The Book of the Shadow Read online

  “You going to look for a job?” Karen said, flipping quickly through the L.A. Times. “The best way would probably be to look through the help-wanted ads in the Times, here. Or in this Echo Park paper.” She rifled through some mail until she found a thin-looking newspaper. “You might be able to find apartment listings in here, too–although you can stay here as long as you want, of course.”

  Right, I thought. I’m sure you’d be thrilled to keep me around, sitting right between you and Hiro on the couch. Instead of you two making out, we can all play a big game of Uno.

  “Thanks,” I muttered. I wouldn’t be able to move out fast enough.

  Karen checked her watch and shot up. “I’m going to be late if I sit around here any longer,” she said, putting her cup in the sink.

  “Do you eat breakfast?” I asked her.

  “I pick up something at a juice bar near the dojo,” Karen explained. “Usually a wheat grass shot and some bulgur wheat and tofu and scrambled eggs. But there’s some multigrain cereal in the cupboard. And edamame, if you feel like a snack.”

  “Oh. Okay.” I’d been hoping for some ridiculously sugary cereal. Or a doughnut. Maybe that was too much to dream of in L.A.

  Karen grabbed her coat and keys. “You sure you’ll be all right?” When I nodded, she opened the door. “All right, see you later!”

  “Bye.” I watched blankly as Karen disappeared through the front door. Then I sat down at the table with a glass of water. The house was so quiet now—it was really unsettling. I stared at the wall for a little while, feeling sorry for myself. Stupid wall, I thought. Stupid wall gets to sit in the house all day, just holding up the roof and a couple of pictures. Stupid wall doesn’t have to go out and find a job. Then I squared my shoulders and rolled my neck around in a circle. What was wrong with me? Envying a wall? Why was I being such a baby? “What is your problem?” I said to myself out loud. “Get a grip, Heaven! People look for jobs every day!”

  I remembered Karen’s words last night. You’ll really appreciate the experience once you’ve been through it.

  A great experience. At least something like that would get my mind off Hiro and the people trying to kill me.

  I squared my shoulders and picked up the paper. Quickly scanning it for any news of my father (nothing, thank God), I flipped to the Classifieds section. Amazingly, there were quite a few listings for the kind of “want fries with that?” jobs I would be qualified for right here in Echo Park. Most of the ads said to come down to the places to apply. There was even an ad for an artist’s assistant in Los Feliz, one neighborhood over. How fun would that be? I circled some of the ads I saw, then found some more in the Echo Park paper, ripped out the pages, and stuffed them into my coat pocket.

  I realized then that my stomach was snarling. I walked over to Karen’s cupboard and pulled out her box of no-sugar-added wheat-free granola. I shook it. The box weighed a ton. What did you put in wheat-free granola? Rocks? What I really wanted right now was a Krispy Kreme. I’d noticed there was a store full of them right down the street from Karen’s house. I deserved a doughnut for getting out there and starting my new life, right? Of course I did.

  Things were looking better already.

  Unfortunately, that artist’s assistant job I was talking about? Complete bust. There was a line of qualified college kids in front of me just dying for the job, so I didn’t even hang around for it. Instead, I did what I think is called pounding the pavement. I must have gone to thousands of little shops, eateries, diners, coffeehouses, bakeries. I even asked if Krispy Kreme was hiring, but they weren’t. Every place on my list kindly gave me an application to fill out, but I felt a little nervous writing down my name and address. Some ice-cream store manager asked me what my “social” was and I stared at him blankly. “Where you from?” he asked. “Japan,” I said quietly. He shook his head. “No social security number, no job,” he said. “We don’t pay under the table here.”

  So, lesson number one: I had to find a job that “paid under the table.” Whatever that meant. I had a feeling it wouldn’t be easy.

  One bagel place I walked into seemed willing to hire me, and the manager said he was cool with “paying under the table.” It looked nice enough until I saw a huge, nasty rat scurrying into the back room. The back room that, presumably, I’d be working in. Well, gross. I might have fallen far from my servants and unlimited credit cards and personal chauffeur, but I wasn’t quite ready to throw in the hat and live like a Survivor contestant just yet. No rats for me, thank you very much. I still had enough money for doughnuts and my pride.

