“Ah, Sam.” Abdi smiled.
“General,” Sam said with a tight nod. His face was blank except for perhaps a note of disapproval in the corners of the mouth. “Are you uncomfortable here?”
Abdi shook his head. “No. Not at all.”
“Does the climate not agree with you?”
Abdi laughed as the car pulled away from the police station. “You are angry, Sam. I make too much trouble for you.”
“And what about Natalie? Adjusting?”
“Yes. She likes it very much, I think.”
“These sorts of things can’t happen, General. If your face gets in the press, someone will recognize you. People who have assumed you are dead will realize that you are not. You understand what that will mean? They will come. I won’t be able to protect you.”
The man who had been General Obah M’Bute closed his eyes and leaned his head back with a deep exhalation. “Yes, yes, I understand, Sam.”
23
CHURCH AND STATE
It could easily become a habit, she thought. She seemed to make it to Alex’s more days than not.
“I’m actually playing hooky. I had Reina cover my particle theory class.”
“I was going to ask.”
“Seemed a shame to waste such a lovely day teaching sophomores.”
“I love that I only see you in the daytime,” he said.
“You mean you hate it.”
“No, I don’t. I get it. Kids, school... I like it.”
Stephanie pulled the comforter up self-consciously and studied his face. “I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen you with a woman.”
“What are you suggesting?” Alex smiled. “There have been a few.”
“Clearly.” Stephanie returned the smile. “And, of course, it’s none of my business...”
“None.” He laughed. “But it’s okay, no big secret.” He looked at her. “No judgments?”
“No judgments.”
“Okay. I guess I would say I’m a practicing believer in the separation of romantic church and state.”
Stephanie laughed. “I’m sorry, that may be a little too cryptic for me.”
“Right. Maybe better to say I’m a sexual pragmatist.” Stephanie snorted but he held up a palm. “Hold on. I know, I know. I’m getting to it.” He considered the backs of his hands.
“You know, this whole dating thing is based on the idea that we’re all spouse shopping, or mating-partner test-driving and that’s just not where I’m at. I’m not looking. Kids, marriage, picket fences, they just aren’t part of the program.”
Stephanie nodded, encouraging him, face serious but eyes still twinkling.
“Sex for me is just...sex. I suppose it’s a kind of barter system. I like pretty women and I’m not naive—I know I’m not exactly Brad Pitt. So if I don’t want to mislead people about my intentions, and I don’t, I have to offer some other kind of value. To wit, I’m a very generous date—excellent dinners, gifts, the occasional shopping spree, that sort of thing. But I’m always clear up front—no commitments, no expectations, no future. That seems to work fine with a certain type of woman, but in fairness, they’re not always the type you want to bring to corporate dinners or the office party. Sends the wrong message. So, I keep it separate. Church and state.”
He glanced up at her. “How am I doing? Too seedy?”
She smiled and ran her hand through his hair. “Not at all. Honest. I think a lot of men want the same thing and just lie about it.”
She thought for a moment.
“I am a little fuzzy on where this fits in, though. I hope you’re not offering to take me shopping.”
“Oh God, no. This is totally different. Completely unrelated. Church and state.”
“Hmm...so...”
“Don’t think too much. No pressure, no expectations. I just want you to be happy.”
She kissed his forehead. “Mission accomplished.”
24
BREAKFAST
Kimiko and Ayumi had invited him to breakfast. “American breakfast,” they’d said with emphasis. They had come together to see him after class and, with lots of giggling behind open hands and consultations in Japanese, formally issued their invitation. They were both in their midtwenties. Ayumi was the more confident and did the bulk of the talking. Kimiko barely looked at him and Jordan suspected she might be harboring a little teacher crush. She had long bangs and almost always covered her mouth when she spoke.
