Rolling his suitcase along, he slung his man bag over his shoulder and headed for customs. He answered the questions as he knew they should be answered and was through quickly, surprise and excitement quickening his heartbeat and his step.
He’d never been to any place Tomakita owned. So far they’d only been together at resorts and on cruise ships. Even with the cloud of doubt hanging over his head since the picture he and Marge looked at in his album, he found himself feeling like a schoolboy on a first date.
Rounding the corner to the final crush of bodies, he saw a man in a driver’s uniform holding a sign reading ‘BENJIRO’ and his face flushed.
He walked up to the man, bowed, and said, “Hello, I am Benjiro-san, thank you.”
The man bowed deeply and replied, “Hello, sir! Please give me your bags, sir! Please follow me and we will exit very quickly, sir! Thank you!” He wrestled the bags from Benjiro’s grasp, bowing again. He confirmed, in the same excited manner, that these were all Benjiro’s belongings, and quickly led him to an elevator staffed by a well-dressed woman.
His driver flipped open a wallet to show some sort of ID; she studied it for two seconds, bowed and turned to Benjiro, bowed low and said, “Welcome, sir! Thank you!”
He returned her bow, replying, “Thank you very much.”
Between the two of them, this was, by far, the richest and most enthusiastic greeting he’d ever received anyplace, outside of maybe a gay bathhouse.
They got in the elevator and descended several floors. He didn’t even realize there were several floors to descend in this airport, but when the elevator doors opened again he realized why he’d never exited the airport this way before. It was gorgeous down here. Nothing but long, black cars and uniformed drivers in black hats, their boots all looking like they were spit-shined. It made Benjiro shiver and brought back vague memories of some of the S&M places he’d frequented during his drug-addled years. Even the parking lot, brightly lit in patches, looked like it had recently been scrubbed down.
The driver led him to one of the most beautiful cars Benjiro had ever seen, where another uniformed man bowed deeply, opening the door for him to enter the vehicle.
“Oh my God, this is beautiful!” Benjiro said, standing back, his eyes wide in amazement. The driver simply bowed deeply, removed the luggage from his shoulder and gestured for Benjiro to accept entrance as offered by the second attendant. Benjiro could see the blush in the man’s face and realized his ears were bright pink. He decided to ease the man’s embarrassment and entered the back seat. I’ve slept in rooms smaller than this on cruise ships, he thought, if not smaller. Certainly less posh.
The seat was leather the color of butter and the texture of baby’s skin. He was a little surprised when the man who had accompanied him from the gate climbed into the back seat with him, seating himself on a tiny fold-down jump seat in front of him and to his right. He saw the second uniformed man get in the front seat and felt a very gentle movement as they pulled away.
“If I might ask, what make of automobile is this? I’ve never seen anything like it,” Benjiro asked the man.
Bowing again, his back seat guest answered, “Thank you, Benjiro-san. This is a 1951 Rolls Royce Silver Dawn. Sir purchased it new. It is his most favored vehicle.”
“I see. It’s truly beautiful. Thank you” he replied. Geez, he’d hate to be driving around his boss’s prized possession in the Tokyo traffic.
#
Benjiro was amazed at the difference he saw in his lover.
Tomakita’s eyes were the color of the full moon again, rather than looking like they were reflecting back the golden hour very near sunset. The man that met him in the spacious, traditional Japanese sitting room came to him with a step that was lively, his back straight. It was not the man he’d left behind in India, withered and bent against the pain of a body failing him.
They bowed deeply to each other and Benjiro said, “Toma-san, you look so different!”
“Sukina, do I not look better?” Tomakita asked.
“Of course you do, Toma-san…just very much better than the last time we parted,” Benjiro replied. “I half-expected it to be my last time to see you.”
Tomakita laughed at this and replied, “Now you realize I may be around forever, and that is possibly worse.”
“Don’t be silly, Toma-san. I think it’s great; just a bit surprising is all,” Benjiro said, taking his lover in his arms. The new energy was palpable and he felt himself carried along with excitement of seeing each other again after nearly six months.