  Then I sat down at a coffee shop for an interview and was immediately weirded out by the gross manager’s sudden eyebrow movements. “We’ve already hired someone,” he said with a smarmy grin, flicking his left eyebrow skyward. “But you look so delicious, I could maybe hire you just for eye candy.” I looked at him in surprise, and the guy just licked his lips as he looked me up and down. I suddenly felt dirty—this guy was at least twice my age. “No, thanks,” I said, grabbing my application and stalking out the door. I’d changed my mind—this was my new low. I was ready to give up.

  I crossed out all the places I had gone to. Of the fifteen or so places I’d circled, I was down to one.

  The place was called Life Bytes. It was in a particularly dingy section of Chinatown. It took me forever to get there, and my feet felt sore and blistered. The place was a storefront building attached to a few others. A piece of plywood hung at the top, strangely painted in neon colors, but I couldn’t exactly make out what it said. It was painted in big swirly letters, like graffiti. I only knew I was at the right place because of the number on the door.

  The ad had said this place was a cybercafé. I remembered reading about cybercafés quite a few years back. I hadn’t seen any others since I’d gotten to L.A, so I didn’t know exactly what was in store for me.

  I pushed open the door. The place was small, with a bunch of high-tech computers propped up against the far wall. The computers were all occupied by an impressive array of clients: dorky white guys, Asian hipsters, and a few kids young enough to make me check my watch and see if school was out (it was—I’d been wandering around for hours). On the other wall was a sleek silver bar with a shiny orange espresso machine. Two large coffee tureens burbled, one with an orange top, the other with chrome. Strange, trancelike techno pumped through the speakers. Everyone was tapping away furiously, pausing to talk on their tiny silver cell phones in Mandarin. I even overheard someone speaking Japanese. This place was so secluded and high-tech, I felt like a signal could be given and the whole place could be converted into a giant war room with computer consoles rising from the ground and a big TV screen dropping from the ceiling.

  Suddenly a round, pale, overly eager face swam before me. “Hello!” it said. “Do you want to use the computers?”

  “Um. I was…the job…?” I couldn’t get my thoughts out correctly. The guy was staring at me oddly. He had terribly cut hair—maybe he cut it himself—and wore a Futurama T-shirt. He was looking at me, in all honesty, as if he’d never seen a girl before. As if I was a new specimen for his jar.

  “A job! The job in the paper!” the guy said happily. “Of course!” He thrust out his hand, and I shook it hesitantly. “I’m Farnsworth. So you’re interested in employment?” He had a funny twitch about him and spoke with a hint of a lisp.

  I wrung my hands together. “Well, I don’t know.” I looked around. “It doesn’t seem like you need anybody.” No one was in the line for coffee. No one even had coffee cups at their computer terminals. How did this place make money?

  “Nonsense! Of course we do!” Farnsworth said, waving his hands. “I’m the manager. I posted the ad.”

  I looked at a little button on his shirt. “Actually, it says you’re the assistant manager,” I said.

  Farnsworth blushed. “You’re smart! See, we do need you! Well, it’s true—a guy named Scott Shou owns the place, and he’s the official manage
r, but he’s never around, and he okayed me hiring someone. We need somebody to man the counter, do a little sweeping and mopping, you know. That kind of stuff.”

  I could tell some of the guys at the computers were listening. They’d taken their headphones off and were sort of staring past me, at the wall. They made me a little nervous. Especially the one who was speaking Japanese. Did he recognize me from the papers?

  “Um, I don’t know if I’m interested,” I said, polite as I could be. The place kind of gave me the creeps. “But thank you—”

  “The salary,” Farnsworth interrupted me, “is twelve dollars an hour. Under the table.”

  I gasped. It was double almost every other place I’d been to.

  Farnsworth looked at me with a serious face. “Is that too low? Fifteen an hour. How’s that?”

  “I…um, that sounds good,” I murmured. Fifteen an hour, I’d be in an out-of-the-way location, and maybe I could even get some use out of the Internet. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. The money was more than I’d imagined. I had to find a job somewhere. I couldn’t imagine spending another day like I had today—humiliatingly trudging from place to place, admitting I had no experience, unable to give a phone number where I could be reached. Farnsworth seemed perfectly harmless. The other guys would be fine, as long as I kept my distance. If it was weird, I could get out.

