by Tom Lutz
“Hughes was much stronger, physically,” Frank said. “You could just see that.”
“Oh, Franky, you can’t really believe that’s what this is about, can you? The mind beats the body every time. Did I ever tell you about my skydiving adventure?”
Their next pitcher of beer came, Frank once again distracted by the waitress.
“Franky, shall we find out when she gets off work? You look like one of those cartoon wolves whose tongue hits the floor and then unrolls like a carpet while his eyes pop out of their sockets.” He did a quick appraisal. “No, of course not, you’re a good boy these days.” He was living with Isa then. “I decided to go skydiving, Franky, because everyone talked about how thrilling it was, and it seemed like a reasonable skill to have if you fly as much as I do. You laugh, but I sometimes use quite unconventional carriers in some dicey airspace. So I did the training, learning how to roll when I hit the ground, how to pull the ripcord, the emergency pull, the emergency chute, all that, how to turn around and face the wind in order to slow down for landing.” He sipped on his beer. “She does have quite a nice little bum, doesn’t she, Franky?”
“Don’t you ever get tired?”
“Yes, but then in roughly thirty minutes, I’m ready to go again. So we went up in the plane to 10,000 feet, which doesn’t look that high from below, but when you get up to the open bay door in the middle of the rusty albatross they use for such things, it hits you, with a preposterous burst of nausea that this jumping out of airplanes is a formidably stupid idea. Luckily they were used to such hesitation and they quite forcibly pushed me out. The wind slapped me in the face with real violence and instead of waiting the ten seconds I was supposed to wait, I pulled the ripcord immediately. Somehow I expected everything to calm down, and dump-dee-dump-dee-dum, I’d just float gradually down and enjoy the scenery. But it wasn’t that kind of parachute, Franky, not the World War II big balloon-like affair, but the little, fast kind, a single rectangular strip of silk, which I guess is better for maneuvering, but does not slow you down nearly as much. I kept plummeting toward the Earth at an alarming rate.
“Then, out of nowhere, I saw in front of me the big X in the field, our landing zone. We were told to watch our altimeters, strapped to our wrists like watches, and when we got to 1000 feet we were to turn 180 degrees into the wind, which would slow our fall and our forward motion. We would lose sight of the X for a while, they told us, as we floated backwards with the wind, but not to worry, we would land in the right place if we just followed instructions. Very simple. The chute had two handles, and if you pulled down on the left one, it turned left, the right one, right. Piece of cake.
“But as I came to 1000 feet, I was directly over an extensive woodlot. It was late fall and the leaves were gone, and all I could think of was getting multiply impaled on the lethal branches, poking up at me by the thousands, and a voice in my head started saying, I am not going to land in those branches, I am not going to impale myself on those trees. Meanwhile, on the ground, the head of the jump school was on a megaphone, shouting up to me, OK, wonderful, now turn around and face the wind, and when I didn’t respond — I couldn’t Franky, I just kept saying over and over, I am not going to land in those branches, I am not going to die on those trees — the man tried again, and I could hear the urgency in his voice as I hit 800 feet, 700 feet: Alright now, no need to panic, everything is OK, just turn around, now, and face the wind! But you’ve heard that phrase, right, paralyzed with fear? My entire body was rigid, all four limbs locked, and I don’t think I could have moved them if I wanted to. It’s not too late! the man on the megaphone screamed, TURN AROUND AND FACE THE WIND! I went sailing over his head, still a couple hundred feet up, still doing thirty miles an hour. There weren’t even any trees anymore, but there was nothing I could do, nothing. The man with the megaphone was now running along the ground. NOW! Turn around and FACE THE WIND! FOR FUCK’S SAKE! I tried to look back over my shoulder. That’s right, but more, MUCH MORE! In turning, stiffly, to look at him I had pulled down on the left handle and changed direction slightly. TURN AND FACE THE WIND, you PILLOCK! he shouted, very perturbed. I wanted to say to him, don’t worry, it’s not your fault, it’s simply human error. Once more he tried, TURN AROUND and face… but tailed off, and then gave up. A moment later I smashed into a farmer’s field.
