by Laure Baudot
On an upstairs floor is a waist-high circular platform with two robots that remind him of the Transformers he used to play with as a kid. Each robot, one blue and one red, has a wire attached to it that leads to a square box with a lever.
Beside him is a pudgy boy with red cheeks, who looks about ten. “You play?”
“Definitely! How?”
The boy grabs hold of one of the levers, and the blue robot comes to life. With a grinding of gears, it marches toward the red robot and kicks it. The red robot skids to the edge of the platform. “Do you see?”
Jeremy grabs the red robot’s lever. For the next few minutes their robots wrestle. First one robot falls, then the other. Jeremy experiences the thrill he used to get when he and Lowell played video games back in university. That adrenalin rush, the sheer joy of it, the seamlessness between his intent to move a character and its onscreen actions. Every time he and Lowell played, there was a competitiveness, the kind he tried to hide, but was betrayed by his quickening breath. Eventually, he would shake Lowell’s hand, but that initial feeling lingered, a feeling that bordered on hatred.
A shard of pain catches at the base of Jeremy’s throat. He should have known it would lead nowhere good when he made those changes to his life. When he thinks about it, that was when Lowell betrayed him: when he became the type of guy they had always despised.
The kid’s robot spins off the table.
“Not bad for a guy who’s out of practice, eh?” Jeremy feels patches of sweat in his armpits, hidden by his jacket.
The boy crouches to retrieve his robot from under a shelf of toy bullet trains.
“Another round?” Jeremy asks.
“No, thank you.” The boy gives him a slight bow.
“Aw, come on.”
Jeremy stares at himself in the mirror as he dresses for dinner with Ren. He’s wearing his second suit; there’s no getting around it, he’ll have to wear the first one again for tomorrow’s meeting with Mr. Watanabe.
Both suits have been tailored to his long limbs, and the cut of the jacket gives him a bit of bulk, especially around his shoulders. He straightens up, rather than slouching as he is wont to do. He’s not a bad-looking man, come to think of it. That sharp chin, the evenly set blue eyes. In his bespoke suit, he looks like he could be very competent. Which is what he is of course — otherwise, would Declan have given him this job?
He is a man who has been sent here to do a job, a man staying in a suite with floor-to-ceiling windows and a panoramic view. He will land this account, persuade Declan to give him a raise, and give Lise what she wants. He will present himself to her as a man with resources. He will fight for her.
The restaurant Ren takes him to seats about ten people. A Japanese couple is already eating when Jeremy and Ren enter. The woman has perfect posture and wears an ankle-length skirt. She looks around, assesses Jeremy, and turns back to her companion. The room is hushed save for the clinking of dishes and the syncopated hissing of things plunging in fat. There is a circular counter, behind which a chef cooks.
“Best tempura in town.” Ren pulls a chair out for Jeremy.
The first dish to arrive appears to be small, cut vege-tables — Japanese pickles, Ren explains. The jewelled pieces glisten: royal purple, forest green, lemon yellow. Then the hot dishes: mushrooms curled like tiny fists; beans like green, wrinkled sea animals; rectangular slices of peach-coloured eggplant. “You see,” Ren says, “in Japan, presentation and taste are equally important.”
Thirsty after sitting in traffic for an hour, Jeremy gulps at the carafe of sake that Ren has ordered. The sake warms as it hits his stomach. He focuses on his chopsticks, bites into a sour pickle. “You know what I love about Japan? It’s how thought-out things are. Like those low walls along the subway platforms, in front of the tracks. Making everyone line up. Ingenious.”
After a few seconds, Ren’s eyes clear. “Ah! No, Mr. Evans. Those are for another purpose. For the Japanese businessman, there is so much pressure, you see. Those barriers that you speak of, they are to prevent people from jumping.” Ren picks up his drink and swallows a few times. “More and more suicides, every year.” He leans forward and speaks almost conspiratorially. “The government cannot do anything about it. In Japan, it is a very respectable thing, to kill one’s self. You have heard about kamikaze pilots. There is also the practice of seppuku, which is honorable suicide.”
