Asimov's SF, January 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Thus did Dafna accept her neighbors’ well wishes, tears, laugher, encouragement, cakes, and coffee; then she politely shooed everyone out of her apartment, took off her favorite crepe linen abaya with chamoisette fringes, hung it in the closet on a pink, cushioned hanger, and donned her own explosive vest. Dressed in jeans, flannel shirt, and a coarse black hijab that covered her hair and fastened under her chin, she left for work.

  * * * *

  Leo Malkin wasn't going to work today.

  His manager Sam Feinstein had arrived at Mrs. Edelman's penthouse at eight sharp with a plumber and a carpenter to renovate her bathroom. Mrs. Edelman was one of Leo's best customers, for she owned four slum apartment buildings that needed constant maintenance. Sam knew what to do and didn't need Leo's help, even though he insisted on calling Leo every five minutes for authorization. Sam did most of the work these days and would oversee five jobs today. Leo concentrated on bringing in new customers, keeping his distributors sweet, taking care of the books, and hiring helpers and tradesmen for Sam. Although it wouldn't buy him a Roller or a condo inside the wall, it was a living.

  His Aunt Martha had willed him a lifetime tenancy in a three bedroom walk-up on West Seventy-Ninth Street, which boasted “glimpses” of Broadway. Leo couldn't sell the condo, nor could he redecorate or renovate without permission from the estate's attorneys; and as he had no children who could inherit, the condo would probably end up going to a distant cousin ... or, more likely, to the lawyers. His ex-wife Cheryl loved the flat, as she called it; and when she left him two months ago, she told him it was harder leaving the flat than leaving him.

  Leo loved Cheryl and was devoted to her—obsessed with her; but for all his pleading and coaxing and acting out, she had left him for a tall, lanky, flat-chested, curly-haired woman named Nandy. Now how the hell could you fight that? He tried, oh, Lord, had he tried. He had even swallowed his pride and accepted Cheryl's invitation that they all live together for a while as an experiment. Cheryl, for her part, was oh, so solicitous in every way. She gave him her body whenever he asked, she always invited him to go out with her and Nandy, and she even urged Leo to sleep with Nandy, which he did. After that, he felt tainted, hollowed out by the empty pain of grief, which he located in his solar plexus. He lost twenty pounds. Finally, he couldn't stand it any longer and asked them to leave. They joined a commune somewhere on the Lower East Side and became sub deacons of the First Church of the Epiphany.

  Leo walked along the edge of Central Park until he came to Seventy-Ninth Street. His house cleaner Dafna would be cleaning his apartment today. Since he usually wasn't at home when she cleaned (she was pretty, and Leo didn't want to chance a lawsuit), he always left her money and a note on the dining room table. She had her own set of keys.

  But he definitely wanted to see Dafna today.

  He had heard the explosion at Max Rosanna's Café, went back to see the carnage, the explosions of flesh and fragmentation of bone, the wounded and limbless, the dead and dying. He scanned his mobile for police reports of the suicide bomber: the perpetrator was a boy (or perhaps a girl, the announcer said) with a bowl haircut and checkered shirt (according to video from a nearby street cam); and Leo remembered the beautiful boy he had passed on the street, remembered the look of hatred and scorn, and remembered seeing him once before—for Leo never ever forgot a face.

  Leo had seen the boy when he had interviewed Dafna at his condo.

  He quickened his pace.

  Of course, the chances were long that Dafna wouldn't be working today.

  * * * *

  She took her money from the envelope on Mr. Malkin's dining room table and left her keys; after all, she wouldn't be coming back there again. She contemplated just leaving without cleaning, but she had been paid to do a job; and she was not going to leave this world owing anybody anything. Except God. To Him she owed everything. Before she started cleaning, however, she took advantage of the privacy of Mr. Malkin's home to adjust her explosive vest just one last time. It was too tight around her breasts; she had pulled it tight purposely to be reminded of the closeness of Heaven and her son Ikrima; but it hurt her nipples, as her son had when he suckled. She went into Mr. Malkin's marble bathroom, which was due to be washed down with stronger detergent, and took off her hijab and work shirt. She loosened the vest, rubbed under her breasts, which were itchy, and then prayed and carefully checked and retied the vest, taking special care that the detonator wire wouldn't catch when she moved her arms, bent over, or arched her back. Then she prayed and thanked God for giving her this opportunity to please him. She would do her allotted tasks, and then without a backward turn, without even going to the toilet, changing her clothes, or washing her face, she would blow herself into Paradise on a crowded street during the rush hour.