Rocket Pajamas was exactly as advertised. The menu was right out of Arnold’s Drive-In from Happy Days. It was cheeseburgers and fries, chocolate malts, banana splits and breakfast served all day. Pancakes, waffles, hash browns, bacon or sausage, eggs any way you like. There were a couple of American tourists sitting at a booth in the back, but the rest of the diners were young well-dressed Japanese kids. The decor was entirely pink plastic and glass. The waitresses wore uniforms that looked like a cross between a vintage stewardess outfit and Jane Fonda’s getup in Barbarella.
The hostess, her hair in two long pigtails wearing pink fluffy pajamas and huge bunny slippers, squealed and embraced Ayumi and Kimiko before leading them to a choice corner booth with a view of the whole space.
The girls both ordered the silver-dollar pancakes and Jordan risked the recommended scrambled eggs and bacon with hash browns.
Conversation was stilted and awkward, Ayumi single-handedly carrying most of it. Everyone was relieved when the waitress returned with their orders. She placed Jordan’s in front of him with a little flourish.
“Wow” was all he could manage. The eggs were a muted green and smelled of smoke and the sea. The bacon looked more like fatty bologna and the hash browns were pale white and flecked with something artificially orange.
“Special for you,” the waitress explained with a little smile at Kimiko, who was blushing and studying her pancakes.
“Wow,” he said again. “Thank you.” The waitress smiled and topped off his coffee. He had only drunk a couple of sips as it managed to be weak and bitter all at once. The creamer had given up its oils, which now swirled around the surface in a glistening slick. The girls were ignoring their tiny pancakes drowned in syrup and watching him expectantly. He took a forkful of eggs and hash browns and chewed thoughtfully without breathing through his nose and made appreciative sounds and nodded to their evident relief.
When they started to eat and confer, he carefully let a trickle of air pass through his sinuses. Fish eggs and seaweed. He ordered a side of toast and just about made it through.
25
ENTANGLEMENT
hey
Hey
what ya doing?
Nothing. Sitting in my office staring out the window. U?
just finishing up a call. lunch?
Mmm...is that what we’re calling it? Sorry I can’t today.
no i mean actual lunch. food. sandwich, salad...
Haha still can’t.
k :(
you all right?
Yeah.
No, not really
Bad morning.
sorry. how come?
Doesn’t matter.
come on.
Ugghh. Just mad...mad at him, mad at me. I don’t know, just mad.
why mad?
Arguably cycle related.
I’m so stupid. How could I not have known?
known what?
Known anything! How could I have not known he was fucking that cunt? How could I have not known ghe was lying about everything.
He** (duh).
how could you have? he fooled us all. he was a good liar.
No he wasn’t. That’s the thing. He was terrible. I always knew. He got pale whenever he tried. And he talked too much.
or he lied well when it suited him
and badly when he wanted you to see through it?
Maybe... I dont know.
You know what entanglement is?
i dont
It’s a quantum thing, spooky action at a distance?
sorry. no bells
It doesnt matter
come on
Okay, basically you have pairs of particles and no matter how far apart they are if you change one of them the other one changes at the same instant, even if it’s at the opposite end of the universe.
that seems impossible—speed of light...
It’s a puzzle, but apparently true. Anyway, we always joked that we were entangled
meaning?
Meaning, how could he just fucking die and I not know!! Not feel it, not KNOW IT!! Not know anything!???
sorry.
steph?
u there?
Yeah.
I’m sorry.
it’s okay.
No it’s not. It’s not fair to drag you into my shit. I just don’t know who else to talk to. Pathetic.
I should go. I’ll call u later.
okay.
steph, it’s going to be okay.
26
GREEN FAIRY
Jordan started when the doorbell rang. It made a cheap digital chiming noise that seemed to be coming from the kitchen somewhere. This was the first time he’d ever heard it. When it rang a second time he jumped up from the couch where he’d been sitting for he didn’t know how long. Minutes, hours? There was an open International Herald on the floor but he didn’t remember reading any of it. “Just a minute.” He opened the door and admitted a broadly smiling Terry Allison.
