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 glow in the dark.  The shorter of the two wore open-toed house slippers with rhinestones and stacked heels.  True punks always minced around in their girlfriend’s footwear.
    Helen smiled.  There were three or four shops in Asakusa that catered to the peculiar taste of the yakuza.  Old couples, probably retired gangsters and their molls, guarded their wares with menacing eyes.  Dust motes sparkled in their hair as the oldsters flitted between light and shadow, pawing through cardboard boxes stenciled “Made in China.”
    A door opened a the gang’s headquarters and an older mobster stepped out.  He wore white everything—suit, shirt, shoes and tie.  Eyes hidden behind mirrored sunglasses, he yelled up at a workman on a ladder.  The man had removed the gang’s crest and was touching up with daubs of beige paint.  A new sign with discreetly brushed characters leaned on the building.  It read: Sumiyoshi Import-Export.
    Helen had seen enough.  The latest government edict, officially declaring the yakuza as criminals, seemed to be having some effect after all.  Oddly, this conclusion had eluded the police and politicians for decades.
The Sumiyoshi-kai and other gangs had been outraged and had sued, claiming harassment.  They hadn’t been laughed out of court as might have been expected, but had lost their cases, anyway.
    Small printing firms nationwide had cheered as thousands of hoodlums had lined up to buy new business cards.  No longer were Big Boss, Crime Chieftain and Junior Thug acceptable job titles.  Painters and sign makers had also prospered as the criminals made at least minimal effort to conceal their malicious intent.
    Her train arrived and Helen hopped aboard.  It was half-empty and she sank into a seat with pleasure.  Ten minutes and seven stops later she changed to the Tozai line at Nihombashi.  The platform was thick with teenagers ready to party in western neighborhoods of Aoyama, Shibuya and Shinjuku.
    Helen stayed near the door, she had only one stop to go and didn’t want to fight through the giggling girls and shy young men when the train arrived.  It took about a minute from Nihombashi to Otemachi and she was one of only a few passengers to get off at the city’s financial center.
    Otemachi was quiet, as if catching its breath at the end of a work day.  Rush-hour would begin in a moment but for now the district seemed eerily deserted.  Helen tossed her bag over her shoulder and strolled down the wide sidewalks.  She was happy, she smiled as if she owned the place.  Tall hopeless buildings loomed in the fading light.  They had no discernible character.  Across the street a solitary pedestrian walked below Nomura Securities toward Tokyo Station.
    She reached a crosswalk and stopped, pleased to enjoy a moment of silence in city that often hurt her ears.  A black Nissan President sat at the traffic light, waiting to make a turn.  The light changed to green and she stepped into the street.
    The limousine wanted to go first.  It dove forward and threatened to run her over if she didn’t yield.  Helen had the right of way.  She set her jaw and kept walking.  The limo bucked and leaped again, determined to scare her and make her jump back.  Its tires protested, the hood dipped, its bumper stopped two inches from her legs.  Like awkward dancers they hesitated.
    Helen took another step, angry and obstinate.  Let the driver run her down if he would.  A Japanese would back off, she never could.  She’d lost all patience with these senseless acts of intimidation.  The bumper touched her thighs and pushed.  She gave ground and almost fell.
    Helen panicked.  She threw her bag at the limo, it smacked into the windshield and bounced onto the hood.  The driver was an old man with thinning hair and thick glasses.  He looked more bewildered than hostile.  Amazed at the gaijin’s anger, he felt his world turn on end.
    She scrambled around the car and screamed in the window.  “You dumb motherfucker.  What are you doing?”
    He cringed, he bowed, he fluttered his hands.  “Excuse me,” he cried, again and again.
    She switched to Japanese, a language with limited obscenities.  “Stupid...stupid...stupid!”
    Helen grabbed her bag off the hood and stared in the back seat.  A suited executive glanced up from a newspaper.  He instinctively retreated from the confrontation—he went far away.  His face was calm, his eyes were blank.  Helen’s face was red, she was visibly shaking—there was nowhere for her to go but across the street.

    She turned down a side street jammed bumper-to-bumper with blue flatbed trucks.  They sat below the Nihon Shimbun Building with their engines idling, waiting for the presses to spit out the evening edition.  Drivers in blue coveralls argued about baseball as a cloud of exhaust rose into the evening sky.
    Diesel fumes mingled with the smell of chicken.  The yakitori truck was already doing a brisk business.  Girls-who-serve-tea sat side-by-side with senior executives and pressmen black with ink.  They lounged on grass mats laid on the sidewalk and toasted each other with big cans of beer.  The executives waved sticks of yakitori for emphasis as press photographers on motorcycles roared by.
    Helen was surprised—the yakitori man didn’t come around much in the warmer months.  He was a winter phenomenon, a movable feast at its best when snow blanketed the streets and red paper lanterns glowed with warm yellow light.
    “Helen-san!”
    A group of young reporters and sub-editors sat partying on the sidewalk.  All worked for the Nihon Shimbun, the mass-circulation daily that owned Helen’s English-language paper, The Tokyo Sun.  The Nihon Shimbun claimed a readership in the millions and touted itself as the largest newspaper in the “free world.”  The Tokyo Sun, by comparison, sold fifty-thousand papers on a good day.  It existed primarily as a shameless purveyor of company propaganda and as a tax write-off.
    She spotted Hiroshi in the center of the after-work revelers.  He called her name again and held up a can of beer.  She shook her head; she didn’t want to wade through the crowd and she was late.  He climbed over his friends to get to her.
    “Come and join us.”  His face was bright red.  Like many Japanese, Hiroshi changed color as quick as a chameleon after only a few sips of alcohol.  It was, at times, a charming trait, and he made for a cheap date on the nights Helen was buying.
    “Sorry,” she said.  “I have to get up there, I’m late.”
    He smiled.  “So what?  You’re always late.  You haven’t been on time for a night shift in three years.”
    She ignored his comment on her tardiness, true though it might be, and asked how his day had gone.
    “OK.  My editor was in meetings all afternoon.”
    “Anything interesting going on?”
    Hiroshi was a police beat reporter and a good source for Helen’s column.
    “Not really.  I’m still working on that piece on jiage.”
    Jiage, the violent intimidation of property owners, had escalated dramatically with the rise of land prices in the big cities.  The old and the weak were usually the victims.  If they refused to sell their downtown homes or shops to land speculators, yakuza punks were brought in to induce them to reconsider.  With the police either inept, indifferent, or involved, jiage was flourishing.
    It was also old news and the last time Helen had written about it her boss, Ozawa, had thrown a fit and had called her a Japan-basher.  He’d moved into the editor’s position three months before and within days had canceled most columns written by foreign staff members, fired the single Chinese writer and convinced two Korean-Japanese editors to seek employment elsewhere.  Helen knew her days at the paper were numbered; she often asked herself why she was bothering to hang around at all.
    “Unless there’s a new angle, I’m not going to do anything else on jiage,” she said.
    Hiroshi stepped closer and lowered his voice.  “Can you come over tonight?”
    “I don’t think so.  Is that OK?”
    He looked disappointed but covered it well.  “It’s up to you.  It’s just that we haven’t been together in a long time.”
    Helen turned him down again as gently as she could, dodged a couple of trucks, and ran across the street.  She just wasn’t in the mood.  After a night shift she wouldn’t make it to his apartment in Shinagawa until after two in the morning.  He’d be waiting on the narrow bed that doubled as a couch in his tiny junior salaryman apartment.  His clothes would be on the floor, his socks and underwear drying on curtain rods.
    At twenty-five, Hiroshi was three years younger than Helen and had never learned to take care of himself.  Once he’d hinted that she might straighten up his apartment or possibly wash his dishes.  She hadn’t bothered to respond and his mother had done it the following week.
    They’d been dating for seven months.  He was considerate, often funny and nicely balanced—neither effete like most young men in Tokyo nor tiresomely sexist like the older men.  Other than May, he was her only real friend and he made a good one.  The time they spent in parks or dancing in clubs was, for Helen, the core of their relationship.
    She’d lost interest in sex after John had left.  On another warm evening, two blocks away, she’d been going to work and he’d been leaving.  They’d passed under a street lamp.  She’d wanted to grab his arm and scream, to shake something loose.  Anything that would have helped her understand.  But the damage had been great and deep.  Too helpless and tired to even say goodbye, neither had looked back.
    The date, the eighth of May, two years before.  The time, seven-twenty p.m.  Her memories remained implacable and hasty—too quick to recall the shadows, like bruises, under his eyes and the color of the artificial light.  Things indivisible from her daily life—sidewalks and sky—still resonated with the past and triggered a humming in her heart.  Helen didn’t know what had happened to her

Chapter 9 - Yakuza slaughter

THE COVERED arcade across the street from Asakusa Station was crowded with shoppers enjoying a warm Saturday afternoon.  Helen stopped to watch street peddlers ply their trade on blankets pitched in front of high-rent shops.
    All the peddlers were young, dark haired and Israeli.  They sold stuffed pandas, mass-produced watercolors and cheap jewelry throughout the city.  Business was brisk and blind astrologers watched enviously behind tables adorned with smoky candles burning in red glass jars.
    Only rarely did the shopkeepers complain about the peddlers blocking access to their stores.  The Israelis, often backpackers taking a break from the Asian hippie drug trail, worked as franchise employees protected by the city’s yakuza gangs.
    Pandas were invariably the hottest sellers and were produced in a dizzying array of models.  The herbivore was highly esteemed and had displaced the truculent koala as the nation’s only living god.  Schoolgirls adept at calculus and elementary physics gushed monosyllabic and swooned in the presence of even the most tattered cloth version.
    Helen snuck through the crowd to get a better look.  Some of the battery-powered pandas were actually quite clever.  But she backed away disappointed—a singing panda that did giant swings on a high was old hat.
    Asakusa Station was underground and she found Hiroshi waiting at street level in front of Matsuya department store.  He’d called a couple of hours before, saying he was onto something hot.
    He pointed at a van parked in the crosswalk.  “I hitched a ride with the TV team.  We’d better get going, nobody is sure when this is going to start.  It shouldn’t take too long and then we can get a cup of coffee.”
    Broadcast vans from Asahi, Fuji and NHK were already parked in front of the Aomori Heights building.  Cameramen, sound technicians and TV reporters stood in groups talking with writers and photographers from all the main dailies and weekly magazines.
    “What’s this all about?” Helen asked.  “I haven’t seen this kind of a turnout in a long time.”
    “I’m not sure.  We were tipped that something big was going to happen but the caller wouldn’t be specific.”
    “Well, it had better be good.  It’s not like I have nothing better to do.”
    “Like what?”
    She smiled.  “Plenty of things.  I was on my third load of laundry before I left and I was working my way up to a championship-level sulk.”
    “What have you got to sulk about?”
    She ticked off her reasons.  “My job sucks, the job market is lousy....  We’re in the middle of a recession.  I’m not sure I want to stay in Japan.  I’m not sure I want to go anywhere else.”
    A photographer shouted and bedlam erupted as two men walked around the corner and were engulfed by pushing cameramen and reporters.  Strobes flashed, motor drives chittered and a columnist was knocked to the pavement.  She looked up into the blazing lights of half a dozen minicams and kicked a soundman in the crotch.
    Helen tried to stay on the fringe of the mob.  News gathering in Tokyo was competitive, extremely invasive and dangerous.  Journalists traveled in packs snapping at the heels of prey.  The possibility of being trampled was real.
    The yakuza basked in the attention.  Both were young, in their early twenties, and overweight.  One wore a Daffy Duck sweatshirt from Mickey House, a nationwide apparel distributor licensed to sell images of Disney’s favorite characters.  In addition to receiving high marks from street punks, Mickey House was quite popular with yakuza wives who swaddled their mob tots in Goofy jogging outfits and Minnie Mouse jumpers.
    His companion wore a lime-green running suit with a portrait of Mozart on the front.  He carried an open can of Sapporo beer in one hand and a short sword sheathed in white pine in the other.  Each had a punch perm and the twitchy eyes of a habitual methedrine abuser.  Helen could smell the alcohol seeping from their skin from five yards away.
    Mozart took a swig of beer and Daffy shoved the nearest photographer in the chest.  Both began to shout at the mob.  Helen’s Japanese was fluent in normal circumstances but the guttural yakuza dialect was difficult in the best of times and nearly unintelligible when mixed with drugs and alcohol.
    She understood enough to know that someone named Takeno was in serious trouble.  They called him a swindler and said he’d reneged on a land deal.  The specifics eluded her but she wasn’t surprised—crooked land speculators were as common as sushi.
    Mozart and Daffy continued to shout as they shoved their way through the journalists to the elevator.  The crowd surged and Helen was trapped, crushed into the yakuza.  The doors opened and she was pushed inside.  A camera lens stabbed her in the kidney and someone stamped on her feet.
    An air of violence and danger was rising; she could feel its heat on her face and in her chest.  It nearly took her breath away.  She’d been caught in Tokyo crowds before and had tried not to panic.  Zen was a daily survival skill, not a mystic religion.  Her teachers had been clawing and kicking housewives.  They’d taught her to bend like grass in the wind.
    The elevator opened at the sixth floor and Helen was pushed along to an apartment halfway down an outside balcony.  Those left behind on the ground floor came racing up the stairwell and closed in.  Daffy and Mozart screamed and the mob grudgingly backed off.  They formed a half-circle around the yakuza as hard and impervious as cement.
    Helen couldn’t move, she was going to get a front-row seat whether she liked it or not.  She spotted Hiroshi off to her right in a crush of bodies four rows deep.  A reporter from a major TV network shoved a mike in Daffy’s face and asked rapid-fire questions.  The rest of the reporters deferred to his seniority and shut up.
    This was no mafia movie, no cool professional job.  Daffy and Mozart were going berserk.  They jerked like maddened puppets and tugged at their restraints.  The reporters waited patiently.  Mozart pounded on the door like a drummer.  Daffy’s weak little heart beat faster and faster.  He pushed at Mozart, and Mozart pushed back.  They swapped their cowardice like a bottle.  The reporters did nothing to discourage the self-induced hysteria.
    Helen had seen it before.  Violence in Japan was rare.  When it came it was explosive, insane and very messy.  She could feel the rage building, edging out of control.  The man Takeno was going to get a beating, not just a warning.  Mozart roared.  Daffy whirled on the reporters and lashed out.  The crowd fell back but made sure the cameras were rolling.  No one thought of calling the police.
    “Who is it?” a thin frightened voice asked from inside the apartment.
    Daffy shouted for Takeno to open up and smashed his fist into the steel door.  He rattled the doorknob and Takeno cried out like a terrified child.  He was going to call the police, he warned.
    Mozart laughed at the threat and flipped his half-empty beer over the heads of the reporters.  It landed with a slap in the parking lot below.  Daffy slammed into the door with his shoulder and Mozart tried to rip the burglar bars from the apartment’s front window.  The bars were thin aluminum and installed merely as a deterrent.  He called for Daffy’s help and the bars began to bend.
    The pebbled window glass was reinforced with wire mesh and translucent.  Helen watched a silhouette move inside the apartment, listened to Takeno beg for help.  Daffy and Mozart pulled at the bars and grunted.  The reporters yelled questions as screws embedded in concrete failed and the bars came away from the window.
    A lazy afternoon breeze rustled notebooks as the sun slipped lower and left the balcony in warm shadow.  Children’s voices lifted out of a grammar school playground and sailed up to the sixth floor.  Mozart paused to catch his breath and Daffy grinned at a weak keening coming from inside the apartment.
    Helen tried to push herself back out of the crowd as Mozart kicked the window again and again.  She gave up, there was no way out.  A long crack appeared in the glass.  Mozart wiped at his face and kicked again.  The window buckled and sagged inward, held in place by the reinforcing mesh.
    Daffy was bigger.  He put his foot straight through the wire.  Takeno screamed and Mozart reached in to unlock the window.
    Helen heard footsteps in the apartment and a door slam.  Mozart and Daffy struggled, both trying to get in the window at the same time.  Mozart snarled at his partner and climbed inside.
    The window was wide open and the crowd pushed Helen forward.  Her thighs were shoved tight into the apartment wall.  The pressure at her back bent her at the waist, forcing her to lean through the window.  With her arms trapped at her sides she could do nothing about the minicam resting on her shoulder or the microphone shoved past her ear.
    Mozart went around to the door and let Daffy in the apartment.  A cameraman tried to follow and they pushed him back.  He tried again and Mozart pulled his sword from its sheath and pointed the tip of the blade at the man’s belly.
    No lights were on inside.  No sound.  No radio and no TV.  No food smells.  No perfume or even dust smells.  Only something very recent, a smell as sharp as acid.
    A few papers lay on a desk to Helen’s left.  A cheap sofa and coffee table sat in the middle of the living room.  A sports newspaper was scattered on the gray carpet.  The furniture looked rented and sterile; the walls were blank except for a calendar above the desk.  Beneath a photograph of Kyoto’s golden temple, Kinkakuji, a few dates had been circled with a fluorescent yellow marking pen.
    A soundman held the front door open with his hip and his partner pushed the snout of a minicam inside.  Daffy and Mozart seemed confused for a moment, as if disturbed by the silence and the deep shadows created by the camera lights.  They glared back at the pale faces of the reporters and then disappeared down a hall to the right.
    Helen heard the two yakuza confer and the crash of splintering wood.  Of Takeno she heard nothing.  The sounds of a struggle filtered through the walls.  The audio technician leaned heavily on her back and pushed his mike further through the window.
    Now Takeno could be heard.  His voice seemed to be coming closer.  Helen winced as he begged.  Much of what he said was senseless, just fear-driven blabber.  Until he pleaded for understanding.
    Daffy and Mozart backed into the living room dragging Takeno by the arms.  He was a big man, much larger than either of the yakuza.  His glasses were bent and twisted, his blue polo shirt was pulled loose from a pair of khaki slacks.  He wore no shoes or socks.
    Takeno was paralyzed by Daffy’s and Mozart’s lunatic violence.  They were well prepared and eager to go too far.  They shouted and shouted.  He couldn’t catch up or even hear his own voice.  Despite his size, he did nothing to defend himself.
    Mozart kicked him in the back and he rolled across the carpet.  Daffy kicked him in the face.  Deep cuts opened as his glasses were driven into his head.  Blood poured from a broken nose and bubbled on his lips.
    Takeno lifted his head and turned toward the reporters for the first time.  Pathetic surprise—strobes erupted as bright as flares.  Still photographers aimed and fired Nikons at his bloody face.  Blinded, Takeno crawled toward the lights.  “Help me, please help me,” he pleaded.
    Cameramen reloaded, reporters memorized the scene and Daffy and Mozart resumed kicking.  Teeth snapped off Takeno’s jawbone and landed on the carpet.  Blood, thick and crimson, splattered the white walls.  He rolled into a ball.
    Tiring, the yakuza slowed their attack and began to work more methodically.  Each stepped back with their hands on their hips and lashed out.  Soft Addidas and Reebok sneakers landed on bone and flesh with a muffled repetitious thud.  The sound engineers boosted their recorders, straining to catch Takeno’s diminishing pleas.
    Mozart looked bored.  He picked up the end of the couch and grunted and dragged it over the carpet and tried to drop it on Takeno’s head and missed.  He grabbed a can of Coke off the coffee table and threw it in the direction of the crowd in the doorway.
    Takeno crabbed away, scuttling down the hall and out of sight.  Daffy and Mozart let him get away.  They were breathing hard and Mozart’s sweatpants had slipped halfway down his ass.
    The soundman and cameraman at Helen’s back relaxed and she felt a lessening of pressure.  Thinking it was finally over and she could get away, she turned and wedged her shoulder into a widening gap.
    Takeno shrieked from deep in the apartment.  The pitch was horribly altered by the broken bones in his face.  The crowd snapped forward as if tied to his terror with a rubber band.  All its weight fell on Helen’s shoulder and she was slammed into the window frame.  The pain was sharp, it jabbed her in the back and ran up her neck.  She cried out and fought back, trying to save herself with her elbows.
    Takeno ran into the living room, tripped over the couch and fell.  He bounced up like a yo-yo and ran straight into a wall.  The couch was covered with blood, the wall smeared with red.  The reporters began to shout as he screamed and whirled toward the camera lights.  His eyes were white, rolled up in his skull; gouts of blood leaped from his belly.
    Helen slammed her elbow into the nearest body, pulled her arm free and wiped blood off her cheek.  Takeno charged for the door begging for help.  He crashed into the camera crew and fell again.  Daffy grabbed him by the collar and pulled him back into the living room.  Mozart stabbed, again and again, trying to finish him off.
    But Mozart was no samurai.  He was a drunk, drug-hyped butcher without even rudimentary skill.  He hacked and slashed and kicked and grunted and made a mess.  He stabbed Takeno in the shoulder, eyes, thigh, groin and face.  He slipped on the blood-wet, coppery-smelling sports newspaper and fell to his knees.
    Daffy picked up the sword and squatted over Takeno’s chest.  A newspaper would later report that the dead man had been stabbed forty-six times.  Takeno stopped begging for help after number twenty-six and died before Daffy reached number thirty-seven.

    Helen walked home alone.  She didn’t see Daffy and Mozart jog down the stairs with the reporters jammed up behind.  She didn’t see Lt. Nakazono waiting at the curb to make the arrest.  But the rest of the nation did.  They saw it on the six o’clock news and then again at eleven.  They saw it the next morning on three talk shows.  They saw it again and again, watching appalled and frightened and fascinated.
    They saw Mozart and Daffy in front of the police cruiser bragging and mugging for the cameras.  They saw a pair of blood-soaked teddy bears, handcuffed and passive, proud of their sacrifice and loyalty.  And if the audience murmured, “terrible, terrible,” the network execs whispered something else.  Star quality, they called it, and watched their ratings soar.

Chapter 10 – Sam meets the neighbors

“THAT THING is gonna make you go blind and stupid.  Why don’t you read a book?”
    “Shhh,” May said, and kept her eyes glued to Sam’s Game Boy.  Manny sighed and continued to wipe down the counter.  It was late afternoon, business was slow and he longed for conversation.  May hadn’t said an intelligible word in over an hour, just an occasional grunt as she struggled to beat the machine.  He’d never played the game and couldn’t imagine the fascination.  He was getting bored watching.
    He tried again.  “Don’t you have any homework?”
    “It’s Saturday.  I don’t have homework on Saturdays.  It’s bad enough I have to go to school half a day.”
    Manny missed his daughters and was feeling paternal.  “What did you learn this morning?”
    May groaned and switched off the Game Boy.  “We didn’t learn anything.  Saturday is mostly sports.  I’m in the soccer club.  We kicked the ball around for a couple of hours and went home.  I bet your daughters don’t have to go to school on Saturdays.”
    “School’s good.  The more you study, the more you learn.”
    May snickered. “Really?”
    “Well, uhh...”
    “Pathetic,” she muttered, switching the game back on with decisive, conversation-ending click.
    Manny picked up a newspaper and studiously ignored her.
    Sam walked into the coffee shop with Kiyomi right on his heels.
    “Hey, what are you doing here?” May yelled.  “You’re supposed to be at juku.” Juku was cram school. Some of May’s classmates attended willingly. More were forced to go by parents hoping it would help them when they took their high school entrance exams.  May had never set foot in a juku and if she had anything to say about it, never would.
    Kiyomi set her book bag on the counter and plunked herself down next to May.  “I didn’t go, it’s too boring.  I went shopping instead.”
    May grabbed her bag.  “Buy anything good?”
    “A submarine game.  I got two of them so we can hook my Game Boy to Sam’s.”
    “It isn’t one of those shooting kind, is it?  You always beat me at those.”
    Kiyomi was already plugging the two machines together.  “Don’t be so picky.  It’s fun, you’ll see.  It’s got good noises.”
    May had switched to Japanese and the girls were speaking too fast for Manny to keep up.  He looked to Sam for help.
    “Don’t worry, you’re not missing a thing.  Just little girl talk.”
    “I heard that,” May muttered, but submarine warfare had captured her attention and she didn’t look up from the screen.
    Sam finished his beer.  “If you need me I’ll be up on the second floor introducing myself to our tenants.”

    The fours bars faced the shrine across the street.  An outside staircase provided exclusive access and kept drunks from bothering the residents on the upper floors.  The name of each bar was written in blue neon script over heavy wooden doors.
    It was five p.m. and two hours before opening.  A small sign on each door announced that the bar was currently being cleaned in preparation for the evening.  The first was named Chieko, presumably after the owner.  The door was propped open with a dustbin and Sam peered inside.
    It was very dark, the only illumination a weak afternoon light slanting through the doorway.  He stepped inside and waited for his eyes to adjust.  The room seemed deserted.  To the right, a long bar disappeared into the gloom.  To the left, low couches and tables hulked in shadow.
    A whiff of perfume drifted by and something moved in front of a low table.  He should have identified himself at this point, it would have been the expected thing to do.  But the compelling rustle of lace over nylon shut his mouth.  He took a silent step forward, like a big cat.  He saw a woman’s face, just a glimpse as she turned away, her eyes sliding over his.
    Sam knew he’d been seen.  The woman moved in front of a low table.  She had her back to him and a dust rag in her hand.  He took another secret step and stopped just two yards away.  Her dress was red knit and very tight.  She hummed a soft tune and bent over to wipe the table.  She pushed up her sleeves to work.  Her arms were thin and pale, her hair tied back in a long thick braid.
    Sam hesitated.  An alarm jangled but it sounded far away, not nearly as close as the woman.  His vision tunneled as she leaned farther over the table and her hips began to sway.
    The darkness, the perfume and the hint of a panty-line triggered an exquisite loss of free will.  Cars honked their horns; a cook in the Chinese restaurant screeched out an order.  Music and voices from the bar next door muffled the sound of Sam slumping onto the couch.
    He thought of escape routes, awkward and improbable.  I’m sitting in this seat, one of many, because this is a bar and that is what people do.  That my nose is less twelve inches from her ass is just a coincidence.
    The woman wore sheer black stockings with red butterflies embroidered on the ankles.  She was tall, her legs mythically long.  Her dress slithered over her body, stretching tight as she wiped the table.
    She shifted her feet, straddling Sam’s Nikes with velvet high heels.  Sleek nylon babbled and whispered as her shiny thighs brushed and rubbed.  She straightened and flipped the dust rag over.  He leaned back as she reached down to massage her instep.  She turned her head and he could see her face in profile and shadow.
    Her eyes were wide, dark and dreamy.  They never approached Sam but rested quietly in the doorway and the fading triangle of light.  She sighed and returned her attention to the table.
    Sam’s knees sought to caress her spread legs.  She opened her stance, staying just out of range.  Her head almost touched the table as she inspected her reflection in the warm wood.
    Ever so slowly, the red dress began to work its way up her hips.  The hem was a handspan from his face.  The exertion of her efforts pulled it higher still.
    Sam forgot to breathe.  Lives have passed more slowly—from cradle to grave—the dress crept up.  The texture and pattern of the stockings changed near the top.  Dark thick lace, mysterious and arabesque, led him higher.
    He encouraged the hem of her dress with the tip of a finger and it slipped up without further help.  Above milk-blue garters, her thighs were tender and white, luminous in the darkness of the bar.
    Sam groaned softly.
    Her panties were transparent black and decorative—garnish—loose enough to slide aside.  She touched her nose to the table and squeezed the rag tight.  He leaned forward.  A single stroke, front to back, a long slow lick.  She gasped, a high jubilant bell.
    Sam fell back on the couch.  His vision was steamy, aqueous, like a sheet of heat on the street.  She turned and walked away, shimmering, sliding her skirt back in place.
    Before he could escape or follow, before he could think, she was back with a tray and a bottle of beer.
    “I’m sorry,” she apologized, “I didn’t see you come in.  I was in the back cleaning.”  She held up the dust rag as evidence and alibi.  “Have you been waiting long?”
    Something was caught in Sam’s throat; his erection was twisted in his jeans.  It hurt.  He groaned and finally managed to croak.  “OK.  That’s OK.”
    She smiled and introduced herself, speaking quite formally.  The sign over the door was correct—her name was Chieko and she was the owner.  She sat with grace and complete propriety on the opposite couch.
    Sam took a few deep breaths.  He did his best to remember where he was—Japan—and cooperate.  Nothing had happened, he’d just walked in the door.  He began to introduce himself, trying to speak casually, still greatly excited by the illusion she was weaving.
    “I know who you are,” Chieko said, pouring his beer.  “Your sister showed me your picture.  I’m very sorry about your mother.”
    It was ten minutes before Sam could adequately understand what she was saying and respond coherently.  Chieko remained perfectly composed, and if she laughed at all, it was only during his most confused moments, and then only with her eyes.
    At last, he was able to ask a question of his own.  Business was just fine, she answered, and then apologized for any disturbance the karaoke music might have caused.
    Sam shook his head.  “Maybe I’ve still got jet lag or something but I haven’t heard a thing.  How late do you usually stay open?”
    “I try to have everybody out of here by five.  Sometimes the singing can get pretty awful.”
    She fetched two more beers.  “Do you mind if I join you?”
    “Please.”
    “Anyway, if it gets too loud just call and I’ll turn it down.”
    Chieko crossed her legs and tugged at her skirt to keep it from rising too high.  His eyes were enticed, they lapped at her knees and thighs.  He checked his watch to cover up.  It was nearly six and he had three more bars to visit.  If he didn’t get out of there soon...
    She lit a cigarette.  Pinpoints of ash fell through the smoke and settled on a deep shelf of red knit.  She looked down and one-by-one flicked the ash off her breasts with a long pink nail.
    “You can speak English, can’t you?” she asked.
    “Sure, of course.  How come?”
    She smiled, her hands now safely at her sides.  “I’ve always wanted to learn but I’ve never had the time.”
    “It’s not so bad.  It just takes time.”
    “I know.  Your sister has taught me a little but I’m too stupid.”
    Sam assured Chieko that she wasn’t stupid, told her he was positive she was extremely bright and clever.  She stretched and grinned as she listened.
    Listening to himself, Sam was grinning, too.  The compliments were wild, they waltzed out of his mouth shamelessly.  He forgave himself, it was all quite beyond his control.
    Chieko was enjoying herself.  She liked Sam.  At least he wasn’t pretending his bullshit was sincere.  It looked like he might burst out laughing.  She beat him to it.  Their laughter dispelled much of the darkness in the room.
    “Maybe you could teach me a few words someday when you’re not busy?” she asked, relaxing back on the couch, her legs flowing loose and slightly naughty.
    “I think I could probably find the time.  Is there anything special you’re having trouble with?”
    She shrugged.  “I can hardly speak at all.  Everything’s difficult but I’ve learned a few verbs.”
    “Which ones?”
    Shy to speak in English but game, Chieko scrunched up her eyes in concentration.  “I know verbs like READ and WRITE and, uhh, DRINK and SPEAK.”
    “Your accent’s pretty good,” Sam encouraged.  “Any more?”
    She slid forward and leaned across the table.  “And I know LICK and SUCK.”
    Sam nodded like a teacher, approving but requiring more.  “Well, that sounds good to me, Chieko.  I think you’ve made a lot of progress with your verbs.”
    She refilled their glasses.  “Thank you Sam-san, but verbs are easy.  What I’m really having trouble with are adjectives.  There’s so many.”
    “Yeah, adjectives can be tough,” he agreed, moving forward to meet her in the middle of the table, their lips inches apart.  “Which ones did you have in mind?”
    “Nagai,” she said, placing her hand on his knee.
    “LONG,” Sam translated.
    “Futoi.”
    “THICK,” he said.
    Chieko traced her finger up his thigh.  “Katai.”
    “HARD.”
    She squeezed and whispered, “Sugoku katai.”
    “VERY, VERY HARD.”

Chapter 11 — The Aftermath

A GAME Boy lay shattered on the floor.  Kiyomi’s cheeks were wet with tears.  Manny and May looked no better; they stared at the television in shock.
    A female news reader nodded and the camera panned down the desk to a male colleague seated with two hastily recruited guests.  One was a sociology professor from Meiji University and the other a popular TV personality.
    The host asked a question and the professor attempted to explain the crime using a series of diagrams drawn on cardboard storyboards.  Arrows and Xs plotted the route Daffy and Mozart had taken, black and blue icons identified the participants inside the apartment.
    The professor provided expert commentary as the station replayed the video footage in super-slow motion.  The camera shifted to the talento.  He wore impenetrable sunglasses and his hair was slicked straight back.  He joked about Mozart’s attire and announced he had a comedy about simple-hearted yakuza slated for release in July.  The anchorman smiled uneasily and asked another question.  The academic produced a pie chart and used a wooden pointer to explain its complexities.
    May shouted at the TV as Sam walked in the door.  He stopped grinning and thoughts of Chieko vanished.  The station was broadcasting reaction shots of reporters at the scene.  Helen was pictured frightened and angry, trying to escape the camera.  She looked drugged, her face was gray and speckled with drops of blood.  She jostled the camera and the film jerked.
    May ran blindly across the floor and collided with Sam.  She fell and jumped up, trying to get out the door.  “Let me go, let me go,” she cried, and struggled as he wrapped his arms around her.  Kiyomi sighed and lay her head on the bar.  Manny switched off the TV.
    Sam slid to the floor and pulled May down with him.  He looked at Manny.  “What the hell’s going on?  What’s wrong?”
    “I should have turned it off,” Manny said.  “There was a killing near here.  They showed the whole thing.  I guess Helen was there.”
    May had calmed a little.  “That’s right.  Now let me go.  I want to go and make sure she’s all right.  She needs me.”  She picked up the Game Boy and set it on the bar.  “I got scared and dropped it.  I’m sorry.  I’ll buy you a new one.”

    May returned with Helen thirty minutes later.  She led her to the counter and put her in a seat next to Sam.  Manny offered her a cup of coffee and Helen shook her head.  “I think I’ll have a beer.”
    Sam asked how she felt and Kiyomi put on music and May turned on all the lights in the coffee shop.  A teenage girl and boy walked in and Manny took their order at a table near the window.
    “Not good,” Helen answered.  “It was horrible and there was nothing I could do.  I’d like to kill those fucking reporters.  They wanted it to happen.”
    They talked for hours.  Customers came and went and May walked Kiyomi home.  When she returned Helen and Sam were smiling and just a little drunk.  He told May they were going to close early that night and asked her to lock the door.
    Helen stood up.  “I should be going.”
    “No, why don't you and Manny stay.  It’s hard to have a family conference with just the two of us, and I’ve got a few ideas I want to try out on you.”
    “Is this going to take a long time?” May complained.  “I haven’t had dinner yet, I’m hungry.”
    “It won’t take long and if you’re good I’ll take everybody down the street for tempura.”
    May thought she could get a better deal.  “How about sushi?”
    Sam didn’t care much for sushi but nodded.  “Sure, fine.  As long as that’s OK with everybody else.”
    Manny voted for sushi without condition.  Helen also agreed but said she couldn’t eat uni unless she was completely drunk.
    “I’ll eat yours,” May promised.  “I love it.”  She smacked her lips theatrically.  “Uni’s delicious.”
    Helen laughed and asked for another beer.  “If I’m going to be sitting next to a little kid slurping fish guts that look like yellow puke I’d better get prepared.”
    “Gross!” May yelled, and Sam called the meeting to order.
    “OK, first on the agenda is an announcement.  I called the lawyer this morning about getting a visa for Manny.  Matsushita-san said she knows one of the section chiefs at immigration and he can probably help us.”
    “How many people do we have to bribe?” Manny asked.
    “Nobody.  This guy owes Matsushita—san a favor.”
    “What kind of a visa?”
    “She said an entertainment visa would be the easiest.  It’s something immigration is comfortable with.  They figure all Filipinos can sing, dance and play the guitar.”
    “I can’t.  I’m a carpenter.”
    “You don’t have to, Manny.  It’s just a visa.  It’s either that or a student visa.  You want to study Japanese full-time?”
    “Not particularly.”
    “Whoa, hold it right there, bud,” May exclaimed.  “What happened to studying is good for you?  The more you study, the more you learn, blah, blah, blah.  What happened to all that stuff, huh?”
    Manny laughed.  “Well, uhh...”
    “How about one of those phony language schools?”  Helen suggested.  “There’s dozens of places that give out visas to illegal workers.  Nobody actually goes to school.”
    “I thought of that,” Sam said, “but those schools are getting busted more and more often.  The entertainment visa is legal.  If a cop walks in we can always have Manny sing a couple of numbers.”
    “I told you I can’t sing.”
    Sam shrugged.  “Entertainment is subjective.  If you don’t want to sing you can juggle oranges for all I care.”
    May laughed and Manny agreed.  “OK, fine.  Anything would be better than walking around afraid of the cops all the time.”
    “Good,” Sam said.  “That’s settled.  After Matsushita-san makes the arrangements we have to go to the immigration center at Otemachi and sign the papers.”
    May jumped down from her stool.  “Is that the end of the meeting?  I’m starving.  Let’s go!”
    Sam held up his hand.  “I also asked Matsushita-san about the investigation.”
    “What investigation?”
    “The investigation into mom’s death.”
    “Oh.”  May looked like she wished she could crawl under the table.
    “She called the cops,” Sam continued, “and they gave her the same runaround they gave me.  Nakazono said they still don’t have any real leads or suspects.”
    “Shit,” Helen growled.  “He was the last person to see her alive.  Somebody ought to investigate him.”
    Sam changed the subject.  He didn’t want the killer to be Nakazono.  The cop would never be charged and Sam knew he’d have to do something.  Retribution would be required.  Who would take care of May if he killed or even injured a police lieutenant?  Certainly not Sam—not from behind bars.
    “The next thing is this coffee shop,” he said.  “There is absolutely no way I’m going to keep getting up at four o’clock in the morning.”
    Helen laughed.  “I told May you wouldn’t last very long but I figured you’d do better than two days.”
    “Yeah, you’re not trying,” May added.  “You just need more practice.”
    “Sleep is what I need, not practice.  How about if we negotiate a little?”
    May narrowed her eyes suspiciously.  “Like how?”
“Well, when Matsushita-san suggested an entertainment visa for Manny it gave me an idea.  What if we turn this place into a club?  It might be fun and we could open later in the day.”
    “How much later?”
    “Uhh, I was thinking of about noon.”
    Manny looked at Helen and smiled.
    May hesitated.  “I don’t know what about—”
    Sam began to ad lib furiously.  “And you could be the musical director and we’d only have music you like and people could dance and—”
    “But—”
    “And, uhh, we could put in a couple of those video games you like.”
    “Really?”
    “Absolutely.”
    “Well, all right, as long as I get to pick out the games.”
    Helen interrupted.  “Wait a second.  Are you talking about hiring a band?”
    Sam nodded.  “Yeah, I guess so.”
    She looked around.  “Where are they supposed to play?  There’s no room.”
    “You could do it,” Manny said, “if you knock out a couple of booths.”
    “Could you build a stage?” May asked.
    Manny looked hurt.  “I’ve been a carpenter for thirty years, May.  I ought to be able to handle it.  If I can get the tools and the materials I can do the whole job in a few weeks.”
    Sam nodded and looked at May.  “You got it straight?  We open at noon and close at ten.”
    “Why do we have to close so early?”
    “Because you’re thirteen years old and I want you to get to bed at a reasonable hour.  If you won’t agree to that, the deal’s off.”
    Sam’s interest in her welfare made May feel safer than she’d had in a long time.  Still it wouldn’t do to give in too easy.  She tried to argue, just to stay in practice. It wasn’t convincing; she asked a question to hide her embarrassment.  “Who’s supposed to play?  Where are we gonna get a band?”
    “There’s lots of bands in Tokyo,” Helen said.  “Most are lousy but there’s plenty of them.”
    “This place is too small for a real band,” May said, “and it would be too noisy.”  There was a sneaky gleam in her eye.
    “She’s right,” Helen agreed.  “Your neighbors would never put up with a rock ‘n’ roll club.”
    May nodded.  “Yeah, we need a small group, just a couple of guitars and maybe a drummer.  They wouldn’t have to be professionals or anything.”
    “You know anybody like that?” Sam asked Helen.
    May elbowed Helen in the side, made a face and rolled her eyes.
    Helen ignored her.  “Uhh, not really, but I can ask around.”
    Sam stood up.  “OK, I guess that’s it.  Let’s go get dinner.”
    “Hey!  What about me?” May shouted.
    “What about you?”
    “I can play guitar.”
    “So?”
    She hesitated, almost but not quite, too shy for self-promotion.  “Well, I could play here, don’t you think?”
    Sam pretended to consider the idea.  “Hmm, that might be all right but we’d still need a singer.”
    “I can sing, too!”
    “Yeah, but—”
    “And I’m small, you wouldn’t have to build a big stage.”
    “But don’t you think—”
    “And I’ll work cheap!”
    “That’s what I wanted to hear.”
    Helen laughed and Manny set three beers and a black cherry soda on the counter.  Sam smiled at May.  “I guess we’ve got a deal.”
    May hugged her brother and began to noisily plan her repertoire.
    “Are you going to get anyone to play with you?” Manny asked.
    “I’d be lonely by myself.  Kiyomi can play the drums and—”
    “I thought you said Kiyomi played the clarinet?”  Helen said.
    “She plays the drums, too.”
    “Really?”
    “Well, not exactly, but she can learn.  Anybody can play the drums.  It’s easy.  Sam’s gonna have to buy a drum set, though.  We’ll need that and amps and microphones and more guitars.”
    Sam was already resigned to a money-losing operation.  The coffee shop had been as much a hobby for his mother as a business.  It didn’t matter as long as May was happy and he didn’t have to get up in the middle of the night anymore.  They made more than enough on rent and investments to cover any losses.
    “What do you need guitars for?” he asked.  “You’ve already got two.”
    “Yeah, but I don’t have an electric guitar and neither does Helen.”
    “I see.  So she’s in the group, too?”
    Helen started to object but was no match for May’s enthusiasm.  “Of course she’s in the group.  What did you think?”
    “I think we should discuss this at a later date,” Helen said.
    “Nope,” May said.  She walked across the room and flicked off the lights.  “It’s all decided.  Now, let’s go to dinner before I starve to death.”