When they had exhausted their pleasure in being together once again, Tomakita pushed off the divan and wrapped himself again in the kimono he’d been wearing when Benjiro arrived. He stepped across the room, returning with a similar robe for his lover.
“Here, put this on and I’ll show you around,” he told Benjiro.
It was dark and Benjiro had been sleeping when the Silver Dawn slid through an opening tucked into the side of the very modern mansion that Tomakita called home bordering on Nishi-Azabu.
It was darker still as he was given his tour.
Tomakita wandered up and down stairways, pointing through vast walls of glass at pinpricks of light in the distance, mentioning electronic installations that boggled Benjiro’s brain, and commenting on furniture and artwork created by designers, most of whom he’d never heard of.
Much of the house was open and, Benjiro imagined, would be full of light in the daytime. When they finally circled back to the sitting room, Benjiro was impressed, and disoriented. He’d never been in a building this large, designed obviously for a single family, let alone a single man. He knew there were staff people on-site…tea cups were refilled, dishes and discarded clothing disappeared, and he was pretty sure the kimono he was wearing hadn’t been laying across a chair when he first entered the room.
“Let me show you to your room, Benji-san,” Tomakita said. “It’s late and I need my sleep in order to continue the rejuvenation process.” He lifted his hand, waving two fingers, and almost immediately a man, dressed all in black and in bare feet, entered the room through what Benjiro thought was a wall and bowed to both of them. “Please show Benjiro-san to his room,” Tomakita said, then bowed slightly to Benjiro and turned to the pinpricks of light visible through the window.
Benjiro watched Tomakita’s back for a few seconds, then turned to follow the man who had been summoned to take him to his room. His room. Apparently they weren’t sleeping together. And neither Tomakita’s nor ‘his’ room had been on the house tour, he thought, as he followed the…what was he…butler? Footman? He didn’t know, and got the feeling it wasn’t considered important.
He was led to a sliding door fitted into a wall to the side of a fireplace and ushered through it to a sleek bedroom suite with ebonized turquoise sleeping room furniture, a highly polished floor and a rug on the floor that looked like a white bear skin that had just had a blow-comb. Besides the bed, dresser and armoire, there was a comfortable chair designed to wrap around the person sitting in it, with a matching footstool, a large flat-screen television, and a side table with a lamp and princess-style telephone.
The wall that Benjiro thought would be behind the fireplace he’d come around to go through the sliding door held its own inset fireplace, with a remote control perched on the mantel.
Directly across from the fireplace was another sliding door that the man in black was waiting to show to him.
Smiling, he crossed to the door and let himself be taken through to a large dressing room where his luggage had been opened, the contents laid out on built-in dressers or hung up to look forlorn in the enormous available closet space. Through one more sliding door he was shown a set of bathrooms, including a main room for washing, toilet room with an electronic toilet for which even Japanese might need an operating manual, glass-lined, walk-in shower and a Jacuzzi tub under the frosted glass of a set of sliding windows.
When he’d been shown how to turn eve
rything on and off and where to find extra towels, robes and various personal toiletries, he followed the man back to the bedroom, where yet another cup of tea was waiting, with a small plate of sesame crackers, sliced cheese and fruit.
Overwhelmed, Benjiro decided to relax and do some yoga.
#
For the next week, Benjiro learned Tomakita’s schedule, figuring out when he would be available and where. He thought he started to recognize the different staff people he saw around the edges, even though they never stayed long enough to chat. The two of them wandered the grounds, which were not actually as large as Benjiro originally thought. However, the grounds held a koi pond and stream and more than a dozen intricately-maintained bonsai. Several meditation areas were designed such that nearly complete privacy could be had by the person meditating. Benjiro rotated through them during the parts of the day that Tomakita was unavailable.
