by Carrie Asai
“Swanky,” I whispered.
Hiro leaned in to the cabdriver. “We’re dropping her off,” he said. “If you could wait here for a moment for me…I’m going back to Echo Park.” The cabby nodded.
“You’re having the cab wait?” I said, my voice breaking a little. All of this was catching up to me. One minute, we were standing in front of my burning house. Suddenly the next, Hiro was shuttling me off to Las Vegas with barely a good-bye! He was having the cab wait for him! Meaning…he only wanted to see me off for a minute or two! When did he think a bus was going to show up?
“I don’t have any clothes,” I blurted, uncertain. “They’ve all burned up in the fire.”
“You can get new ones in Las Vegas,” Hiro said. He wiped his palms on his pants. I glared at him, suddenly angry. It was pitch-dark out. There was no one at the bus station. It was creepy. What was his problem? Why was he just leaving me like this, on the curb? What had made his mood change? How could he just drive home and snuggle into his warm bed with Karen at his side while I staggered onto some smelly bus to a city I’d never even seen?
My throat went dry. I didn’t want to show Hiro how nervous I was. Instead I let my emotions turn to controlled rage. Fine. So he thinks I should get out of town. Well, then, I’ll go. Sayonara.
I walked up to the counter as chill as possible and checked the timetable. A bus for Las Vegas would be leaving in an hour. I glanced behind the ticket window, but it was dark and empty. I turned to Hiro, but he was standing with his back to me, facing the car. I breathed out, frustrated, and walked as calmly as I could over to the Greyhound To-Go machine console. I shoved money in, and out popped a ticket. I examined it, trying to figure out what it said under the dim lights.
“The bus is in an hour,” I said, walking back to him. Hiro turned. The cab lights lit up his face, and my heart flipped over.
“So,” I said in an authoritarian voice. I wanted to be fully in Independent Heaven mode when I said good-bye to Hiro. “What about training? If I find Katie and everything—I mean, when I find Katie—I’m going to want to keep up my training. Should I check in with you every once in a while? Are you going to want to give me drills or something?”
Hiro shook his head slightly and stepped closer to me. He put his hands softly on my shoulders. Tingles instantly rushed through me. “Listen,” he said. “This is very important. You have to listen to me carefully. When I get back into this cab and leave you, I want you to forget all about me.”
I breathed in sharply.
“I want you to forge your way ahead, Heaven. Make your own life. Become your own rock. Train according to your own needs. Find your training within yourself.” He spoke slowly and evenly, not quite looking into my eyes but instead at a faraway place, past the bus station.
I stared at him, completely dumbstruck. “Say what?” I sputtered finally.
He stood there, arms crossed, a look of total serenity on his face. I mean, Hiro always had a pretty deadpan expression on his face anyway, but I expected him to crack up soon.
He shook his head. “I’m not joking. It’s your mission. This is very serious.”
I felt a movement behind me and flinched. But it was only the stationmaster, unlocking his booth. He nodded at me. “You’re here a little early, aren’t you?” he asked. I looked back at Hiro. I had an hour to kill. They could find me here. The people looking for me. The people who set fire to that house. The Yukemuras. So many people.
He didn’t meet my gaze. “I have to go,” he said.
“But…,” I squeaked. “The bus…is in…an hour!” Don’t lose it, I told myself. Keep it together. Instead I blurted, “Does this mean you don’t want…me…around?”
Hiro looked out at the cab. He purposefully wasn’t looking in my direction. What was his deal?
“It’s not that, Heaven. My feelings for you are…very strong…. You don’t understand…but…” He put his head down. He bit his lip, turned away. “This is what we have to do.” His voice sounded muffled, strange.
“What are you talking about?” I said. I knew I sounded desperate. “What do you mean your feelings are strong? Why is this what you have to do? I don’t get it!”
“I…I can’t explain it now,” Hiro said. “Forget me. Please. You have to. Now go wait for your bus.” He pointed at a bench. I tried to speak, but no words came out.
The cabdriver peered out disintrestedly at Hiro. “You getting in or what?” he growled.