Chapter 12 — Bulldozer

MANNY CAUGHT the last Chiba-bound train on the Tozai Line a few minutes after midnight.  The car was nearly full as it left Nihombashi and he was lucky to find a seat.  A slim woman nodded and scooted over to give him room; a fat salaryman crossed his arms and refused to budge.
    It was thirty-minute trip to his apartment in Nishi-Funabashi.  At each stop the fat man opened his legs wider and pushed against his knee.  Manny turned and looked more closely—the man wore the traditional tan raincoat over a blue suit.  He stared straight ahead and looked tense enough to pop.  Slowly, he applied even greater pressure, until Manny’s knee began to ache.
    “Excuse me,” Manny said, and slid out of reach.  Tonight, at least, he refused to push back, to sit angry and uncomfortable, locked in a squabble for half an inch of space.
    The salaryman grunted, annoyed that Manny had spoken.  He shifted his eyes around the car to see if anyone had noticed.  None of the riders seemed to be looking his way.  He gave up on Manny and shoved against the body on his right, a kid in leather with half-black, half-orange hair and an electric guitar.  The kid ignored the pressure for a moment and then stood up.  He offered his seat to a young woman hanging off a strap.  She scowled down at the salaryman and declined.
    When the trained pulled into Nishi-Funabashi, seventy percent of the passengers rushed to get off first.  The rest, too drunk or sleepy to fight the crowd, waited in their seats.  The doors opened and spilled the mob onto the platform.  A young man in a light-gray suit waited for the car to clear and then stepped toward the door.  He stopped to allow Manny to exit first and said quietly, “Go ahead, please.”
    Nishi-Funabashi was just a spot on a map, a place to change trains, not really a city and hardly a town.  Workers from the hinterlands poured through on their way to Tokyo and most never left the station.  Those that did wander away from the drafty terminus did so with specific intent.  They wanted to drink, gamble or fuck.
    The fucking took place in love hotels behind the station.  One stood eight-stories high and was painted Kelly green.  Its prices were low and the efficient staff changed the sheets in two minutes flat.  Fleet-footed patrons that didn’t bother with foreplay could have sex and still catch the next train home.
    Manny walked down the steps of the station past a long queue in front of a late-night taxi rank.  The streets were nearly empty.  A few blobs, workers unfortunate enough to actually live in Nishi-Funabashi, trudged up the road past fast-food joints, bars and mahjongg parlors.  At the crest of the hill a major artery narrowed and choked cars into a couple of noisy bumper-banging lanes.
    Most that lived in Nishi-Funabashi didn’t like to admit it.  They dreamed of moving from concrete condominiums overlooking the snarling traffic to a place where kids could play safely.  Just the old people wished to remain.  They lived in big gloomy houses built a hundred years earlier with curving blue-tiled roofs and tatami rooms.
    Once upon a time the old people had been farmers and Tokyo had seemed far away.  Now their children were rushing to sell the last remaining fields and the old people puttered in gardens behind high stone walls.  They grew solitary sunflowers and kept half-dead roosters that infuriated the neighbors.
    Many were nearly as old as their houses and wore dark padded yukata and wooden geta.  When they looked up they usually became confused.  Tall buildings blocked the sun and the shadows were too cold to touch even in summer.  They shivered and fretted in the lee of English-language schools and banks; they complained to fat carp lolling gold and salmon-red in rocked-lined pools.
    Standing in the street, slick grandsons watched the big city ooze closer with delight and talked of tax laws and loopholes.  They made plans to bulldoze the old houses and ignored their grandparents when they held their breath and began to turn blue.
    Manny’s apartment complex was across the main highway, fifteen minutes from the station.  Six two-story wooden buildings of twelve apartments sat between low hills.  The weed-choked complex was surrounded by a new chain-link fence.  Manny reached the padlocked gate and stepped off the cement walkway onto a path snaking through the grass.  He slipped through a hole cut in the fence and returned to the walkway.
    Plastic bags of garbage, torn open by dogs and cats, and rusting abandoned bicycles slowed his progress.  The new moon, weak and distant, was reflected in the screen of a fat console TV half-buried in the damp earth.  A piece of newer junk—a skinny avocado washing machine—rested on its back next to the TV.  A wind without direction teased open its plastic lid and then slapped it shut.
    Manny had moved into the complex after the economic bubble had burst and construction work had dried up.  The buildings were twenty-three-years old and ancient by Japanese standards.  He lived on the first floor of Building 4 and considered himself lucky.  Three weeks before a woman from Senegal had lost an arm when the iron staircase on Building 5 had collapsed.
    Manny let himself into his apartment.  His only home-improvement had been a steel hasp and a strong padlock.  The lock was the reason he lived alone and why his few possessions remained his.  He crossed the room in darkness and lit a kerosene lamp made from a jelly jar.  The small flame provided sufficient light to get undressed but not enough to see any but the largest cockroaches scuttling across the tatami.
    The room was very cold.  Manny spent much of his time patching holes in the ceiling and walls with cardboard and duct tape but the night wind always found a way in.  He hurried out of his clothes, crawled under a thin futon cover and stopped shivering after a few minutes.
    It was too bad he’d returned so late—his favorite public bath was closed.  There was another still open but it made him feel self-conscious.  Citing AIDS as his reason, the owner had stopped admitting foreigners.  There had been protests and the story had been picked up by the newspapers.  A local official had reluctantly forced the owner to change his policy if not his attitude.
    A surly old man, he now took the gaijins’ money with a grimace and slapped a dish-rag sized towel down on the counter.  He also provided a piece of brown soap, no larger than a pat of butter, and hostility as hot as the water in the deep pools.
    Manny didn’t mourn the loss of the bath too much.  His new job would let him save enough to find a place nearer Sam and May.  He concentrated on leaving and the apartment didn’t seem quite so awful.  At least he had the place to himself.  There were six Chinese next door and eight Malaysians wedged into the apartment above his head.
    He just wished the government hadn’t turned off the water when they’d condemned the public housing project and relocated the Japanese residents.  He could live without electricity and gas but the lack of water was inconvenient.  Japan was a modern country, public taps and wells were hard to find.  His neighbors on the other side of the hill were frightened when they found darker-skinned foreigners crouched in their yards, filling plastic milk containers from garden hoses.
    But the price was right.  Squatters paid no rent.  A lack of amenities and confused, intermittent police harassment was part of the deal.  Twice, in the months before Manny had arrived, cops had chased away the Bangladeshis, the Nigerians, the Filipinos and the rest.  They’d returned the next day after dark.
    The local government, tentative and unsure of itself when dealing with foreigners, had dithered.  The chain-link fence had been tried after the evictions and had proved equally ineffective.  The gaijins had been distressingly persistent and the problem had been passed up to the central government mandarins in Tokyo.  What they would do next was anybody’s guess.

    Manny woke to the roar of diesel engines, screams and lights as bright as day.  The ground trembled beneath the building and he whispered earthquake.  The light grew brighter in the window and he considered fire.  His feet tangled in the futon and he fell grabbing at his clothes hanging on a hook on the wall.
    He put on his trousers and opened the door.  An amplified voice shouted in Japanese, a spotlight hit him in the eyes.  Cops were everywhere, running and waving riot batons like swords.  Mobile generators on the hillside spat clouds of exhaust blacker than the night and powered huge searchlights.  He turned his head at the sound of ripping metal.  Three bulldozers trampled over the fence and charged down the grass.  They leveled their blades at Building 1 as gray prisoner buses with wire mesh windows rolled into position.
    The cops began to shove the squatters onto the buses.  Men without shirts and shoes and women dragging quilts screamed in a dozen languages.  A loud-hailer answered as a bulldozer took a bite out of Building 1.  The men tried to fight, the women tried to run.  The bulldozer took another bite and Manny jumped out his back window.
    He ran up the hill stumbling over junk hidden in the weeds.  He didn’t stop running until he crossed the main highway.  A taxi slowed as he collapsed on a bus stop bench.  The driver leaned toward the window, took a long look, and drove away.
    It seemed to take a long time for his heart to slow.  Sweat began to dry on his chest and it felt cold.  He put on his shirt and jacket, checked that he still had his wallet and passport.  It took longer to lace up his sneakers.  He’d torn his trousers climbing over the fence.  Warm blood ran down his leg and made his fingers slippery.
    Manny waited until the trains began running five a.m.  He cleaned himself up as best he could in the station toilet and took the first train back to the city.  May’s coffee shop was closed.  Sam had decreed Sunday was, now and forever, a holiday.
    Too early to be knocking on doors, he walked to Sumida Park and climbed the bank overlooking the river.  The morning sun glanced off bright work on tugs and launches and began to warm the water.  A small sloop with a tangerine sail tacked down river, heading for Harumi Pier and Tokyo Bay.
    He waited until ten and walked back to the coffee shop.  There was no need to ring the bell, Sam, May and Helen were just leaving and he caught them at the door.
    “What happened?” May cried, before he could speak.  She dropped to one knee and examined the gash in his leg.  A feeling of helplessness, of being a beggar, had tormented him all morning.  Once again, he was reminded of his daughters as she ignored his protests and hustled him upstairs.  The feeling faded as Helen bandaged his knee and May fetched some of Sam’s clothes.
    They were on their way to Yoyogikoen, a park on the other side of the city, and he kept his explanation short and undramatic.  May insisted that he move into the apartment.  He was thankful when Sam said no.  It was hard enough to accept the money, an advance on his salary, that Sam offered.
    Back on the street, May wished him luck and Manny set off to find another place to live.  Sam’s clothes were warm and smelled of water softener.  He fingered the wad of bills in his pocket—Sam had borrowed from May and Helen to raise the cash—and smiled.  The cops and their prisoner buses seemed farther away now.
    Manny knew that you couldn’t rent an apartment without going through a middleman but he had no experience.  He’d slept in Ueno Park when he’d arrived in the city and his first employer had provided a bunk in a workers’ dormitory.  Squatting in Nishi-Funabashi had required no red-tape or contracts at all.
    He splurged and paid a hundred and forty yen for a ticket on the Ginza Line to Ueno Station.  Apartment rental agencies were a lucrative consumer shakedown and their hole-in-the-wall offices could be found clustered around any train station.  Within ten minutes he’d found half a dozen, all easily identifiable by the scores of floor plans pasted in the windows.
    Sunday was apartment-hunting day and the agencies were crowded with young couples.  Manny stalled and had a cup of coffee.  He sat by himself in the corner of a small restaurant and reviewed all the housing-related words he could remember.  There weren’t very many and he knew he was going to have major communication problems.
    He tried a small agency near the restaurant first. A stocky middle-aged man looked up from a desk in a dark, closet-sized office and scowled.  Before Manny was two steps in the door he was waving his hand rapidly in front of his face and snarling, “That’s impossible.  Go away.  I don’t want to be bothered.”
    Japanese could be a compact language and he was able to say all this by repeatedly spitting out a single word that sounded like “dah-may.”  Combined with the hand-waving it was a brush-off all foreigners soon became familiar with.  When Manny didn’t retreat fast enough, he stood up and crossed his arms to form an X in front of his face, Japanese sign language for “Get lost, dumbshit.”
    The next agency forced Manny to reevaluate his tactics.  He’d thought the crummier looking offices would be more likely to help a gaijin with limited funds.  Again, he made it no farther than the door.  The office contained six or seven metal desks stacked with musty documents.  Two old crones with shifty faces and shapeless dresses hunched over desks drinking tea and punching fingers into calculators.  The office smelled of wet dog.
    He took a step back, startled by a yipping and a yapping.  A pair of toy poodles leaped from desk to desk, charging straight for him.  They landed on the nearest desk and skidded, their tiny claws frantically seeking purchase.  Yip, yap and snarl—they shook their piss-yellow paws and tried to bite him with pointy teeth.
    Clearly a more upscale establishment was in order, preferably one that didn’t keep vicious pets.  He soon found an office with young staff members and Apple computers bolted to odd-shaped, European-looking desks.  The boss smiled when he walked in and motioned for him to take a seat.  Manny thanked the girl that delivered a cup of green tea and shook hands when an agent asked if he could be of service.
    The agent was just a kid straight from college.  He’d joined the firm three weeks before.  As a first-year employee, he was paid a slave’s wage and could empathize with Manny’s budgetary predicament.
    “Please speak slowly,” Manny said, understanding little but the agent’s smile.
    “OK, OK,” the kid said, fingers flying over a computer keyboard as he manipulated the office data base.  He shook his head and yanked on his skinny tie; he shoved a pack of Marlboros at Manny and fanned a sheaf of computer printouts.
    Manny took one of the cigarettes as the kid mumbled to himself and began to root around in the bottom of the desk.  A storm of file folders flew out and littered the floor; the boss raised his eyebrows and the kid shouted, “I’ve got it!”
    He slapped a piece of paper on the desk.  “Nobody wants this one.”
    The offering looked like it had been kicking around the office for years, it had yellowed and the edges were ragged.  The floor plan was drawn with a weak jerky hand.  It wasn’t an apartment, just a single room.
    “It’s cheap,” Manny said.
    The agent nodded.  “Really, really cheap.  Only 20,000 yen a month.”
    It was a ten-mat room.  Manny had expected to get no more than six and would have settled for four and a half.  You couldn’t rent a toilet in Ueno for 20,000 yen—there had to be something wrong.  He examined the drawing carefully.  There was a window but he couldn’t find a kitchen or bath.
    The kid noted his concern and launched into an excited explanation of the particulars.  Manny strained to understand, catching one word in ten.  He rephrased what little he’d understood into gaijin Japanese.
    “It’s part of a house and I can use the bath and toilet?” he asked.
    “And the kitchen.”
    “The owner is an old woman who lives alone?”
    “Yes, but she’s healthy.”
    “What’s the catch?”
    “Huh?”
    “It’s still too cheap.  A ten-mat room is big.  Why hasn’t anyone rented it?”
    The kid laughed and offered Manny another smoke.  “Ahh, I understand.  It’s cheap because she only wants a gaijin.”
    “Why?”
    “Because you have to teach her English two hours a week.”
    “How old did you say she is?”

    A chubby man in a plastic apron pointed a heavy cleaver in Manny’s direction and berated the crowd, insulting anyone who refused to buy his wares.  Manny smiled and the fishmonger grinned.
    His wife, so short her head was barely visible above a mountain of dried fish and paper-thin seaweed, snapped, “What are you smiling about, old man?  You tryin’ to ruin our business again?”
    The fishmonger sighed.  The grin, however fleeting, had been a flagrant violation of Edokko rules of conduct.  Edokko were long-time downtown residents, literally, children of the city of Edo.  It was an awesome responsibility.  His customers expected him to be rude and irascible twenty-four-hours a day.  Ungrateful wretches, they had no idea how tiring it was to be perpetually obnoxious.
    Manny gripped the collar of the housing agent’s suit jacket as they moved deeper into Ameyoko market.  The noisy Sunday crowd eddied and swirled down the alley and tugged on him like a rip tide.  He was afraid if he let go he’d be washed away and surface somewhere near Hong Kong.
    The kid stopped and pointed.  “She lives up there.”
    Dead in the heart of Ameyoko, the city’s best and sleaziest district.  It was his favorite section of Tokyo, a last-remaining slice of Asia a block from Ueno Station.
    “Too noisy?  No good?” the agent asked.
    A Yamanote Line train roared past on elevated tracks and Manny shouted to be heard.  “No, it’s OK.  No problem.”
    Ameyoko reminded him of Olongapo and Manila, it was one the few areas in the city where he felt at ease.  He like the fish smells and the tea smells and how easy it was to get lost.  It would be a good place to live—people were alive here.
    The shops were jammed together helter-skelter and bargain hunters grazed through narrow aisles aimlessly.  Salarymen squinted at ten thousand gaudy ties wrapped in crinkly cellophane; gum-popping counter girls screamed back at preteens clamoring for discount video games.  Undercutting competitors in Shibuya and Aoyama by fifty percent, shopkeepers treated their patrons with a brusque equality.
    Manny had once needed warmer socks and had spent twenty-five minutes haggling over three pairs knitted in the mills of Shenzhen, China.  Finally, the owner of the stall had thrown up his hands, puffed out his chest and refused to go any lower.  He’d stuffed the socks in a wrinkled bag appropriated from a famous department store and held it out—take it or leave it.
    The price had been fair and Manny had paid, counting out his money carefully in fifty- and one-hundred yen coins.  One by one, the shopkeeper had dropped the coins in his shirt pocket.  His wife had looked up as he’d pushed Manny out of the shop.  She’d laughed as he’d dragged him toward a stand-up bar shadowed by the trains rushing out of Ueno Station.
    The shopkeeper had slapped his hand on the bar and pulled Manny’s money from his pocket to pay for the first round.  He’d conspired with the proprietor of the bar to thwart Manny’s efforts to pay for anything at all.
    Communication had been easy, flowing as freely as the beer poured from cold brown bottles.  Working stiffs with wives and kids, they’d waved their hands, patted each other on the back and ogled women they wouldn’t have dreamed of pursuing.
    At last, when everyone in the bar had been rip-snorting drunk, the shopkeeper and the bar owner had provided a demonstration of sumo fighting techniques.  The shopkeeper’s wife had arrived as they’d charged, grappled and laughed.  A cold winter rain had been falling for hours.  She’d held an umbrella over their heads and led them home through the darkness.
    Manny had been treated to dinner—tempura—and the honor due a guest.  The next morning he’d struggled from his dormitory bed with a pounding headache, a rebellious stomach and no socks—he’d left them on the bar, pushed aside and forgotten in their crumpled bag.  Still, they had been one of the true bargains of his life.
    The agent led him up a wooden staircase at the back of a leather goods shop.  The door opened and a small, crinkly face peered at the two men.  She stood on her tiptoes to get a better look, the top of her head almost reaching Manny’s shoulder.  Her hair was silver, long and loose.
    “Is this my foreigner?” she asked.  She looked younger than her eighty-three years.  Her voice was strong and her eyes clear.
    The agent took a long time making introductions.  Her name was Nobuyo Kojima and she asked, “You’re not an American?”
    The kid didn’t give him time to answer, he began speaking too fast for Manny to follow.  I’m about to flunk the gaijin test, he thought.  Japanese liked foreigners that fit a specific image—young, white, spunky and naive.  American blondes with less than three months in country were prized most of all.  Canadians of the proper race and age were almost as good and Australians were acceptable.  British were looked upon with skepticism.
    Manny stopped listening the second time the kid mentioned the Philippines.  He didn’t have a chance, the Japanese no longer believed they were Asians.  Where this left them in the global scheme of things, he didn’t have a clue.
    Kojima-san waved away the agent’s explanations and invited them into the house.  She led Manny down a dark hall to a room at the back.  The tatami was new.  Still green, it smelled of fresh-cut grass.  Sunlight streamed in through a large open window.  A colorful Ukiyoe print, sea-blue and magenta, hung on the wall.  A black lacquer table sat in the corner.  Overhead, a carved sandalwood lamp with a round neon bulb dangled from a brass chain.
    Kojima-san looked up at Manny and spoke shyly in English.  “I’m sorry.  No TV.”
    “The room’s beautiful,” Manny said, and nodded at the kid grinning widely in the doorway.  “He didn’t tell me you could speak English.”
    “I can only a little.  My husband taught me.  He was a trader for Nissho Iwai.  He did business overseas.  Now, I have no chance to speak English because I’m an old woman.  Nobody talks to me.”
    Her accent was awful and she hesitated between each word but a Manny could understand the true meaning easy enough—nobody talks to me in any language at all.
    She bustled across the room and slid open a closet door printed with blue herons on a snow-white background.  “Sorry, no bed.”  She pointed inside at bedding and cushions.  “I have futon and zabuton.  Do you know futon?”
    “Sure.  I like it, it’s easier than a bed.”  He hesitated.  “So, would it be OK for me to stay here, Kojima-san?”
    “Yes, but can you teach me English a little?”  She paused and felt adventurous.  “Or maybe, you could teach me Taga...uhh, Taga...”  She blushed.
    “Tagalog,” Manny helped.
    “And tell me of Cebu.”
    “Cebu?”
    “My honeymoon.  It was in...”  Nobuyo Kojima tried to remember, to look down the years, to recall palm trees, the sun and a coral blue sea.  “I was nineteen.  Mr. Kojima was sent to Cebu for two years and I went, too.  That was in 1928.  Beautiful, beautiful.”
    Manny smiled.  He’d never been to Cebu or any of the Visayan islands.  But that didn’t really matter.  Kojima-san only wanted someone to listen and help her with her memories.  He knew he could do that much; he missed the Philippines, too.

Chapter 13 — A day in the park

“HARAJUKU'S CHANGED in the last couple of years,” Helen said, as they headed out of the station.
    Sam started to ask why and stopped.  The area in front of the ticket machines was an ocean of idlers, clusters of men standing shoulder to shoulder.  None were Japanese.  Outside the confines of the station, they overflowed the sidewalks and into the street.  Thousands were converging, milling and massing in Yoyogikoen.
    “They call it Little Teheran,” Helen explained.
    “Yaaaada,” Kiyomi said.
    “Yaaaada,” May echoed.  It was a word used to exhaustion by teenage girls.  It meant: yucky, nasty, no way (I’m going to do that) and gross.
    “Is it like this all the time?”  Sam asked.
    Helen nodded.  “Yeah, and Sundays are the worst.”
    The men had dark eyes, dark hair and white faces—east and west, somewhere in the middle.  They wore Jordan and Ewing sneakers, designer jeans and brown leather jackets.  Sam looked down.  At least his jacket was black.  He smiled—he’d always wanted to fit in somewhere, anywhere.  Now he wasn’t so sure.
    There was an unwelcome roughness to the crowd, they blocked the ticket wickets without concern.  They gaped at the women, pointed and snapped their fingers; they stood in a threatening mass, dangerous and too foreign for Japanese eyes.
    Sam watched May edge toward Helen and Kiyomi’s nervous smile as they started through the crowd.  He took the girls by the hand and left Helen to fend for herself.
    Teenage girls, not much older than May, fought against the exiting tide, trying to get into the station.  They held their tickets out like talismans, almost swaying in their indecision and reluctance.  Too many voices, loud in a box of concrete and tile, hummed like a machine.
    They took a deep breath and dove in.  It was impossible to avoid the gangs of leering men who leaned toward their shoulders and arms, hoping to touch as much as possible.  Deep in the crowd, hands were anonymous and brazen.  They stroked the hips of terrified girls.
    One tall man stepped in front of a teenager and spoke in English.  “You be my girlfriend, you be girlfriend.”  He grabbed her arm and she shook him off.  He didn’t stop, he tried to maneuver her away from the gate, like a cowboy cutting a heifer from the herd.  She was a small girl and very scared as he kept bumping her with his shoulder.
    She lowered her eyes and pushed forward.  Occupied with the man on her right, she could do nothing about the lewd comments or the hands that grabbed her from the left.  She escaped through the wicket and ran for the trains.
    Helen led the girls away from the station.  Sam followed, remembering the days when you could walk halfway across the city and never see another gaijin.
    Half a dozen rock ‘n’ roll bands were playing side-by-side in a tree-shaded street just inside the park.  “They used to have more space,” May said.  “The Iran-jins stole their spots.”
    “And the Iran-jins sell drugs to kids,” Kiyomi accused.
    “How do you know?” Sam asked
    “I saw it on TV.”
    The rockers looked lost, overwhelmed by thousands of foreigners.  They played as loud as possible, trying to defend their shrinking turf with Marshall amps and squeaky off-key lyrics.
    Nobody cared if the bands were lousy, their enthusiasm made up for any lack of skill.  Each band had its groupies, boys and girls sitting on the curb in pink chiffon and rainbow-colored hair.  They turned their faces to the sun and bobbed their heads to the beat, ignoring rival bands and gaijin intruders.
    Sam was surprised when May and Kiyomi let Helen lead them away from the music in the direction of Meiji Jingu shrine.  His stomach growled and he remembered Helen was carrying food in her backpack.  The girls weren’t being obedient—that was too much to expect—they were just hungry.
    The crowd thinned as they walked deeper into the park and Helen found an isolated spot on a rise overlooking a pond.  She handed sandwiches and Cokes to the girls and lit a cigarette.
    “I didn’t know you smoked,” Sam said.
    “I don’t.  This doesn’t count.  That station always makes me nervous.  It’s always like this when the weather’s good.  Ueno’s the same, just not as bad.”
    May and Kiyomi ignored her and began to hungrily divide up a bowl of potato salad.
    “Leave some for us,” Helen snapped.
    May groaned and put a few spoonfuls back in the bowl.  Kiyomi added a couple more.  They giggled, started to eat, and giggled some more.
    Helen snubbed out her cigarette.  “What’s so funny?”
    “Grouchy?” Kiyomi smiled, trying out a new word.
    Helen reached for a beer.  The pull-ring wouldn’t cooperate and she snapped it off leaving the can impossible to open.  “Son of a bitch.”  She tossed it aside and opened a second more carefully.
    May and Kiyomi were frozen in mid-bite, staring.  They’d never seen Helen angry or even very excited.  Long ago, they’d decided she was more Japanese than they.  The idea that she could lose her temper was startling and a little exciting.
    “If you two don’t stopped staring at me I won’t play in your weird little band,” she threatened.
    The girls ducked their heads and whispered.  “So you’re gonna do it?” May asked.
    Helen lay back on the grass and closed her eyes.  “Why not?  It should be memorable.”
    “Don’t worry, Sam’s gonna pay you just the same as us,” May promised.
    Helen had one arm over her eyes blocking the sun.  “No, he’s not.. I have a job.  I play for free or I don’t play at all.”
    Sam tossed a couple of Snickers bars at May and Kiyomi.  “How much are you girls going to cost me?”
    The kids put their heads together for a hurried consultation.  “We want a thousand yen an hour.  That’s not too much, is it?”
    “I don’t think so,” Sam laughed.  “You’ll be the cheapest band in Tokyo.”
    A couple of gaijins, young and noisy enough to be American, were playing Frisbee on the grass.  A cop stopped his clunky black bicycle on a path to watch.  The Frisbee was tossed in his direction in a friendly fashion.  He dismounted and returned it to the players.  They stopped smiling and handed over their alien registration cards as ordered.  The cop got back on his bike and watched as they walked toward the park exit.
    Sam was pleased Helen was going to play in May’s band and relieved she’d refused payment.  He didn’t want her as an employee, however informal.  Things were too complicated as it was.
    During the plane ride to Tokyo, when the lights had been low and the flight attendants had napped, he’d curled up in two seats and worried.  His fears had covered the broadest spectrum, ranging from death by earthquake to a loveless, lonely old age.
    He’d given himself a headache but accomplished little else.  A flight attendant had rubbed her eyes and given him aspirin.  The plane had landed without crashing into Tokyo Bay and he’d slogged through customs feeling oppressed and panicky, paying for his forgetfulness.
    Will I never remember? he’d wondered, standing aside for a battalion of boys and girls carrying skis and poles like rifles.  Probably not.  Not when it’s so easy to forget and scare yourself.  To forget to practice to remember to absolutely trust in the simplest things.  That we will fail—sometimes the best of intentions are all that we can manage.  That truth is black and white—look deep, close to the bone.  And that effort counts most of all.
    What about Helen?  He watched her nap and listened to the kids prattle on.  They never stopped talking, she didn’t seem to say enough.  Last night, he’d carried the conversation, entertaining her with the best stories of his life.  She’d offered a few of her own but had seem happiest when listening.
    Encouraged by her attentiveness and nearness, Sam had leaned closer.  Slowly, she’d relaxed and put some space between herself and the murder that afternoon.  He’d watched carefully for signs of interest, a lift of the chin, a casual touch.  But the only flirting had been his own.
    Like a con man, he’d fed her insubstantial bits of intimacy, hoping she’d slip and trade away something vital.  Helen hadn’t been fooled but she hadn’t objected, either.  She’d listened with a half-smile, seemingly content to hear it all again.
    Sam had carried on, and if anyone had observed that he wasn’t thinking very far ahead, they would have been right.  Desire preempted thought and action became a means to an end ill-considered.  His expectations of Helen were based on his experience, not hers.
    At the end, sometime after dinner and May had gone to bed, Helen had changed the music on the jukebox and the subject under discussion.  Slowly, she’d finished her beer and talked vaguely about Australia.  Sam had nodded his head.  It had been more of an act than real understanding—she was quite beautiful and her perfume just so sweet.  Finished with her story, she’d shrugged and smiled—it was, after all, still early, and Sam forgivable.
    Helen had stood up and said good night.  Just past one-thirty in the morning, she’d placed her hand on his shoulder and said, “I don’t have very many friends, you know.”
    May began to chirp.  “Can we leave?  Sitting here is really boring.”  She stood up with Kiyomi by her side, waiting for permission to abandon the picnic.
    Sam didn’t mind the girls’ desertion, he welcomed it.  He couldn’t talk to Helen with his sister nearby.  May’s ears turned pink at even the hint of romance.  She snickered at pretense.
    He tried to think of protective questions but he knew May had him at a disadvantage.  She was an experienced adolescent while he was only a novice parent.
    “Where are you going?”
    “Shopping.”
    A direct answer but wouldn’t a proper parent require more?
    “Shopping where?”
    May looked at him as if he’d just stepped off a DC-3 from Ulan Bator.  “Takeshitadori, of course.”
    Sam nodded.  Takeshitadori was the main drag in Harajuku and considered trendy heaven by Tokyo’s hippest teen bunnies.  “Do you want us to go with you?”
    Helen laughed, and May and Kiyomi didn’t even bother to respond.
    He tried again.  “When will you be back?”
    The girls conferred.  “Can we meet you at home?”
    They rode the train alone nearly every day of their lives.  It was a reasonable request.  “OK, but don’t talk to strangers and be home before dark.”  Good.  That sounded like something a parent would say.  He sat back pleased with himself.
    May and Kiyomi agreed, gathered up their things and headed off.
    “Wait,” Sam shouted.  “What about money?”  He’d borrowed all of May’s cash to loan to Manny.
    “I’ve got nine-hundred yen,” May said, counting her change.
    “How can you go shopping with nine-hundred yen?  You can’t buy anything with that.”
    “We don’t have to buy anything to go shopping.  We just look at stuff.  Besides if I see something I really like...”
    May paused to reconsider and Kiyomi tried to help.  “What she means is that if there’s some horrible emergency—”
    May nodded.  “Yeah, like if we get hurt or something, uhh, we can always, uhh...”
    Sam turned to Helen.  “What are they talking about?”
    She laughed again.  “Credit cards.”
    “But they’re only thirteen.”
    May put her arm over Kiyomi’s shoulder.  “We’re very mature.”
    Thinking Sam’s Japanese was rusty and leading to confusion, Kiyomi tried to switch the conversation to English.  “And we are...”  She searched through a compact dictionary pulled from her bag.  She found the word she was looking for and grinned.  “And we’re, uhh, spoiled!”
    “Wrong word!  Wrong word!”  May clapped her hand over her friend’s mouth and the kids fell to the ground laughing.

    Helen watched a soft breeze ripple the surface of the pond, listened to voices echo in the woods and did her best to talk to Sam.  It wasn’t easy, she was out of practice.  She tried to remember how to hold a conversation with a man.  It had been so long, she seemed to have forgotten how to deflect personal questions.
    She was both disappointed and relieved when he gave up.  They lay side by side with their eyes closed, letting the sun warm their faces.  Helen would have liked to tell him to ignore her hesitancy and the distracted look in her eyes.  Keep talking, I like to listen.  I’m sorry I’m so quiet, I wasn’t always this way.  Keep talking, tell me stories, make me laugh.  I know it seems unfair, an uneven trade.  But most men will hurt you if you give them half a chance, if you tell them anything at all.
    The one in Ottawa certainly had.  It had been her first job, her first newspaper.  Just a smart kid straight out of college, she’d believed in the nobility of the fourth estate and the invulnerability of her heart.  He’d destroyed both illusions and then left for Japan.
    Even today, years later, she was ashamed she’d jumped, almost leaped across the water, when he’d snapped his fingers.  Lonely and selfish, he’d recalled her to his side.  The power to summons and then exhibit her in Tokyo had soon revived his strength.  When he’d left again, he’d told her she was tough and could take care of herself.
    For once he’d been right, and when she’d received his sad needful letter from Prague she’d tossed it in the garbage.  The next few years, first teaching English and then working for the Sun had been good.  Tokyo had treated her well, it had been exciting and had always retained its capacity to surprise.
    Men had been merely an adjunct to her life.  She’d circled the wagons with her women friends, occasionally forgot her earrings in strange apartments and told herself she’d learned all life’s lessons.  Later, growing cynical and tired of losing her jewelry, she’d given up on strange apartments entirely—men either came to her or they didn’t come at all.
    Sometimes she’d cooked them breakfast, sometimes she’d kicked them out.  But she always slept in her own bed and used her own shower, soap and shampoo.  Never again, she’d vowed, would Irish Spring, Coast, or soap-on-a-rope touch her skin.
    On her twenty-sixth birthday Helen had discovered she was safe and secure.  By the next day this independence and serenity had begun to wear thin.  Weeks passed and each day she became more and more convinced that she’d outgrown love.  Thus frightened, she impaled herself on the first man suitably abusive.  She’d called John’s appearance in the newsroom fate.  But the only thing preordained was Helen’s calculated, desperate decision to love.
    Within a week she was congratulating herself on the depth of her passion and within a month on how bad she hurt.  She cried bitterly over his innumerable cruelties and waited eagerly for the next.  John followed Helen’s script without difficulty.  It was, after all, one he was familiar with.  He wasn’t much of a writer, not much of an editor, but at least he could make women feel bad.  That, too, wasn’t much, but it made him feel better than being nothing at all.
    Helen was obsessed.  She wallowed in her martyrdom and her work suffered.  Her friends tried to help but she took offense at what she saw as plots and condescension.  By the time John vanished into Australia, Helen was isolated and alienated from her friends and herself.
    Two years had passed since his departure, and just as she’d once doubted her ability to feel anything at all, Helen was now less convinced of the purity of unrequited love.  At first, she’d tracked his movements across Australia like a Bushman.  Mutual friends had provided what little information they could.  Some had resented being used, others had been concerned by Helen’s prolonged depression.
    Slowly, in increments unnoticed or vehemently denied—her love would last forever—his trail had grown cold.  No longer could she go to bed and pull his perfidious nature over her head like a warm comforter.  Ungrateful for the healing, she’d fought and scrabbled as he’d disappeared into the outback of her heart.
    She sat up, looked over Minami pond and down at Sam still sleeping.  He wasn’t the same, she knew that already.  Conversation with John had ultimately been mutual lamentation—they’d cried over their repetitive sins and shivered together in self-pity.
    She’d met Sam three days ago and she already knew more about him that she’d ever learned about John.  They’d actually held a normal funny amusing conversation, an activity impossible when perched on a needle-point of self-absorption.
    Sam opened his eyes and looked up, as if happy and surprised to see she was still there.  Yes, he was different.  It was reassuring that his ability to lie and cheat seemed quite limited, but also less exciting.  He asked if she wanted to go for a walk and Helen agreed.  True, men couldn’t be trusted, she had the scars to prove it, but what about herself?

Chapter 14 — The blimp, the child and the yakuza

A WHITE blimp drifted over Asakusa, peering down from a vanilla blue sky.  It urged consumers on the ground to beat the heat with Asahi beer.  The blimp was radio-controlled and its operator was ensconced in a lawn chair on the roof of the White Rose love hotel.  He wore wrap-around sunglasses, rubber zoris and baggy turquoise surfer trunks.  By his side was a cooler of his employer’s beer, a plastic bottle of Coppertone 45 moisturizing sunblock lotion and a pile of comics.
    He popped open another beer as the blimp bumped gently onto the roof of the ROX department store; he burped as it bounced and lurched back into the cloudless sky.  It was the kid’s first and probably last day on the job and he laughed as he steered it over buses on Kokusaidori.
    It was still early-morning cool as grandmothers stepped out of shops, glanced up at the blimp and waved kids off to school.  Bent over short-handled brooms, sweeping the sidewalks and gutters meticulously, the ladies grunted with pleasure, content in weather kindest to old bones.
    They swept between lines in the sidewalk, real or understood, that delimited each family’s area of responsibility.  Resting at the demarcation points, they waited for next-door neighbors to catch up.  When brooms converged they straightened their backs and chatted about friends down the street.  The gossip paid no more attention to sidewalk boundaries than the dust kicked up by passing delivery vans—it settled equitably over everyone.
    The impetuous blimp bumbled across the sky once more and the grandmothers thought a small glass of beer would be nice later in the day.  It was Friday, the third week in May and the afternoons had become hot and hazy.
    Finished sweeping and chatting, the old ladies sprinkled water on the sidewalk and turned shrewd eyes to their neighbors’ shops.  They sniffed that many of the displays heralding the weekend’s Sanja Matsuri were ostentatious and commercial.  Their own decorations, they decided, were tasteful, harmonious and perfectly appropriate for the most significant and lucrative festival of the year.
    May and Kiyomi stood on the sidewalk in their blue and white sailor suits watching the blimp dive toward rush-hour traffic packing Kokusaidori.  The cars were backing up past the Asakusa View Hotel and frustrated drivers honked their horns and slammed on the brakes.  The blimp hovered like a great white egg ten feet above the center of the four-lane highway and refused to budge.   
    Today was the first day of the three-day festival and tourists were already arriving from all over Tokyo and its suburbs.  They lined the sidewalks and watched open-mouthed as a traffic cop shouted and waved his hands at the blimp.
    Kiyomi grabbed May by the hand and pulled her down the street.  “Hurry up, we’re going to be late.”
    May glanced at her watch.  “Wait.  We’ve still got ten minutes.  I want to see what happens.”
    The cop had climbed on the hood of a Toyota and was jumping up and down trying to grab the undercarriage of the forty-foot blimp.  A distraught commuter leaned out the window and screamed, objecting to the dents the cop’s boots were leaving in his hood.
    The blimp shuddered, soared as high as the tallest buildings, and escaped in the direction of Ueno station.  The cop climbed down and retreated to the sidewalk.  The commuter was right behind, shaking his fist and shouting about stupidity.
    May laughed.  “Hey, why don’t we skip school today?  Nobody would know, they’re all too excited about the festival.”
    Kiyomi dragged her around the corner.  “Forget it, we’ve got to go.  My mom says you’re a bad influence and she’s right.  You’re always getting me in trouble.  When I asked her if I could play drums with you, she nearly had a fit.”
    “What did she say?”
    “You know, a lot of stuff about homework and staying out late and things like that.”
    “So what did you do?”
    “I begged and cried a lot.”
    May shook her head.  “I told you not to wait so long.  Manny’s all finished and we’re supposed to open on Monday.  What are me and Helen going to do without you?”
    “Don’t worry, I made a deal.  I promised to try that new juku she’s been talking about and she said she’d think about it.  That means yes.”
    “Excellent!”
    “Yeah, but I also promised I’d never ever be late for school again and...” Kiyomi checked her watch, “they’re going to shut the gate in four minutes.”
    “Then what are we waiting for?  Come on, I’ll race you.”
    May took off running and Kiyomi followed hot on her heels.  Little black oxfords slapping, navy blue skirts flying, they laughed and ran down the sidewalk.  Parisian tourists saw them coming and leaped out of the way; panicky housewives protected prams with their bodies and humorless cops arrested the kid on the roof of the White Rose Hotel.  Police marksmen shot holes in the disobedient blimp after failing to gain radio control.  It fluttered and collapsed and blocked the sun.