“Hey, Gordo, how ya goin’?” Terry boomed, surveying the apartment. Jordan saw his eyes rest momentarily on the menagerie of strange anthropomorphic trees and creatures folded from old newspaper and paper bags that huddled beside the new modest flat screen. He didn’t ask.
“Okay, n-nothing,” he stammered, waving vaguely toward the open paper. “Just catching up.”
“Well, leave it,” Terry said. “We’re going out.”
“Why?”
“You’ve graduated. We’ve got to celebrate. Come on, don’t you have any decent clothes?”
Jordan looked down at his black discount-store sneakers and jeans and winced. “Not really. What do you mean graduated?”
“All in good time, my son. Patience is a virtue much to be admired.” Terry strode through the tiny apartment to Jordan’s bedroom and started rifling through his closet. “Fucking right you don’t. Your wardrobe is shit. You really don’t get out much, do ya?”
“No.”
“Right, no worries. Come over to mine. We’ll kit you out.” Terry tossed Jordan his coat and opened the front door with a flourish.
Terry’s place was just around the corner, the parking lot actually backed onto Jordan’s. It wasn’t very big, Jordan thought, barely bigger than his own. The decor was well-traveled frat boy, some unframed photos from exotic locales and a stunningly comprehensive collection of third-world beer bottles. Jordan obediently followed his host and allowed him to hold various garish and oversize garments up to his body while pursing his lips and shaking his head, casting the rejects aside until finally settling on a simple white button-down and a tailored black leather jacket. It was an outfit Jordan would never have chosen but, particularly considering most of the alternatives, it could have been much worse.
“Better,” Terry said, surveying his handiwork. “Let’s hit it. First stop, the hub of the known universe.”
The hub turned out to be the Hub of Roppongi, an English pub five minutes’ walk down the hill. The entrance was a couple of steps down from street level and, had Terry not guided his head under the lintel, Jordan was certain he would have knocked himself out cold.
“Terry, you sorry sack of convict semen and Aboriginal ova,” roared a voice with a damp north London accent from somewhere behind the semicircular bar.
“Alan, you fat cunt,” Terry cheerfully returned as a mountainous man with disheveled black hair and riotous eyebrows and beard emerged and embraced him warmly. “This is Gordon, new guy. Gordon, this repulsive hillock of flesh is Alan, our proprietor.”
“Good to know you, Gordon,” Alan said with a wicked smile and an enveloping handshake. “I won’t hold him against you.” He disappeared behind the bar as Jordan and Terry sat down at a dark wood table with a sticky plastic cover protecting a collection of faded Guinness coasters. Almost immediately a sour-looking older Japanese man in a tight pink Never Mind the Bollocks T-shirt set down two tumblers of a pale, sickly yellowish liquid and a plastic bucket of ice. Terry dropped a handful of ice in each of their glasses and Jordan saw milky clouds roll off the cubes and drift through the liquor.
“Kampai,” Terry said, raising his glass.
“Cheers,” Jordan replied. “What is it?”
“Green Fairy. Bottoms up,” the Australian said, emptying his glass. No more enlightened Jordan shrugged and knocked back his own. It tasted familiarly of licorice or anise.
“Pernod?” he said, swirling the milky residue.
“Not exactly,” Terry said as he waggled his empty glass toward the bar. “Close, though.” The waiter came back with a half-empty bottle, which he slammed down on the table with a disgusted look before walking away muttering to himself in Japanese.
“Absinthe,” Terry said, showing Jordan the label quickly before refilling both of their glasses.
“Right,” Jordan said. “Toulouse-Lautrec, crazy artists...”
“Yeah, that’s the one.” He took a languorous pull on his glass. “Made a bit of a comeback, you know, craft cocktails, all that bullshit. Alan swears this one’s the only one with the historically accurate amount of wormwood and whatever other crap they put in it.”
Absinthe was the only English word on the label; the rest was in a belle epoque–infused kanji that Jordan found completely unintelligible. Terry drained his glass and Jordan tried to keep up.
