Mas walked from the tsukubai to the bridge over the pond. The yellow police tape was still haphazardly draped over the gourd-shaped concrete floor. Mas squatted down to get a better look at the inscription Becca had been trying to show him that first day. Carved on the side, probably with the end of a stick while the concrete was still fresh, were the kanji characters, ko, and, short for ikiru. “Child lives”? Strange. What had Kazzy’s overeducated father been trying to say with this message? These artistic erai types had all kinds of sayings that made no sense to Mas.

Next was Sylvester the sycamore. Mas tentatively made his way to the toolshed. As he reached down for the handsaw, he couldn’t help but feel for the small indentation that had once held the bullet. Armed with the saw, Mas set up the ladder by the sycamore and went straight to work. The handsaw was old, probably from the seventies. Years of rain had seeped into the wooden handle, so Mas should have seen it coming. But he didn’t. With each push and pull of the saw, the wooden handle jiggled and the metal blade curved back and forth, instead of remaining straight. Seeing little result from his effort, Mas cursed under his breath and dragged the blade forward with all his might. The handle burst free, the blade sinking its rusty teeth into the soft tissue of his left hand, in between his index finger and thumb. A streak of blood immediately dripped down his hand. The wound burned so badly that Mas feared that he would do shikko in his pants. Mas was too stunned to even hear himself yell.

“Mr. Arai!” Becca poked her head from the upstairs window. “What have you done to yourself?”

Becca wrapped Mas’s hand in a dish towel and guided him up the staircase to the second floor of the Waxley House. Once they reached the top of the stairs, Mas could see that there were two rooms at opposite ends of the hallway, perfectly symmetrical like a set of weights on a barbell. Both doors were wide open. A TV set and fancy electronic equipment were stored in the room on the right, while an old-fashioned desk and typewriter sat in the left. They headed to the bathroom that was right smack in the middle.

“I’m so sorry,” said Becca. Mas sat on the closed lid of the toilet. “I should have told you not to bother with Sylvester without the proper tools.” Becca made Mas keep his hand elevated. She opened up the medicine chest and took out a plastic bottle of antiseptic and a tube of Neosporin. From the cabinet at the bottom of the sink came a roll of gauze bandage and some white tape.

“I think I’d better take you to the hospital. You might need some stitches. And definitely a shot for tetanus.”

Mas shook his head. He’d had enough of hospitals on both coasts. He had had his share of gardening war injuries over the decades; a sliced hand was as common to a gardener as a black eye to a boxer.

Becca must have realized that it was useless to argue with Mas. She soaked a cotton ball with the antiseptic and pressed hard against the cut, making sure that it hurt. While she was wrapping the gauze bandage, the phone rang. Becca went into the room with the TV equipment to take the call. She spoke about fruit platters, cheese, and other kinds of appetizers that Mas had never heard of. The bandage still dangling down his arm, Mas walked out of the bathroom, looked both ways, and headed for the unoccupied room-the one with the old-fashioned desk and typewriter. This had been Kazzy’s office, Mas figured. A row of bookshelves lined one of the walls. A small circular table sat in the middle, while a wooden desk, looking like it belonged in the TV Western Bonanza, was against the wall by the window. The desk had a roll top, which had some sort of lock, but it was a Cracker Jack kind that could be jiggled open with a nail file. Above the desk on the wall was a framed black-and-white photograph of a hakujin woman with a broad face and laughing eyes. Mas saw a slight resemblance to Becca. Must be the grandmother, Kazzy’s mother. On a small table was the ancient typewriter, labeled Remington. Mas remembered seeing that kind of typewriter at his janitor friend’s workplace, the Kashu Mainichi, once the number two newspaper in Little Tokyo. Now it was number zero, because it went belly-up in the early nineties. Housed in an old factory on First Street, the newspaper staff worked amid pigeons resting on a beam near a skylight, while one of the staff members’ cats prowled on the cement floor.

For old times’ sake, Mas pressed down on one of the typewriter keys. Had to have strong fingers to type on these old machines, that’s for sure. Not like those fancy computer keyboards they had now.

He heard the front door open and shut. He walked away from the typewriter, knowing he shouldn’t have been in the room. He kept his hand elevated and waited for Becca to complete her phone call.

“Hello?” It wasn’t Becca but the old lady, Miss Waxley. Miss Waxley was probably a little younger than Mas, but she seemed from another era. She smelled like the fragrance counter of a department store. She probably used a handkerchief to blow her nose and went to the hairdresser’s once a week.

“Mr. Arai,” she said, and Mas was surprised that the hakujin woman had remembered his name. “Where’s Becca?”

“Telephone,” he said, gesturing with his bandaged hand toward the other room.

“What happened?” She put her fancy pocketbook down on the circular table and took a closer look at Mas’s wound.

Mas didn’t want to get into the story, but allowed Miss Waxley to grab a pair of scissors from the desk and snip the loose gauze bandage. “Sank you,” he managed to say.

They stared at each other for a good minute before Miss Waxley tried to make conversation. “Do you know that this was my parents’ room?” Miss Waxley said.

“Oh, yah?”

“In fact, the typewriter and desk were originally theirs.”

Tsumaranai. Boring as hell to hear an old lady talk. But she had extended her friendship by helping Mas with his hand, so he at least owed her some listening time.

“My mother was housebound for years with her illness. She could putter around the house a little; even make some meals, I was told. I don’t have any memories of this house, because we had moved to Manhattan, closer to my father’s office, by the time I was one. It was a new start for our family, I guess.

“Now it’s just me,” Miss Waxley said with a weak smile.

Since everyone called the old lady “miss,” she had probably never married, figured Mas. Even though she had money, she must be lonely, all by herself. Good thing she is involved in the garden project, he thought.

Becca then walked in, freeing Mas from Miss Waxley’s stories. The conversation turned to food, so Mas excused himself, saying that he would be leaving after he put the remaining bandage roll back in the bathroom.

After closing the door of the medicine chest, Mas heard a couple of male voices through the open bathroom window. Underneath the diseased sycamore tree were Phillip and a young man, a teenager, wearing a blue knit beanie cap trimmed in gold.

“This is the last time. I’m telling you,” Phillip said. Mas couldn’t see his face, just the top of his thinning hair. He opened his wallet and stuffed some bills in the boy’s hand. “If you say anything, it’s not only my head, it’s yours, too, remember?”

The boy said nothing. After getting his money, he walked away from the house, toward Flatbush Avenue.

As Mas quickly made his way down the stairs, he heard the jangling of a key at the front door. Slipping out the back, Mas hurried to the sidewalk in search of the teenager in the beanie cap.