“It seems a little extreme,” says Jeremy.
“Ah, no,” Ren says. “It was very respectable, for those in the war.”
“I mean in business,” Jeremy says.
“You don’t know what is happening. Some companies, they have two books. One for the government, with fake work hours, and one for real hours. Most people, they work many hours of overtime, but they do not record them.”
Jeremy wants to ask whether this is the case in Ren’s factory, whether his father, too, has two sets of books. But for once, Jeremy’s good sense gets the better of him, and he stops himself from posing the question just as it starts to form. He thinks to himself Lise would approve of his self-control, since it has to do with keeping his job. He tips more sake into his mouth.
The tempura arrives. There are fish bones (which Ren assures him are a delicacy), prawn heads, and potato-like vegetables. He bites into an eggy, salty piece of heart-shaped fish — “Kissing Fish,” Ren tells him — dipped in a sauce, not soy, though possibly fermented. He drinks more sake, for the sweet alcohol complements the salty, juicy food so well. He’s never tasted anything so delicious. He closes his eyes, and when he opens them, Ren is smiling at him.
“You know, Mr. Evans, the generations are different. My father, he works for work’s sake. But for myself, this is why I work so hard. Eating like this. Living like this. Do you agree?”
“Yes. Yes, I do agree.” He finds, to his surprise, that he believes it.
Behind the counter, the chef dips morsels into a vat of oil, and lifts them out again with a giant slotted spoon. He affects a concentration that borders on religious fervour. Each time he hands over a dish, he studies their faces, as if to ensure that they’re enjoying it.
The waitress treads in soundless slippers, anticipating their needs before they themselves are aware of them. When she brings more food, she rearranges the other dishes so that they are equidistant. Jeremy feels an expansive happiness: toward the chef, the waitress, Ren. Toward Lise. He thinks briefly of Lowell and feels a pulse of pity for him, who has never experienced a meal like this. The pity is almost instantly replaced by anger, like a slammed shutter.
But Lise. On the way home in a taxi, Jeremy decides he will phone her. He wants to give her something, anything. He wants to tell her that he’s starting to understand what she wants. The food, the service, he’ll say to her. It was art. I get it. This is what money can buy. It can make you part of someone’s dream, part of something greater than yourself.
He wants to grow old with her. In his mind’s eye he sees them on a patio swing at twilight, drinking beers. Crickets chirping, the smell of cut grass. He’ll cup the hot, dry heel of one of her feet, calloused from all those hours she stands during her nursing shifts.
From the open windows of his cab, he watches fluorescent signs blink. Hordes of people walk by, their feet clip-clopping on the sidewalk. Their conversations roar. He can’t believe this many people are out this late — it must be one in the morning.
By the time he gets back to the hotel, the alcohol-induced euphoria has started to seep away. The bed, with its cloud-white sheets and fluffed-up pillows, awaits. Nevertheless, he dials, first Lise’s work, then home. At home, the phone rings on and on, in a tinny kind of way. Outside the enormous windows, a fog has risen, obscuring the skyscrapers’ blinking lights.
Jeremy dreams that he and Lise are at the Scarborough Bluffs. Their jeans rolled up to their knees, they taunt the water, seeing how far they can wal
k in without getting their clothes wet. Lise squints her eyes at him. Above them, gulls screech.
He wakes to a woman’s screams, coming from the room above. Wails rise and fall, followed by the low tones of someone who sounds angry. Someone male. Jeremy’s heart speeds up. He’s not hearing someone’s television, he realizes. Someone is harassing a woman. His eyes fly open. He listens a bit longer, and as he listens, he grows indignant. How dare someone interfere with the delicacy of his experience, especially with something as sordid as, what, abuse? His imagination forms a variety of scenarios, all involving a woman who looks like Tomiko, being bullied by a large, faceless man. Now he wavers between anger and fear.
Somewhere, from a long-drawn-out domestic argument that lies in his past, he hears Lise’s frustrated voice: I want you to move! Up, down. I don’t care which way.
