One Hundred and One Ways

by Mako Yoshikawa

  Picking up on the implied compliment, he smiled at me in the mirror, that quick brightness lighting up his face.

  I paused, examining his reflection closely, as if seeing him at a remove offered a new angle or a different perspective. With those hollow cheeks and the eyes that moved of their own accord, it was a face too broken to be conventionally handsome, yet in repose, as it was then, Phillip’s face sometimes had the serenity of a stone saint in a churchyard.

  “God, did I hate brushing time,” I continued. “Sometimes I hid, and my mom had to drag me kicking and screaming from beneath the bed, or from behind the shower curtain.”

  “You hellcat,” he said. “Spitfire. Wild girl.”

  “Maybe I was. Until—”

  “Aren’t you still?” he interrupted, sounding disappointed. I tried to catch his eye in the mirror, but his face was hidden behind my head.

  “To get back to my story,” I said, “I always squirmed and squirmed when she brushed my hair, until one day she yelled, ‘I quit,’ and put down the brush forever.”

  “That doesn’t sound like your mom,” he said, poking his head up. “From what you tell me, she doesn’t sound like the yelling type.”

  I made a face at his reflection. “Whose story is this?” I asked. “But you’re right. She didn’t yell, but she did quit.”

  Phillip, smirking, let the back handful of hair go and started working on the right side.

  “She told me I had to take care of my own hair. I was only about eight at the time, and really she should’ve just cut it short. My hair went uncombed for days, maybe weeks. I’d wash my hair and not bother to brush it, and go to school like that. This big, ugly tangle grew like a tumor on the left side of my head, and soon it was too late—I couldn’t get a brush through it at all. And then”—I stopped, letting the suspense build—“then one day I got bubble gum stuck in it.”

  Phillip laughed. “How’d you do that?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe when I was trying to spit it out, I hit my own hair. Or maybe I stuck it on the table for safekeeping and then forgot and rested my head on the spot. I tend to think, though, that it was like the time I stapled my finger to see what would happen. I probably did it deliberately.

  “When I tried to get the gum out with my fingers, I of course spread it all around, and more and more of my hair kept getting caught in it. It was really kind of scary, this big purple blob dangling just in the corner of my vision. And, boy, did it stink—you know that heavy, sickly grape smell?

  “I suppose what my mom should have done is coax the gum out with conditioner. But she didn’t. She just cut off my hair.”

  “Yowza,” he said, holding one lock in his fingers, and letting it slide through them slowly. “What drastic measures.”

  “It was the one and only time I ever had short hair in my life. And it was really short. My dad said I looked like I was in the army. In the pictures I look awful, but I didn’t notice at the time. By then it was summer, and it was hot.”

  Standing behind me, he held my head between his hands, and looked at me seriously in the mirror. “I’ll brush your hair whenever you want,” he promised. “And if you get gum stuck in your hair again, I’ll soak it in conditioner and untangle it strand by strand, if I have to, so that not one bit of it ever has to be cut.”

  I gazed back at him, and our eyes locked.

  “I’m done,” he added, handing me back the brush.

  My hair was so smooth it was silken. I was about to thank him when he stopped me.

  “Now it’s my turn,” he said. “Have you got scissors?”

  “Yes. I didn’t know you cut your own hair.”

  “I don’t,” he said, following me into the bathroom. “You’re going to cut it.”

  I got the big scissors out of the medicine cabinet and went back to the bedroom, with him tagging close behind. He sat down on the chair I had just been in, and I brushed his hair back while we discussed different possible hairstyles.

  He took off his shirt before I began cutting, his hands reaching behind to pull it over his head, and when I began to cut I felt dizzy with the closeness of his bare skin and the faint salty smell that rose from his neck.

  Although I had seen him without his shirt on before, we were alone in my bedroom, and the hour was late. I tried not to breathe too hard on his skin as I leaned closer to cut the fine hairs at the base of his neck. I had not yet lost my fingerprints then, and the sight of his body made me conscious of the wholeness of my own. He was well muscled but painfully thin. He had a long gash on the inside of his left forearm. There were three scratches on his left rib cage and he had a jagged and tortuous scar, very apparently stitched up, which ran down his stomach and disappeared into his jeans.

