The Island Dwellers

by Jen Silverman

  “Enough,” I said.

  I expected him to say something cutting, but instead he just looked at me, with that pale unreadable gaze.

  “You’d think it would have noticed the glass by now,” Kaneda said.

  “Who gives a fuck about the glass,” Yasuhara said, answering Kaneda but looking at me. “It doesn’t even notice the glass.”

  * * *

  —

  YASUHARA WAS WAITING FOR ME by the ramen shop. He was alone.

  “Where’s the fan club?” I asked.

  The two of us against the early evening light. It reminded me of all those times I stood in Anthony’s doorway, framing myself for him like a picture. But when I thought of him it was like thinking of a civilian in a war zone. Yasuhara wasn’t a civilian.

  He switched my question with his own. “Going somewhere?”

  If it was going to happen, why not now.

  I looked straight back at him. “I dunno,” I said. “Am I?”

  * * *

  —

  WE ENDED UP IN NI-CHOME, at a love hotel that I’d actually been to once, a year ago, before Anthony. The street was waking up, blinking neon, as we came out of an alley and cut across the main thoroughfare. In another hour or so, the crowds would be thick and rowdy.

  Yasuhara walked into the love hotel through the discreet side entrance as if he’d been there a hundred times before. We stopped in front of the lit-up display panel of available rooms, and Yasuhara picked one, without asking me. We took the elevator up and followed the blinking red arrow down the dingy little hall to the room. You never have to meet anybody in these places. In some, you even pay at the end, sticking your bills one by one into the money slot; once you pay the full price, the door unlocks and you’re let back out. We didn’t say anything the whole time.

  The door closed after us and the lock clicked into place. We both looked around. A window with the curtains drawn. A big-screen TV. A karaoke machine on the wall, a bathroom. And the bed, huge and remarkably clean for a place where thousands upon thousands of people have fucked in every position and configuration imaginable.

  “Love hotels frown on threesomes,” Yasuhara said, as if he’d been reading my mind. He dropped his school jacket on the floor.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. If somebody’s watching the security cam and they see three people come in, they’ll kick you out. That’s Japan for you. Limited, sanitized perversion.” Yasuhara turned to face me, and yanked his shirt over his head. I took him in: the hard flat lines of his torso, the swell of muscle in his chest and arms. A tattoo swam up his ribs, a fine net of dark lines that I couldn’t make out clearly. He saw me looking and smiled that thin cold smile.

  “Your turn.”

  I shrugged out of my jacket, dropped it. Pulled my shirt off. Then kicked off my shoes, socks, unzipped my jeans, dropped them, then the boxers. He took me in. I knew what he was looking at. Even in the dim light you could make out the marks.

  “Who was it?” he asked, surprising me. When I didn’t answer, he started unbuckling his belt. “You don’t have to tell me, I know it was that white guy. I’ve seen you with him.”

  All of a sudden I wasn’t sure what the game was.

  “You been following me?” I asked.

  Yasuhara stepped out of his jeans, then looked at me with those dark calculating eyes. “You fuck him?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “I fuck him. What’s it to you?”

  Naked, Yasuhara walked to the window. He opened the curtain and looked out. “Haven’t told anyone,” he said. “If you’re wondering.”

  “Don’t give a shit if you do.”

  Yasuhara turned back to me. “Haven’t told Noriyuki.”

  My mouth was dry. “So tell him. I don’t care.”

  Yasuhara sauntered toward me. He stopped a hand-span away, and tilted his head to one side, watching me.

  “Yeah you do,” he said, softly. “And no, I won’t.”

  He took my face in his hands and kissed me on the mouth, hard but without meanness. It surprised me completely—I don’t know why. I pulled away sharply.

  “What do you want?” I asked. It had seemed so obvious on the way here, but now it no longer did.

  Yasuhara shook his head. He was touching my body now, not answering. My collarbone, ribs, the edge of my hip bone. Outlining the shapes of bruises with his fingertips. The long zipper-line of a cut. That one had been an accident—Anthony forgot to take off his rings. I let Yasuhara touch me. I still had no idea what the game was but it didn’t feel bad, his fingertips on my skin. I closed my eyes to concentrate on his strange light touch, but the note of anger in Yasuhara’s voice made me reopen them.

