[Conduct Unbecoming 01.0] Conduct Unbecoming

by LA Witt

  “I would hope not. Eww.” She shuddered. “Looks just like the jars of dead animals in my biology teacher’s classroom.”

  “Oh, they do not.” I gestured at the jars. “These have pretty lids and crap on them.”

  Marie shot me a pointed look. “So if I put a pretty lid and a nice little bow on one of Mr. Haggerty’s pig fetuses, you’ll drink it?”

  I laughed. “No, but that’s formaldehyde. Totally different.”

  “Totally different? It looks exactly the same!” She wrinkled her nose. “Tell me you haven’t tried this stuff.”

  I shook my head. “No, not yet. Too expensive.”

  The wrinkles in her nose deepened. “But you’d try it if it wasn’t too expensive?”

  “Hey,” I said with a shrug. “When in Rome.”

  A block or so later, while I looked at some T-shirts, Marie snickered.

  “Hey, Dad,” she said. “Think you can put your money where your mouth is about the Habu sake?”

  “Hmm?”

  She gestured at a sign that read Habu Sake Sample above a very appetizing image of a striking habu. “You said you’d try it if it wasn’t too expensive.” She made an after-you gesture into the shop.

  “So I did,” I said. “Guess I’d better.”

  “Well, unless you want me posting all over Facebook that you wimped out.”

  “God forbid the people of Facebook think I’m a wimp.” I laughed, and we walked into the shop. At that point, I realized I’d been spoiled having Shane around; he spoke enough Japanese to make communication with the locals a breeze. The shopkeeper’s English was shaky but beat the hell out of my embarrassingly tiny Japanese vocabulary. Still, through some gesturing and a lot of apologizing on both our parts for our mutual lack of understanding, I conveyed to her that I wanted to sample some of the Habu sake.

  She took a jar out from behind the counter, and I tried not to notice the snake still in it. When she brought out a tiny plastic cup, I shifted my gaze away before she started pouring so I didn’t have to think about the fact that I’d be drinking something that had been marinating a snake for God only knew how long.

  I picked up a smaller jar off a shelf beside the counter. The label was almost entirely in kanji, but one word was written in English: Awamori.

  Oh God.

  Not that I was planning to have nearly as much of this as I’d had with Shane at the Izakaya, but holy hell, I remembered that headache.

  The shopkeeper finished pouring the sample cup and set the jar aside. She took the cup in both hands and held it out to me, bowing as she offered it.

  I returned the bow and took the cup from her with a murmured, “Arigato.” Thank you.

  Then I looked at the faintly amber-tinted liquid in the cup in my hand.

  Awamori. We meet again.

  “Come on, Dad,” Marie taunted. “You can handle it, can’t you?”

  “Of course I can.” And, hoping I wouldn’t regret it, I threw it back. It was faintly herbal, almost sour, but the alien flavors paled in comparison to the sinus-clearing burn of the alcohol.

  “Holy…” I coughed and grimaced. “Wow. That is strong.”

  Marie and the shopkeeper laughed.

  “Wimp,” Marie said.

  “Oh, whatever.” I coughed again.

  The shopkeeper looked at Marie and gestured at the jar. “You try?” To me, she added, “Daijobu?” Basically, “Is it okay?”

  Marie looked at me, eyebrows up.

  “I thought it grossed you out,” I said.

  “Yeah, but it didn’t kill you, so…” Her eyebrows rose a little more.

  I chewed my lip. Her mother and I had always let her try things—wine, beer, even some Scotch—in order to keep them from becoming forbidden fruit. She didn’t like most of it, fortunately, and usually turned up her nose if we offered her any. Which was exactly what we’d hoped for.

  So what was a little taste of Habu sake? Judging by the aftertaste that was still making my eyes water, she wouldn’t be coming back for more.

  Finally, I looked at the shopkeeper and held my thumb and forefinger about a half an inch apart. “Skoshi.” A little bit.

  “Skoshi.” She nodded and poured a tiny bit of the Habu sake into another cup.

  “If you can handle this stuff,” I said, giving Marie a pointed look, “I may have to talk to your mother about what you’ve been doing after school.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Whatever. I just want to taste it.”