The reception desk answers his call immediately. “Tomiko?” He listens to silence. “I’m sorry, I thought you were some-one else.” He gives the woman on the line his room number and explains what he’s heard. “I’m sure things are fine.”
“I will check.” At first uncertain, the female voice is now amused.
“Because you never know.”
“Thank you, sir.”
It takes him a full hour to fall asleep, what with his rising headache and dry throat, both signifying tomorrow’s hangover. Finally, he gets up, swallows a sleeping pill, and sleeps.
The phone wakes him. The blinds are open and from his bed he can see the blinking light of a single airplane across the night sky.
“Mr. Evans? It’s Tomiko.”
“Yes?” He feels as if someone is dredging him up from a lake.
“I wanted to say thank you. For alerting us to a problem.”
He rubs the sleep out of his eyes.
“You called, before, about a noise?”
“Right. Is everything okay?”
“I wanted to say thank you.”
Well, alright, she doesn’t want to tell him. She’s a professional, after all.
“It has been taken care of,” she says.
He is suffused with a rare contentment. Once she has hung up, he turns his head into the pillow, which smells of orchids, and smiles.
Sometime later, he wakes up for a second time. The light-grey sky outside his window tells him it’s morning. Then he looks at the clock.
It’s nine-oh-eight.
Crap. He’s supposed to be downstairs, meeting Ren and Mr. Watanabe to visit the factory.
Jumping out of bed, he retches, but manages to keep whatever is left of last night’s meal down. Ren’s card is in his wallet, but where is his wallet? He finds it in the back pocket of his pants, at the foot of his bed. Without thinking, he dials his cell phone, which will cost a fortune in long-distance rates. “Ren? I’m sorry. I’ll be down in five minutes.”
“Fine.” Ren’s voice seems to come from far away.
Wishing he had time to take a shower — if only to rinse off his skin, which emanates a scent of oil and fermentation — he washes his face and brushes his teeth. It takes him another two minutes to dress. The clock now reads nine thirteen.
In the elevator, the wedding video is playing, looping as Jeremy makes his way down to the lobby. The bride and groom hold hands, then separate as the movie begins again.
The lobby’s cacophony, of unknown languages, of children and women and men, hits him when the elevator doors open. Halfway across the room, Ren is standing in front of one of the lobby’s revolving doors, holding the elbow of an old man. The man, who looks like an older version of Ren, seems to be wriggling out of Ren’s grasp. Ren finally cedes and looks around him: first over his shoulder, toward the interior of the lobby; then down at his wrist where, even from where he stands, Jeremy can see the flash of a watch; then out the revolving door into the street, and finally over his shoulder again. It’s as if he’s trying to decide something.
In the Afternoon
The last time I saw all of them together, we were standing in their beige marbled vestibule: Jackie, clouded in Givenchy, and Richard, in a charcoal suit, bending to kiss baby Suzette, who sat in the crook of my arm as if it were a rocking chair.
I wanted them to go. It was always the same: my regret that Richard was leaving, and my eagerness at becoming the mistress of his house.
Richard turned to me. “I want to show you something.”
“Richard,” said Jackie.
“Un petit moment. Come, Catherine.”
Jackie looked at me and rolled her eyes, as though to con-firm that we both knew how Richard could be. Back then I liked her pretty well, though I disdained her a bit, too. I felt she didn’t have much control over her husband. It was only later that I realized, where Richard was concerned, she had always been more powerful than me.
I gave Suzette to her mother and she protested, but then turned placid. She was an easy baby, which I appreciated only a few years ago, once I had my own kids. Then I followed Richard up the stairs.
Richard was tall and had a kind of middle-aged professorial handsomeness. He had a lick of untamed hair on the top front of his head, and he wore wire-rimmed glasses and expensive suits. He was a diplomat who’d landed in diplomacy by accident because his father had been in it. He didn’t like his work, but he was good at it. He had an attitude of respect for his elders in the job, a stance that bordered on subservience, but didn’t quite make it there. He was a political man too, and he could, when required, become rapidly dissembling.