    Teacher Yokoi noted the blimp’s descent with satisfaction.  Its untidy flight had upset the children and destroyed the order of the morning.  He turned back to watch the students stream through the gate of Asakusa Middle School.
    He checked the time.  It was his responsibility to close the gate at eight-thirty and take down the names of late-comers.  He shouted at three boys lounging on the other side of the street.  They reluctantly crossed the street and passed through the gate with one minute and forty-three seconds remaining.  Their voices were still floating with excitement and pleasure at seeing the rogue airship.
    Yokoi grunted and set his shoulder to the gate.  Made of heavy black steel, it ran on metal wheels over a track stretched between stone pillars.  The pillars guarded a wasteland of sand and gravel called a playground.  The school was a three-story building of gray concrete.  Rust stains ran down its face like tears.
    Yokoi glanced at his watch again and took comfort in its shiny face and solid gold band.  It was a Rolex and very accurate.  He’d bought it the previous year after the principal had assigned him gate duty.  His wife had objected.  While she’d admitted that the gate should be shut on time, she’d complained about a lack of new clothes for herself and the children.
    Typically, she’d scoffed at his need for precision timing and had shouted that a few seconds either way wouldn’t make a real difference.  Yokoi had countered with a lecture on rules and responsibilities and she’d burned his dinner for two weeks.  He’d taken refuge in porno videos and solace in small blessings.  She’d been too angry to pester him to learn English.
    What she still refused to see was that he was already the perfect English teacher.  His inability to speak the language was an asset not a hindrance.  Even his most misbehaved students eventually came to understand that English was not an academic subject but an exercise in self-discipline.
    Of course, at the beginning of every term a few always tried to rise above the general level of incompetence.  But Yokoi had very sharp ears and any child that dared use a correct accent or words of more than one syllable quickly felt his wrath.
    He taught obscure and obsolescent grammar with the intensity of a football coach and punished any child that deviated from his game plan.  By humiliating the showoffs, Yokoi demonstrated the necessity of team play.  After a month, one-hundred percent of his students could be counted on to blither incoherently when cued.
    He looked down the street.  There were a couple of small shapes laughing and racing for the gate.  One looked like May.  He liked her, she was a good kid and fit right in.  When called on in class she was as inept as the rest.  He’d heard that she was fluent in English and idly wondered if it was true.
    The second hand on his watch ticked over.  Yokoi braced himself against the gate, closed his eyes, and began a countdown.
    May heard Kiyomi panting right behind and the screech of rusty wheels as Yokoi began to shove the gate closed.  They weren’t going to make it, the gap between the pillars was narrowing too fast.  She slowed her pace, intending to cruise to a stop in front of the gate.
    Kiyomi surged ahead.  I can’t be late. I can make it if I try.
    May felt Kiyomi brush past and shouted a warning.  She reached out to grab the embroidered flap on the back of her sailor blouse and missed.
    Teacher Yokoi didn’t let May’s screams distract him from his duty.  He rammed the gate home at precisely eight-thirty.  It hit Kiyomi square in head and her heart fluttered as she collapsed and blocked the gate.

    Two million souls gathered for the climax of the Sanja Matsuri Sunday evening.  They stood twenty deep on sidewalks and streets.  Red paper lanterns swayed to the concussion of a thousand taiko drums and splattered the crowd with a jerky yellow light.  Babies cried—imagining the booming footsteps of giants—and blinked their irritated eyes as hawkers sold chicken and eel from smoky sidewalk grills.
    Rough trade was out in force.  Gangsters leaned on lamp posts and waited for the parade to start.  They were thin men and nearly naked.  Some wore unbelted happi coats over hairless chests, others were shirtless.  Purple and black tattoos ran down their backs into loin cloths tied to emphasize their genitals.  All wore headbands and the jingoistic Rising Sun was the motif of choice.
    The thugs spit and strutted and squatted and surveyed the crowd with aggressive eyes.  They poured down beer after beer bought from street vendors.  Spectators smiled weakly and kept their distance as the yakuza growled their gutter dialect and tensed their hard ropey muscles.
    The bargirls and waitresses that hovered nearby were slightly more discrete, keeping colorful happi coats loosely belted over tan breasts and white short-shorts.  Their voices were shrill and excited as they drank to the beat of the pounding drums.
    The parade mosaic also contained less exotic individuals.  Law-abiding Asakusa residents outnumbered the criminals and their molls a thousand to one, and less tiresomely self-conscious, they had more fun.
    The parade began in deep twilight and one-hundred mikoshi were borne through the streets.  The portable shrines were generations old and made of gold and rich carved wood.  Groups of little kids squirmed in native garb and carried small light shrines; adults hefted mikoshi so heavy three-hundred pairs of hands were not enough.
    The procession worked its way around corners and down the main avenue.  There was nothing solemn nor religious about the event.  The majority of the onlookers and bearers were excited by the spectacle, the remainder simply drunk.  The bearers chanted loudly, urged on by the crowd and the booming drums.
    The slightest odor of restraint-abandoned, a whiff of mania, cued the parade marshals to guide the kids down safe back streets.  The children gently lowered their mini-mikoshi to the pavement, rubbed tired muscles and fell laughing into the arms of waiting parents.
    The drums and the chanting grew louder and louder as the mob returning the mikoshi to the shrine across the street came closer.  Sam leaned over the balcony as the vanguard rounded the corner two-hundred yards away.  “Here they come.”
    May held her brother’s hand and did her best to look interested.  She felt Helen’s hand on her shoulder and tried to smile.  At their urging, she’d donned her happi coat and headband like a good little trooper but had declined to join the parade.
    They hadn’t pressed her when she’d said she only wanted to watch this year, that she was getting too big for the kiddie mikoshi and was still too small for the rest.  Neither mentioned that May and Kiyomi had been practicing with their mikoshi team for the last three weeks.
    May had returned from St. Luke’s Hospital in Tsukiji an hour before.  Again she’d brought flowers, again she’d had no one to give them to.  The nurse had taken the bouquet away, promising to put it in Kiyomi’s room.
    Kiyomi couldn’t have any visitors, they’d told her again and again.  May had kept asking doctors, nurses and orderlies, anyone who would listen.  Finally, this afternoon a nurse had relented and let her look in the door of the intensive care unit.  “It looks worse than it is,” she’d whispered.
    May had been prepared for the bandages but not the tubes and the bruises—Kiyomi had been punctured in too many places to count and her face was swollen and discolored.  May had generally understood what was meant by a severe concussion but somehow had expected Kiyomi to look more hospitalized, more under control—cleaner.  The scrapes on her face and the purple-black and yellow-brown bruises had made her look dirty—small and hurt and beaten.
    May had been too scared to cry, she’d just stared at her friend until the nurse had led her away.  Not until she’d been halfway home had she remembered that stupid teacher and that stupid principal.  Full responsibility, the principal had vowed to take.  So sorry, so sorry, the teacher had cringed.  Both had lied and lied and said Kiyomi was too bad, too late and to blame.  May had wished it had been their heads smashed in the gate.
    The bearers maneuvered the mikoshi around the corner with great difficulty; they strained under two logs larger than telephone poles and shouted at spectators to stand clear.  A dozen kids ran ahead and climbed on top of fences and garbage dumpsters to get a better look.  They yelled up at May and waved enviously.
    The procession halted below the balcony and the crowd swarmed around the mikoshi.  Relief bearers dove into the fray, allowing exhausted men and women to fall away, shouting and reaching for beer.  Speakers on the roof of the shrine blared direction and encouragement as the gates were flung open.
    May clapped her hands over her ears and Helen shouted at Sam.  He shook his head, unable to hear over the speakers, the drums and the wild chanting mob.  The bearers lifted the mikoshi above their heads, the frenzy of the crowd fueling their exertions.  Fore and aft, the mikoshi dipped and dived, as if bouncing between trough and peak of repression and release.
    Helen chastised her body as it shied away from the rail, cursed her eyes when they searched for an escape route.  She told herself she was a racist—they’re strange and alien and all the same—and wrong—they’re a breath away from atrocity.
    She leaned over and shouted in Sam’s ear.  “Pretty scary, ehh?”

Chapter 15 — Nakazono's threats

ONLY THE most determined drunks were left on the street as May scooted across the carpet and pushed a video into the VCR.  Sam and Helen had let her pick the movie and were soon frustrated with her choice, a drama filmed at a high school in Beverly Hills.
    Helen nodded toward the balcony.  “Did you carry a mikoshi when you were a kid?”
    “I did it every year when I was little,” Sam said.  “It was a lot of fun.  I dropped out when I was about May’s age.”
    “How come?”
    “I don’t know, it’s hard to remember.  I guess that’s when the teasing in school got serious.  School wasn’t much fun for me once I got into junior high school.”
    May looked back.  “Please be quiet, I can’t hear the TV.”  There was an edge to her voice that only surfaced when she was upset.
    Sam lowered his voice and tried to explain what it had been like to feel so different from the rest of the kids.  May wasn’t satisfied.  She objected again that they were making too much noise and said, “You didn’t try hard enough.  Mom said so.  She said you were always in trouble and didn’t try to get along with anybody.”
    Sam looked at her closely.  She appeared near tears and he didn’t know what to do.  “You’re right.  I was about your age when Mom got married again.  I acted like a jerk for a long time and blamed all my problems on other people, mostly the Japanese.  Really, there were just a few kids that gave me a hard time, but I tried to hit back at everybody.”
    Helen leaned back on the couch.  “I think I know what you mean.  Sometimes I feel trapped, like I’ve been backed into a corner.  If I don’t pay attention, I get lazy and end up doing the same thing, I blame them for everything.  The Japanese are such an easy target.  Gaijins here can’t seem to talk about anything else.”  She smiled.  “I’ve probably been in Tokyo too long.  The other day I was trying to figure out who people back home use for scapegoats and I couldn’t remember.”
    May had given up on the movie and was lying on her stomach watching Helen and Sam.  Sam walked to the kitchen.  “Was that the first time you’ve seen the festival?”
    “No, but not from that perspective,” Helen said.  “It was different looking down on all those people.  I wasn’t really frightened but it made me nervous.  Maybe the street was too small for the crowd.  I knew everything was under control but that’s not how it felt.  I know its crazy to make comparisons but it reminded me of—”
    Sam handed Cokes to Helen and May.  “I know what it reminded you of and you’re not the first but I’m not sure historical comparisons are valid.  Unfortunately, the Japanese haven’t done much to convince anyone that things have changed.”
    “Have they?”
    “I think so.  But it’s difficult for the Japanese to admit their mistakes even when they’re truly sorry.  They don’t do it well on a personal level and it’s even harder as a group.  It works here because it’s an understood part of the culture but to outsiders they end up looking, at best, self-conscious and half-hearted, at worst, callous and selfish.  Actually, I think they’re—”
    May knocked over her Coke and began to cry.  She pulled off her headband and tried to wipe it up.
    “Here, let me help you,” Sam offered.
    “I don’t want your help,” she shouted.  “Just leave me alone.  That’s all you ever talk about—the Japanese, the Japanese—the horrible horrible Japanese!  You make everybody sound like monsters.”  She jumped up and her head collided with Sam’s chin.  He fell and landed on top of her, she rolled away and retreated to the hall.  “What about me?” she cried, and ran into her room and slammed the door.
    Helen let herself out of the apartment as Sam knocked on May’s door.  She was sitting on her bed playing with a new Game Boy he’d bought her.  A tear splashed on the screen and she tried to wipe it away.  “I said go away.”
    “I’m sorry,” he said, and sat cross-legged on the carpet by the bed.  “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
    “Leave me alone.”
    “Don’t you want to talk about it?”
    “No.  I want you to go away and I want Mom back.”
    Sam sat on the bed and put his arm around her.  He felt weak and sad and wanted his mother back, too.  What did he know about comforting a thirteen-year-old girl?  He apologized as best he could and tried to explain, knowing he was botching the job.  May didn’t buy it, she kept her head down, staring at the game.  “Mom didn’t hate the Japanese.  She was nice to everybody.”
    “I don’t hate them, May.”
    She threw the machine across the room and it smashed into the wall.  “Yes, you do!  You hate them and you say rotten things all the time.”
    The accusation was partly true and Sam knew it.  He hugged her and tried to dry her tears with the bed cover.  May shouted and shoved him away.  “I’m Japanese!  I’m Japanese!” she cried, again and again, hitting Sam in the chest and shoulders with her fists.
    “Stop it, stop it, May.”  He reached for her.  “You know I love you.”
    “No, you don’t.  You don’t love me because I’m Japanese.  You’re just like all the other gaijins, you don’t even try to understand.  Mom loved me, anyway.”
    Sam held her and waited until she tired herself out, until she couldn’t hit or cry anymore.  He told her he loved her so many times he lost count, knowing it was true and that he could never say it enough.  Finally, she leaned over and took a box of tissues off the nightstand and blew her nose.  “Are you sure?”
    “A hundred percent.”  He detected a hint of a smile.
    “Are you really really sure?”
    “Yes.”
    The smile grew larger.  “How much do you love me?”
    “A lot.”
    “As much as the sun?”
    “And the moon, too.”
    She laughed.  “The sun’s enough, don’t overdo it.  If you love me that much you’ll do anything for me, I bet.”
    “Anything.”
    Sam was happy to see a cunning look in her eye.  She was up to something, a clear sign she was feeling better.
    “Like what?”
    She pointed across the room.  “If a brother really loved his sister he’d buy her a new Game Boy if she accidentally broke her old one.”
    “Even if she’d ruined another one only a month before?”
    May twisted out of his arms, pushed him off the bed and jumped on his chest.  “Absolutely.”
    “OK.  Is tomorrow soon enough?”
    “Yes, and in that case you’re forgiven.  But you’d better remember not to pick on the Japanese anymore.”  She punched him softly in the chest.  “You’re Japanese, too, you know.”
    Sam shook his head.  “Only a little bit.  No more than twenty-five percent.”
    “That’s a lot.”  May looked him over.  “I wonder which part it is?  What do you think?”
    Sam had no idea, it had always been a major mystery.  One foot could be Japanese, the other Russian and the rest American.
    She picked up his hand and examined it carefully.  “Maybe this is the Japanese part?”
    He shook his head.
    “Well, how about these?”  She yanked on his ears and pinched his nose.
    “Ouch!  Stop that.”
    “Nope, not them.  Too much complaining.  Very very gaijin.”
    May scooted back, placed her ear to his chest and listened for a moment.  “Wait, what’s this?  That sounds Japanese to me.  Can’t you hear it?”
    “What?”
    “Shhh, listen.”
    Sam laughed.  “I can’t hear a thing.”
    “That’s because you’re not trying hard enough as usual.  I can hear it perfectly.”
    “What’s it saying?”
    Her lips brushed his cheek and she whispered in his ear.  “I love May, I love May, I love...”

    Police Lt. Nakazono saw the lights on in the coffee shop and headed for the door.  A shadow moved in the alley and he stopped.  He told himself he was a superstitious fool, but he peered into the darkness anyway, afraid of what he might see.  If Elena Takagi was anywhere, she would be here.  Three nights ago he was positive he’d seen her on his balcony.  She’d beckoned for him to join her, her hair flowing long and white.
    At the time he’d been certain, now he wasn’t so sure.  But it didn’t hurt to be careful, he told himself as he checked the alley.  It was empty and he felt safer.  If only the dreams would stop, everything would be back to normal.
Hara, the boss of the Sumiyoshi-kai, had called that morning and ordered him to get moving on the Takagi building, saying the market was ripe for a takeover and a quick resale.  Threats had not been necessary.  Nakazono’s debts were hanging over him like a sword.  Succeed or die, it was that simple.  He bit down on his fear of Elena and knocked on the door.
    Sam didn’t invite the cop inside.  Nakazono made him feel more than a little uncomfortable.  His stiff crew cut and self-indulgent belly, his ill-fitting suit and his tiny eyes—it was all too much.
    Nakazono was polite, too polite, and when he asked to come in to see Manny’s work, Sam couldn’t reasonably refuse.  He had to live in the neighborhood and the cop was as much a part of the local infrastructure as the sewers.
    “The place looks good,” he said, glancing at the new stage and the small dance area.  He sat down at the counter and nodded at the next stool.  “Why don’t you join me?  Maybe we could have a beer and talk?”
    May was asleep upstairs and Sam wanted to get back to the apartment.  He looked toward the door.
    “Oh, come on.  It’s not that late,” the cop urged, smiling.  “I’m not such a bad guy.  One beer can’t hurt, can it?  Who knows, maybe you’ll even like me.”
    The possibility seemed remote, but Sam fetched a couple of Kirins anyway.  “What can I do for you, Lieutenant?  You didn’t come here to tell me you’ve solved my mother’s murder, did you?”
    Nakazono took a long pull on the bottle and wiped his lips with his sleeve.  “No, no, it’s nothing like that.”
    “I didn’t think so.”
    “Of course, we’re still working on the case but this isn’t an official visit.  I just wanted to say hello and make sure you were settling into the neighborhood all right.”
    Sam lied easily, assuring him that his readjustment to Japan was going quite smoothly.
    The cop winked.  “I’ve seen you with that gaijin, the one with the big...”  He held his hands out in front of his chest.  “You getting any of that?”
    Sam restrained an impulse to knock Nakazono off his stool.  “We’re just friends.”  That was the truth as far as he could tell.  He wished it were otherwise but Helen’s behavior remained perplexing.  They’d had dinner together five or six times in the last month, usually at her suggestion.
    At first, Sam had thought they were dating and had acted accordingly, once going so far as to buy her a rose from a street vendor.  He considered it a major step and if not a declaration, certainly a strong hint.  She’d considered it, too, holding it up to the fading light as if it were merely a red flower, a pleasant pretty thing.  He’d expected her to take it home with her and press it into a book or whatever women did with flowers.  Instead, when she’d gathered up her things in the restaurant, the rose had remained on the table, forgotten.  Sam had pretended not to notice.
    In the days that followed, Sam had been very careful to let her take the lead and set the tone.  She hadn’t hesitated to ask him to dinner again, and then again.  Frustrated, he’d begun to think about her when she wasn’t around—always a bad sign—and he’d vowed to hold out until she took at least a small risk.
    The last time they’d gone out, he’d walked by her side with a growing belief that only one of them was dating.  What Helen was doing, he still had no idea.  On that night, as they’d crossed a glittering Aoyama street, he’d missed a curb and almost fell, feeling ramparts rising higher than flowers, red or otherwise.
    Nakazono was talking about women he’d known and abused.  Sam interrupted and asked what he wanted.
    “Now that you mention it, I was wandering about that gaijin you’ve got working here.”  Nakazono had no real interest in the Filipino, he didn’t think any of them were worth spit, but thought it was time to apply a bit of pressure.
    “His name is Ramos,” Sam answered, working to keep his annoyance under control.
    “Would you mind telling me his visa status?” Nakazono asked, beginning to sound more like a cop than a friendly neighbor.  “I’m sure you wouldn’t employ an illegal but sometimes these people have forged documents.  I try my best to keep the scum out of the area but you know how it is...”  He waved his hands at the helplessness of it all and shook his head.
    “Well, this is one gaijin you don’t have to worry about,” Sam said, unable to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.
    The cop looked hopefully at his empty beer bottle but Sam ignored him.  “Ramos has a valid entertainment visa.  It’s good for the next year and I’m the guarantor.”
    Nakazono nodded.  “Well, that’s settled then.”  He looked past Sam to the new stage.  “Didn’t this Ramos fellow do some of your construction work?  It looks like it was a big job.  You must have had to pay him.”
    “You’re right, it was a big job.  But I didn’t pay him anything.  He’s a singer not a carpenter.”  Sam nearly laughed, wishing he could see Manny’s face.
    “Please don’t take offense,” Nakazono said.  “I just don’t want you to have any problems, that’s all.  Believe me, I’m just thinking of what’s best for you and your sister.”
    “I’m sure you are, Lieutenant.”
    “It must be difficult for you to raise a little girl in the city all by yourself.”
    “We’re doing all right.”
    “I don’t envy you.  I imagine you worry all the time about what this downtown...uhh,” Nakazono searched for a word, “environment is doing to her.”
    “It hadn’t occurred to me.”  Sam wondered where the cop was going and wished he’d get there.
    “Many families have had the same problem and have moved away.  You know, out to the suburbs.  They say the, uhh, environment is good for the kids.  Have you ever thought of moving?”
    “No, I haven’t.  I just got here.”
    Nakazono leaned closer.  “Maybe you should.  I have a friend that could give you a fair price for this building.  Property values are starting to drop and maybe you should get out while the market is near the top.”  He passed a business card across the bar.  “Why don’t I arrange a meeting?”
    Sam glanced at the card, finally understanding what Nakazono was after.  “Thanks, but I don’t think we’re going to be moving.  May likes it here.”
    Nakazono thought the gaijin might have missed the point.  “I’m sure she does, but is living here really in her best interests?  We try to stay on top of things but there’s still quite a bit of crime in Asakusa.”  He narrowed his eyes and a nearly imperceptible hint of menace entered his voice.  “I know you wouldn’t want anything to happen to your sister.”
    “You’re right, I don’t want anything to happen to her.”  Sam stepped down from his stool, put his arm over the cop’s shoulder and whispered in his ear.  “And I don’t think you or anyone else does either.  Who knows where that might lead.  Somebody could get hurt or even killed.”

Chapter 16 — The bosozoku

THE TOURISTS from Wichita were looking for a good time and had no idea where to start.  They walked through the alleys and took turns peeping in the doors of small eateries and bars.  The mysterious smells were enticing and the faces friendly, but each time they backed away, too shy to enter.
    “There’s always Denny’s,” the wife said.
    “Or Mr. Donuts,” the husband smiled.  They both laughed and kept walking, hoping the neighborhood would reach out to them.
    The sun had slipped behind buildings, leaving Asakusa dappled with soft shadows.  The husband felt an evanescent stillness and smelled honeysuckle floating on the evening air.  A temple priest’s black robes sighed as he passed the wife.  She listened to his straw sandals scratch the macadam until he vanished through a distant torii gate.
    It was the dinner hour and a woman was talking and washing dishes behind a thin wooden wall.  A breeze pushed aside a curtain in an open doorway.  A small boy sat cross-legged, a father stretched on his side and an aproned-mother padded over tatami in bare feet.  Dominating the darkening room, a color TV glowed electric infield green.
    The husband squeezed the wife’s hand and pointed across the street.  Languid schoolgirls in second-story windows set down their pens and noted the touch with hopeful eyes.  “How about that place?” he suggested.
    “At least the sign’s in English,” she agreed.  “Crazy Noise” glowed in curvaceous pink neon above a green pastel palm.
    The club was too crowded and they would have backed out again if not for a middle-aged waiter standing near the door.  He welcomed them in English, talking as if they were friends.  It was the club’s opening night, he explained, gesturing at the packed tables and booths.  The customers were chatting between tables pointing as they recognized each other, laughing and drinking.
    The waiter said his name was Manny and asked if they would mind sharing a table.  Chris and Jennifer shared a look—wasn’t that why they’d come to Japan?—and he led them to a table in the front.  One ancient woman was leaning over whispering in the ear of another even older.  Both wore silk kimono and their silver hair was pinned up with glossy lacquered combs.
    “Oh, please, please, sit down,” Jennifer pleaded, as the ladies struggled to their feet and bowed.  She returned the bows solemnly, feeling helpless and embarrassed.  The older woman was the tiniest creature she’d ever seen and it was clearly difficult for her to stand, let alone bow.  She introduced herself and Chris and the ladies bowed again.
    “This is my landlady Nobuyo Kojima and this is Kimiko Nakamura,” Manny said.  “Kojima-san can speak English.”
    Nobuyo laughed shyly.  “I’m sorry, I still can speak only a little but I have a good teacher.”  She smiled at Manny.
    “You’re doing great,” Jennifer said.  “We’re the ones that should apologize.  We can’t speak Japanese at all.  In two days, all I’ve learned is please, thank you, and which way is the New Otani Hotel.”
    “That sounds like progress,” Manny said, as Nakamura-san grabbed his hand and spoke rapidly.  Unable to understand, he asked Nobuyo for a translation.
    “She wants beer, lots of beer.”
    “It sounded like she said more than that.”
    Nobuyo grinned at Jennifer and Chris.  “She also said you talk too much and don’t work enough.”
    Jennifer whispered to Nobuyo.  “How old is Nakamura-san?”
    “Ninety-seven.”   
    “And you?  If you don’t mind my asking?”
    Nobuyo smiled.  “I’m still young, only eighty-three.”
    Manny returned with three beers, one for Nobuyo and Nakamura-san to share and one each for Chris and Jennifer.  Nakamura-san had fallen asleep.  Her chin rested on her breast, her hands were quiet in her lap.
    “Will you pour for her later?” Manny asked Chris.
    “Sure, I’d be happy to.”
    Nakamura-san’s head snapped up and a century of wrinkles danced around a big smile.  “May, May,” she cackled, and pointed across the room.
    Sam turned down the house lights as May stepped on stage.  She was surprised at all the people, it seemed as if every friend in the neighborhood had turned out.  The smiles made her feel less scared but she hadn’t expected so much clapping.  Sam and Manny were slapping their hands together like idiots.
    Helen leaned down and shouted in her ear.  “You’re a star already.”
    May smiled and tried to forget the empty drum set at the back of the stage.  Kiyomi was conscious and talking today.  She’d asked May to record the opening performance so she could listen to it in her hospital room.  May had promised and delegated the job to Sam.
    “They’re not clapping for me,” she grinned, “they’re clapping for your dress.”
    “I knew I shouldn’t have let you con me into this,” Helen growled.  They’d gone shopping and May had insisted she needed a “costume,” not an everyday dress.  It was midnight blue, too tight, too short, and very low cut.  The sequins flashed and winked at the audience.  “I look like a hooker.”
    “No way.  It’s totally excellent.  Like I told you, this is showbiz.”
    Helen picked up her guitar.  “If this is showbiz, what happened to you?”
    May was wearing baggy jeans and a Neal Young T-shirt.  “I’m the talent and you’re the fluff,” she said, with a smile just wide enough to keep Helen’s hands off her throat.  Helen laughed and kissed her on the ear.  “OK, kiddo, I guess I can accept that.  It’s all yours.  Go out there and knock ‘em dead.”
    May marched to center stage and stood in a blue spotlight.  She waited for Helen to retreat to a stool in the shadows and then began to play.  She got no further that the second chord as Sam bounded onto the stage.
    “Wait, wait,” he shouted, and grabbed the microphone.
    May clutched her guitar like a weapon, thinking her brother had gone mad.  “What are you doing?  You’re embarrassing me.”
    Sam ignored her and addressed the audience.  “Friends, thank you for coming to our new club, the Crazy Noise.”  He pointed at his sister with a grand flourish.  She cringed and took a step back.
    “We hope you have a good time and come back to see us soon.  For your evening’s entertainment, we have a couple of rising stars from our very own neighborhood.  Will you please give a warm Asakusa welcome to my sister May and her friend Helen Lang.”
    May closed her eyes and took a deep breath as Sam repeated his entire spiel in English for the benefit of the two gaijins in the front row.  She thought he was never going to shut up and felt her face getting redder by the second.  She was still trying to decide whether to run or bean him with the guitar when he backed off the stage clapping.
    She stepped forward and began to play, taking courage in Helen’s nearness.  They had practiced in great secrecy for weeks, learning to work together, to play and sing songs May had written.  Hidden away in Helen’s apartment, she’d listened carefully when Helen had told her just to do her best, that nothing else was important.
    By the end of the second song the party atmosphere in the club had vanished.  Jennifer looked down at her beer glass.  It was halfway to her mouth and she had no idea how long it had been hanging there.  She touched Chris on the knee to get his attention.  He looked at her out of the corner of his eye, shook his head, and turned his gaze back to the stage.
    It was too quiet—she could almost hear the tears sliding down the cheeks of the old ladies and the moon rising over the club.  She forgot to clap after the third song, she held onto Chris’ hand throughout the fourth.  The girl sang in English and Japanese and Jennifer understood both equally well, as if the lyrics had been engraved on her heart long ago.
    The girl’s voice was so sad.  It came at her from all directions.  Like the wind on the high plains, it was intrusive and unrelenting.  She felt a panic rising—the girl sang of confusion and endless wounds.  She tried to resist.  Until she could listen no longer and fell, splashing a trail of memories across a black Kansas sky.
    All was lost.  She braced herself for a terrible crash.  It never came.  The girl caught her on a melody, a lullaby that laid her gently on the ground.  She closed her eyes and listened—to a protective moon shining above a small girl singing.  Her defenses lay in the dust.  Don’t pick them up, the moon warned.  Jennifer promised and promised, wanting so much to be willing.  That’s enough for now, the girl sang.  I’m always here for all of you.
    “Are you all right?”  She felt Chris’ hand on her arm and opened her eyes.  The lights were coming up in the club and the girl was leaving the stage.
    “I’m fine,” she answered, not at all sure it was true.  “I guess I was daydreaming.”
    “Wasn’t she great?” he asked, pouring beer for everyone.
    Nakamura-san was napping again, but Nobuyo nodded and dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief pulled from a wide kimono sleeve.  “A surprise,” she smiled.  “Very, very wonderful.”
    Jennifer returned her smile, feeling calm but strangely exhausted.  “Would you mind if we went back to the hotel?”
    “Sure, if that’s what you want,” Chris said.  She looked like she could hardly keep her eyes open.  “We can get dinner there.”
    “Thanks.”
    “Are you sure you’re OK?  You look a little weird.”
    “No, I’m fine, just tired.”  She placed her hand over Nobuyo’s.  “Can I write to you?”
    Nakamura-san opened her eyes just as Nobuyo and Jennifer finished exchanging addresses.  She scratched at Nobuyo’s sleeve and whispered in her ear.
    “They have to go now,” Nobuyo explained, repeating herself twice and raising her voice.  Nakamura-san nodded and reached up, her hands tangling in her hair.
    “What are you doing?” Nobuyo asked.
    “Help me with this thing.”
    Nobuyo unfastened the comb and handed it to her.
    Nakamura-san’s silver hair cascaded over her shoulders, falling nearly to the floor.  “Now help me up,” she demanded.
    “What’s going on?” Chris asked, surprised as the old ladies struggled to their feet and Nakamura-san bowed.  She held out the lacquered comb with both hands and spoke to Jennifer.
    “Her grandmother gave it to her,” Nobuyo translated.
    Jennifer hesitated and then took the comb, holding it like a treasure.  “Thank you so much.  It’s very lovely, I’ll always remember you.”
    Chris looked over his shoulder as he eased his way through the crowd toward the door.  Both women were still bowing and smiling.  He wondered if Jennifer would begin to cry in the taxi or wait until she got back to the hotel.  He heard a small sniffle and bet on the cab.

    The bosozoku boys were unmuffled engine-revvers, motorcycle marauders, unrepentant and incompetent cowards.  Jiro and his gang of night-school dropouts and video arcade loonies were bored.  They sat on their bikes in front of a Seven-Eleven and discussed potential diversions.
    “How about if we go cruisin’ and wake everybody up?” the newest recruit suggested.  Noise was the bosozoku’s raison d’etre.  In selected suburbs lived families who hadn’t slept in years.
    Jiro sighed.  The new guy was dumber than shellfish.  He glared at the rest of his crew.  Most weren’t worth squat and he was counting the days until he was promoted out of the kiddie leagues to a real yakuza gang.  All he needed was a break.  He put his arm around the kid’s shoulders and stuck his watch under his nose.  “What time is it, Fukui-kun?”
    “Five minutes after eight.”
    “Very good.  Now what does that mean?”
    Fukui looked perplexed.  “Uhh, I don’t know.”
    Jiro screamed in his ear.  “You shithead.  You brainless idiot.  Nobody’s asleep yet, that’s what it means.  Who the shit are we gonna wake up?”  He pushed Fukui off his Yamaha and kicked him viciously in the side.  The rest of the gang laughed.
    “Maybe we could make a run up into the hills, beat up some guy and rape his girlfriend?” an older gang member offered.  “You know, throw ‘em down a hillside and leave ‘em for dead.”
    Jiro yawned.  “Naah, everybody’s doin’ that these days.”
    “Hey, let’s go to Koenji and mess with those cops again,” Takanawa-kun shouted.  He was a shining example of bushido and Jiro cracked a smile.  Though encased in a plaster cast from shoulder to wrist, Takanawa-kun was still ready for anything.
    Jiro’s eyes brightened in a face marred by acne and a chin so weak he had trouble keeping his helmet on.  It wasn’t a bad idea.  He remembered Koenji with fondness.  They'd ridden across town a month ago looking for an evening’s entertainment.  Whooping and racing their engines, they’d circled the plaza in front of the train station like Comanches besieging a wagon train.
    For twenty minutes they’d enjoyed beating up pedestrians, smashing shop windows and kicking in the sides of parked cars.  The screams of the victims had alerted two beefy cops stationed in the plaza’s police box and they’d stepped outside to take a look.  Following a prolonged tête-à-tête, the officers had decided their heavy caliber pistols were no match for six skinny adolescents and had ducked back inside to resume terrorizing a female illegal alien.
    Jiro had laughed and laughed as they’d driven their bikes round and round the police box, lashing out with their hobnailed boots, smashing its windows with lead pipes.  One of the boys had tossed in a petrol bomb and the cops had fled, dragging their suspect down a dark side-street.
    Takanawa-kun had been their only casualty.  An aged shopkeeper had attacked him with an aluminum baseball bat while trying to protect his two granddaughters.  With only four remaining fighters under his command, Jiro had watched the encounter from across the street, deeming it too dangerous to take on the old man and his bat.
    Just as Takanawa-kun had been knocked to the sidewalk, the cops had come slinking back.  Jiro had applauded as Suginami-ku’s finest had arrested the old man and charged him with aggravated assault.  The stupid fool had spent three weeks in jail.  The courts had later forced him to make a humiliating apology and pay Takanawa-kun’s medical expenses.
    “Get your ass over here, punk.”
    Jiro turned toward the alley.  A man was standing beside a garbage dumpster.  The darkness hid his face but not the danger and malice in his voice.  “Yeah, I’m talking to you dumbshit.  Don’t make me come over there and get you.”
    Jiro knew he had no choice with his gang watching.  His knees felt weak as he left the light spilling over the sidewalk and entered the alley.  “What do you want?” he asked, with as much insolence as he could muster.
    “I want you, asshole.”  A hand grabbed him by the front of his jacket and slammed him into the wall.  He fought to get away.  The muzzle of a revolver was cold against his cheek.  He stopped resisting and concentrated on not wetting his pants.
    “You recognize me, punk?”
    Jiro nodded, afraid to breath.  The last time he’d run into Nakazono, the cop had beat the shit out of him just for fun.
    “What do you want? he repeated, the bravado in his voice replaced by fear.
    Nakazono released him.  “I want you to shut up and listen.  I got a little job for you and those morons.”
    Jiro relaxed.  His ship had come in at last and he was about to get a crack at the big time.  “Just name it, Lieutenant. The boys are always ready—”
    Nakazono bounced him off the wall.  “I told you to shut up.  Now, listen, asshole, this is what I want you to do.”

    May had just trundled off to bed.  Helen was sitting at the bar talking to Sam while Manny waited on a handful of remaining customers.  A pair of teenagers were playing one of May’s new arcade games.  Helen was still wearing the dress May had picked out and Sam was having difficulty finding a safe place to rest his eyes.
    “What are you looking so glum about,” she asked.  “Tonight was a huge success.”
    “I’m not sure, I guess I just didn’t realize May was so unhappy.”
    “What makes you think she is?”
    “You heard her singing.  Half the audience was in tears.”
    Helen smiled.  “And you, too, I bet.”
    Sam didn’t deny the allegation and Helen continued.  “Tonight was, as May calls it, showbiz.  She’s perfectly capable of manipulating you.  Why are you so surprised she can do it to an audience?  She’s a poetic little kid and a natural performer.”
    “Are you saying she was faking the whole thing?”
    “Not at all.  Letting the audience inside is what performing is all about, isn’t it?  Her mom died recently and her best friend is in the hospital.  She made sure we could all feel that, but she’s not devastated by any means.  You should give yourself a little credit.  The only reason she was able to go up on stage at all is that she knew you were there and wouldn’t let her fall.”
    “I hope you’re right.”
    “I am right.  Why don’t you lighten up a little bit?  Ninety percent of those songs were written long before your mother’s death.  I should know, I helped her with most of them.  May’s doing just fine considering everything that’s happened.  She’s got you and me and everybody else eating right out of her hand.  Look at this dress she got me into.  There isn’t a man alive I’d wear it for.”
    “Not even Hiroshi?” Sam asked, and instantly wished he hadn’t.  He’d never mentioned the man, not once, and Helen had only referred to him as a friend.  May had been Sam’s only source of information and a thin one at best.
    She laughed.  “Hiroshi?  Not hardly.  He doesn’t get any special treatment, I assure you.”
    “Then I should consider myself—”
    Glass shattered, engines roared and Sam was saved from another stupid remark.  The front window imploded and customers screamed.  Sam ran to the door and onto the sidewalk.  A pack of motorcycles raced away, escaping down the street.  The lead bike turned and charged straight for him.  He kicked at the bike and missed.  The rider laughed, wheeled his bike towards the lights of Kokusaidori and shouted, “Get out or we’ll kill you.”

