heisenberg lives

Sako is back in town, after a prolonged stay in Seattle to complete another morsel of her degree. She moved back in with mom for two short months. During her stay she acquired a cell phone and a desperate yearning for the company of people who hadn't actually given birth to her.

This is not, I think, really a surprise to anybody.

It was a little unfortunate that the phone and the loneliness were coincidental developments. The combination of the two meant that she was calling me obsessively. The record was three times in under an hour. Her calls were short, meaningless, and unfailingly random; in Seattle she was strapped to the vagarities of the public transportation system, and so would call me whenever she found herself waiting for a bus, sometimes just for the sake of saying hello to someone who wasn't homeless. I spoke more to her when she was in Washington than I ever did when she lived thirty minutes north of me.

She didn't start her conversations with 'hello,' either. Like another member of the family not too distant from me, she has a tendency to start phone conversations in the middle and forge her way out from there, leaving her conversational partner to grope after her with the odd handful of clues.

Witness.

Brrrring. Click.

"She's driving me crazy! CRAZY!"

"Wha--?"

"That's all. Bye." click.

You see what I mean? Or, for instance:

Brrrring. Click.

"Hello?"

"I'm waiting for the bus."

"Okay?"

"That's all."

"Okay."

Click.

This is not the sort of conversation that made Dorothy Parker famous.

School ended for Sako -- inasmuch as school ever 'ends' for her -- last week, and in her creative way, she managed to get a job that would actually pay her to drive one-way down to California. She left without any real warning, the same day (coincidence?) my grandmother and aunt flew in from Japan. Japanese relay, with my mother as the baton.

Let's pause and think about this for a moment. My sister got paid to do something she was going to do anyway: drive down to California. What I would like is for someone to pay me to do things that I do anyway. Like, you know. Sleep. Eat. Go to the bathroom.

She called me several times on the road, leaving messages on my cell phone; I'd turned it off for a doctor's visit and neglected to turn it back on. "I'm driving to California. I left this morning," the first message said cheerfully. "Pick up."

The second message was much the same, albeit a little less enthusiastic. "Still driving. Where are you? Call me back."

And the third, decidedly sour: "Driving. Call me. Pick up. Pick up. Pick up pick up pick up pick up...."

Travelling by car from Seattle to Mountain View is about 13 hours, so it was certainly understandable that her mood would gradually become depressed during the course of the drive. However, the notable thing about each of these calls was the background noise.

If I'd been a strict adherent to narrative truth, I should have transcribed her first call as follows:

meow. Meow. MEOW. mew. -- "Hey. I'm" -- meow. Meooooooooow!! mew. mrrrrrp. -- "to Califor--". MEOW. Meow? Meow. Meow meow meow meow. -- "--this morning. Pick up." MEOOOW.

The second:

MEEEEOOOOOOW. -- "--ll drivi--" meow. Meow. Meow meow mewmewmewmewmew mrrrp? "--you? Call me b--" MEOW. meow. (meow.)

The third ... but you get the picture.

I finally got the messages while waiting for the Guy outside a noodle shop that evening. I called her back and was answered by a strained, "Hi." In the background I could hear the backup feline singer carolling a happy answer to
one of the more buoyant Bee-Gees recordings.

"You hear that?" Sako wailed at me. Her voice cracked. "It's been doing that since ALL DAY."

The job, it turned out, was a single payment of $100 to courier a cat from Washington to California. A man in Washington had bought a pedigree cat, only to discover that he was allergic to it. He wanted it shipped to his mother down in Mountain View, fifteen minutes south of where I live. "It's a beautiful cat," Sako admitted grudgingly. Meow, meow, meeeeeeeeooooow! sang the cat in the background, self-congratulatory. "It just won't shut up."

My sister is not, alas, a cat person. By the time I talked to her, she was emphatically a dead-cat person.

She called me again from just south of the Redwood City exit on 101. There was a note of intense frustration in her voice.

There was aggressive meowing taking place in the background.

"Hey." MEOW. "How far "...MEOW MEOW!... "from Redwood City is" ...MEEEEOW! MEOW! MRRP MEOW!... "Mountain View? God DAMN i--" MEOW! MEOW! MEOW! MEOW!

I was, I regret to say, reduced to hilarity. Who knew I could be so heartless? I held up the phone so the Guy could hear the noise; he pressed his ear to the receiver and listened in awed silence for a moment before offering his opinion. "I think it hates you."

My personal opinion was that the cat really liked Sako.

"Bitch!" squeaked the Guy. "Cow! Let me out! Get me out of this car! You're so fucking annoying!"

I started to laugh.

When Sako had dropped the cat off, she drove back up and crashed at my apartment, exhausted and smelling distinctly of feline musk. "The lady I left it at was really polite," she said wearily. "Really, really polite. I don't think she wanted the cat; I think she's just taking it because it's her son and she's an Asian mom. It was still meowing when I gave it to her. She looked at it and said, really politely, 'My, what a ... talkative cat.' I told her she had no idea."

Heisenberg, curled up behind the door, yawned pointedly and drifted out. He has no interest in members of his own species.

Unless they're female. And stuffed.