by Tria, Jay E.
Already their neighboring caffeine consumers were speaking in rapid murmurs, darting covert looks and batting eyelashes at him. Was everyone updated in Japanese cinema now too, or was it only because he was beautiful?
Shinta kept his eyes on his own frappe, slurping. “What?”
Jill slurped back, her eyes darting to his full lips, wet from his coffee. “It always feels weird seeing you here.”
His eyes flicked up. A pucker of whipped cream was resting on his upper lip. “At a coffee shop?”
“In this side of the Pacific Ocean.”
“I was here just this New Year’s, remember?” Shinta said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “And hey, I’m part-Filipino.”
Jill’s eyes left his mouth to fix him a glare. She frowned. “Your parents were both born in Kodaira, Tokyo.”
“My mother has been teaching in a Philippine state university for the past fifteen years.”
Jill began a slow smile. She’s heard this speech before.
“That has to count for something.”
“Lodging and an easy scholarship, sure.” She bit her straw. “Citizenship too, you think?”
“And a nickname with an extra H.”
“Shintah.”
He laughed. “Jhill.”
He gnawed his straw, and together they slurped, punching teeth-shaped holes on the green plastic.
Shinta was already a hot movie star when Jill first met him. It was three years ago at a music festival in Tokyo. Trainman had played four songs in two languages their audience did not understand but still jumped and danced to. Shinta had crept backstage afterwards——trailed closely by a line of his fans—and stood there among them, towering, long-limbed and luminous, a stark contrast to their post-set grit and sweat. He spoke to them in fluent English—having an English literature major for a mother must have helped—inviting them for beer and asking for autographs.
It seemed like a normal occurrence under those absurd circumstances, so a friendship between the six of them was inevitable. There were other music festivals, small gigs, a vacation to Japan that left her and her bandmates broke for six months, Shinta’s visits to his expatriate mother, and blackout nights over the deadly mix of sake and Kirin.
Still, there were times like now when Jill would think, wow, a hot Japanese idol paid for my grande.
“How’s your mother?” Shinta’s voice broke into her thoughts.
“Still in love with you,” Jill said sulkily.
Shinta beamed. There was a time when Jill’s mother openly stated that she liked Shinta over Kim, as if there was even a contest. Jill thought that wasn’t fair. Shinta must have won her mother over with those matcha products and queer anti-aging implements he always brought her.
“Sometimes I think if she could choose her only child, she’d want it to be you,” Jill mused darkly.
“Better that than I become your brother!” Shinta exclaimed, pulling a face. “Hey we should invite her to my mother’s party.”
“Don’t you dare,” Jill hissed. “I said no,” she said firmly when Shinta opened his mouth to protest.
Shinta chuckled, then returned to his coffee, slurping while scanning her face. “I wanted to come here earlier,” he said in a quieter voice. “I wanted to see you.”
“Well you had that TV show to shoot, and that fan meeting. Then you had that stalker situation.” Jill waved her hand in the air as she enumerated. These actor problems. “Did you ever get your sock drawer back from the culprit?”
“No.” Shinta frowned. Jill knew he liked those socks. “But I got a restraining order.”
“Good enough. Anyway, you’re not late for your mom’s birthday. Which I’ve heard is your first one here since you were fourteen, because your mom won’t shut up about it. My mom was never that excited when it was her turn to throw the big 5-0 party.” She paused, thinking. “I haven’t been Professor Mori’s student for three years. I’m breaking some kind of student-teacher code here about post-class relations.”
“It’s your fault,” he said. “You encouraged her too much. She thinks she’s responsible for the success of your debut album.”
Jill grinned. She, Kim, Miki, Son, and Nino took Professor Mori’s Creative Writing class in their sophomore year in university. They wrote songs for homework on fiction, songs for non-fiction, songs for poetry and haiku. They were able to write their debut album in one semester. It was an indie success story.
“Well she kind of is. And I did get a 1.0 for my final project.”
She felt it was very important to say this. She was as proud of that as of her 1.0 in Development Economics, and her teacher there was an iron lady.
“You bribed her with future concert tickets,” Shinta pointed out. “For when you sell out coliseums.”
Jill grinned. “She might have to hold on to that promise for a while. Although I don’t think she minds. She has a soft spot for Miki.”
Shinta started drumming his fingers on the table to a familiar beat. “While I stumble on the floor of your room/Flushed when you look at me/While I look in the glass and see no one there/Still you’d make me believe…”
Shinta smiled, leaning towards her. “That’s a great song.”
An easy blush spotted on her cheeks, her hands suddenly cold at the small breathing space Shinta held between them, but Jill’s frown came easier. Why did Shinta have to pick the lines Kim wrote? She wrote the next stanza. He could have sung that.
“What?” Shinta nudged her elbow.
“You’re not a very good singer.”
“Sorry, I’m just a fan,” he said, laughing.
Jill leaned back against her seat and returned to slurping her coffee.
“You’re glaring at the slushy bits,” Shinta said.
Jill slurped louder.
“They didn’t do anything to you,” he went on.
Slurp. Sluuurrpp.