Chapter 17 — On a date

"WHAT ARE you going to do?”
    Sam smiled and lined up the cue ball.  “Sink the eight ball and win the game.”
    “That’s not what I’m talking about.  What are you going to do about the cop?”
    The question had disturbed him all week and continued to do so.  He undercut the cue ball and it jumped off the table.  Guacamole dripped off the chins of startled office girls as it clattered across the cement and ran under their feet.
    Sam set down his cue and Helen retrieved the ball.  “You want to play again?”
    “Maybe later.”  He climbed an iron staircase leading to a narrow balcony overlooking the main dining area.  A waitress with short hair and a short skirt brought tall Corona beers and menus printed in Japanese and English.
    “You didn’t answer my question.”
    He hadn’t answered because he knew there was very little he could do.  The cops, a couple of patrolmen who worked for Nakazono, had glanced at the shattered window, jotted down a few notes and disappeared.  With no proof, Sam hadn’t accused their boss of complicity in the crime.
    He’d called his lawyer the next day and asked for advice.  Matsushita-san had been sympathetic but not very helpful, telling him unnecessarily that it was dangerous to antagonize the police and to call her again if something more serious happened.  Insurance would cover the damage, she’d said.  Sam had thought a death threat serious enough but had thanked her and hung up.
    “What I’d like to do and what I’m going to do are two very different things,” he said.  “I’d like to push him out of a very high window but I won’t.  Instead, I’m going to order a cheese burrito, a chicken taco and another beer.”
    “What if he tries something else?”
    “Then I suppose I’ll reevaluate the high window option.  Come on, Helen, realistically, there’s nothing I can do.  He’s screwed the whole neighborhood for years, and just like everybody else I’m going to ignore him and hope he finds somebody else to pick on.”
    Helen set down her beer and leaned across the table.  “That’s a fairly shitty attitude.”
    “What would you do?”
    “I don’t know, maybe I’d push him in front of a train.”
    Sam laughed.  “Get serious.”
    “You don’t think I could?”
    “I don’t think you would.”
    She smiled back.  “Maybe you’re right, but I think it would be a lot of fun.”
    Sam shook his head.  “Unless something else happens we’re all going to be law-abiding citizens.  Remember the other night when May was so upset?”
    “The night of the matsuri?”
    “Exactly.  She may only be a kid but she was right.  I don’t have any choice.  I either do it the Japanese way or not at all.  The country isn’t about to adapt to me, I’m the one that has to change.”
    “So Nakazono gets away with it?”
    “It’s only a window, not life itself.  The insurance paid for it.  May is more important.  What happens to her if the situation gets worse?  My main responsibility is to her.  If I do something stupid and get thrown in jail, who’s going to look after her?  You?”
    “Of course.”
    “I know you’d want to but the law wouldn’t allow it.  Her crazy aunt in Kochi would be here in a heartbeat and you’d be out in the street.  Did I tell you that the property speculator Nakazono’s working with stopped by?”
    Helen shook her head.  “No.  What did he say?”
    “Nothing surprising.  He was quite polite and made me a pretty good offer.  He didn’t mention the window of course.”
    “Did you?”
    “I might have if I wasn’t worried about May.  He wasn’t a cop, after all, and I was still pissed off at the bosozoku.  It would have been easy to lose my temper and kick his ass.  It would have been just as easy to end up facing an assault charge.”
    “So what happened?”
    “Nothing.  I gave him a cup of coffee and turned down his proposal.  I was just as polite as he was and May said she was proud of me when I told her about it later.  It’s a funny thing when your little sister says something like that to you.  It’s even funnier when it means so much.  I ended up as proud of myself as she was.”
    “Don’t expect too much,” Helen warned as the food arrived.  “I brought you here for the pool table, not the food.”
    “It doesn’t look so bad.”
    “Appearances can be deceiving.  The best Mexican restaurant is in Hiroo but it doesn’t have a pool table and you can’t smoke.”
    It was Sunday and Sam had asked Manny to baby-sit.  May had objected, but after the bosozoku attack he was afraid to leave her alone.  She’d only agreed after Manny had promised to take her to his house and cook Filipino food for her and Nobuyo.
    The restaurant was filling up quickly.  Every table on the main floor was taken as were most on the balcony.  Carefully groomed women in tight colorful skirts and matching jackets drank Mexican beer and raised their voices over loud jukebox rock ‘n’ roll.  They talked of travels past or planned, and arched delicate eyebrows at posters of Acapulco and Mazatlan.
    “You know I’m the only man in this room.”
    Helen looked over the railing.  “No, there’s a guy behind the bar.”
    “OK, I’m the only male customer in here.”
    “Does it bother you?”
    Sam laughed.  “No, I kind of like it, but it’s a little disconcerting.”
    “It’s completely normal.  The young guys are too poor to do anything but sit in their dinky little apartments and eat instant ramen.  All these women still live with their parents.  They’ve got nothing to spend their money on except clothes and having a good time.”
    After dinner, Sam stuck with beer while Helen switched to Margaritas.  They kept moving their chairs closer, first Sam and then Helen, so they could hear over the music and the lilting voices of the diners on the ground floor.  They weren’t satisfied until their chairs touched and their knees brushed under the table.
    Sam listened as Helen spoke at length, telling bizarre anecdotes from her days at the Tokyo Sun and talking about a job interview she’d lined up with an ad agency the next day.  He was interested in the substance but even happier with the volume.  She was talking more these days.  No longer was she content to sit back and watch him with those big gray eyes of hers, forcing him to either carry the conversation or sit in silence.
    Maybe it was the beer or maybe it was the heat in the room.  A question slipped out.  He’d held it clenched between his teeth for weeks.  It fell on the table loud and impatient.
    “I don’t understand what we’re doing.  Are we dating or what?”
    Helen stiffened.  She’d known it would come to this.  Not that she didn’t give him credit—they’d been out half a dozen times and he’d kept his desires to himself.  She turned to the waitress and ordered another drink.
    Sam asked for a beer as Helen lit a cigarette and looked across the room.  A song on the jukebox ended and another began.  She cocked her head to listen—the ash on her cigarette lengthened and the song ended.
    Once begun, the process couldn’t be stopped.  He pushed her harder, powerless to control himself—she’s attracted to me or she’s not, we have a future or we don’t.  The possibility of a middle ground was beyond his ability to conceive.
    “It’s a simple question.”
    Helen set her cigarette in the ash tray.  “I thought we were friends?” she asked, not wanting to speak, knowing whatever she said it would be wrong.  The way he was leaning toward her, his forearms rigid and his back straight—she didn’t like it at all.  She slid her chair away from the table and it banged into the wrought iron railing edging the balcony.
    There it was, that hated word.  She’d been stringing him along the whole time.  He flipped through the pages of their history, looking for evidence to confirm his hypothesis.  Her eyes—remember that glance?  Her clothing—designed to entice.  Even her silence.  What better way to lead him on?
    “Friends?”
    She hated being pressed so close to the rail.  “You make it sound like a dirty word.”
    Her voice was temperate, her eyes restrained.  He fought a jittery pressure, familiar and seductive.  It promised the paralyzing distraction of anger and self-pity.  The door was only a few feet away.  Succumb, jump up and turn your back—the hurt will heat you all the way home.
    Not this time, not yet.  He tried to match her composure.  Feeling like an actor, he spoke hesitant lines not yet learned by heart.  “Not at all.  There’s nothing wrong with friendship.”
    “Have I done anything to give you the wrong impression?”  Sometimes I’ve wanted to but I know I haven’t.”
    “No, not really.”
    Helen smiled.  He didn’t sound too bad.  It might work out after all.  “Then we can still be friends?”
    “Sure, why not?  I just don’t think we should see each other so much, that’s all.”
    “How much is not so much?”
    “Not at all.”
    “What?”  She couldn’t hide the distress in her voice.  “What about May?”
    “That’s not what I mean.  It’s these dates or whatever you call them.  I don’t think they’re a good idea.”
    She snubbed out her cigarette.  So that’s it.  A unilateral decision.  “Don’t I have anything to say about this?  I enjoy your company.  You know I don’t have very many friends.”
    “What about Hiroshi?”
    “What about him?”  She’d only seen him once in the last month.  “I can’t talk to him like I do you.”
    Sam knew he was hurting Helen and himself, too.  He struggled to find an endpoint to the conversation—and hurt her more.  “Well, that’s just great.  You sleep with him and talk to me.”
    “You make it sound so sleazy and calculated.  Can’t you see I enjoy being with you?”
    “Not enough, apparently.”
    “What do you want from me?”
    “Let’s not make a big deal out of this.  We see each other all the time at the club.”
    “I don’t see why we can’t have dinner together sometimes.  Friends do that, you know.”
    Sam shrugged.  He really didn’t understand her.  She sounded almost desperate, as if she cared about him.  It couldn’t be true, she’d as much as said so.  Her expectations were out of reach, too deep to fathom.
    “I think you’re missing my point.  It’s unfair to expect me to keep going on these non-dates.  While I’m entertaining you or whatever it is I’m doing, I’m also growing more attached to you.  I can’t help it and I can’t stop it.  One of these evenings I’m going to have to watch you ride away on a train heading for your boyfriend’s apartment.”
    Helen closed her eyes.  What does he want?  She tried to slip across the table and into his body.  It was alien terrain and impenetrable.  She retreated, left without a clue.
    “You’re not going to pretend that you didn’t know I was attracted to you, are you?”
    She shook her head.  “No, I knew it.  I just wasn’t sure what to do about it.  To be honest, I wasn’t sure I wanted to do anything about it.  I like you, I like the fact that you like me.”
    “That sounds selfish.”
    “No more selfish than you refusing to be my friend.”
    It would have been kinder just to kick over the table or knock the drink from her hand.  It would have hurt less if he’d just slapped her face.  Sam snapped, “I’ve got enough friends.  I don’t need anymore.”
    They boarded the Ginza Line at Omotesando.  The train was crowded; passengers on the left and right pushed them together.  Their knees touched, their thighs brushed, as the train clattered through tunnels leading to the older, eastern part of the city.
    The passengers on the opposite seat were just a few feet away, the strap hangers even closer.  The car shivered and leaned into a curve.  Its metal wheels screamed and sparked.  Again and again, the car lost its grip.  Overhead lights failed and battery lamps powered up.  Tired faces, bored faces, flickered white and disappeared.
    Helen and Sam concentrated on the grimy tunnel walls flashing past.  Recidivists, veteran victims, they examined their wounds and calculated how many days it would take to feel good again.  Sam thought six, Helen a few more.  The totals balanced when Helen got off at Kanda Station, saying she was going to spend the night with a friend.

    Sam turned off the TV and got another beer from the kitchen.  He told himself to read or take a walk, ignored his own advice and stared out the window at the shrine across the street.  A taxi slowed as it turned the corner.  A woman paid the driver and ran into the building.  Her hair was as black as the sky and Sam cursed himself.  She wasn’t coming home tonight.  A second car turned the corner and he forced himself to look away.
    May had left a message on the machine, asking to spend the night with Nobuyo and Manny.  It was a school night and he’d called her back, intending to refuse.  She’d pleaded, claiming she was already in her pajamas and very sleepy.  Tired and outmaneuvered as usual, he’d agreed.  Now he wished he hadn’t.  May was the perfect diversion when he was worried or depressed.
    He stepped out on the balcony.  Couples moved down the street arm-in-arm.  They weaved in and out of the darkness, hurrying past lighted restaurant windows, slowing in front of shops closed and shuttered.  The men tugged on elbows and wrists and let free hands brush over bellies and breasts.  The women resisted—refastening buttons undone, keeping slim fingers away from zippers unzipped.  Dragged into the light of love hotels, their breath quickened and their faces glowed pink.  They laughed and reached in their purses, exchanging reluctance for discount coupons hidden away.
    It was a hot night and the windows had been thrown open at the White Rose, the Moonglow and Tiger.  Sam drank his beer slowly, thinking of Helen, watching as silhouettes merged behind gauzy curtains facing east and west.  Across the alley, behind the wooden roof of the bicycle shop, a shade flapped up in a fifth-floor window.
    A thick-waisted man with tight curls and a tattooed back sat on the edge of a bed watching TV and drinking beer.  An agitated woman wearing lace panties and nothing else crossed back and forth in front of the window.  She shook her head and knocked the beer from his hand.  He reached back and pulled down the shade.
    Sam flopped on the couch, picked up a book and read the same paragraph four times.  He left the apartment and started to walk to Sensoji temple.  Air conditioners clattered above his head, sucking hot air into the second-floor bars, shoving out cigarette smoke and enka music.  He thought he heard Chieko’s voice and decided he could use another beer.
    She smiled and led him to a table in the rear.  He stumbled over someone’s foot in the darkness, coughed his way through clouds of cigarette smoke and fell onto a velvet couch.  Chieko brought him a beer and offered to detach one of her girls from a party of middle-aged men to serve as a companion.  Sam refused, the look of hurt on Helen’s face was all the company he wanted.
    The bar was smaller than his living room and filled to capacity.  Overworked salarymen dozed, cigarettes still burning between their fingers.  Others, just a few feet away, clapped their hands and shouted.  One man stood in the corner swinging an imaginary pitching wedge while three others murmured, heads bent low over whiskey-stained spreadsheets.
    One after another, men in suits mounted a carpeted dais and belted out karaoke favorites.  All took the singing quite seriously, aping mannerisms of well-known crooners.  While well-practiced, they were neither talented enough to be entertaining nor bad enough to be amusing.
    At the bar an older gaijin sat beleaguered by his hosts, four men of a like age wearing company pins in their lapels.  One urged him to spear sea slug tidbits with toothpicks, another flashed snapshots of his daughter’s trip to the States.  All pooh-poohed his embarrassment and insisted he sing.
    The foreigner ran his hand through his hair and begged to refuse, repeatedly saying he couldn’t speak, much less sing, the language.  His hosts clapped him on the back and grinned in victory—it was just the excuse they’d been waiting to hear.  They called for song books and rifled through dozens of pages.  All bars provided two songs for shy visitors.  They pointed at his choices and urged him out of his seat.
    Knowing he was beaten, contemplating contracts, he finished his whiskey and took his turn on the dais.  He rejected Sinatra’s My Way and croaked his way through Country Roads.  Everybody cheered and his hosts decided he was a man they could do business with.  Even the golfer in the corner joined the applause.
    Sam watched Chieko work the room.  She glided between tables and bar, refilling glasses and patting customers on the knee.  They patted, too, aiming for her bum and breasts, usually missing as she slipped away with gentle chastisement.  None argued or tried very hard, most laughed and promised to behave.  They winked at their buddies as she walked away.  Touching up mama-sans was as de rigueur as karaoke and everybody wanted to be one of the boys.
    Chieko’s skirt and jacket were gray-blue, the color of smoke billowing from ash trays on every table.  Sam tracked her back and forth across the room, watching as she bent, stretched and whispered.
    More diverting than playing Tetris with May, better than a walk in the park, sex was voracious and all-consuming.  He meditated on her breasts and pondered her thighs.  Soon bosozoku were veiled in lace and Nakazono restrained by straps and clasps.  Helen went down last, pinned by the heavy weight of speculation: were Chieko’s panties black or blue?
    “Sam-san?”
    He groaned and opened his eyes.  Chieko was leaning over him, her hand on his shoulder.  “You’d be more comfortable in your own bed.”
    “How long have I been asleep?”
    “Quite awhile.  It’s nearly three.”
    She handed him a glass of water, aspirin and a hot towel.  “You’re stupid to drink so much.”
    He couldn’t disagree.  The bar was still jammed and if anything, even nosier than before.  The golfer and the gaijin were gone, replaced by a party of drunk office girls.  A trio crowded onto the dais, waved their hands and began screeching into the microphone.  He swallowed the aspirin and lowered his head into his hands.
    “Come on,” Chieko said, ”you look terrible.  Let’s go.”
    He wiped his face with the towel and felt marginally better.  She pulled him to his feet and marched him out the door.  The night was cooling and quiet as he tried to maneuver her into the shadows of the stairwell.
    “Forget it,” she said, taking his hand and pulling him down the stairs.  “Not this time.  You’re too drunk and I’m too busy.  I’ll walk you back to your apartment.”
    Not quite ready to give up, he fumbled with a button on her skirt and reminded himself that Helen was sleeping with Hiroshi.  She pushed his hand away as they entered the lobby.  The elevator arrived and Chieko leaned against the back wall.  She was smiling and he wondered what she was thinking.  He was drunk, tired and not very imaginative.  Her thoughts remained her own but of one thing he was certain, she wasn’t using Helen as an excuse to justify her behavior.
    He closed his eyes against the sharp light, opened them again hearing a clatter of high heels and a shout.  Helen jumped inside just as the doors began to close.  Her words of thanks faltered and her smile faded.
    The elevator began to move and she felt her face redden.  She wished she could say something but the elevator was too small.  Sam’s elbow brushed her side, Chieko’s breath was hot on her neck.  She heard a foot scrape across the floor and listened to cable motors winching.  She stared at the doors, wanting only to escape to the safety of her apartment.
    Sam held out as long as he could but the silence was so loud it hurt his ears.  Chieko had turned sideways and was watching him with half a smile.  She wasn’t going to be any help and Helen was standing with her nose nearly pressed into the door.
    “So you decided not to spend the night?” he asked, his voice less casual than he’d hoped.
    She felt so stiff, as if she might crack.  “Hiroshi has to get up early.”
    It was a lie.  Hiroshi didn’t live in Kanda, she didn’t know anybody that did.  She’d spent a couple of hours in a coffee shop and had walked the streets alone.  The lights of Kanda had grown dark around her.  When her feet had begun to hurt she’d sat on a curb and watched waitresses and cooks pass by on their way home.
    Twice men had tried to pick her up.  She’d snapped at the first so loud he’d panicked and dropped his briefcase in the gutter.  Busy trying to rescue muddied papers from beneath the wheels of passing cars, he’d forgotten his desire for Helen.  The second had backed away frightened and thrilled by the anger in her eyes.
    Why had she lied?  Why had she got off the train at all?  She’d promised to never let a man hurt her again and to never hit back if they tried.  She’d hoped to see with eyes clear and new but her emotions were traitors patient and cunning.  They tainted the present and frightened the future.  She saw Sam as a friend, they only saw the woman by his side.
    “Looks like you’ve been busy.”  The accusation sounded pathetic and she wanted to bang her head into the wall.
    “Chieko’s just walking me to my apartment.  She owns one of the bars on the second floor.”
    Helen turned.  “I’ve known Chieko longer than you, Sam, and you don’t owe me any explanations.”
    He wished he did.  Anger could fade, indifference was immutable.  The doors opened and Helen walked away.

Chapter 18 – Raining children

IT WAS raining children all over the nation.  What had started as a mere sprinkle, a body here, a body there, was now a torrent—kids were jumping off buildings from Wakkanai to Kagoshima.
    Nakazono sat on a bench in Ueno Park and scanned the sky nervously.  He’d lost weight and hadn’t shaved in a week.  He felt small inside his suit but not small enough.  To shrink was a blessing, but she had sharp eyes.  If only he was a blade of grass, one in a billion.  If only he could disappear.
    She’d started whispering to him the day after Jiro had thrown the brick through her children’s window.  Now her imps were dropping like tears from a cloudless sky.
    It had all begun the day Junko Ando had died.  Junko had been a pop singer, a fourteen-year-old cutie with bashful eyes, short curly hair and a fondness for clunky black shoes.  She’d made everybody smile and her rise to the top had been spectacular.
    Dancing across the country in her crazy too-big shoes, curtsying for the Empress, Junko had befriended every lonely child in the land.  Fathers had escorted daughters to concerts, mothers had touched her poster above children dreaming in bed.  In village and town, on islands far to the south, girls had descended in droves on shoemakers wrinkled and brown.
    Soon every enterprise, from noodle maker to public railway, had owned a piece of Junko.  She’d smiled her way through eighteen-hour days, never once complaining, obediently following her mom and her managers.  Until one day she’d fallen behind, stopping to tie her shoes, frowning at the pushing and the pulling.  No one had noticed and Junko had found herself alone, and the knots, once so simple, far too complex.  They’d discovered her shoes atop a midtown Tokyo building, placed neatly against the rail.  Even animals in deep forest hamlets were said to have cried.
    Nakazono winced, feeling a body hit the pavement five hundred miles away.  Elena cooed, urging him to join them.  Twenty-six suicides in the past seven days and Nakazono had felt them all.  The older girls, their heavier bones pulling them down, were like a cold brush of wind on his cheek—they cried and were quickly gone.
    But the younger girls, as light as leaves, they floated down, caught on sunshine.  Even smaller than Junko, their shoes as neatly placed, they jumped through a hole in his heart.
    Inside his apartment he’d drunk himself blind and begged Elena to silence the leapers and leave him alone.  An accident, an accident—he’d beseeched her.  She’d laughed and promised relief if he would step out on the balcony.
    He’d been late for work every day this week and was late again today.  Just as vulnerable at the station as at his apartment, he took refuge in the open spaces of the park.  Hara had visited his office the day before with three of his men.  He’d started calmly enough, casually listing the names of mutual acquaintances who’d failed to pay substantial debts.  All had either died or disappeared.  After commenting on Nakazono’s ragged appearance, he’d launched into a rambling monologue about the look and smell of bodies burning.
    Nakazono could almost see the flames and feel the heat.  Hara would kill him if he didn’t get the gaijin out of the building, Elena would push him off a balcony if he did.
    His patrolmen ducked their heads as he rumbled into the station.  The desk sergeant looked up.  “There’s a woman waiting for you in your office.”
    A bargirl wanting a favor?  If she’d lift her skirt and bend over his desk he might oblige.  He shook his head sadly.  The way he was feeling he doubted he could get it up.  Something small and ghastly was seated behind his desk.  It waved a bony hand and spoke.  “I’ve been looking for you, Lieutenant.”
    He turned his back and slowly closed the door.  It was just an illusion, another of Elena’s tricks.  He looked over his shoulder, waiting for it to vanish.  There was a cigarette burning in an ashtray and he pulled himself together.  It wasn’t a ghost, just an old woman.  She didn’t look like anything to be afraid of.  “Who are you?” he growled.
    May’s aunt wasn’t about to be intimidated by some cop, especially one as crooked as Nakazono.  She’d asked around after the local yakuza had laughed at her plan and kicked her out.  He was just the kind of man she was looking for—cruel and greedy.  She took a drag on her cigarette.  “I’ve got a proposition for you, Lieutenant.”
    He didn’t have to take this, he didn’t have to listen to some rag-bag country yokel.  Nakazono reached over the desk, picked her up with one hand and slammed her into the straight-backed wooden chair reserved for unimportant visitors.  She squawked and grabbed her purse as he reclaimed his chair.  “For the last time, who are you?”
    “You bastard, you hurt me.”
    “That’s it, you’re outta here.”
    “Hold it.  I’m Elena Takagi’s sister-in-law.  I’ve come all the way from Kochi to see you.”
    “What do you want?”  He winced and slumped deep in his chair.  Now he remembered.  She’d been at Elena’s wake, an unappetizing nuisance clutching at the sleeves of mourners.
    “I hear somebody’s trying to get their hands on my sister-in-law’s building,” she said.  “They’re trying to force her kids to move.”
    “I know.  I’m doing everything I can to prevent it,” he lied, turning his head away.  She smelled like mothballs and dried fish.  He sucked in some fresh air and looked back.  “We’re investigating.  I appreciate your concern but what’s your interest?  It’s her son’s building.”
    She grinned, crimson lipstick caked on jagged teeth.  “But it doesn’t have to be, does it?  That should be my building.  I got a loan all lined up.  All I need is a little help getting rid of the competition.”
    Nakazono groaned.  This was the last thing he needed.  “What makes you think he’ll sell it to you?  Like you said, somebody has already threatened him and it didn’t work.”
    “Well, of course it didn’t.  A broken window ain’t gonna scare nobody.  I gotta much better idea.”
    “What?”
    She reached into her blouse, adjusted her bra and wriggled on the seat.  “What do you think he’d do if his sister disappeared?  I bet he’d sign the papers real quick to get her back.”
    A horrible idea.  Elena’s anger would be terrifying.  She was trying to push him off a building over a harmless bit of vandalism.  What would she do if her daughter was endangered?  He closed his eyes.  “Forget it, that’s kidnapping.”
    “No, it ain’t, at least not exactly.  I’m the brat’s aunt.  The law ain’t gonna do nothin’ to me even if I do snatch her.  If he doesn’t hand over the building and goes to the cops, all I gotta say is I was worried about her and thought she needed a better home life.”
    He laughed, imagining the home life she would provide.  “It’s still kidnapping.”
    “Shit.  What world do you live in, Lieutenant?  He’s a gaijin—nobody believes them.  And what if they do?  The worst that can happen is I gotta apologize and promise never to do it again.  It works every time.”
    Nakazono hesitated.  She was right, the gaijin would do anything to protect his sister.  Maybe the worst was over with Elena, maybe it had all been in his head.  He hadn’t heard a body drop in three hours.  “What’s in it for me?”
    “I’ll give you ten million yen to make sure nobody else gets their hands on the property and another ten million to grab the brat and deliver her to Kochi.”   
    It wouldn’t make a respectable down payment on his gambling debts.  He was crazy to even consider it.  Even if Elena left him alone, nobody double-crossed Michio Hara and lived.  His intercom buzzed.
    “You got Hara-san on line two, Lieutenant.”
    It was all the reminder he needed.  “Tell him I’m out and I’ll get back to him, uhh, later.”
    May’s aunt narrowed her eyes.  “I just finished talking to that bastard.  You’re in on it with him, aren’t you?  You and Hara are trying to steal my building.”
    “And sergeant?”
    “Yes, sir?”
    “Get in here and escort my visitor out.  We’ve finished our discussion.”
    An ashtray whizzed past his ear and bounced off the window.
    “Never mind, Sergeant.  I’ll do it myself.”

    Ex-Staff Sergeant Tokunaga cursed a pair of kids flying down the sidewalk on bicycles.  Their eyes widened and they wrenched their bikes off the curb into Kokusaidori traffic, fleeing his anger and his terrible eyes.  A city bus driver hit brakes and horn, skidding to a stop a foot from the nearest kid’s head.  Tokunaga grinned and kept walking.
    Tokunaga towered over the other pedestrians and if anyone got in his way he shoved them aside.  Not that many did.  One look at that tiny head perched on his broad shoulders and they shied away.  His was not a face that gave comfort.  Watery eyes lay in a skull so thin it appeared defective.  His liver was shot; chronic pain had etched furrows across his forehead and spider tracings down his cheeks.  Stubble covered his jaw.  Hands that trembled from sake made shaving dangerous and he rarely bothered.
    He was getting older, true, but he still worked out every day and knew he was a match for any man that crossed him.  He was bigger than nearly everyone and while his size had been the source of much pride, it had also gotten him into trouble more than once.  As a drill instructor he’d broken a recruit’s neck.  He’d had no qualms about the death, the kid had been a pussy.  But his superiors had disagreed and he’d been cashiered from the army.
    He smiled as he turned off Kokusaidori.  Really, the pencil-necked little bastard had done him a favor.  If they hadn’t thrown him out of the service he never would have discovered the education racket.  After a few months in the stockade and subsequent discharge, he’d bought an old farm on the outskirts of Kochi, slapped a coat of paint on the buildings and rechristened the place Tokunaga's School for Wayward Children.
    He now spent his time teaching children rejected by normal schools.  Some were too smart, some not smart enough and many just too shy.  The word teaching was, of course, employed in its broadest sense—the parents knew their kids were going to get their butts kicked.
    The smart ones were easy to whip into shape—after a few weeks of mistreatment they invariably learned to conceal their advantages.  The dumb ones and the shy ones—shit, Tokunaga couldn’t do a thing with ‘em.  He just kicked their asses for as long as their parents paid the freight and then sent them packing.
    But the discipline business had fallen on hard times recently and now he was in Tokyo, a city he hated.
    Tokunaga turned a corner and his destination was in sight.  He leaned against a wall facing an apartment building and scanned the schoolyard across the street.  A group of girls were kicking a ball around in the corner of the playground watched over by a teacher in her twenties.  He saw a couple of kids that might be May, both fit the rather sodden description provided by her aunt.  It didn’t matter, today was just a reconnaissance mission.
    The crazy bitch had only let him come up from Kochi with her on the condition that he share her bed and provide certain services.  He’d agreed and had put up with her bizarre demands last night but this morning she’d still insisted on enlisting local help in conning her sister-in-law’s son out of his property.  The yakuza had laughed her out of their office and now she was talking with some crooked cop.  He checked his watch.  It was time to get moving, he was supposed to meet her in half an hour and he still wanted to take a look at the building where the kid lived.
    One of the girls crouched down to retrieve the ball and Tokunaga spotted something white, possibly panties.  He crossed the street for a better look and stood just outside the gate. The girl saw him and the ball slipped from her fingers.  It slowly rolled away and nudged the legs of her teacher sitting on stone steps reading a paperback.  She looked up, straight at Tokunaga, and a frown of distaste shadowed her pretty face.
    Tokunaga was halfway down the street by the time she reached the gate.  She could almost hear his thoughts as he hurried away.  Even at thirty yards, the anger and the perversion were deafening, like a jackhammer cracking open pavement.  Her stomach twisted in a knot as she turned back to her girls, trying to smile.

Chapter 19 – 'Chikan' cop goes nuts

A BAR in a covered shopping arcade looked inviting.  A retired welder shouted his name through an open doorway.  Nakazono fought down the urge to drink.  It would take all day to get drunk enough to make the fear go away and would leave him exposed to predators.  There was a better, safer way.
    It took longer than expected to get to Kokusaidori.  His eyes on the balconies overhead, he kept banging into pedestrians.  He gave up on the direct route and zig-zagged across streets and alleys, refusing to walk below any building higher than two stories.
    The thunderous crash of martial music rocked him back on his heels.  He let the glass door swing shut and pushed through a wall of noise and cigarette smoke.  Row after row of pachinko machines roared beneath neon lights as bright and hot as the core of the sun.
    Housewives and hoodlums, bums and businessmen crammed the aisles.  They sat on short stools, shoulder-to-shoulder, back-to-back.  Most appeared drugged, a few brain dead.  All stared straight ahead, their faces less than an inch from the glass-faced machines.  Cigarettes dangled from slack lips beneath varnished eyes.  None flinched as chrome ball bearings clattered and cracked against the glass.
    Nakazono squeezed down an aisle and found a vacant stool between a hooker and a salaryman.  Ass overflowing the stool, knees jammed halfway to his chest, he bought and dumped fistfuls of balls into the feeder tray.  They bounced through a thicket of brass nails and dodged tiny airplane props.  The machine shrieked, numbers flashed red, and the balls plummeted out of sight.  He tried again and this time the machine spit out a few balls as encouragement.
    His neighbors had reached the desired state of nonexistence.  The hooker’s regrets and razor-blade memories were long gone; the salaryman sat released from obligation.  Nothing could penetrate the withering vortex of noise and numbing repetition.
    Not yet, Nakazono.  He still had a ways to go.  The hooker’s breasts were nondescript but near, her long legs angled in his direction.  He brushed against her with his elbow, feeling the scratch of lace beneath her blouse.  She twitched but didn’t blink.  He passed his elbow vigorously over her nipple and leaned down to look under her skirt.
    She’d been at it for hours, coaxing thousands of glittering balls from the machine.  They filled two plastic bins sitting on the ledge next to her purse.  Nakazono shrugged.  Her passivity was boring; a bomb could go off under her ass and she wouldn’t notice.
    There were other sights to see.  Ball girls scampered around the parlor, squeezing down the aisles when summoned by the least somnolent customers.  They cheered the winners and unclogged overworked machines.  Despite the hopes of management, few customers were in any condition to notice the girls’ slinky blue jumpers, their fishnet stockings or their glossy stiletto heels.
    The pachinko parlor worked its magic.  Nakazono forgot the girls and the hooker.  His eyes tunneled as the noise, at first battering and painful, became pure and white.  The balls whizzed round and round, banging and hammering.  His right hand gripped the accelerator like an extension of the machine.  When he ran out of coins he pushed bills into a change machine and kept playing.
    The pressure lifted, rising like smoke.  Nothing could touch him.  The voices, so hot inside his head, cooled and fell silent.  Elena and Hara, debts and death—the parlor’s soothing mania overwhelmed them all.
    He surfaced hours later, feeling purged and refreshed.  The ashtray was overflowing and his wallet lighter by seventeen-thousand yen.  Nakazono grinned.  He was no better at pachinko than mahjongg or blackjack.  But it had been worth every yen, he was thinking clearly for the first time in a week.  Plans bubbled up unbidden, each nastier than the last.
    His respite was short.  A fight broke out in the next aisle.  A woman screamed and a man shouted.  It was Fukuyama, Hara’s second-in-command.  Fukuyama never went anywhere without bodyguards.  There had to be more yakuza nearby.
    Nakazono made it out the back without being seen and started for his apartment.  Halfway home he changed his mind.  Until he could get in touch with Jiro and make his next move the neighborhood didn’t feel safe.  Hoping Hara would get over his nostalgia for lighting fires by morning, he decided to spend the night in a flophouse near Jiro’s hangout.
    It was rush hour and Ueno Station was clogged.  He pushed aboard a Hibiya Line train heading north-east just as the doors were closing.  The train surged ahead and the passengers fell back en masse.  The driver braked and the crowd tipped forward.  Nakazono listened to low moans and startled cries as commuters fore and aft were crushed by a shifting mass of bodies.
    He reached over the back of a teenager and grabbed a strap to steady himself.  Contact was unavoidable; his crotch rubbed against her ass, her apple-flavored hair caressed his lips.  The girl was in a precarious position, forced to stand between the splayed knees of a man fortunate to get a seat.
    Nakazono smiled as the man slid lower, slyly rubbing her legs with his thighs.  She tried to back up but there was no escape.  He ground his cock into her ass and breathed hot in her ear.  She fell forward until the hem of her short skirt touched the man’s chin.  He slumped even lower, content to stare goggle-eyed up her skirt.  She closed her eyes and pretended she was already home.
    Nakazono loved crowded trains.  He often rode just for fun, picking a point on the map and returning by a different route.  He never left the stations.  What was the point?  All the action was on platforms and in the cars.
    While basic mechanics militated against actually getting laid on trains, every man and not a few women thought about it incessantly.  For most it was a harmless, private way to pass the time while commuting to and from work.
    Video stores encouraged their fantasies, displaying entire shelves of porno shot inside mock-up train cars.  Nakazono never missed a new release and never tired of the format—after minimal resistance a strap-hanging woman gives in and puts out.
    Better still were flicks filmed on location aboard moving trains.  The plot remained the same but the action took place on the Yamanote, the Chuo and the Keio lines.  The extras, unpaid and unconsulted, were quite real—docile passengers too tired or frightened to move—they sat with their eyes averted.
    At the end of the cars young hipsters with wispy artistic beards gave direction to extremely beautiful women.  They grunted and sucked behind newspapers held up by yakuza in sunglasses.  Children on bikes waited at railway crossings, gawking at pink breasts flattened against windows sparkling in the sun.
    The majority of men remained disappointed dreamers.  They used fantasy to block out long painful train rides and kept their hands to themselves.  Nakazono did not belong to this group.  He was one of the many hand-roaming, loin-thrusting men who infested every train.
    The train stopped in Iriya and the girl in front of Nakazono elbowed him in the stomach and shoved her way off the train.  He shrugged off her anger and looked around for another prospect as each rider fought to reestablish territory.  A short woman in a tailored suit emerged to his left.  Their hips bumped as the train began to move.  A hint of perfume excited him.  He slid behind her to get in position.
    A clerkish man with narrow shoulders stood in the spot he wanted.  He started to bull him out of the way and stopped.  Like Nakazono, he’d been forced to reach over the woman’s back to reach a strap.  Unlike the cop, his other hand was in view, holding his briefcase to his chest.  As the train swayed and shimmied he leaned away from the woman, trying hard not to touch her with his lower body.  Nakazono let him stay where he was, he might be useful later.
    He liked her beige suit and her perfume, knowing exactly what each signified.  Leaning over her shoulder, he peeked down her blouse.  She was wearing a low-cut silver-gray bra.  It was all the confirmation he needed.  Only women hot to trot wore beige suits, perfume and silver-gray bras.
    She looked like a housewife in her mid-thirties.  He knew the type—randy broads looking for a little fun before going home to their husbands and kids.  Of course, there were a few, dykes, he figured, that resented being molested on trains.  He’d been yelled at many times and slapped twice.
    Both of the slappers had been gaijins and now he left them alone.  Japanese women were far superior—more feminine, he and his cop buddies called it.  They almost always kept their mouths shut and let men be men.  Even if they objected to being fondled—damn, he loved that word—they rarely complained, preferring to endure silently rather than call attention to themselves.
    He brushed her hip with the back of his hand and checked her reflection in the window.  She kept her head bent over a paperback and didn’t move.  The train would arrive at his station soon and he had to hurry.  He skipped the foreplay and dragged her skirt up around her waist.  His hand was busy inside her panties when she yelled for help.
    “Police!” Nakazono shouted, and grabbed the man to his left.  The woman turned as the train pulled into Kita-Senju.  She looked frightened and confused.  Nakazono flashed his shield and frog marched the clerk off the train and out of the station.
    He was still laughing when he reached a motorcycle repair shop three blocks away.  God, how he loved being a policeman.  He’d released his captive with a warning and the dimwit had actually thanked him.
    A van owned by a major TV network was parked by the curb.  The owner of the shop, a biker reformed by wife and child, was working on a pink scooter in the repair bay.  He blinked as Nakazono walked out of the sun into the cool shadows, recognized the cop and went on with his repair job.
    Jiro was in the back office examining a map with a young guy in jeans and black T-shirt.  Neither noticed Nakazono's approach and he didn’t announce his arrival.
    “Where do you want us to start, Yamaguchi-san?” Jiro asked.
    Yamaguchi pointed at the map.  “Anywhere on this section of the expressway.  Just don’t do anything until you see our van and we’ve got our camera rolling.”
    “I still don’t understand exactly what you want us to do.”
    “If I told you what to do it wouldn’t be news, would it?”  He laughed.  “Just be yourselves.”
    Jiro shook his head.  “Can’t you give me some idea of what you expect?  You’re paying us good money and I don’t want any complaints later.”
    “It wouldn’t be ethical to have you work from a script.  Why don’t you just tell me what you and your friends would normally do?”
    Jiro grinned.  “How’s this sound.  First, we would weave our bikes in and out of traffic and scare the shit out of everybody.”
    Yamaguchi nodded happily.  After the land speculator in Asakusa had been snuffed on camera, hints that the network’s execs wanted more live violence had worked their way down the chain of command.  With this punk’s help he was going to give them exactly what they wanted.  “And then what would you do?”
    “Oh, I don’t know,” Jiro sighed.  “It would depend on our mood.  Maybe just make a lot of noise and then go home.”
    “That’s it?”  Yamaguchi looked disappointed.
    “Wait, hold it a minute.  Like I said, it depends on our mood.  Sometimes we surround a car and terrorize the occupants.  You know, windows get smashed, doors get kicked in, shit like that.”
    “You think you might be in that kind of mood tomorrow night?”
    “We can be in any kind of mood you want, Yamaguchi-san.”
    The TV producer folded up the map and shoved it in his jeans.  “There’s just one more thing.  I don’t want anybody physically injured, is that clear?”
    “Sure, no problem.  But your film is gonna be pretty boring without some ass-kicking.”
    The shithead was right.  If it bleeds it leads—the network wanted to see blood.  He tried to figure out a way to make everybody happy.  It was too risky to set up a real assault, it would be his ass if word got out.  He put his arm around Jiro’s shoulders.  “I think you’re right, it needs a little more punch.  Hypothetically speaking, what would you do if a member of my team jumped out of the van and tried to stop you?”
    Jiro shrugged.  “I don’t know.  Go away?  Nothin’?”
    “Let me put it another way.  What if a complete stranger messed with you?”
    “We’d break his head.”
    Yamaguchi smiled.  “Good, that’s more like it.  Now, what would you do if a complete stranger who just happened to be working for me messed with you?”
    Jiro slapped his hand on the desk.  “Whoa, I get it.  You want us to fuck with one of your guys.  Hey, that’s really cool.”
    “I didn’t say that, I didn’t even think it.  Right?”
    “Yeah, right.  But why would anybody be dumb enough to try and be a hero if they knew we were supposed to beat their ass?”
    “Who knows?  My assistant always listens to what I tell him.  Maybe my advice won’t be so good this time.  Everybody makes mistakes.”
    Nakazono stepped into the office and tapped Jiro on the shoulder.  “They certainly do.”
    Jiro jumped.  “Lieutenant!  Uhh, how long you been standing there?”
    “Long enough.  Aren’t you going to introduce us?”
    “Yeah, sure.”  He turned to Yamaguchi.  “This is Lieutenant Nakazono of the Asakusa police.”
    Unfazed by the intrusion, Yamaguchi fished a business card from his wallet and bowed.  “Glad to meet you, Lieutenant.  You saw my van out front?”
    Nakazono nodded.  “Yeah, and I know a criminal conspiracy when I hear one.”
    “Not everything is quite like it sounds,” Yamaguchi said.
    “Is that so?”
    “Yes, and I’d be honored to get together with you to explain what I mean.”
    Nakazono sat on the edge of the desk and lit a cigarette.  “You work for a company with very large resources...”
    “I certainly do and I could bring some of these resources with me for explanation purposes, if you think that might make things clearer.”
    “I think that’s an excellent idea.”
    Yamaguchi bowed again.  “It’s always a pleasure to do business with the police.  You’ll be hearing from me very soon.”
    As the TV van pulled away from the curb, Jiro grabbed a couple of beers from a refrigerator under a rack of tires.  He looked more confident than the last time Nakazono had seen him.
    “You’re going into show business, huh, punk?”  He popped open a Kirin.
    “Yeah, and I’m gonna be a star.”  He laughed and when Nakazono didn’t join him, hesitated.  “I mean, that’s OK with you, isn’t it?”
    Nakazono was feeling magnanimous.  The pachinko and the train ride had made a new man out of him.  “Sure no problem.  We’re both going to get something out of it.”
    Jiro relaxed.  “How come you’re here?  You got another job for me?”
    “Yeah.  I need you to hit the same place again but this time with a little more, uhh, what’d that producer call it?”
    “Punch?”

