The Best American Short Stories 2016

by Junot Díaz

  Toru, feeling weary, picked up his sweaty undershirt from the floor and brought it to the sink. He ran it under the water, squeezing the stench out of the thinning fabric. “Well? Any prospects?”

  Saki didn’t respond, and Toru kept squeezing and rubbing, as though if he kept up with it long enough, he would be able to wash away his thoughts as well. When he finally wrung out the shirt, much more thoroughly than necessary, and turned around, he was met with Saki’s patient eyes.

  “Did you know you can see the sunset from your window?” she said.

  “What?”

  She said she could see the western sky change colors in his neighbor’s window. Toru was rarely home before sunset, and when he was, he never thought to look out. That evening, as the sky turned from pale blue to light green to amber to pink to crimson, they sat on the floor watching it, cut out in rectangular in the neighbor’s windowpane. There was no way of knowing if all that transformation was actually happening in the real sky out of their sight, but there it was in the reflection, vivid and real enough.

  “Hey, I just thought of something,” Saki said, once it was all gone. “Do you know how to do the farewell fire?”

  “No,” Toru said. “My family never did the rituals. Why?”

  “Wouldn’t it be nice to do one of our own? I was listening to the radio and they were talking about it. The different ways they do it around the country.”

  “But Saki, the premise is that we’ve welcomed the spirits into the house beforehand. Who are we going to send off?”

  “You’ve been taking care of a whole bunch of graves. That should be enough.”

  “I really have no idea how it’s done.”

  “Let’s just make it up, then,” Saki said. “We don’t have to be proper. You said you don’t believe in these things anyway. I want to do the one where you let the lanterns float away in the river.”

  Saki rummaged through Toru’s kitchen drawers and found some plastic take-out containers and emergency candles. There was no river in the area, so they decided an old irrigation ditch on the outskirts of town would do. It was a meandering, twenty-minute stroll through streets lined with small houses and two-story apartments before the residential area gave way to an overgrown rice field.

  “I’m pretty sure none of this is legal,” Toru said as they climbed down the short slope to the ditch in the dark. “This is a fire hazard, and it’s littering. Do you know plastics never biodegrade? Ever?”

  “Will you be quiet for a second?” Saki was leading the way, surefooted and in control. She was giddy. “Just let me have a little fun.”

  The night air near the water was ripe with a grassy smell and crickets’ chirping. In the moonless sky above, Toru thought he could make out some stars if he squinted hard. Once they found a little spot that was level enough, Saki lit the candles and prepared her makeshift lanterns, five in all.

  “Here, you have to do one too,” she said.

  They carefully lowered the plastic containers into the water, trying not to let them topple. They had to hold on to some roots with one hand because the embankment’s final drop was steep. When they let go, the lanterns precariously bobbed up and down a couple of times and then, finding their balance, started to float.

  “It’s working,” Saki said. “They’re leaving us.”

  In the dark, the disembodied voice belonged to Masato. Only it had never sounded so cheerful back then, so certain. This—that despite the recent turn of events, perhaps Saki was at least more secure now in her body—comforted Toru.

  They lowered the remaining three lanterns so that they could follow the others’ paths. As the flickering flames drifted away, they reflected off the water and multiplied. They grew smaller and seemed to wander uncertainly, like spirits searching their way back. But Toru imagined that both he and Saki were letting go of some parts of themselves, shedding their pasts maybe, seeing them off to a better place.

  “Bye-bye,” Saki said. “I hope it’s peaceful there.”

  Back in the apartment, with the neighbor’s dark window no longer reflecting anything, Saki continued to look out with her elbow on the windowsill. As he prepared their dinner, Toru glanced over his shoulder every once in a while to find her in the same position. The sight was strangely reassuring. He thought perhaps this, the two of them on the fringe together, could work. Perhaps this was something he needed.

  Toru was heading out to the station one morning when one of his neighbors caught up with him.

  “Hey, 203,” said the middle-aged day laborer whom Toru had seen several times in passing. “You’re in 203, right? Wait up.”