  “I can kill him if you want.”

  “Kill who?” I asked, bewildered.

  “The white guy. For doing this to you.”

  I stared at him. “It’s not like that.”

  “Easy to fall through the cracks,” Yasuhara said, low and fast. “Hundred thousand people here, one day he’d just be gone. You don’t know what I can do. I have friends…”

  “Don’t,” I said. The two of us whispering secrets like kids in the dark. “It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t even want to.”

  “He shouldn’t do that to you.” Yasuhara lowered his head to my chest, his lips brushing over the red jag of the cut, down across my ribs. The edge of his teeth, our skin painted red and gold and blue from the neon signs flashing outside. My breathing, ragged now. He stood up in one swift movement and wrapped his arms around me, tight.

  “You have no idea what I can do,” he said, his lips moving against my neck. “Just ask me.”

  “Yasuhara.” My voice was cool despite the tightness in my chest. “What are you doing.”

  Yasuhara didn’t let go. “I know what you are. Knew it when I met you.”

  “Yeah?” I couldn’t seem to get angry, although I felt like I should be.

  “Walking around with Nori, talking all your shit, nobody sees what you are. But I do.”

  “And what am I?”

  He hesitated, and then grinned that small feral grin. “Lonely. Really lonely.”

  I was pretty sure that wasn’t what he’d been going to say, but he kissed me hard. It hurt a little, since my mouth was still bruised, but I didn’t push him away. It was bewildering to me, how hot his body was against mine. His skin seemed so hot to the touch that I wondered briefly if the dim glow in the room was coming from him and not from the neon outside. But still I didn’t push him away, and he just kept kissing me, gentler now. It seemed so innocent, suddenly, that I wanted to laugh. The two of us here in a love hotel, secret and naked, and Yasuhara was kissing me like we were at a junior high dance. Like some teen love story. For some reason, then, I thought of Nori.

  Earlier that day, the two of us had been in his bedroom watching the snake coiled in its jar. Nori had brought out the lighter but before he could flick it on, I’d said, “Don’t.” In that one moment, I had this terror that if he sparked the lighter and drew its attention, it would see his face clearly, remember him forever, and then hurt him. He would be asleep and it would move like silk in the dark, it would sink those two needle-teeth into the hollow of his neck where the pulse jumps, pull away and leave the fangs behind.

  Nori had asked me what was wrong. I hadn’t known what to say. I don’t want anything to hurt you. I’d kill anyone who hurt you.

  “Nothing,” I’d said, shaken.

  “What’s wrong?” Yasuhara’s voice drew me back. “Ancash, what is it?”

  Nori with the forked stick. Nori with the jar. Nori in the back of the truck and the rice fields flashing by and every rice paddy had mamushi, every stone wall hid mamushi. Nori asleep on the train back from Hiroshima with a jar in his book bag, everyone asleep, the snake and I had been the only ones awake.

&nbs
p; “Ancash!”

  Nori dodging bicycles. Nori dodging traffic. And me, always five steps behind, following the solid line of his shoulders. I don’t want anything to touch you. Stupid jokes and sideways glances. Anything to keep you clean.

  Anthony: “Have you ever loved anyone?”

  “No,” I’d said, scornful. “No.”

  “Ancash, talk to me.”

  I blinked. Yasuhara, shaking me. His face close to mine, that smooth mask disrupted by concern. He stopped shaking me when he saw me focusing on him.

  “Ancash—?”

  I made it to the bathroom before I was sick.

  Afterward, I knelt with my cheek against the cool of the toilet seat. Yasuhara came in, I heard him in the doorway. He stood there looking at me. I wouldn’t look at him. Neither of us said anything. Finally Yasuhara swore, in Portuguese, and turned away. I heard him moving around in the other room, then the door opened and closed.