Shinta planted his chin on one palm. “While I get tangled, awkward in your sheets/ Scared as you come to me/ While I close my eyes and see no one there/Still you say, I’m here.”
Grudgingly, Jill fixed him a stare. His evil smolder was in place and her breath caught in her throat. The words she wrote suddenly sounded sexy. She thought she heard a girl from the nearby table swoon.
“You’re already a famous actor with fan clubs across Asia,” she shot at him. “Don’t be an overachiever.”
Shinta started laughing, raucous peals that echoed through the coffee shop’s walls and drew even more attention from the already ogling patrons. She wasn’t even trying to be funny. Shinta was now slapping his thighs to the tune of his guffaws, and Jill’s only comfort was her coffee jelly.
“I’m taking you home now to your mother,” Jill grumbled.
“Wakatta, wakatta yo.” Shinta nodded in efforts to restrain his laughter. “I guess the jet lag is getting to me after all.”
“It was a four-hour flight, you wimp.”
Shinta pulled her chair back for her as she stood, catching her car keys before they hit the floor again.
“At least I know my mother missed me,” he said, depositing the keys on her palm and closing her fingers around them. He pivoted to the glass doors.
“I’m not falling for that,” Jill called out as she followed Shinta to her car.
It was a quiet drive from there as the pains of Shinta’s cross-ocean commute seemed to catch up with him. The Strokes’ Clampdown was on repeat in Jill’s music player, the only sound between them. He worked very hard to keep his eyes open, alternating between watching the dancing lights on the streets and watching Jill shift gears from third to fourth and back. When they parked in front of his mother’s house, he had successfully evaded sleep in the entire 30-minute race.
“Can you please drive slower on your way home?” Shinta peeked at her through the open window as he stood outside, bag in tow.
“But this is the only time when there’s no traffic.”
“Didn’t you say you’ve had premo
nitions about dying in a car crash?”
“Fears,” Jill corrected him. “Fears are different from premonitions.”
Shinta frowned. “Fine.” He walked the couple meters past the gate, where the porch light illuminated the door to his mother’s house.
He looked back. “Jill!”
She looked out the passenger window. “Shinta?”
To Jill, Shinta looked curious from this short distance. “You don’t look very horrible, for a person with a broken heart.”
“Uh. Thanks?”
His mouth lifted in one corner. “You’re welcome.” He gave her a small bow. “Good morning.”
“Don’t get lost on your way in!”
“I’ll call you if I do,” he said as he went through the door, waving back at her.
When the door closed the porch light went off too, and Jill thought she heard the distinct sound of a mother’s excited squealing. She lunged on the gas and drove off, a smile stretching across her face as she sang the old song that Shinta liked at the top of her voice.
Nevermind
While I stumble on the floor of your room
Flushed when you look at me
While I look in the glass and see no one there
Still you’d make me believe
While I get tangled, awkward in your sheets
Scared as you come to me
While I close my eyes and see no one there
Still you say, I’m here
Never you mind
When I love you imperfectly
Darling, you will find
My heart has perfect memory
When I sift through the sandbox and pan for gold
Listening for a song that only I know
While I turn my gaze and see more faces
Still you say, stay here
Never you mind
When I love you imperfectly
Darling, you will find
My heart has perfect memory. (Kim, Jill)
April 21, Tuesday, morning
“Well you all look pretty today.”
Mars dropped his two-inch thick organizer on the table. Son was shaken out of his stupor by the violence of the act, hitting his head against Miki’s guitar hard case. Five sleepy heads tipped upwards and glared at the imposing organizer.
They were slumped in their favorite spots in the small square room, the official Trainman meeting room in the old four-story building that had been their headquarters for four years now.
“Didn’t we leave for home at the same time?” Mars asked, surveying the pathetic-looking lot as he straddled his designated chair by the table.
Mars was a short, dark man who made up for the fact with regular, expensive body-building and a premier vintage record collection. They met him after a three-song gig in a small bar just in the outskirts of the university, early in their freshman year. He said he was a music manager and would like a copy of their demo. He looked the part, wearing skinny jeans and dirty high-cut sneakers, and looking like he was 30-ish, but they didn’t even think of making a demo then, and he was carrying around that bulky organizer, so the initial answer was, “the thing is old man…”
He stalked them in other gigs. Time came when they had written more than three songs, and Kim learned the technical details of amateur song recording. So Trainman said yes to an actual, real live band manager.
They swore then too that they will someday burn that despicable notebook.
“Nino deposited another newbie at our table,” Kim explained, crouched on the white plastic chair across from Mars.
“I had to cope,” Son added.
“Then said girl got drunk,” Kim continued.
Mars’s eyebrows rose. “You drove her home?” He turned an accusing glare at Nino. Mars had adored Suze—Nino’s actual girlfriend—like the rest of them.
“I towed her to her less intoxicated friends.” Nino shrugged, back flat on the red sofa he shared with Jill. He crossed his stretched legs over her lap. “Miki took one arm, I tugged on the other.”
“Wow, Nino.” Jill punched Nino’s sneakers. “You can be a total jerk when you want to, huh?”