  He had told me just a few days earlier of the accident on the construction site that led to these scars, the rush of air that had seemed to come almost simultaneously with the slipping of his foot, and also of how close he had come to dying.

  I wanted to run my fingers through the fine hairs at the base of his neck. With my tongue I wanted to trace that jagged and tortuous line from the top of his stomach down to its end, and I wanted to lay my ear on his chest and listen to his heart beat. I wanted to hold him, and more.

  We did not talk while I cut. Though he was pleased with the final result, I thought it a trifle uneven.

  The knock on the door came two weeks later. It was late, perhaps around two, and when I peered through the peephole I could dimly make out Phillips hair, just this side of blond, and his black jacket. He came by so often that all the doormen of my building let him through without buzzing me, but he always called first, even if it was only from the pay phone on the corner of my street, and so I was feeling bewildered as I undid the locks and opened the door.

  “They took my camera,” he said, sounding tired.

  The book I was holding fell with a flutter of pages, hitting the ground with a leaden thud.

  His face had taken the brunt of the beating, although he had been punched in the stomach a few times as well. There was a pink bruise on his right cheekbone, and his lip was split open, his left eye all but swollen shut. A gash slicing through the center of his eyebrow would leave a permanent line where the hair did not grow—another scar to add to his collection.

  His hair was sleek with water, and his jacket was damp. It had been raining so quietly I had not heard the drops hit the skylight.

  I put an arm around him and led him to the couch. I eased him down onto it, and then sat down next to him. Not knowing where to start, I brushed away the water that had fallen from his hair to his shoulders. “Should I call the hospital?” I asked.

  “It’s not that serious, and anyway, I can’t afford it,” he said. His eyes, which had been zigzagging crazily when he first walked in, slowed and steadied as they looked into mine. “I—will you take care of me?”

  When I had scarlet fever at the age of seven, I surfaced once from my delirium to see my mother sitting at my bedside, with tears rolling down her cheeks. It was a sight that had bewildered me at the time.

  “Don’t worry, you’re in good hands,” I told him. “I used to be a lifeguard, you know—oh, don’t you know? I was, and I know CPR.” I thumped on his chest a few times to demonstrate.

  He chuckled, or rather wheezed, in shallow gasps, and then his face twisted. “Ow,” he said. “Ow, ow, ow. Don’t make me laugh.”

  “Boy, if you look like this,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady, “wish I could get a look at th’ other guy.”

  This time he only smiled, but the caked blood on his lips cracked as he stretched them, and he gingerly touched his mouth with his fingers.

  I made him an icepack for his left eye, and wincing when he did, I rubbed alcohol onto his cuts and scratches. At his request, I brought out some wine—his, left in my apartment—which he drank straight from the bottle, and as his wincing continued in the disinfectant process, I joined him.

  “There were four of them,” h
e said, sounding drowsy as the drink began to take effect. “With knives. I shouldn’t have fought back but I’ve had that camera for eleven years, and it’s gone everywhere with me. I was heading to the subway when it happened, the Astor Place stop, you know, the one with pictures of beavers on the tiles….

  “I was scared shitless.”

  “I know,” I said.

  He stopped talking, then, and reached out and intercepted my hand, which was traveling with a dab of ointment towards his scraped cheekbone. He flipped my arm over, bent his head down, and peered nearsightedly at the pale inside of my forearm, studying it as if he had never seen one before. He traced a finger along the length of it, starting from my wrist, following the trajectory of my veins to move higher and higher. My head was spinning a little from the wine, but just as he was reaching the crease of my elbow, I yanked my arm back.

  “That tickles,” I said, looking away as I rubbed the ointment off my fingers.

  He spent that night at my house. It was like a children’s sleepover party, with him camped out on one couch and I on the other, within whispering distance. He fell asleep almost immediately, but I lingered for what felt like a long time, listening to the sounds of the distant Broadway traffic and the lightest patter of rain, watching him as he lay there, his body curled towards me, his face smoothed of expression, and his head cradled on one arm.