“Luckily for me, the ground was newly turned and therefore unusually soft, so I got off easy. I broke both my legs just above the ankles. The people from the flight school were really pissed. They had to come out with a stretcher and carry me across a quarter mile of freshly plowed earth, and every jolt, as they stumbled, sent shoots of pain like I had never, ever known. They were so mad at me I believe they started stumbling on purpose. The megaphone man was muttering about his insurance, and I tried to explain. The best I could do was to keep repeating, It was only human error. I don’t know why. Human error. They told me to shut up.
“I say all this, Franky, as I’m sure you’re already aware, to make a point about risk assessment. When I did the risk-benefit analysis of skydiving, I looked at the numbers of accidental deaths at skydiving schools, which approaches zero, statistically, lower than you’d think. Then I factored in, as benefits, what I erroneously thought was going to be a thrillingly good time, along with the marginal utility of being able to save my own life at some statistically improbable point in the future. But what I did not figure in was the possibility of that particular form of human error. I did not factor in my own culpability. People rarely do.
“Where will human error manifest? That is always the question. Would B. J.’s ambivalence toward the sport, his Buddhist nonattachment, continue to make him undefeatable, or sap his desire to win? Would Hughes’s white-hot anger enable or disable him? These are considerably more important questions than relative muscle mass. It’s the human factor that you can never predict. The human error.” Dmitry watched their waitress walk by once more. “I’ve decided that the phrase is a redundancy, human error. Either word will do. In my case it was double casts in a wheelchair for six weeks, crutches for another ten.”
He remembered that story because there he was, trying to assess what the risks were. If Dmitry was alive, and the locked voyeur’s playroom was evidence he was, that was one thing. If dead, another. Smith and Jones must have guns, and Dmitry’s father, too, for that matter — these anti-Muslim whackjobs always have guns. At what risk was he putting himself? And Yuli? The whiskey sours weren’t helping him think any straighter. He went upstairs — someone had already relocked the door to the security room — and went to his own room and lay down. He realized he no longer cared where Dmitry had got the money, didn’t care how dirty it was, only what kind of trouble came with it. He wanted Yuli to have the money, but without the trouble. He wanted her to — well, he wanted too many things, but Yuli should have the money. The Indonesian police wouldn’t care, and the Taiwanese police couldn’t touch her here. And him, Frank? Smith and Jones had no reason to kill him. Dead man? Him? Why? Who was he a risk to? He walked back downstairs — the house seemed empty, Setiawan missing — and poured a third whiskey sour from the shaker, a little watery with melted ice. It was barely noon. He was cracking up.
The four cameras on the bed. That was creepy. Setting it up was just Dmitry being kinky, but anyone with that key could watch it now. Creepy, creepy, creepy.
He grabbed the retractable knife he had bought and went straight to Yuli’s room. He found each of the cameras — they were all in plain sight, but tucked into corners of the very high ceiling, white against the white plaster — and he dragged a dresser under the first one, put a bedside table on top of it, and on top of that a chair. He teetered on this improvised scaffold and cursed the whiskey sours. He snipped the wire on the first one, then went to each corner, disabling them all without killing himself. There must be a recording of him doing this — first on four cameras, then on three, then on two, then on one. In other circumstances he’d find that funny. He put the furnit
ure back where it belonged, went to his room, and flopped onto his bed.
After his nearly sleepless night, he crashed at once, and dreamt the dreams of the devious.
He woke two hours later, showered, and wandered downstairs once more, neither drunk nor sober.
He was surprised not to be intercepted by Setiawan, whose absence made the house feel abandoned. Remarkably abandoned for early afternoon.
“Hello,” he said. No response. Frank saw an envelope in the silver mail tray on the foyer table, a tray that had always been empty. It said “Franky” on the front and was sealed.
He opened it.
He knew what it would say before he read it.
Franky,
Please forgive the suddenness of my departure. I needed to run to my boys. They were coming to repossess the plane, and it was my last chance. All is lost here, the banks have taken everything. I can’t tell you where we are, it wouldn’t be safe. But I know Dmitry told you about Tokyo. Go there. I know you’ll do the right thing. I can’t —
The letter just stopped, had no signature. Stunned, he turned to see Setiawan, who had silently appeared. He was a little self-satisfied, but maybe a little sympathetic as well. Frank didn’t care. He was too staggered to care.