“Good-bye,” Hiro said to me, still avoiding my eyes. And then, without even a touch—much less a kiss—he turned and got inside the waiting cab.
“Good-bye,” I said softly. I watched him get in the cab and instruct the driver to take him back to Echo Park. I chewed the edge of my lip, then turned away as the cab pulled out of the lot. I didn’t want to look at him.
I have to drop her off and leave. This is not an easy decision, obviously. I cannot wait with her.
But this is all part of the flow of things. This is necessary.
The cab drives me around the corner, and I stop him. “Let me off here,” I say. I get out and stand in the bushes, watching her from a distance. She sits next to the stationmaster, on the bench. She looks terrified. Confused.
I’ve asked her to embark on a very serious journey.
Have I just made a big mistake?
After a long time the bus pulls up. She lifts herself off the bench and climbs aboard. She is getting on. She is going.
I think of the people I know of in Las Vegas. Not good people. People that I have wanted to get away from. But they will always be there. Will they find her? Will she be able to take care of herself on her own?
What is she feeling? What if she fails in her mission?
I have to remain calm. There is a lesson in every journey that we take—I know this for myself. But I am still learning. I breathe deeply. L.A. is just beginning to wake up.
She’s stronger than I originally thought. She’s stronger than I am, in many ways.
This is the first day without Heaven here.
I think of the fable that my mother once told me. Once upon a time, a young man named Mikeran was walking home after working in the fields. As he passed by the shore of a lake, he spotted something hanging from a tree. He wondered what it was—it looked like a robe.
But it was not like any robe he had seen before. It shone like a bright star. Mikeran was delighted with his find. I must have it, he thought. He took the robe down, folded it, and put it in his basket. He was about to walk away when someone called out to him. “Did someone call me?” he asked, looking around. “Who is there?”
“I did.” Out of the grass by the lake stepped the most beautiful young woman Mikeran had ever seen. “My name is Tanabata. Please give me back my celestial robe,” she said.
Mikeran was confused.
The woman continued. “Without it, I cannot return to my home in heaven.” She was nearly ready to cry. “I don’t belong on earth. I only came here to bathe in this lovely lake. I beg you, give me back my robe!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he lied. “I haven’t seen any robe.”
Rather than allow her to return to her heavenly home, Mikeran forced Tanabata to live in his house with him. Eventually the two grew to love each other. Happy as she was with her earthly life, however, Tanabata longed for her true home.
Then one day when Mikeran was out working in the fields, Tanabata noticed that a bird was pecking at something between the roof beams. To her horror, the bird pulled out a piece of beautiful, glittering cloth.
“My robe!” Tanabata cried. Mikeran had known about it all along and was keeping it from her.
That evening Mikeran returned from the fields to find his wife waiting outside in her celestial garment. He drew in his breath.
Tanabata nodded sadly, lifted her hands toward heaven, and began to rise into the air. As she rose, she looked down at her husband and said, “Mikeran…if you really love me, weave a th
ousand pairs of straw sandals and bury them beneath the bamboo. If you do, we can meet again.”
Mikeran watched helplessly as Tanabata rose higher and higher in the sky until all he could see was the shining robe.
Mikeran was not able to weave that many sandals in his lifetime. They say these two lovers only meet one day out of the year—on the seventh day of the seventh month. In the sky they are called Altair and Vega. I’m not sure why I’m reminded of this just now. Maybe because of my own feelings of frustration. I wanted to tell Heaven how I felt. I know she wanted me to explain it to her.
But it was not the right time.
I try not to think of this.
I catch the bus for the long ride home. Finally I come to my lighted window. Karen must be up early. I see her there, looking out. She sees me but does not wave. I look away. What is wrong with me lately? I’m feeling a pull, somehow, toward someone else. Something else. I look back at Karen. She stands before the window, luminous and beautiful, peering out at nothing. I’m wondering if my decision was the right one.
I look away again. I can’t deny it. I want it to be someone else up there in that window, lying in my bed, waiting for me to come home. Wondering where I’ve been. Waiting to start the day with me.