Chapter 20 — Manny's trip

THERE WERE no shadows, no cool places to rest the eyes.  There was not the slightest breeze and the air had been too long under the sun.  It hissed and crackled in the ears.  Tourists struggled up the slope, their sneakers sticking to the asphalt.  Their cameras were heavy and their noses burned.
    It looked like a West Texas oil derrick with red-lead girders and old-fashioned rivets as big as fists.  The tourists clustered underneath and tried to hide from the sun.  Trees in Shibakoen park leaned away from the artless tower and whispered behind its back.  The oldest recalled a view of the sea, claiming it was less than a mile away.  Saplings wrapped their roots around sewer pipes and looked up.  They confused the sky with the sea, thinking the brown-yellow clouds were waves.
    The girls were lagging behind but Manny didn’t slow down.  It was too hot and he wanted to escape the crowded sidewalk.  Today was an extravaganza, an outing for a man who now possessed a proper visa and a proper job.  He’d asked May and Kiyomi to go with him to a tourist spot, a place where he could buy postcards for his daughters.  They’d agreed but groaned at his choice.
    Manny had no guidebook but his family in Olongapo did.  Purchased at the expense of a bumpy Victory Liner trip to Manila, it was well-thumbed.  They wanted to see this, and that, and everything.  And if they couldn’t afford to go themselves, he had to go for them.  And postcards, too, don’t forget the postcards.
    It wasn’t much to ask, to see through his eyes.  But the most important sights he could never convey.  Springtime.  He would always remember a welder’s black silhouette high in the beams.  A purple twilight and sparks like a waterfall, silver and gold—tumbling down.  A winter’s day.  Sweating underground.  Laying a foundation, listening to Christmas carols high above.  And falling past shoppers, bundling past, his first snowflakes.  If only a little, Manny had helped build the city.  He’d already seen Tokyo from the bottom, today he wanted to climb to the top.
    He heard a sound, angry and barren, like sandals crackling over dead leaves.  A man approached carrying a briefcase and a head filled with noise.  In old Edo, aristocrats had lopped off the heads of commoners to test their blades.  Their descendants—all commoners now—bullied people on sidewalks.  Japanese stepped aside, gaijins eventually resisted.  They ended up with black and blue shoulders and victories at too high a price.
    Manny sighed and moved out of the way.  The salaryman plotted another collision course.  He looked left and right—innocently up and away.  Sidewalk bullies never made eye contact.  They collided and Manny whacked him with his new plaster cast.  The salaryman grunted and staggered forward.  Weak under the sky, in spaces too open, he didn’t rub at the pain until reached the subway.
    The girls caught up and they took the elevator to the tower’s viewing area.  Manny bought postcards and joined May and Kiyomi at the rail.  “I can’t believe you two have never been up here.”
    May stopped fiddling with a coin-operated telescope.  “This place is only for tourists.”
    “But you can see the whole city.”
    Kiyomi leaned on the rail and looked out.  “Ugly.”
    “It says here,” he waved a postcard, “that this is taller than the Eiffel Tower.”
    “Totally ugly,” May repeated, and both girls laughed.
    Manny left them at the rail and circled the platform.  It was a waste of time, the view was the same from every direction.  The horizon was hard to find.  Concrete buildings merged with a dirty gray sky.  Like weeds in a sidewalk, patches of green grew in cracks between neighborhoods and cities.
    The girls were waiting on a bench drinking Cokes when he finished the circuit.  “Well?” Kiyomi asked.
    “It’s big.”
    They nodded, unimpressed.
    “Are you feeling all right?” he asked Kiyomi.
    “I’m fine.”
    “The altitude doesn’t make your head hurt or anything?”
    She smiled.  “Only teachers make my head hurt.”
    “I can’t even see the scar, your hair hides it.”
    “Does it itch?” she asked.
    “What?”
    “Your arm.  My scar is itchy.”
    He glanced at the cast embellished with the names of his friends.  “Sometimes.”
    “It serves you right,” May admonished.  “If you hadn’t fought back you wouldn’t have been hurt.”
    The bosozoku had attacked the club twice.  The first time they’d driven out the customers and destroyed May’s prized video games.  Manny had been in the kitchen and May had thrown herself in front of Sam when he’d started after them.  No one had been hurt and the games replaced.  Nakazono had investigated the crime personally, promised action and had done nothing.  Property agents scenting a kill had visited or called every day since.
    The second attack, just a week ago, had resulted in serious injury.  Jiro had jumped a college kid leaving the club late one evening.  The rest of the gang had smashed the palm-tree sign and front window.  Sam and Manny had stopped the beating but not before metal pipes had shattered Manny’s arm and Sam’s nose.  An ambulance had taken away the student and the owner of the bicycle shop had driven Manny and Sam to the hospital in her van.
    “Are they going to come back?” Kiyomi asked.
    “I hope not,” he answered, certain they would.  “Sam’s lawyer has filed a complaint against Nakazono.”
    “That won’t do any good,” May said.  “Nakazono’s crazy and the rest of the police don’t care.  We should just sell the stupid building and go somewhere else.”
    Manny looked at Kiyomi.  She was as surprised as he.  “I thought you said we should never give up?”
    “Well, I’ve changed my mind,” she snapped.  “I can do that, you know.  I don’t want to stay here anymore if Helen’s going to leave.”
    Another surprise.  “Where’s she going?  Back to Canada?”
    “Almost.  She said she’d moving to Shinjuku at the end of the month.”
    “Why?”
    May put her chin in her hands and stared at the floor.  “I don’t know.”
    “What about the band?  Now that Kiyomi’s better I thought you guys were doing really well.”
    Kiyomi laughed.  “What a liar.”
    She’d lasted three days on the drums, joyfully releasing energy stored up during her convalescence and creating a prodigious racket.  May had loved the new sound but not the neighbors.  Sam had walked into the club on the fourth day carrying a new electric bass.  Kiyomi had switched instruments cheerfully, happy just to be part of the team.
    “You’re not so bad,” he encouraged.  “You’re hands are just a little bit too small.  We have to wait until you grow some.”
    May had to translate Manny’s comment and Kiyomi’s reply.  “She said maybe Helen’s leaving because she plays the bass as badly as the drums.”
    “That’s not it,” he said.
    “That’s what I told her.  Do you think it’s something I did?”  May looked hurt, as if she actually believed such a thing possible.
    Manny didn’t want to talk to May about Sam and Helen.  She loved them both and would try hard not to take sides.  But she was only thirteen.  It seemed to much to ask; she deserved better.  “If Helen leaves it won’t be because of anything you did,” he said.  “I can promise you that.”
    “How about Sam?” Kiyomi asked.
    “What do you mean?”  May’s voice rose sharply and people at the rail turned and stared.  “Sam wouldn’t do anything bad to Helen.  Anyway, they talk all the time.”  She turned to Manny for reassurance.  “I haven’t noticed anything different.  Have you?”

    Manny leaned over the counter as the band finished their last song of the evening.  “Kiyomi sounds better tonight.  I think she’s improving.”
    Sam stopped fooling with the bandage on his nose.  “She has to, she’s got nowhere to go but up.”
    Three drunk gaijins shouted and Sam crossed the club to take their order.  Emulating the Japanese, two had ties knotted rakishly around the foreheads.  The third snapped his red suspenders and stretched, nearly falling out of his chair.  He recovered and ordered another round.
    “And do me a favor, will you bud?”
    Sam stopped and turned.  If the guy made another crack about his nose he’d strangle him with his suspenders.  “What’s that?”
    “Ask the blonde if she wants to join us for a drink.”
    Not a chance.  “You’d better ask her yourself,” he said, walking away.  He wished they’d give him an excuse to throw them out.  He’d been trying to think of a reason since Helen had stepped on stage.  They hadn’t taken their eyes off her in the last hour.  But he doubted if May or even Manny would consider thought crimes sufficient provocation to chuck them into the street.
    He glanced at Helen.  So many questions, one after another, each more crucial than the last.  A month ago he could have asked.  So easy, between friends, with nothing riding on the answers.  Tonight, it was impossible.  Brick by brick, the walls had gone up.  The less they talked, the less they had to say.  The less they trusted.  Comments on the weather or the time of day seemed dangerous.
    Helen had told him she’d be moving at the end of the month and had asked to get out of her lease.  She wanted to get away from him, from his disappointment.  He’d told himself it was for the best.
    May hadn’t agreed.  She’d cried and asked why.  The truth, when examined through her eyes, left him vulnerable to accusation.  Impatient, childish, selfish.  He was all these things and more.  Confused and afraid of being hurt, unwilling to try.
    May’s mother was dead and now her friend would soon be gone.  Sam’s cool logic—love me or leave—was driving her away, it could not be denied.  Not that he was cruel or rude or even unfriendly.  It was Helen’s decision to go, she was the one running away.  He told himself this over and over, hoping repetition would make it true.
    He watched the guy in red suspenders approach Helen at the other end of the bar.  “She wants too much, she expects too much,” Sam whispered, and Manny looked up.
    “What?”
    He shook his head.  “Nothing, just talking to myself.”
    Helen stuck out her chin and walked stiffly across the room to join the three men at their table.
    “Instead of talking, you should start doing,” Manny advised.
    Sam ignored him.  They’d argued when Manny had brought May back from Tokyo Tower yesterday.  He doubted his explanation would sound any better tonight.
    The three gaijins were leaning forward in their chairs, attending to her every desire.  “You want me to wait on them?” Manny offered, trying to help.
    “No.  It’s my job, I’ll do it.”
    Helen made introductions he didn’t want to hear.  They were currency traders, she said.  He didn’t listen as they recited their names, they didn’t listen when he mentioned his.  They turned back to Helen, she stared at Sam.  Her eyes were angry.  “Why don’t you join us?”
    “No thanks.”
    Red suspenders emptied his glass.  His natural rudeness was exacerbated by alcohol.  He snapped his fingers at Sam.  “Four more beers.”
    Sam hesitated, trying to control his anger and growing jealously.
    “You’re the waiter, aren’t you?”
    Helen winced at the arrogance but remained silent.  Sam walked away.
    Manny had the order ready on the counter.  Was she trying to hurt him?  She’d never accepted a customer’s invitation before.  Her distaste for the tribe of foreign financiers now plaguing Tokyo was well known.  He wanted to shake her, to ask her what she was doing.  Instead, he delivered the beer without a word and retreated to the counter.
    Manny pushed a can of Budweiser across the bar.  “Like I said, you should do something.”
    “What?” Sam shouted, loud enough to turn heads in the corners of the club.  He lowered his voice.  “Exactly what would you have me do?”
    “I don’t know.  Almost anything would be better than sitting there looking like a wounded puppy.”  He nodded in Helen’s direction.  “Look at her.”
    “Yeah?”
    “What do you see?”
    “I don’t know...  Helen and three jerks?”
    Manny shook his head.  “You gotta learn to look better than that.  I see Helen talking to three guys I know she doesn’t like.  I see Helen trying to make something happen.”
    “So what?  All I see is a woman trying to make me feel bad and I’ve seen that before.  I didn’t like it then and I don’t like it now.”
    Manny grabbed the beer out of his hand.  He leaned down until their eyes were just inches apart.  “You know, you can be a real ass sometimes.  What makes you think you’ve got all the answers?  How can you possibly know what she’s thinking when you haven’t even tried to understand her?”

Chapter 21 — Helen's big night

IT WAS two a.m.  Helen rolled over and tried to go back to sleep.  Instead of sheep, she counted the days left in her apartment.  It brought her no pleasure.  She didn’t want to move to Shinjuku or anywhere else.  The idea of leaving was far more disturbing than she’d counted on.  She told herself she would make new friends, that she could come back and visit anytime.  But she didn’t want new friends, she liked the ones she had—May and Manny, and despite himself, Sam.
    There was something else she hadn’t counted on—the desertion of her fantasies.  No longer could she lie in bed and script conversations of chance meetings.  It just didn’t work anymore, no matter how hard she tried.  John’s voice, once a roaring in her heart, was gone.  No more could she pray for his repentance, salvation and return.  It was startling and a little disappointing to discover how quickly forever could pass.
    Helen gave up on sleep and got out of bed.  She pulled on jeans, T-shirt and desert boots, stepped out on the balcony and laughed at herself.  What the hell am I supposed to think about now?  Everyone needs a lullaby.  What will mine be?
    She’d held on far too long.  It was understandable.  Like drugs or alcohol, unrequited love had occupied a lot of space.  However destructive her obsession might have been, it had been hers and hers alone.  It was scary to look inside and see such emptiness now.  Vacancy.  Rooms for Rent.  She felt panicky and alone.  At four in the morning, of course, but even in sunlight.
    The night was warm enough to go without a sweater.  She left the building and walked toward Ueno Station.  The streets were deserted beyond the borders of Asakusa and its bars.  In an alley near the station, a dozen bums, men and women, were rolled up in futons gray with dirt and grease.  Their shoes were placed neatly beside shopping bags containing their possessions.
    One of the lumps in the middle of the row groaned and sat up.  He shook his head to clear it of bad dreams.  Helen leaned against the back wall of a tonkatsu restaurant.  She watched as he pulled a bottle of sake from his bedding and drank.  His hair was very long and streaked with gray.  It was as filthy as his San Francisco 49ers sweatshirt.
    Taro reached into the bag, retrieved a pair of glasses with black plastic frames and placed them on his face.  It was a face of good bones and intelligence.  He looked about fifty but alcoholics aged fast.  He was probably closer to thirty-five.  No one, least of all Taro, believed he was the victim of a disease.  He was simply a failure and an embarrassment.  It was his fault.
    Helen approached, nodded at a pack of Mild Sevens and asked for a cigarette.  She wasn’t afraid.  The homeless were passive, they knew their place.  And she remembered this one, she’d given him small change many times.  Taro held out the pack, grinned, and made a show of lighting her cigarette.
    In his world, constricted by disease and circumstance, there were two kinds of people—the dangerous and the indifferent.  Helen was the exception.  While it was too late for happiness or even hope, she provided a soft exotic distraction.  Alcoholics literally died of fright.  When she passed by, until her footsteps faded, he forgot to be afraid.
    Even still, he became nervous when she gestured that she wanted to sit.  He pushed out a corner of his futon uncertainly, embarrassed that she should sit on such a dirty thing.  His agitation eased when she sat and began to talk to herself.  Everybody he knew talked to the moon, garbage dumpsters, stray cats, to themselves.  Her voice was soothing and he closed his eyes.  She spoke English, words he’d never learned.  But instructed daily in the dialogue of distress, he nodded his head and understood.
    “I lied,” she said.  “I lied when I told him I wasn’t attracted to him.  It was his fault.  He wasn’t listening.  He should have heard the lie, he should have known I needed more time.  What did he expect?  That I was just going to toss myself into his arms and we’d lived happily ever after.”
    Helen poked Taro in the side with her elbow.  “And what’s wrong with friends?  That’s a good place to start if you want my opinion.”
    The blonde woman was looking straight at him.  He heard anxiety in her voice, understood an answer was required.  “Gambatte,” he shyly advised, and tried to pacify her with another cigarette.
Helen lit it herself and looked at him as if he was crazy.  “Keep trying?  Is that all you’ve got to say?  What do you think I’ve been doing?  And what about him?  He’s the one with all the unreasonable expectations; he’s the one who said he doesn’t want to be my friend.”
    A woman three bodies away cackled and Taro grunted.
    Helen shook her head.  “That’s not true.  My expectations have been perfectly reasonable.  All I wanted was a little time.  There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?”  She leaned back and crossed her arms over her chest.  All the homeless were awake now.  They leaned on their elbows, their heads turned toward the center watching her intently.
    “Hey, don’t look at me like that,” she complained.  “I don’t know why I sat with those guys tonight.  Maybe I just felt like it.  It had nothing to do with Sam.  If you or him or anybody else thinks it did, well it’s all in your imagination.”
    Taro held out the sake.  Helen made a face and pushed it away.  “You’re just taking his side because you’re a man.  All right, maybe, just for the sake of argument, let’s say I was trying to make him uncomfortable.  Why shouldn’t I?  When I told him I was going to move, he didn’t even blink.  He could have at least refused and held me to my rental contract.”
    “Gambatte,” Taro whispered again, and voices up and down the row echoed his sentiment.  Helen ground out the cigarette and muttered, “OK, you win.  I’ll try not to expect so much.  But this is his last chance.  If he doesn’t get with the program this time, I’m outta here.”

    Jiro heard a woman’s voice as he strutted past the alley.  He saw something impossible out of the corner of his eye and stopped.  A gaijin, a good-looking blonde, and she was sitting in the middle of a group of bums talking to herself.  He slipped behind a row of trash bins and moved in for a closer look.
    Lit by a low-watt bulb hanging over the back door of the restaurant, her face was beautiful.  Sitting by her side, so close their shoulders touched, was a ratty boozer with long dirty hair.  Jiro watched in amazement as the drunk offered her a cigarette and the blonde actually put it between her lips.
    He smiled.  It was only to be expected.  Everything was going his way.  His televised escapade on the expressway had made him a star nationwide.  In top form, he’d tied up traffic for six kilometers and kicked the crap out of the TV producer’s editorial assistant as planned.  Yesterday, a senior member of the Sumiyoshi-kai, his arm around a well-known politician, had recognized him on the street.  He’d hinted that Jiro would soon be inducted into the gang and the cabinet minister had smiled his congratulations.
    Jiro struggled to read his watch.  He was supposed to meet Nakazono at three a.m. at a construction site two blocks away.  It was too dark to see the time but he knew if he didn’t get moving he was going to be late.  A month ago the thought of keeping Nakazono waiting would have been terrifying.  Tonight, he didn’t give a fuck.  If rumors were true, the cop had gotten himself into some serious shit.
    Jiro’s ship had finally come in and Nakazono’s was taking on water.  He had no intention of letting the cop take him down with him.  But Nakazono had promised a million yen for an hour’s work.  It was easy money and he wouldn’t have to split it with his gang.
    Helen sat quietly, listening to the passage of occasional taxis and the whisper of the homeless.  A siren wailed nearby and then began to fade, skirting marshaling yards lined with silver trains silently waiting for morning.  She heard the clickity-clack of a woman’s sandals enter the alley.
    It wasn’t a woman, just another punk wearing his girlfriend’s house slippers.  She didn’t have time to laugh.  He stopped and crouched down, his face just three feet away.  His trousers, of vinyl or leather, gleamed dully in the weak light.  He wore a heavy chrome bracelet on his right wrist; his face was thin and shadowed.
    Jiro grinned.  Disturbed, dimwitted women excited him.  Even more defenseless than most, they made perfect victims.  You could do anything to them.  Tokyo was a big city and many fell through the cracks.  He’d had his share but this would be his first gaijin.  She had to be nuts and loose.  Nobody normal would sit and talk with these useless drunks.
    “Get lost, asshole,” Helen said.  There was little anger in her voice, she was tired and still thinking of Sam and May.  The punk was typical of his breed, skinny and effeminate.  He looked wired and twitchy, with a slight methedrine sheen to his skin.  She smelled booze on his breath as Taro flinched by her side and leaned away from the intruder.
    Jiro liked the gaijin’s voice.  It was low and sexy, not at all coy or shrill like the girls he was accustomed to.  Fucking her would be good.  Right up against the wall.  She would like it like that.  All gaijin women were whores and whores weren’t choosy.  He pulled out his wallet and flipped a couple of thousand yen into her lap.  “Let’s go,” he demanded.
    “Go fuck yourself,” Helen snapped, switching to English.  She crumpled up the money and threw it at him.
    Shock contorted Jiro’s face.  “You dumb bitch,” he shouted, and tried to slap her.  Helen ducked and jumped to her feet.  She slammed her knee in his crotch as he tried to grab her by the throat.  His fingers caught in her T-shirt and ripped it open as he fell away gasping.
    No one was more surprised than Taro when he came to Helen’s defense.  Still tangled in his futon, he stood up and screamed at Jiro.  His knees were weak and his head hurt but he wasn’t afraid.  He’d been beaten many times before.  Physical pain was something he was used to.
    The inside fear, the reasonless panic, was far more threatening.  If Helen was hurt she might never come back.  He would never hear her voice again, never feel safe, if only for a moment.  He screamed at Jiro to leave and waved his sake bottle.
    The pain in his groin nearly brought Jiro to his knees.  He forgot Nakazono and the Sumiyoshi-kai, he forgot about sex.  His head seemed to burst with humiliation, pain and rage.  Hurt the bitch, hurt her bad.  Leave her dead in this fucking alley.  But first the wino, do him first.  He yanked a metal pipe from his back pocket and brought it down on Taro’s head.
    The homeless sounded like frightened angry children.  They screamed and cried as Taro tried to ward off the blow.  He brought his arms up to protect his head; the pipe shattered the bottle and crashed into his collarbone.  He fell away, stunned by the pain.
    Helen leaped on Jiro’s back and wrapped her arms around his throat.  He yelled as her nails dug deep into his cheeks.  She cried out as he tried to shake her off, bit him on the ear as he backed up and crushed her into the wall.  She lost her grip and fell to the pavement, unable to scream, unable to breathe.  Blood dripped from his torn face, it splattered her cheek.  He leaned over with a knife in his hand.
    Jiro screamed.  His ankle burned.  Pain raced up his leg and lodged in his stomach.  He turned gray, then white; sweat poured off his face.  He stumbled back, trying to face his attacker.  Taro slashed at his other Achilles tendon with the broken bottle.  Both tendons severed, Jiro’s feet felt like Jell-O.  He was already going into shock as he fell forward and landed next to Helen.  Blood splashed her face, hands, chest.
    A quarter-moon rolled across the sky and stalled over the alley.  The night noises faded, all Helen could hear was Jiro whimpering, pleading for help.  The homeless, their futons draped over their shoulders like thick shawls, shuffled forward casting long moon-shadows.  He cried out again and again as they poked and prodded his body with dirty fingers and toes.
    An emaciated woman, young and light as silk, smiled angelically and stroked his forehead.  He felt her touch and stopped threatening to return and kill them all.  Helen turned away as the woman wrapped a purple cord around his neck.  A cloud covered the moon, leaving Jiro to strangle in darkness and Helen to walk home alone, blood drying on her breasts.

    The wind was wild and strong, twisting between peaks of buildings five hundred stories high.  It forced Nakazono back on his heels, changed direction and tried to push him to his death.
    Just as he was beginning to wonder what he was doing perched so dangerously high, a hand crept over his shoulder.  He groaned as it stroked his chest.  Blood dripped from porcelain fingers.  A dark stain spread over his shirt front, ran down his stomach and disappeared into his trousers.
    A voice whispered, “Jump.”
    Dry cracked lips kissed his neck.  A hand wrapped itself around his face and long nails punctured his cheek.  The hand pushed his head around, forcing him to look.  He screamed.
    Elena’s face was gray and bloodless, her lips blue.  She laughed as her hair, long and witchy white, tore at his eyes and left him blind.  He begged for mercy; she granted his wish, gently shoving him off the ledge.  He fell willingly, praying he would hit bottom soon.
    Lt. Nakazono jerked awake.  His hands were shaking, his face was drenched with sweat.  He wiped it away but a sense of impending doom was harder to remove.  Deep down and growing, it was out of reach.  He groaned and checked his watch.  It was nearly four.  He’d slept for an hour.  The cab of the dump truck was cramped.  His back hurt and his legs were stiff.  He swore softly.  Jiro had stood him up.  The punk would pay for it but that wouldn’t solve his immediate problem.
    Nakazono was an urban creature and hadn’t driven in years.  He wasn’t sure he remembered how.  On the rare occasions a car was required, a uniformed patrolman served as chauffeur.  Steering a tiny Honda through the narrow streets would be a challenge.  Negotiating the same streets in a truck the size of a small house would be a miracle.
    If he could get it started.  A confusing array of levers and buttons mocked him.  It took ten minutes of experimentation but Nakazono got the truck off the construction site with only minor damage.  He was lucky it was early morning.  If there had been any traffic at all he wouldn’t have made it half a block.  As it was, he sideswiped three parked cars and flattened a row of bicycles before he got the hang of it.
    One of the bikes was still caught under the frame and a bumper clipped from a luxury sedan dragged behind the truck.  Nakazono swerved to miss a body in the middle of the street as he turned off Asakusadori.  The drunk slept on, undisturbed by the scream of tearing metal and sparks exploding from the undercarriage.
    The cop considered stopping and trying to free the bumper and the bike but was afraid he wouldn’t get the truck started again.  He blundered ahead, praying he wouldn’t run into one of his own patrolmen.  While stupid and lazy, even those fools might notice something was amiss.  An explanation would be difficult.
    He managed to stop the truck two blocks from the Crazy Noise without killing the engine.  The club was dark.  Karaoke music seeped out of a handful of upstairs bars but the street was empty.  He fought with the shift lever.  The gears screamed, a trio of temple cats wailed in sympathy and a light went on above the bicycle shop.
    Nakazono grinned and pulled a ski mask over his head.  If someone witnessed the attack so much the better.  It would teach the neighborhood pricks a well-deserved lesson.  He patted the revolver heavy in his jacket and grunted, almost sad there would be no chance to use it.  No one would get in his way, there weren’t any heroes left these days.
    The dump truck charged down the street spewing thick clouds of black exhaust.  Leaning over the wheel, roaring over the engine, the cop cursed his enemies.  He filled his head with images of yakuza torn and mutilated; he imagined Jiro begging for mercy.  Anything to keep from thinking of Sam, May and their bitch of a mother.  He wasn’t sure if she could read his thoughts but he didn’t want to take a chance.  The witch was a tenacious defender of her brood and could pop up anywhere at any time.
    With only a hundred yards to go, he remembered a crucial detail.  Intimidation was an art.  There was a right way and a wrong way to ram a shop or home with a dump truck.  The pros backed into the target to avoid injury to themselves.  The amateurs hit it head-on and were often found in the morning impaled on the steering column or lying slashed to ribbons on the hood of the truck.
    Nakazono’s foot slipped from the accelerator and the truck began to slow.  He moaned in frustration and pounded the dash.  The truck rolled to a stop fifty yards from the front door of the club.  He lowered his head onto the steering wheel and tried to compose himself.  It’s OK.  All I gotta do is turn this fucker around.  It’ll only take a second.  I just need to catch my breath.
    “Hey, you!”
    Nakazono jerked.  Someone was running toward the truck.  He cursed and fumbled for the door handle.  A dog barked, the cats resumed their screeching and shades flapped up in the White Rose Hotel.  A shadow ran out of the darkness and took shape under a street light.
    His eyes went wide and locked open in terror.  His heart froze and he pissed his pants.  There was blood on her face and hands.  Angry white hair streamed far behind.  She grew larger and larger and raised her bloody hands.  His foot slipped off the brake and hit the accelerator.  The dump truck leaped forward.  It swerved out of control, missed the front of the Crazy Noise and crashed into a corner of the building.
    Nakazono’s face bounced off the steering wheel.  He felt something wet run down the inside of his ski mask and shook his head, trying to clear a roaring in his ears.
    The witch shouting, the witch running.  Closer and closer.  He grabbed the door handle again.  It wouldn’t budge; the impact had jammed the door shut.
    Nakazono was halfway out the window when she caught up with him.
    “You bastard,” Helen screamed, her fingers flying at his face, trying to rip off the mask.  He lashed out with a fist, driving her back, and tumbled out the window to the pavement six-feet below.
    Helen should have ran for help or simply ran.  Instead she leaped on top of the cop as he lay stunned face down in the gutter.  Again, she grabbed for his mask.  He screamed, bucked her off, and scrambled to his feet.
    Nakazono was shaking with shock and terror as he tried to get away.  Her screams were endless, like curses cast on the wind.  Unable to think, barely able to walk, he staggered back and fell into the wall of the Crazy Noise.
    The witch was on him in an instant, crawling across the pavement, clutching at his legs with bloody hands.  He tried to run, to shake her off.  Still she held on, still she wailed.
    There was no more time.  He pulled out his revolver and placed the muzzle against the top of her head.  Could a police-issue bullet kill a witch?  He didn’t think so but he had nothing to lose.  If it didn’t kill her it might at least shut her up for awhile.  He pulled the trigger and the gun jumped in his hand.

Chapter 22 — Torturing Manny

HELEN FELT the muzzle of the gun and jerked.  The bullet went into the macadam and she rolled under the truck.  She heard Nakazono curse, his breath rasping in his throat.  His shoes scraped across the pavement and he groaned as he leaned down, peering under the truck.  Helen scurried back into the darkness, away from the wavering muzzle of the revolver.  His eyes would adjust any second and that would be the end.
    A shout turned her head.  And then another.  First Sam, then May.  Feet running toward her, feet running away.  When she looked back the gun was gone.

    First light, with May, once again, peaceful in her bed.
    Six stories below, a seventy-year-old cook emptied his slop outside the Chinese restaurant and kicked at a dog.  It snarled and backed away.
    The temple gate had just opened across the street.  An old woman rang the offering bell.  It rattled dull and tired, as if bored with her tedious prayers for the dead.  The bell pleaded for the sun to warm its copper and for a supplicant of greater originality.
    The cook wiped his hands on his whites and grinned at Helen.  Traffic noise from Kokusaidori drowned out his greeting.  Afraid to step away from the safety of the sidewalk, he waved.  She nodded and gave him a weak smile.
    It would have been good to talk to Helen, to tell her he was sorry, but there were too many cops.  Cops made his head ache and upset his stomach.  He retreated into the restaurant, let the door swing shut and counted the uniforms.  He lost track at nine and started again.  They crawled over the street, measuring and drawing arcane symbols on the macadam.  One circled shattered bricks on the building in yellow chalk, another photographed skid marks from half a dozen angles.
    So many cops.  The cook grimaced.  He wondered if it was because he was old and naturally more timid.  It seemed like there were more cops these days.  Certainly they were taller and stronger.  Everywhere he went, everywhere he looked, he saw them.  They saw him, too, staring as he walked by, fingering their radios and guns and clubs.  They watched everybody, peering in innocent windows, knocking on blameless doors.
    The macadam was rapidly filling with chalk and beginning to look like a child’s drawing.  The cook laughed.  If they weren’t so dangerous, the cops would be funny.  Scurrying, whispering, trying so hard to look busy.  Only the dumbest crooks had ever tripped over their chalk, none had been lassoed by their measuring tapes.
    If real detective work was an alien concept, oppression was well understood.  People toed the line in a city with a cop under every bed.  The cook watched Helen standing in the middle of the street talking to Nakazono’s sergeant.  The cop stood close, glaring at her.  He couldn’t hear through the window glass but he knew the voice would be rough and angry.
    “I already told you,” Helen said.  “I didn’t see his face.  He was wearing a mask.”
    “Then what makes you think it was Lt. Nakazono?  It could have been anybody.  You shouldn’t make accusations without proof.  This is Japan.  You gaijins think you can do anything.”  He took a step forward, forcing Helen to back up.  “Unless you’ve got some real evidence you’d better shut up and mind your own business.”
    Helen turned her back and walked away.  The cop was an idiot but he was right about one thing.  She’d better shut up.  One more word and there was a good chance he’d drag her down to the station.
    Ten feet away her temper flared.  This asshole wasn’t taking her seriously.  Twice she’d almost been killed.  First by Jiro and then by Nakazono.  Sam was wrong.  She hadn’t been brave.  She’d been stupid, absolutely crazy to chase after him.  But it had happened so fast and she’d been so angry.
    She whirled and shouted, resorting to English.  “Look it, you jerk, I know it was Nakazono.  I could smell him, I looked him right in the eye.  He shot at me for Christ’s sake.  Everybody in the neighborhood heard it.”  She waved at the patrolmen.  “Instead of scribbling all over the street, why don’t you check his gun?  Why don’t you at least see if he was hurt last night, you dumb motherfucker?”
    Helen took a step toward the sergeant.  He shouted and his hand went to his club.  Sam jumped between them.  She bit her tongue and crossed the street, watching angrily as Sam tried to mollify the cop.  He bowed, he scraped.  He humiliated himself to keep her safe.  The sergeant shouted until he regained his face.  Sam took the abuse meant for Helen.
    She couldn’t watch anymore.  Clouds caught her eye.  Impetuous, early morning risers, they wouldn’t last.  They didn’t have the strength to face the sun.  The cop turned, yelled orders at his men, jumped in his patrol car and drove off.  Helen felt as weak as the clouds.  Sam walked into the temple and sat on a stone bench.  He put his head in his hands and closed his eyes.  She watched and wanted to cry.  The night had been too long, the morning too painful.
    An hour later, the last of the police had disappeared and the cook finally relaxed.  He stepped across the empty street and rang the temple bell.  It sounded loud and clear, happy with the hot sun and cook’s prayer for the living.
    Sam watched as Helen poured out two cups of coffee.  “You didn’t tell them about the guy that attacked you at the station.”
    She shook her head.  “There wasn’t any reason.  He’s dead.  It’d only get those bums in trouble.  It wasn’t their fault.  If they’d let him live he would have come back and hurt them.”
    “Are you sure it was one of the kids that attacked me and Manny?”
    “Absolutely.  He was as close to me as I am to you right now.”  Her hands shook as she picked up the cup.  She carefully set it back down as a tear slid down her cheek.  “God, Sam, the way he died...”
    Helen lowered her hands to the counter, resting her cheek on her arms.  Her blonde hair flowed over the counter, hiding her eyes.  Sam watched her cry, reached out and hesitantly touched her shoulder.  Helen leaned back and stroked his cheek.  “I’m sorry I yelled at that cop,” she whispered.  “You’re the brave one, not me.  I know how much that cost you.  I won’t forget, I promise.”
    He pulled her close and held on tight.  “And I’m sorry for just about everything.  I was scared and stupid.  I really do need a friend.  Please don’t leave.”

    “Please tell me how to say hanabi in English.”
    “Fireworks,” Manny translated, his mouth full of toast.  “How come?”
    His landlady smiled.  “Are you going to enjoy the fireworks, Manny-san?”
    He chased the toast with hot green tea.  “What fireworks?”
    Composing her sentence had exhausted Nobuyo Kojima and she switched to Japanese.  “The Sumidagawa fireworks.  It’s the best in Tokyo.  Millions of people come to Asakusa to watch every year.  You should go.”
    Manny nodded.  “Maybe I will.  When is it?”
    “In a few weeks.”
    “Are you going?”
    “Of course.  I always go.  Maybe we can go together?”
    A sharp knock on the door brought a frown to the old lady’s face.  “Too early in the morning to be so noisy and rude.”  She started to get to her feet.
    “I’ll get it,” Manny said, padding across the tatami in his socks.  “You finish your breakfast Kojima-san.  It’s probably one of those newspaper subscription guys.  I’ll get rid of him.”
    Nobuyo munched on a piece of seaweed, happy she’d chosen her boarder so wisely.  Her warm thoughts were brought to an abrupt halt by shouts from the entryway.
    Thin wooden slats splintered and paper shredded.  Manny’s body flew through the delicate shoji screen separating the living room from the hallway.  He landed face down on the tatami and slid across the floor.
    Nakazono jumped through the shoji and kicked Manny in the side as he tried to get to his feet.  He ignored the old woman’s screams and slapped on a pair of handcuffs.
    “Get out, get out,” Nobuyo cried, crawling across the tatami to help.  “What are you doing?  Leave us alone.  We haven’t done anything.”  She flailed at Nakazono, trying to make him stop.
    The cop slapped her down, shouting that Manny was under arrest for robbery.  She didn’t listen and charged again.  He hit her harder, driving her head into the low breakfast table.  She collapsed on the floor and lay stunned.  Nakazono dragged Manny from the room.  Green tea ran off the edge of the table and poured down the front of her purple kimono.  Helpless tears filled her eyes.

    May paced across the floor and shouted for the tenth time.  “We’ve got to do something.”
    Helen held an ice pack to a bruise on Nobuyo’s forehead and asked, “Are you sure you don’t want to see a doctor, Kojima-san?  It wouldn’t hurt to have it checked.”
    Nobuyo pushed her hand away and shook her head.  “I’m OK.”  She looked at May.  “Sit down, young lady.  You’re making me nervous and you’re not helping Manny at all.”
    May started to object.  “But we can’t just—”
    Sam set down the phone, picked up his sister and plunked her down in the booth across from Helen and Nobuyo.  “She’s right, May.  You’ve got to try and be calm.  We’ll get Manny out, I promise.”
    “What did Nakazono say?”
    “I couldn’t get through to him.  The desk sergeant said Manny’s being held for questioning.  That Seven-Eleven on the next block was robbed last night.  They said he did it.”
    “Bullshit.  It’s just another one of Nakazono’s—”
    May leaped out of the booth and raced for the door.  “No way!”
    The door slammed and Sam raised his hands in frustration.  “God knows what she might do.  I’d better go after her.”
    Helen shook her head.  “She’ll be all right.  She isn’t going to do anything to crazy.  Maybe we should call the Philippine Embassy.  They might be able to help.”
    “I’ve already called them.  They said they’d look into it but they didn’t sound very hopeful.  The cops can hold anybody without bail or arraignment for twenty-three days.  No records are kept.”
    “Why three weeks?”
    “I guess it gives the prisoner enough time to confess.  If he doesn’t, the cops think they haven’t done their job.  The conviction rate is ninety-nine percent.  Only guilty people are tried or so it would seem.”
    “What about your lawyer.”
    “I’ll call her but don’t get your hopes up.  Lawyers are barred from interrogations.  The prisoners are on their own.”
    May rushed back into the club just as Sam hung up the phone.  “I knew it,” she yelled.  “I talked to the owner of the store.  Maejima-san said she doesn’t know who the robber was.  The guy was wearing one of those big motorcycle helmets.  She told the cops that he sounded gaijin but she wasn’t even sure of that.  She was real mad at the police.  They kept trying to get her to swear the robber was Filipino and when she wouldn’t do it, they were really rude.”
    Sam pulled May into the booth.  “Well, kid, I think it may be time to give Nakazono what he wants.  What do you think?”
    May looked confused.  “You mean he arrested Manny just to get you to sell the building?  Can he really do that?”
    Sam nodded.  “Cops can do almost anything.  Look how many times we’ve reported him and nothing has happened.  Helen is sure he was driving the truck last night, but it doesn’t matter.  We don’t have any proof.  Nobody is going to take our word for anything.”
    “So he wins?”
    “Yes.”
    “Where would we live?”
    “Anywhere you want.  We could buy another house somewhere in the neighborhood or move across town.”
    May closed her eyes and leaned against Sam.  She didn’t understand what had gone wrong.  They’d taken her mother away, they’d hurt all her friends.  Bad things happened every day.  If she stayed they’d take it all away, they’d never stop.
    Sam knew he’d failed his sister.  He couldn’t protect her.  It was as simple as that.  He looked at Helen.  She read his thoughts and shook her head.  “It’s not your fault.  You did the best you could.  She’s getting older.  She see things now.  It would have happened even if your mother was here.”
    May opened her eyes and sat up straight.  She announced her decision.  “We can’t live here anymore.  We don’t fit in and they’ll hurt us.”
    Helen asked, “Where do you want to live.”
    May wiped away a tear.  “California?”
    Sam and Helen groaned.
    “But it’s negotiable,” May offered quickly.  “Anywhere is OK as long as you come, too.”
    “I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Helen smiled, looking at Sam.  “Is that all right with you?”
    Nobuyo interrupted before he could answer.  “What’s going on?  Speak Japanese.  I don’t understand.”
    May explained and the old lady frowned.  “So I won’t see you again.”
    “Sure you will.  Flying is fun.  You can come and visit all the time.  My brother will pay for your ticket.  It’ll be great.”
    “But what about Manny?  How are you going to get him out of jail?”
    “I’m going to sell the building to Nakazono.  There’s nothing else we can do.  He’ll let Manny go as soon as I sign the papers.”
    “Wait a minute,” Helen said.  “I’ve got an idea.  I think there’s a way to get Manny released without giving in to that asshole.”  She quickly laid out her plan, making much of it up as she went along.
    “I love it!” May yelled before she could finish.  She crawled over Sam and ran to the phone.  “Hey, what are you guys waiting for?  Let’s get to work.  Nakazono is going to be totally surprised!”

