Crazy Noise

Chapter 1 – Decompression

NEVER LOOK too close, the salaryman whispered, you might not like what you see.
    And so tonight, dreaming in a shadowy bar the size of a decompression chamber, he kept his eyes narrowed and the whiskey flowing.  Until his heart’s most secret reservoir overflowed and a body drifted by.  It had been in the water a long, long time and he snagged it tenderly.
    His eyes closed, a slice of a smile flickered.  He watched with pleasure as he chopped up his section chief and fed the nasty bits to pigeons in Ueno Park.  The remains could be poured into slick black garbage bags and consigned to lockers in Tokyo Station.
    A pair of moon-faced farm girls flanked the salaryman like wings of a vise.  Their cotton-candy petticoats escaped high-bodiced dresses and buried him to the waist.  He looked forlorn, like a man waiting to be dug out of the snow.
    The girls talked over him in staccato Korean, impudently sucking the air out of the bar.  They filled the vacuum with fumes of fermented cabbage exuded from every pore.  He finished his drink and the girl in yellow dumped water and Suntory whiskey in his glass; he snubbed out his cigarette and the girl in pink reached for a pack of Mild Sevens.
    The salaryman sighed and tried not to think about the blue jeans the girls wore under their petticoats or their rough stubby hands.  Instead, he closed his eyes and floated.  Up, up—above the girls with their small breasts and tent-like dresses.  Up, up—and straight through the roof.  The night sky was warm and moist; he kept climbing.
    Below, wedged between Ueno Station and the Sumidagawa, the lights of Asakusa were dazzling.  On Kokusaidori, a Ferrari growled at a pack of college girls digging for smokes inside Yves St. Laurent bags.  Old men in yukata stopped to stare.  Their eyes slid up nylon-shiny legs, their breath hot and smoky.  A breeze off the river lifted spring dresses and offered a glimpse of lace.  With their breasts snugged high and tight in light sweaters, the girls waggled their heads in happy debate and glanced across the boulevard.
    The district offered many delights—renowned sushi restaurants, mind-numbing pachinko parlors—more temples and shrines than anywhere in Tokyo.  The girls marched wickedly tipsy into Mr. Donuts and the old men shuffled away.
    The salaryman floated beyond the boulevard, watching a small tug push a barge up the Sumidagawa.  Its running lights winked on the sluggish black water.  A glossy call girl raced down an alley a block away, her high heels clicking to the tug’s diesel beat.  A cook in a ramen shop licked his teeth as she ran past in her crowded dress.
    The salaryman winced—neon signs topping hundreds of love hotels pricked his eyes.  Sensoji temple’s prerecorded drums rattled his ears.  He felt a migraine coming on and climbed higher, trying to get away from the noise, the light and the heat.
    They’d told him Asakusa was one of the last bastions of Old Japan.  Born in 1976, the salaryman had no experience with such things.  A feeling of disquiet, perhaps of guilt, crept over him.  He decided he’d had enough for one night and searched the eastern terrain for home.
    Tokyo Bay was dark, the cars on adjacent Wangandoro a thick bright stream.  He followed as they bumped down an expressway built on garbage.  His sense of insufficiency disappeared as an institution timeless and wondrous came into view.
    A handful of fireworks—gold, green and blue—painted the night with seashells and feathers.  The man smiled and fell toward his apartment crouched in the lee and shadow of Tokyo Disneyland.

Chapter 2 – Elena & The Cop

THE GARDEN was deserted and dark.  A late spring breeze pushed the bell rope back and forth.  Its satin windings glowed purple, warmed by flickering candles and incense burning.  Behind the bell, the shrine itself was weathered woods--chocolate brown, red and gold.  The silhouette of a seated monk could be seen through an open window.
    Elena smiled and listened to the monk’s lilting prayers as they mingled with the horns of impatient taxis and the whisper of lovers in shadow.  She reached up, gave the bell rope a shake and clapped her hands together twice.  A drum began to beat; a shakuhachi flute began to play.  The music followed her out of the shrine and across the street.  She looked at the sky, hoping her prayers would find their way.  Her son was far away and in danger.
    Police Lt. Nakazono waited in the doorway of a nearby building and watched Elena finish her nightly ritual.  He waited until she walked back in the coffee shop and followed.  As usual, he felt uncomfortable as soon as he stepped inside.  She’d renovated the place a couple of years before and he’d never gotten used to it.  The subdued lighting was peculiar, the strong smell of cedar, while not unpleasant, was disconcerting.  Worse still were the peanut shells customers were encouraged to scatter about.  This was a phenomenon outside his experience and he attempted to pick a path to bar the without crunching any underfoot.
    Elena put down her book and greeted Nakazono.  She explained the kitchen was closed and all she could offer was coffee or beer.  He seemed shy as he ordered, an emotion she would have thought alien to Asakusa’s top policeman.  She wondered what he wanted.
    Nakazono felt better sitting down.  While Elena was getting the beer he surreptitiously swept the floor beneath his stool of peanut shells and scanned the coffee shop.  He’d heard of similar places across town in Harajuku.  But he only left the confines of Asakusa in emergency.  He felt big here and small everywhere else.
    While the peanut shells remained mysterious, the cedar booths and flashy Wurlitzer jukebox were at least comprehensible.  The music was soft, a woman singing in English.  He heard the word love, but could make out nothing else.  Nakazono hated English and had forgotten what little he’d learned as soon as he’d left school.
    This was Japan and if the gaijins couldn’t speak Japanese, fuck ‘em.  He had a couple of patrolmen who could speak the language a little and he let them deal with the foreigners.  He didn’t trust either one and would never promote them but they were useful during interrogations.  What he really needed were cops that could speak Farsi and Chinese--the shina-jin and the Iran-jin were crawling all over the city and his efforts to discourage them from encamping in Asakusa were growing more futile every day.
    Elena set a beer and a glass in front of Nakazono and returned to her stool at the end of the counter.  He stared at the empty glass, annoyed she hadn’t poured the beer for him.  He chalked it up to her gaijin nature; she was half Russian.  She’d show her gratitude soon enough, when he revealed the reason for his visit.
    Nakazono poured the beer himself and drank half.  He wouldn’t admit it but the greatest reason for his discomfort was the woman sitting just across the counter from Elena.  She had a beautiful face and body but she scared him.  He couldn’t look at her without being reminded of his mother and the stories she’d told about the witches that had once haunted Asakusa.  Long white hair, flaming lips and high cheekbones – he still dreamed about them, he still believed.
    Maybe she wasn’t a witch, maybe not, but she had the arrogance of a witch.  Or an American.  The fact that she was Canadian didn’t really register with Nakazono.  In his mind Canadians were just misplaced Americans.  She’d appeared a year ago, one day in the spring, as if she’d stepped out of a movie or the pages of a magazine.
    There were plenty of gaijin women in Asakusa but none like her.  The rest, the Thais, the Chinese, even the noisy independent Filipinas, were all afraid of him.  They understood his position in the neighborhood scheme of things.  She did, too, but she didn’t care.
    The first time he’d seen her, walking toward him with her big gaijin tits and impossibly long legs, she’d looked right at him.  That in itself had been a surprise, most women stared at the sidewalk when they passed Nakazono.  But worse was the way she’d seemed to size him up and dismiss him as insignificant.  She’d walked past, her blonde ponytail swinging fearlessly.  He’d stood angry and frustrated, vowing it would be different next time.
    But it hadn’t been.  He’d stopped her in front of the Matsuya department store and had demanded to see her alien registration card.  Unimpressed with his authority, she hadn’t even blinked.  He’d hoped for fear, would have settled for anger.  But she’d easily fielded his Japanese and handed over her identity card.  He’d felt like a beggar, or worse, like a servant.
    Nakazono finished his beer and asked for another.  Elena was talking in English to the gaijin and didn’t hear his order.  Embarrassed, he raised his voice and both women turned and stared.  He asked again, this time more politely, and stumbled over the words.  The blonde said something and Elena smiled.  He felt his face flush, certain they were talking about him.
    Things were not going as expected and when the gaijin began to gather up her things to leave, Nakazono glued his eyes to his beer glass, afraid to even look at her.  Her feet went crunch-crunch as she crossed the room; he shifted his eyes to the bottle, staring at the label until the lettering began to blur.  The smell of the cedar counter top was overpowering--Elena laughed, the gaijin laughed, and Nakazono looked around for the toilet.  A bell jangled above the door and the blonde let herself out.
    “Excuse me, Lieutenant.  I’d like to close up now,” Elena said.
    She still didn’t have a clue as to what the cop wanted.  They hadn’t spoken more than a couple of paragraphs in the last thirty years and most of that had come at her husband’s wake two months before.
    Elena had been less perplexed at his appearance at the ceremony than by his attempts at solicitous behavior.  At ease harassing bar hostesses or in curbside conversation with local yakuza, Nakazono was a graceless man who did not feign sympathy well.  The role had fit him no better than his shiny suit.
    Both of them had been raised in Asakusa and had gone through primary school together.  Nakazono seemed to have forgotten that he’d been Elena’s main source of unhappiness for a number of years.  She still remembered him taunting her, shouting at the top of his lungs on the playground.  To a little brown-haired girl, terribly aware she was different from her playmates, he’d been a monster.  He’d often chased her all the way home, his belly bouncing, his buttocks jiggling inside tight blue short-shorts.
    Nakazono was gripping his beer glass so tight his knuckles were white.  Knowing he couldn’t just blurt out his offer, he tried to make conversation.  She hadn’t smiled once; her face remained impassive.  Absolutely convinced she was happy to see him, he kept at it.
    The cop talked to Elena of their school days, seemed to expect that their memories could coexist and even fraternize.  She was appalled.  He’d been a spoiled bully in the midst of rubble and starvation.  The child of an immigrant from an enemy alien nation, Elena had been more afraid of Nakazono than the tall American soldiers occupying her city.
    But the occupation was long over.  And if Nakazono hadn’t changed--he was still a fat, sordid bully--she had.  Her father had somehow hung on to his property and today she was a rich woman.  Her coffee shop was just one of nine businesses in a building she owned free and clear.
    Like clockwork, she collected rent from the owners of the Chinese restaurant, the Korean bar and the book shop.  On the second floor were five small bars.  She owned one outright and leased the others.  Nine apartments, very desirable by Tokyo standards, occupied the next three floors.  The smallest rented for 140,000 yen a month, the largest for 300,000 yen.  On the top floor was the penthouse where she lived with her daughter May and a much smaller apartment she’d built with her son in mind.  Soon he’d come home and she wanted more than anything to be ready.  Someday she would move into the little apartment and he could have the penthouse.
    The apartment had stood empty for the first year after she’d renovated the building.  Last year, for reasons she was still unsure of, Elena had rented it to Helen for less than it was worth.  A month later she’d made her annual overseas trip to visit her son.
    Sam was a drifter--Bangkok, Singapore, San Francisco and London--he’d worked on newspapers in all these cities.  For the last few years she’d brought May along and the trips were always the highlight of the year for the girl.  She’d loved Cape Town and was praying that Sam wouldn’t move on before she got another crack at its beaches.  May had a map of the world in her bedroom and had drawn an ominous circle around Moscow.  The girl had an uncanny ability to predict her brother’s movements.
    Elena smiled to herself.  They weren’t the most conventional family but it seemed to be working better every year.  The death of her second husband, a casualty on the Tomei expressway, had only increased the chances of bringing her children together again.
    That was as it should be and Elena felt little guilt that the death of the man should bring her happiness.  He’d been in the way far too long.  It had been a mistake to remarry and she’d regretted it for years.  At the time she’d thought he would provide stability for Sam but the opposite had proven true.
    Sam’s real father had been an American and her twelve-year-old son had not been able to make the transition to a Japanese step-father.  They’d fought almost continually for the first two years, battling for possession of Elena.
    Her love and her loyalty had never been in doubt and her new husband had eventually surrendered, disappearing into his job and himself.  He’d treated his home like a dormitory, leaving early in the morning, returning very late at night.  For the first few years Elena had often thought of divorce but he’d been no more trouble than an irresolute ghost, coming and going but never really there.
    When May was born, divorce became out of the question.  Two parents were almost always better than one and little girls certainly needed fathers.  Raising her daughter alone might have been more fun but Elena knew it was also selfish--May was far too young to be consulted in the matter.
    With a daughter of his own, her husband became slightly more substantial, a situation intolerable to Sam.  Elena had packed her son off to college in the United States when he was eighteen.  That he’d never returned was a sadness, but not a tragedy.  Elena believed young men should go off on their own.
    She was a happy woman with a glorious daughter and loads of money but she still missed her son.  The last time they’d talked, Sam had promised to come home for Christmas and this time she knew he meant it.  She had a special calendar in the kitchen and each morning she crossed off a day.  Once she’d calculated the hours and laughed at herself.
    Nakazono was still blithering; he’d shifted from the good old days to neighborhood gossip.  He looked up at her with not an inkling of understanding.  His eyes were difficult to find, hard little things like the beads of an abacus.  Just looking at him made her queasy.  His face was bloated with a grayish sheen, his crew cut looked sharp enough to cut her hand.  The stiff bristles were too black to be natural; his scalp was pale underneath.
    Nakazono was not a man for pleasant conversation.  He saw it as a tool weaker men employed when trying to get under a woman’s skirts.  Intimidation was faster and produced better results.  He looked up and grunted--she was no different from all the rest.
    Elena picked up Nakazono’s beer and set his half-empty glass in the sink.  His look of anger pleased her.
    “There’s something I wanted to talk to you about,” he said.
    Elena fetched a broom and began to sweep the floor.  “What’s that?” she asked, her back to the cop.
    Nakazono watched her work.  She was still sexy, her auburn hair long and free.  It seemed he’d loved her all his life.  That he’d never approached her or even hinted at his feelings was as it should be.  But now that his wife had divorced him there was nothing to keep them apart.  Surely she felt the same.
    “You’re all alone.  Your husband’s dead,” he said.
    Elena finished sweeping and turned off the overhead lights.  She had an idea where the conversation was going and didn’t even want to hear it.  She moved through the darkness straightening up the room.
    Nakazono glared at her from inside a circle of light cast by lamps over the counter.  She seemed to be ignoring him.  But that couldn’t be possible, she must be playing hard to get.  The frustration of the evening broke over him.  What started as a request ended up a shouted demand.
    “Come over here.”
    Elena’s patience was at an end, she didn’t have to take this kind of shit from anybody, especially this hated man.  She gave him a look reserved for the rare drunk that forgot where he was and who he was dealing with.
    “That’s it,” she snapped.  “I’m closing up and you’re leaving.”  She marched over to the cop.  “Come back tomorrow if you’ve got anything to say.  I don’t have time for you now.”
    Nakazono didn’t budge from his seat.  He felt weak, worse than when the blonde witch had ignored him on the street.
    “Wait a minute, this is important.  You need a man to take care of you.  I’m very powerful...”  Looking up into her unyielding face, Nakazono wasn’t even strong enough to finish the sentence.
    Her anger gave her courage.  Elena looked down on the cop with disgust and whispered in English, “You’re such an asshole.”
    He couldn’t fathom the words but he got the point.  His hand shot out and grabbed Elena by the wrist.  He was a man of action, not soft talk, and he felt a semblance of his old self as he stood up and shook her.  “You’re going to marry me, you cunt.  I, uhh, love you.  A woman can’t take care of all this property by herself.”
    Elena laughed and slapped him.  “You miserable slob.  I wouldn’t marry you if my life depended on it.”
    Conscious thought abandoned Nakazono, he was swallowed by a fog of rage and hysteria.  He slapped her hard and slammed her head into the counter.  Elena moaned and felt his hands grabbing her breasts, ripping open her blouse.  Bent over the counter, his bulk a huge weight on her chest, she couldn’t even scream.  She tried to kick out as he yanked up her skirt--she watched blood run from her mouth and stain the beautiful cedar.
    Nakazono banged Elena’s head into the counter again and again.  He unzipped his trousers.  When she felt his hands close around her throat she knew she’d made a terrible mistake and she cried.  Her tears mixed with blood and she went away, to another time, another place.  She remembered sitting on a mountain above Cape Town with her son and daughter--the sun had been in her eyes.  The day had been so lovely it had been hard to breath.

