Lu  hadn't always been a walker. As a boy, he thought walking was the most useless boring thing one could do. Now, Lu saw it differently. Now, Lu notice things when he walked. He noticed an old lady with a young boy; a bird flying in a mad pattern as if trying to fight back its own gravitational pull; a young couple in love; a sad old man staring at what used to be his street, his life; a young man who understands it all, or so he thinks; a beautiful young woman who sees through this young man and doesn't care; an old sundry store being converted into a cell phone shop; an old cd-store decaying into the earth; a drunk compassionately petting a cat; a prostitute laughing at a construction worker; shoes on a wire; the rain. 

Lu ran into the pub to escape the storm, a sudden onslaught of torrential thunder and God delivered smite. He surveyed the landscape an saw nothing at first. Then, he saw movement from underneath a red children's slide. The body shivered, but it did not look scared. Instead, he saw the town's fortuneteller trying to escape the rain and survive the threat of pneumonia. For a second, Lu thought of helping her. It wasn't that he didn't want to rescue her from the rain, but it wasn't the rain that killed her. Years later, Lu would still remember seeing her there, soaked from head to toe, an easy look in her eyes but sad nonetheless. For years, Lu had thought exactly about what had killed, why She had to die instead of someone else. The only explanation that Lu came with had to do with her clairvoyance. This lady made a living predicting the future, and most of the time she was correct. Maybe she was comforted in total knowledge, or maybe she was deeply troubled by the divine insight. Either way, Lu took from her death a overarching sense of irony. She could see everything, but in those last seconds of death, her she wore a face not of acceptance or understanding but surprise. Surprise! She made a living predicting all the insignificant details of courtship and gossip, but the most important and tragic nugget of knowledge never came to her. 

Lu took her death and grew from it. He saw what he didn't like in himself. He didn't like how no one had ever affected him like the fortuneteller did when she died. He wanted to be affected, and he wanted to affect others. He used to be deeply afraid of the uncertainty in his life, the things he didn't understand. He understood more now, and what he didn't understand he didn't fear. Besides that, he just wanted to be a nice store owner. The ancient Chinese proverb says, "Don't open a shop unless you like to smile."

Lu Garigami Walks Into a Bar

Lu decided to play hookey from work today. He went to the loyal bar and ordered himself a pint of Guinness. Disgusting beer, he thought. Better than a day drenched in motor oil. Lu, Donald James, and another Donald he had heard of were the only inhabitants of the pub at that particular hour, which happened to be 10 o-clock in the morning. The other Donald had a last name which sounded Russian or Ukranian, which Lu couldn't pronounce and had no intention of learning how to pronounce. While Lu and Donald were drinking beer, the other Donald was sipping lightly on a glass of cranberry juice. Lu, feeling slighly amiable, decided to inquire about his effeminate beverage. 

"What you drinking juice at bar for?"

"Well, if you must know, it helps my urinary system. Besides, it's much too early for alcohol." 

"Hey, it's five o-clock somewhere!" and with that, Lu excused himself from a conversation he knew he would 

regret later. 

Lu was prepared to wait until a moderately attractive woman entered the bar until he struck up any more dialogue. ]Just when he thought he would have a few more hours of silence, he heard Donald James yell in a gravely drunked stupor, "You on your period or what!?!" and then smash a beer bottle on Donald Batzcavich's head. Lu ran over to Donald, towering over the other Donald, now in the fetal position. Lu wound up his grease-stained arm and unleashed the crouching tiger in Donald's face. 

"It's fo his urinary track!" 

Lu had to work late that Monday night. There had been a backup of fender benders from the previous ice storm, so he didn't leave the shop till about ten. It was dark outside when he exited the shop, and the street lamps painted jagged amber streaks of light upon the remaining snow. Lu walked speedily, somehow sensing a distant danger, of what he knew not. He was feeling especially insignificant that night.

 Maybe it was the fact that nothing ever seemed to happen to him, he thought. Sure, everyone feels bad for Donald now because he happened to catch a bullet from some lunatic escaped from the Police station. Poor Poor Donald, thought Lu, undeserving of any sympathy. Lu remembered the law of Karma and took comfort in that thought. 

As he walked down the icy amber streets, thinking of the mini-celebrity status Donald had recently attained, he was suddenly stopped dead in his tracks. In front of him appeared, almost as if from dust, a stalky looking asian man with a pony tail, wearing a white t-shirt. He stared piercingly at Lu and then cracked his neck twice. Lu looked behind him and then back at the frightening man, only to discover that he had disappeared completely in front of him. Lu searched desperately all around him to spot the man again, but he only saw the dark icy buildings. Lu slowly started to walk again, and just when he thought he had cleared the danger of his warped imagination, Loretta Lynn McMurphy popped up from out of an alleyway right in front of Lu, just like the asian man. 

"OH!" yelped Lu. 