  I laughed and shrugged. “Your funeral.”

  Alarm flickered across her expression, and I just grinned. She threw a wary look toward the cup as the shopkeeper held it out in both hands. “Um…”

  “Too late now.” I nodded toward the cup in the woman’s outstretched hands.

  Marie hesitated, then bowed to the shopkeeper and carefully took the cup. She held it for a moment, staring into it. I was about to tease her about chickening out, but she took a deep breath and, just as I had, threw it back.

  She downed it one swallow and immediately coughed. Shaking her head, she said, “Oh, wow. That’s…” Another cough. When she looked at me, her eyes were watering, and the shopkeeper and I both laughed.

  The shopkeeper tried to encourage me to buy a jar of Habu sake, but I declined. From what I’d heard, it was illegal for us to export the stuff, and I sure as hell wasn’t drinking an entire jar in three years. That, and the price tag made my eyes water almost as much as the awamori itself. The smallest bottles with the tiniest snakes were over a hundred bucks. The more impressive ones with the three- to five-foot snakes were easily over five or six hundred dollars. The stuff would have been cool to put on display, but not that cool.

  After sampling a few of the shop’s shortbread cookies to get the taste out of our mouths, Marie and I left to continue our exploration of Kokusai Street.

  Just beyond one intersection, where a Starbucks faced a couple of sleek, trendy clothing stores and some Japanese restaurants, a wide, cobbled path broke off from the sidewalk and led into the marketplace. This was one of the areas Kokusai was famous for. It was a combination farmer’s market, fish market, and flea market, with shops and semipermanent booths selling everything from pineapple slices to ceramic sake flasks.

  Marie and I both took off our sunglasses and hooked them in our collars. High above us, stretched between arched red-metal bars, a canopy of opaque, white plastic filtered the sunlight, illuminating everything comfortably without making everyone squint or shade their eyes. The heat of the day still infiltrated this area, reminding us we were still more or less outdoors, but a few of the shops had air conditioning, which offered refreshing gusts of cooler air.

  One of the produce vendors had baskets full of pineapple, star fruit, mangoes, papayas, bananas and…what the hell was that?

  I picked up one of the bizarre fruits. It was about the size of a softball, mostly a deep pink with a little bit of green, and looked like the love child of a mango and an artichoke.

  Marie tilted up the label on the box so she could read it. “Dragonfruit?” She leaned a little closer, eyeing the strange fruit like it might come to life and explain itself.

  “Oh, this is a dragonfruit?” I turned it in my hand. “Huh. I’ve been wondering what they looked like.”

  “I was going to ask if you’d ever eaten one,” she said. “But I’m guessing not.”

  “Not that I’m aware of, anyway.”

  “Hey, we should buy one.”

  I shrugged. “Hell, why not?”

  She peered at the box of fruit. “How do you tell if they’re, like, ripe?”

  “You’re asking me?”

  She sniffed. “You’re the dad. You’re supposed to know this shit.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “Stuff.” Her cheeks colored. “You’re supposed to know this stuff.”

  I tried to scowl but failed miserably. “Jesus, Marie. You sound like you were raised around a bunch of Sailors or something.”

&nb
sp; “Funny, that.”

  I looked around in search of a shopkeeper to ask how to pick out a dragonfruit, but a refrigerated case caught my eye. Amidst the slices of star fruit, pineapple, and God knew what else, there was a handwritten sign that read Dragonfruit—¥200/slice.

  “I’ve got a better idea.” I set the one in my hand back in the box. “Why don’t we get a couple of slices and see if we like them before we drop eight hundred yen on a whole one?”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  With some pointing and gesturing and no shortage of apologizing for being an idiot English speaker, I asked the shopkeeper for two slices of dragonfruit. He understood me better than I understood him, but we figured it out, and I handed over the yen.

  Dragonfruit in hand, Marie and I stepped aside so we were out of other people’s way.

  I regarded mine cautiously as I brought it up to my mouth, but before I took a bite, I looked at my daughter. She looked at me over her own slice, silently daring me to go first. I lowered mine a little. “Hey, I dove into the Habu sake first. Your turn.”