Chapter 3 – Mozambique

A RAG-TAG band of Mozambican soldiers dozed under an ironwood tree.  A half a dozen AK-47 rifles lay in the dust nearby.  Only the two oldest soldiers had boots; the rest wore tattered sneakers or rubber sandals.  They occasionally glanced over at the white man but the heat had dried out their curiosity and he didn’t linger long in their thoughts.
    A convoy of battered Mercedes lorries sat on the shoulder of a dirt road in front of the soldiers.  Each truck carried a load of maize under a green tarp.  The grain was destined for Caia on the Zambezi river.  If it arrived a few outlying villages might last another week.  But the sun seemed hot enough to burn the paint off the trucks and the soldiers were in no hurry to leave the shade of the tree.
    Sam Murphy read the telegram from the lawyer in Japan a second time and put it in his pocket.  He walked over to the soldiers, explained he was leaving and shook a few hands.  No one said very much as he left; they had their own worries.
    Underpaid, underfed and outgunned, the soldiers were tired of beating villagers off the trucks with the butts of their rifles.  They were sick of women holding dirty babies in their faces.  The women seemed to think their children were unique, as if the soldiers had never seen starving babies before.  That was just about all they had seen; the drought was eating up southern Africa and dying children were everywhere.
    The women and the babies made the youngest soldiers uncomfortable.  But the Renamo guerrillas and the bandits terrified everyone.  Burned out carcasses of relief trucks littered the road.  The bandits came at night to steal the grain.  The guards that didn’t run away were found dead at dawn, shot or hacked to death.
    The white reporter from the south had rode with the soldiers for three days.  At first, they’d thought he was American—he’d talked and moved like people they’d seen at the cinema.  Later, an officer claimed to have seen his passport and said the reporter was Japanese.  That had been too ridiculous to believe and everyone had laughed.  Embarrassed, the officer had demanded the platoon sergeant back him up.
    “He might be Japanese,” the old man had said, not wanting to disagree with the officer.  “I don’t think I’ve ever met any.  I ran into a Chinese patrol once, but he doesn’t look much like them.  Somehow I thought they all looked the same.”
    Nobody had been satisfied with the explanation but they’d let the matter drop.  Now someone had come to fetch the reporter in a Land Rover and it was too hot to care if he was American, Japanese, both or neither.

    “I’m not going to cry and I’m not going to make a scene,” May Takagi promised herself over and over as she waited for Sam’s China Airlines flight to clear customs.  But it took so long, it seemed like the passengers would never come out.  She’d nervously watched the plane land from the observation deck on top of the terminal but that seemed like hours ago.  Impatient and a little guilty for cutting school, May blamed the entire problem on Haneda airport.
    When Sam called, she’d been too happy to hear his voice to pay much attention to his actual words.  He’d said something about politics, South Africa, Taiwan and China.  All she’d really understood was that she’d have to pick him up at Haneda instead of Narita, an airport she knew like the back of her hand.  She’d thought only domestic flights used Haneda and couldn’t figure out why some planes had to sneak into this dinky little airport.
    It was old and boring and she didn’t like it at all.  That it was far closer to downtown didn’t count for much as far as she was concerned.  She’d never been to Haneda and had ended up calling half her friends before she’d found one who knew which subway to take.
    It was a lot more fun, like a little adventure, to ride the train from Ueno Station to Narita.  She’d made the trip a bunch of times and had always enjoyed it.  The countryside was pretty and the men and women working in the rice paddies surrounding the big airport were interesting.
    Viewed through the window of a fast train, the women seemed very proper in their old-fashioned bonnets and blue pajamas.  They looked like people on postcards.  Unfortunately, these women and their skinny little husbands wouldn’t stay put.  Nearly every day shiny buses would dump one farm co-op or another in front of the gates of Sensoji temple in Asakusa.
    May found them terribly embarrassing, especially since there were always lots of foreigners in the temple compound.  The farmers never even bothered to change clothes.  They were unfashionable and seemed to have no idea how to act in the city.  The women who looked so serene from the train had loud voices and country accents.  They said totally dumb things and always bought the junkiest souvenirs.
    After much discussion, she and her friends decided that the country people shouldn’t be allowed into the city until they could be taught to behave like everyone else.
    May looked around at the arrivals terminal, prepared to glare at any farmer who might spoil Sam’s homecoming.  He hadn’t been home in a long time and she wanted him to like Japan enough to stay.
    At last the China Airlines passengers started to dribble out of the customs area.  A man behind May tried to push past her to get a better look.  She jabbed him with her elbow and held her ground.  Nobody was going to see Sam before she did.  He looked down at her more surprised than annoyed—schoolgirls in sailor suits were usually more docile.
    May couldn’t help herself, she began to cry when Sam walked through the swinging doors.  Her tears splashed into a bouquet of roses clutched in her hand.  Despite her small size and her promises, she caused a rather large commotion.  Heads turned as she shouted and charged across the floor.  She leaped like a panther and grabbed her brother around the neck.
    May didn’t weigh much but Sam was half-dead from jet lag and a 25-hour flight from Johannesburg.  Still, he might have stayed on his feet; her choke hold wasn’t too bad—he could almost breathe.  Just as he was finding his balance she let go with one arm and pushed a bunch of flowers in his face.
    “Here,” she shouted.  “These are for you.”
    Blinded, Sam slipped on something and fell.  The crowd laughed as May dropped the roses and scrabbled across the floor on her hands and knees.  She retrieved another gift, crawled up on his chest, and waved a foil-wrapped box in his face.
    “You stepped on your chocolates,” she accused, and whacked him gently in the heart with the damaged gift.  She cried and laughed and kissed him over and over again.