“This is for you also,” he said, not unkindly, handing him another envelope.
“Where is she?”
“I cannot tell you, most obviously.”
“I’ll have you arrested.” Inside the envelope was a ticket to Tokyo.
“As you wish, sir.”
“Tokyo.”
“For you, yes, Tokyo.”
“And you?” he asked, knowing he would get no answer.
Setiawan waited.
Frank couldn’t stand the idea of staying in the house another minute. I can’t, she had written. Can’t what? Can’t be with him, obviously. It was over.
What had he expected? Happily ever after?
Why had she stopped mid-sentence? Why no love, Yuli? What would that have cost her?
And what was he supposed to do in Tokyo? She had taken the jet to the island, and now was without a fortune. Maybe. Or maybe she was there with Dmitry and he had metals and currencies and accounts strewn across the globe. Why did she want Frank to go to Tokyo? Was she going there, too, keeping it a secret from Setiawan? Maybe there was a safe-deposit box for her as well.
“OK then, Mr. Setiawan, the airport.”
“There is a taxi waiting. I’m afraid the chauffeur and the rest of the staff have been dismissed. You will have to gather your own things.”
He went upstairs, packed his stuff, pulled his email up to see if there were any old ones from Dmitry with details about the Tokyo bank and its safe-deposit box. There was an email from his business manager titled FYI.
“Isa is getting married,” it said. “She is pregnant and very happy. I thought you should know.” It was signed with a little heart icon.
He didn’t love the idea that Isa had shared this with his employee but not him. She didn’t owe him anything, he supposed, but still. He searched and found the one email in which Dmitry mentioned Shinjuku in passing, nothing else. Then he remembered him saying Bank of Japan, because he thought at the time: if you were trying to remember the name of a bank in Japan, what easier one was there? He took care of the few other things his business manager had emailed about, told her he’d be going to Japan for a few days, that he’d get her the flight info when he could, and that she should send his congratulations to Isa. He sent chatty notes to his step-kids. He broke down and wept — not for the last time, he suspected.
His email pinged with a confirmation of his flight. It was in two hours. Fuck it, he thought, either she’ll be there or she won’t. He looked around one last time, checked to make sure he had everything, and went downstairs with his bags.
Amarya was posted by the front door.
“Leaving so soon?” she asked, angry.
“I’m sorry, Amarya, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“You and every other man I’ve ever met. Isn’t it interesting how few people ever mean to hurt anyone?”
“Please, Amarya…”
“Pfff…” she said, dismissing his plea. “Really. You are so fucking clueless.”
“I am.”
“Yes, you are.” They were standing at the door, both taut, unmoving.
“I’m sorry.”
“Yes, you’re sorry. And you’re a fool.”
“I know, I know. Where are they?”
“No, you don’t want to know where they are, and you never will, unless they want you to, and if they ever do, all the worse for you.” They? And what happened to the sweet little sister? “You know nothing,” she added. “They’re using you.”
They. He was alive.
He wondered if she was somehow spinning a romantic novel in her head, the way she did with Dmitry and Yuli when she was sixteen.
“Using me how?”
She shook her head, looked away.
“All you need to know is this: you don’t have a clue. Go home. Protect yourself.”
“What about you?” he asked.
With that, she threw herself into his arms, tears in her eyes, gave him a serious kiss on the mouth, turned, and left.
He watched her half-run up the stairs.
The taxi driver — with some sixth sense? — opened the door and took his bag.