  Toru nodded in acknowledgment but kept walking, and the man, who was shorter than he was, half-trotted beside him.

  “So,” the man said, “about that girl you got up in your room.”

  Toru glanced sideways at the man’s deeply tanned, stubbly face. He thought he could smell alcohol on his breath, but he didn’t seem confrontational. “Excuse me?”

  “Come on now, there’s no use playing dumb. You know the rules.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Hey, didn’t your mother teach you manners?” The man looked genuinely taken aback. “Slow down. I’m not trying to blackmail you or anything here. I could’ve complained to the landlord if I wanted to.”

  “Okay.” Toru loosened his stride a little. “Then what is it?”

  “That girl you’ve got. She’s this, isn’t she?” The man touched the back of his hand to his opposite cheek, in a gross approximation of femininity. “She a professional?”

  “What? Of course not.”

  “Well, I don’t know what the story is. I don’t even want to know. But I wouldn’t let her squat for too long if I were you.”

  Nearing the station, they were about to join a steady stream of commuters.

  “I know that type,” the man said. “The minute you let them into your life, they trample all over it. With their muddy shoes.”

  “What are you talking about?” Toru turned to face the man.

  “I saw her bring a guy up to your room.” The man evaluated Toru’s expression. “Bet it wasn’t something you’d arranged.”

  Toru stood there, his feet suddenly rooted to the hot asphalt.

  “So here’s some friendly advice,” the man said. “Get her out of there.”

  A female voice announced the train Toru was supposed to catch. “I have to go,” he said.

  “Look, I know your lady issue’s none of my business.” The man was almost sympathetic. “I don’t care what you do or with whom. But I don’t want any fishy stuff where I live. I can’t have police sniffing around, you know what I mean?”

  “Sure,” Toru said.

  “I mean it. I’ll tell the landlord if you—”

  “I said okay,” Toru said. “I understand.”

  “I’ve been wondering, Saki,” Toru said, in that pocket of time just after dinner but before they were ready for the dishes, “if I could have more of a part in this, your situation, in some way. Longer term.”

  Two days before, after he had spoken with his neighbor, Toru had come home mid-shift to an empty apartment. He didn’t know what he had expected to find, but he checked the futon sheet and tatami mat, perhaps for suspicious stains, and went through the trash. For a while he contemplated searching Saki’s canvas bag, but then he suddenly became aware of what he was doing, a part of him coolly observing his discomposure from the outside, and felt disgusted. What exactly did he want to know, anyway? What was he going to do with the knowledge? He went back to work, sneaking out of his own apartment like a thief.

  Saki looked up from where she sat across the table, leaning against the wall. They had the radio on and were listening to the weatherman predict the course of the first typhoon of the season. “What did you say?” she said.

  “If I can help you find a job, a proper job,” he said, testing the water, “maybe we can find another place. Together.”

  Saki picked up a chops
tick and lightly tapped on an empty bowl. “I don’t know,” she said, “if that’s going to work out.”

  On the radio, a young female announcer laughed at the weatherman’s joke, and some cheerful music came on.

  “Yeah?” Toru said. “Why not?”

  Toru had remembered it was Saki’s birthday. Masato’s birthday. The date had been stored somewhere in his mind all these years, like a lock’s combination that stuck with you long after the lock itself had been lost. He had bought two slices of prettily decorated cake on his way home, and the box was sitting in the fridge.

  “It’s been so good being here,” Saki said, not looking at Toru but gazing at the dirty dishes on the table. “You have no idea. I think I almost got too comfortable.”

  Toru got up and turned off the radio on top of the fridge. “Well then, what’s going to work out? What is your plan?”

  “I don’t know,” Saki said. “But you can’t help me more than you already have.”

  “What’s this all about, then, Saki?” Toru felt a flash of anger somewhere deep behind his eyes. He sensed his plan to gently work out the tangle slipping away. “Tell me why you are here if I can’t help you. Why you came to me.”