    “What are you waiting for?” May demanded.  “Get on the train.”
    Sam took a step forward and hesitated—a wall of bodies blocked the door, there wasn’t the slightest space left in the subway car.  Crushed by the crowd, young women were bent at unnatural angles, their faces pressed into the window glass.  Above an undulating mass of dark suits and pastel frocks, heads attached to the tallest commuters looked elongated, as if compressed to save space.
    “It’s too crowded,” Sam said, afraid to board the train.
    May pushed him in the back.  “It’s rush hour.  What’d you expect?”
    A petite woman stepped around Sam and May, put one foot aboard the train and did a well-practiced pirouette.  A klaxon blared on the platform as she shoved herself backwards into the car, leading with her hips and elbows.  The doors hissed shut and the train began to move.
    “See?  She knows how to do it,” May chided.  “It’s easy.”
    The train picked up speed and the lead car disappeared into the tunnel, aiming for east Tokyo.  The trains seemed a lot more crowded than Sam remembered but May was right, they couldn’t stand there forever.
    “OK, we’ll get on the next—”
    A whistle blew and an alarm screamed.  The train slammed to a halt and a couple of platform workers came running.  The last car stopped in front of Sam.  An arm wriggled, trapped in the door.  A small blue shoulder bag dangled from slim fingers with delicate pink nails.  The workers pried open the door and shoved the arm inside.
    “That’s it,” Sam said.  “We’re taking a taxi.”
    May laughed.  “Boy, are you a wimp.  This is nothing, hardly anybody rides the Ginza line.  Wait until I take you on the Odakyu.  That one’s ten times worse.”
    May led Sam through the labyrinthine passageways under the streets of Ginza.  They surfaced next to Mitsukoshi department store, rising into a crowd notable less for its density than its opulence.
    Middle-aged housewives, tired after a day of shopping headed for the subway entrances.  Sweating slightly in mink and sable, their hair fluttered in the evening breeze.  Gold necklaces graced their necks, diamonds glittered on their fingers.  Thinking of long train rides back to the suburbs and what to fix their kids for dinner, they waded through groups of office girls chatting on broad sidewalks.
    May slid through the shoppers and commuters with ease, reaching back for Sam’s hand to guide him past teenagers laughing in front of Mikimoto’s.  Their faces were nearly translucent, as clean and shiny as the pearls on display.
    It was just dusk and one by one the lights of Ginza came to life.  Towering buildings engaged in dazzling combat astride the most expensive real estate on earth.  Gaudy neon images flickered and flashed—Sony, Toshiba and IBM.  Nissan and BMW sedans moved slowly down Chuodori.  Reflected in the windshields, ads for Nestle and Kanebo merged with Dairy Queen and Samsung.
    May waved at a cab stopped below a TV screen bigger than a billboard.  Children gazed up in wonder as electric dragons danced with pink pandas.  Sam shook his head—this was not the Japan he remembered.
    May’s courage began to falter as the taxi moved slowly through the rush-hour traffic.  She snuggled under Sam’s arm and closed her eyes.  Her mom’s death hurt her every second.  It was a cruel lie devised by strangers and distant relatives who didn’t care about her.  She couldn’t imagine what was going to happen and was very afraid.
    Sam pulled May closer and watched tears slide down her cheeks.  He remembered the day his father had died.  His bedroom, a warm place filled with familiar things, had suddenly become a tall skyscraper without walls or floors.  Everyone could see him sitting on an I-beam miles and miles above the ground.  He’d wanted to cry but couldn’t, afraid if he let go he’d fall and never stop.
    Sam had never cried and today he still wasn’t sure if he’d ever really forgiven his father for leaving.
    Halfway to Asakusa, May looked up, tried to speak but became confused.  There was so much she wanted to say, she didn’t know where to begin.  Sam smiled and hugged her.  He dried her tears and whispered, “I’ll never leave you, May.  Never.  Cross my heart and hope to die.  I’ll take care of you, always and forever.”
    May sniffed a little, trying on smiles until she found one that fit.  The taxi driver made a noise and she directed him past Tawaramachi Station and down Kokusaidori.  They turned onto a narrow street and then another.  The cab slowed to a crawl to avoid kids delivering L.A. and Chicago pizzas on motorbikes, teetering bicyclists and strolling women with babies sleeping on their backs.
    “This will be fine,” May said, and the cab stopped in front of a small shrine.  A tabby cat sat on top of a red torii gate and watched Sam pull his suitcase from the trunk.  A yellow dog backed out of a garbage can and yipped at May.  Sam smelled garlic, sesame and raw sewage.
    May pointed across the street at a six-story building faced with new red brick.  “What do you think?  Do you like it?”
    Sam looked down at his sister.  He knew an important question when he heard one.  For May’s benefit, he examined the building carefully.  The bay windows on the corner apartments were large, the neon signs on the second floor bars discrete.  But aesthetics had given way to commerce on the ground floor.  The Chinese restaurant looked like a greasy spoon, the Korean bar was a dive and the book shop appeared to deal exclusively in pornographic comics.  Only his mother’s coffee shop managed an air of respectability.
    Sam said, “I love it,” and almost meant it.  This was his neighborhood; he’d been raised here.  It looked different but felt much the same.  He’d stayed away far too long.
    Reassured, May smiled broadly and pointed at an antenna dish on the roof.  “Every apartment has satellite TV.  We can watch the Simpsons every week.  It’s my favorite show.”
    Sam had only vaguely heard of the program and had never seen it.  He grabbed May’s hand and pulled her down the street.  It seemed every other building was new.  The Asano’s fish shop was gone, as was the home of the tatami makers.  As a kid, he’d sat for hours watching two old men, brothers with strong hands and sharp eyes, producing grass mats on wonderful machines.  For generations the Usui family had covered the floor in all the neighborhood houses.  It was hard to believe they were gone.
    “What happened to the tatami shop?”
    May pointed at a pink stucco castle replete with fake ramparts, spires and gargoyles.  A sign invited lovers to drive over a cement drawbridge into an underground parking area where they could check in unobserved.  Rooms at 8,500 yen for a two-hour “rest” were advertised as luxurious and imaginative.
    May looked at Sam uncertainly.  “They sold their land and moved to Saitama.  Lot’s of people did.  I guess the area’s changed a little, huh?”
    Sam pulled his sister back toward their apartment.  “Not so much.  The love hotels and the bars were always here, there’s just more of them.”
    May hopped in the elevator and pushed the button for the top floor.  “Lots of people are gone but we’re not going anywhere, are we?”
    “No, we’re not.  We’re going to stay here as long as you want.”  He laughed.  “The neighborhood’s a little sleazy but it always was.  We can be sleazy together.”
    May clapped her hands and jumped up to kiss him.  He leaned down so she could reach, happy to see her smiling again.
    Standing outside the door of the apartment, May whispered, “There’s one more thing...”
    “What?”
    She pointed at the door.  “They’re really gross.  I didn’t tell you because I thought you might get upset.”
    “They” were May’s aunt and uncle.  The uncle was the older brother of Elena’s second husband.  Shopkeepers from Kochi on the southern island of Shikoku, they’d flown up two weeks before to take care of May after her mother’s death.
    “Have they mistreated you?”
    May pulled on his sleeve.  “Shhh, they’ll hear you.”
    A woman screamed inside the apartment, glass broke and a man shouted over a TV turned up too loud.
    “Hell,” Sam said.  “They’re not going to hear anyone.  Have you got your keys?”
    She hesitated.  “Maybe we should ring the bell.  They won’t like it if we just walk in.  There might be trouble.”
    May’s eyes were frightened, she looked like she wanted to run.  Sam held out his hand for the keys.  Something was wrong, there was a lot she wasn’t telling him.
    “Did they hit you?”
    “No.”  She held her purse tight across her chest like a shield.
    Sam felt an adrenalin rush and heat on his face.  “Are you sure?”
    “Maybe just a little,” May whispered, beginning to cry again.  The look on his face was scary.  “It didn’t hurt, Sam, it was really just slaps.”  She begged, “Don’t start trouble, please.”
    “I won’t.”
    May held out the keys.  “Do you promise?”
    “I promise.  “I’ll be good.”  He looked around.  “Do you have anywhere you can go for a little while?”
    “What do you mean?”
    The woman was screaming again, the man bellowed in return.  More glass shattered.
    “I want to talk to them alone.  Is there anyone in the neighborhood you can go visit?”
    May glanced down the corridor.  “I’ve got a key to Helen’s apartment.  She lives right there.  Is that OK?”
    Sam had no idea who Helen was but now wasn’t the time to find out.  “Sure, that’ll be fine.  Go on down there now, honey.  I’ll pick you up as soon as I can.”
    May retreated, watching him over her shoulder.  She rang the bell, waited for a moment and then let herself into the apartment.
    Sam had promised not to start trouble but as he unlocked the door he decided the word was relative.  They’d hit May and anything short of killing the son-of-a-bitches seemed reasonable.  He wondered how high they would bounce when he tossed them down the stairs.