Frank had hopped on the plane without getting a hotel, so when he arrived at Narita he went to the Tourist Information booth and asked for one in the Shinjuku neighborhood. They said the Park Hyatt would send a car so he let them call for him. He sat on a bench outside. He was not in Kansas anymore, or in Jakarta, either. Everything about Japan — every advertisement, every structure, every piece of packaging, every bench, every sign — was meta-designed. The seat he was on had the precise amount of curve to make it impossible to sleep on, or set a drink on, or even a backpack. It was for people sitting and sitting only, an anti-loitering bench. He got a can of something called Pocari Sweat from a vending machine by pushing a button with Brad Pitt’s face on it. When the car arrived from the Park Hyatt, a white-gloved driver picked up his bags. Plastic bottles of cold water sat in insulated cup holders. White crocheted liners covered the seats and the armrests. It was as if a high-end Manhattan limousine service had mated with your grandma’s doilies. The city went by in alternating slabs of grey concrete and wild bursts of color.
When they arrived at the Park Hyatt a room was $916. Plus tax. He could hear Dmitry in his ear saying, “It is not good value, Franky.” He told the clerk he was sorry, paid for the car service and walked out with his bags. He checked into a hotel in the next block called the Sunroute, hard to say what that meant. It was two hundred dollars and change. The room was the size of a walk-in closet, or a berth on a submarine. It was so cramped he worried he would feel like he was getting a CAT scan all night. Instead, he ate an Ambien and slept like he was already dead until the morning sun blasted through the magnifying glass of his tiny window. It was already 10am.
He jumped up, headed back to the lobby, and pulled up Google maps. The road names were in Japanese. He grabbed a map from the front desk with transliterated street names and went in search of his bank.
The science-fiction, parallel-universe feel Tokyo produced was enhanced by the odd costumes of the various youth subcultures — Bo-Peep dresses on the teenage girls, the boys in matching boyband outfits — and by the excess neon signage up and down tall buildings. He found a Bank of Japan branch on the main drag and went in. He showed his passport to an English-speaking bank officer, a classic salaryman in what now looked — after the kids outside — like a cosplay version of a suit instead of a suit. The banker looked on a computer and told him his box was at a different branch. If I were him, Frank thought, I would have found this a little suspicious, but if he did, he made no indication. The man gave him directions to the correct branch, six blocks away, and bowed. Frank bowed back, hoping it was the right thing to
do.
At the second branch, he was taken by a grey-sheathed young woman, another cosplay office-worker, past a man in a security guard costume, to a room lined with deposit boxes. She opened his box for him and then left him alone with it. Inside were a dozen envelopes, which he opened one at a time. Several felt empty and were, but five of them each held a bankbook, a plastic debit card, and a sheet of paper with PIN numbers and security questions for internet access. A sixth held a British passport. Everything he had wanted to find in the box was missing: any information about what had happened, a little note from Dmitry explaining things, a confession — yes, he stupidly had thought Dmitry would have wanted to disburden himself to his old confidante, share whatever the trouble had been. He had even half hoped, illogically, to find a note from Yuli, explaining her disappearance. But instead of answering any of his questions, the contents of the box created more. That sterile room, lined with polished-steel doors, was designed to give a feeling of complete security, with its gleaming marble floor, multiple scanning cameras, and antiseptic, unscratchable surfaces. He felt the opposite. He felt at the mercy of forces he didn’t in the least understand.
The bankbooks were from five different banks. He opened the one from the Bank of the Cayman Islands, and it had his name, with all his data — passport number, date of birth, name, address — and had been opened with three million dollars three years ago. The information sheet with it had a PIN code, all his biographical data, including his mother’s maiden name, his father’s middle name, a security question (favorite song: “Born Slippy”), phone numbers, address, social security number, driver’s license number, all correct. The second was from a Swiss bank and it had been opened within a day or two of the Cayman Island account, also with three million Swiss francs, which were worth almost a dollar a piece, if he remembered right. It had the same information on the sheet, the same PIN code and slate of security questions and answers. The third was from a bank in Cyprus. It had opened with a million and a half Euros. The fourth was from the Bank of China and had, as of a few days ago, over ninety million yuan. He wasn’t sure what yuan were worth, but ninety million of anything was a lot. The fifth was from the Bank of Japan, and had started with three billion yen. Thirty million dollars. The bankbooks seemed anachronistic, from a time before online banking, and he wondered what the point was. Had someone walked in and out with suitcases holding millions of dollars in cash? The Bank of Japan deposit was from 2007.