Heathern

by Jack Womack

  "They're getting good at this shit," Thatcher said. "We could put that to use somehow."

  We stepped inside. Otsuka sat at his desk, his form silhouetted by the window behind him. His view was that of another window, across a space no wider than a tenement airshaft. Metal shutters veiled the opposite building's eyes. Japanese prints of traditional design were hung on the wall above a fireplace whose hearth seemed never to have seen a log. Upon his broad teak desk were a bonsai tree and a large amber lump; trapped within the amber was a tiny frog, preserved in mid-leap. Otsuka was as well-groomed as a dowager's corpse. His companions assisted him in rising, holding his arms when he tipped forward as if fearful that in bowing, he would break.

  "A pleasure, Mister Dryden," he said, singing with ancient and unexpectedly resonant pipes. "Your presence is a great gift."

  "Good, 'cause that's all I brought," said Thatcher, sweeping out his hand. "My associates."

  "Mine," said Otsuka. His two bookends made their bows: they were mature men, with silver hair and rimless glasses; their tailored suits failed to hide their mass, and in the day's dim light they appeared to be carved from rock. All guards present sized each other up. "I am sorry Mister Leibson cannot join us today. We've worked so closely of late you will understand me when I say I sometimes think he must be one of my employees."

  "I know the feeling," said Thatcher, rocking back on his heels as if preparing to swing. "He runs a one-man show in our operation. Keeps him busy."

  "Sit, please," said Otsuka, fingering a chromium nipple built into his desktop. "Our meeting must be honored." A door that hadn't been there moments before slid open, and a young woman emerged, proving her existence by the silver tray she bore. From the tray she took a crystal decanter and thimble-sized cups. "A sixty-year-old single malt," Otsuka said. "Hard to come by."

  "I'm not much of a drinker," said Thatcher, tossing his drink down as he might Kool-Aid. "From the Emperor's collection?"

  Otsuka shook his head so vigorously that I feared his withered face might crumble away from his skull. "He abstains. A gift from the late premier," he explained. "Where is your wife?" Thatcher shrugged, holding his thimble up for a refill, behaving as he'd promised and not grabbing the bottle by its neck. "Mister Leibson tells me she is an active proponent of our renewed alliance. In the past I believe she has dealt with several political appointees, I should say, from my country. This belief in equal rights for those within equal classes is so peculiarly American, don't you believe? Even now in Japan the wife too often remains simply the pipeline between husband and children."

  "That's what we got plumbers for, over here," said Thatcher. "She's good at what she does."

  "Perhaps my lessers are correct, I fear, and women should be kept from participating in business. They are too good at outsmarting us. The lovely woman who attends you today." His young boy's eyes studied me as he exuded his opinions. "She is more than your secretary, but is not your tayu."

  "We don't do those things here," Thatcher insisted. "Diseases, you know. Got to keep business risk-free, within reason."

  "She would be your miko, then?"

  "What is it?"

  "Difficult to translate," said Otsuka, tapping his cheek with a thin finger, a bone sheathed in skin. "A shamaness of statistical productivity, in the sense I use it. One who blesses the shrine of capital."

  "We got that covered, too," said Thatcher. "Joanna's too down to earth for that feminist mystic stuff. She oversees new projects."

  "And I am a new project, true," he said. "Still, Mister Dryden, remember that defending the spiritual quality of your business is as important as having faithful nihirisuto to protect your personal well-being. Forgive me, please. When I am with Mister Leibson we speak my language as if we were friends. Nihirisuto. Laughing samurai, you might say. Dancers at the lip of the volcano." He examined our guards as if wondering how much they might bring. "In my youth I kept with me always the long sword from Kyoto that Hiro now carries for me." The larger man, on his right, bowed lower; the scabbard's tip protruded from his jacket, obscene in its bluntness. "But these are the words of one who prepares to leave this world. There is no need to expend the declining energy I have when my associates may do it for me. In this setting, certainly, it seems so unnecessary."

  "Seems so," said Thatcher. "Trust makes the world go round."