Chapter 4 – Lunatic relatives

SAM PULLED off his boots and stepped into the hall.  The odor of dried fish, spilled beer and unwashed bodies grew stronger as he approached the living room.  He paused to listen to May’s aunt and uncle.
    “All I’m askin’ is that you don’t hit the kid anymore,” the uncle said.  He sounded both drunk and petulant.
    “Why not?  I’m taking care of the brat, aren’t I?  You’re no help, all you do is sit around on your ass and drink beer all day.”  Also drunk, the woman’s voice was thick with slang, expletives and anger.
    The man shouted over the TV.  “You’re one to talk, you old sow.  Why can’t you get it through your head that nothing’s settled yet?  You know we gotta be nice to the girl if we’re gonna get custody.”
    The women growled, “What are you talking about?  We’re here aren’t we?  Look around you, dummy.  What do you see?  This is our place now.  Hey, gimme some of that fish.”
    Sam struggled to follow the conversation.  Both were slurring their words and speaking in a dialect unique to Kochi prefecture.
    “Here, take it and shut up,” the uncle said.  “How many times do I have to tell you Elena left everything to the brother and as soon as he gets back we’re out on our asses.  Our only chance is to use the kid as leverage.”
    “What good is that?”
    “If we can get our hands on her maybe we can make a trade—the kid for the building.”
    “Shit, if he was coming back he’d already be here.  Screw you, I ain’t goin’ nowhere.  All these Tokyo people look at me like I’m shit.  We’re rich now and I’m going to rub their noses in it.”
    A scuffle erupted.  The woman snarled, “Hey I was watching that.  Put it back on.”
    “Get your hands off me, you bitch, I’m watchin’ the movie.  I’m sick of your game shows.  Go buy some more beer.”
    Sam stepped around the corner.  Floor-to-ceiling windows ran the length of the room.  They opened on a large roof garden that overlooked the street and the shrine below.  The carpet was Persian, the leather couch Italian.  A Ming dynasty vase rested next to an affable pair of figurines from Holland.
    A quick glance might have missed the relatives from Kochi.  Hunkered down in a corner, they were about the size of large dogs.
    The aunt wore an unbelted blue and white yukata over a black lace slip.  She had too much skin for her frame, it hung on her bones like a wrinkled sack.  Much of her hair had been lost.  What little remained fell far down her spine in a gray tangle.
    Her soul mate’s head was too small for his ears; the back of his neck sported a pair of boils and a leaking tumor.  His hair had been oiled and fashioned to resemble a supermarket bar code.  He wore a tubular stomach sweater over a greasy singlet and a pair of yellow polyester trousers.  Both had prominent beer bellies and fuzzy pink mules on their feet.
    They’d pushed the imported couch to the side and sat cross-legged in front of a low table apparently retrieved from a neighbor’s garbage pile.  It overflowed with fish skeletons, chopsticks and open tubes of ointment.  A few feet away, a 33-inch Pioneer TV floated on a sea of empty beer bottles and discarded Cup-O-Noodles containers.
    May’s aunt yelled and dived at her husband, trying to rip the remote control unit from his hand.  He whacked her a glancing blow with a beer bottle and scuttled backwards.  Blood dripped off her nose; she screamed in frustration and pummeled him in the face with her slipper.
    Sam crossed the room and turned off the TV.  He remembered his promise to May and tried to speak in a normal tone of voice.  “I’ll give you thirty minutes to pack your things and get out of here.”
    The Kochi relatives upended the table and rolled across the floor.  The husband screamed as his wife tried to impale him with a chopstick.  Sam reached down and tossed the pair on the couch.  The woman shrieked, “Gaijin!” and frantically covered her head with a scarf.  Speechless, her husband cowered in a corner, his mouth opening and closing like a fish.
    It took the best part of ten minutes and a good deal of intimidation to get the pair settled down.  They glared at him silently.  The woman, in a ludicrous display of modesty, closed her yukata and poked her husband in the side.  He looked down, zipped up his fly and scrunched further back on the couch.
    Sam checked his watch and smiled.  “In seventeen minutes I’m going to throw you out of this building.  It’s pretty chilly outside.  I think you’d better change your clothes so you don’t catch cold.  I’ll help you pack if you like.”
    Tears rolled down the uncle’s cheeks; May’s aunt hissed.  Sam placed his hand on her shoulder and squeezed ever so gently.
    He carried the old people’s suitcases down to the lobby and hailed a cab.  Still jittery with fear, their eyes were black with malice.  The aunt started to object as he told the driver to take them to Ueno Station, thought better of it, and pushed her husband into the taxi.
    Sam leaned in the window.  “I don’t want to see either one of you again.  Is that clear?”  Neither had the courage to meet his eyes and the cab drove off.  The driver swerved to avoid a pack of drunk office workers and Sam walked into the building.  A chair seemed to be in his way—he kicked it over.  A small trash basket stuffed with advertising circulars sat below a bank of mail boxes.  He kicked that over, too.

    One of the building’s residents stepped into the lobby.  He was a young man, unmarried, thin and stylish in a dark double-breasted suit.  His eyes widened when he saw the gaijin sitting in the corner of the floor amid crumpled ads touting overpriced condominiums, massage parlors and local politicians.  He crossed the lobby cautiously, treading uneasily on the scattered papers.
    The elevator was on the fifth floor and he watched the man out of the corner of his eye while he waited.  Foreigners were frustratingly difficult to categorize and this one was worse than usual.  Long dark hair, jeans and leather jacket.  Boots and dark eyes.  He could be dangerous or simply hip, it was impossible to be sure.  But muggers didn’t stare blankly at flyers for discount furniture, did they?  And he’d never seen one that looked tired enough to cry.
    The tenant relaxed his grip on his Gucci briefcase and thought he should say something.  He considered himself an international person.  But he was shy and afraid his English might be misunderstood.  The elevator arrived and he stepped inside, whispering good evening to the closing doors.

    Sam spent the next two hours removing all trace of the relatives from the apartment and went to fetch May.  She opened the door wearing pink and blue flannel pajamas and a yellow flower behind her ear.
    “What took you so long?” she complained and tried to pull him inside.  “Come and meet Helen.  We ordered pizza.  There’s some left.  You like mushrooms, don’t you?”
    Sam felt like he’d been traveling forever.  Africa seemed a lifetime away, the return to Tokyo more of a shock than expected and he detested mushrooms.  He didn’t want to meet anyone.
    May locked both hands around his wrist and tried to drag him like a stubborn mule.  He dug in his heels.
    “Is he always this shy?” a low voice asked.
    Startled and embarrassed, Sam relaxed just as May yanked as hard as she could.  He flew past her, staggered like a drunk across the room and landed face down on a big double bed.
    He looked up—into a pair of very serious gray eyes.
    May laughed and the woman leaned closer, her blonde hair caressing his cheek.  “You stepped on the pizza and kicked over the Monopoly game,” she whispered.
    Sam dangled his head over the edge of the bed.  She was right—red hotels and green houses lay demolished.  A silver slipper gleamed in a mushroom-and-black-olive footprint.  He groaned and tried to bury his head in the quilt but May wouldn’t allow it.  She was still laughing as she tugged him to his feet.
    “What a jerk,” she said helpfully.  “I told Helen you were really cool.  Now what’s she going to think?”
    Helen kept her thoughts to herself.  She sat calmly on the bed, her arms wrapped around her legs, her chin resting on her knees.
    Sam tried to apologize.  In the middle of the first sentence he noticed her pajamas were identical to May’s and that both wore apple-green Godzilla slippers with claws for toes.  It was suddenly quite warm in the room.  He lost his place and started again.
    Helen watched him curiously.  She pushed her hair from her eyes; her neck was long and graceful.  Her hands...
    The thought slid out of reach.  The apartment was only a studio and seemed to be growing smaller by the second.  She had the slightest hollows in her cheeks and...
    Sam took a step back, bumped a bookcase and brushed a basket of FTD flowers with his elbow.  He whirled and grabbed wildly—too late.  The basket slipped off the shelf.
    May giggled and congratulated herself.  She’d wanted to see Sam’s reaction to Helen and hadn’t warned him.  This was far better than anything she could have imagined.  Helen had fascinated her from the moment they’d met.  She never talked much but she had a lot of power, just like the wonderful witches in the old folk tales.
    Indeed, Sam stood bewitched and becalmed, clutching a handful of blossoms.  He drifted in Helen’s haunted eyes, until, at last, she smiled.  It lit up the room and Sam fell—for the third and final time that day.

