by Alex Austin
The ringtone played for thirty seconds before Katashi distinguished it from memory’s melody. He almost failed to recognize the frantic female voice, but as his index finger touched the end button, the voice attached itself to a face and name that he’d sooner have forgotten.
“Slow down, slow down . . . I don’t understand a word that you’re saying, Cassandra.”
Chapter 30
Among the gymnastic apparatus on Santa Monica Beach, three thick ropes hung from a horizontal steel bar twenty feet above the ground. As beachgoers, crimson-faced and drained of expression, trudged across the shadowy sand, Hugh gripped the rope and using only the strength of his arms ascended halfway. There he pinched the rope with his ankles to secure himself and caught his breath. Restored, Hugh continued to the top, twisting on the rope to view the rear façade of Kazuki’s oceanfront hotel.
It hadn’t been difficult to locate his ex-father-in-law’s accommodations. A visit to the Pasadena bookstore where Hugh had heard Kazuki read weeks before, and the purchase there of several Ono novels, prompted the owner, Mr. Huddle, to share a few stories about his honored friend, and name-drop Ono’s favorite restaurants, nightspots and hotels—hotel, for Ono stayed exclusively at the Santa Monica Olympic, on the oceanfront.
The villain’s lair established, Hugh’s first impulse was to visit the author unannounced and, without accusation, cold-cock him. When Ono regained consciousness, Hugh would present his indictment: twelve years ago, Ono had stolen his sons from that Oceanside Beach. Through some deception, perhaps involving Setsuko, his sons had been lured onto that waiting yacht. From there, Takumi and Hitoshi were taken to Japan, told that their mother would be joining them and given the tragic news that their father had died. In Japan, they would grow into manhood, removed from the dangerous paths their reckless and irresponsible father would have led them on.
Such a bullshit motive. At the heart of it all, Kazuki wanted his daughter and grandsons back.
Hugh balked at executing that measure for one reason: the risk that he would forever seal himself off from Hitoshi and Takumi, if not by incarceration then by alienation—for he could only guess what affection the twins might have developed for their grandfather, an affection that might trump their outrage at Kazuki’s crime.
So for three days, Hugh simply had observed the facility. He spent his first hours outside the hotel entrance watching luxury vehicles discharge guests late from intercontinental flights, sleepy-eyed, confused and ill-tempered. In wondrously short time, these selfsame guests would emerge refreshed and ebullient, looking for the city’s fabled sand, surf and sun. Transitioning to the lobby, Hugh read newspapers behind dark glasses and beneath the shadow of a lowered baseball cap. Feeling the eyes of hotel security on him, he removed to the hotel’s lobby bar, where on a bank of high-definition televisions, he followed little green balls passing through a universe of angles, little white balls disappearing into holes in the earth and larger white balls soaring above a thousand hands reaching toward heaven. An ideal perch to watch the comings and goings of humanity. Of Takumi or Hitoshi, Hugh caught not a glimpse, but for two days in a row, Kazuki had emerged.
On both occasions, when Kazuki left the hotel it had been late afternoon. He had strolled the oceanfront to a pub along the walkway, into which he disappeared for an hour and then emerged to return to the hotel. Hoping that the outing was becoming a routine, Hugh saw this as the ideal environment in which to approach the author.
“Right on time,” Hugh thought, spotting Kazuki exiting the hotel’s rear entrance.
In his excitement, Hugh’s grip slackened and he slipped down four feet. He regained his hold, lost it again and hit the ground hard. The jolt stunned and knocked the wind out of him, but he stayed on his feet, though he had lost sight of Kazuki. Hugh lumbered across the sand, but by the walkway caught his breath.
Laughter burst from the patio of the pub where a server dealt platters of fish and chips from her overladen arm, her body gliding effortlessly past bare muscular shoulders and outstretched legs.
Hugh shoved his hands into his pockets to stop their shaking. Kazuki had to be inside.
