Mr. Rosen looked at them. “This I’d be wil ing to buy.”
Weezy gave her head an emphatic shake. “Uh-uh. It’s not for sale. Sorry.”
Mr. Rosen nodded as he put it down and picked up the pyramid. He turned it over and over in his hands, making little humming and grunting noises as
he held it up to the light and checked it with a magnifying glass. His sleeve slipped back revealing a string of numbers tattooed on his forearm. Jack had
seen them before but had hesitated to ask about them.
“Let me tel you, I’ve seen many strange objects in my day—you wouldn’t believe the things people bring in to try to sel me—but the likes of this I’ve
never seen. I couldn’t even guess what it is.”
“Oh,” Weezy said, her voice thick with frustration.
Jack hid his own disappointment. “Too bad.” Mr. Rosen had seemed to know a little bit about everything. “We were hoping—”
“But I know someone who might be able to help you.”
“Who?”
Jack half expected him to say,
“Professor Nakamura. He’s a maven of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania.”
Weezy looked at Jack. “U of P? How are we going to get to Philadelphia?”
Weezy looked at Jack. “U of P? How are we going to get to Philadelphia?” “You don’t have to. He lives right here in town.”
Jack frowned. He thought he knew pretty much everyone in Johnson. “Never
heard of him.”
“Moved in about a year ago. Keeps to himself, I think, but he’s been in here a
few times. Interesting fel ow. His grandfather ran a laundry in San
Francisco but was driven out in the twenties by the Jap haters—al fired up by Wil
iam Randolph Hearst who hated Jews as wel —and fled back to Japan. Now his grandson has returned as an Ivy League professor. For al we know he
might be teaching the greatgrandchildren of the bigots who drove his
ancestors out. What sweet irony that would be.”
Jack didn’t remember any Oriental customers.
“Have I—?”
Mr. Rosen shook his head. “Hasn’t been in since you started. Col ects Carnival
Glass, of al things.”
“What’s Carnival Glass?”
“Iridescent kitsch is what it is. But he loves it. Bought every piece I had last
spring.”
That explained why Jack had never seen any—he hadn’t started here until late
June.
Mr. Rosen was fishing under the counter. “He left his number to cal as soon as
any new items came in.” Final y he came up with a card. “Here it is. Let me give it a try. I got the impression his schedule at the university isn’t too heavy, so who knows? You may get lucky.”
4
They didn’t. Professor Nakamura wasn’t home but Mr. Rosen left a message to cal him back. Jack and Weezy headed back to her place. He didn’t have
long before he was due at work.
“What do we do now?” he said as they coasted along Quakerton Road.
“Wait and see if this Professor Nakamura can help us, I guess.”
“And if he can’t?”
Weezy shrugged. “I don’t know. Don’t you wish the TV had a channel where you could, say, ask a question and it would search every library in the world
and pop the answer onto the screen? Wouldn’t that be great?”
“Yeah.” Then he thought about it a little more. “Or maybe not so great. You’d have to make TVs two-way before that could happen. I mean, it’s just oneway now—we can watch it and that’s that. But if it became two-way … it might start watching us.”
Weezy looked at him and smiled, something she didn’t do often enough. “And you cal
“Hey, less than five months til Big Brother starts watching.”