  Such was her plan ... until she felt the profane heat of someone's eyes staring at her. She screamed as Leo Malkin grabbed her, pinning her arms behind her back. He was breathing heavily, like an animal, she thought wildly. He smelled of tar and sweat and burning; he smelled bestial, like the streets, like Hell, like darkness.

  “Don't move,” he said, shushing her, squeezing her, and Dafna prayed, for surely this stinking pig of a man was going to rape her, bloody her vagina, which had not felt the monstrosity of a man since her husband died for God. She tried to wrench free of him, pull away just long enough to detonate her vest and blow this eructation of a building into dust and entrails; but Leo was implacably strong and disgustingly erect. She closed her eyes tight, waiting for the inevitable. If he loosened his grip for an instant, she would send him to Hell ... while she would be carried by winds of fire into Paradise.

  But he pulled the wiring away from her vest in one quick, smooth movement (after all, he was an electrician), and she sobbed as he relaxed his grip. He held her, as if this could become an impossible, tender moment. She felt his erection pressing hard against her, felt a terrible, ugly, guilty warmth suffusing her groin. She would give herself up to him. She wouldn't fight. She would be a statue: unfeeling, unyielding marble. There would be another day for her to join her son and husband as a martyr, and what was going to happen to her now, the horror of the next few moments, would purify her as a martyr.

  Perhaps, just perhaps ... she might escape, run away, repair her vest, hand out gifts, explode into Heaven.

  Abruptly, he released her.

  “Take the vest off,” he said.

  “Not with you watching me."

  “Either that, or I'll take it off for you."

  She nodded and removed the vest, handing it to him while she covered her breasts with her right arm. He turned away from her and, standing in the bathroom doorway, said, “Put your shirt back on.” She did and he demanded she give him the detonator, which she had tried to hide from him. “I saw your son,” he said.

  “My son? Where...?"

  “On his way to Max's. I know what he did. And so do you, don't you."

  Dafna met his gaze, would not avert her eyes.

  “Your son looked at me the same way you are now,” Leo said. “How could you ... why?"

  And she smiled at him, just as her son had.

  “Let me pass, Mr. Malkin, or do you wish to see my breasts again and humiliate yourself ?"

  Leo stepped aside, and as Dafna walked past him, she felt an inexplicable regret. She felt an urge to succor and comfort the beast, to give herself to him. Dread and claustrophobia followed her into the elevator and into the street.

  If she had her vest, she would have pressed the detonator.

  But her last filthy thoughts would forever bar her from the ecstasy of Heaven. She had consigned herself to the humiliation her son and husband had escaped.

  * * * *

  Holding the vest to his chest, Leo paced back and forth in the living room. He was still breathing heavily, was still excited, guilty, humiliated. Why had he allowed her to pass? To walk away? To procure another vest and murder innocents? He laughed at his thoughts, for there were no inno
cents, except little babies perhaps; but not much of the world was lost when little babies fell back into the darkness from whence they came. Leo took off his shirt, loosened the straps of Dafna's vest, and then put it on, shrugging into it as if it was an old, comfortable sweater. He pieced the wiring back together, just a few twists, and made sure the connections were solid. The wiring was bluecoat, which was virtually undetectable. He put on his shirt, slipped the detonator into the side pocket of his trousers, and walked out of his condo.

  He left the door wide open.

