Chapter 27

Fingal’s Cave/29
YUUDAI PLAYS DETECTIVE

A call to the California Department of Motor Vehicles got Yuudai nowhere. In the Stalking Age, numerous obstacles had been set up to prevent a citizen from tracking down someone through a license plate number. Yuudai suspected that even his preliminary phone call was being recorded. Before he took the step of falsely reporting a hit-and-run, he turned to Google.

CSNDRA was of course Cassandra. Demi was Cassandra.

“Cassandra California” produced 2,890,000 results.

“Cassandra’s 1972 Mustang” produced 1,260,000

“Cassandra’s 1972 Red Mustang” produced 105,000 results.

He closed his eyes and returned to that night. He was the one who had done most of the talking, but she had used an odd word . . . Bodacious? No. Delicious? No. Bitchin’? No. Hellacious. Hellacious. Yes.

He typed in “Cassandra’s 1972 Red Mustang Hellacious California.” 79 results.

Within an hour, he reduced the field to three candidates who had posted 1972 Mustangs for sale and described their cars as “hellacious fast.” One Cassandra was in San Francisco. Two were in Los Angeles. That there might be dozens of 1972 Mustangs not for sale whose owners favored the word hellacious didn’t dismay him, for he felt caught in a current that he neither wanted to nor could resist, and were he tossed up on some barren bank one hundred miles downstream, he would be no worse off than in his present state. He called the phone number of San Francisco’s Cassandra Gissing. No, the Mustang, which had been her deceased husband’s car—hellacious fast, he called it—hadn’t been sold. She was retired, confined to a wheelchair and had no use for it. She offered to reduce the price by $300 if he bought the car within forty-eight hours. He thanked her and told her that he would consider.

Of the two remaining Cassandras, one was in North Hollywood, close to where Yuudai lived, and the other in Topanga Canyon. Neither listed a phone number, so he e-mailed both expressing his interest in the Mustang and asking for an appointment. The North Hollywood Cassandra responded within an hour with a phone number and address. He phoned her back, could not tell if her voice was Demi’s, and so arranged to see the car. The North Hollywood Cassandra was the right age, but the wrong height—by a good six inches—and the wrong color. In ten minutes of conversation, he learned that she was a bookkeeper, recently divorced—from a loud-mouthed drunken asshole—and unemployed. Yuudai agreed that the Mustang was cared for, a classic and a bargain at her price. Recognizing that she might have found a buyer, she stroked the car’s hood, dabbed her eyes and offered him an iced tea. With misgiving, he promised to get back to her within a day. Unhappiness was well distributed.

When Topanga’s Cassandra did not get back to him within forty-eight hours, he drove out to LA’s rustic and close-knit community of artists, freethinkers and aging hippies, unfettered by even a traffic light until recent decades. Yuudai had commuted through the canyon for several years and knew well its few cafés and restaurants. The most popular was the Peace & Love Café, near the canyon’s center, and always buzzing with left-of-center opinion, magical thinking and nonjudgmental gossip.

Kazuki ordered his coffee and took it to the café’s deck. A few minutes before noon, it was a glorious day, the air so clean and clear as to be austere. He sat at a small table in the shade of a dollar tree. Vines threaded through a cedar lattice against which he laid his head to take in the rocky cliffs and dense green brush, a hawk circling lazily above. Dreamily, he turned from nature to observe the three people on the deck. Two were a young couple engaged in a fierce argument. The young man was shirtless and the woman wore a thin torn blouse. Head bobbing and weaving, screaming for her to be quiet, the shirtless man thrust his mouth at her face as if looking for the most paralyzing place to bite. The woman dug her fingers into the telling blue hair, bent her head almost to her knees and repeatedly asked him to leave her alone. A moment later, she jumped up, ran from the deck and strode south along the roadside. The bare-chested young man sprinted after her. Kazuki was tempted to follow them, to see how it would turn out. But the setting was now so peaceful. Not a car or motorcycle passed. The hawk circled. Quiet enveloped the deck. The only movement was when the other patron, a haggard man in worn flannel shirt, lifted his eyes to Kazuki, as if a question might be on his mind, as a question was certainly on Kazuki’s mind. Would Hugh show up? He was a regular at the café, so it was not improbable. Kazuki chose to risk it. If it happened, it happened. With Gina’s phone call, Kazuki suspected that Hugh would soon be seeking him out. But the prospect of the finished book had invigorated and strengthened Kazuki for the confrontation. Kazuki continued to think through the scene . . .

Yuudai would play it cool. He would drink his coffee until an opening appeared. He settled into a table on the deck and leafed through a latte-stained issue of the Topangan Times that had been left on a chair.

The other customer on the deck was an older man rocking on his bench, eyes closed, a cigarette clinging to his cracked lips, brittle white hairs springing from the open neck of his greasy green fatigue jacket. Yuudai took the lid off his coffee, set it on the napkin and sipped, gazing at the mountains and smelling the jasmine, occasionally returning the man’s glance.

“Would you like to hear a poem?” asked the man.

“Of course,” said Yuudai.

The poet glanced at Yuudai. “Uh, well . . .” The poet turned his head. “I charge a dime a poem.”

“I’ll take ten.”

“That’s all I got today.”

“You won’t use them up. You can say them again.”

“That’s right, I guess.”

“I’ll pay you for ten, but please just read six.”

“Six, huh?” He pulled a dirty black notebook from his flannel pocket and removed the pen that had hitched a ride. He thumbed through it, notching pages.

“What you want to hear first? I got one about angels.”

“No. No angels.”

The poet cleared his throat. “Well, let’s see . . .” He flipped through the pages. “I got one about flowers.”

“What else?”

“The flower one is pretty good.”

“All right. Flowers, then.”

“What about the sea?”

“The sea? Sure.”

The poet stood up, holding the notebook with two hands like a preacher with a Bible. He studied his words for a moment and his eyes danced around until they settled on the open page.

“The world is a pisser in many respects . . .”

Yuudai listened, applauding each time the poet looked up, which Yuudai supposed to be the end of each poem.

The poet’s last poem was titled “Rock Pool,” and Yuudai was surprised to find that it resonated with him.

A rock pool can be calm, but deep,
A rock pool can be shallow and stormy.
A rock pool can be cold as dry ice.
A rock pool can be warm as shit.

The poet repeated the stanza, the fourth line becoming the first line, the first line the second and so on. Using this formula he read the remaining stanzas, and then raised his glittering eyes to Yuudai’s.

“I like that very much,” said Yuudai.

“You got four more coming.”

“Great. Hey, do you know a Cassandra?”

The poet grinned. “Damned straight. Calls my poetry hellacious, Cassy does.”