That same morning, by telephone, Mr. Tamazaki of the Daily News reached out to the Nishi Hongwanji Buddhist Temple in Los Angeles. In part of this ornate house of worship had been stored the belongings of some of those Californians sent to relocation camps during the war. A limited number of items were never reclaimed, and a curator looked after them even these years later. In addition, the curator maintained a lengthy list of the people who had been sent to the relocation camps, as well as a smaller list of those who wished for their whereabouts to be known to others who had endured the camps and who regularly updated their addresses with the temple.
Mr. Tamazaki wished to know if the temple might be aware of a former internee of any of the ten War Relocation Authority camps now living in or around Charleston, Illinois. Within an hour, he received a confirmation call. A woman named Setsuko Nozawa had been interned at the camp in Moab, Utah, and currently resided in Charleston. She had already agreed that her address and phone number could be shared with Mr. Tamazaki.
Mrs. Nozawa proved to be quite a talker. Mr. Tamazaki learned that she was twenty when released from Moab, that she was forty-four now and, with her husband, had become a successful entrepreneur. They owned a car wash, two dry-cleaning shops, and an apartment building. Their younger daughter was a sophomore at Northwestern University in Evanston. Their older daughter was a senior at Yale. And their son had begun work on his MBA at UCLA. She loved to play bridge, taught origami to interested friends, was learning French cooking from the book by Julia Child, found the Beatles unlistenable, but was fond of the music of the Osmonds even if Utah didn’t have good associations for her.
When Mr. Tamazaki finally managed to explain his situation and described the information he hoped that she would attempt to collect for him, she at once agreed. She was currently at the front desk of one of the dry-cleaning shops, but could get someone to cover for her within the hour.
54
After Miss Pearl left, I went inside to lie down on the sofa, and I fell asleep at once. For half an hour I remained oblivious, until the doorbell woke me, ringing incessantly. Of course the insistent visitor proved to be the twelve-year-old geek saxophonist.
At the open door, squinting and blinking blearily against a day fiercely bright by comparison to my dreamless sleep, I was reminded that the sun is a continuing nuclear holocaust, ninety-three million miles from our doorstep.
Assessing my appearance, Malcolm said, “Drinking this early in the day, you’ll be dead of liver failure before you’re famous.”
Without being quite so mean as to indicate that his belt line was just inches below his nipples, I said, “At least when I’m found dead, I’ll be dressed with style.”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing. I was asleep on the sofa. I don’t know what I’m saying. Come in.”
He shuffled across the threshold, tripped on the throw rug in the foyer, and stumbled into the living room. Already, I found his lack of coordination endearing, as if it were his cross to bear just like Quasimodo’s deformity in The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, only not so tragic and grotesque. Because he never excused himself or showed the least embarrassment when he careened through a room, you had to admire his determined pretense of grace; and considering how well he blew that sax, he would win the heart of the pretty Gypsy girl that Quasimodo had lost, assuming a pretty Gypsy found him one day.
“I hope I didn’t bring my axe for nothing.”
“That’s like fingernails on a blackboard to me. Please don’t call it an axe.”
“What do you want me to call it?”
“Sax, saxophone, brass-wind instrument, reed instrument, I don’t care.”
“So if you don’t care, I’ll call it my axe. You’ve got to loosen up a little, man. So why were you taking a nap at ten-thirty in the morning?”
“Because I didn’t sleep well,” I lied, but it was a little white lie to avoid being taken for a nut if I told him about the woman who was the city and what she had in her handbag.
“Hey, you know what’ll always put you sound asleep?”
“Listening to you?”
“A glass of milk before bed. Use it to chase a Benadryl.”
“I don’t do drugs, and I never will.”
“Benadryl isn’t a drug. It’s an allergy medication.”
“I don’t have any allergies.”
“Take a walk on the wild side, Jonah.”
“You want to play?”