by S. J. Parks
Josh was watching Naomi closely. ‘One day, if it’s Sam,’ he added, ‘and it depends how old the friends are. He just got older.’ He laughed as if the pressure of losing the girls was finally released and in the outburst of that release his emotions overcompensated. He laughed too loudly. ‘He stinks,’ he added finally with tears in his eyes.
‘You need food,’ Sam observed and suggested they find a sushi bar. Without waiting for an answer he turned heel, his jacket over the shoulder of his crumpled shirt. A curious inverse applied to Sam, where the less tidy he was the more attractive he became. As they moved off, the blue-jacketed man followed, stopping behind them when they stopped. Josh turned, recognizing the familiar figure that had reappeared behind them.
‘What does he want?’ Josh blurted.
‘Good sushi. New sushi,’ he garbled, as he pounced on them. He was blocking their path with his body and hemming them in against the wheels of a delivery van parked at the side of the road.
‘Good fish. Good sushi,’ he continued unappealingly. They were tired; they wanted to eat and did not have the stamina to come up with an alternative when a solution had been thrust upon them. Like many travellers they bought the idea out of weariness, sold because their resistance was low and no contest in the face of a seller who had about him all the energy of desperation. They followed him across the market, clustered, concentric bands of activity, each supporting or supplying the other, laid out like a casebook economic model.
Back on the outskirts, where all the sushi bars and stalls traded, was an alley marked by traders’ bunting; the short, split noren curtains, heavy in the stagnant breeze. Low shakuhachi music played at the entrance as their hawker led them to a covered bar. He leaned against the wall, brushed aside the short indigo cloth, flapping at eye level, and guided them inside.
‘Irasshaiemase!’ Hoots of welcome met their entrance.
It was all new, with five seats in all; five being a lucky number, but two were already taken by a couple of men from the lorry park enjoying miso soup. Naomi felt awkward, as if someone who didn’t have the right had invited them to a party. Conscious of the lack of spaces, the hawker went off, bidding them to wait with pantomime gestures.
‘Ocha wa ikaga desu ka?’ a woman asked. Then, in English, ‘Tea?’
They all nodded and Sam dumped his parcel. It hit the counter with a reassuringly solid thud and he opened it.
‘Fish. Fish. Fish. Fish. Fish. Fish.’ His voice was loud with exaggeration.
‘It isn’t any fish, Sam,’ Naomi counselled him. ‘It’s an expensive delicacy.’
‘You bet.’ He nodded with mock gravity. ‘It isn’t any fish. None of it is really.’
‘Look, it’s fugu,’ Naomi said.
‘You know fugu,’ Miho added cajolingly. ‘It’s a good delicacy.’
‘It’s fucking poisonous.’ The fish was a great delicacy but did carry a health warning.
‘It’s a great choice,’ Miho urged. ‘You just have to make sure you cut the liver out.’ Sam decisively thrust the package towards the sushi stallholder who was busy cutting through slices of sashimi with the precision of a skilled artist.
‘No, no, no. Not here, you can’t,’ Miho warned.
‘Why not here? Now is as good as any time. Let’s get the liver cut out. Listen, if the fish is poisonous I say we all eat it for breakfast. That way I’m not going to be the only victim. Anyone for Russian roulette?’
‘You got to have a license to cut this fish,’ Miho cautioned. He looked at the tiresome present, and then she let him off the hook. ‘You know, Sammy, you can’t have fugu this time of year. Only in the winter. We couldn’t afford Fugu anyway. This is yellowtail.’
He laughed and held her. ‘Thanks, Naomi,’ he remembered to say, before taking a toothpick from a glass box in front of him and sucking with concentration. ‘Marvellous. Sweet, thoughtful gift,’ he added and laughed again.
The warm green tea sharpened her senses as Naomi watched the sushi chef embed rice in his palm, shaping it with three fingers, repeating the process with the alacrity of a well-honed skill. With a knife as sharp as his talents he took a live prawn and in two curt strokes removed the head and split it in two, laying the butterflied flesh aside. Taking from each tray he worked methodically and laid the opalescent pink, sticky ochre, and unguent white pieces of fish, across the rice in serried files. The balance of the meal was chosen for its texture as much as its colour.