Since their time together previously had been exclusively on neutral territory—at least neutral in that, given enough money, Benjiro could have stayed in the same places—or they had been in public places, it was a very different experience to spend almost all of his time with Tomakita being essentially the only other person he’d see all day. They spent a lot of time together just being, and most of the conversation was initiated by Benjiro, trying to either learn something about Tomakita’s current or past life.
Their conversations were smooth and easy, but later, when Benjiro thought again about the people, places, and activities they’d discussed, he found himself scowling in confusion, either not remembering details or recalling that there were no details to remember. He didn’t know any more about Tomakita’s past than before he’d come, other than that it had apparently been a very successful one.
Toward the end of the week he’d taken to wandering the house and grounds, exploring the places he hadn’t been introduced to and starting to feel like he needed to get out of a cage. When he found himself in what was obviously the staff kitchen on a lower level, he opened a door he figured was another pantry and found himself in a garage. It was gleamingly clean and looked like a museum.
Closest to him was a new black BMW 7-series, so waxed and polished it looked like it too had been ebonized along with most of the furniture in the house. Next to it was an Austin Martin, not new, but exquisite, then the Silver Dawn and after that a series of Kawasaki motorcycles.
Benjiro really wasn’t any good at driving an automobile, but he’d gotten quite adept with motorcycles since he’d gotten clean. It was the only fast, noisy, mechanized enjoyment he went in for when not sailing. Any time he was on shore leave, if there was a motocross racetrack of any sort, he would spend some of his time there. In ten years he’d won a number of low-level races.
He was squatting at the prettiest road bike, a midnight blue Ninja ZX, when a door to the garage was opened by one of the interchangeable staff members who came through, followed by the two drivers and Tomakita. The staff members looked surprised to see him, but if his lover was, he didn’t show it.
“Benji-san, welcome. I see you’ve located the upper garage. You like my collection?” Tomakita asked.
“Very much, Toma-san. You have good taste in everything, it seems,” Benjiro answered. “Are you going somewhere?” The answer clear in the scene being played out in front of his eyes.
“I have several appointments and will not be back until tomorrow,” Tomakita replied. “I’m confident you will be looked after until I return.”
Benjiro smiled and watched as Tomakita disappeared into the back of the BMW and it headed to an empty wall space on the opposite side of the garage. The wall hissed and slid quickly to one side as the big car sped out and up a sunlit ramp, only to slide closed as the final inch of its bumper passed through.
#
The staff member that was left behind moved to the kitchen door and waited beside it while Benjiro made a point of finishing his tour of the upper garage. Does someone have an ‘upper’ garage without having a ‘lower’ garage? Maybe the house really is over the top…of another whole house, he thought, smiling at his own private joke.
When he got bored, he walked to the doorway Tomakita had emerged from and couldn’t see anything. Dang all the sliding doors in this house, he thought, giving up and heading back across to the kitchen entrance. It was clearly the staff entrance, opening like a door should open, with a handle and all. He found himself a little pissed and put his nose in the air slightly when the doorman bowed to let him through.
The rest of the day went by slowly, with Benjiro finishing a lengthy workout and swim in the gymnasium and pool he’d discovered the third day of his visit. After meditating in the garden he wandered until he found himself back in what he thought of as the formal guest greeting room. It was the only place he remembered seeing any sort of printed material. There were a variety of Japanese fashion magazines, as well as a copy of today’s Yomiuri Shimbun, the most popular newspaper in Japan.
As the sun was beginning to set, two staff members brought in hot towels and a platter with a delicately fragrant miso broth, steaming edamame and a single gyoza dumpling. He made them return the sake and requested green tea, which showed up five minutes later with plates with sushi, sashimi, kaiso, and delicately-sliced quail eggs. The final tray consisted only of Sakuramochi, a sweet pink rice cake and red bean paste, covered with a leaf of cherry blossom. While he didn’t feel like a sweet after his meal, Benjiro wrapped and pocketed the dessert before relaxing with his tea.
#
Hours later, still wide awake in his bed, he thought, It’s now or never.