Chapter 5 – Sleaze

POLICE LT. Nakazono watched the teenager buy an ice cream cone from Baskin Robbins, cross Asakusadori and stop under Kaminari Gate.  It was 10 p.m. and pedestrian traffic in the plaza was light.  The girl licked at her cone and Nakazono smiled.  She began to stroll north toward Sensoji temple and the cop followed.
    He felt himself quicken as she turned up Nakamisedori.  The alley was lined with souvenir shops.  Forbidden to vehicles, it was the main access to the temple and visitors were forced to fight through a gauntlet of folding fans and fortune tellers to reach their goal.  Nearly impassible in the daytime it was now deserted and shuttered.  Spotlights over the shops lit the cobblestones brightly and left the alley tidy and sterile.
    Nakazono touched the revolver holstered at his waist, fingered the stocking mask in his pocket.  He felt immune.  Head down, concentrating on her strawberry-cheesecake, the girl kept walking.
    The temple and the five-story pagoda waited one hundred yards ahead.  It was quiet in the temple precincts and very dark.  There were bushes and trees and streams clogged with candy wrappers and condoms and short humpbacked bridges.
    Nakazono closed the gap.  A few more steps and she would be out of the light and he could do whatever he wanted.  His eyes rolled down her back and over her ass.  She licked the cone; he licked his lips.  He imagined her surprise and fear.  She would fight.  But not for long, they never did.  They just cried, covering up, as he walked away, zipping and grinning.
    A siren wailed on Kokusaidori and the girl stopped.  She checked her watch and turned to retrace her steps.  Her eyes widened when she saw Nakazono so close, bearing down on her.  She hesitated and clutched her purse tighter.  They passed a meter apart, the cop entering the darkness, the girl hurrying back to Kaminari Gate and safety.
    Nakazono cursed the temple and the girl, blaming both for his ill luck.  He considered rousting a few bums or lovers, anything to keep from returning to the station.  Inside, there would be paperwork and subordinates with demands on his time.  Outside, at least one of Hara’s men would be waiting to escort him to an appointment with the leader of the Sumiyoshi-kai.  He’d already missed three meetings and knew he couldn’t avoid Hara much longer.  Nakazono sat down on a bench to rest.  He was so tired, he didn’t seem to have any strength at all.  If only he could get some sleep, maybe then he could think clearly.  Elena had been his last hope.  Everything would have been all right if she hadn’t died.
    No one could blame him, she’d brought it on herself.  He remembered quite distinctly the way she’d tormented him, as if she’d wanted to die.  She’d known he was a man of action, had known how he’d react.  It had been a suicide or at worst an accident, preordained and unavoidable.
    Each morning, he woke hours before dawn with a pain in his stomach and a weight on his chest.  His apartment was on the ninth floor.  He wondered how long it would take to hit the ground and what he would look like after he landed.  He’d loved her so, how could she have put him in such a position?
    Nakazono walked on, unable to feel the macadam under his feet or remember where he was.  He tried to accept the escape of the girl from Baskin Robbins philosophically, tried to concentrate on previous successes.  It didn’t work, it just made him angry.  A few minutes in the bushes wouldn’t have done her any harm and it would have made him less nervous.  A cop with gambling debts smaller than his had been found mutilated in Ikebukuro the day before.
    Thirty minutes later he stood in front of a small theater near the Sumidagawa river.  A skinny tout in a cheap tuxedo shouted at a passing salaryman.  A Marine from the U.S. Naval base in Yokosuka stood under photographs of naked women and drunkenly counted his money.  He wore jeans and a T-shirt that graphically promoted nuclear destruction as a means of conflict resolution.
    Nakazono shoved past the tout, ignored a fat lady selling tickets in a glass booth and walked through the lobby.  The smell of popcorn, dried squid and urine made him feel safe.  He bought a beer from a vending machine near the toilet.
    The theater had been built right after the war to showcase the talents of two-man comedy teams.  Now it provided employment for strippers as old and worn out as the theater itself.  Nakazono wedged himself into a seat in the back and opened his beer.  It was a good place to hide and collect his thoughts.
    An old wino was mopping up liquid on stage.  He worked slowly, swinging his mop in a reddish gloom.  The audience waited silently.  A record player was just visible on a table in the wings.  The bum finished mopping and changed the record, replacing one scratchy enka album with another.  Accompanied by bells, gongs and twangy stringed instruments, a woman whined about betrayal and suicide.
    The original stage had been expanded to accommodate the changing tastes of the customers.  A narrow runway thrust deep into the audience and extended almost to the back wall.  Men with beard stubble and blackened teeth flanked college kids.  A pair of wizened creatures with Shanghai-eyes and long chin hairs passed a bottle of sake to clerks in identical tan raincoats.  Two dozen in all, the customers propped their elbows on the runway, drank and smoked.
    The Marine pushed his way through the heavy curtains and stood uncertainly against the back wall.  There was more light than he’d expected and he felt exposed.  A few heads turned and he could see their faces clearly.  The distance from his ship seemed to lengthen.  He was beyond the reach of welcoming ceremonies and pier side bands.  A heavy man in the back row gave him a hard look and then turned away as a woman walked on stage.
    She wore a transparent nighty and high heels.  Her thin legs were bruised and her ass flecked with pimples.  A dragon tattoo crawled over her shoulder and down her back, spitting blue fire at a red-eyed demon.  Her hair was yellow-orange and black at the roots.  It fell over her eyes as she wobbled across the stage.
    The music changed, the tempo livened and she shuffled her feet.  She was graceless and indifferent.  After a few half-hearted kicks and squats, she dragged a greasy futon down the runway.  In her other hand was a tin box.  She let the futon slide to the stage and took a penlight from the box.
    Customers in the back left their seats and crowded to the front as she sat on the cold wood and lifted her nighty past her waist.  They leaned forward as she opened her legs and arched her back.  Each man got a chance to inspect her vagina using the penlight.  She stared at a point high on the wall and held her lips apart with one hand.
    Nakazono closed his eyes, thinking he might stay in the theater forever.  Elena’s face haunted him, it crawled under his eyelids and laughed.  He knew she would enjoy it when the Sumiyoshi-kai dropped him in the river or buried him in the woods.  He wished she’d suffered more, as much as he was suffering now.  A sliver of a tear slid down his fat cheek.
    A photo session began on stage.  The woman cackled and joked and held out a Polaroid camera with a flash attachment.  The college kids in the audience demurred but the clerks weren’t shy.  They gladly parted with a thousand yen each for the chance to take an extreme close-up of her genitalia.
    She placed a rough sheet over the futon and gestured to the audience.  Three men in front of Nakazono and two on the other side leaped to their feet.  The women didn’t choose, she let the aspirants sort it out themselves.  Finally, a consensus was reached and one of the students was selected.  He climbed on stage, slipped off his trousers and lay on the futon.  The stripper knelt beside him as he closed his eyes and folded his arms over his chest like a corpse.   
    She eased down his underwear and took a small towel from her metal box.  It was wrapped in hygienic plastic and distributed by the same company that serviced many local restaurants.  She cleaned him off with a few quick swipes and placed a condom on his penis.  He tensed and the clerks leaned forward on the edge of their seats.  His face was rigid with concentration as she used her hands and then her mouth.
    The stripper climbed on top and bounced.  He blinked and opened his eyes.  She snapped the used condom across the stage and beckoned to the next man.
    A laborer in blue work clothes jostled the Marine and he almost dropped his beer.  Instead of apologizing, the man grunted.  As a salaryman listlessly fucked the stripper and Nakazono continued to feel sorry for himself, the laborer began to jabber.
    The Marine didn’t know what the guy was saying but thought maybe he wanted to buy him a drink.  The Japs did that a lot and it was a cool way to stretch a pay check.  Not one of the fucks understood a word of English.  More than once he’d called them assholes right to their faces and had demanded they buy the next round.  Too dumb to say no, they’d ended up buying all the rounds.  He’d laughed and cursed them all the way back to his ship.
    When the guy grabbed his arm, it occurred to the Marine that free drinks might not be on the agenda.  He stepped back and two words wrapped in spit—Vietnam and Hiroshima—struck him in the chest.  They landed just to the right of the mushroom-cloud design on his T-shirt.
    Nakazono was driven from his hiding place by the commotion.  Two men, a gaijin and a Japanese, were rolling across the carpet.  He kicked them both as hard as he could and left the theater.
    He didn’t get very far.  Two of Hara’s men stepped out of the shadows and blocked his path.  They positioned themselves on either side and began to escort him down the street.
    “Why don’t we just shoot him and get it over with?” one asked.

Five years before, the solicitor for the Sumiyoshi-kai had begged Michio Hara to take a lower profile.  Hara had reluctantly taken his lawyer’s advice.  He’d parked his white Lincoln Continental in favor of a dark Mercedes and had begun to wear J. Press suits.  It had been a sad moment in his life.  How could the people of Asakusa recognize him if he looked like a common banker or, worse yet, a politician?
    When the solicitor had further suggested that he give up his punch perm and stop wearing pearly white ties, Hara had returned home in a funk.  Hours later his wife had found him sitting in the garage behind the wheel of the beloved Lincoln with tears in his eyes.
    Hara smiled graciously as Nakazono was pushed into a seat on the opposite couch.  He nodded at a trio of teenage porno actresses and the girls scurried off to play mahjongg in a corner of Hara’s private club.
    Nakazono looked frightened and Hara’s mood improved.  He grunted and a kid with pimples rushed over to pour the cop a drink.  Hara made small talk, stopping intermittently to look up at a TV behind the bar.  An announcer was analyzing a game played earlier that evening between the Yomiuri Giants and the Hanshin Tigers at Koshien Stadium in Osaka.
    Nakazono was a Giants fan.  He resisted the urge to turn his back on Hara to catch a glimpse of the highlights.  Instead, he poured himself another drink and lit a cigarette with a gold Dunhill lighter.
    Hara looked down at his paisley tie and grimaced, ran his hands through his razor-cut hair and nearly cried.  Oh, how he longed to turn back the clock.  To his salad days when everybody was starving and the yakuza could steal from the fat gullible Americans almost at will.  Just like Robin Hood and his merry men, the yakuza had been a selfless tribe distributing crumbs fallen from the occupiers’ over-laden table.  Hara had never understood why the Americans had pumped trillions of yen into Japan but had been more than happy to pick up his share.
    He considered himself a father figure for the common people of Asakusa.  The yakuza had helped so many down through the years.  They were his children.  He tried to recall their faces and their looks of gratitude.  There must have been hundreds and hundreds.  Oddly, he drew a blank.  All he could remember was cruising around in his big Lincoln and honking the horn a lot.
    He shouted at his chief of staff.  “Hey, who’d we help last week?”
    Fukuyama was seated at the bar playing patty-cake with one of the porno queens.  He looked puzzled.  “Help?”
    “You know, did something good for somebody.  When was the last time we did anything like that?”
    Fukuyama stroked his chin.  “Gee, boss, I’m not sure.  I think it was back in October.”
    “That long ago?  How about old Nagata-san.  Didn’t we help him out last week?”
    “Well, it was kind of like helping him, I guess,” Fukuyama agreed.  “Sure, you could look at it like that if you wanted to.”
    “What’d we do?”
    “We helped him retire and move to the country.”
    Hara settled back satisfied.  “Great.  I knew I was right.  We gave him some money, huh?”
    Fukuyama sucked his teeth.  “Not exactly.  It was more like an incentive plan.”
    “What was the incentive?”
    “We burned down his house.”
    Hara had been hoping for something a little more clear-cut.  He aborted his trip down memory lane and took out his frustration on Nakazono.
    “You owe us a lot of money, you moron.”
    Nakazono bowed half a dozen times, pressed his forehead to the coffee table and begged for more time.
    “Time?” the yakuza chieftain growled.  “I’ve given you all the time you’re going to get.  You couldn’t pay if you lived to be a hundred and you’re going to be lucky to see next week.”
    “I’ll do anything,” Nakazono pleaded.  He looked over his shoulder.  Three of Hara’s men were standing behind him holding short swords.  Fukuyama sat down and shoved a 9mm Beretta into his side.
    The cop slid off the couch and fell to his knees.  “Please, please,” he begged, his tears wetting to the tops of Hara’s suede slippers.
    Hara grinned at Fukuyama.  This was more like it.  The National Police Agency was in the midst of a vendetta against the mob, threatening their lifestyle and their livelihood.  It felt good to humiliate a cop, even if it was only Nakazono.
    “Get up and act like a man,” Hara snarled, and Nakazono crawled onto the couch like a beaten dog.
    “Bring the Lieutenant a beer,” Hara ordered.
    Nakazono wiped his eyes with his sleeve and sat on his hands to stop them from shaking.  He was still alive; it seemed like a miracle.
    “Nakazono-san,” Hara said, “there’s a couple of small favors I’d like you to do for me.  I think I could take care of your financial problems if you agree.”
    The cop nodded his head as fast as he could.  “Anything, anything.”
    “Good.  It’s all quite simple, really.  First, I want you to encourage Elena Takagi’s son to sell that building to me, uhh, to my agent.  You can do that, can’t you?”
    Nakazono began to breathe again.  “No problem, just say the word.”
    “Don’t do anything for awhile. Let ’em settle in and the heat die down.”
    “Whatever you say.”
    “That brings me to my second request.  The government’s so-called crackdown on our business has left my boys restless and the people in the neighborhood confused.  A few even think we’re getting weak.  I’ve arranged for a little morale boost tomorrow.”
    “What’s that got to do with me?”
    Hara smiled.  “You’re the police aren’t you?  There will be a crime and you will be required to arrest a couple of my boys.”
    “You want your own men arrested?”
    “I just said so, didn’t I?”  Hara snapped.  He raised his hand as Nakazono started to ask another question.
    “Just shut up and do what you’re told.  Keep your patrolmen away from the Aomori Heights building between three and five tomorrow afternoon.”
    Nakazono nodded.  The Aomori Heights was a large apartment complex in Higashi-Asakusa, just a few blocks from the police station.
    “Stay in your office and wait for a call reporting a disturbance.  Get your ass over there and make the arrests personally.”
    “What kind of a disturbance?”
    “Don’t worry about it,” Hara said.  He looked over at his second-in-command.  “But you’d better bring an umbrella.  Asakusa’s gonna get wet tomorrow.  Real wet.”
    Fukuyama laughed and dragged his girl face down into his crotch.