He decorated the dominoes of sushi with green and purple translucent seaweed and a bowl of soy. The wasabi radish he added was shaped as a miniature Mount Fuji. They took their chopsticks from a glass jar at the end of the counter. It was a democratic eatery and the best food, fresh from the quay, was for the drivers and delivery boys who ate like the emperors of corporate Japan. In a babble of explanation worthy of a west-coast actor/waiter, the chef described his offerings, directing his patter to Miho. Josh slumped over the counter submitting to his fatigue. Naomi surveyed the glistening appetizers and, reading her hunger, took a bite from the innocuous-looking white fish. It was a mistake. The cartilaginous morsel was unappealingly brittle in the mouth and a completely unfamiliar texture. Miho sat with her knees drawn up and her side plate raised to her mouth eating hungrily.
‘You’ll like cuttlefish,’ she inaccurately supposed, through her mouthful.
Naomi’s heart sank and her energy began to flag.
‘This is exceptional sea urchin,’ Miho continued, her bare back hunched over her food. ‘The colour is very good.’
Naomi looked at the sticky, mustard mess that still lay in the lacquer bowl. Sam and Josh put down their chopsticks in synchronized protest and, as they turned towards her, she registered their objection. It wasn’t as if the idea of sea urchin was new to them; it was just that now, in the early morning light of their extended day, they had reached the limits of their endurance.
Their stools scraped loudly as they rose to pay, confusing the chef with the timing of a settlement at the start of a meal. He was more perplexed when they turned to go, leaving payment behind them and a largely untouched masterpiece in sushi. As they left he tried to offer them some tissues from a cardboard box beneath the counter. Nobody recognized him as the man at the subway. Naomi turned and accepted them, graciously, following after Sam’s creased, white shirt, brightening with the creeping strength of daylight as he stepped out from beyond the canopy.
‘Where are we headed’? Naomi called after him. His next idea met with unanimous approval since they had all lost the power of free will.
The new capsule hotel rose before them like a giant lorry fender, formed of a bank of cubicles.
‘Four in a row,’ he said.
Josh climbed a ladder and swung over the chrome step into a freshly made starched futon and cover. He turned and called the others.
Sam followed him with a bottle from the vending machine and threw it to the back of the capsule, and, hanging onto the mouth of what looked like a washing-machine door, he held his hand out for Miho to join him.
‘We can’t both fit into one capsule!’
He pleaded with her to try, and, despite her initial protestations, they crammed into one. Before they pulled the shutter across, he brandished the bottle at Josh triumphantly.
,Josh and Naomi followed them into the adjacent capsule and could hear Miho’s mock screams, which eventually reduced to laughter.
Josh turned on the TV in their cramped pod. They were so far into early morning it seemed they had gone through fatigue and had a second wind. He switched it to mute, to play like wallpaper.
He held Naomi tight and she felt a warmth between them that only manifested when he had abandoned the state of readiness he lived under as he moved millions of dollars across a computer screen, mindful not to drop any of the small figures, which, if they fell, crashed into so many shards of financial implications that it equated to the GDP of a small country. Instantly she forgave his flickering tempers and lay breathing in the e
asy rhythm of his ketone breath.
On the screen an Asian-looking man crossed a square, which was emptying of people. He stood, carrier bag in hand, at the fender of a Chinese military tank in an extraordinarily vulnerable gesture of defiance. The grocery shopper’s protest. The TV was mute and she could translate nothing of the NHK broadcast.
‘Wonder what that is?’ she said, before they surrendered to a sudden sleep they had so long deferred.
Naomi woke, she could not tell how much time later, when Sam knocked vehemently on their screen door.
His wide smile placated them.
‘You want to go back to the Imperial garden room for a full English breakfast?
‘You are so right.’
Josh acquiesced sleepily; so often in awe of his American friend.
Their eyes only had feasted on the fish, which Miho alone had stomach for, and so Naomi picked up the pace of enthusiasm for the idea.