"Ah! Don't yell. It's me, Loretta."

"What are yu doing heare?" 

"I'm just taking my dog out for an evening stroll. You look a little jarred. What's been eatin' away at old  Bruce Lee this time?"

"Nothin," mumbled Lu. "Go away before I have to go all red dragon on you." 

Loretta looked at Lu with puzzlement for a second, but then she gets the joke and a soft smile appears on her aging face. 

"Lu. That's the first time i've ever heard you tell a joke."

"Ya well life's weird. I've had a weird night. I have to go. Bye."

With that, Lu walked off with gusto to be alone in an apartment full of strange thoughts. 

The Broken Beauty

A busy day at Lu's Car Garage. The icy streets, a sinister afterthought to yesterday's storm, had led to a string of car crashes the day after. Magdalane did not escape the vehicular chaos, and her car was slowly towed into Lu's with a busted fender and a spastic tailight. Lu spotted the seductive wreck from the dirt-stained office window. She came down from the AAA truck, slightly off kilter, but nevertheless powerfully smooth. Lu tried his hardest to shake off the romantic urges he thought had died in Vietnam. The shine of her body caught his eye like a bird who sees a piece of sheet metal amongst a sea of dead batteries and diapers. He tried turning up his radio to distract himself, but Smokey Robinson only made it worse. He closed the blinds to his office, but the sound she made on the floor moved him like Beethoven to his Ninth.
"Dam Cats!" he yelled in frustration.
As she approached him, Lu glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. He wanted so badly to treat her with more care than the others, but at the same time he felt contempt for her self-assurance and capacity for love, of which he didn't know whether he still possessed.
"Oh, to feel her shape and form. Oh, to go faster and faster with her. Oh, to ride her!" Lu thought with schoolboy ecstasy. While no one was lookin, Lu reached out and ran his hand down her smooth body, mapping the contours with his cracked and bruised fingers.
"Mr. Garigami?" asked Magdalane.
Lu jumped to her attention with terrible fright, but then looked off in fake apathy.
"Ya what?"
"Were you just touching my car?" asked Magdalane.
"No. Stupid qestion! What you want?"
"Just fix my Jaguar please."

A Bad Day

Lu closed the shop early for the day because of the recent power outage and snowfall. As he walked home from locking up, he felt cold gust of wind slap him across the face. He felt his nerves creep to the surface of his skin and he gave out a short but violent yelp. Physically, Lu had never felt worse. Mentally, Lu had felt worse, maybe once or twice. As he stumbled down the sidewalk, Lu accidentally brushed shoulders with whom he thought to be the most insufferable person in the world, Yung Li. In the gray/white mist of windy snow, Lu THOUGHT he could slip away without any interaction. Ms. Li, however, had a way of making all Lu's wishes come untrue. She grabbed his arm and threw out at him, 

"What, no apology now?"

Lu rolled his eyes and muttered, 

"srry."

"Darn white! So, what you gonna do to fight off the snow and the no powa and the cockroaches?"

"I don't know Ms. Li, probably just sleep it all away. Bye now," replied Lu. 

Ms. Li, a bit offended at Lu's apathy towards her, offered one more hook: 

"You know, i've got a problem Lu. I've got cockroaches all over my place, and I need someone to squish 'em fo me."

"You want me to be your cockroach squisher?" asked Lu. 

"Yes. Lu, you owe me fo something. Lu!"

"Sorry I...I have to feed my cat."

As Lu starts to walk away, Ms. Yung Li yells out, 

"You don't have a cat!"

"I do now!"

"Cockroach!"

Lu Garigami-character intro.

Lu leads a fairly simple life. He lives in the 121-F Jupiter apartment complex in a rather seedy part of town. He owns a car mechanic shop aptly titled, "Lu's." Lu, born in China in 1963, moved to America in 1976 and has since called it his one and only home. He's more American than the average native born person, constantly quoting such icons as The Fonz and James Dean. The staples of Lu's wardrobe include a faded Mickey Mouse t-shirt and a battered New York Yankees baseball cap. His love of baseball is fitting, seeing that his name curiously resembles Lou Gehrig. Despite Lu's zest for the American dream, some of his mannerisms are less appealing. Lu has a temper, and he is prone to go off on his customers at the car shop. Lu is unmarried and has no children. 

As Lu was walking in the orange morning, he suddenly felt quite uplifted. He had no idea why he was feeling so cheery, but whatever it was, he wasn't entirely comfortable with it. Lu approached the lock to the car garage with his giant wad of metal keys, out of which a plain silver key barely protruded. Lu prepared himself for the process of "jimmying" the lock by cracking his neck and fingers. He slid the key into place and gave it a hearty jerk, which, to his surprise, opened the lock seamlessly. Lu walked uneasily inside his shop. He flicked the switch, which incandescently illuminated the dull green walls. The shop looked more like a prison than a garage, and Lu enjoyed playing warden.