Crossing the patio, Hugh entered the pub through a screen door flocked with glitter flakes that smelled of fish. One hundred people or so occupied the L-shaped bar, two or three deep in hot spots. Its adjoining dining room, which held a half-dozen tables, was equally popular. Hugh edged through the crowd to the corner of the L, and stood next to a long-legged woman in a microskirt who was chatting it up with a Schwarzenegger lookalike rammed in next to her. Ordering a beer from a red-haired barmaid with huge green eyes and tattooed temples, Hugh took out his wallet and saw that the rope’s friction had drawn blood to his palms. With a wad of bar napkins, he wiped himself clean, but a moment later, blood rose again. The barmaid brought him his beer, took his money, winced at his red palms.
Where was Kazuki?
Sipping his microbrew, Hugh looked around, pausing at a bookcase projecting from the wall, its shelves packed with rotting and discolored novels. On the jukebox, “I’m a Believer” played. Carrying two immense plates of fish and chips, an agile server skirted Hugh to deliver the food to a couple arguing heatedly. It would sit there and go stone cold before the man and woman ate it.
“Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes . . .”
Hugh chugged his beer, ordered a second.
A high-pitched scream. In an alcove near the front of the bar, a young woman jumped up and down in front of a dart board, pointing to a flight lodged in the bull’s-eye. Her other darts were all over the board. A second young woman clapped and hugged her companion. They wore bright summer dresses that clung to their bodies. They clinked their beer mugs and smiled at the joyful world.
The moment was broken when the woman arguing with her companion at the nearby table angrily shouted several obscenities. A shaft of light from the lowering sun struck her arm, setting her skin afire. A door slammed. Hugh saw Kazuki standing in front of the restroom.
Hugh gazed at his ex-father-in-law, who remained immobile. The author joined thumb to forefinger and seemed to dab an invisible canvas. Kazuki then took out a pair of glasses from the top pocket of his open-necked, white silk shirt. Fitting the glasses, he scanned the bar stiffly, like a myopic robot. Hugh lowered his head. Three brown bubbles in the bottom of his glass. Pop, pop, pop. A weight fell on his shoulder.
“Hugh.”
Hugh looked up in unconvincing surprise, forced a smile and addressed his ex-father-in-law.
“How—how are you, Kazuki?”
“Oh, fine,” said the author, studying him. “And yourself?”
“No complaints,” said Hugh, his heart thunderous.
“I’m staying at a nearby hotel,” said Kazuki. “Book tour.”
“Of course,” said Hugh, remembering his letter to Setsuko, which Kazuki would remember too. Already they were playing a game.
“I’m almost blind,” said Kazuki. “Bear with me while my eyes adjust to the light. But if you would order for me?”
“Jack Daniel’s?”
“Yes, neat. I envy your memory. The time bandits who have been plundering mine will soon have slim pickings. A melody or two. A few faces. A moonlit night in O¯ saka watching a beautiful young woman reddening her mouth.”
Yes, yes, pretty shit. “Water back?”
“No, no water,” said Kazuki, blinking.
Over the sliver of worn mahogany at their disposal, Hugh ordered the Jack Daniel’s and another beer. While they waited for the drinks, they stared past each other, like shy strangers on a packed commuter train. A mediating third party had always separated them. Setsuko, Jack . . . The drinks arrived.
A surfing song by a band that didn’t surf played on the jukebox. The harmonies held both men for a moment.
“You’ve been hanging around my hotel,” Kazuki said. “Why didn’t you just knock on my door if you wanted to see me?”
“It wasn’t you I wanted to see,” said Hugh.<
br />
Kazuki seemed not to have heard. He looked around, taking in the varied life like a common tourist. Spotting the bookshelf, Kazuki poked at the titles. Clucking, he drew a book out and thumped the garish cover.
“The dreaded Vortex of Valtow!”