Hands resting on the white tablecloth at the Imperial Hotel, they ordered pots of black coffee. They were back where they had begun.
‘Good start to the weekend,’ Sam reflected.
They had run through the night for more than a full twelve hours and the thought drained Naomi. Josh’s tangled hair fell across his forehead; the lines beneath his eyes were deeper and shadowing neglect. It was this helplessness about him which so often toppled her. She wanted to catch him up and shelter him.
Taking refuge in his safe world of numbers he said to her, ‘I’ve got to go into the office this morning.’
She needed to shield him from himself, but she turned away. Losing him again to work, which left him with so little left to give.
‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ she protested, mindful of the plans that they had made for the weekend, and all too conscious that they had not spent a full weekend together since she’d arrived to join him.
Miho broke into the uncomfortable silence that followed. ‘You can always come back with us.’
Naomi wanted to go home and sleep.
‘Or I can come over later?’
As they split, Miho dug into her bag reaching for the the architect’s card and gave it to her.
Sam called after her, ‘Call him. He needs some help. Big project on. If you’re interested?’
Back home in Shimokitazawa, Naomi walked up the steps to their house and turned the key in the lock. Across the road, the company apartments crowed morning, and festoons of futon mattresses hung over the balconies to air. In her spacious home, it seemed unfair for her to question whether she was in the wrong country with the wrong person. Thumbing the card in her bag she decided to call the architect first thing Monday.
Chapter 37
Tokyo, 1989
In the morning, once vertical, Josh was like a fully functioning alcoholic able to make the early subway train, though parts of him were still shut down and not yet open for business, and Naomi watched as he moved across the kitchen like a shadow boxer, mentally preparing himself for the day’s contest.
He took toast and coffee in hand as he worked across the room. If he could have cleaned his teeth and swigged coffee at the same time he would have done. A patch of damp ran down the back of his T-shirt, growing dark, minutes after he had put it on. He changed into a clean shirt before he left for work and she wondered why he didn’t eat bare-chested over breakfast. He was so well-trained; it was a habit he would never adapt.
Behind Naomi on s-hooks swung the red kitchen colander she had chosen to work with the greys of the rented kitchen. Leafing through the day’s headlines, the intrusion of world news was thin. Her bare foot ticked beneath a field of the blue and white dragonflies resting on the hem of her cotton yukata dressing gown. The political associations were still alien among news of Styrofoam waste. The earth tremors never received mention. For a time she had been used to mouthing words as she read but Josh’s ridicule had helped cut the habit.
She had learned not to interfere with his finely timed departure. Halfway across the floor he stopped, mug of coffee in hand.
‘I can see it now: Apprentice to international architect in her early career, the Pritzker Prize-nominee Naomi Ardent pays tribute to that early influence.’
She didn’t look up. ‘Don’t, Josh.’
‘The committee …’ he continued.
‘I said don’t, Josh,’ she repeated, looking up at him now and raising her voice.
In her eyes he could see beyond the irritation that had prompted her outburst. It could be fear; fear on account of her timidity.
‘Well, okay,’ he soothed.
‘You know you are winding me up and I just can’t handle it this morning.’
You’ll be fine. The man’s a friend of Sam’s.’
‘He’s not really a friend of Sam’s; a business acquaintance maybe. His wife is a friend of Miho’s.’
‘Well, that’s good enough.’
‘I just don’t want to talk about it.’
And she sailed out of the swing door, the unbelted yukata dragonfly gown billowed open, exposing her naked body. She stood contemplating the large rusting TEPCO sign beside the persimmon tree. Tokyo Electric Power Company, it said in small letters beneath. Somebody should give that sign a lick of paint. She returned to the idea that if she did not get taken on by the architect, she might not stay. It was a relief to come close to acknowledging it but it would be harder of course to settle on a conviction to go; for weeks she had not even admitted to the possibility.
As he left, Josh planted a prerequisite kiss on the top of her head, wishing her luck and when the big, heavy door shut, and she found herself alone, as usual the silence of the house stood before her like a bare-fisted challenge .