  It would be a good long walk downtown along Broadway, past the upmarket shops and bistros, past the checkpoints, and into the mid-town/downtown safety zones. Safely pacing, heels clicking on pavement, pushing through the crowds, walking in a straight line, fully focused, Leo and his vest, wires, and detonator went unnoticed. His mobile buzzed and vibrated insistently in his pocket, but he ignored it.

  He was calmness itself.

  He walked to the First Church of the Epiphany on Tenth Street without incident. The church was a confection of Gothic Revival style and Stanford White design. He admired it and then walked inside, where he admired its famous and magnificent mural by John Le Farge. He stood veiled in crimson light from the great stained glass windows above the nave and waited. Cheryl and Nandy would surely be arriving soon, and Leo would greet them with loving kindness and personally guide them into the blinding light and exploding stillness of ascension.

  Copyright © 2006 Jack Dann

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  THE WINGS OF ICARUS

  by John Morressy

  Fly neither too high nor too low was his advice,

  That careful artificer,

  Moderate in all things as he ever was.

  But how can any soul be moderate

  When the sea's a breathing carpet of deep blue

  Sown with diamonds, and the sky a softer blue,

  And both are beckoning?

  I will soar to the warmth of the sun,

  Swoop to the cool embrace of water,

  Bathe in my freedom in sea and air,

  Fly too high, too low, too far, too fast,

  And if I fall,

  I fall from a height no man has reached before.

  —John Morressy

  Copyright © 2006 John Morressy

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  The Hikikomori's Cartoon Kimono

  by A.R. Morlan

  A.R. Morlan lives in a Queen Anne House in the Mid-west with her “cat-children.” Her work has appeared in over 118 different magazines, anthologies, and webzines including Night Cry, Weird Tales, F&SF, The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror, Full Spectrum IV, and Sci-Fi.com, and her short-story collection, Smothered Dolls, has just come out from Overlook Connection Press. The multi-layered and textured tale that follows is her first story for Asimov's.

  "...we have to answer the challenge of modernity: what is a kimono, or what will it become, if it ceases to be a thing worn?

  —Kunihiko Moriguchi (one of Japan's preeminent kimono painters; from: “The Kimono Painter,” Judith Thurman, The New Yorker, October 17, 2005)

  * * * *

  I (Obi)

  "The nail that sticks out gets hammered in."

  —Japanese saying

  It didn't matter how often Masafumi saw Harumi Ishii walk through the autoclave room door in the back of his employer's tattoo parlor—his reaction was invariably the same: first, a sharp sudden intake of breath, not unlike his response to the initial visits of his rescue sister Mieko back in Japan, in his parents’ house. Back in Tokyo, the reflexive shortness of breath was understandable. There was a strange woman standing on the other side of his bedroom door, bare knuckles touching the thin wood in a patient, persistent rapraprap, waiting with trained politeness born of dozens of encounters with other men of his kind, suffering from hikikomori, the withdrawal. Masafumi had wondered, there in the comfortable, yet painfully familiar confines of the room he so seldom left for all those months, those years, if women like Mieko looked upon their job as a form of service, or as something more insidious, a means of forcing those who'd chosen to withdraw from life, from society, and ultimately from unwanted responsibility, to become a part of that hellish social miasma ... simply because they, the rescue sisters (or the occasional rescue brother) hadn't had the self-reliance necessary to withdraw from life, as he and his fellow hikikomori had done with such ease, such completeness.

  But no matter what he'd thought of Mieko (with her schoolgirl's mini-skirt and bleached-to-coarse orange streaks in her hair, despite her three-decades-plus age), she'd kept on coming, twice a week, to stand for hours at his door, knocking and imploring, begging and rapping, until her sheer tenacity wore him down, and he'd opened the door—only a crack, enough for a quick glance at her—and asked, “What?” Not the Why? or the How? he'd longed to ask (he knew too well that the Why? was cultural pressure, Japan's need for all to have a place, to be successful, just as How? was the result of his parents calling for the aid of a rescue sister to cajole him into leaving his room, before his nineteenth birthday.)