  "And our countries have had so little trust in one another for so long."

  "We'd've preferred to settle our differences sooner, certainly. But there's no sense running into anything till you've looked to see what you're running on."

  "I wouldn't have expected you to put it any other way."

  "Past few years, your country's had it hard," Thatcher said, failing to express in his countenance the semblance of sympathy he sought to give. "Your people, too. It's a shame."

  "It has not been so difficult as some might have hoped," said Otsuka. "Persistence in the face of hardship is often rewarded."

  "Often," Thatcher repeated.

  "Still, through my foresight our industrial hollowing-out was nearly complete when this so-called Readjustment began. While we expected certain emergency measures on the part of your government, we did not foresee that the opinions of individuals would cause us to be treated as enemies. It seemed so much more unwise for you than to us, in a sense. The freeze on our assets hurt so many of your own countrymen, you know. America has been in such a perilous state since that time."

  "The sensible man who's starving can always convince himself somebody else's hungrier," said Thatcher. "America's never been stronger than it is today. A little adversity builds a lot of character. Think I'm broken up about it? Aren't I smiling?"

  "Mister Dryden, the adversity of others has built your character. Your strength-through-joy approach is something I put little stock in."

  "Are you calling me a Nazi?" Thatcher asked; I prepared to do as Bernard demanded, and squirt in conversational lubricant, but had no chance.

  "A witticism, Mister Dryden," said Otsuka. "In some ways Americans would be ideal Nazis, but in the long run it could never work. Every man would insist upon being his own Fi ehrer." Thatcher gripped the arms of his chair as if readying to leap up and strangle his proposed ally. "I mean no disrespect. Not everyone appreciates my humor, sir. That your Mister Leibson does counts for much in my eyes. He and I see things as they are. My countrymen neither appreciate my belief in the individual nor my telling them what they prefer not to hear about what they choose not to see. In America the concept of individualism is at least honored in theory. All I earlier intended to say was that our stasis was brought about by your decline, and neither of us need to have suffered so much. Nothing more."

  "What I'm trying to say is we've finally got our house in order, and now we're ready to start helping the rest of the neighborhood-"

  "The arsonist always returns to the scene of the fire." Otsuka held his hands before him, as if in prayer. "A new approach must be made by you first, Mister Dryden."

  "What approach? What are you talking about?"

  "Leaving aside nearsighted economic retributions," Otsuka said, "I have heard stories of how you refer to my country, and my people."

  "What'd Bernard tell you?"

  "Mister Leibson has been a model of circumspection in these matters, Mister Dryden. His view of all members of humanity is consistent. But a bad word shouted from a cliffside echoes off the rocks, and I have heard these echoes in several places."

  "I'm not sure what you're getting at ..."

  "Have you not at times called us yellow perils? Whale eaters? Monkey boys?"

  "People get upset and say things-"

  "laps?" Otsuka said. "Gooks?"

  "My brother was in Vietnam," Thatcher said, as if that explained.

  "I have never been in Vietnam, Mister Dryden. Only Americans go to Vietnam. Perhaps it would be similar, and more accurate, were I to call you a Nazi in such circumstance-"

  "You all don't have any room to talk," Thatcher
said. "Way you treat Koreans. The Chinese. Things you've said about American people-"

  "I treat all equally, Mister Dryden. I have said no such things. The Japanese are a homogenous people, sir, but to remain that way we shot no Ainu from trains. We imported no Koreans to sell in our cities' markets. We never beat American students to death in our universities simply for being intelligent."

  "You're still bad as we are."

  "Ours are both racist nations, Mister Dryden. But we'll have none of it between us if you want my business. This is not in the agreement but must be agreed to. You will never call me or my people anything other than Japanese again, to my face or behind my back. Is that agreed?"

  "You have to understand it wasn't deliberate," Thatcher said. "My dad was in the war."

  "In the European theater," Otsuka said. "I was in the war, Mister Dryden. When I was taken prisoner it was by Americans considerate enough not to send my skull back to a girlfriend as a token of love."