Hiro
2
They announced my bus. I walked toward it like a zombie and climbed aboard. There were only three other people—old ladies who’d woken up at 4 A.M., it seemed—who boarded with me. I took a seat, careful to avoid a huge wad of gum stuck between the chair and the window.
Mission, my ass.
Hiro wanted to get rid of me.
That had to be it. He wanted to get rid of me.
But what had he been trying to say? My feelings for you are very strong, but…
But what?
Then the bus began to fill.
“I can’t wait,” one of the women sitting next to me said, craning her neck to see out the front window. “Vegas.” She smiled. “You ever been to Vegas before?”
“No,” I said tentatively. The last thing I wanted right now was to talk to some old woman who had a gambling problem.
“You’ll love it,” she said.
Mission. Ha. I could hear Hiro’s voice: “This mission is not about me, Heaven. This mission is about Samurai Girl.”
“Lies,” I said quietly. Who was Samurai Girl, anyway? I turned uncomfortably and something stabbed my hip. Cheryl’s necklace. I pulled it out and examined it. It was really gorgeous. Purple, sort of translucent. A heavy stone. Not my style, really, but still really fancy and interesting.
“That’s a nice necklace,” the same old lady said. “Are you going to use that for gambling?”
“Excuse me?” I asked tiredly.
“You know, pawn it,” she said. Her teeth were yellow.
“Um, no,” I said. But maybe I could use it if I ran out of money. I shoved it back in my pocket.
We drove and drove. I fell asleep for a couple of minutes, shell-shocked. And then, all of a sudden, we rolled into the heart of Vegas. The bus coughed and wheezed up what definitely must be called “the Strip.”
I pressed my nose to the window. What was this place? I mean, I knew something about Vegas from movies and stuff. But this was…this was…dirty and gritty and sort of gross. It was about 10 A.M. The sun was hot and oppressive. We rumbled by the casinos. They were huge and lit by strange, desert light. They looked tired. We whooshed by a gigantic Statue of Liberty that looked…I don’t know…like it was made out of papier-mâché. The Eiffel Tower danced into view. The next casino was full of Roman columns and fountains. A Ferris wheel peeked out from behind another row of casinos.
The heat clung to my arms and legs. My hair stuck to the back of my neck. I smelled like a bonfire. My fingernails were dirty. Since it was pretty early in the morning, the only people roaming around were harmless-looking families with fanny packs. But Vegas seemed…grimy and old. I’d expected neon, shiny stuff, opulence, style, diamonds, money….
“It doesn’t get good until it gets dark,” my bus mate said. I nodded. Hopefully she was right.
Katie. Was she really here? I tried to remember one of my last conversations with her. Immediately one came to mind: it was right after I got engaged, and right before she spoke out in opposition to my marrying Teddy Yukemura.
Katie had brought over a pile of fun prom magazines and we were looking through them for prom dresses. I obviously wouldn’t be wearing an American sort of wedding dress for my ceremony—my father had made it clear I was to wear a tsuno kakushi wedding hood and a “fan of happiness” in my obi belt, along with my very un-American wedding kimono—but it was fun to look at all the tulle and the beads and the high-heeled pointy shoes and the fun hair all the girls wore when going off to their fairy-tale school dances with the date of their dreams. We were marking the styles that we liked the best.
“Yatsumi for some reason likes dresses and shirts with no backs, like halters,” Katie said absentmindedly.
“How do you know that?” I asked her. Yatsumi was a gardener who worked on our grounds from time to time. He was flat-out gorgeous. He looked like Keanu Reeves: rugged, rough, a little wild. I’d watched The Matrix a million times and dreamed of Yatsumi instead of Keanu. I’d talked about my crush on him a couple of times to Katie; of course, nothing could come of it because before I was engaged, I wasn’t allowed to date. And I doubted that Yatsumi would’ve been my father’s choice of date for me anyway, Teddy or no.
Katie gave me a look that was full of guilty surprise. “Oh…um, well…” And then she grabbed my hands. “I was supposed to keep it a secret, but I went on a couple of dates with him.”