Miho’s hours were flexible and they met for brunch at the Kanda bookstore, with a café on the upper floor. Miho chose it partly because it was cheap and partly because she wanted to take Naomi round the shelves to trawl for inspiration on Japanese architecture.
‘So, do you go to his office in Ikebukuro?’
‘No. The other one.’ She had agreed to meet at the regional office outside the centre.
‘But that’s miles away.’
‘Yes. Yes, it is.’ Naomi broke the seal on a sugar cube she didn’t need and wondered whether to tell Miho that she she had concluded that the inconvenient back office location meant the meeting was not going to end in a serious proposition.
Miho was camouflaged against a backdrop of books.
‘Should I bother to go all the way out there?’ She would decide on a whim and, caving in to superstition, felt Miho would be her oracle.
‘It’s a strange choice, that office. But of course. You should.’ Miho climbed the library steps and leaned far to her right, balancing her large platform shoe on the bookshelf.
‘Tadao Ando, Taniguchi, Junzo Sakakura,’ she called down. ‘It’s a “No” on traditional.’ Abseiling the shelves she looked out-of-her mind anarchic.
Miho’s activities drew the attentions of an assistant who finally sourced a large coffee-table book from the discounted section.
‘Only this one?’
The assistant was sure.
Miho patted the discounted remainder, an interior of a church on the cover, as the waiter arrived with water and o-shibori hand towels to take their order.
‘I don’t need that and it is still too expensive.’ The dated church interior promised to be of little inspiration when she was looking for traditional Japanese architecture, though the name was Japanese. Nakashima. George Nakashima.
Miho left the table with the book, returning a couple of minutes later. ‘I bought it for you.’
As they sat down to eat small bowls of rice and pink, gingered fish, Naomi didn’t want to be ungrateful and handled the book.
‘You have to take a good look at it now.’ Miho barely removed her chopsticks from her mouth. It was pretty much the only thing Naomi hadn’t quite come to terms with about her.
By the time the waiter brought them coffee, she had only
just broken the cellophane wrap on the volume.
‘I have to leave,’ Miho apologized. ‘I read with the children at the nursery. I’m a volunteer every Wednesday, across lunch hour.’ She punched Naomi’s shoulder to wish her luck. ‘Gambatte,’ she called back as she left, catapulting Naomi into a recurring set of worries about meeting with the architect.
He had asked her a week ago to come for a chat. ‘A chat’. She was sure she could be of use but the cost to her of getting nothing out of meeting made her all the more nervous at seeing him. She threw some coins into a plastic tray beside a curling bill and left to visit the Mingei Kaikan folk-craft museum for the afternoon, which she chose because she had visited just about every other museum in the city within a day’s radius.
Chapter 38
The day she was to meet him was the eighth of August, a lucky day in the local calendar. The offices of Mochizuki’s architectural practice were a control centre in a state of emergency, set up, in haste, in a shabby domestic building unsuited to the purposes of running a thriving business. His client meetings took place in the borrowed elegance of Tokyo Tower where the walls were lined with colour enlargements of past projects. The grunt work, where the sous chefs to his confections worked, was here, out of town, where the leases were cheap and suited his current business climate, which had recently taken a compromising turn in the form of a heavy favour for Ukai.
Mochizuki was at his desk, contemplating a rhombus of light that fell on the wall in front of him. His long fingers held a cigarette and he smoked with deliberate pleasure. His narrow eyes closed slightly further, in an effort to avoid the wayward coils of smoke, his deep enjoyment reading like some erotic satisfaction. His wavy grey hair was not ‘establishment Japan’. A day-old tan remained after his weekend walking the beach with Kazuko. She had suggested that if he could just take a break he would find himself twice as productive and he had listened to her, as he so often did. His movements were studied and calm and fluid.
Madori floor plans covered the walls and lay stacked on tables and desks. Here and there a few models of past concepts now lay gathering the dust of over-familiarity. There were desks for three other people in this, the main room of the house, but for Naomi’s arrival Mochizuki had contrived to ensure there was no one else in the office, sending his loyal troop out on errands.