  "He could have been in the Pacific--

  "Then we might have killed each other, and where would we be today? Ours are different countries now than what they were. We must both remember that, and not view each other through our fathers' eyes."

  When Thatcher at last replied I barely heard him. "That's true."

  "To fruitfully share our hegemony," said Otsuka, "we must trust each other as partners, if not as equals."

  "I can drink to that," Thatcher sighed. Otsuka smiled. "Let's do it, shall we?"

  Otsuka pulled at the sleeve of his righthand associate. "Please hand the papers to Mister Dryden. Mister Leibson has gone over the working copy with you, of course."

  "Of course." As Thatcher speedily read through the clauses, I relaxed, and allowed my glance to drift across the prints on the wall, assuming them at first to be Hiroshige's; noted in the corner of one landscape a pair of golden arches.

  "Your hard bargaining may cause us difficulties in the future, Mister Dryden," Otsuka said.

  "We'll be dead by then," Thatcher mumbled.

  "The only way to offset the thirty percent share of our profits that you require will necessitate an end to the present deflation, true, but perhaps to too great a degree. Some of my advisers believe me foolish to make such a settlement."

  "People'll have to pay what we charge, won't they?" Thatcher said. "Long as they got something to trade we can always work something out."

  "Our retrofitted world cannot long exist on this barter system your country introduced-"

  "It was my wife's idea, actually," said Thatcher, reading the pact as he might the lease for an apartment. "You all don't like it cause your money'll be going like everyone else's, once you get rid of what we turn loose, and you don't have nothing left to trade but brains and VCRs. Nobody else complains."

  "What choice do they have?" Thatcher grinned. "We are not so bad off as all that, Mister Dryden, and you know that."

  "I got one question. This bit about programs employing viable personnel components of-what the hell? South- hemi states?" Thatcher reread what he'd quoted. "People of Latin America, I suppose. I'm curious as to what your intentions are for that part of the world."

  "What is the context for your inquiry?" asked Otsuka.

  "What're you going to do down there?" asked Thatcher. "Clear enough?"

  "The agreement allows only for the discussion of proposed projects. Your approval is necessary for any actions taken after the date of signing. Otherwise, certainly, we would lose our favored status-"

  "Actions already underway are unaffected?"

  "Of course. Mister Dryden, you look upon Latin America as you might look upon your mother."

  "I was reborn there," said Thatcher. "What sort of things you got underway down south?"

  "Nothing unexpected. We possess a certain amount of liquidable property there as we do in many places. Money we once had that we were unable to invest in the United States had to go somewhere."

  "I see."

  "Mister Dryden, your doubts are still evident. For a moment examine your other partnerships and see the benefits of realigning with Japan. Who else is out there with whom you deal? Europe? Because of their own so-called alliance they believe they will shortly be able to dispose of us both. So they've believed for six years, and someday they may convince one other to believe. China? You don't nurse vipers without knowing they'll strike when they choose. Russia." He paused; sighed, and rubbed his eyes. "Mister Dryden, your countries have an incomprehensible relationship. Each of your nations seems a dream of the other. This war without war the two of you have ongoing seems likely to bankrupt you in time, no matter the business you believe it creates-"

  "We tried not fighting," said Thatcher. "Just didn't seem natural. It's not as if there're dangers involved. The Pax is signed, and in long-distance conflicts we both use local advisers-"

  "So that your Army may be saved, to use in battling against your own countrymen. That is the most puzzling thing of all."

  "This incountry stuff is penny-ante insurrection, that's all," said Thatcher. "Long Island wouldn't go along with the FEMA plan. Too many posses quartered out there weren't used to working inside any law." Most had worked for Thatcher; he never forgave. "You don't see martial law still in effect anywhere but here, do you? It's unavoidable. We're just mopping up now. I'll be on the winning side of the civil war this time, that's for sure."

  "Your soldiers have been mopping for two years," said Otsuka. "Your Army cannot settle a disturbance among your own people not a kilometer from where we sit."