“Really?” I asked. “But—”
“Yeah,” she said. “He took me to a couple of cafés and a couple of bars, and he even took me to see How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days—even though it’s such a girlie movie!”
I frowned and looked at the floor.
“It’s just for fun, though,” Katie said. “We’ll see where it goes. I mean, I may want to go to the States after you’re married, so I can’t take it too seriously.”
“Wow, I’m jealous,” I said, trying to be light and kidding. “You get to have so much fun…. You’ll have a blast once you’re outta this household.”
“Yeah, well…,” Katie said. “I don’t really have a plan of where I’m gonna go. But I do have a cousin who has connections at a casino in Las Vegas. I can make awesome money there. So that might be fun for a while.”
Working at a casino in Vegas sounded like a hell of a lot more fun than marrying Teddy Yukemura. Anything sounded more fun—mopping the floor, dancing naked, being one of those people who dresses up as a piece of fruit or a cartoon character and hands out flyers on the street. God, Katie could have this fun life—dates with gorgeous guys, adventures in Vegas, freedom, and I was under lock and key. The whole conversation had really bummed me out. I’d forgotten about it until now. But recalling our talk made me realize that Katie had definitely mentioned that she might be going to Vegas. Although if she’d mentioned a specific casino, it had gone right out of my head.
Damn.
The bus stopped and we trooped off. We were right in front of the Flamingo casino. I could see palm trees peeking out from behind its creamy facade. I shaded my eyes from the sun. The people meandering down the Strip were the same sort of American tourists who came to Tokyo and gaped and pointed. But like the old lady said, maybe it would get better at night.
I hadn’t slept well on the bus, so I could barely keep my eyes open as I wagged my head right and left, peering at one side of the Strip, then gazing, squinty eyed, at the other. I wandered into the Flamingo and immediately sank into one of the large leather sofas in the lobby.
Hiro and I stood together in front of his house. Except it looked more like the house that, until quite recently, I’d lived in with my family in Japan. Hiro held my hand. He turned to face me. “Wasn’t it beautiful?” he asked.
“
Wasn’t what beautiful?” I said.
“The ceremony,” Hiro said, turning to me, looking quite shocked. I noticed he was wearing a very formal charcoal gray suit and a well-knotted, perfectly matching tie. I looked down at my own outfit and saw that I was wearing a very high collared Chinese-style cheongsam dress. In a pure ivory white. I’d never owned such a dress. I’d never even wanted one, although I remembered liking the chartreuse one that Nicole Kidman had worn to the Oscars. But anyway. In my hands I carried a bouquet of flowers.
“What ceremony?” I asked. Hiro looked at me, still astounded. He gestured at my finger.
“Look,” he said. “We are married now.”
I looked down. A diamond ring was on my finger. I gasped. It was huge. Bigger than the one Ben gave J.Lo. “What?” I said. “But I thought you wanted me to forget you….”
Just then a huge, long black car parked in the driveway revved its engine. And just then the door opened—a door that was identical to my front door in Tokyo—and out stepped Mieko, in a bloodred dress cut similarly to mine. She stood on the porch for a moment or two, looking around. She was holding something—blankets? Big gray blankets?—in her arms. Suddenly she looked at Hiro and me and broke into hysterical laughter.
“What is her problem?” I asked. Hiro didn’t answer. “What’s going on here, anyway?”
Mieko continued to laugh. “My little Heaven,” she said.
Then I noticed what she was holding: several of my father’s suit jackets and pants. I recognized the label on the inside of them—sometimes I would watch as one of our maids, Yumiko, pressed his stuff, and the labels, with fancy names like Gucci and Dolce & Gabbana, always caught my eye. Beyond that, I didn’t know how I knew—but they were definitely my father’s suits.
“What’s she doing with those?” I asked. Mieko just kept on laughing. “Why is she taking his suits out of the house?”
Hiro looked at me. His shoulders fell forward. “I don’t know, but I will protect you now. Not your father.” He looked at me, bent forward to kiss me. I closed my eyes. But the kiss never came. I opened my eyes, and he was gone.