  “Something tells me this will taste better, but, okay.” She took a bite. There was no immediate disgusted reaction, but her brow furrowed. “I swear to God, I’ve tasted this before.”

  That was enough of an endorsement for me, so I took a bite myself. She was right; it was definitely familiar. I stared at the fruit. “It tastes like…I can’t put my finger on it.” Sweet but not terribly so. Even the soft but not mushy texture—particularly with the abundance of tiny seeds—was familiar. “I have a feeling I’m going to feel like a total idiot for not figuring this out faster.”

  “Mm-hmm.” Marie took another bite. She chewed it slowly, her brow still furrowed above unfocused eyes. Then she snapped her fingers. “Kiwi! It tastes like kiwi fruit.”

  “Yes, that’s it.” I chuckled. “And I do feel like an idiot for not figuring it out.”

  She shrugged. “Eh, whatever. It’s good, though.”

  With the mystery of the dragonfruit solved, we discarded the rinds and kept walking down the cobbled thoroughfare.

  The fish market made itself known well before we got to it. At least that gave us time to adjust to the smell, so when curiosity dragged us through the double glass doors, the odor wasn’t too overpowering.

  We both stopped and looked around. This wasn’t the grocery store seafood section we were both used to in the States. We were accustomed to neatly packed and wrapped filets, crabs and shellfish stacked on top of pristine white piles of ice. Here, row upon row of counters, cases and coolers displayed whole fish of every variety, live crabs, live snails the size of my fist, and slimy, tentacled things I wasn’t quite sure I wanted to identify.

  “Oh my God.” Marie put a hand over her mouth and recoiled from a case of brightly colored fish. “Didn’t we see some of those when we were snorkeling?”

  “Yeah, I think we did. Though they were a little more”—I moved my hand like it was a fish swimming past—“active.”

  She made a gagging sound. “Okay, I think I’ve seen enough of the fish market. If we keep looking around here, I’m afraid I’m going to find Nemo.”

  I laughed. “Good call. Let’s get out of here.”

  Back on the other side of the glass doors, the air was warmer but not quite so ripe with the scent of seafood. The farther we walked, the less I could smell the fish market. Thank God for that.

  We found a shop that specialized in handblown Ryukyu glass. It was expensive as hell, but I’d already accumulated a few pieces myself. The glassware was simply too cool not to buy.

  The trademark style of Ryukyu glass was a two-tone—yellow on top, orange on the bottom—highball glass. The bottom third or so had an odd crackled look, which was another distinguishing trait of the island’s glasswork. Of course there were numerous other styles and colors, but the crackled look was a recurring theme, and every shop that sold this stuff, including the one Marie and I browsed, had the orange-and-yellow highball glasses.

  This particular shop was extremely narrow. It seemed like it was designed to make customers hold their breath and walk as carefully as possible to avoid tempting the you-break-it-you-buy-it rules. When my elbow brushed a shelf, I jumped, preparing to catch whatever glass I was sure I’d just knocked over, and in doing so, almost knocked a very expensive vase onto the concrete floor. It wasn’t the most dignified moment of my life, and I was thankful my daughter, who walked ahead of me, missed it. I could almost hear my wallet pleading with me to get out, get out, for the love of God, get out.

  Marie had no problem navigating through the jungle of glass, though.

  “Hey, you think Mom would like something like that?” She pointed at a decanter made of glass. It was clear up on top and a deep cobalt blue on the bottom, with a narrow, slightly curving neck.

  “Hmm, I think she would,” I said, moving carefully toward her so I could get a better look. “We’d probably have to ship it home, though. No way in hell this will fit in your suitcase once we wrap it enough to keep it from shattering.”

  “Can I get it for her?” she asked.

  “Let me see if I have enough yen,” I said. “If not, I’ll come back another day and pick it up for you when I have more.”

  “They don’t take Visa?”

  I laughed as I took my wallet out of my back pocket. “Honey, Visa’s everywhere you want to be unless you want to be on Okinawa.” I glanced up at the decanter. “How much is it?”