He decided to head back to the garage since he knew for sure there was another entrance to a part of the house he’d not visited. Arriving without seeing any of the house staff, he took his traveler flashlight out and searched the area of the wall he’d seen Tomakita come out of earlier in the day. It wasn’t until he started feeling the wall that he hit upon what felt like a membrane-covered switch, and the wall in front of him opened silently to another dark space.
Benjiro carefully stepped through to find himself in a narrow, split hallway, carpeted and soundless, with glowing lights that his eyes only saw once he shut off the beam of his own flashlight. The passage led off at forty-five degree angles to his left and his right, seemingly with no end. He started down the passage to the left first, counting out steps and lights. It was twenty-five paces long, with two lights on the left wall, one on the right and one at the flat end where the hall stopped. He returned to the start of the angle and went the other direction. Eighteen paces, one light on the left, one on the right, and one again on the end wall.
Trying to picture the house around him, Benjiro decided to start in the hallway to his right. Returning to the first light on the right side, he searched for another switch. Now that he knew what he was searching for, the switches were more obvious, but they were still subtle, especially in the dark. Pressing the switch, he heard a slight clicking noise, then with a barely audible pop the door opened inward to blackness.
Benjiro aimed his flashlight into the space, revealing a room extremely different than any he’d seen in the house so far. This one seemed to be a library, or at least it was filled with books. As he explored the space with his beam, every wall was covered with shelves and every shelf was jammed with books or pictures or trinkets. He stepped inside the room and the door slid closed behind him. Shit, don’t think about that, he thought, checking the plain wall that had sealed him in. Feeling around he found a membrane pad on this side, too. Ok, that’s good to know.
He looked around for a light switch, since there were no windows in the room, and found one on the only other section of open wall. He flipped it on to reveal a well-used study designed in a very traditional Japanese style with a large wooden desk at the far end. Besides the desk, there was what looked like a comfortable reading chair with a side table and lamp. Other than that, nothing more besides the hundreds of books and paraphernalia in the shelves surrounding him.
Benjiro picked up one of the books on the side table and glanced at the title. It was an operative book on transplant surgery. That makes sense, he thought, laying it down and picking up the other book. ‘Transplant Ethics and Options’ was its title. Moving to the desk, he saw it was covered with articles from various sources, journals, newspapers and a few printed or photocopied pages. More stuff on transplants.
Moving to the shelves he glanced at book titles. They were mostly history and almost exclusively Asian. He was impressed; it looked like Tomakita was well-read, even if his subject interest was narrow. He stepped to a section of shelves that seemed to be dedicated to a collection of artifacts and pictures. There were lots of pictures of military men. Groups of them in the field, in rooms, at what looked like training events. Picking up an article from the top of a pile, he read an old headline from a newspaper, ‘War Criminal Sought’. A picture below the article was of a group of six officers, all named by hand on the picture, all but one with a red ex over the face.
The one without the red ex looked familiar, but the name was totally unfamiliar: Koitamta.
Benjiro dug further down the pile. Article after article on war criminal trials in Japan. He was aware of the atrocities his countrymen perpetrated, particularly on other Asian nations during World War II. Because of his Filipino heritage, he was particularly aware of what they’d done in the Philippines.
He remembered long nights with his mother, the questions she would be asked by her family, over and over, after she’d married a Japanese man. It was sometimes hard to believe, but his mother and father had once been young and in love—and expecting their one and only child—when they married.
His mother’s parents had tried hard to understand the marriage, but they could not seem to get over the background of cultural fallout that came with it. In the end, they’d given up, as, it seemed, did his parents.
Setting the papers back on the stack, he returned to the desk that dominated the room like a general and took a seat in the commander’s chair. The space was large and mostly covered with the transplant articles, but there was another picture of a military group, framed this time and with many more faces. The man from the previous picture, Koitamta, was also in this picture. Based on the uniform, he was obviously the leader.
One Fish, Two Fish, Big Fish, Little Fish_Silver Dawn Page 15