  When I emerged from the bathroom he was gone. My clothes were folded on the bed. I put them on and left. It only occurred to me halfway down the street that he must have paid for everything to get the doors to unlock. He must have picked my clothes up from the floor, folded them neatly, laid them on the bed. The folded clothes and the unlocked door, I didn’t know what to do, nothing made sense. I’d thought Yasuhara was the same as me. I’d thought he only fucked people who meant nothing.

  * * *

  —

  IT SEEMED AT FIRST AS if Anthony wasn’t home. I knocked for a long time and he didn’t come to the door, and then I turned the doorknob and the door opened, so I went in. The lights were all on and still the apartment was death-silent, void of any live human sound. I kicked my sneakers off and walked through the kitchen and came upon Anthony, sitting on the couch. He wasn’t reading anything, hadn’t been asleep. He was just sitting there.

  “Didn’t you hear me knocking?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Didn’t you figure it was me?”

  “Yeah.”

  I tilted my head, trying to see him better. He looked awful. He hadn’t shaved, his eyes were bloodshot. I could smell the whiskey rolling off him.

  “Are you drunk?”

  He laughed, a little thickly. “I made a good-faith effort.”

  I couldn’t seem to put things together today. “Why?”

  He stood up then, quicker than I’d expected. He crossed the space between us and grabbed me by the front of my shirt, hauling me close. I couldn’t remember seeing him like this before, looking at him and not knowing what he would do. I always knew what he’d do—his predictability was one of the many things I disdained.

  “Fuck you,” he said. “You can’t do this, can’t have it like this, can you.”

  “Anthony, what are you—?”

  He hit me sharply across the face. It had never been like this before, that look on his face like he wanted to hurt me. I shook my head, startled, and he hit me again.

  “You can’t make me do this,” he said, and his voice sounded like he was asking me for something, but then he kept hitting me, over and over again. “You can’t have it like this, never be able to go back now, never be able, look at myself and it’s not the same, I did that for you, you wanted me like that so I, but now I can’t, I can’t look at myself and I can’t—”

  Dizzy, I pulled away from him, trying to block my face with my hands. The cuts that had started to heal had reopened now, and there was blood on him and on me, and my head was ringing with a deep, old echo, like a stone hitting the bottom of a well over and over again.

  Anthony looked at me hard. He was drunk but his eyes were sober. He hated me right then. I didn’t blame him. “Don’t look at me like that,” he said, rage in his voice. “Don’t you look at me!”

  I looked away.

  He was pacing back and forth in front of me. Every so often, he’d slap his palm down on the counter and the sound would snap like a gunshot. I just kept my eyes fastened on the linoleum floor.

  “—if you understood,” Anthony was saying. Lecturing the wineglasses, the refrigerator, now toward me again. “It doesn’t have to be like—you make it like this, you twist things—there’s something wrong with you!” And then straight to me, stopping in front of me. “I don’t hurt people! I’ve never hurt anybody!”

  I looked up at him. I couldn’t stop myself. “It’s an acquired taste. Don’t hate me because you acquired it.”

  “Don’t you fucking look at me,” Anthony said, and his voice was as low as mine.

  So I looked down again. And because I looked down, I didn’t see him pick up the whiskey bottle until he was already swinging it at my head.

  I blocked, sheer instinct. It shattered against my forearm and I felt a sharp pain shooting from wrist to elbow. He was already swinging it again, the broken bottom slashing at my face, like a bad bar-fight scene in some movie. I dodged, skidding a little on the broken glass all over the floor. I looked at his face. It wasn’t his. I realized quite clearly that he was going to kill me.

  I almost stayed. It would have been so easy to just stand there with my arm dead weight and the glass on the floor and let him come at me. Not block that one. I don’t think I can explain if you don’t already understand, how easy it would have been. But what did it was the thought of Nori, the lid off the jar and the smoothness, the gentleness, two poison needles sliding down into his pulse. I had to tell him to watch out.

  I kicked a kitchen chair between us just as Anthony lunged. Even as he tried to stop, he tripped. The bottle flew out of his hand and smashed against the far wall. Glass sprayed like shrapnel. I didn’t wait for him to get up. I ran. I heard him yelling my name as the door slammed shut after me.