  Shifting uneasily on the couch, I woke later in the night to see a tall figure standing by the windows, silhouetted in the moonlight.

  “Phillip?” I murmured, terrifyingly uncertain.

  The dark shape turned, moved, and soon was standing over me. I do not know what I was expecting, but I was ridiculously relieved to see that it was him. Like a little girl I held out my arms, and without a moment’s hesitation, he bent down and crawled into them, stretching out beside me. He was still for perhaps ten minutes, long enough that in spite of the sweaters, the jeans, and the socks that we were wearing, the warmth of his body carried through to mine. His breathing became deep and even, but as I slowly raised myself to a sitting position, he stirred.

  “Stay with me,” he whispered, so low that I had to stoop to hear.

  I hesitated, and then stammered. “I don’t…”

  “Stay with me,” he said again. “Please.”

  So I stayed. With Horse the cat watching us benignly from the top of the coffee table, I lay back down next to Phillip—an awkward business, as the couch was narrow, and his body tender. I tried to be careful but I must not have been trying hard enough, for I heard a sharp intake of breath as I was easing my head onto his shoulder. I drew back, muttering about aspirin and bandages, but he pulled me back down. “Hush,” he said, his eyes glinting in the moonlight, and he wrapped his arms and legs around me so tightly I could not breathe, let alone cry, and had to come up sputtering for air.

  None of this was what I expected, and as I drifted off to sleep again, I reminded myself that none of it was happening, for the night had been a rainy one, and the scene was tinged with the black-and-silver quality of all of my dreams.

  I woke in the morning to a gray light, the sound of rain, and the knowledge that I was alone. The couch that Phillip had been lying on was empty. My clothes were rumpled, my back was sore, and my face was mashed against the edge of the sofa. But at least, I told myself, at least I had not drooled. I was just beginning to pick myself up when I heard a footfall behind me, and I turned to see Phillip come through the hallway with Horse in his arms.

  “I fed Horse,” he said. “And made you breakfast. Hungry?”

  “You’re still here,” I said, almost singing out the words, and then I hastily cleared my throat and tried to wipe the grin off my face. “I mean, I thought you’d be long gone.”

  He smiled and shook his head. “That’s because you still don’t trust me,” he said, scolding patiently. “When will you learn to remember that we’re friends?”

  I smiled stiffly back, nodded, and went to the kitchen to eat the breakfast that he had made, but though he was more or less competent in the kitchen, the eggs and even the cereal tasted like sawdust, and I pleaded sleepiness and sent him home as soon as possible. The book I had been reading the night before still lay on the ground, and I picked it up, dusted it off, and attempted in vain to smooth out its bent pages. Finally I gave up and placed it on top of the tall stack of academic books on my desk. Turning my back to them, I went to take a bath with a Sue Grafton mystery I had been saving for just such an emergency. Yet the words of the book slipped by me, no matter how often I reread them, so that eventually I had to put it aside. After that I sat with Horse and listened to the rain striking the roof, my body curled on the couch and my head resting on my arm, for Phillip’s words had been a rejection.

  Grandmother, I will whisper, interrupting my own rambling narrative, I was wrong to think he did not want me. But tell me, please, whether I should have known.

  In missing all the signals, was I being stupid, or just afraid?

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  FOUR AND A half months after I met Phillip, three weeks before he left for Nepal, I stepped out of my Southern Writers class at Columbia to find him leaning against the wall, chewing on a toothpick. “How’d you know I was here?” I asked, smiling for no clear reason. “I mean, you are waiting for me, right?”

  He grinned. “I called up the graduate department and told them it was urgent. And yes, I am waiting for you.”

  “You lied to the graduate department?” I said. “What’m I going to say to those nice secretaries?”

  “It is urgent. I urgently needed to have lunch with you,” he said, but then he paused and suddenly there it was, surfacing from beneath his cool, that diffidence that bordered on fear. “That is, if you want to, of course.”

  “You kidding? I’d love it,” I said, taking his arm. “Let’s go.”