We went into the spare bedroom, which was cluttered with the things the family no longer used. It was where Richard kept his stash of videotapes. These were stacked haphazardly, on bookshelves, on dressers, and on the floor. Some of the boxes were open, with cassettes peeking out like turtles emerging from their shells.
On a stand, the VCR radiated heat from having been on for some time. Richard reached for a remote.
“Look,” he said. He showed me a clip. “It’s a documentary about Artaud. The playwright.”
Onscreen, the actor who played Artaud sat at a table with a man and a woman. Artaud ate soup while the woman watched.
“That’s the poet Prevel and his wife,” whispered Richard.
As I watched, Artaud and the woman held a philosophical discussion about the nature of good and evil. Prevel’s attention drifted; he scribbled in a notebook. Twice Artaud interrupted his discourse to comment on the soup. “What is in this?” he asked the woman. “It has a velvety texture.” The woman smiled.
Richard turned to me. “You see. Even during a philosophical discussion, Artaud appreciates the here and now, the sensations he is experiencing at that moment. In this scene, unlike Prevel, Artaud eats. He wants to savour every particle of that soup.”
He ejected the cassette and handed it to me. “Here.”
“Are you sure?” I asked. I wouldn’t be able to watch it at home. My mother would wander into our living room and wonder why I wasn’t upstairs, studying. My father would frown on it, too. He had a mixed attitude toward Western culture, and liked only Japanese film.
In fact, it was due to Japanese cinema that I was in Richard’s house; it was what had brought Richard and my father together. At the time, my father was engineering plans for the construction of a library at the French consulate. Richard expressed his longing to include a film section, and my father mentioned Kurosawa’s Ran in order to argue that the Japanese could take a Western story and make it better. After a while, the two talked about their children — and that was when Richard asked if I had babysitting experience.
I took the tape. I liked having something of Richard’s, and would add it to other things of his, kept in a box under my desk. My mother was a good housekeeper, but she never touched my study space.
“Richard!” Jackie called from downstairs.
Like her husband, Jackie was tall. She came from a weal
thy expatriate Moroccan family living in New York. Short for “Jacqueline,” “Jackie” was coined by Richard during a phase of his of loving all things American. He and Jackie met at a charity ball in Manhattan. Jackie finished her degree in art history at Vassar and moved to Toronto with Richard.
She had put the baby down on the floor. “Dadada,” said Suzette, shaking her mother’s keys.
“Nice shoes,” I said to Jackie. She had Mary Jane shoes on: beige, with white semicircles along each side. The colour matched her coat, against which her dark hair lay in a solid mass.
“A Mother’s Day present. Do you believe Richard picked them out himself?” She was glowing, as always when she was about to go out. She was like a horse kept too much in the stable, chomping at the bit.
Richard smiled. “We’d better go.”
“Oh God, I haven’t told you anything, have I?” Jackie went through a list of what Suzette should eat. “There’s an egg on the stove.”
“Only the whites,” said Richard. “She doesn’t like the yolk.”
For months I’d been exploring their house slowly: first admiring, then touching. The last few weeks, I’d become braver, picking things up, smelling stuff, reading books. I could feel myself ready to try something more. Perhaps, for the first time, I would go up to their bedroom. Jackie had a closet full of clothes, which I wanted to try on. The couple was leaving for the rest of the day, and I would have time to look around.
Suzette cooed. She had begun crying when Jackie took back her keys, so I’d picked her up, and she stopped fussing. Since the day I’d met her, she trusted me. I was good with kids, but I speculated that there were also other forces at work. I’d been told by white acquaintances that I never seemed to feel anything, that my face looked expressionless. This seemed to me to be a common misconception about Asians, and I wondered whether Suzette had a kind of racial blindness when it came to me, and didn’t recognize that I did, in fact, have strong feelings and that they must have registered on my face, to be perceived by people who knew me well.