  * * *

  —

  ROPPONGI WAS A WHIRL OF colors, lights, bodies shoving past. Pounding music. I reeled through it. I didn’t know where I was going, couldn’t slow down, couldn’t think. I fell a few times, got up and kept going. I had to find Nori. It occurred to me eventually to call him and the thought was so logical, so supremely precise, that it stopped me short. Like taking a deep cool gulp of air, I found that I could think again. My hand was shaking so badly that I could barely punch Nori’s number into the tiny keypad. All around me Roppongi surged and seethed, and I focused on the thin faraway sound of Nori’s phone ringing. After what seemed like forever, he picked up.

  “Ancash, what’s up!”

  “Nori, I gotta see you. Where are you?”

  He sounded distracted. “Shinjuku, I’m at the arcade with Kristen. What’s wrong?”

  My legs gave out. I was sitting on the sidewalk, I didn’t even notice.

  “Nori, you gotta be careful, don’t go home tonight. Or if you do, turn all the lights on, leave them all on when you sleep. No, don’t sleep. You shouldn’t sleep.”

  “I can’t hear you, you’re breaking up.”

  “I said don’t sleep! And throw the snake out! Kill it and flush the body!”

  “Kill what? Ancash, I can’t hear you.”

  “The snake!” I was getting dizzy again; I shook my head to clear it, and droplets of blood fell on my jeans. “Nori, we have to get rid of it!”

  “What did you say? Where are you?”

  “I’m coming!” I yelled into the phone. “Wait for me!”

  Nori started to say something but his phone cut off. I started off at a run toward the nearest JR station. It was the usual late-evening crush of commuters, kids, tourists, and they all looked at me, shocked, and then looked away fast. I cut the line to get my ticket, and nobody stopped me. They just looked down until I’d passed.

  As the darkness flashed by the windows of the train, I stared at my reflection in the glass. I didn’t even recognize myself at first. I looked like the echo of a person, like a skin that somebody had shed. I closed my eyes.

  Nor
i in the truck, Nori laughing, Nori’s hand in mine, Nori’s hand in mine.

  I wasn’t going to bring him into this, I swore that up and down. Let him have his Swedish girl, I’d never say a word, keep him safe, keep him safe, I don’t know who I was pleading with, there was nobody on that train but me and the commuters, and the commuters had their backs turned. Everybody in Tokyo had their backs turned, and only the snake was listening.

  Behind my closed eyes I saw Anthony again with the broken whiskey bottle in his hand. And then Yasuhara, something feral, beautifully angry—Just ask me, he’d said, and he’d folded my clothes. He’d paid for the room. He’d touched my face. He’d folded my clothes. I know what you are. What did he want from me? Couldn’t he see that I was beyond hope? I couldn’t make sense of anything.

  I’ll make a deal with you, I said to the snake. Stay in your jar. I won’t kill you. I’ll climb in. We’ll live there together, you and me, with our fangs folded flat against the roofs of our mouths. Our blood will run so slowly that it will freeze inside us. We’ll let the world slide by on the other side of the glass, hot and far, flickering neon.

  I opened my eyes and so did my reflection and we watched each other warily, jolting along toward Shinjuku where Nori was waiting, and he didn’t understand, he didn’t understand, and I swore to God I’d never tell him anything.

  When the headache lasts past a day, I decide I have a brain tumor. Inoperable, probably. Hard to know, but chances are, I’m dead. I look in the mirror. Do my eyes look different? I check my lymph nodes. I can’t tell if they’re swollen, or if they’re just lymph nodes. I wonder how I’ll tell this story, when I tell it later. From the hospital bed—or online, a video testimonial of a life cut short, probably intended to raise money for something, or someone, who is no longer me. I just had a feeling, I’ll say. I had this headache, I’ll say. Go to the doctor, kids, I’ll say, pay attention.

  I meet my friend Agnes for coffee. This is what I do when I think I’m dying, which happens fairly often. I wouldn’t say that I’m always wrong, I would just say the jury is still out. There’s no special rule that only one thing can kill you. You can have brain cancer and Ebola and get hit by the subway. One thing may kill you slower and another may kill you faster, but all are operative factors.