  Saki sat quietly for some time, as though contemplating the tip of the chopstick in her hand. “What would you like to hear?” she said almost kindly, now looking straight at Toru.

  “Well, one thing for sure—that you don’t bring your customers here again.”

  “What?”

  “I know what you’re doing.” Toru couldn’t stop. “A neighbor saw you. I don’t know what you think I owe you; maybe you think I deserve this, and maybe I do. But how can you do such a thing? Have you thought of the consequences?”

  Saki held his gaze, but Toru could see something retreat in her eyes, closing off. The fan slowly swung its head, back and forth, back and forth, just slightly stirring the air between them.

  “That was my boyfriend’s brother,” Saki said, words exhaled like a resignation.

  Toru stood still.

  “I meant to tell you,” she said, “but I hadn’t figured out how to.”

  “He found you?” Toru said. “Is the brother also a psychopath? Did he do anything to you?”

  “No, no.” Saki halfheartedly waved her arms in the air, as though physically scattering the idea. “I’ve been going to see him. My boyfriend. His brother came to ask me to stop.”

  Toru felt weariness settling on him like fine dust, weighing him down. He thought maybe he should sit down, but that seemed to require too much effort. “Is that what you want?” he said. “To get back with this guy?”

  “I don’t know.” Saki ran her hands through her hair and then grasped it in her fists, as though holding on to her head. “I really don’t know.”

  Long after they had turned the lights off, Toru lay awake on his sleeping bag. He could hear Saki’s regular breathing, but he knew she wasn’t asleep either.

  “Toru-kun,” Saki said, eventually. “Do you remember what I used to look like?”

  “I do,” he said. “I do remember.”

  “Did you know you were my only friend at school?”

  Toru stared out the window at the small patch of sky that contained nothing. “No,” he said. Then, “Maybe.”

  “Well, now you do. You were. That’s why I came to you.”

  Toru got up and dragged his sleeping bag over to where Saki lay on her side, her back toward him. He placed his hand on her waist. It was warm. When she turned over onto her back, he gently lifted the bottom of her shirt. In the dim light from the street lamp, Toru could see her torso littered with old scars and healed incisions. He reached his hand and felt them with his fingertips, as though reading Braille. Just below her left ribcage, he found one that had healed into a forceful indentation, like a diagram of a black hole bending space-time.

  “That’s the new one,” Saki said. “All the others are from the fall, back in school. Did you know I almost died then? Most of my injuries were internal, from the impact. They had to cut me open many times.”

  “I’m sorry,” Toru said.

  “He didn’t mean it, you know. He didn’t even know what he was doing. It was one of those moments.”

  “It’s okay,” Toru said. “You don’t have to defend him to me.”

  “He was so gentle and proper. You’d never imagine him hurting anyone.”

  “Saki. If you think things will work out with this guy, you’re totally deranged. You know that.”

  Saki made a sound that was halfway between a chuckle and a sigh. “Yeah,” she said. “I know.”

  Toru continued to trace the scars, trying to decipher something from each of the textured edges, as though straining to hear someone whispering in a room next door. He kept his hand on Saki’s torso and lay down next to her.

  “Did you think I came to you for a romantic reason?” Saki said.

  Toru didn’t say anything. He didn’t know the right answer.

  “Who knows,” she said. “Maybe I did.”

  Like that, with his hand rising and falling with Saki’s breathing, he closed his eyes.

  When Toru came home the next day, Saki wasn’t there. Her white canvas bag, which normally sat on the folded futon in the corner of the room, was also gone. But she didn’t leave her key, so Toru cooked dinner and waited, just in case. On the windowsill where she always rested her elbow, he found a stone he recognized from the cemetery. When the food grew cold, he packed a lunchbox and put it away in the fridge. The cake box still sat on one of the shelves, unopened.

  That night, the typhoon hit. It was already September. The rain smashed onto the pavement with enough force to knock a child down. It was as though someone had decided to waste the entire world’s supply of water on this town. The roaring replaced the sound of cicadas, which had by then become such a constant that Toru noticed it only in its absence. The new, powerful roar took up every inch of the available space, filling the world with another level of deafening silence.