  I asked Farnsworth about hours and flexibility, and he seemed totally cool with working around my training time. I got the feeling I’d found a real gem here—they were paying me to make up my own schedule and not do much at all.

  “I’ll take it,” I said, taking a deep breath.

  “You will?” Farnsworth said, almost bursting at the seams. “That’s great!” He stuck out his hand for me to shake. I put my hand into his delicately. His palm was a little sweaty now, as if he were nervous. He pumped my hand up and down. “Congratulations, and welcome aboard!” he said. I smiled weakly.

  Farnsworth rushed over to a little hole behind the counter, which led to a back room. He emerged with a set of papers. “Some stuff for you to fill out.” He winked at me. “Just so I can reach you if we need extra help, that kind of thing.” I bit my lip and thought for a moment. Did I really want to give Karen’s address or phone number?

  “Do you mind if I don’t fill these out right this minute?” I asked. “I’m sort of in transition right now as far as an address goes. Can I finish this when I find a new place?”

  Farnsworth shrugged. “Sure, that’s fine. I probably won’t need to contact you right away, anyway.”

  “I’m in the process of finding a new place right now,” I explained.

  Farnsworth walked over to the three nerdy guys at the computers. “Heaven,” he said. “I want to introduce you to my homeys over here. There’s Rom, Shigeto, and the Professor. Say hello, boys. Heaven is going to be our new countergirl.”

  Homeys? I struggled to stifle a giggle. This Farnsworth guy was definitely going to be entertaining. Rom and Shigeto—two of the sleek-looking, DJ-spinning kind of kids—rolled their eyes a little, but Rom gave me a little nod and Shigeto smiled and winked at me. Shigeto was the guy who had been speaking Japanese earlier. For a second I panicked—had he recognized me? But in the time it took me to get all worked up about it, he had already turned back to his computer game and resumed blasting away at something. I guessed I was safe. The Professor seemed to be cut from the same cloth as Farnsworth. He was a big-headphoned, dumpy guy with a big smile. He looked as harmless as a puppy.

  “What kind of professor are you?” I asked him.

  “A professor of the Internet,” he said, grinning and offering his hand. Give me a break.

  “The Professor is our best customer,” Farnsworth said proudly. “He’s here all the time.” I groaned inwardly. Both the Professor and Farnsworth were staring at me with love-struck eyes. Why couldn’t Hiro look at me like that?

  Farnsworth and I spoke for a little while longer, arranging that my first shift would be tomorrow at one. He gave me a spare set of keys in case I ever had to open up the store in the morning. And he kept thanking me over and over. I left, giving everyone a little wave, and finally found my way out the door.

  Standing outside in the brisk air, I looked back into Life Bytes and saw Farnsworth gathered around his homeys, giving everyone a high five. I caught only snippets of what he was saying, but a word that stuck out very clearly was the word babelicious. I hadn’t heard anyone use that word since…ever.

  What had I gotten myself into? I took a deep breath and tried to think calm thoughts. Even though Life Bytes seemed kind of strange, I couldn’t help but feel a little proud of myself. I had done something. I had made a change for myself. I had marched in there and negotiated a higher salary—even if only by accident! Way to go, me! If only Hiro could see me now. If only Ohiko could see me now. For once, thinking of Ohiko didn’t make me burst into tears. Instead, I felt that he was watching over me—guiding me, even. Ohiko would have gotten a real kick out of Farnsworth, that was for sure. I walked quickly. Now I was a girl with a purpose. A job. I smiled and felt strong.