Chapter 6 – Reunion

SOMETHING WAS rattling around in his head.  It clattered and crashed.  He tried to hide, to slip deeper into sleep but the noise had sharp painful edges.  A bright light jabbed and poked, trying to crawl under his eyelids.
    The noise spoke.  “Get up, get up.”
    Sam panicked, his body flooded with danger signals.  Run, run—Renamo guerrillas are attacking the convoy.  His brain, befuddled and still in Mozambique, yelled at his feet to move.  He groaned and opened his eyes.
    A little guerrilla with auburn pigtails banged a couple of frying pans together.  She reached down and tried to pull the covers off the bed.
    Sam was sleeping naked.  Just in time, he yanked the covers up to his chin and held on.  “What time is it?” he croaked.
    “Four-thirty,” May said.  She was wearing an immaculate white apron over her school uniform.  Her face scrubbed pink, her pretty brown eyes laughed behind a pair of gold-framed glasses.  “We have to open at five,” she announced, and when Sam didn’t move fast enough, banged the pans together again.
    “Stop that,” Sam moaned.  “Jesus, May, it’s still dark out.  Go back to bed and leave me alone.  I gotta get some more sleep.”
    “That’s impossible.  You have to help me with the coffee shop.  We’re going to lose all our customers if we don’t reopen soon.”  She held out the pans in a threatening gesture.
    His mother’s business hadn't even crossed his mind.  He was a writer, not a shopkeeper; even basic entrepreneurial skills were a mystery.  Wasn’t a certain rapport with the customers an obvious requirement?  Would May let him off the hook if she realized that pleasant banter with a steady stream of Japanese was impossible?
    Not likely.  Two years ago in London he’d hurt her feelings trying to explain why he couldn’t return to Tokyo.  Too perceptive by far, she’d shouted that couldn’t was different from wouldn’t and called his reasons excuses.  He was a chicken, she’d said, and for the rest of the month had refused to speak anything but Japanese.
    Sam looked at the darkened windows and shook his head.  For the time being May was going to get whatever she wanted—they could renegotiate later.
    “OK, OK.  Just don’t make any more noise, please.”  He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and grumbled, “You’re a pretty cruel kid.  Couldn’t you have found some other way to wake me up?”
    May shrugged.  “I saw it on TV, they do it in the army.  It looked like fun.”
    Sam sniffed the air.  “I smell coffee.”
    May set down her pans and picked a mug off the bureau.  “I brought you some.”  She grinned and held it out.  “Do you want it now?”
    There was nothing in the world he wanted more.  He begged.
    She backed away from the bed.  “You can’t have it unless you get up.”
    “Please, May.  I can’t get up until you leave the room.  I’m not wearing pajamas.  Just set it on the night stand like the good girl I know you are.”
    Unimpressed with his flattery, May hesitated, wondering if she could get away with anything else.  No, she decided, he looks too pitiful.
    Sam took the mug from her hands and cradled it gently.  “If you’ll get out of here I’ll be down in a minute.”
    Retreating to the bedroom door, May couldn’t resist a parting shot.  “I’m going to tell Helen you sleep naked.  I bet she’ll be interested.  What’d’ ya think?”
    May left and Sam dug around in his suitcase for a pair of jeans and an old sweatshirt.  After last night he doubted Helen would be particularly interested in his sleeping attire or anything else he might say or do.
    Nothing much had gone wrong after his unfortunate entrance but very little had gone right, either.  May had eventually stopped her teasing and Sam had gained a bit of composure.
    He’d done his best to make conversation but Helen had remained remarkably reticent.  She did nothing to encourage or discourage, and if there had been a depth of emotion she could not hide, it had always been reserved for May.  Temperate with words and gestures, Helen did not flirt.
    Matching pajamas and ridiculous slippers, a passion for pizza and Monopoly—these were only cute addendums to what was clearly a much deeper relationship.  When Helen had turned her eyes on May, Sam had felt at best like a piece of furniture, at worst like a voyeur.
    Never had he felt at such a loss with a woman.  Any question, even the most innocent, had seemed invasive.  And though she’d answered agreeably enough, before she’d finished he’d always regretted having asked.  What should have been a simple introduction, a harmless exploration, suddenly became disproportionately important.
    He should have known better—just a glance at Helen was enough of a warning.  She looked, in certain critical aspects, like all the women he’d ever tried to love.  Hollow-cheeked women with thin wrists and insistent eyes—he’d tripped over their intensity every time.
    It had been left to May to keep the conversation going.  Helen was an editor at one of Tokyo’s four English-language newspapers.  But what Sam had always considered a profession, she’d dismissed as a job any monkey could do.
    Still, it could have been a point of common interest, a conduit to greater intimacy.  But Helen had shied away from the subject and he’d let the matter drop.
    Soon after, he’d gathered up May and left.  To Sam, the departure had seemed nearly as strange as the entrance.  He’d said good night and shook Helen Lang’s hand.  It was a normal gesture that had turned awkward with May chirping away at his side.  Helen had remained silent and unflappable.  Finally, she’d grinned and pinched May on the nose.  The girl had quit her blithering and Helen had looked Sam straight in the eye.  She’d offered an indecipherable smile, and, like a veil brushed aside in uncertain light, a suggestion.  His feet had floated at least an inch off the ground as she’d worked him over with her eyes.
    Returning to their apartment, May had squawked that Sam was holding her hand too tight, had protested that his comments on the moon were idiotic.
    He found May waiting outside the coffee shop.  The street was gray and cold.  He heard a low warbling, a dispirited mournful voice singing the last enka song of the night.  Amplified by a karaoke machine, distorted by whiskey, it drifted down the block.  An older man in a suit and tie was methodically kicking in the side of a parked car.  He cocked his head, listened for a moment and then staggered off toward the subway entrance.
    May was shivering.  She looked embarrassed and vulnerable as she handed Sam the key.  He put his arm around her shoulders and didn’t ask why she’d waited to enter.
    “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked, putting the key in lock.  He doubted anyone had been inside since the police had finished their fruitless investigation of his mother’s death.
    May nodded and covered his hand with hers, helping him turn the key.  “I want things to be the way they were.”
    Sam dropped to one knee, bringing her eyes within reach.  “I don’t think things can ever be just the same, honey.  But if we stick together maybe they can be almost as good.”
    “That’s right,” May said, opening the door.  “We have to keep going.”
    He was amazed at her bravery and ashamed of himself—a little banter with the customers, Japanese or not, wasn’t going to kill him.
    May flipped on the lights and showed him around while the heaters kicked in.  She was proud and possessive and her smiles increased in number and depth until she reached the flashy jukebox.
    “Isn’t it just great,” she said, punching in a series of numbers.  “I picked out all the music.”
    She had unusual taste for a thirteen year old.  Gershwin and Cole Porter.  Eric Clapton, Neil Young and a slew of few Japanese bands he didn’t recognize.
    The Japanese bands made sense, of course.  And the composers—she’d picked them up from her mother.  But the aging rockers were a puzzle.
    “What’s with Neil Young and Clapton?  Aren’t those guys a bit dated for you?”
    May shook her head, “Get real.  They’re terrific guitar players.  You do remember that I play, don’t you?”
    She’d been studying seriously since she was tiny.  That he’d never heard her play was just one more failing he’d have to remedy very soon.
    “Of course not, I didn’t forget.  I just didn’t make the connection, that’s all.  When are you going to play for me?”
    “I’ll think about it,” May sniffed, not entirely mollified.  “Maybe if you do a good job here today I’ll play something tonight.”
    Sam scanned the rest of the Wurlitzer’s menu.  “One last question.  What’s with all the R.E.M.?  It looks like you’ve got everything they’ve ever done.”
    May winked.  “Helen likes them a lot.”  She walked behind the counter and started filling napkin holders.  “Guess what?”
    “What?”
    “Helen plays the guitar, too.  She’s even better than me.  Maybe I’ll ask her to join us.”

