Mari had returned without Lloyd or Takeo, but with two other guests-Tug and his daughter, Joy.

“Mas, old man, we were wondering where you were,” said Tug, getting up from his chair at the kitchen table, which had been moved into the living room. Mari smiled and scooped a serving of fried rice from a wok onto a plate in front of an empty chair. Her hair was wet, freshly washed. In fact, her whole spirit seemed freshly watered. She told him what he had already sensed: Takeo was doing much, much better, and would be released from the hospital after undergoing a few more tests.

Before he took his seat, Joy acknowledged him. “Mr. Arai, I haven’t seen you in ages. Maybe even ten years.” Joy didn’t mention Chizuko’s funeral, but that had been the last time, they all knew. Joy had the same moon face, and wore a dark-blue kerchief over her head. Her hair lay in two long braids, like those women in Hong Kong kung fu movies, except the right one was dyed bright pink and the other electric blue. When Mari was a teenager, she often said that Joy had “tight eyes,” claiming that she herself found that kind of thin eyes attractive.

“Yah, long time,” Mas replied. He couldn’t believe that this two-tone-braided girl had been close to becoming a full-fledged doctor after completing her residency in South Carolina. He had once viewed her as being quiet and bland, like a boiled egg, but it was quite obvious that her shell was now broken.

“Well, Dad,” said Mari, pulling out a chair for Mas, “tell us where you’ve been.”

Mas took off his jacket and started from the beginning. He mentioned the sycamore, but quickly went on to the suicide letter and conversation at the Waxley House. Mari kept interjecting, filling in Mas’s blanks. The sea urchin, Penn Anderson, worked with Phillip at Ouchi Silk, Inc., while the sumo wrestler, Larry Pauley, was a senior vice president of Waxley Enterprises, which donated money to the Ouchi Foundation. And Miss Waxley was the only child of Mr. Waxley, and chairman emeritus of the company.

“Who is this Waxley fellow?” asked Tug.

“The late, great Henry Waxley?” Mari said. “He started Waxley Enterprises, a shipping company, before World War Two.”

“Oh, yeah, wasn’t there a biography that came out recently?” recollected Joy. “Sounds like he was a real SOB. A control freak, right?”

“Joy.” Tug frowned and wiped his beard of any stray grains of fried rice. “He was a successful businessman.”

“No, Mr. Yamada, Joy’s right,” said Mari. “I heard Waxley was a hard man to deal with. Actually, Kazzy was no better.”

Mas didn’t know why these daughters had to warukuchi so much. Warukuchi literally meant bad-mouth, and they were freely talking bad about men two and three times their age.

“Kazzy was lecherous, Dad,” Mari maintained. “A sukebe. He even propositioned me when I was four months pregnant with Takeo.”

“What an asshole.” Joy tossed her blue braid behind her shoulder while Tug took a big swig of water.

“Maybe youzu get it wrong,” Mas countered.

“No, Dad, I didn’t misinterpret that. It was pretty clear what he wanted.”

The four of them became quiet. Mas didn’t know whether to be happy that Kazzy was dead or to view his daughter as being shinkeikabin, too sensitive. He watched Mari circle the table, collecting dirty dishes, until she stopped at his side. “Oh, I forgot to tell you,” she then recalled. “Haruo left a message on the answering machine. Wasn’t quite sure what he was talking about.”

After she took the dishes to the sink, Mari turned the dial counterclockwise on the aged answering machine.

“Mari, don’t you think it’s time to go digital?” said Joy. “Damn, girl, you guys live like you’re just out of the eighties.”

“What can I say? Lloyd and I are old-school.”

“More like prehistoric.”

Mas waved the girls to be quiet as he positioned his ear toward the machine’s speaker.

It was indeed Haruo, first breathing hard like he had run up a bunch of steps to make this call.

“I gotchu Mystery Gardenia, Mas. Call me as soon youzu getsu dis message.”

Mas looked at Tug and didn’t waste any time. Since Haruo had been up for his graveyard shift, he was probably already in bed, wiped out from the day’s activities. But Haruo wasn’t the type to mind if anybody interrupted his slumber, especially if it meant that someone out there needed him.

Haruo answered after the sixth ring. He had indeed been sleeping, but Haruo being Haruo, it didn’t take him long to start talking, his words dribbling out like a steady rain.

“You be proud of me, Mas. Izu found your Mystery Gardenia.”

Haruo’s search actually began in the Flower Market, where he now worked part-time, a concrete refuge in downtown Los Angeles amid wandering transvestites, fenced factories protected by coils of barbed wire, and refrigerator box after box (apartments for the homeless). Inside, on the first floor, however, were rows and rows of blossoms-either grown locally in Southern California or imported from Latin America and Asia. Haruo always spoke about how he loved the scent of flowers. Like Mas, he had survived the Bomb, but unlike Mas, he always talked about sweet smells, whether they came from a garden or a woman’s kitchen. The Bomb might have destroyed Haruo’s face, but his nose was as strong as ever.

Haruo worked for his friend Taxie, an old-time chrysanthemum grower. They had an established routine. From two o’clock in the morning, Taxie was the front man, greeting the customers and showing them their flowers soaking in water. Haruo, on the other hand, worked in back, toward the cash register. He was the one who wrapped the dripping bunches in sheets of old newspaper and carried the flowers onto their customers’ metal carts.

Mas thought it was well and good that Haruo was making some extra cash at the Market, but he had some concerns as well. The Market was rampant with gamblers. The game of choice was liar’s poker, in which men brought out dollar bills from their pockets and wallets and gambled off of the bills’ serial numbers. This wasn’t the best environment for a recovering ex-gambler like Haruo, and Mas sometimes wondered when his friend would succumb to the temptation. But today was no day to go into a man’s addiction.

“So whatsu the Mystery Gardenia?” asked Mas, hoping for a short explanation.

“You knowsu Kanda Nursery? Only gardenia grower in Market. Roses, carnation, they all come from Latin America, yo, but gardenia plants, they have mushi, whatchacallit, worms in soil. No out-of-country gardenia allowed. So Kanda doin’ good.”

Mas knew about the nematodes, wormlike parasites that could burrow near the roots of gardenia plants. The greenhouses of Kanda Nursery must be either north in Ventura County or south in Orange County, he thought.

“Well, anyways, I go ova to Kanda’s stall and talk to the son. Good thing I brought ova donuts one day at the Market. He rememba and then make time for me. I tell themsu they gotsu the biggest gardenias I ever seen. He tell me about their special Mystery Gardenia. Thatsu whatchu call dat type, you knowsu, Mystery Gardenia. Ship all ova the country, I think. I tellsu them about the gardenia you lookin’ for. ‘No way,’ he say. ‘No way you can find who grow dat flower.’ But I tellsu him how big and beautiful you say it was. So I guess heezu gotsu some hokori.”

Mas knew that if you complimented a man on what he grew or made with his hands, you had a friend for life. Although Haruo didn’t have a lot of common sense, unlike Mas, he had smarts on how to get along with people.

“Then he tellsu me, ‘You go with my dad to ranch.’ The father turns out to be Kibei, Mas, just like us. Name Danjo. Skinny guy, as skinny as a broom. But mouth, okii, so big thatsu you could sweep a whole day’s worth of leaves in there. Born in Riverside, but spent time in Tottori.”

“Yah, yah,” Mas said impatiently. He didn’t have time to hear Danjo Kanda’s life story.