    Manny’s cell was nine feet deep and four feet wide.  There was no window, toilet, sink or bed.  There was nothing but a rotting tatami floor, a rusty vent high in the ceiling and a naked light bulb.  Manny sat cross-legged in the center of the tatami.  He didn’t move.  Prisoners were required to sit motionless for sixteen hours a day and reflect on their crimes.
    This was all new to Manny.  He’d learned the hard way.  A jailer had kicked him in the head when he’d found Manny stretched out on his back.  After two hours he’d asked to be taken to the toilet.  His request had been refused and an hour later he’d asked for a sip of water.  This, too, had been denied.
    A bug crawled out of the tatami, over his naked foot and started to meander up his calf.  He flicked it off and watched another take its place.  A pair of young cops had taken him from Nakazono, roughed him up, and thrown him in the cell.  They’d laughed when he’d asked what he was charged with.
    The light overhead was so bright it hurt his eyes.  He knew without asking that it would be left on twenty-four-hours a day.  Food was out of the question as was the use of a telephone.  His bladder hurt and it was terribly hot in the cell.  He could feel sweat run down the back of his shirt and soak into his trousers.  It would get worse as the summer sun rose higher in the sky.  For the first time, he thought of dying.  There were many ways they could kill him but the easiest would be to let him die of thirst.
    Think positively, he told himself.  He wouldn’t be much use to Nakazono dead.  It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that he was just being used by the cop to get to Sam.
    Patrolman Takahashi opened the cell door.  Middle-aged, bespectacled and bald, he was mildly retarded.  Due to his handicap he had never been promoted and was rarely allowed into contact with the public.  He kept the station clean, assisted in interrogations and never asked questions.
    Takahashi shoved Manny out the door and pushed him down a corridor at the back of the Asakusa police station.  Prisoners, many of them held without trial for months, were kept well out of sight of the public.
    The interrogation room was larger than the cells but not much.  There was a metal desk and two chairs.  The walls were beige and the linoleum on the floor a scuffed and dirty gray.  The only window was tarred with years of cigarette smoke and nearly opaque.  It looked out on an alley and a gray wall made of cement blocks.  The window was covered with steel mesh.  A poster next to the window featured a pretty teenage girl exhorting citizens to donate blood.
    Takahashi pushed Manny into a straight-backed chair bolted to the floor.  He pulled lengths of rope from the desk and tied his wrists to the arms of the chair, his ankles to the chair legs.
    Nakazono entered and locked the door behind him.  He didn’t look at Manny or the jailer as he sat down behind the desk.  Takahashi coughed discretely, tightened Manny’s restraints and stood in a corner at parade rest.
    If Manny felt like a dead man, Nakazono looked like one.  He watched as the cop rooted around in the desk, muttering to himself.  He pulled out a first-aid kit and a woman’s silver make-up mirror.  His impact with the dump truck’s steering wheel had left a deep gash over his left eye.  Dried blood stained an insufficient gauze bandage.  The surrounding socket was yellow going on purple.  His lips were bruised crimson, split and swollen.  The skin on the rest of his face was loose and greasy white beneath a week’s black beard stubble.  He looked like a dead clown prettied up by a drunken undertaker.
    Takahashi’s eyes rolled back in his head.  It was a sign that he was nervous and worried.  Something in the room smelled bad.  It wasn’t shit or piss, smells he was used to during interrogations.  He leaned forward and sniffed at the Filipino.  Nothing there, just an average fear-smell, an odor Takahashi was accustomed to and liked.  Intrigued, he forgot what little he knew and crept up on his boss.  He had his nose buried in Nakazono’s collar and was closing in on the source of the scent before the lieutenant noticed.
    Nakazono dropped a pair of tweezers and shouted, “What are you doing, you idiot?”
    Takahashi muttered an apology and retreated to the corner.  Manny twisted in his seat, looked back and shuddered.  All he could see were the whites of the jailer's eyes.
    Nakazono stared at Manny.  His voice was low and weak.  “Do you believe in ghosts?”  He repeated the question, almost pathetically.
    Manny kept his face neutral.  What kind of an interrogation was this?  The cop was serious and seemed to expect an answer.  No, I don’t, he thought, but it looks like you do.
    “Yes,” he answered gravely.  When Nakazono winced, he added, “I saw one a few days ago.  It was, uhh, a terrible experience...”
    Takahashi couldn’t stand it any longer.  The boss had always been such a tiger.  Now he was acting like a rabbit.  He tried to get the interrogation back on track.  He pointed at Manny and asked, “The usual?”
    Nakazono nodded absently and slumped back in his chair.  It didn't matter, nothing did anymore.  He was convinced Elena was going to kill him.  He’d been nearly hysterical when he’d dragged the Filipino down to the station.  It had seemed like a good idea at the time.  He’d figured Elena would leave him alone.  The guy wasn’t a relative or anything.  After last night, he didn’t dare go anywhere near the Crazy Noise or her kids.
    A bubble of sanity floated behind his eyes; he jerked, trying to catch it.  Stop this.  That wasn’t a ghost.  You got a good look at her.  It was that Canadian bitch.  Calm down and think.  You’ve still got a chance; you’re still alive.  If the Sumiyoshi-kai wanted you dead they would have already done you.  Don’t fuck this up.
    Takahashi moaned.  “Please boss.  What do you want me to do first?  The ears or the head?”
    Nakazono already had a headache.  He didn’t think he could stand the noise the ear treatment required.  It involved screaming in a prisoner’s ears until they bled.  It was terribly painful but didn’t leave any marks.
    He opened a drawer and removed a Tokyo phone book.  It was at least six-inches thick.  “The head,” he ordered.  “Work on the head first.”
    Takahashi nearly leaped across the room in eagerness.  He snatched the phone book off the desk and brought it down on Manny’s head with all his strength.
    After the third blow Manny wondered how much damage his spine could take.  By the fifth he remembered he still didn’t know what crime he’d committed.  He would have been happy to confess if someone had only filled him in on the details.  No one did and the seventh blow knocked him unconscious.

Chapter 23 — Jail break

HELEN AND MAY marshaled their forces in the club shortly after dawn Thursday.  Chieko was the first to arrive.  She’d just ushered out the last drunk karaoke singer and showed up with three of her bargirls drafted for the occasion.  They slithered in the door laughing.  Skirts too short, hair too wild—their bangles, their bracelets jangled.  They crossed the floor and flowed into a booth.  Helen smiled.  The girls were highly picturesque.
    Kiyomi was next.  As ordered, she wore her school uniform as did May.  Both had complained but Helen had insisted.  Four similarly clad kids, two boys and two girls, arrived a few minutes later.  All had been bribed.  May had won their hearts with the free use of the club’s video games for two weeks.
    Helen set everybody to work making signs and banners.  Sam served donuts and coffee and tried to stay out of the way.  His lawyer, Rie Matsushita, walked in a few minutes after seven.  A tall stately woman in her mid-fifties, she wore a dubious expression and a suit by Anne Taylor.  Sam offered a donut and a smile.  “Thanks for coming.  How about some coffee?”
    She took a cup and surveyed the club.  The kids and the bargirls had poster boards and paint spread all over the stage.  “I admire your enthusiasm but I don’t think this is going to work.  The police are stubborn and conservative.  They’re unlikely to give in even if they know they’ve made a mistake.  Nakazono’s superiors will do everything they can to protect him.”
    He shrugged.  “It’s worth a try.  We’ve got nothing to lose.”
    “Maybe.  At any rate, it’s unlikely the police will get too rough with women and children.”
    Nobuyo Kojima was the next to arrive.  She held the door open for the neighborhood’s oldest resident, Kimiko Nakamura.  Both ladies were wearing their best kimonos, tabi socks and zori.  They were the picture of propriety and contrasted serenely with the noisy bargirls and kids.
    May rushed up.  “Nakamura-san, I didn’t know you were coming.  It’s nice to see you.”  She covered up her surprise and led the women to a booth.  She hadn’t called Nakamura-san because of her age.  Walking was difficult, marching in a protest had seemed too much to ask.
    “Why didn’t you let me know?” Kimiko asked.  “I wouldn’t have heard about this if Kojima-san hadn’t called.”  She patted her friend’s hand.  “You don’t think I’m too old for neighborhood activities, do you, May-chan?”
    “Of course you’re not too old, Nakamura-san, but this isn’t exactly a regular activity.  It’s not like we’ll be picking up trash around the neighborhood.  It might be dangerous.”  Her eyes brightened.  “We might even get arrested.”  It was a possibility she clearly relished.
    “Then you won’t let me go?” Kimiko asked, sinking lower in the booth.  Tiny when sitting erect, she nearly disappeared in her disappointment.
    “Watch out, she’s going to cry,” Nobuyo warned.
    May hesitated and relented.  She could have Sam take care of the ladies.  Age was still respected and their presence would be a big help.
    Sam arrived with green tea and cookies.  “Kojima-san and Nakamura-san are going with us,” she announced.  “It’s going to be your job to keep them safe.  Think you can handle the assignment?”
    “It’ll be my pleasure.”
    Kimiko pointed at the activity on stage.  “What are they doing?”
    May explained that everyone would carry a sign demanding Manny be freed.  It took a long time for Kimiko to grasp the possibility of wrongful arrest and before May was finished she’d dozed off.
    Nobuyo pried a cookie loose from her hand and rearranged her shawl.  “She’s tired.  It took her great-granddaughter two hours to get her into her kimono this morning.”
    “Will you explain the rest when she wakes up?”
    “I’ll try, but it really isn’t necessary.  I’m sure whatever you’ve got planned is fine with her.  She’s too old to be afraid of anything.  She just doesn’t want to be left out.”
    “I’m not afraid, either,” May boasted.
    “Of course, you’re not.  I’d be surprised if you were.  The very young and the very old have a lot in common, May-chan.  Didn’t you know that?”
    “I never thought about it.”
    “No one ever does.  We’re old before we know it.  It sneaks up on us.”
    “I’ll never be old.”
    “How are you going to manage that?”
    “I’m going to die young.  I bet I don't make it to thirty.”
    Nobuyo laughed and put her arm around the girl.  “I said the same thing when I was your age but I’m still here.”
    “I’m different.”
    “Not that different, dear.  You’re a Japanese woman.”
    “So what?”
    “That means you’re going to live a long, long time.  You’d better get used to the idea.”
    “But—”
    “You can’t change the way things are, May-chan.”  Nobuyo sipped her tea, remembering when she was a schoolgirl.  She’d measured the future in minutes, not decades.
    “Aren’t you afraid of dying?”
    “Hardly.  There are days when I look forward to it.  When I was a teenager, I was just like you.  I couldn’t even imagine being old and wrinkled and weak.  No matter what anybody says, nobody likes being old very much.  Unfortunately, we don’t have any choice.”
    May was sorry she’d asked so many questions.  “But you’re doing OK.  Your health is good and you seem happy.”
    “Being an old person isn’t half as bad as I’d thought it would be.  Luckily, I’ve always been able to find somebody around whose even older.  They’re the old ones, I always think, not me.  It wasn’t until I was about forty that I realized something you still can’t understand—that life isn’t unlimited and that I was certainly going to die.”
    “Sounds pretty scary.”
    Nobuyo nodded.  “A little bit, I suppose, but the real scary part came just a little later when I realized that I was going to live.  The option of dying young wasn’t realistic.  I had to come to terms with the fact that I was going to get old.”
    “Was it hard?”
    “Yes, but the most difficult part came even later.  I had to accept the fact that not only was I was going to get old, but I was going to be old for a very, very long time.  I think it’s both a curse and a blessing to be a Japanese woman.  We live forever, you know.”
    Nobuyo nodded at Kimiko.  “Look at her.  She’s ninety-seven.  She was already old forty years ago.  Some people don’t even live that long.  She’s seen so much, things you can’t even imagine.”
    “That doesn’t sound so bad,” May whispered.
    “It’s not.  That’s the good part.”
    “So what’s the bad part?”
    Nobuyo sighed.  “Being alone, I think.  The men always leave.  Either they just go away or they die.  They always take the easy way out.  I’m eighty-three and I’ve been a widow for nearly thirty years.  My husband was a good man but sometimes I get angry with him for leaving me alone for such a terribly long time.”
    “I’m part gaijin,” May said.  “Maybe I won’t get so old?”
    Nobuyo laughed and hugged her.  “Don’t worry, honey.  You’re not going to get old today or even tomorrow.  Life gives you plenty of time to get accustomed to the idea.”
    Helen called everybody to the center of the club for a final briefing.
    “Remember our job is to get Manny out of jail.  That means we might have to get arrested ourselves.  If there’s anybody that doesn’t think they can do that, it might be best if you stayed here.  We won’t hold it against you.”
    The kids looked at each other and laughed.  They were as fearless as Chieko and her troopers.  Nobuyo Kojima stood tough and determined.  By her side, Kimiko Nakamura looked slightly confused.  She raised her doll-like hands into the air.  “Banzai, banzai,” she shouted.  “Banzai!”
    Helen laughed and looked at Nobuyo.  “Does she know what we’re doing?”
    “Don’t worry about it,” Nobuyo shrugged.  “She’s having fun.”
    Helen continued with her battle plan.  “OK, like I said, we want to get arrested.  But we don’t want anybody to get hurt.  If the cops attack, just lie down and let them drag you away.  You got that May?”
    “Sure.  Why are you looking at me?”
    “Because I don’t trust you.  I don’t want any kicking, punching or biting.  Is that clear?”
    May winked at Sam.  “Yes, Helen.  I promise to control myself.”

    Hiroshi was waiting in front of the Asakusa Police Station as promised.  He’d been very successful in mustering the Tokyo media.  Network camera crews stood in groups drinking coffee from Styrofoam cups while print journalists and photographers formed their own contingent a few yards away.
    “Well, what do you think?” Helen asked, pointing at the protesters as they hefted their signs and began to chant.
    Her ex-boyfriend smiled.  “I don’t know if you’re going to be able to get your friend out of jail but the networks are going to love it.  You’re a very photogenic group.  Those old women are a great touch.”  He pointed across the street.  “See anybody you recognize?”
    A photographer for the Washington Post was standing next to the bureau chief for the Oregonian.  A pretty reporter for the L.A. Times laughed as an older man, NBC Radio’s Tokyo voice, told a joke.  The correspondent for London’s Economist sniffed and pretended he didn’t understand the punch line.
    Helen knew all of them slightly.  She nodded.  “No matter what happens, I owe you.  You’ve really done a great job getting all these people here.”
    He waved away her thanks.
    “Is there anything we should do?”
    He shook his head.  “Not really.  You told them not to fight back if the police try to make arrests, didn’t you?”
    Helen nodded.
    “Then I think you’ve got it just about right.  Make sure your people give interviews to anyone that wants one.”
    A crowd was already gathering to watch.  Tousle-haired housewives stood on balconies, husbands paused on their way to the station.  Little boys on bicycles ignored their parents’ commands and peddled furiously toward the scene.  Their toddler sisters bounced on the handlebars.  They giggled and screeched and rang bicycle bells.
    Kimiko Nakamura carried no sign.  They were all too heavy.  She felt left out and when a patrolmen peeked out of the station door she flung her arms in the air.  “Banzai!  Banzai!”
    The husbands smiled, the wives laughed.  The toddlers screeched louder and cameras clicked and rolled.  Three Tokyo stations opened live feeds to the scene, interrupting regular programming on morning gossip shows.  Hiroshi walked away from Helen and took out his notebook.
    A flock of reporters descended on the police station as the protesters yelled and shook their fists.  The cop ducked back inside and slammed the door in their faces.  They stared through the glass and shouted, demanding information on the prisoner, Manuel Ramos of Subic Bay, Republic of the Philippines.  The policeman managed to look surprised, besieged and offended all at the same time.  He fell away from the window as a battery of strobes flashed and captured his anger for twenty-five million afternoon readers.
    Word spread through the neighborhood as the police hunkered down in their fortress.  New recruits swelled the ranks of the protesters.  Noriko Maejima, owner of the store that had been robbed, grabbed an extra sign and waved it angrily.  She liked Manny and wanted him freed, but more importantly, the police had been rude to her.  A camera crew quickly homed in on her round honest face and nodded sympathetically as she recounted her ordeal.
    Across the country, ten million equally sympathetic housewives nodded and exclaimed, “What a pity.”  Less than a million actually picked up the phone.  It was more than enough.  Fiber-optic cables swelled and relays inside the National Police Agency chittered in fear.  On a dozen floors, in a hundred private offices, senior police officials tried to soothe their angry wives.  Threats of cold dinners, cold baths and warm beers rang in their ears.  They replaced telephone receivers as if they were cobras and buried their heads in their hands.
    On the tippy-top of the building, in an expansive corner office, the NPA chief sighed and pressed a buzzer on his desk.  His adjutant was instantly through the double oak doors, striding across yards of deep blue carpet.  His captain’s uniform was custom tailored, his hair a work of art.  The shine on his shoes was rumored to have permanently blinded three coworkers.
    In contrast, Japan’s top cop was a rumpled old man.  He’d served as a junior lieutenant with the secret police in Manchuko during the Pacific War and only MacArthur’s intervention had saved him from a war-crimes tribunal.  The general had used him and hundreds of others in a crackdown on suspected communists and union radicals in the early 1950s.
    “Have you been following this?”  He waved at a bank of TVs, all broadcasting live from Asakusa.
    The adjutant settled into a chair and nodded.  He checked to ensure he hadn’t creased his trousers.  “I’ve already taken action to diffuse the situation, sir.”
    The chief shook his head.  “The only action we’re going to take is ignore it until it goes away.  I want you to order the officers in Asakusa to stay inside the station until that mob gets tired and goes home.  There will be no press releases or briefings of any kind.  I’ll have the ass of anybody that speaks to the media.  Is that clear?”
    “But, sir—”
    The chief stared his adjutant into silence.  “I know what you’re going to say and I don’t want to hear it.  I don’t care if it’s a whole new ball game out there and I don’t give a shit about bad publicity.  Somebody has to draw the line somewhere.  Those human rights assholes can take over the rest of the world but they’re not going to get away with it here.  That Filipino is going to be treated just like a Japanese.”
    “But, sir—”
    The chief rose from his seat and leaned over the desk.  “Are you having trouble hearing me, Naganuma?  My orders are very clear.  We release no one.  We admit to nothing.”
    “I’m afraid...”  The adjutant shifted in his seat and nodded helplessly at the TVs.
    The announcers’ voices were different but the picture was the same.  Cameras panned the crowd, offering glimpses of happy, expectant faces.  They cut to the front of the station.  The door opened and a thin, middle-aged man with brown skin walked out.  He was limping and his face was bruised.  The announcers fell silent, allowing the cheers of the crowd to the tell the story.  He fell into the arms of a little girl in a sailor suit.  Tears were clearly visible on her cheeks.
    “They let him go,” the chief roared.
    “Yes, sir, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.  I ordered his release twenty minutes ago.  I thought it would be best to accept our losses and—”
    “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
    The adjutant stood up and defended himself.  He was tired of the old days and the old ways.  He’d tried to do the right thing and wasn’t going to be bullied any longer.  His courage was a surprise and once unleashed it grew and grew.  “Sir, I believe I’ve saved the agency a great deal of negative publicity both here and abroad.”
    The chief fell onto a sofa and sighed.  He was too old to fight much longer.  Things were changing too fast.  He couldn’t believe he was hearing such words from the mouth of a Japanese police officer.  The probability that there were more just like him was appalling.  “Who are we going to blame?” he asked softly.
    Naganuma smiled.  He’d won.  “Everything has been taken care of, sir.  I’ve scheduled a press conference for you at thirteen-hundred hours.  You will announce that the officer in charge of the Asakusa station has been relieved of duty pending investigation and possible criminal proceedings.”
    The chief’s eyes fell shut as he retreated into the years.  “What’s for lunch?” he whispered, as Naganuma left the room.  “Do you think I could have Chinese?”

Chapter 24 — Nakazono's demons

THE FRONT door stood open.  It offered a sky pink with sunset and a summer breeze like a celebration on the skin.
    Chieko’s girls danced and danced, their eyes blazing with the light of victory.  Laughter defied gravity; they orbited slower dancers like overheated planets and brushed their backs with tender hands.
    Kids crowded the arcade games while Chieko slipped coins in the Wurlitzer.  She threaded her way through the dancers and took a seat at the bar.
    “Another beer?” May asked.
    “No, thanks.  I’ve had enough.  How about some coffee?”
    Kiyomi poured out a cup and pushed it over the bar.  “What’s wrong?  You should drink like everybody else.”
    She shook her head.  “Too tired.  I have to open the bar in a few minutes.  What I really need is some sleep.”
    “You can’t go,” May complained.  “The party is just getting good.”  She nodded at Chieko’s employees.  “Your girls are having fun.”
    “They’re not the only ones, I think.  Does your brother know you’ve been drinking?”
    May threw up her hands and backed away from the bar.  “Who, me?”
    “And her,” she nodded at Kiyomi, as the girl handed half a dozen beers over the bar to Noriko Maejima and her housewife cronies.
    May looked aghast.  “Kiyomi-chan, you haven’t been sneaking beer again, have you?”
    “Of course not,” she burped.  “I’m too young.”
    “Well, just don’t let your brother catch you,” Chieko warned.
    May leaned across the bar and whispered.  “What gave us away?  How did you know?”
    Chieko laughed.  “You should take a look at yourselves.”
    The girls grinned into the long mirror behind the bar.  Kiyomi’s face was strawberry red, May’s a deepening rose.  They screamed in mock horror and covered their faces with their hands.
    “You look really drunk!” Kiyomi accused.
    “You, too!”
    “How much have you had?” Chieko asked.
    “A lot!” the girls laughed.
    “How much is a lot?”
    “A whole can.”  They looked proud of themselves.
    “Well, that is a lot,” Chieko agreed.  “One whole can each.  I’m impressed.”
    “Uhh, not exactly,” May admitted.  “We shared it and she couldn’t even finish her half.  What a lightweight.”
    “I did, too.  You’re the one that—”
    “They look very happy, don’t you think?” Chieko said, changing the subject.  The girls didn’t appear in imminent danger of falling down or getting sick.  Half a beer wouldn’t hurt them.
    “Who?”
    “Your brother and Helen.”
    May and Kiyomi leaned on the bar and placed their chins in their hands.  Encircled by the other dancers, Sam held Helen close and whispered in her ear.  “It’s so romantic,” Kiyomi sighed.  “She’s so lucky.”
    “Hah!” May exclaimed.  “He’s the lucky one.  She’s totally perfect.  Everybody knows that.”
    The girls began to argue, Kiyomi saying that Sam was smart and kind and reliable.  May countered with Helen’s beauty, independence and bravery.
    “What do you think?” they asked Chieko, willing to let one of their favorites settle the argument.
    “You’re both right,” she answered.  “Now, why don’t you calm down and watch.  It’ll give you something to look forward to.”
    May and Kiyomi needed no further urging.  They watched and smiled and dreamed as Sam spun Helen across the floor.  May was so happy she thought she might faint.  Nakazono was gone gone gone.  Anything, absolutely anything was possible.  Nothing could hurt them ever again.
    “So that’s it, I guess,” Helen said.  “I wonder how he’ll like it in jail.”
    Sam was holding her close enough to feel her heartbeat.  The cop had been far from his thoughts.  He felt free for the first time since his return to Japan.  His choices seemed limited only by his imagination.
    “Nakazono’s not going to jail, you know that,” he said.  “They’ll fire him, they’ll humiliate him, but they’ll never convict him.  I expect he’ll be around the neighborhood for a long time.  He was raised here.  He has nowhere else to go.”
    “You don’t think he’ll try anything else, do you?  He’d have to be crazy.”
    “Everything is going to be fine.”  He caressed her cheek and lost himself in her gray eyes.
    Helen laid her head on his shoulder.  “I hope you’re right.”
    “Trust me.”
    “I’ve heard that one before.”
    “And did you?”
    “What?”
    “Trust.”
    “Too much.  I staked my whole history on it, my past and my future.”
    Sam nodded.  “You’re right, that is too much.  I might not be able to pick it up, let alone carry it.  Why don’t you just trust me today?  I can do that much.”
    She smiled and hugged him.  “That’s sounds just right.  You’ve got a deal.”
    The music changed.  Helen held his hand and towed him back to their table.  “How was Manny doing?” he asked.
    “He was still sleeping the last time I went upstairs.  He’s just tired and bruised.  He’ll be fine in a couple of days.”
    “How about the old ladies?  Are they taking good care of him?”
    “Kojima-san was guarding him like a mama bear watches over her cubs.”
    “Did Nakamura-san go home?”
    Helen shook her head.  “No, she’s still up there doing what she does best.”
    “Sleep?”
    “Exactly.  Kojima-san put her into bed with him.  You should go up there and take a look before she wakes.  It’s a very pretty picture.”

    Lt. Nakazono stumbled out of a bar under the tracks.  A train rumbled overhead as he pissed on a cement wall.  His suit jacket was long gone, his shirt stained and torn.  He leaned forward and pressed his cheek to the wall.  The cement was still warm from the sun.  A woman in black approached.  She averted her eyes and tucked her chin into her breast, afraid to see too much.
    Nakazono slid down the wall to his knees.  He moaned and held out his hands, begging for help.  His fluttering hands, his bruised and bloody face—the woman changed course.  His eyes scratched at her as she passed.  She gasped and began to run.  That kind of help wasn’t hers to give.
    Nakazono made it to his feet and struggled onward.  The stars, shining above, were pretty.  They pulled him toward the river and his apartment.  A ragged choir sang brittle a cappella in his head.  Off-key voices drowned out the world and pushed him forward.  He bounced off pedestrians, knocking men and women aside.
    A light brighter than stars, brighter than neon, pulsed and swelled.  He looked up and howled.  She stood tall and strong atop Matsuya department store.  Her hair was long and white.  Looking at him, laughing at him.  The choir scrambled behind his eyes, wailing in fear, fighting for a better look.  They upset his balance and he crashed to the pavement.

    Just to make sure, but casually so no one would notice, Patrolman Takahashi verified his feet were touching the ground, confirmed the top of his head was lined up with the moon.  Everything seemed properly oriented and he continued walking.  You could never be too sure, especially after a day like today.
    Eyes on cracks in the sidewalk, resolutely onward, he walked toward the home of Nakazono.  To put things right, if he could.  He nearly cried out in fright.  Without the lieutenant, what would become of him?  It was a mercy he had no imagination, his vision of the future—a wall of blackness—was horrible enough.
    For nearly thirty years, Nakazono had been his life, an anchor.  When the ground trembled and tried to dislodge him, only Nakazono kept him from drifting away.  Takahashi turned a corner and checked his feet again.  Still firmly planted.  But not this afternoon.  When they’d come for the lieutenant he’d floated up to the ceiling, flailing and crying.  No one had noticed his ascent, they’d been too busy with Nakazono.
    First, they’d taken away his gun.  That had been the easy part.  The lieutenant had been more difficult when the captain from headquarters had asked him to give up his bottle of gin.  It had taken three men to pry it out of his hands.  They’d covered his head with a beige raincoat to hide him from the photographers.  Takahashi could still hear Nakazono’s sobs eerily muffled by the coat.  He’d assisted at a hanging in a prison on the edge of the city last year.  The man had worn a hood, not a raincoat, but his final cries had sounded exactly the same.
    He knocked on the lieutenant’s door.  A neighbor stuck her head out of an apartment down the hall.  Her eyes were both sly and angry.  They burned with a passionate interest in lives more eventful than her own.
    “Get back inside,” Takahashi shouted.
    The woman snarled and pulled her head back into her apartment.  Takahashi knocked again.  No answer.  The patrolman sighed and put his ear to the door.
    And there it was:
    Nakazono moaned and moaned.  So much rarer than tears, an expanding pain, a loss of breath.  A great sadness given voice.  Dead silent screams, loud between the cries, were heard as far away as Honolulu.  Pleas for release at any cost, they rolled up the beaches like a tsunami.
    A chain rattled.  Takahashi whispered, afraid of upsetting what might be behind the door.  “Boss, let me in.  It’s me, Takahashi.  I just want to help.”
    Slowly, the door swung open.  The room was dark, filled with darting flickering images.  A TV set glowed in a corner, chocolate drapes billowed.  They concealed a balcony and a sliding glass door open to the night.  An air conditioner hummed, straining to cool humid air pushing into the room.  Currents, hot and cold, blew over Takahashi’s cheeks.  They carried a fearful smell.  Gin consumed and passed through the skin, forgotten food conniving to rot, urine, vomit and coppery blood.
    He gasped and followed a dark shape deeper into the room.  It paused, stymied by shards of red brick strewn across the carpet.  A bonsai with shiny leaves lay collapsed on a bier of dry soil.  Yellow roots shivered, exposed and dying.  The wallpaper was torn three feet above the baseboard.  A smear of mud and a dusting of red brick marked the spot the little tree had hit.
    The patrolman snapped on a table lamp and turned off the TV.  Nakazono muttered, detoured around the broken pottery and shuffled over to a leather couch.  He was naked under a woman’s pink terry cloth robe.  The sleeves squeezed his biceps like tourniquets and hung just past his elbows.
    Takahashi stared at the wreckage.  His jaw fell open and he made a little noise of confusion as the lieutenant’s feet tangled.  He fell into the narrow divide between couch and coffee table.  Nakazono cried and struggled to free himself.  Takahashi hesitated, fascinated, as if seeing a tortoise on its back, baking in the sun.
    Nakazono muttered and pulled himself up on the couch.  He sat with his hands on his knees, shaking his head like a dog whacked in the skull with a two-by-four.  The tissue surrounding his left eye was purple-yellow, tinged with green.  The eye had closed beneath a cut that would require many stitches to close.  Dried blood caked his face.  The corner of the coffee table was sharp beveled maple.  A dark streak stained the table and ran down to a small pool of blood soaking the carpet.
    Nakazono was still wagging his head back and forth like a metronome.  Takahashi shivered, stepped forward and held the lieutenant’s head until it slowed and stopped.  Nakazono began to clap his hands and laugh.  He slapped them together slowly.  His laughter was soft but growing, rising.  His hands popped together like gunshots.
    “Stop, oh, please stop,” Takahashi cried, afraid of such craziness.  He grabbed and held the lieutenant’s hands with all his strength.
    Nakazono opened his good eye, aware for the first time that someone was in the room.  He cocked his head for a better angle.  “Who’s that?  Is that you, Takahashi?”
    The patrolman backed away, unnerved by his own audacity.  To touch the boss.  Until today, what an unthinkable thing.  He grinned.  “Yes, boss, it’s me.  I’m here to help you, I mean, I know you don’t need my help but, uhh...”
    Nakazono sighed.  “Shit, the idiot.”
    Takahashi began to cry, fat tears streaming down his middle-aged face.  “Let me help, boss.  Let me make it better.  You can be strong again, stronger than before.  We can get those bastards, we can get ‘em good.”
    The lieutenant shook his head.  “Get the fuck out of here.”
    Nakazono reached under the couch and pulled out an American-made .45 automatic.  He put the muzzle in his mouth and rocked back the slide.
    His head exploded, cracked open by a red-black screaming thing.  A voice like no other, huge and cruel, shouted, “STOP!”
    White hot pain raced up his arm.  The gun clattered to the table.  He screamed and looked down, expecting to see his hand burned to the bone.
    The voice laughed.  “HURT DIDN’T IT, ASSHOLE?  WELL THAT WAS NOTHIN’.  YOU TRY A STUNT LIKE THAT AGAIN AND I’LL SHOW YOU WHAT REAL PAIN IS.”
    Takahashi sobbed and crawled toward the door as Nakazono gagged on the pain and threw up.  The red thing, the black thing, was purging his skull.  The other voices, guilty little secrets, tried to escape.  It ran them down and crushed them.
    Until only one survived.  “YOU DON’T NEED THIS ONE NO MORE, DO YA?”
    Nakazono wiped his mouth and coughed.  “Too strong, too strong.  It was an accident, I tried to explain, she won’t listen.”
    The voice laughed.  “OF COURSE SHE AIN’T LISTENIN’, YOU DUMBSHIT, SHE’S DEAD.  YOU KILLED HER.”
    “But—”
    “SHUT THE FUCK UP.  IT’S JUST YOUR IMAGINATION.”
    “What about you?”
    “I’M THE REAL THING, BOYO.”  The voice moderated it’s tone.  “AND FROM NOW ON YOU AND ME, WE’RE GONNA HAVE SOME REAL FUN.”
    “Please—”
    Pain crawled up from his stomach and Nakazono screamed.
    “YOU’RE NOT LISTENING.”
    The lieutenant whimpered and surrendered.
    “THAT’S BETTER.  AND SINCE YOU’RE BEING SUCH A GOOD LITTLE SAMURAI, I GOT A TREAT FOR YOU.”
    The red-black thing raced across his head and pinned Elena to the back of his skull.  It ripped open her blouse, yanked up her skirt and shredded her panties.
    “HEY, LOOK AT YOU.  THAT’S WHAT YOU WANTED ALL ALONG, ISN’T IT?  WELL, GO AHEAD, EAT YOUR FILL, THERE’S PLENTY MORE WHERE THAT CAME FROM.”
    Patrolman Takahashi reached the door.  Still on his knees, he looked back.  He was shaking in fear and it was all he could do to keep from screaming.  The lieutenant was slumped on the couch covered in vomit, masturbating wildly.
    Takahashi unlocked the door.
    “Get your ass back over here, patrolman,” Nakazono ordered.  “I got plans for you.”

Chapter 25 — Sex in public

THE THAI girl urged her customer down the street, alternately pulling and pushing.  Her heels sank in asphalt only now beginning to cool.  He grabbed her ass and she pointed to the lights of the White Rose.  Sweat slid down her neck and ran into her breasts.  The heat had sucked out most of her strength.  Men turned to stare, their careless eyes stealing the rest.  She sighed, longing to lie on a beach under a cooler moon.
    A voice drifted over the rooftops.  She checked her watch. It was only nine.  If she hurried she could sneak away and meet her girlfriends.  But she had to fuck this guy first.  At least one a night, that was the rule.  The bar’s manager had made that clear, just after pocketing her passport so she could never run away.

    May grabbed Kiyomi’s hand and headed for the door.
    “Don’t talk to strangers,” Sam yelled from behind the bar.
    “Stop worrying, I’ll be right back.  It’s only a couple of blocks.”
    Sam shrugged as the girls left the club.  He did worry.  May walked Kiyomi home every night after the show, and every night he worried.
    Manny washed a beer mug and set it in the rack.  “Take it easy.”
    “Yeah, but—”
    Helen slid onto a stool as the last customers said good night and filed out.  “Manny’s right.  She’ll be fine.  The streets are safe, that bosozoku kid is dead and Nakazono’s, uhh...”
    She looked at Manny.  “You seem to know everything that’s going on around here.  Where the hell is that slime ball?” 
    Manny shook his head.  “I don’t know.  It’s been over a week since they dragged him out of the station.  I don’t think anybody’s seen him since.  It’s like he just disappeared.  They say the yakuza are after him.  He’s probably as far away from Asakusa as he can get.”
      “You see?”  She smiled and punched Sam in the shoulder.  “Now, why don’t you do something useful.”
    “Like what?”
    “Like take me to dinner.  Manny can look after May until we get back.”
    Helen was still in the astonishing blue dress May had picked out.  As much of her as would fit, that is.  Precarious breasts, and long legs dangling.  Sam didn’t know how much more he could take.
    Watching her mount the stage each night—her short black boots, the backs of her knees.  And higher.  It wasn’t his fault, the heat made him look.  At least he didn’t crane his neck or slink slyly to the floor.  For a better look, higher and higher.  But he wanted to.  And much more.
    He smelled her in his dreams, day and night, until he grew larger and larger.  Spending a lot of time behind the bar so strangers couldn’t see—see how huge he became.  Listening to her body bend and whisper.  Her voice, wild and throaty.  Teasing offering, begging.
    “Right now?” he asked.  It was too much to hope for.
    She laughed.  “I can’t go anywhere like this.  I’ve got to change first.”
    He nodded, not at all embarrassed that Helen could read his mind.  That’s just the way it was.

    “Christ, how long does it take to put on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt,” Sam grumbled, as he turned off the lights in the club.  May had already returned and bounced upstairs with Manny.
    A hint of perfume announced her arrival and turned his head.  Moonlight slid through the windows to help her across the floor.  Her heels tapped urgently, her thighs brushed.  Sam stood up.  He’d waited thirty minutes for Helen; a century would not have been too long.
    She was wearing a dress identical to the first, the only difference was color.  It seemed her mood had shifted from blue to red.  She stood before him, gift-wrapped in scarlet, too hot to touch, her skin flushed and pink.  He took her hand and led her toward the door.
    Helen snaked her arm around his back.  “Sorry I took so long.  I couldn’t find some stuff.”
    “Stuff?” he asked, still trying to breathe.  “What stuff?”
    She whispered in his ear, “Secret stuff.  Stuff you’ll like.”
    It was dark in the cab and the radio loud.  But not too dark, not too loud.  He could see—as she settled in for the ride—her skirt riding up.  He could hear—as she slowly crossed her legs—nylon scratching over lace.
    Helen smiled in the half-light.  “So what do you want to do?”  Her voice was cheerful, without suggestion, but her eyes were merciless.  They kept up the pressure, raising the temperature in the cab.
    “I WANT TO FUCK!” Sam screamed.  The windows exploded, showering the street with glass.  The taxi driver slumped over dead from a stroke and blood trickled from Helen’s lips.
    She leaned closer, her hand soft on his wrist.  Sam shook his head—a bumpy landing.  The windows were back in place and the driver safe.  He answered her question again, and this time she heard him.
    “It doesn’t matter,” he lied.  “Whatever you want to do is fine.”

    Helen leaned over to scoop up a bit more lasagna.  Sam’s fork froze in mid-air.  His eyes overruled any objection.  They dragged his head forward; they stared unabashed down the front of her dress.
    The air in the restaurant glittered.  Sam’s fork fell through the sparks in slow motion.  He tried to jerk his eyes away.  They fought back and leered at her swelling breasts.  Her nipples reared above a flimsy bra, midnight lace and dusky rose.
    Helen, breathing deep and fast, held her pose, his excitement feeding hers.  Until his fork crashed into the plate, alerting diners and alarming waiters.  She straightened up, releasing him.
    “See anything you like?” she asked, moistening her lips with a delicate tongue.
    Sam nearly choked on his wine.  He could manage a smile but not an answer.  She leaned forward again and this time he concentrated on her eyes, seeking a clue.
    “Don’t get too carried away,” she admonished.  “We’re just friends, remember?”
    He sat speechless, unable to believe.  Until she leaned closer and closer, until he could see the lie and the love.
    Helen sat back, purring softly with happiness.  But she had to be careful.  If she pushed him any further he was going to run screaming into the night or fuck her right there under the table.  She stared into Sam’s eyes and marveled at the depth of his desire and how vulnerable it made him.  She stroked his cheek.  He closed his eyes and lifted her palm to his lips.