    The first customer of the day walked in the door and May, in the tradition of every Japanese business everywhere, screeched out a welcome.  Sam jumped, groaned and looked around for an apron.
    Half the booths and most of the counter stools were occupied by a quarter to six.  May knew exactly what she was doing and ordered him around shamelessly.  He dropped only one cup of coffee and gained confidence rapidly.
    The earliest customers were mostly mama-sans on their way home.  The owners of neighborhood bars, they were attractive women in their 30s and early 40s.  They wore racy dresses and had bold tarty eyes.  Curious about “Sam-san” and not afraid to show it, they sat with their skirts hiked up and peppered him with questions.
    With May bustling around, he tried to keep his eyes above the waist as he fielded their questions and delivered coffee and toast.  It wasn’t easy.  The mama-sans were apparently too tired to give much thought to the positioning of the their legs.  Oddly this lack of caution seemed even more pronounced when Sam happened to look in their direction.  After his debacle with Helen, he enjoyed the attention very much.
    May handed a traditional Japanese breakfast across the counter—cheese toast—and grinned.  “The ladies seem to be livelier than usual this morning.  I wonder why?”
    “You got me,” Sam said, congratulating himself for maintaining at least a facade of indifference.  May couldn’t possibly know to what pleasant sleazy depths he could sink if given half the chance.
    “A couple of them work right upstairs,” she added.  “They’re our tenants and you’ve got to collect rent from them every month.  They’re REALLY friendly.”
    Sam looked in the mirror behind the bar, horrified that his thoughts might be tattooed on his forehead.
    “So what?”
    May giggled, “Oh, it’s nothing.  I just thought I’d mention it.”
    The next wave of customers hit a little before seven, just as the bar owners packed their oversized bags, replenished their lipstick and left.  This next group, early rising old people, favored a more complicated traditional Japanese breakfast—a hardboiled egg, toast and a small pile of shredded cabbage with thousand island dressing.
    Sam was kept hopping.  He balanced plates on slippery trays and avoided being drawn into arguments between friends who’d known each other for sixty years.
    All expressed condolences over his mother’s death and welcomed him home.  They spoke with a level of politeness unheard of in anyone under the age of seventy and with unfeigned sincerity and concern.
    At exactly seven-fifteen, the very oldest, Kimiko Nakamura, stuck her head in the door, squinched up her eyes to make certain of what she saw and then disappeared.  She returned minutes later carrying a parcel wrapped in white paper imprinted with purple cranes.  Deep into her nineties and barely able to walk, Sam helped her across the floor.
    “Not there,” May said, shaking her head.  “Nakamura-san always sits here.”  She pointed to an end seat at the counter.  “It’s hard for her to get in and out of the booths.”
    It was also hard for her to talk and Sam strained to make sense of her words.  But everybody in the coffee shop could understand her intentions when she held out the parcel with shaky hands.
    May opened the gift slowly, careful not to tear the rice-paper wrapping.  She folded it precisely and complemented the old lady on how pretty it was.  Inside was a sweater and May had tears in her eyes as she tried it on.  The sweater was knitted in powder blue.  English words and phrases—Cute, Boyfriend and Happy Life—served as crimson decoration.
    May either didn’t notice or didn’t care that Kimiko Nakamura’s spelling was less than perfect.  She thanked her graciously and when the old woman began to cry, dried her tears with the cuff of her new sweater.
    May looked up at Sam and smiled.  “Sorry, we Japanese cry a lot.”
    He nodded, thinking he might join them if he opened his mouth.
    The oldsters had shuffled off by a quarter to eight and the coffee shop was, at least for the moment, empty.  Sam slumped in a booth to rest.  His feet already hurt and he wanted to crawl back into bed.
    May pulled off her apron and hung it on a hook.  “Hey, big brother, it’s time for me to go.”  She grabbed her book bag from under the counter.
    “You’re not really going to leave me here all alone, are you?” he asked.
    She slid into the booth with a gleam in her eye.  “I cut school yesterday but if you need me I could stay home again.”
    Sam shook his head.  “Absolutely not.”  If May had even the slightest trouble at school it would give her aunt and uncle an opening they could exploit in a custody battle.  He was certain he hadn’t seen the last of them.
    “No, I’ll be fine.  It hasn’t been so tough, I can handle it.”
    May looked at her brother doubtfully.  He hasn’t seen the lunch crowd, yet.  He doesn’t know what tough is.
    “How are you doing at school?” Sam asked.  “Any problems?”
    “I had a few hassles at first but it’s OK now.  They were going to throw me out because they said I dyed my hair.”  She waved an auburn pigtail at Sam.
    “What happened?”
    “Mom took care of it.  She told them that because I was a little bit gaijin it was my natural hair color.”
    Sam remembered his own school days.  The teachers had been authoritarian and inflexible.  A couple had actually aided and abetted the school bullies in their harassment of anyone even slightly different.  Unlike May, Sam was more than a little bit gaijin and he’d been made to pay for it.  The intolerance had driven him right out of the country.
    May smiled.  “Wait.  I haven’t told you the best part.  After Mom talked to the principal they had an emergency teachers’ meeting and decided I should dye my hair black so I would look like all the other girls.  Isn’t that weird?”
    Weird but not surprising.  Sam reached across the table and touched May’s hair.  It was beautiful, he could easily imagine his mother’s reaction.  “I bet Mom wasn’t too happy with the idea.”
    May laughed.  “You could say that.  She had a fit.  It was great, she was really pissed off.”
    Sam frowned.  “Pissed off?”
    “Oh, come on.  Everybody says stuff like that.  Anyway, she threatened to sic Matsushita-san on them and they backed down.”
    Rie Matsushita had been Elena’s friend and lawyer.  The mention of her name reminded him that he needed to arrange a meeting.  The Kochi clan’s aspirations could be a nuisance, maybe there was something he could do to head off any problems they might cause.
    “Are the teachers treating you all right now?”
    “Pretty much, at least no different from the rest of the kids.  My home room teacher got down on her hands and knees and measured all the girls’ skirts last week.  Mine was an eighth of an inch too short but lots of other kids were worse.”
    May glanced at her watch.  “Hey, I gotta run.  Kiyomi’s waiting for me.  They slam the gate at exactly eight-thirty.  If we’re even one second late we’re in big trouble.”  She jumped up and ran to the door.
    “Study hard,” Sam yelled.
    May ran back, kissed him on the cheek and held out her hand.
    “Lunch money?” he asked.
    “Forget it.  Lunch money’s for kids.  I want my salary.  You don’t think I do this for free, do you?  Mom always paid me.”
    “How much?”
    “A thousand yen an hour.”
    “That’s pretty steep.  There’s a recession on, you know.”
    “I’ve got lots of expenses.  I want to buy a Game Boy.  Mom said I have to buy it myself ‘cause it’ll rot my brain.”
    Sam had one in his suitcase and wondered if he should admit it.  “What games do you play?”
    “Mostly Tetris.”
    The lure of competition was too great.  He considered himself an expert.  “I bet I can beat you,” he challenged, handing over May’s wages.
    She pocketed the money and raced for the door, tossing a threat over her shoulder.  “Wait ‘till I get home.  I’ll slaughter you.”
    He picked up the newspaper and began to read about the latest scandal.  Just as he was reaching the part where the construction minister blamed everything on a long-time aide, the bell over the door announced the arrival of another customer.
    “Welcome!” Sam shouted, grinning to himself.  This coffee shop business was easy, anybody could do it.  He’d show May that he was as adaptable as the next guy.  How could anything possibly go wrong?

Chapter 7 — Meeting Manny

THE EASTERN sky began to lighten over Sanya, above shops and small factories tossed up in the early 50s and left to decay.
    Manny Ramos stepped over a bag lady sleeping in the mouth of an alley and crossed the street.  He sat on the steps of a dormitory for transient workers and waited for the yakuza crew bosses to arrive.
    A few miles south of Manny, the first trains of the day were leaving Ueno and Asakusa stations.  Clattering along elevated tracks, their headlamps winked down at newspaper boys on bicycles and road repair crews finishing graveyard shifts.
    Manny watched as a mongrel dog pissed on a dumpster a foot from the bag lady’s face, yawned as the wind drove scraps of paper—racing forms and fast-food wrappers—into a chain-link fence.
    Beside the ramshackle dormitory, men in tattered work clothes wandered near a fire burning in a weedy lot.  They argued and jingled coins in their hands, keeping watch on vending machines in front of a tobacco shop.  With timers set to the sun, the machines wouldn’t spit out Kirin beer, Chu-Hi and cups of sake for another ten minutes.
    The wood smoke from the fire reminded Manny of home and how much he missed his daughters.  He hadn’t seen the girls in nearly a year. Such a long time. He looked back ever further—to the day the big tugs had towed the last floating dry dock out of Subic Bay and changed his life forever.
    Manny was forty-nine-years old and had worked as a carpenter at the giant U.S. Navy base since the beginning of the Vietnam War.  A concrete house on Olongapo’s Baloy Beach and an aging Datsun had marked him as a man of stature, a member of the community’s tenuous middle class.
    And then the politicians had ruined it all, destroying his life and the lives of thirty-thousand other base workers.  First, the Soviets had thrown in the towel, rendering Subic and Clark airfield expensive white elephants in a battle against a Red menace that no longer existed.
    Next, Mt. Pinatubo, in what Manny was certain was a warning from God, had erupted and buried Clark and surrounding Angeles City in mountains of ash.
    But the Philippine Senate hadn’t got the message.  Addicted to shaking down the Americans for base rental fees, they’d postured, threatened and whined.  And missed the geopolitical boat.
    When it had finally became clear that the U.S. wasn’t going to bother digging out Clark and intended to abandon Subic, the politicians had made fiery speeches and retreated to their family plantations on Negros and Mindanao.  While watching half-starved children work the cane fields, they’d proclaimed themselves anticolonial saviors in a war of national sovereignty.
    But sovereignty was thin gruel for Manny Ramos—it wouldn’t pay his daughters’ school fees or replace the water pump on the Datsun.  After a couple of years trying to scrape by doing odd jobs, he’d flown in desperation to Japan, a cheap tourist camera around his neck, the name of a building contractor neatly folded in his pocket.
    The first few months in Tokyo had been good.  His tourist visa had kept the ever-present cops at bay and he’d quickly found work.  The construction trade had been as hot as the rest of the nation’s overheated economy.  Even after his visa had expired, life had been tolerable.  He’d kept working, ducking the police and sending money home every month.
    But then the economy had taken a dive.  Illegal workers had been the first hurt and now every day dozens of men were turning themselves in for deportation and a free plane ride home courtesy of the Japanese government.
    Manny had decided to stick it out, hoping things would get better.  He was holding his own but just barely.  The few jobs available almost always went to younger men.
    He stood up as a line began to form outside a storefront office.  White-faced Iranians in leather jackets and baggy jeans stood beside dark-skinned Pakistanis.  Chinese spoke to Bangladeshis in Japanese and listened closely to replies in precise British English.
    The line edged forward.  A bricklayer from Bangkok looked back at Manny.  They’d met at a job site in Funabashi months before.  “I hear there’s no work again today,” he said.  “It’s always the same now.  This place is no good for us.”
    He lit a cigarette and held out the pack.  “We’re old men, we should be sitting in the sun, not digging holes for the Japanese.”
    Manny nodded.  The sun sounded wonderful.  It would be hot in Subic and if he was home he could take the girls to the beach.  He looked up at the dark sky and decided to give himself another week.

    Sam leaned on the bar.  It was nearly two o’clock and he was exhausted.  Without May to help, the lunchtime crowd had been a killer.  Even his sign on the door suspending food service had done little to deter rabid packs of housewives, both tourist and local.
    The rush seemed to be over.  The only customer was a skinny, owl-eyed college student at the counter.  The kid had sat slumped on his stool for the last hour, flicking through the pages of a comic book three inches thick.
    Shortly after the student’s arrival, Sam had dropped a soapy glass and it had shattered in the sink.  The kid had looked up, his eyes wide and jittery.  Sam had topped off his coffee and apologized for the noise.  The kid had mumbled and gone back to his reading.
    Later, long after the coffee had grown cold, the kid’s head had sunk on his breast and his eyes had glazed over.  His hand had moved faster and faster, until the rasp of turning pages had been the loudest sound in the room.  He’d blindly slurped his coffee, his eyes locked on the comic heroine, a doe-eyed schoolgirl with perky breasts.
    At last, he’d sighed and lit a cigarette, setting the comic on the counter open to the final page.  The girl, her breasts still perky, lay raped in a school yard.  Despite glistening comic tears in her big round eyes, she looked both resigned to her fate and ready for next week’s adventure.