Son raised his hand, lounging on the lone office chair. “Can we vote against Nino’s fans?”
“Hey!” Nino cried.
“At least in Commute.” Son went on, sitting up straighter. “I mean, we drink beer there.”
Mars tapped the organizer impatiently on the table. “Kids, no fighting.”
“When the hell is Suze coming back anyway?” Miki muttered, slumping on the crowded couch beside Jill.
“I fear she’ll be smart enough not to,” Jill returned.
“Hey! Well, Jill ran out like a kid with a curfew,” Nino shot back.
“Like the wind,” Son put in.
“And she doesn’t look pretty today either,” Nino finished with a glare.
Jill gave him a curt nod. “Mature of you.”
“Do we get to go to the agenda before Son screams for a lunch break?” Kim cut in sharply.
Jill and Nino’s open mouths clamped close. Miki watched as Jill sunk deeper into the sofa, hands now folded on her lap.
“You listen to him, while I’m the one who hands out the payroll.” Mars shook his head as he started his pacing, a signal that the meeting was actually beginning. He stopped, turning to them. “I need to ask you for a date.”
The heaviness settled fast in the air.
Kim’s brow furrowed. “Ask or demand?”
“What do you think?” Nino said, scowling.
“Early July. Late June if possible,” Mars continued.
He began thumbing his organizer, pen in hand. They turned to glare at the notebook again. Under normal circumstances a notebook would be alright, but for a reputable music manager it somehow seemed nerdy, especially since it was merchandise that he bought from a comic book store. They had wondered if Mars’s wife knew of it.
“By possible do you mean bone-drying exhaustion?” Son muttered.
“Great. My artistic zits will be making a comeback.” Jill bumped her head on the wall behind the sofa.
Miki patted her hair gently. “So I guess we’re actually going to do actual work now. It was fun living the rock star life for a while there.”
“Hey, I’m not the one consistently in the hit charts.”
Mars restarted his pacing at a faster rate. They all groaned. Here was his slew of career-highlight reminders. It always came when he felt the pressure to produce a new Trainman album and he wanted to pass the stress around.
“I’m not the one with two successful albums. I don’t have an international fan base.”
“I don’t think those are plenty enough to be called international,” Jill cut in. “Or a base of any kind.”
“Don’t forget the magazine covers,” Son piped in.
“That too,” Mars said with force. “It’s only April anyway. You’ve got two entire months to complete an album. And I want an LP. Ten songs plus. You don’t have school as an excuse anymore for spewing out EPs.”
Jill straightened up from the couch and opened her mouth to protest. Miki pulled her back by the elbow, probably guessing that she was going to argue about the sounder logic of a six-song album over a full-length one. They discovered it together in Economics class after all.
“Stand down, soldier,” he mouthed.
Jill dropped back on the couch, her mutinous glare mirroring Nino’s beside her. The pressure for good output on a deadline always made them feel like accountants during tax season. There was a reason none of them went corporate despite their corporate degrees.
“Isn’t the point of going indie is so you don’t have this kind of stress?” Nino pointed out.
“We’ve got songs,” Kim said after a pause.
Jill turned to see the serious set of his mouth, the frown on his brow, and recognized that Kim was on full-on leader-mode. He was always the one to attempt a boost to their sleep-deprived, hung-over morale. Always the one with the pl
an.
Jill flicked her eyes back to her hands.
Son began rocking his chair. “We always have new songs, I guess. We road test them all the time. Should be enough for a complete album. But since you know who the primary songwriters are, the theme will be clinical depression.”
“Don’t look at me,” Jill growled just as heads started turning in her direction.
“Hey I wrote a couple,” Miki offered.
“Okay.” Nino crossed his arms, his face deadpan. “Themes are post-breakup psycho-depression and perpetually unrequited love.”
Miki’s already small eyes thinned into slits. “You wrote a few, so there’d be something in there about wandering eyes.”
“Come on, kids.” Mars slapped his palm on his forehead, reminding them all that he was still present and officiating. “You can’t do depressing. You’re dance-y, jump-your-bones rock and roll!”
“It’s relatable, dance-y, jump-your-bones rock and roll with feelings,” Son corrected him, moving his chair so he can clap Miki and Kim’s shoulders. “Tears and sadness can’t be helped.” Both brushed his hand away with a jerk.
Mars pounded his organizer on the table. “Just give me a single before the end of May. You know the drill, you’re not virgins.” He pivoted, leading the way out the door.
“How do you know?” Nino called out. “I may very well still be.”
Everyone burst into laughter. Son fell from his chair and Kim had to pick him up. Mars almost hit the door on his way out. Nino kept a buzz of expletives under his breath as they picked up their lazy bodies and made for the exit.
They stopped in mid-step halfway out the door, their way blocked by a long shadow.
“Yo!” Shinta said with a huge grin and a salute from the hallway.
It took about two full ticking seconds before they started to recognize him, Jill included.
“Shinta,” Kim murmured.
“Have you grown again?” Mars exclaimed, his four-foot-ten frame looking even sadder next to Shinta’s six-foot-plus body.