  Toru stood at his window, letting the stray splashes into the room. He picked up the stone and turned it in his hand, feeling its warm surface the way Saki had done, before putting it into his pocket. The neighbor’s windowpane was pitch black now. A streetlamp stood illuminating a sheet of rain, waiting for someone to step into its cone-shaped spotlight. Toru took out his cell phone and held it in his hand for a long time before finally flipping it open. He counted seven rings before she answered.

  “Hello?” It was the familiar voice, half-worried, half-pleased. “Why are you calling now? Do you need to reschedule?”

  “Hi,” he said, and cleared his throat. “No, I just wanted to make sure you weren’t stranded somewhere.”

  He heard a chuckle. “What, like in a flood?”

  “You know, with all this crazy . . .” He trailed off, the words suddenly escaping his throat without first collecting sound.

  “Yeah?” she said. “Well, I’m fine. Don’t worry. Listen, the kids are here, so I should go. Next Wednesday, right?”

  He thought about the empty house in Saki’s dream. In his mind, he was walking from one dark room to another, looking for something. The Post-it note. Wasn’t there a Post-it note? He needed to find out what was written on it. But none of the rooms in the empty house had a table on which the plastic-wrapped plate of food could be placed, on which the note could be stuck.

  “Toru?” the voice was saying. It was right in his ear, yet so far away. “Are you there?”

  SHARON SOLWITZ

  Gifted

  FROM New England Review

  THEY LIVED ACROSS from a rundown park on a street they jokingly called Park Place. They drove older cars, drove as little as possible for the sake of the environment. They had a cleaning service, so they wouldn’t fight over who had left what where. But they rarely fought, in part because Allan was easygoing, in part because Thea was happy. Her job required travel (what fun!) but not enough to upset the applecart of the family. She made it
to basketball games (Nate), violin recitals (Nate), and soccer matches (Dylan). When she was gone, Allan, who taught two courses a semester at a Research I university, took care of the boys. Amiably. Lovingly.

  Was she lucky? She felt it, though less keenly than if she were less used to being lucky. The older of two girls, she had been deemed (so it seemed) the prettier and smarter early on, so it stuck. Which floated her through high school, sent her to the University of Chicago, and made her want to test herself—not just her luck but her limitations. Nixon was routed, the war over. Money and work were easy to come by and would be forever and ever, amen, world without end.

  Her sophomore year she quit school without asking for a leave and moved in with a gifted, troubled boyfriend. She worked as a waitress, took classes in painting, then singing and acting; she auditioned for plays. She had other boyfriends amid the mysterious AIDS epidemic, went to bed with men whose names she didn’t know, and once had asked for and received money. And she remained healthy; what luck! She could stay up far into the night at a bar where a boyfriend’s band was playing, her pleasure in the music intensified by MDA, then get a couple of hours of sleep and still make it to work the next day. She could have an abortion in the morning, deliver correctly designated plates of food in the afternoon, and remember her lines (there weren’t many lines) in the play she was in that night, with an occasional break to change her pad. To friends in law or medical school she would declare wryly: I’m downwardly mobile.

  By her midtwenties her élan was flagging. Gaby, her sister, had married right out of college, taught fifth grade, and had two girls one after the other while her solid-citizen husband climbed his corporate ladder. They moved to Highland Park, threw dinner parties, gave to the Symphony and the United Jewish Appeal. Gaby started working out, cut her hair short, looked no-nonsense glamorous. At a downtown lunch, Gaby picked up the tab. And Thea could see sister lunches down the years, Gaby generously paying, and she grateful and ashamed. And now the balance had shifted, or else it was always like this but till now she hadn’t understood: Gaby knew what she wanted and what she didn’t want, while Thea wanted just about everything. If not everything, she would have nothing. She’d impress the theater world with her Portia and Gypsy Rose Lee, she’d reign over a salon where she and other brilliant people amused one another, or she’d shuffle through alleys with all her possessions in a shopping cart. One or the other.