Kazuki displayed the dust jacket to Hugh. “Black Nebula by Todd Ostermann. I read this book when I was a boy. It was one of dozens that were sent to me regularly by an American company—a book-of-the-month club, I suppose. Perhaps a two- or three-books-a-month club, for I recall many books arriving in their stiff resistant packaging.” Kazuki leafed through the book as he spoke. “All were hard covers with bold, nightmarish dust jackets. I joined the club by tearing out a coupon in Popular Mechanics or perhaps it was Popular Science. The books were printed in English and each one science fiction, which I would discover was a very broad genre. They were defective books. They would come with chapters missing or reversed. Many typos. Paragraphs transposed. Some pages blank. Faint print on one page, out of register print on another. Characters’ names changed from chapter to chapter. Those books had a great influence on my life and writing. I thought that was how books were supposed to be written. That in a nutshell is the secret of my style. Bad American science fiction.”
Let him talk.
Kazuki continued, “Or do I just remember them that way? It seems that a publisher would go out of business if he published books like that, month after month. Unless these were printing press mistakes, defective books early in the run that publishers normally threw into the trash. Perhaps publishers realized there was a way to make money on these monstrosities by selling them at discount prices overseas, where the problems would be overlooked, especially if the readers were young boys and girls. Or perhaps the books were perfect and I have imposed my own flaws on them, which I’ve transposed to my own books.”
Draining his glass, Hugh rocked its base on the wood. The bartender looked over.
“I’m here for Takumi and Hitoshi,” said Hugh. “Are they with you?”
“No, Hugh, they are not with me.”
“I’m begging you.”
Kazuki’s brow tightened with concern, but it was a tease, for he changed subjects. “You tried to take your own life?”
“Takumi and Hitoshi!” Hugh insisted.
“I put a knife to my belly,” Kazuki said, pushing the book back into its place. “I got it in a quarter inch, spilled a fair amount of blood and then I remembered my responsibility, my daughter.”
Kazuki sipped his drink.
“It was when my wife died,” Kazuki said.
“Answer me,” demanded Hugh, bringing his glass down hard on the bar. There was a crack, but the glass stayed intact. Plastic.
Jimi Hendrix’s voice rose above the chatter. “ ‘There must be some kind of way out of here,’ cried the joker to the thief . . .”
“Takumi and Hitoshi. I want to see them,” said Hugh.
“If I thought that . . .” Kazuki’s voice trailed off.
“Christ, man, just give me that moment.”
“I want you to wait,” said Kazuki.
“Wait? For what? Why the fuck should I have to wait?”
“For it to be finished.”
“It? What?”
“My book.”
“Your book? Fuck your book. My sons, Kazuki. I want my sons.”
“You should have thought—” Kazuki cut himself off.
“I’m rotting in a Simi Valley graveyard. A little white fabrication, right?”
“A little white fiction.”
Hugh slapped him lightly, but Kazuki’s head jerked sideways as if from a boxer’s leaden blow. Hugh’s arm remained suspended, his open hand quivering. People had seen. People were closing in.
“You okay?” someone asked the old man.
“We were playing,” responded Kazuki.
“My sons!” said Hugh.
Kazuki turned and walked toward the exit. Before Hugh could take a step, someone grabbed Hugh’s arm, and then another.
“Motherfucker,” Hugh screamed. But he was held, and it was for his own good and was kind of the strangers.
At the exit, Kazuki turned to mouth one two-syllable word to Hugh.
Patience.
Chapter 31
Fingal’s Cave/32
YUUDAI BOARDS THE YACHT
Yuudai glanced at the Saab’s digital clock. Almost one A.M.
He removed the stand-up paddleboard from the roof rack and leaned it against the car. Opening the trunk, he removed his shoes, shirt and pants, revealing his three-quarter length wet suit. He set his clothing neatly into the plastic tub in which he kept miscellany, including the sheathed knife. Slipping the knife out of the sheath and back in, satisfied it would be secure, he strapped the sheath to his right ankle. He next removed the paddle and quietly shut the trunk.
Balancing the stand-up-paddleboard on his head, he walked past the jungle gym and rings, the climbing ropes and parallel bars, across the bicycle path and shadowy sand, over the clumps of kelp and decaying sharks. He was little interested in the muttering loners and entangled lovers.
The yacht, as on previous nights, was moored two miles from shore, outlined by its running lights.