  We went to the diner down the street from Columbia, and slid into our favorite booth by the window. I reached for the menu, but he was observing me with curiosity. “You’re glowing like a firecracker,” he said.

  “I am not” I told him. “And besides, firecrackers don’t glow.”

  “That’s true,” he said. “But you’re glowing like one anyway.”

  I put my hands to my cheeks, knowing already that they would feel unusually warm. “Must be the wind,” I said, and bent my head down to look at the menu.

  I had just finished reading the Daily Specials out loud to Phillip when Russia walked in the door. Reading distant signs and menus printed on far walls for Phillip became such a habit with me that I once caught myself doing so for Eric, who laughed and said it was my repressed maternal instinct surging to the fore. I never did tell Eric about Phillip’s eyesight.

  Russia reached down to give each of us a kiss, first Phillip and then me. “Haven’t seen you for a while,” she said lightly to Phillip. “And you—” she said, peering closer at me. “You’re looking radiant, like a firecracker or something.”

  Phillip smiled.

  “Did you guys plan that?” I asked. Russia raised her eyebrows, and I shook my head. “Never mind,” I told her. “Wanna eat with us?”

  She paused for only a second. “I was going to get a muffin to go, but okay, for a few minutes, if you’re going to twist my arm,” she said, and squeezed in next to me as I moved over to make room.

  After the waitress took our orders and left a basket of bread in exchange, Russia turned to me and said, “My brother just got his first girlfriend.”

  “But he’s so young,” I said.

  “Twelve and a half next month,” she said. “It does seem young, doesn’t it. But Mom says she’s a very sweet girl, and Joey says that all of his friends are dating.”

  “As long as she’s sweet,” I said, “more power to him.”

  “Amen,” said Russia, but then added, “Speaking from experience, though, I gotta say there’s a lot to be said for living alone.” She picked out a large piece of bread from the basket, and began buttering it generou
sly. “Think about it: the luxury of being able to fart in peace.” She looked up from her bread, and shook her knife at us for emphasis. “If I die single, I want you guys to have my mother engrave that on my tombstone. ‘Russia Hannah Putnam-Jones, 1964 to 1989: She Farted in Peace.’”

  Phillip and I dutifully chuckled, but I knew, and I suspect Phillip did as well, that her words were meant to reassure us. Yet they served only to remind me of how lonely she had been and still was, and how long and how badly she had wanted someone. Her hopes for Phillip had been high.

  “Speaking of romance,” she said, “just last week I was sure that one of my students was going to hit on me.”

  I could tell from her voice that she had entered story mode. “Jail-bait?” I asked, teasing.

  “Well, if he was, I wasn’t bitin’,” she said. “He’s a tall, thin guy, kind of ugly and really shy, and I sort of thought he was gay, at least at first. But by the end of September, ol’ Johnnie’s taken up staring at me all through class, sittin’ in the front row and keepin’ his eyes just riveted on me. Then he takes up visiting my office hours, stammering and blushing and talking about nothing at all. He always stands too close, and though you could never consider him threatening, really, I’m starting to get a little unnerved at the way he’s always peering down at my body.”

  Taking a big bite of bread, she chewed contemplatively for a few seconds. Swallowing with some difficulty, she continued, “So last week Johnnie comes to see me at the tail end of my office hours; no one else is in the conference room and it’s getting dark outside… a perfect romantic moment, right? And I’m trying to think what to do, how to tell him kindly but firmly that it’s unethical for me to date a student, and I’m even planning what to do if he tries to kiss me, how I’d step to the side so that he’d fall over my chair. I figured I could take him, because he’s tall but skinny, and so unconfident.

  “He talks about his latest paper, blah blah, which was a terrible one, by the way, and even though I ask him questions and he answers them, I can tell his mind’s not on it, and finally I can tell he’s made up his mind to speak up for himself. And he says, his face bright red, his voice almost a whisper, ‘There’s a Gay and Lesbian Dance this Thursday night, and I was wondering if, if’—and here he clears his throat and lifts his head, looks me right in the eye, and says, ‘I was wondering if I could borrow your black imitation-Chanel suit.’”