“What did you mean by graduated?” he asked.
“I mean the babysitter’s gone. Your mate Dennis took off this morning,” Terry said with a conspiratorial smirk. “That leaves me in charge, lunatics running the asylum.”
He poured two more generous shots. “It’s good. It means they think you’re okay, you’re not going to do anything weird. It all gets easier from here on out, my friend. Long leash.” Terry saw Jordan wince at the metaphor. “Look, no point trying to pretend a thing’s not a thing, right? A cage is still a cage but it doesn’t have to be the fucking zoo. I cut the camera in your bedroom today. A man needs some privacy, right?” He raised the glass. “Kampai.”
They emptied the glasses twice more in silence. Jordan was feeling it now. It was warm but edgy. There was none of the self-pity and justification of the brown alcohols, nor the furry conviviality of vodka. He felt alive and invulnerable and something else, something that felt a little like what bagpipes must have felt like to a Scot following William Wallace across Stirling Bridge.
Terry stood up suddenly, his chair shrieking on the floor. He stoppered the bottle and left it on the table as he headed for the door, Jordan in his wake. “Cheers, you fat cunt,” he bellowed to no one.
“Good riddance, convict,” echoed the bar.
27
LEXINGTON QUEEN
The air was bracing cold. It stung Jordan’s cheeks as he pulled his coat tighter. The neon and fluorescence of Roppongi had a garish sparkle. Terry led him straight across the street, ignoring peevish honks from a green-and-white taxi. They walked down half a block before Terry ducked into a doorway overhung with an unmarked blue awning.
The sushi bar was not much bigger than Jordan’s bedroom. There were half a dozen somber, nattily dressed men seated at the bar. They looked up when the gaijin entered, but the sushi
chef greeted Terry with a familiar nod and the men went back to their conversation.
They took two available seats and almost immediately a large Asahi and two sakes appeared. Terry served Jordan, who reciprocated in the traditional ritual. The chef placed a wooden platter with six pieces of pinkish-white sashimi between them.
“You feel lucky?” Terry said.
“What do you mean?”
“Fugu, puffer fish. You ever had it?”
Jordan shook his head. “I’ve heard of it, though. I thought it was poisonous.”
“Lethal, mate, but only if they cut it wrong.”
“So, illegal?”
“Not illegal, just has to be prepared by a certified guy and there aren’t too many of those.”
“How many’s not too many?”
“No idea, but I doubt Ochi’s one of them.” Terry tipped his head toward the chef, who was deftly peeling a daikon radish into long curled sheets. “But don’t worry, I’m pretty sure he knows what he’s doing. Did you catch the fellows at the bar?”
“Yeah,” Jordan said.
“They’re all chimpira, low-level yakuza. They trust him—Ochi is the best. Come on, try it before he gets pissed off.”
Jordan broke apart his chopsticks and rubbed them against each other to smooth off the splinters. Terry poured a splash of shoyu in the little ceramic bowl and stirred in a lump of wasabi. “After you, mate.”
Jordan picked up a slice of the glistening fish and dredged it lightly through the soy, then, with no more than a blink’s hesitation, popped it in his mouth. It had an odd texture, firm and mushy at the same time. The taste was salty, yeasty soy in front with an almost tangy, delicate sweetness behind. Jordan didn’t chew the fish but compressed it between his tongue and the roof of his mouth, enough to make the tender sashimi disintegrate. He smiled and looked straight into Terry’s eyes as he swallowed. What did he care? He was dead already.
“Not bad,” he said, taking another.
Terry laughed and said, “Slow down, sport,” diving in himself.
Jordan felt exhilarated and reckless; maybe it was the risk, or maybe it was the freedom of being with the one person with whom he could be relatively honest. His lips felt a little numb and tingly. He refilled Terry’s sake cup and looked at him expectantly. Terry took the cue and served him, then they both drained and served and drained again.
Exit Strategy Page 9