Age

Author's note: don't own anything. On with the story.

They tried houses up and down Castro all day. No houses with Mizuno on the doorplate it was the best they could run on, and Rei would be for asking for him at each house, but she couldn t do English and Makoto and Ami would be dead against such a trial. So they walked. They tried an apartment on a corner, a dingy three-story house that needed a new coat of paint. Windows that needed washing, a lawn with a piebald look. They went doubtfully up the four battered steps.

They stood there doubtfully. It was a cool afternoon with a gray sky overhead, and a loan bird blundered overhead with a sore, cracked note. Cars wheeled up and down the street behind them. Just open the door and there he is? I barely remember how he looks. I guess, I was little, I guess I blocked him out. Ami felt trapped. They were on a stage of sorts, this whole American center of life behind them, and waiting behind the door was not her father, nonsense. The landlady. But still to be on trial. Ami looked to her left. Makoto, taller than either of them, a sweet face but the deportment of a prizefighter and the mien of one too, one who has been through fights and won and lost. On the right, Rei, tall and elegant, but a hard look on her face as always. Her good for nothing father, her loving mother who died young and neglected by all but her and Grandfather. Rei, who probably considered that the man she had always remonstrated with but loved, Grandfather, was now gone, probably not dead but still lost. Probably lost as Hiro Mizuno, for there was that stark shame, the dropping off of the veil, with which he recognized and fled his indiscretions when he went on pilgrimage. Hiro would feel that if he was decent, perhaps. Ami was sure of it. Rei, who was the soul of elegance back home, Rei who had ceased that life by choice, Rei who now was in a land where she could speak barely any English. Rei who had coolly dismissed America as an asylum for ridiculous portly men, similar women, and of course (in her charitable hours) a few real people.

Here, I ll knock, said Makoto, who aspirated thus and knocked in the same instant, three sharp raps to get the uncertainty over with.

After few moments the door opened. An old, short woman with a mop of white hair, sucking on a cigarette and exhaling mechanically as she fumbled with a cane too big for her. She had a grim look on her face, but as she scanned the three women and noted Ami s eyes, perhaps the connection was made, and she softened slightly, with wonder not sentiment. Ami knew this her mother had determined, hard eyes, but she had her father s eyes, sort of happy and sad. The token ill girl of a manga, Minako had once styled it.

You re, you re looking for Harry, right? Paints?

This was for Ami, and she spoke. Probably. Hiro Mizuno, he s an artist. A really good artist, she thought afterword.

"Harold's at, let me see, " she took a drag, and she gave an address on Haight Street. She gave them an idea how to get there. " I hope you see him. Big art show. He s actually invited me now and then. Not my cup of tea though." A thought. "You can wait here if you don t see him. He'll come back sooner or later." Another drag and blow.

Rei stifled back a choke for dignity's sake. "Thanks. I think we'll go and see him," said Ami.

The old lady nodded. "Name's Eleanor Edwards. Well, it was a pleasure to meet you" , and she pulled the door shut.

It was a big Victorian house on Haight. The sign by the door noted that upstairs there was an exhibition of paintings by local artists. Hiro Mizuno is at the top of the list. Some of them aren't even named. Pride. Not like Mother's pride, though. It's not really status for him. Or obsession with him getting ahead. He did it himself. Whether or not doesn't enter into it. As the three walked inside (they noted it was free, put on by some community beautification endeavor or something), Ami realized that when they crossed the Pacific she had of course thought of her father, she thought of him consistently and dreamed of a hazy figure in lieu of his actual similitude, which some part of her had repressed somehow; what she had not realized, hadn t thought with perception and certitude, that they would be in his country, would have easier means than ever before of seeing him. If Makoto had not failed to make a mark or had not been able to do so at all, then it might have been years before she had the chance to think of seeing her father. When pressed to it, she had thought of it suddenly. It was odd.

Not that she missed him. She truly could not remember him. He was Santa Claus, this sort of entity that she perceived was good because he gave, but she could not think of walking with him or hanging with him. He wasn't palpable. She did not know truly of being without him, so this was less reunion than a meeting for the first time.

As they went up the stairs they met with music, a soft, free jazz. They got to the top of the stairs, and it was a room adjacent to a big room with the exhibition, what must have been a few rooms let into one at some point. As they went into the room, which had a fair amount of people milling about and looking at paintings and chatting (immediately and clearly a semi-formal to formal affair, probably mostly attended by the people who had arranged it themselves), the source of the music was clear. A mood to take in the works. At a standup piano sat a small, frail looking girl, pale and with nine or ten stud piercings on her earlobe. Next to her, further in the corner, was the saxophonist. The instrument was a big, tarnished silver saxophone and had a full, placid sound. The musician looked about the age of the pianist; she was clearly the age of the other and had pink hair, styled almost reminiscently of Usagi s. They mixed well with the soft mist that had started outside, a nice quiet but deep sound and soul.

Rei, Ami, and Makoto stayed sort of huddled together as they went, trying to show decision of purpose as they pretended to be there for the art, all paintings, and not in search of someone.

Rei trailed behind slightly, and then she sensed a presence. She whirled around.

The guy had bristly hair and a ragged green coat, the sleeves too long, though he was probably better than six feet tall. He was kind of slimy, and if his thick glasses were unflattering, they at least downplayed his skewed eyes. In his big mitt, the back of which was obscured by a reddish grove, was clenched a battered big sketching pad, stuffed with papers. "Hi, I am in need of a model." A foolish sort of deep lilt, with slobbering. He leaned in when he had spoken his piece. Rei reached behind for Makoto s shoulder, full of a black horror.

"Sorry, miss. Ed, man, you know I can't," And he stopped. The three turned around, Ed standing there grinning sheepishly.

The man had greenish hair, shot with gray and fairly rumbled. A thick scraggly beard. A ragged wooden crucifix of sticks bound with strawlike twine, hung from his neck. He had a vest jacket, like that of a hunter, which was a drab green, and his shirt was a wrinkled white dress shirt. His eyes were reddish, possibly from a dubious cigarette or two. "Oh God. Oh God."

He stood, swaying slightly. The patrons stopped now and then, looked about in curiosity, and then went back to the pictures, not so much in awe of the bedraggled man Hiro, or his protege Ed, whom they both knew, but more of this tableau that seemed, though its meaning was occluded, momentous to them.

"Ami."