    Mari Okamoto stood by the register and wished she could sit down, just for a few minutes.  Her feet were killing her and she still had an hour to go.  Like a lot of coffee shops in Ginza, hers stayed open until early in the morning.  Despite the clinical decor—white smoke-stained walls and furniture better suited to a cafeteria—it was a popular spot.  Tonight was no exception.  Most of the tables were jammed with beer-drinking college kids and office girls.  Their excited conversations broke like waves over isolated salarymen, sitting at tables alone and lonely.  Pillars divided the room and provided privacy here and there.
    Again, Mari sought out the gaijins.  There were sitting close, deep in the corner.  She could see their faces clearly, under lights high and bright.  Seeing their smiles, watching them touch, she forgot about her feet and her apartment waiting empty on the other side of town.  It looked like they might like another beer.  And if not, she could ask.  It would give her an excuse to get closer, to feel their warmth, at least for a moment.
    A little wine, a little beer.  For Sam and Helen, modest drinkers, it added up.  They sat shoulder-to-shoulder, slumped in deep chairs against the back wall.  They stretched their legs, their feet pointing at a pillar rising to the ceiling.  It blocked the gaze of all in the room except for a solitary salaryman.  He sat a few feet away, head bent over a beer, eyes surprised at the length of Helen’s legs.
    Helen knew she was a little drunk and enjoyed the sensation.  Not too much, she cautioned, not too much.  I want to remember everything.  She wiggled her chair around and Sam did the same, until they sat facing each other, their knees just inches apart.
    “It’s getting late,” Sam said.  “Do you want to get going?”  He didn’t care about the time, in fact, had no clear idea of what time it was.  But he sought a taxi’s darkness or the softness of Helen’s bed.
    She leaned forward and stretched, thin wrists and hands rising up and over her head.  She massaged her pale neck, lifting her breasts.  Eyes half-closed, she looked Sam in the eye, watching him watch.  “I feel too good to move,” she sighed, sliding deeper in her chair.  “Just let me sit here for awhile, OK?”
    Something brushed Sam’s cheek, an idea.  “Sure, we’ve got plenty of time.  Just lay back and relax,” he urged.
    Helen took his advice.  Her eyes slid closed, her hands fell loose at her sides.  Their chairs were too close, their knees bumped.  First to the left, and then the right, she angled her legs.  No good, not comfortable yet.  Helen grumbled softly and tried again, placing her knees on the outside of Sam’s.
    Sam shifted in his seat, his jeans pinching his cock.  He sat stiffly, hands in his lap.  His face was flushed, his palms wet.  Slowly, Helen’s legs slipped apart.  He leaned forward.
    Her eyelashes fluttered and he looked up from between her legs.  Just a slit, her eyes were dark, open and locked on his.  He smiled and Helen dropped her gaze, as if too shy.  Her hands, so quiet in her lap, came to life.  A finger twitched and then another.  She watched, fascinated, as a long pink nail slid over her dress and hooked the hem of her skirt.
    Up came her eyes, beckoning to Sam.  All her fingers joined in.  They reached down and pulled her skirt over her thighs, to her hips, and higher, nearly to her belly.  Helen’s legs fell wide open and her eyes, surprised at such exposure, registered both excitement and dismay.
    Her hands weren’t satisfied and Helen surrendered, letting them have their way with her.  They caressed the inside her thighs from the dark tops of her stockings to her transparent panties.  They snapped the black strap of her garter belt.  It hurt and she whimpered, “Secret stuff.”
    Sam rubbed his cock through his jeans.  He leaned down to lick her knee.  Helen’s fingers snaked into her panties and began to move.
    “Excuse me, would you like another beer?”
    Helen’s eyes flew open.  “Whoops!”  She shoved her dress down and sat up straight.  “Uhh, I don’t know.  Uhh, Sam, what do you think, ehh?  Another beer?  Gee, maybe we should be go—”
    Sam came to his senses as Helen blithered.  “Sure, thanks.  Two more please.”
    Mari wrote down the order and smiled.  Sorry to interrupt but that was too good to resist.  Her gaijins were great, they’d made her night, and probably the whole week.  She zipped back to her station to get the beer, her tired feet not even a memory.
    “Holy shit,” Sam said.  “That was quite a performance.  I didn’t know you had it in you.”
    Helen smiled.  “I did.  I always knew.  You bring out the best in me.”
    Sam laughed.  “Well, you certainly had my full attention.”
    “You’re not the only one.  That guy behind you was deeply interested.”
    Sam looked back.  A middle-aged businessman was sitting on the edge of his seat.  His eyes were glazed and his hands shook as he tried to get his beer to his lips.
    Sam turned back and slid his hand up her leg.  He hurt, from his balls up through his stomach.
    Helen pushed his hand away.  “Stop.  That’s enough for now.”  She stood and grabbed her purse.  “I’ll be back in a minute and we can go.”
    Five minutes.  Ten minutes.  At fifteen, Sam got up and went to look for Helen.  He threaded his way between the tables and walked through the door leading to the toilets.  The men’s room was to the left, the women’s to the right.  Between the two was a communal sink.  Helen stood in front of a large mirror putting on lipstick.  “It’s about time,” she said, without turning.
    He watched as she leaned forward, the hem of her dress slipping up.  Her ass began to sway slightly, in time to a tune drifting through the door.  She reached back and slowly eased the hem higher.  Her garter belt peeked, her panties winked. Black lace and see-through blue, Sam moaned and locked the door behind him.
    Watching her eyes in the mirror, he gently pushed her down—until her cheek rested on the counter.  One hand in her bra, the other in her panties, he pinched her nipples and teased her pussy.  The beat of her heart, her rasping breath.  Both were deafening—Sam couldn’t hear an impatient knock on the door.
    Two hands, simply not enough, he longed for three or even four as he pulled her breasts from the cups of her bra.  Helen rose up and arched her back, pushing her breasts into his palms.  He positioned himself and reached for his zipper.
    “No,” she said.
    The heat in his cock, the roaring in his head, they batted her protest aside.  He shoved down his jeans.
    “No, I said.”  She struggled in his grasp.
    The words registered and he stepped back, dazed and stumbling.
    Helen shook her head as if to clear it and crouched before him.  She caressed her nipples with one hand and pulled out his cock with the other.
    “I thought no meant no?” he groaned.
    “It means whatever I want it to mean,” she whispered.  “In this case, it means I want to suck your cock.”  She took him in her mouth.
    And later.  He lifted her up and kissed her.  Her lips, her cheeks, her eyes.  Helen sat on the counter and took his cock deep inside her.  In and out, licking and sweating—she screamed and bit and scratched.  He grabbed her hair and yanked back her head, to see her eyes.  She bared her teeth as he lifted her again, off the counter and into the air.  She wrapped her legs around him as he turned and ran her into the door.
    Bang bang bang.   Come come come.
    Knock...knock...knock.
    The door handle rattled as Helen and Sam descended, floating through a warm liquid haze.
    Mari Okamoto laughed as the gaijins came out of the bathroom.  Their sheepish grins, their tangled clothes, she couldn’t help herself.  The manager was complaining loudly but she paid him no mind.  They thanked her with their dreamy eyes as she led them to the door.  Hand in hand, they disappeared into the darkness.  She sighed and carefully folded her apron.  The hot night was over and now she could go home.



Chapter 26 — Kids, slowly dying

IT WAS the hottest summer in twenty-five years.  Daytime temperatures soared past one-hundred degrees.  The sun was relentless, it hung over Shikoku island and refused to budge.  Darkness brought no relief.  The moon was white-hot and restless.
    Palm trees on the city’s broad avenues bowed their heads in submission.  They waited for clouds and rain.  Day after day, none came.  Conversation with their neighbors waned as their fronds turned brown and brittle.  Craftiness displaced camaraderie.  They competed like coquettes for the attention of once-scorned dogs.
    Kochi was a wild, semi-tropical town and home to more drunks per capita than any city on the planet.  Beer consumption soared as the heat wave continued.  Gangsters cursed and shot each other in a snit.  Old people dropped under the curved eaves of temples.  They expired gracefully, felled by the heat or drilled by stray bullets.

    “Come on, don’t be chicken,” the girl said.
    Twelve-year-old Kenji backed away shaking his head.  “No.  If Tokunaga-sensei catches us we’ll get in a lot of trouble.”
    “What a baby,” the girl laughed.  She took a cigarette from the pack of Mild Sevens and lit it.
    “Put that out,” Kenji demanded.  “You’re going to get me in trouble, too.”
    She inhaled deeply and squatted down to scratch an old sow behind the ears.
    “Leave her alone,” Kenji said, nearly shouting in frustration.
    The girl looked at him as if he had lost his mind.  “What?”
    “The pig, the pig.  She’s mine.”
    “Yours?”
    Kenji wished he’d kept quiet.  He’d learned long ago never to let them inside, to let them see you cared about anything at all.  “Uhh, I didn’t mean she’s mine like I own her or anything, all I meant, uhh, was that she’s my friend.”  My only friend.
    The sow pulled herself to her feet and nudged Kenji in the leg with her snout.
    “See?” he exclaimed.  “She likes me.”
    The girl took another drag on the cigarette and glared at the boy.  She didn’t give a shit about pigs, friendly or not.
    Kenji started for the door and the pig followed.
    “Come back here.”  Her voice was sharp and threatening.  “Or I’ll beat you up.  You know I can do it.”
    Kenji stopped.  That was his problem.  Everybody wanted to beat him up.  He never did anything to make them angry, just the opposite, he did all he could to please.  It never worked.  The girl had been just like all the rest.  She’d punched him in the stomach thirty minutes after arriving at the school that morning.  She’d laughed at his diminutive size and made fun of his long eyelashes and big ears.  At sixteen, she was four year’s older and nearly twice his size.  He turned and walked back into the barn’s gloom and shadows.  She held out the cigarette.  “Smoke.”
    Kenji took a shallow puff and coughed.
    “Again.”
    This time he only pretended to inhale and managed not to cough.  The girl was pleased.  “That’s better, baby.  It just takes practice.”  She lit a second cigarette from the butt of the first.  “How long you been here?”
    “Two weeks,” he whispered, looking over his shoulder at the barn door.  “My parents are coming to get me tomorrow.”
    “Where’s all the other kids?”
    He shook his head.  “There aren’t any.  Just you and me.  There were two boys but they went home last week.”
    “I guess business ain’t so hot, huh?” she grinned.
    “I don’t know.  I just want to go home.  I hate it here.  Tokunaga-sensei is mean.”
    “Ahh, it ain’t so bad.”  She held up the Mild Sevens.  “Pretty lucky finding these, don’t you think?”
    Kenji nodded but he wasn’t so sure.  Who would leave a full pack and a lighter in plain sight in the barn.  Besides Tokunaga, there was only the cook, old Tada-san, and she didn’t even smoke.  He took another puff and tried to smile, hoping the girl would like him.
    “You’re cute,” she said.  “I’m sorry I hit you.”
    “That’s OK.  It didn’t hurt much.”
    “Where is Tokunaga, anyway?” she asked.  “I thought he’d watch us all the time.”
    “He usually does.  This is the first time he hasn’t been around while we did our evening chores.  It’s strange.”
    The girl looked down at the cigarette suspiciously.  They’d been so easy to find, such a temptation, almost like a gift.  “Maybe not so strange.  Put that out, hurry up.”

    Kenji’s father and mother stood in the barnyard, sweating and listening to Tokunaga-sensei with embarrassment.
    “I was as surprised at yesterday’s smoking incident as you are.  Kenji was making excellent progress.  No one wanted to see him graduate more than I.  I never keep my students one minute longer than necessary.”
    “What do you mean?” the mother asked, alarmed.  “Isn’t he coming home today?”
    Tokunaga shook his head sadly.  “I don’t think that would be wise.  His problem is still clearly unresolved.  If he were to leave now he would soon revert to his old behavior.”
    “Are you sure?” the father asked, his voice wavering.  Implying that a teacher, any teacher, could make an error was a tremendous breach of etiquette.
    Tokunaga stiffened inside his camouflage fatigues and worked to control his temper.  He despised these spineless parents as much as their spawn.  Only the thought of an extra two-weeks tuition salvaged the moment.
    “I am absolutely certain.  Little Kenji is a typical school-refuser.  I’ve worked with many boys and girls just like him.  They always blame the other children when the real problem is their arrogance and inability to try and fit in.  Don’t you agree?”
    The mother looked to her husband for support.  “I don’t know.  Kenji is so quiet.  I can’t understand how he couldn’t fit in.  Most people don’t even notice him.”
    Tokunaga nodded.  “Silence is the most common ploy of the school-refuser.  Another is lying.  I’ll bet Kenji claims the other students tease him.  Am I right?”
    “Well, yes...”
    “Of course I am.  And he even goes so far as to say they beat him?”
    “He’s come home with bruises—”
    Tokunaga held up his hand.  “Self-inflicted.  Believe me, the true school-refuser will stop at nothing.”  He pulled an olive green towel from around his neck and mopped his face.  It was too hot to argue and he had a plane to catch.  “Kenji has to stay another two weeks.  It’s the only way.  Now, if you’ll step over to the office, we’ll take care of the financial...”  His eyes widened, he shook his head and scanned the cloudless sky.  “It’s the money,” he sighed.  “That’s why you’re so reluctant.”
    The father murmured an objection and a reassurance.
    “There are cheaper schools,” Tokunaga continued.  “But if you want what’s best for your boy...”
    “It’s not the money,” Kenji’s mother cried.  “We’ll do anything, we’ll pay anything.”
    Tokunaga opened the door to a small prefab building.  It resembled a temporary office at a construction site.  “Please accept my apologies.  I realize it’s hard to understand, but there are some parents that just aren’t interested in their children’s welfare.”
    “Can I see him?” the mother begged.  “Just for a minute?”
    “That’s out of the question, I’m afraid.  We can’t interrupt his, uhh, schooling, can we?”

    A railway freight container sat behind the barn on a pair of truncated roofing beams.  Made of heavy gauge steel, painted baby blue and white, it was a small version of cargo containers transported by ships across the Pacific.
    Over time, weeds had grown up around the bottom.  They were like the earth below, bleached of life and color.  A pig rolled in the dust nearby, a hen crouched under the container, seeking shade from the afternoon sun.
    The container rocked slightly on the beams.  The hen ruffled her feathers and cocked her head in alarm.  The trembling subsided and she settled back in the dust.  Her head sagged on her breast.  She began to doze, lulled into ever deeper sleep by a low keening from inside the metal box.

    At a few minutes past midnight, the roof of the container was still too hot to touch.  Temperatures inside had reached one-hundred and forty degrees that afternoon.  Rational thought had abandoned Kenji some hours before.  His existence had narrowed to involuntary reflex and terror.  He lay naked, face down on the floor of the discipline cell.  There were deep gouges scoring his cheeks and arms.  He could no longer cry out for help.  His tongue had swollen in his mouth.
    Reiko had given him her share of the single can of grape soda Tada-san had delivered that morning.  Kenji had wanted to refuse but she’d insisted, saying Tokunaga would have to let them out before it got too hot.  He’d cried at her generosity and had promised to take her along when his parents came to take him away.
    Reiko had tracked the passing day through three small air holes punched in the side of the container.  Sometime in the morning she’d whispered, “Is that you’re mother and father?”  Kenji had pushed her out of the way to get a look.  “Yes, yes,” he’d cried with relief, watching his mom and dad talking with Tokunaga by the side of the barn.  And then they’d walked out of his line of sight.  Kenji had scooted over to the door of the container, expecting to be released any second.
    “I don’t think we’re getting out of here,” Reiko had whispered hours later, long after the grape soda was gone.  Kenji had cried at the thought.  She’d held him in her arms as long as she could, until they were driven apart by the rising heat.
    Reiko had gone mad sometime in the late afternoon.  She’d shrieked and shrieked, her cries filling every inch of the box.  Kenji had crawled into a corner and squeezed his eyes shut.  Wild, crazy moans had escaped her throat; the sound of her nails breaking on steel had forced his hands to his ears.
    Beating back the fear, he’d opened his eyes, seeing things no one should ever see.  Reiko throwing herself against the walls of the box—smack, crack.  Reiko licking at urine running down her legs.
    Brave little boy, he’d reached through the darkness to pull her down.  He’d held fast as she’d ripped at his face and arms with broken bleeding nails.  And then she’d calmed, feeling his hands stroke her burning cheeks.
    The air had been like fire in his throat, he’d whispered his parents could still save them.  Try to believe.  Stay with me, I can’t do this alone.  Hold on.  But Reiko-chan was leaving.  Her thoughts had turned to blue-sky smiles and mothers gone away.
    They’d remained side by side all day.  A couple of kids so slowly dying, the heat so cruel it swallowed their tears.

Chapter 27 — May in danger!

TOKUNAGA EASED the van to the curb in front of a shuttered fish shop.  He turned off the engine and climbed out.  A man and a woman walked hand in hand halfway down the block; a taxi turned the corner and drove past.  He slid open the van’s sidewalk-side door and smiled.  The flight from Kochi had landed on schedule and he’d had plenty of time to pick up the rental at Haneda and drive to Asakusa.
    It had taken three trips to figure out and confirm her routine.  The two girls had walked right past him a week before.  Chattering and laughing, neither had seen him standing in the shadows.  She’d returned by the same route a few minutes later.
    Her aunt and uncle had promised a few million yen for the job.  He laughed softly.  He’d get a good deal more than that by the time he was finished.  Those idiots didn’t understand even the basics of blackmail and extortion and it would be his pleasure to give them a lesson or two.  But first he had to grab the kid.  He checked his watch, looked down the street and grinned.
    May quickened her pace, anxious to get home.  A week before she’d trapped Sam in Helen’s apartment at seven in the morning.  Their embarrassment had been cute and had only added to her pleasure.  She wanted to get back to the club to be with them.
    Try as she might, she couldn’t imagine being happier.  She felt safe and easy, her steps as light as cotton candy.  Sister Helen, Brother Sam.  A family, a real family.  She laughed at herself, adolescent cynicism spying on emotions that felt suspiciously dumb and squishy.
    “I don’t care!” she yelled, and pointed a finger at the night sky drifting warm over Asakusa.  She stood in place and jumped up and down.  “Brother Sam, Sister Helen!”  She laughed again.  “Grandfather Manny and Sister Kiyomi!”
    Tokunaga looked around in panic as the kid began to shout.  Half the neighborhood was going to be on the street in a second if she didn’t shut up.  He swore at her aunt and uncle.  They hadn’t said anything about her being crazy.  He jumped back in the van.  Maybe another time.  Fuck it, maybe never.
    She calmed down just as he was putting the van in gear.  After the yelling, the silence was spooky.  He watched in the mirror as she approached the van.
    “Excuse me,”
    May stopped, startled by a man stepping onto the sidewalk in front of her.
    “Excuse me,” he repeated.  “I’m trying to get to Sensoji temple.  Do you know the way?  I’m sorry to bother you.”
    She stepped back.  Creep or not, it was hard to tell in the dark.  He was tall and his head looked too small.  Creep, she decided.  But he’d been polite and she should be, too.
    “It’s that way,” she pointed, and explained the route.
    “Thanks,” he said, taking a step forward and smiling.
    Too late she wondered why anyone would want to visit the temple at ten at night, too late she noticed the half-open door on the van.
    One scream, that was all she managed.  It chased after shouts of joy still echoing over the rooftops.  Tokunaga clamped a hand over her mouth and forced her into the van.  The door slammed and the van sped away.

    The agent glanced at the boarding passes.  Everything seemed OK—a father and daughter flying economy to Kochi.  “Wait.”  She held up her hand as they started for the gate.  “Is she sick?”
    The girl was wearing blue jeans and a yellow T-shirt.  Her eyes were closed, her head lay on the man’s shoulder.  His arm was wrapped around her waist.  She looked like she would fall if he let go.
    “She’s just tired.  She’ll be fine as soon as we get home.”
    His smile faded as she angled her head to force him to look her in the eye.  Passengers in line grumbled at the delay.  The girl wasn’t just tired, she was sick.  Her face was pale, her eyelids fluttered beneath auburn bangs.
    Tokunaga leaned toward the agent, a movement designed to remind her of exactly how small she was.  He flexed his muscles beneath a blue jogging suit.  The agent was twenty-six and frail.  The top of her head barely reached the middle of his chest.
    She sighed.  It was one of those nights.  Sometimes, about once a week, it seemed as if every jerk in the country showed up at her gate.  Just an hour before, she’d had a remarkably unpleasant encounter with a group of slovenly housewives.  They’d towed their husbands up to the gate like carry-on luggage and demanded new seat assignments.
    Very politely, but with a wicked gleam in her eye, she’d told them to get on the plane or get lost.  Their bleating had ceased almost instantly.  Recognizing superior toughness, they’d filed past her like a flock of dumpy lambs.
    And now this.  She was deathly tired of men trying to push her around.  A lot of other girls let themselves be intimidated but not her.  It was humiliating and just led to even worse behavior.  “Your daughter looks sick to me,” she insisted.  “Has she seen a doctor?”
    “She’s all right,” Tokunaga snapped.  He started to drag May to the gate.  The agent took a step and blocked his path.  The other passengers complained louder.  A supervisor rushed over from an adjacent gate and took charge.  He listened with concern to Tokunaga’s indignant accusations.  May’s condition became a secondary issue, the agent’s rudeness of paramount importance.  He escorted Tokunaga through the gate to the waiting jet with ingratiating clucking noises.
    The last passengers boarded the flight to Shikoku island and the supervisor winked as a pretty stewardess sealed the plane.  He was still smiling as he returned to the gate.  The agent’s independence had always been an irritant.  Yelling at her would be good.  It would make the shift go faster.
    A shoe hit him in the face as he turned the corner.  He felt blood trickle from his nose.  She was on him before he could speak, wagging a finger in his face.  “One of her shoes fell off as that guy dragged her down the tube.  That doesn’t sound right to me.  How about you?  Just how stupid are you?”

    May kicked and punched as Tokunaga dragged her through the darkness behind the barn.  He cursed and smacked her in the face again.  The drug had worn off sooner than expected and he’d nearly crashed on the way back from the airport.  It had been stupid not to tie her.  She’d nearly bit his ear off and split his lip before he’d been able to beat her into submission.
    She didn’t want to go into the box.  Something fetid crawled out the open door.  Stay out, it warned, if you want to live.  She fought harder.  An arm and then a leg hung up outside the container.  Tokunaga howled as she kicked him in the crotch.  He stepped back and charged, driving her forward with his shoulder.  A bone snapped and May popped into the box.
    Old Tada-san shuffled up in bathrobe and slippers as Tokunaga slammed the heavy door and locked it.  He nodded at the box.  “You gave ‘em food and water, right?”
    She nodded, thoughts dulled by sleep and age.
    Tokunaga grunted and headed for his office.  There was a first-aid kit in his desk.  “OK.  Make sure you give ‘em some more first thing in the morning.”
    “Who’s the new kid?” Tada-san asked.
    “Don’t worry about it.  She’ll be gone in a day or so.”
    Tada-san slowly made her way back to her quarters, trying to remember exactly what she’d put in the box.  Cokes for sure, early in the morning.  No, that wasn’t right.  It had been grape sodas.  She remembered because Tokunaga had gotten a special deal on the stuff from a shop in town.  The food and water must have come later in the morning before she’d gotten busy with her soap operas.  That she couldn’t recall the exact details didn’t trouble her.  She forgot a lot these days.

    The door swung open.  A square of light, still gray and feeble, hit her in the eyes.  May had been dreaming, lost and falling, confused and frightened.  A hand reached in and dropped something inside.  She leaped for the light.
    “No,” she screamed.  The door crashed shut on her shoulder and bounced her back into the box.  Her arm exploded and something huge kicked her in the stomach.  She vomited down the front of her T-shirt and into her lap.
    May lay on her side, her arm snapped, her spirit broken.  Down, down, pounded down, she fell.  Down a shaft of pain and despair.  Her hands flew to her face.  Too small, too weak, to block the heat, like a hammer—the smell of death given life.

    Lift and push, lift and push.  Tears ran down her cheeks as she rolled the body away from the door.  Stiff and heavy, it fought against her, hanging up on frozen arms and legs.  Slow work with only one arm.  The smell of shit and fear.  Lift and push—she’d looked at the girl’s face once and never again.
    “Reiko?” the boy called.
    A steel sliver pierced her knee.  She ignored the hurt, just one of many.  Lift and push.  And one last shove.  The girl flopped into the corner, face against the wall.
    She dragged the boy underneath the air holes in the front of the box.  Beams of light, thinner her than her little finger, crisscrossed his face.  He moaned once and was silent.  She picked up the last can of grape soda tenderly.  Less than a third was left.  Three cans had seemed like a lot at dawn.
    May lifted the boy’s head into her lap.  “You’ve got to drink,” she whispered, and poured a little soda between his lips.  He coughed and the liquid ran down his cheek.  She watched it soak into his T-shirt.
    “You’re wasting it,” she cried, frustrated and angry.  “Try again.”
    This time the boy kept a little down.  May shook the can.  There were only a few swallows remaining.
    “Reiko,” he moaned again.
    She shouted, “May, May, May!  Why can’t you remember?  I’ve told you a hundred times.”  She pressed her face close to let him see more clearly.
    “Please try to remember,” she begged.  “My name is May.  Reiko is sleeping now.”
    The boy gagged and a bubble of blood formed on his lips.  She wiped it away.  Drop by drop, she poured the last of the soda into his mouth.  A small voice in her head pleaded for her to stop, to drink it herself.
    His eyes cleared for the first time.  “May?” he whispered.
    “Yes, yes,” she cried, joyful that he could see, that he could speak her name.  It seemed very, very important.
    “And who are you?” she asked, stroking his cheek.
    He tried to lift his head to answer.  May held him tight and put her ear close to his lips.
    “Did you say Kenji?”
    He nodded.
    “You’re going to be OK, Kenji,” she promised.  “Just lay back and don’t try to move.  I’ll take care of you.”
    For an instant all the pain and terror washed away.  He was the cute little boy with the big ears again.  He felt his mother’s cool hands on his face and chest.  He smiled.  And then he died.
    May fell across Kenji’s body.  Her sobs were poor diminished things.  At last she fainted.  It was a mercy, a blessing.  At 10 a.m., the sun was still rising, the heat still building.

Chapter 28 — Mad flight to Shikoku

THE PHONE rang a few minutes after Kenji died.  Sam’s heart jumped.  After searching the neighborhood, he’d gone to the police.  They’d ordered him to go home and wait by the telephone.  Manny and Helen had continued the search, calling in frequently, hoping to hear May had turned up.
    He picked up the phone.  It was May’s aunt.  Just after ten in the morning, she was already drunk.  She hurled incoherent, long-distance abuse.  Sam held the phone away from his ear and waited until she ran out of breath.
    “May has disappeared,” he said.
    “I know that, you bastard,” she shouted.  “The cops were here at the crack of dawn looking for her.  They accused us of doing something to the kid.  What the fuck’s wrong with you?  We’re her relatives for Christ’s sake.”
    The police had asked if anyone had a grudge against him.  Aside from Nakazono, the aunt and uncle had been the only other possibility.  Sam didn’t see any need to apologize but he wanted to get off the phone.
    “Yeah, OK.  Sorry for the inconvenience.  I gotta go, May might try to call.”
    “I wouldn’t hold your breath, if I were you,” she snarled.
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “Well, buddy.  Just ‘cause I ain’t got your precious little sister don’t mean I don’t know where she is.  You get my drift?”
    “Where is she?”
    Drunk and petulant.  “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”
    “If you’ve hurt her I promise I will—”
    “Calm down, she’s OK, and if you want her back you better do exactly what I say.  You listening?”
    “Yes.”
    “Good.  Now, you get your ass down here.  I got the transfer papers all drawn up.  You sign that fucking building over to me and I hand over the kid.  It’s as simple as pie.”
    “All right, I’ll catch the first plane and—”
    “And no more cops.  You call the cops again and you’ll never see that brat again, I promise.”

    Weekend travelers had jammed up all domestic flights.  Sam didn’t touch down on Shikoku until a little after two.  He rented a Nissan at the airport and drove into the city.  The air conditioning controls were too cryptic to understand.  Sweat ran off his face as he steered along ever-narrowing streets into the oldest section of Kochi.  The shop was difficult to find and parking impossible.
    A grandfather fanned himself on the balcony of a sagging wooden house.  He chuckled as the stranger abandoned the car in a no-parking zone.  “They might tow you away,” he warned.
    Sam looked up and smiled.  “It ain’t mine.”
    The old man laughed.  “That’s the spirit.”
    It took thirty minutes to track down the shop.  It was tucked in an alley so narrow his shoulders brushed the sides of the ramshackle wooden shops and houses.  Rickety balconies blocked the sun.  They hung at weird angles, like afterthoughts tacked on by men unfamiliar with tools.
    The alley was crowded with women in bright, stained polyester.  They squatted in the shade of their men’s handiwork and did laundry in wide tin buckets.  Little girls watched their mothers obediently; their brothers tried to slip away.
    Dark eyes tracked his progress, murmurs of surprise floated out from open windows.  He slowly weaved his way between the women.  Three small boys began to bray and poke each other as he approached.  They pointed fingers and exclaimed, “Gaijin!  Gaijin da!”  The biggest loudest child dropped a clear plastic bag on the ground.  The goldfish inside died of shock.
    Sam rubbed dust off a small blue and white number plate.  The address was correct but the shop appeared deserted.  He peered through a window lettered with faded gold characters.  The shop sold general merchandise—many things of little value and less interest.  Shelves always in shadow and gloom were crammed with old-fashioned toys and stale candy.  Off-brand cans of tuna and okra rusted and waited for the next most desperate shopper.
    He rapped on the glass and slid open the door.  A small brown rat backed out of a burlap bag of grain on the highest shelf.  It stared down at Sam with cherry eyes, twitched its whiskers, and burrowed back into the bag.  A dented ice cream freezer hummed near the door.  He walked toward the back of the shop, his footsteps lifting dust into the air.  It smelled centuries old and clung to the sweat on his face and arms.  Claws skittered in the shadows and something ran over his boots.  He fell back, knocking a jar of mayonnaise off a shelf.  It shattered on the concrete floor with a loud pop.
    Sam turned to leave, intending to find a telephone.  He heard noises overhead.  Footsteps, voices growing louder and finally the creak of rusty hinges.  A shaft of light spilled into the shop.  He stood transfixed, like a deer frightened on a nighttime highway.
    His heart banged against his ribs.  He looked up amazed and speechless.  May’s aunt was hanging upside down from the ceiling.  Her mouth and nose were inverted, her gray hair dangled dirty and free.
    “Awww, it’s not a robber, you fool,” she shouted.  “It’s the brat’s brother.”  She pierced him with a pair of upside-down eyes.  “You used the wrong door, dummy.”
    The outline of a trapdoor came into focus.  Sam shook his head and demanded to see May.
    “Shit,” she muttered.  A rope ladder with wooden rungs clattered through the hole in the ceiling.  It grazed Sam’s head as he jumped to the side.
    “Watch out,” she laughed.
    The trapdoor led into a squalid kitchen.  Black iron pots and pans hung from hooks over a sink jammed with dishes left to mold.  Sam followed her into the parlor.  It was a six-mat tatami room.  A 29-inch television set was the centerpiece.  Purple and white zabuton cushions lay beneath a low wooden table.  An ancient black fan buzzed in the corner.  Clogged with dust, it did little to cool the room.  Sliding paper-and-wood shoji opened on a narrow balcony.
    “Turn that off,” the old lady snapped.
    Her husband was hunched behind the table watching a ball game between the Carp and the Dragons.  He wore a formal black kimono, apparently to mark the solemnity of the occasion.  Clean and starched, it only drew attention to a ring of dirt around his neck and a fiery boil erupting in the corner of his forehead.  He petulantly zapped the TV, climbed to his feet and bowed.  While he mumbled a greeting, his wife clucked about, kicking fat comic books and beer cans into corners.
    Sam smiled.  Though kidnappers and extortionists, the aunt and uncle were still captives of obligation.  A guest was a guest.  Muttering in the incomprehensible Kochi dialect, she yanked a spare zabuton from beneath a pile of dirty laundry and skimmed it across the tatami.
    “Clean off the table,” she ordered, and disappeared into the kitchen.
    The uncle looked at the table uncertainly.  It was covered with leavings from lunch—mismatched dishes, beer bottles, rice bowls and a TV guide.  His eyes were watery from too much beer and the acidic stench of a nearby squat toilet.  He shrugged, swept his arm over the table and knocked everything to the tatami.  The TV guide refused to budge.  It lay glued to the table in a puddle of spilled beer.  The old man grinned at Sam, unpeeled it page by page and tossed it over the balcony to the alley below.
    May’s aunt returned with a tray.  Badgering her husband into a kimono had sapped all her strength.  Her own kimono lay on a pile of futons in the bedroom.  She’d struggled for twenty minutes to tie the obi and had given up.
    Sam stepped out on the balcony and watched as she bent to set a teapot and cups on the table.  Her black lace slip fell away to expose small wrinkled breasts; her bald spot seemed more pronounced than ever.
    “Sit,” she commanded, pointing at a zabuton by her side.  Sam knelt on the cushion and waited impatiently as she poured the tea.  He considered violence.  While it could speed up negotiations, it could just as easily set off a chain of events he couldn’t control.
    He sipped his tea and wished she’d served beer.  There must be plenty of it around.  The room was terribly hot.  An old-fashioned thermometer hung on the wall.  The mercury hovered above 100 degrees.  He wiped at sweat pouring off his face and watched the uncle crawl across the tatami and retrieve a sheaf of papers from a low bureau.  He placed it on the table and bowed from the waist.
    The aunt wasn’t as polite.  She poked him in the ribs with her elbow and growled, “Sign it or you ain’t ever gonna see that kid again.”
    The document had been drawn up by a local attorney and seemed to have all the stamps and seals in the proper places.  He flipped it back on the table.  “This is worthless.  You know that, don’t you?”
    “I told you, I told you,” the uncle whined.
    “Shut up.  It ain’t worthless.  The lawyer said it’s legal, didn’t he?”
    “Yeah, but—”
    Sam let the pair squabble until he tired of their voices.  He held up his hand.  “Wait.  Let’s try to be reasonable.  That contract is only legal as long as I don’t contest it.  If I do, the courts will declare it invalid.  No judge is going to hold me to a contract signed under duress.  That’s a guarantee.”
    “Duress?  What duress,” the aunt objected.  “I served you tea, didn’t I?”
    “Kidnapping is usually considered duress.”
    “She’s my niece—”
    “And it’s also a serious crime.  You both could go to jail.”
    The old man squirmed.  “Jail?”
    “However,” Sam said, “I think we can reach an agreement.  I’ll give you three million yen if you return May to me today and relinquish all further claims to my property.”
    “I don’t know...”  The uncle hesitated and fumbled for a cigarette.
    Sam pushed a pink disposable lighter across the table.  “How about it, uncle?  That’ll buy a lot of sushi and beer.”
    “OK, sounds good to me.”
    The aunt exploded.  “Not OK!  Not OK!”  She jumped to her feet.  “Never!  I’ll let that brat rot first.”
    Sam turned and stared.  She was hopping from one foot to the other.  Neither seemed able to support her weight.
    “Arrgh,” she howled, both feet fast asleep.  She jerked across the floor and fell flat on her ass.
    The old man laughed and slapped his thighs in pleasure.  Sam shook his head in pure wonderment.  He wished Helen had come with him.  She’d have enjoyed this.  The sight of his wife was too much for the uncle.  He coughed, he drooled, he fell over on his side.
    Sam got to his feet.  “That’s enough.  I’ve been more than patient with you crazy assholes.”  He picked the old woman up by an ankle and carried her upside down into the kitchen.  Her screaming threatened to shatter dishes in the sink as he lowered her head-first through the trapdoor.  “Tell me where my sister is or I let go.”
    “Do something,” she screamed at her husband.
    The uncle stopped laughing, wiped his mouth on his sleeve and crossed the room.  He squatted next to the trapdoor and looked over the side.
    “I’m going to count to three and then drop her,” Sam warned.
    “Do you think it’ll kill her?” the old man asked wistfully.  He stood and pulled a beer from the refrigerator.  “Is it far enough?  I mean she’ll land on her head but—”
    May’s aunt kicked and screamed.  “I’m gonna rip your lungs out, you old bastard.  I’m gonna make you miserable for the rest of your fucking life.”
    “Shit,” he muttered, taking a swig on a can of Sapporo.  “I guess I can’t take the chance.”  The can clattered to the floor and he disappeared back into the parlor.
    Sam was trying to think of a new plan when he returned.  He had a gun in his hand.  It was a fat black Nambu revolver, a relic favored by the Imperial Army during the Pacific War.  He looked depressed.  “I guess the three-million-yen deal ain’t ever gonna work.  I gotta live with her every day.  You got no idea what it’s like.”
    “All right, fine,” Sam whispered.  “Just put the gun down.  I’ll sign your paper.”
    “Shoot him, shoot him,” May’s aunt shrieked, still dangling from Sam’s fist.  “Kill him and we get everything.  Do it.  Do it, now!”
    Her husband nodded.  At least it would shut her up.  He didn’t much care what happened after that.
    “Wait, you idiot!  Get me out of here first.”
    Too late.  He closed his eyes, pointed the pistol at Sam’s chest and pulled the trigger.

Chapter 29 — A softer, safer sleep

SAM JUMPED for the gun.  He never had a chance.  The hammer on the Nambu was faster.  It struck the cartridge.
    Click.
    Adrenalin slammed his head back, he never heard the misfire.  The gun was still in his face.  He slapped out and it skittered across the kitchen floor.  It bounced off a table leg and came to rest beside a wooden crate of brown beer bottles.  A single bullet lay in the Nambu’s rusting chambers.  Not quite as old as the uncle, it was just as impotent.
    Sam watched the old man collapse in the corner and heard a distant sound.  His brain struggled to put the pieces in place.  He looked down.  A woman hung upside down from his fist.  Her eyes bulged, her mouth opened and closed.
    May’s aunt didn’t stop screaming until Sam pulled her out of the trapdoor and slapped her.  He pushed the pair through the parlor into the bedroom.  They stumbled and fell on a pile of futons and quilts in the center of the room.  The fight had gone out of them.  They huddled together, eyes wide with fear, and waited for retribution.
    He watched silently, until he trusted himself to speak.  “Tell me where my sister is or I kill you both right now.”
    The aunt recovered slightly.  Her mouth opened to argue.  She gagged on the truth in his eyes.  He wasn’t kidding, it wasn’t just a threat.
    “She’s at the Tokunaga School,” her husband blurted out.
    “How do I get there?”
    The uncle tried to give directions.  Too frightened, he babbled.  The third time through Sam knew he could find the school.  He looked around and found a purple obi, the belt for the old woman’s kimono, discarded on the tatami.  She regained her voice as he tied her hands and feet.  A strip of cloth torn from a futon cover served as a gag.  The uncle received similar treatment.
    The rental was where he’d left it, unmolested by traffic police.  He drove as fast as he could, knuckles white on the wheel, through snarling city traffic.  Until buildings dropped away, replaced by paddy fields and low hills.  At the turnoff described by the uncle, he pulled into a gas station to use the phone.  The cop made him repeat himself over and over but finally agreed to send a car.
    A rutted dirt road led to the school.  He parked under the only tree large enough to provide shade from the searing heat.  A few ill-tended buildings were surrounded by fields lying fallow.  He saw no children, heard no voices.  The only indication that it was a school at all was a small sign, easy to overlook.  It was made of plastic and tacked on the side of a metal prefab office adjacent to an old farm house.
    A man in camouflage fatigues with an olive green towel draped over his neck sat behind a desk.  He set down a bottle of beer as Sam walked in, turned down the play-by-play on a mini-TV, and stood up.
    “Good afternoon,” he smiled, wiping his face with the towel.  “Welcome to the Tokunaga School.  I’m—”
    “I don’t give a fuck who you are,” Sam said.  “Where’s my sister?”
    Tokunaga looked as if he’d been slapped.  His face reddened, his eyes registered shock and then anger.  Whether parent or guardian, brother or sister, no one had ever dared to talk to him in such a manner.  He was a sensei, for Christ’s sake.  His response was predictable.  He leaned forward and roared mindlessly.
    Sam had met dozens of Tokunagas in his life.  He grabbed the teacher by the collar and dragged him across the desk.
    “You weren’t listening, asshole.  I asked you where my sister is.”  He lifted Tokunaga’s head and smashed it into the metal desk.  Blood spurted from a broken nose and splashed across the TV screen.
    “Where is she?” Sam shouted.
    “Stop,” Tokunaga gasped, trying to stem the flow of blood from his nose with the towel.  “She’s here.  I’ll take you to her.”  He nodded at the door and made a gesture for Sam to go first.  Sam opened the door and stepped into the sunlight.  It was sharp and blinding, almost painful.
    Tokunaga snarled and smashed the beer bottle into Sam’s head.  He crumpled and fell motionless into the dirt at the base of the steps.  The ex-soldier leaped down and kicked him experimentally in the side.  Satisfied Sam was out, he started dragging him feet-first across the yard.
    The old sow noticed the activity, ambled over and nudged Sam with its snout.  Tokunaga lashed out with his foot and the pig wandered away.  He pulled Sam into the barn and grabbed a coil of rope hanging on a peg.
    “Can I kill you?” Tokunaga growled, as he bent over Sam’s body and reached down to tie his feet.  “Can I get away with it?”
    Sam’s boot caught Tokunaga square in the face, driving him back.  More blood escaped his nose as he sagged and fell to his knees.  He stared at Sam in confusion and disbelief.  Both men slowly climbed to their feet.  They stood in the gloom of the barn facing each other on shaky legs.
    Sam could feel blood dripping down his neck, soaking into his T-shirt.  He was afraid he might pass out again.  “Where is she?” he demanded, staggering forward.
    Tokunaga grunted and charged.  Most of his strength was gone.  They came together—a tangle of arms and legs, curses and threats—and rolled through the dust, out the barn door and into the yard.
    “Stop!” voices commanded, “Stop!”  Hands reached down and pulled them apart.
    Sam fought to get at Tokunaga.  Until he saw the police cruiser parked in the yard.  He stopped struggling and started yelling at a cop in plain clothes.  Tokunaga, restrained a few yards away by a uniformed patrolman, yelled louder.
    Inspector Arakawa sighed—it really is too hot for all this commotion—and slipped out of his suit jacket.  He carefully set it on the hood of the cruiser and looked at Sam.  “Are you the one that reported a kidnapping?”
    Arakawa was an amiable man of middle height.  His tone, as quiet and reasonable as his smile, carried an unmistakable undercurrent.  It demanded Sam be quiet and reasonable, too.
    The patrolman led Tokunaga away to get his statement as Sam began to explain.