    “Excuse me, are you open?”
    Sam lifted his head from the counter.  “Uhh, yeah, sorry.  I must have dozed off.  Our kitchen’s, uhh, closed but I can get you a cup of coffee or a beer.”
    “Coffee’s fine,” Manny Ramos said.  He couldn’t afford to eat in a restaurant anyway.  He’d been wandering all day and just wanted to get off his feet.  He took a closer look, wondering what a white guy was doing working in a coffee shop.  He’d seen plenty of Southeast Asians—that wasn’t so unusual—but the whites always had better jobs.
    The guy handed over the coffee and asked, “You speak English?”
    “I was speaking English,” Manny smiled.  “Or at least I thought I was.  Is my accent that bad?”
    Sam rubbed his eyes.  “Uhh, no.  I’m sorry, I guess I’m still half asleep.  Sometimes I get confused.”
    “Tough day, huh?”
    “Murder.”  Sam poured himself a cup of coffee.  “Where are you from?  The P.I.?”
    “That’s right, near Subic Bay.  Ever heard of it?”
    “Sure.  I filed some stories from Manila when Marcos was kicked out of the country.”
    Manny nodded.  Hopes had been high then.  Everybody had thought things were finally going to change.  He smiled.  They’d been right, things had changed.  They’d gotten worse.
    “What are you doing in Japan?” Sam asked.
    “Trying to make a living.”  He explained his situation in as few words as possible.  Reality was depressing.
    Sam listened and an idea began to form.  He could help this guy and help himself, too.  The more he thought about it the more he liked it.  The only question was whether May would go for it.  There was only one way to find out and he knew he couldn’t stand another day like today.
    He refilled Manny’s cup and peered at the older man.  “Can you cook?”
    “Cook what?”
    Sam handed a menu across the bar.  “This stuff.”
    The menu was written in katakana, the simplest of the Japanese alphabets.  Like many foreigners, Manny had learned it his first month in Tokyo.  He scanned it quickly—all Japanese coffee shops served the same food.
    “Anybody can cook this,” he said.  “How hard is it to make fried rice and tuna sandwiches?”
    Too hard for Sam.  “Yeah, but what about the spaghetti?” he demanded, feeling a little defensive.  “Spaghetti’s not easy.  Not everybody can make that.”
    “Hmmm, I guess you’re right,” Manny agreed.  “Spaghetti’s pretty tough.  First, you have to boil the noodles and then dump sauce on top.”  He laughed.  “I bet it takes a lot of training.”
    Sam held out his hands.  “OK, OK.  Maybe spaghetti’s not that difficult.”  He grabbed the menu back, determined to find something that took real culinary skill.
    Manny waited, surprised and amused at the turn his day had taken.  He wasn’t at all sure where this conversation was leading but it was very easy to like the guy behind the counter.  After the crew bosses and the cops, the loneliness and the crowding, it was fun to joke around.  He’d been taking life far too seriously recently.
    Sam slapped the menu down on the counter and grinned.  “All right, all right.  Here we go.”  He pointed at an item halfway down the list.  “OK, buddy.  Just try and tell me this one’s easy.”
    Manny sounded out the katakana.  “Mini-Pizza?”
    “Right.”
    “I think those usually come frozen.  You just put 'em in a toaster oven, don’t you?”
    “Really?”
    “I’m almost sure of it.”
    Sam put away the menu, popped the tops on a couple of Budweisers and handed one across the bar.  “So you want a job?”
    Manny’s smile was as wide as Sam’s.  “Of course.  That’s what being an illegal alien is all about.  We always want jobs.”
    “Yeah, that’s what I figured.”  Sam hesitated.  “There’s just one thing, though...”
    “What’s that?”
    “The final decision is up to my sister.”
    “Is she the owner?”
    Sam looked toward the door.  “Uhh, not exactly.”

    May grabbed Kiyomi by the shoulder to stop her from moving deeper into the coffee shop.  Too late, the strange man behind the bar had already seen them.
    Her heart bounced—he was standing right by the cash register—and stopped beating.  A body was lying in one of the booths.  Its feet were sticking out.  She recognized the purple and kiwi-colored Nike sneakers.  Sam’s sneakers!
    The door closed behind May, gently bumping her inside.  Kiyomi, flustered and getting scared, tried to back up.  They banged together, their books flew from their hands and slid across the floor.  Eyes wide with fright, they prepared to scream.
    Manny beat them to it.  “Welcome!” he shouted at the top of his lungs.  He smiled broadly and gestured for them to come closer.
    May would have none of it.  She took two steps forward and three to the side, circling the intruder as if he were a dangerous animal.
    “You can sit anywhere you like,” he invited.
    May began to breathe again.  The stranger looked almost shy and his Japanese was funny; he put musical accents on every syllable.  She heard a low noise from the other side of the room.  Sam was lying on his back, his face covered with a copy of the Asahi Shimbun.  One of his feet moved; he snored and snored.  Lazy man!
    Kiyomi laughed and picked up her books; May advanced to the counter and plopped herself down on a stool.  She leaned forward and looked the stranger right in the eye.
    Manny flinched under the intense scrutiny.  This must be the sister.  It was a surreal moment.  He was nearly fifty years old and his life and the lives of his children might depend on her opinion.
    “You’re old,” she said.
    “I’ve got a daughter about your age.  Her name’s Miriam.”
    “Your Japanese is terrible.”
    “It’s difficult.”
    “Yeah, it’s pretty hard,” she agreed, switching to English.
    May looked over at Sam.  She was still a little afraid he might run away again.  It wasn’t fair to leave him here all alone in the daytime.  Maybe if he had somebody to talk to.
    “OK,” she decided.  “You can stay.”
    Manny concealed his relief.  It wouldn’t do to grovel.  “Good.  Is there anything you’d like?  A Coke or something?”
    “Absolutely,” May said.  “Two Cokes, please.”
    “Anything else?  You must be hungry.”
    “Do you know how to make Mini-Pizzas?”
    Manny turned, flicked on the toaster oven and began to laugh.

Chapter 8 - Helen

HELEN WAS thinking of May’s brother as she stepped from the elevator.  Annoyed she’d flirted even a little, she promised to keep her eyes to herself in the future.  It had only been for a second but that was no excuse.  He shouldn’t have made her laugh, that was the problem.
    She breezed right past the mailbox and out the building.  It was late afternoon and the air was warm.  She could smell spring flowers.  The shrine was in shadows.  Because it was a very small shrine no ferocious lions guarded the gate.  Instead, the tabby cat sat on the offering box in front of the alter.  It stretched and batted at the thick cord hanging from the prayer bell.
    “Hi, cat,” Helen said, and checked her watch.  She had just enough time to show May her new boots before she had to go to work.
    If only she’d walked straight into the coffee shop, chatted for a few minutes and then headed for the office—what a cause for rejoicing that would have been.  What progress!
    But her regretful heart pulled her back.  The tabby’s eyes glowed in the shadows, watching as Helen returned to the lobby and opened her mailbox.  A phone bill from KDD, a pink business card from a hooker service and a letter from her mom in Ottawa.  She put the bill and letter in her bag and slammed the mailbox shut.
    She was so stupid.  Almost two years now.  She whispered—facts are facts, nothing will ever change—and bowed her head.  But the mantra was worn out.  It didn’t help when the phone made her jump and the sight of a mailman made her bleed.  She closed her eyes—why hurt yourself so?—and begged to forget.  To forget that son of a bitch, to forget to check the mail.
    May and Kiyomi looked up from their homework.  Helen sat down, Manny smiled, and May made introductions.  Helen asked for a cup of tea and glanced at a snazzy pair of sneakers attached to a body in one of the booths.
    “Cool shoes,” she laughed.
    “That’s Sam,” May explained.  “He’s asleep.”
    “I can see that.  Why don’t you wake him up?”
    “Manny said to leave him alone because he’s got jet lag.”
    “It’s four-thirty in the afternoon.  If you let him sleep like that he’ll never adjust.”
    Helen spoke without really thinking.  It never entered her head that she might want Sam awake because she was feeling a little down.  Other than Hiroshi, she hardly ever talked to men.  They couldn’t be trusted and they never listened, anyway.
    But when May didn’t move fast enough, Helen insisted.  “Come, on.  Go wake him up.”
    This time something clicked.  She wondered what the hell she was doing and why she didn’t finish her tea and get her ass to work.
    May climbed down from her stool and hesitated.  “Well, OK, but if he gets mad, I’m gonna blame you.”
    “Sure.  I can handle it,” Helen agreed.  You blew it, dummy, too late to back out now.
    May tentatively jiggled Sam’s foot.  He moved underneath a blanket of newspapers.  There was nothing diffident about her second attempt.  She grabbed the foot and yanked, nearly dragging him off the seat.
    Kiyomi and Manny laughed as Sam groaned and sat up.  Helen smiled and stretched like the tabby.  Big silver earrings swayed beneath her ears.  They gathered up the light in the room and bounced it into his eyes.  He blinked and shook his foot loose from May’s grasp.
    “How long have I been asleep?”
    “About an hour,” Manny answered.
    “You snore!” May accused.
    Sam stood up.  “Only when I’m really tired and should be left alone.”
    May-the-turncoat pointed at Helen.  “Don’t blame me, it was her idea.”
    His annoyance miraculously vanished.  “Well, she’s right.  I’ve got to start living here, not back on African time.”
    The only seat at the bar was next to Helen.  Manny held out the coffee pot but Sam shook his head.  He turned to look down the counter at May.  This movement also afforded him a better view of Helen.
    “Does that espresso machine work?”
    “Of course.  Do you want some?”
    Sam nodded.  Helen was wearing jeans and a silk shirt the color of flat-black auto primer.  He tried to keep his eyes neutral.  But the way her shirt dived off her breasts and darted into her jeans was alarming.  Their elbows brushed; she moved away and their knees banged together.
    “Excuse me,” they both said, apologies overlapping.
    May handed Sam the espresso in a small blue cup.  He drank slowly as Manny asked the kids about school.  They answered dismissively and scribbled away in exercise books.  Helen pulled a paperback from her bag, opened it, closed it, and put it away.
    Sam remembered the disaster the night before.  Let her talk.  But Helen remained silent, her eyes half closed, listening to a song on the jukebox.  When the music ended she stood up and pushed a foot in May’s direction.
    “I bought those boots I was telling you about.”
    May and Kiyomi jumped down to get a better look.
    “Too hot,” May applauded.
    “Very beautiful,” Kiyomi agreed.  Her command of English didn’t allow her to use the slang that May employed.
    “Tony Lama’s right?”  May asked.
    Helen had her back to Sam.  She nodded and slowly leaned down.  She touched her toes—to adjust the cuff of her jeans.  It seemed to take a long time.  He set down the blue cup.  It banged the saucer and jangled primevally.  He remembered a sunset over Brazil but forgot his own name.  She straightened up and tossed her hair.  Her boots were black and blue, his thoughts red.  He was lost in a fog bank of drifting perfume.
    “I got them at that shop you showed me in Roppongi.”
    “How much?” May asked.
    Helen bent to fix the other cuff.  “Sixty-thousand.”
    “Expensive,” Sam said.
    Helen looked back.  Her face was upside down; her blond hair brushed the floor.  She smiled.  “Not really.  You’d better get used to Tokyo prices.”
    She glanced at the time, said she was late, and walked toward the door.  Manny set the blue tea cup in the sink and it rattled loudly.  Sam waited for his head to clear.  There were a lot of things he’d better get used to.

    It was Friday and Asakusa was packed with tourists getting a head start on the weekend.  They chattered and flowed through the alleys like a conga line.  Helen stopped outside Tawaramachi Station and stared across the street.  The Sumiyoshi-kai buffoons were doing their spring cleaning.
    A chubby young man in jeans and a James Dean T-shirt was washing a window.  Two other gangsters kibitzed nearby.  Both sported punch perms, the short tight curls favored by yakuza lowlifes.  Their polyester leisure suits—lime green and mango orange—were bright enough to gl