  This is probably more amazing than the time they came out with the Magic Onslaught cards. Professor and I happened to get to the store before anyone else, and we were able to buy the whole set without wandering around to any other stores or searching on the Internet or anything. I mean, it’s probably not the most wonderful thing—there was that time we were able to sneak into the Star Wars triple feature at the Torrence theater, or there was that time when I went to that garage sale and found vintage X-wing fighters still in the box, so I’m probably overreacting. But still, you should have seen the troglodytes that came in here before this girl did…. They were beyond Cro-Magnon, mere amoebas, just slug bodies and potato noggins for heads, kind of like pod people. And then this girl—she’s gorgeous, this perfect specimen—she comes walking in and she actually wants the job and everything actually goes right for once, which never seems to happen with me and my romantic forays. She’s like those wild girls in Shonen Knife—she just needs tall kneesocks and a crazy ponytail—but she’s more beautiful than them, actually. The Internet dating was a complete bust: I signed on to match.com and even included that picture of myself in a cowboy hat (aren’t cowboy hats in style? Bentley had insisted they were, so we set up the Net cam and did the shot and I thought it looked pretty goofy, but Bentley insisted it would be an instant babe magnet) but no one answered. I’m beginning to think there are no girls in this city, or at least no smart girls, and maybe this girl is a smart girl. I wonder if she’s into Dungeons and Dragons, or is that too old of a game…. She seemed to have a little bit of an accent. I wonder how new she is to the country, but she’s got her English down pretty well. I could be her Belldandy and she could be the lovely Keiichi (or maybe it’s the other way around, I can’t remember), and I wanted to get out my X-Ray Specs and get a better view of her insides, although I don’t know if they really work or not—I’ve been too shy to try them on anyone. I could protect her from all the rough characters who come blowing through this neighborhood—they’ve left us alone so far, I think because of some of the guys Scott knows—but wouldn’t I be the hero if I saved heavenly Heaven from some big burly dude who came sweeping into here acting all tough? But if there’s a big bad wolf staking out the old Life Bytes fortress of solitude, I’d better stick around while celestial Heaven is manning the counter. I wouldn’t want her alone in here if something ever happened—I see her as the delicate type, a hothouse flower perhaps, completely in need of a rescuer in times of peril. Meaning, yep, you guessed it, old Farnsworth, stud extraordinaire, will have to just nobly put in some extra hours to play bodyguard to my precious orchid. Not such a bad deal all round, I’d say. As Mr. Burns from The Simpsons says, “Exxxxxcellent, Smithers.” Excellent, indeed.

  Farnsworth

  5

  I walked around aimlessly for a while, just soaking in the sun, feeling like quite the little go-getter. I wished I could ca
ll someone, but there was no one to call. Hiro was teaching classes right now. I didn’t feel like relaying the news to Karen. If only I knew Katie’s phone number in Las Vegas. I’d tried to look it up once before, but there was no listing. But I was pretty sure that was where she lived.

  I looked around. Finding a job had gone so swimmingly, I wondered if I should try to make some headway toward finding an apartment. If my apartment search went like my job search, maybe I could find a huge penthouse loft in Beverly Hills with no background check for two hundred dollars a month. Or maybe that was pushing it. But to get out of Karen’s house, I would settle for much, much less. Karen had said there were apartment listings in the papers. Maybe I could find a place to buy a paper. I started walking.

  I walked up Wilshire, checking out the storefronts. I think I was in Echo Park. All kinds of people were coming and going—guys with multicolored mohawks, people gabbing away on cell phones, women and baby carriages, perfectly toned women carrying yoga mats. Suddenly I noticed the name of a small street jutting out across the avenue. Dawson Street, it said. Why was that name familiar? I felt like I’d seen it before. Had I just walked by it earlier today, or…

  Duh! This is where Cheryl lives! I looked around with a big smile. Right after my wedding, when I’d been wandering around all bloody and lost, I’d sort of accidentally crashed this party in Hollywood. The party was given by this cool girl named Cheryl, who ended up loaning me some clothes and helping me figure out where Hiro lived. About a week ago, I’d gone to Cheryl’s place to return her clothes and wound up on this crazy shopping/drinking/dancing trip where I’d ended up kicking the butts of these two jerky guys. It had been an awesome night.

  I looked up and down Dawson Street and immediately spotted Cheryl’s house. It was a ramshackle yellow number with a big front yard that held a couple of shaggy, undertended palm trees. You could tell young people lived there. An old beat-up car was parked crookedly in the driveway. I took a deep breath and went up to ring the bell.