  She craned her neck. “Seven thousand yen. Is that a lot?”

  “Nah, it’s about seventy or eighty bucks.” I pulled a ten-thousand-yen bill out of my wallet and handed it to her. “You go ahead and pay for it. I’ll wait for you outside.” I gestured—carefully!—at the glass around us. “Another minute in here, I’m going to break something, I know it.”

  She laughed. “Okay, I’ll be out in a minute. Thanks, Dad.”

  I got the hell out of the minefield of glass and released my breath when I’d made it into the safety of the cobbled walkway.

  As I waited outside for Marie, a couple of familiar faces emerged from the crowd. It took a second to register, since they weren’t in uniform, but then I realized it was Grant and Diego.

  “Hey, MA1.” Grant extended his hand.

  “Hey, guys,” I said, shaking their hands in turn. “You know, I think you’re the first Americans we’ve seen here all day.”

  “We?” Diego looked past me. Then his eyes widened. “Oh, damn, dude. You tappin’ that?”

  I blinked. “I…beg your pardon?”

  “The blonde chick,” he said. “Are you—”

  “That’s my daughter,” I growled. “Remember, I said I was taking leave because my kid was in town?”

  “Oh. Right.” Diego coughed into his fist, and he at least had the decency to look sheepish. “So, you’re enjoying your leave?”

  “I’m not at work,” I said. “Of course I’m enjoying my leave. Am I missing any excitement?”

  “Not really.” Grant shrugged.

  “Except we had some guys from one of the ships get into some trouble with the JPs,” Diego said. “Dipshits got drunk, and the JPs brought them in.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Oh, there’s a shock.” Whenever a ship was in port here, just like anywhere, at least some trouble could be expected. Sailors and booze were always a fantastic combo.

  “Anyway, we should get out of here,” Grant said. “See you at work when you get back.”

  “Yeah, don’t remind me,” I said, chuckling.

  They turned to go but hadn’t quite made it into the crowd and out of earshot before Grant looked at Diego and said, “See, man? I told you he wasn’t gay.”

  I chewed the inside of my cheek. So the rumors were going around. I tried to tell myself the rumors about me being gay didn’t mean they’d connect me to Shane. I knew how this worked, though. Once the bug was in everyone’s ear that I might be gay, they’d notice anytime they saw me engage another man.

>   You’re asking for it, Randall. You know you are.

  Marie came out, shopping bag in hand, and we walked back out to Kokusai Street.

  “This place is so cool,” she said, looking around the semicrowded sidewalk.

  “Kokusai Street?” I asked. “Or the island in general?”

  “The whole place. You’re so lucky you get to live here.” Before I could reply, her smile fell, and her shoulders sank a little.

  I cocked my head. “You okay?”

  Her head snapped toward me, like she hadn’t expected me to notice her sudden change in demeanor. “What? Yeah, I’m fine.”

  “You sure?”

  Marie swallowed hard and dropped her gaze. “Just kind of sucks having you this far away.” She looked at me again. “You get to live in a cool place like this, and I’m, you know, back home.”

  “I can understand that. Have you been doing okay with it? I mean, with me being this far away?”

  “I don’t know.” She shrugged. “It’s better than when you were in Iraq or Afghanistan.”

  “Except I wasn’t over there quite as long.”

  “Yeah, but no one’s shooting at you this time.”

  “True,” I whispered.

  She said nothing for a moment. “Are you going back over there after this?” There was a note of fear in her voice that made my chest ache.

  “I don’t think so, baby,” I said. “IA tours are pretty much volunteer-only right now, and most of the troops in Iraq have been yanked anyway. Anything’s possible, but I’m not worried.”

  “Good,” she said softly. “Mom will be glad to hear that too.”

  “I figured she knew,” I said. “But if she’s still worried about it…”

  “She hasn’t said anything about it for a while, but…” She trailed off. “You know, every time the news said someone had been killed over there, for like the next day or two, Mom would panic if her phone rang. She was sure it would be Grandma calling to say something had happened to you.”

  I blew out a breath. “I’m sorry you guys had to go through that. Combat deployments suck for everyone involved.”

  “Yeah, they do.”