    So far she had fallen, so far to return.  Easier to suffer the world of nightmares than to relive the heat, the thirst and the children, lying dead inches away.
    Only Sam’s voice could lift her up.  She rose slowly, against her will—each scrape, bruise and break crying out as she surfaced.  May coughed and rubbed her eyes; she tried to vomit but there was nothing left, just a little drool that ran down her chin.
    Almost conscious, almost believing, she crawled across the burning steel and pressed her eye to an air hole.  A tentative tear escaped and ran down her cheek.  It wasn’t a trick or a dream.  A second tear, more hopeful, followed the first.  It was Sam.  She could just see past the barn, into the yard.  He was standing next to a car, a police car, talking to a man in a suit.
    She wanted to scream but her voice was gone.  Even if she could, he was too far away to hear.  “Come on, Sam,” she urged.  “I’m right over here.  What are you waiting for?”
    He turned his head, seemed to look straight at her.  “Please, brother,” she whispered.  “There really isn’t very much time left, you know.”

    Inspector Arakawa raised his hand, stopping Sam in mid-sentence.  “I understand the situation.”
    “Then let’s start looking.”  Sam bit down on his anger and impatience, working hard to keep his voice under control.
    Arakawa looked over at Tokunaga.  The housekeeper Tada, was standing a few feet away wringing her hands and looking confused.  “This is private property,” he said.  “We can’t conduct a search without a warrant.  Basically, it’s your word against his.”
    And I believe everything you’ve told me.  He’d never been introduced to Tokunaga but had seen him around.  After nearly twenty years on the force he could recognize a bad guy when he saw one.  There’d been rumors about this school of his but no formal complaints.  But scum like Tokunaga always made a mistake, it was as inevitable as the monsoon.  Arakawa had filed away the rumors and had waited patiently.  Today was the day.
    “You need to have your head looked at,” Arakawa said quietly.  “You’re still bleeding.”
    “What?”  Sam reached up and touched the back of his head.  His fingers came away smeared with blood.  He’d forgotten the wound.  It was of no importance.
    Arakawa reached a decision.  He didn’t like the delay it would require but he had no choice.  “I’m going to take you and Tokunaga to the hospital and then I’m going to get a warrant.  It shouldn’t take more than an hour.  The patrolman will stay to make sure the old lady doesn’t move your sister if she’s here.  I’m sorry, it’s the best I can do.”
    “What about the aunt and uncle?”
    “I’ll radio in and have them picked up.  Now, if you’ll get in the car.  The sooner we leave, the sooner we’ll be back.”
    Sam started to argue.  A look from the cop stopped him.  He was only going to make things worse.  Arakawa pointed to the back seat and Sam opened the door and got in.  After a word with the patrolman, Arakawa shoved Tokunaga in the front seat and started the engine.

    May’s eyes fell shut as Sam got in the car.  She didn’t have the strength to open them again.  She didn’t scream or even cry, she simply lay down on her side and curled up in a ball.  He was leaving and she didn’t understand why.  Hope, like a mirage, shimmered and was gone.  She knew it wouldn’t come back.  Not in time, not for her.
    May apologized again and again.  For giving up so easy, for not trying harder.  But she couldn’t go on any longer.  From beyond the terrible darkness, she heard a gentle voice, she saw a cool friendly light.  “Goodbye, Sam,” she whispered, slipping away.  “Goodbye, goodbye.  I’ll always love you.”

    Inspector Arakawa’s eyes never left Tokunaga as he radioed in his report.  Sweat poured down Tokunaga’s face, his eyes were everywhere, bouncing around the barnyard, never resting.
    Tokunaga could feel the cop staring at him.  He tried to relax, to make his mind go blank.  He looked at the farm house, he looked at the office.  Not once did he glance at the freight container, just visible around the corner of the barn.  He closed his eyes and began to tell himself hopeful lies—I can still get out of this—about a hopeless future.  He began to feel better and started to smile.
    A rooster crowed behind the barn.  Arakawa glanced toward the sound.  A hen cackled angrily and fluttered up out of the weeds.  The sun bounced into his eyes, glinting off metal blue and white.  He blinked.  A pig stood on its hind legs, pawing at an old freight container.  He shifted his gaze back to Tokunaga and now it was his turn to smile.
    “So what’s in the box?”
    Tokunaga was still trying to wipe the shock and fear off his face as Sam bolted from the car and began to run.  Arakawa made no effort to stop him.  Tokunaga’s expression was all the warrant he needed.  The heat in the car was intense, it seemed hot enough to melt the plastic dash.  He looked again at the metal box and casually backhanded Tokunaga across the face.  He picked up the radio and called for an ambulance.
    Sam burned his hand opening the steel door.  The stench brought tears to his eyes and drove him back.  He reached inside and lifted May out of the box.
    The patrolman was yelling in his ear, gesturing.  Sam couldn’t understand the words.  He stroked May’s forehead and refused to let her go.  Her face was terribly flushed, hot and dry.  He knew his tears weren’t enough but he couldn’t think, he didn’t know what else to do.
    Arakawa pulled the little girl from her brother’s arms and set her in the dust.  He saw a broken arm, he saw heat stroke—he saw she wasn’t breathing.  He didn’t think she was going to make it.
    Sam knelt and tried to help the cop with CPR.  When the inspector shook his head, Sam tried harder.  The cop didn’t know May—she would never give up.

    Arakawa watched the ambulance pull out of the yard with its lights flashing.  He prayed a little for the kid and then retrieved Tokunaga, standing forgotten, handcuffed to the door of the cruiser.
    He cuffed Tokunaga’s hands behind his back and dragged him over to the box.  Two bodies, one small, one smaller, lay beside the freight container.  He shooed the sow away from the children and forced Tokunaga to look.  “You did this,” was all he would allow himself to say.
    They stood together as the bodies were loaded into ambulances and driven away, this time without lights or siren.  Arakawa ordered the patrolman to take the housekeeper to the station in the cruiser.  “But how will you get back?” the patrolman asked.  Arakawa said he would call for a car.  The young cop did as ordered.  He looked worried and uncertain as he drove away.
    The sun was down, the yard in dark shadow.  The pig glanced at the two men and strolled into the barn.  “Get in the box,” Arakawa ordered.  He pointed a pistol at Tokunaga’s head, giving him a choice.
    “Please...” was all Tokunaga could manage.  He tried to climb inside but the heat and the smell nearly brought him to his knees.  “Please...”
    Arakawa assisted Tokunaga into the box and shut and latched the door.  He shrugged and walked out of the yard.  A small breeze lifted his spirits a little as he walked down the dirt road.  The smell of alfalfa, strong and sweet, filled the deepening gloom.  The inspector suddenly felt very tired.  He stepped off the road and sat down under a small tree.  Soft sounds, near and far—Arakawa listened with eyes closed.  He heard it all.  The rustle of palm fronds, the call of earth and sea.  He listened to voices gone forever and wished for a moment’s silence, nothing more.

    The connection was bad, his voice a whisper over wires stretched to breaking, heart to heart.  She wanted to ask him to speak louder but was afraid.  Evening shadows crept across the walls.  Can you fly down?  Tonight?  She promised and gently set down the phone.  A cry of sadness escaped her throat.
    There were things she needed to do, arrangements to be made.  Minutes passed.  She sat, her head at an angle, staring at the wall.  Street noises receded and were gone.  The light grew soft.  It slid out the door, cascading off the balcony to the street below.  She felt a coolness on her cheeks as a summer wind touched her tears.
    Helen stepped out on the balcony.  Remembering her first days in Tokyo, she felt all alone under a decorated sky.  A new arrival—the city had been master, she apprentice.  It had taught her the shape-changing art.  An import, too big to fit, she’d been forced to shrink.  Painful reminders had been administered when needed.  She’d thought it natural, a cultural adaptation.  And if others had commented on her silence, only she’d known of a growing bitterness.
    Excessive love had proven a distractive palliative.  She’d conjured emotions as ethereal as the sunset and called them real.  And then May had miraculously come into her life.  A little sorceress, she’d cast charming spells, visions of past and possible Helens.  Sam had followed and she’d grown even more, expanding to reach for his love.
    She looked at the temple below.  Awed by sharp angles and shiny surfaces, she’d gotten lost somehow, forgotten where she was.  Now she remembered.  She’d nearly disappeared just to survive, a believer in shades of gray.  She shook her head.  Not all differences were neutral—ask Kiyomi, ask May—children trimmed to fit like bonsai.

    The hospital was quiet and dark with nurses dozing at their stations.  Sam sat outside May’s room resting his head in his hands.  He prayed she live one minute longer.  The hand on the clock ticked over and he repeated his prayer.  The door opened and a nurse hurried past without a glance.
    He’d grown used to the footsteps of the doctors and nurses.  They moved between darkness and light on crepe soles that only whispered of their approach.  Sam raised his head to a different sound, loud and urgent.
    Helen was out of breath from running.  “I got here as fast as I could.  How is she?”
    Sam shrugged.  “Not good, I guess...hell, I don’t know...the doctors won’t tell me anything.”
    “But she’s hanging in there, isn’t she?”
    “Yes.  One of the nurses said every minute is important.  The longer she lasts...”   
    “When can we see her?”
    “I don’t know.  They kicked me out an hour ago.”
    Helen took his hand. “All right, we’ll wait.  She’s going to be OK.  Trust me.”
    Sam tried to smile.  “That’s my line.”
    “Not any more, it’s mine now.  Come on, if she can make it this far she can make it the rest of the way.  Have a little faith.  She’ll come back to us.”
    Deep into the night, the doctors relented.  Sam and Helen sat silently at May’s bedside, listening to her breathing.  It was a weak sound that struggled to be heard in a room loud with despair.  Sam held May’s hand, Helen held Sam’s.  Doctors and nurses came and went, their footsteps and whispers punctuating a history undecided.
    Sam leaned down and encouraged May once more.  His words and tears joined with Helen’s.  They fell gently, one by one, over the little girl.
    May’s eyelids fluttered just before dawn.  She lifted a hand to rub her eyes.  “Why’s my face all wet?” she complained.  Sam smiled, Helen whispered thank you and May fell into a softer, safer sleep.

Chapter 30 — Nakazono sets a trap

PATROLMAN TAKAHASHI listened to the river as he walked along the flood control wall.  The movement of the water lapping against the concrete offered at least an illusion of coolness.  In no hurry to get home, he walked very slowly.
    He’d finished his shift at midnight and clocked out of the station.  He usually took the last train three miles north to Minami-Senju and walked five minutes to his place.  But tonight, like every night this week, he walked.  It took well over an hour but he didn’t mind; he really didn’t want to go home at all.
    He reached a very large cardboard box and paused for a moment.  A loud snore escaped through a small door cut in the side.  Behind the box, shirt and trousers were drying on hangers on the river wall.  A week before, Takahashi had seen an old man washing clothes in the river.  He’d reminded him of a native in some far away, foreign village.
    He kept walking, passing many more boxes.  Just like a village, he thought.  The well-off villagers had the best places and their box homes were covered with plastic sheets to keep out the rain.  The poor villagers had smaller boxes and less protection against the elements.
    But all were the neatest of villagers.  No old tires or bicycle frames littered their yards; no chickens or goats foraged for food on their doorsteps.  He’d seen a dog or two, once or twice.  Maybe they would get the chickens and goats later when the village got bigger.  He wondered if there was a law against the river people keeping chickens and shrugged.  Cleaning the station toilets and helping Nakazono was his job, others could worry about the chickens.  All he knew was the police had been ordered to pretend they couldn’t see the boxes or the bums.
    Near Sakurabashi bridge, small tugs worked under spotlights, pushing fireworks barges into position along the banks of the Sumidagawa.  Takahashi grinned at the sight and stopped to watch and rest.  The night was still very warm and he took a handkerchief out of his uniform cap and wiped his bald head.
    Two fire department launches raced past the tugs, their wakes rocking the ungainly work boats and barges.  One of the tugs whistled angrily at the intruders.  A firefighter on the bow of the lead launch fired his water cannon in the direction of the tug and laughed.
    Takahashi laughed, too, and waved his cap at the fireboats as they disappeared around a bend.  On loan from the Nihombashi fire department, the boats would be stationed beneath Azumabashi bridge in Asakusa for tomorrow night’s fireworks festival.
    He replaced his cap and left the river wall, heading north up Edodori toward his home.  The streets became darker as he traveled farther and farther from Asakusa.  He liked it that way.  There was less to see in the dark, less to be afraid of.  Not that there was anything real that scared him, he just felt safer in the dark.
    He knew he was a dumb person.  Gosh, he’d been told often enough.  Still, he wondered if other people were afraid the same way he was.  Afraid of everything, but nothing he could ever touch.  Maybe smarter people knew what scared them, he never did.  If they knew, they could run away.  But what if they were like him and didn’t know?  What did they do to make themselves feel better?
    “Bad things, I bet,” he whispered, as he neared his home.  Takahashi wasn’t used to thinking, Nakazono always did it for him.  The idea was so startling he froze in the middle of the street.  “They do bad things ‘cause they’re scared.”
    Stuck in the center of the road, Takahashi didn’t see the car.  The driver stopped right behind him and leaned on the horn.  The patrolman jumped out of the way and pointed his finger at the driver.  “You’re scared!” he shouted.  “You’re scared just like me!”  The woman drove away with a look, perhaps, of fear on her face.
    His home was one of six shed-like structures.  Small, single-story and wooden, they clustered on a dirt lot.  When Takahashi placed his hand on his front door, he could reach out and touch the opposite shed.  Laundry hung on lines stretched between roofs, broken toys and candy wrappers littered failed plots of carrots and onions.
    Takahashi whistled softly as he took a key out of his pocket.  His hands shook as he turned it in the lock.  He’d tried so hard not to think about it, but it was true.  He finally had something real to be afraid of.

    May had slept with Helen for a week after her release from the hospital.  On the eighth day she stood in the center of the living room and announced she would sleep in her own bed that night.
    Sam turned down the sound on the TV and Helen set down her book.  “Good,” he said, “but are you sure you’re ready?  There’s no hurry, you know.”
    May picked at a cast on her left arm and smiled.  “I’m ready now.  I’m not a baby you know.”
    “OK, OK, don’t get excited.  I was just asking.”
    Helen smiled.  “I think this is May’s way of announcing she’s fully recovered.  Isn’t that right, May?”
    May hesitated and then waved the cast, making sure it was seen and not forgotten.  “Well, I wouldn’t put it that way exactly.”  She was still enjoying her convalescence and all the attention it entailed but it was placing a burden on her social life.  “But I’m, uhh, almost fully recovered.”
    Helen and Sam smiled at each other, nodded agreeably at May, and returned to book and TV.
    “Hey,” May exclaimed.  “Is that all you’re going to say?”  She stepped to the side to ensure that Sam couldn’t see the TV at all.
    “What am I supposed to say?” he asked.
    “You’re supposed to say that since she’s now feeling OK, she can watch the fireworks tomorrow night,” Helen said, without looking up from her book.
    “I thought we were all going together?”  Sam appeared puzzled.  “What’s the problem?”
    “I want to go with Kiyomi.”
    “Fine, she can go with us.”
    May hadn’t been out of Sam’s or Helen’s sight since coming home.  She was starting to feel trapped.  She couldn’t have any serious fun with them watching her every second of every day.
    “We want to go by ourselves.”
    “Why?”  Sam didn’t want her going anywhere by herself, ever again.  He knew he wasn’t being realistic but logic didn’t help.  He tried to smile.  “What’s wrong?  Are we boring?”
    May shook her head but didn’t answer.
    He turned to Helen.  “Don’t you think it’s a little early for her to be going out alone?”
    “No, I don’t,” Helen gasped, as May jumped into her lap.  “I think she’ll be fine.”  She laughed as May tickled her stomach.
    May nodded.  “Yeah, and we’re only going to be a couple of blocks away and—”
    “Get off me.”  Helen shoved and May fell on the carpet.  “Like you said, you’re not a baby anymore.  You’re way too heavy.”
    “Awww...”
    Sam knew this was an argument he couldn't and probably shouldn’t win.  “All right,” he agreed.  “But don’t talk to anybody weird and don’t leave the neighborhood without calling.”
    Helen leaped off the couch and pinned May to the floor.  They laughed and tickled and hugged and shouted.  Sam watched the two women for a moment, shrugged, and went back to watching the ball game.  He felt slightly old, a bit stodgy, and quite protective.  It wasn’t a bad feeling at all.

    Takahashi held his breath as he took off his shoes and tiptoed down the hall.  All was quiet, it looked like Nakazono had gone to bed.  He winced as he stepped into the living room.  The lieutenant was sitting in the dark on the tatami staring right at him.
    “Why tomorrow?” Nakazono asked.
    Takahashi eased himself past his boss, slid open the shoji leading to the bedroom and gently closed it behind him.  His hands were still shaking as he pulled off his trousers and shirt.
    Nakazono’s voice penetrated the shoji.  “You’re right, the temple’s probably the best.”
    Forgetting to remove his cap, Takahashi dragged a sheet up to his chin and covered his head with a pillow.  An hour later he was still awake.  It was too hot to sleep.  On a desk, on the other side of the room, was an electric fan.  He sobbed with frustration, imagining the coolness and the nice white noise it would make.
    “Do I kill her before or after,” Nakazono asked, his voice thick with anticipation.
    Takahashi rolled over, entangled in the sheet.  It was wet with sweat.  He whimpered and bit his lip, afraid the slightest sound would disturb Nakazono and the other one.  He pulled his knees up to his chin and decided to run away the next day.

    “How about some coffee?”
    Takahashi blinked and opened his eyes.  It was late, almost noon, judging from the light slanting in the window.  The lieutenant was squatting at the edge of his futon holding out a cup.  Takahashi took the coffee and whispered thank you.
    “What’s the matter, Takahashi-kun?” Nakazono asked, smiling broadly.  “You don’t like my coffee?”
    “No, no, it’s great.”  He floundered about for something to say.  “Uhh, you feeling good this morning, huh, boss?”
    Nakazono stood up and stretched.  He walked to the window, letting the sun warm his face.  “I feel great,” he shouted.  He was wearing a summer yukata of blue and white.  Takahashi had bought it for him when he’d fled his apartment weeks before.  It had hung loosely on his beaten, frightened frame.  Now it stretched tight across his broad back and tighter still across his expanding belly.  Takahashi wasn’t really surprised—he’d done nothing but eat, exercise and fuck dial-a-hookers during his confinement—but still the transformation was nothing short of miraculous.
    Takahashi remembered he was supposed to run away today.  It wouldn’t be hard, the boss sent him on errands almost constantly.  Whatever he wanted, it was his job to run and fetch.  He followed the boss into the living room.  Nakazono flicked on the TV and flopped down on the tatami.  He zapped the set a couple of times, pausing when he found the afternoon cartoons.  “How about this?”
    Takahashi nodded, confused but happy.  He couldn’t decide what to do.  Sometimes the boss terrified him, sometimes he was like his old self again.  If he ran away, where would he go?  And who would take care of him?  Maybe the other one, the one the boss talked to in the middle of the night, was finally gone.
    Ten minutes later, the middle-aged patrolman was sitting three feet from the TV screen laughing happily.  He munched on an onigiri as schoolgirl hero Sailor Moon flushed prettily.  Her precipitous cartoon breasts heaved against the thin fabric of her jumper and Takahashi sighed.  His plan to run away was completely forgotten.
    After the cartoons and a couple of daytime dramas, Takahashi went to buy dinner.  At a Seven-Eleven around the corner, he grabbed a dozen beers and after some indecision, two tonkatsu and spaghetti bentos.
    Nakazono burped and tossed the last beer can at the garbage pail.  It missed and bounced across the linoleum.  “Good job, patrolman,” he said, snapping off a mock salute, as Takahashi retrieved the can and placed it in the garbage.  “I’ve always liked Seven-Eleven for dinner.”
    Sarcasm was wasted on Takahashi.  He nearly glowed with pleasure.  “Thanks, boss.  We can have it again tomorrow night, if you want.”
    Nakazono grunted.  “Yeah, sure, whatever.  But I got another job for you before that.”
    “What?”
    “You’re gonna make a phone call for me.”
    “You want me to call another one of them broads for ya, boss?” Takahashi giggled.  “You want some more pussy?”
    Nakazono grabbed Takahashi and slammed him into wall.  “This ain’t no joke, you fucking moron.  Now, listen and listen good.  You’re gonna say exactly what I tell you and if you fuck up I’ll kill you before you hang up the phone.”
    The sun was nearly down before Takahashi was calm enough to make the call.  Nakazono dialed the number and handed him the receiver.  His hands were slippery and he dropped it in his lap.  “It’s OK, it’s OK,” he mumbled, and put it to his ear before Nakazono could smack him in the face.
    “Hello?”
    “Uhh, is this Miss Lang?”
    “Yes, who’s this?”
    “You don’t know me,” he stuttered, “but I’m with the Asakusa police department.  My name is, uhh, Akamoto.”
    “I see.  What do you want?”
    Takahashi lifted a piece of paper from the table and carefully read the first sentence.  “I have some information about the murder of Elena Takagi.  Are you interested?”
    “Why are you calling me?  What about her son?”
    He ignored her question and moved down the paper to the second sentence.  “This is very dangerous for me.”
    “OK.  Where and when do you want to meet?”
    “If they knew I was talking to, uhh...”  Takahashi nearly panicked.  He was still on No. 3 and she was way down the list.  “Uhh, meet?  Where?”
    Nakazono reached over his shoulder and pointed at No. 7.  “Meet me at Sensoji temple in one hour and come alone.”
    “I can’t meet you tonight—”
    He relaxed a little and read off No. 8.  “It’s either tonight or forget it.  It’s your choice.”
    “All right, I’ll be there.”
    Takahashi replaced the receiver and slumped in his chair.  “She went for it, boss.”

Chapter 31 — On the river

THE BELLS were ringing, the July sun lingered, over Asakusa heated breathless.  In deep shadow, one million, two million—more—faces in street.  Cops everywhere, shouted, directed, sweated, manned the barricades.  The crowd shuffled, not enough room to lift its feet.
    Casual—jeans and T-shirts, shorts.  Girly-men (salaryboys) in suits here and there, and there—yukata tarts in blue and white.  Tottering on wooden geta, sipping beer from cans.  Wet lipstick laughs tagged after perty breasts pushing rude against the flow.
    Across the street, a gaijin, dressed the same, no lipstick.  Clackety-clack awkward on geta and a look-at-me grin.  Head above the crowd—a fresh-off-the-boat sucker with a paper fan stuck in his obi.
    Islands in the sea.  Mothers held children’s hands on blankets laid down hours before.  They ordered men off to buy yakitori and Cokes from vendors.  Past dusk now, almost dark.  They sighed as the first rocket exploded overhead—a slash and a clap.  The kids wiggled their fingers at the purple sky.  Delighted, the sky grew expansive, blushing gold, faster than light.  The kids squealed as their fathers returned, grins on their faces, beers in their hands.
    On the river, stout hawsers tied barges to banks.  On board, venerated wizards eyed shifty-looking apprentices.  The wizards sniffed approvingly, cordite and smoke; they glared at the apprentices racing to reload big-mouth mortars.
    Helen waited at the top of the steps leading to the temple’s main hall.  It bulked large behind her, rising in sharp outline under cold spotlight.  Full dark now, she watched rockets light the sky.  On the edges, where the spots could not reach, the temple was blood-red and black.  To her right, the five-story pagoda loomed above an unruly mass of temple-goers.  They lapped over the steps, pushed past Helen and grabbed at the bell rope.
    She held her ground with difficulty, growing angry at the pushing and at herself.  Crazy to agree, to meet the cop—what cop?  She’d never heard of him.  And tonight of all nights.  A waste of time, nothing good would come of this.  Sam and May had been out shopping—she’d left a note.  They would worry.  Stupid idea, stupid, stupid.
    A college boy banged her, an old woman stepped on her toes.  She shoved them away and started down the steps.  Supposed to meet Sam.  If she hurried there might be time.
    A hand on her shoulder, urged her around, not gently.  She flinched from the craziest eyes she’d ever seen.

    “Well, what are you two waiting for?  I thought you wanted to watch the fireworks by yourselves,” Sam asked.
    Kiyomi and May stood half-in, half-out the door.  “But what about Helen?” May asked.
    “I already told you.  I’m going to meet her right now.”
    “Why do look so worried?”
    “I’m not worried.  Everything’s fine.  Go have fun.”
    Kiyomi crossed her arms over her chest and May shook her head.  “No, something’s wrong and we’re going with you.”
    Sam had to get to the temple and he didn’t have time to argue.  He nodded to Manny sitting, listening, in a booth.  “Keep and eye on these two.  Make sure they don’t follow me.”
    Despite his reassurances, Sam was worried.  Somebody had to be, she wasn’t afraid of anything.  The note, cryptic, just a few words—the temple, a cop, his mother.  He moved slowly through the crowd, pushing when pushed, shoving when shoved.
    The sky was crashing, the temple crowd thinning, drawn to the river for the fireworks.  He checked the front, the back, the sides.  No Helen.  Retracing his steps, to Mr. Donuts, her meeting place.  Back in the crowd, crushed front and back.
    A fist in the spine—impatient knuckles, sharp, designed to hurt.  Sam turned and dropped a middle-aged man where he stood.  Matsuya department store.  Across the street, the donut shop.  Again no Helen, not inside, not on the sidewalk.  He wedged himself into a slice of space and leaned against the wall.  Kids laughing...a noisy sky...too humid...sweat slid down his face...where the hell is she?

    A little resistance.  He stuck the gun in her back; she stared at his eyes, and then again.  Nakazono and not, whoever.  He promised to shoot and would.  No doubt, no resistance.
    “Witch, witch,” he whispered.  She was wearing jeans.  Convenient for him.  Just grab the belt, push and pull.  Helen went this way, Helen went that way.  Too hot, sweat, with Nakazono holding on, dragging him through the crowd like a caboose.  The sky looked cool blue and black, willows weeping silver.  She wanted reach out, to fly.
    A flash, A-bomb bright, lit the crowd.  Her face grim, locked up tight.  Only the eyes moved, seeking, begging.  And the gun, visible.  A man saw her plea, a woman the gun—and looked away.  Didn’t see, didn’t want to see.  Too dark, again, to see.
    Clearly mad, mad as a hatter.  Whispering whispering—witch bitch. Gonna fuck ya, gona kill ya.  And on and on and on.  The words hurt her ears, made her knees weak.  What he was going to do—to her, to Sam, to people she’d never heard of.
    She looked around.  Two million witnesses.  Nakazono read her mind.  “Go ahead, scream.”  His gun pressed hard into her kidneys.  “What are ya waiting for?  Go ahead, you bitch.  Shit, there ain’t even enough room to fall.  I’ll be gone before you hit the ground.”
    “Over there,” he nodded at a subway entrance.  “Get going.”
    Steps leading to the underground were jammed up.  Arriving trains dumped thousands of passengers into the crowd.  They poured out the exit, shouting and pushing.  Helen hesitated, Nakazono shoved.  She tried to buck the tide and was pushed back.  Just yards away, a cop’s whistle.  He waved her off—no departing trains, not for hours.  Nakazono stabbed the gun into her back, yanked her into the center of the street.  Bodies bounced off, swirled past.  A rooftop drum boomed as a wavering sheet, magenta and smoke-gray, tumbled down and curtained the night.  Star shells pierced the curtain and burst silver-blue.
    Helen glared at Nakazono.  “Now what, asshole?”
    “It was your idea,” he growled, looking at her.  No, through her.
    Her idea?  What the fuck?  His eerie little eyes bounced around in his head.  No, not her idea, somebody else’s.  He let go of the belt and pulled her closer, an arm wrapped around her waist.  In the other hand, the gun, still in her back.
    She held her breath.  It was all coming down, right now, right here in the middle of the street.  She could feel his panic, his muscles jumping in his chest, his thighs twitching.  He whispered and talked and argued and moaned.  Yeah, shit, he was going to do it, right now, shoot and run.  His fear, it stank; it fell on her neck like acid rain.

    Back against the wall, Sam scanned the faces.  He drank a beer, wanted another.  Nervous.  Not like Helen, not at all.  Dependable.  A cop?  Cops.  Nakazono unaccounted for, still out there.
    On the river, on the barges, the wizards warmed to their task.  Waving their arms, casting their spells.  A rocket, larger than the rest, streaked from a barge.  A wizard shrieked in anger, an apprentice cringed.  The rocket twisted out of control.  The sky recoiled, trying to get out of the way; the crowd held its breath.  Trailing sparks yards wide, it fell past a block of buildings and exploded over the street.  Heads thrown back, mouths agape, the crowd stared into a metal-white flash.
    And there she was, her face pale in rocket relief.  And fuck, Nakazono, too.  Pushing her down a side street leading to the river.  Sam jumped forward, banged into a group of kids and screamed.
    Sam!  Helen turned, trying to spot him in the crowd.  Impossible, just a mass of faces, smiling, laughing, having fun.
    “Move, witch!”  Nakazono hit her in the side of the head with the gun.  She screamed Sam’s name and dug in her heels.  If he was going to shoot, let him, she was going no further.  He hit her again, harder.  She sagged in his arms, unconscious.
    The plan was unraveling.  Nakazono hit her again in frustration.  Obscenities, objections, complaints poured from his mouth.  The crowd fell away.  He ran down the street, dragging Helen until he was blocked by the river.
    Looking left, looking right.  People shouting for help, gawking, pointing; their faces reflected the fiery sky.  He heard a siren; it was loud red and painful.
    Sam shouted and ran, knocking people to the ground.  He closed the distance to twenty yards.  Helen’s blonde hair flickered in the darkness.  He burst through the crowd at the base of Azumabashi bridge.  Helen and Nakazono were gone.
    “Where?” he screamed into the face of teenage boy.  The kid pointed under the bridge.  “Down there.”
    Nakazono shoved Helen through a gate and dragged her down a steep flight of stairs leading to the water.  Under the bridge, tied to steel camels, floated Edo-style excursion boats.  Too big, too slow.  Nakazono heard powerful engines rumble, smelled diesel.  He looked again.  Nested outboard, a pair of red and white fireboats, engines running.  Helen groaned as he crossed the last excursion boat.  The firemen looked up with smiles on their faces and beers in their hands.  Nakazono fired over their heads and the firemen went over the side, swimming for their lives.
    Gunshots, mere pops, beneath rockets thundering.  Sam skidded through the gate and took the stairs three at a time.  In the water—heads bobbing, voices shouting, telling him to stop.  He let go the bow and stern lines and jumped into the second fireboat.  Twin screws, very fast.  The boat leaped from under the bridge.  Nakazono was three hundred yards ahead, no running lights, charging up river.  Sam cursed and slammed the throttles forward.

Chapter 32 — The explosion, the end

A LORD of the river, a broad-beamed ferry, whistled as the small boat crossed her bow.  Nakazono spun the wheel to avoid a collision.  The fireboat hit the ferry’s wake and bounced out of the water.  Her twin screws shrieked as they tore the air under the keel.
    Nakazono braced himself and kept the boat headed up river toward Minami-Senju.  Again, he felt his brain flop over in his skull.  Keep going, keep going, they’ll never catch you.  Promises, promises, hot and lewd—get the witch back to the apartment—rip and rend.
    Grainy snapshots in black and white.  The dark canal, one of dozens, leading off the river.  A big man drags a woman off a boat.  An invulnerable man scuttles a boat, sinks it in the river.  The bedroom of an apartment two blocks away.  Hot and humid—handcuffs, breasts and blood—the righteous, vengeful man.
    A delicate flower, a pink rose, illuminated the sky.  Nakazono glanced over his shoulder.  There she was, face down on the deck.  He touched himself through his trousers.  Spray wet his face, the boat rocked under his feet.  He shouted in the darkness; he wept with joy under the rocket-bright sky.  We’re so clever, so very clever.
    Helen drifted, fell.  She slammed into the ground and opened her eyes.  She saw something black and wet under her cheek.  Blood, she decided and remembered.  She lifted her head.  It hurt as she turned it side to side.  Her vision was limited.  Left and right—the sides of the boat.  Dead ahead, a dark shape, Nakazono, leaning over the wheel.  She pulled herself to her knees.  Water splashed her face, helped clear her head.  The boat pitched forward, back; it rolled to port, to starboard.  Helen looked back, past the glowing wake, down the black river.  Many lights on the water—green, red, blue and white—but nothing near.  She heard no sirens, felt no urgency.  No rescue.
    A fresh salvo of fireworks lit the boat.  She scanned the deck.  Sailors’ tools—yellow braided line, a galvanized shackle, a rusting turnbuckle—nothing useful.  And firemen’s tools—a fire extinguisher, coiled canvas hoses—a fire ax clipped to the port gunwale.
    Quietly, quietly, Helen freed the ax from its clips.  She tried to stand, slipped on the wet deck and nearly fell.  She steadied herself, got to her feet and raised the ax.  It was heavy in her hands.  One step forward, two—send him straight to hell.
    Nakazono spun the wheel to port to follow a bend in the river.  Helen yelled as the deck tilted under her feet.  The ax slammed into his shoulder, hit bone and bounced.  It jumped out of her hands and hit the deck.  Nakazono fell away from the wheel, roaring in pain.  Flailing, turning, reaching for the wound, trying to stop the blood.
    The fireboat circled, helm unattended, and headed back down river.  Helen dived, grabbing for the ax.  Nakazono kicked her in the side.  She rolled away, trying to protect her face from his feet and fists.  He lifted her up, tossed her against the side of the boat.  His hands were covered with blood.  They painted Helen’s neck red as they closed around her throat.

    Activity on the barges was frenzied, a crescendo of running feet, curses and commands.  Across the river wall, two million were on their feet.  They stood on tiptoes, craning their necks, oohing and aahing.  Black smoke billowed from the barges and lay inert, dead on the water.
    The boat slipped, bounced over a heavy chop.  Sam blinked through the spray.  Nakazono was turning, heading back down river.  He spun the wheel, plotting a new course.  Not much of a sailor, his calculations were approximate at best.
    The wizards battled on.  One sent a silver whale swimming across the sky.  Another unleashed a whale-eating green dragon.  The crowd cheered and pointed, knowing the best was yet to come.
    The boats raced side by side.  Sam shouted.  No one at the wheel.  Dark figures, obscured by smoke, tangled on the stern.  The sky flashed.  Nakazono bending over Helen, her blonde hair trailing in the water.  Sam wrenched the wheel to starboard.  The boats collided.  He leaped, aiming for the center of the boat but landed on the bow, his head missing the blade of an anchor by half an inch.  He bounced into the windscreen, shattered his left wrist, and bounced again.
    He came to rest in the bottom of the boat.  No pain, not from the wrist, not from a dozen cuts.  He grabbed Nakazono and dragged him off Helen.  The boat rolled and her body slid quietly over the side.
    Pinned under Nakazono, Sam watched helplessly as she disappeared under the water.  He roared and smashed a forearm into the cop’s throat.  Nakazono fell away fighting to breathe.  Sam scrabbled desperately across the stern deck, searching for Helen.
    “You bastard,” he screamed, turning.  The cop was sitting on his ass in the bottom of the boat, blood leaking out.  He laughed.  “Fuck you, gaijin.  I finally got your bitch.”  He leveled a pistol at Sam’s heart.  “And now I'm gonna get you.”  Sam took a step forward.  A bullet brushed his cheek.
    “Shut up and don’t move,” Nakazono ordered.  “I gotta think.”  He sat motionless, his eyes a universe away.  Sam glanced over the side.  The boat was running parallel to the river bank.  Too close, getting closer.
    “You know I did your mother, don’t you?” the cop said, his voice just audible over the engines.  “Not that it was my fault.  It was an accident and anyway, she asked for it.”
    He grinned.  “Guess what I’m gonna do after I kill you?  What, no ideas?  Come on, give it a shot.  Oh, all right, I’ll tell you.  I’m gonna pay your sister a visit.”
    Sam charged.  A bullet tore through his shoulder, in and out.  He kept going, driving forward, slamming Nakazono onto his back.  The gun skittered across the deck.  Sam rolled away, reaching.  Nakazono clutched at his leg, missed and sprawled face down.
    Sam pressed the muzzle to his head.  “Stand up asshole.”
    Nakazono stood, hands raised over his head.  He backed into the wheel and stopped.  “You gonna shoot me?”
    Sam hesitated.
    “Shit, I knew you didn’t have the balls.  Come on, hand it
over.  I’ll make it quick.”  He smiled and held out his hand for the gun.
    Sam rocked back the hammer.  Something huge loomed up out of the spray and smoke.  He had the balls but not the time.  He leaped over the side.

    The apprentices, always a step ahead of disaster, abandoned ship with alacrity.  Their stubborn masters held their ground and were consequently sent to join their ancestors.  Nakazono exploded with the barge and became a lost soul, an expanding point of light.
    The concussion broke windows and bent trees in Sumida park.  The crowd cheered and slapped each other on the back.  The best ever, they shouted.  The best, the best, they exclaimed.  Japanese fireworks are the very best!

    Helen was thinking no such thing.  She’d watched the earth rear up and touch the sky.  She’d watched him die.  She rolled over on her back and let the current carry her.  The salt water burned her eyes; she cried.  To float away, to fall into the darkness and never rise again.  She thought of May and began to swim to shore.  She reached the bank and pulled herself up.  She forced herself to walk, head up, bones like smoke.

    Helen sat on a stone bench atop the river wall.  She shivered and hesitating hands placed a jacket over her shoulders.  She lifted her head and saw a shadow slipping away.  Above, the stars had reclaimed the sky and shone with perpetual grace.  Below, lights were spinning red through the trees of Sumida Park.  Police and firefighters ran and stumbled.  Orders were given and countermanded.
    A helicopter passed low over the river, its spotlight searching the water.  A TV chopper dived toward the park and hovered.  A spotlight punched through the trees, illuminating fire trucks and rescue crews.  The light passed over Helen.  She wished she could be alone for a few more minutes.
    The light returned.  It caught her, a small pale figure high on the wall.  People in the park looked up and pointed.  A blast of wind pinned her to the bench and she closed her eyes.  The chopper eased lower; she listened to the whump-whump of its rotor’s panicked beating.
    The first to reach her was a cop.  He bent over and opened his mouth to speak.  All that came out was a startled yelp as small hands pushed him aside.
    Helen looked up into May’s face.  She reached out, pulled the girl toward her, held her.  “I’m sorry,” Helen cried, over and over.  Her words were lost in the roar of the chopper.
    May pulled free.  She reached out and stroked Helen’s bruised face, tried to shout over the noise.  Helen was having trouble breathing—can’t hear, can’t understand.  She tried to take May in her arms to comfort her.  May would have none of it; she grabbed Helen’s hand and dragged her off the bench.
    Down the stairs, to the park.  Through the park, to the street.  May held Helen’s hand so tight it hurt.  She followed as May fought her way through the crowd and scrambled over a yellow police barricade.
    Helen stopped, freed herself.  No, no, she couldn’t go any further.  She saw police cruisers and rescue crews; she saw doctors and nurses and bodies in a row under white sheets lying on the ground.
    May was unstoppable.  She raced behind Helen and pushed her in the back.  “Hurry up,” she shouted.  “Hurry up.  What are you waiting for?”  Another impatient shove sent Helen spinning into a crowd near the curb.  She scowled at strangers’ faces; she blinked at familiar faces.
    Sam’s face was blackened by smoke, his shoulder bandaged.  He tried to rise from the curb, thought better of it and held out his arms.
    Helen shouted and her heart leaped across the divide.  She was only half a second behind, falling into his arms laughing and crying.
    May’s legs could hold her no longer.  She sat herself down on the curb and wiped away a tear.  “Hey,” she grumped, staring up at Manny and Kiyomi.  “What are you two looking at?”

The End