  "There's just more of 'em out there than originally estimated," Thatcher said.

  "I would say America should invest its capital and its young men in areas where they might have more purposeful effect."

  "Well, it's our problem in any event," said Thatcher. "New York's got to be secure. We don't need Japanese help on that."

  "But you do in other areas, Mister Dryden," said Otsuka. "You need a dependable friend."

  Thatcher nodded to Avi, who handed him a fountain pen with a golden nib. Upon signing the agreement he passed it over to Otsuka, who inked in his own ideograms.

  "That our age may again know reason," Otsuka said. "As Adam Smith wrote, economic self-interest guided by the unseen hand of God enriches the marketplace."

  "You got to watch out for that hand."

  "Our new world," said Otsuka, reading over the signatures. "So much clay awaits its sculptors."

  For several long moments Thatcher was unnaturally pensive, as if he already regretted having signed. "Sometimes it takes a while to see everything in the big picture," he said, wistfully, as if admitting to a character flaw. He folded his copy of the agreement into a neat square and stuffed it into his jacket pocket.

  "Remember, Mister Dryden," said Otsuka, smiling, showing no teeth. "What you don't see is Japanese."

  "We have to move," Thatcher said, standing, walking over to where I already stood. "You'll forgive us?"

  "Of course," said Otsuka. Thatcher nodded.

  "Go!"

  Thatcher took me down with him as he threw himself to the floor. He lay on top of me; the rug's pile scoured my face as he shielded my head with his hands. Along with a cacophonous uproar I heard what sounded like the thunk of darts striking wood. Thatcher entered a state beyond consciousness, I sensed; as he heard each dart take its mark he thrust himself against me. Flattening my hands against the carpet I was able to lift myself up, rolling him off me before he could attain his ultimate joy. Standing, I saw that it was done. Jake squatted atop Otsuka's desk, between the bonsai and the amber, and Avi stood where he'd been all along.

  "To the elevator," Thatcher whispered, wrapping his arm around me in pretense of concern as he got up, taking firm grips with his hand. Even his voice trembled. "Nice and calm."

  All should have been confusion and blur, but each moment seared itself into my mind, so that even now I can call up each image of the afternoon as easily as I might find a photo in an album. Otsuka's associates bo
re the look of dolls tossed haphazardly against the spattered window, their arms thrown back, their heads dangling. Otsuka himself appeared to have fallen asleep while in prayer, having had no more time to wait for an answer. Gus had found his own rest upon the darkened carpet. From his angel's perch Jake stared down at his mentor, his face as livid as that of his friend's. Taking up Otsuka's sword from the desk, where the associate had dropped it unsheathed, he tied its strap around his waist; then he glared at Avi, appearing no less surprised than Ito see him holding a gun.

  "Nice and calm," Thatcher repeated. We drifted away then, floating across the office, into the reception area and past the ever-smiling receptionist into the elevator. I'd had dreams that seemed more real. My stomach burned as if I'd swallowed boiling water; I couldn't stop my hands from shaking, and pressed them between my arms so that the others wouldn't see. Feeling wetness on my face as if I'd run for hours through the rain, I watched seventy stories vanish beneath my feet as we plunged to earth. As we emerged at the bottom I recall wondering what else Thatcher had in mind; if another sudden episode was planned, simply to add a fillip to the fun he'd already had.

  "Thanks a lot," Thatcher said to the guards gathered round the information desk. "Nice place."

  None of the guards stopped us as we walked out the doors; no one stopped us when we walked on, to the car. No one would stop us once we drove away. A haze began to cloud over my mind, making each moment darker and ever-colder, but rather than being swallowed within white it was black that overtook me, black deep and limitless; as if, having been pitched from heaven into space's floorless pit, I realized too late that not even stars would keep me company. Awakening once more I found myself in bed, at home, later that night. My head reeled in unending implosions as I allowed my feelings to detonate. The last thing I remembered from that afternoon was Thatcher's voice, breaking as if with puberty, saying only yeah.