Yuudai strode waist deep into the water and slipped the SUP off his head. He walked the board through a few small waves, set his paddle on top and climbed aboard. A fog was creeping in, but Yuudai welcomed it.
Though paddling leisurely—nothing was to be rushed— and calmed by the gentle rise and fall of the sea, he was soon midway between the shore and the yacht.
But as he drew closer, his heart raced.
Now Yuudai thrust his paddle deeper into the blank ocean. If he could, he would have jammed the paddle to the ocean floor itself so that he could give one mighty push, propel the board from the sea and onto the very deck of the yacht.
“Slow down,” he whispered to himself. “Take it easy. Don’t let the sound of your own wheels . . .” He laughed and continued to sing as he paddled. The fog rolled in ever more rapidly.
Fifty yards from the vessel, Yuudai stopped paddling. As if a child gazing up from the base of a Christmas tree, he took in the configuration of lights, settling on the string that ran from the ship’s bow and vanished into the fogswept water.
Paddling noiselessly to the anchor chain, Yuudai lay down and unrolled the board’s tether, tying it first to the paddle and then lashing it to one of the anchor chain’s fat links. Getting up on his knees, Yuudai grasped the chain and slowly hauled himself to the bow, the chain’s groan at his shifting weight no louder than what would be produced by the wash of a small passing boat. In less than two minutes, Yuudai was grabbing the bow rail and sliding under the polished steel to rest on the cool deck.
As he waited for his energy to return, he followed the approach of a sizeable wave. The enormous yacht took the impact dismissively, barely a quiver. Larger than any creature in the sea, a prehistoric beast of unimaginable size and power, a T. rex, a sauropod, a—
“Yuudai?” whispered his father on his death day.
“Yes, Dad?”
“The mother’s hiding these little plastic dinosaurs on the café’s patio.”
“Stop, Dad,” said Yuudai. “It means nothing.”
“No, Yuudai. I saw them,” said Herb, lifting his head from the pillow. “From the airplane. I saw them all that way. On the ground. The mother and daughter were there and they were playing and they were so joyful. It should have gone on forever. But then there was light and then they were gone . . .” His father’s head fell back. Herb touched Yuudai’s hand and whispered, “Mama hides the last toy, and yells, ‘Iidesuyo.’ Right? ‘Iidesuyo!’ The little girl jumps up, laughs . . .”
Chapter 32
It was eleven P.M. when Hugh stopped for the light on Pacific Coast Highway. On the radio the singer declared, “It’s the edge of the world/And all of western civilization . . .” A line of midnight cyclists, glowing like bioluminescent jellyfish, streamed silen
tly out of the canyon and turned with choreographed precision north on the highway, vanishing into the slipstream. Hugh glanced toward the Pacific, where six thousand miles away his sons might be sitting down to a lunch of sukiyaki or sashimi—or Big Macs for all he knew— and, too, they could be eating the same ten miles distant.
The car behind him honked. Hugh accelerated onto Topanga. Continuing to scold him, the car veered in front of oncoming traffic to rip past.
Tomorrow, despite the warning, Hugh would continue his surveillance. If he failed to find his sons in California, he would fly to Tokyo. He wouldn’t leave Japan without finding Takumi and Hitoshi.
As he climbed the dirt road, he smelled the residues of the fire. His landlord had left a message on Hugh’s cell phone. The insurance company had completed its inspection and would cover the damages. Preliminary repairs had been made to the house, and it was all right for Hugh to move back in.
Pulling up to his home, Hugh hoped that the car’s headlights would find Hanna sitting in his backyard. He needed someone to lie with and listen to his story. He needed someone to hold and to wake up with in the night. Someone to reassure him of his own existence.
He needed proof . . . of everything.
Under the hard white beams, the lounge chairs were empty and the scrawny blades of glass were still.
He took a sleeping pill, poured a glass of wine, downed another sleeping pill, and sat in bed reading Barnaby Rudge. But Dickens drifted . . . Costumed as a ballerina, Setsuko came to him, danced across his bed.