  “Because I'd like to get to know you,” was all she'd needed to say; as rehearsed as her words sounded, there had been something in her eyes, in the quirky flicker of a smile on her lips, which had been enough, at least then, to make him open his door just a bit wider....

  But that was Mieko; as far as Harumi (of the natural brown-orange hair, worn in elaborate quasi-Incan khipus of braided, knotted, and wooden-beaded swaying tresses, and the minimal clothing) went, the second thing Masafumi would do was lower his eyes, their lashes forming a capri-shell screen between him and the object of his fascination, as if she might be offended by his stare.

  (His boss kept telling him, “If she don't want people to look at her, why have all that ink drilled into her hide? Or do her hair in coked-up dreads?")

  For her part, Harumi either pretended not to notice his persistent shyness, or didn't notice him in any real sense aside from being aware that there was another space-taking, breathing form in the small room. True, she literally had her hands full of wooden trays of momengoshi—firm, well-drained “cotton” tofu flown in daily from Japan, to be served an hour or so from now, after Harumi worked her magic wand across the pliant creamy white surfaces. Masafumi prided himself for having learned that nickname for a tattoo gun from one of his boss's many repeat customers. On occasion, he'd shyly remark about it as Harumi worked, and, often, she'd smile.

  Setting the layered trays of tofu on the low table nearest the outlet across from the autoclave, she peeled back the cheesecloth coverings, revealing the waiting slabs of skin-solid tofu, one tray at a time, prior to picking up the prefilled ink bottles that contained freshly squeezed yuzu juice and onion-skin dye, then attaching them to the old, slow-vibrating tattoo machine Masafumi's boss gave to Harumi for her exclusive use. After plugging it in, and turning it on, she filled the small space with the insect drone of the quick-darting three needle cluster.

  A tired, yet apt cliché, only in America, spun in his brain as he watched Harumi work; without need for a stencil spotted onto the waiting surface, she worked the business end of the wand over the tofu, leaving weeping sprays of pale, citrus-scented pigment on the gelid upper layer of the processed bean curd. Her designs varied by her mood; today, he surmised she was troubled, obviously agitated, judging by the wild waves-breaking-on-rocks choppiness of the design. Finishing one tray, she shoved it aside with a dismissive thrust of her lower left palm, moving so quickly that the smooth-bottomed wooden tray nearly slid off the low table—until Masafumi put out both hands to stop its momentum.

  This time, she did notice him; letting out a shuddering exhalation smelling of cinnamon and cloves, she locked her hazel eyes into Masafumi's dark brown ones, and said, “You saved my ass—no way no how could I bring that back to the restaurant with tatami-mat lint on it. The chef, he'd know—"

  Masafumi nodded.<
br />
  Shutting off the gun, Harumi let out another sigh. “Your boss, he wouldn't want me smoking in here ... but when I'm done, you wanna join me for a stick? They're clove, no nicotine—"

  He started to shake his head, then mumbled, “I'll stand with you while you smoke. I don't."

  Harumi shook her head; her intricately braided and embellished strands of hair rustled and whispered, like the silk-on-silk sound of a woman wearing a layered kimono, delicately stepping along a subway platform. A sound Masafumi had not heard in the years he'd lived here, in a particular United State called Minnesota, yet the motion of Harumi's head brought it all back, so vividly....

  “You're something else, y'know that? Not many guys are willing to breath in used air, but you ... why am I not surprised that you would?"

  (Over time, Masafumi had learned enough of the intricate nature of the English language to know better than to consider her questioning tone of voice to be an actual question. A yoko meshi thing, that inherent stressfulness of mastering, not merely learning, another tongue.)

  Harumi uncovered another tray of naked tofu, and switched bottles on her gun, taking up the pale reddish brown onionskin ink she'd distilled herself in the restaurant down the block. Watching her ply the needles across the yielding, fleshy foodstuff, as the tattooed woman created starbursts of sunset-ruddy pigment, Masafumi found himself uttering a thought that had been in his brain each time he'd watched her work, “Why do you not do this in the restaurant? You carry the trays here, you carry them back, while the gun stays—"