I spent hours mopping and scrubbing and wiping. Or at least I’d start to, until Eiju popped in. He’d put me on the broom until it clicked in his head that I could actually help him, that this was my area of fucking expertise, and then he stopped showing up to the bar until he absolutely had to.
This was probably the only reason he didn’t send me back to fucking Houston.
Or at least before he finally got sicker.
But then the fucker didn’t have a choice.
* * *
When I first showed up in Osaka, Eiju asked how I planned to spend my time. I’d just dropped my shit on the wood floor of his apartment, this ugly one-bedroom thing. The luggage made this cracking sound. I asked him to repeat the question.
You heard me, he said, in English this time. Your ears aren’t broken yet.
You’re not making any fucking sense, I said.
Fucking, said Eiju. So you’re grown now.
I flew here for you. I came down here for you.
Which is fine. But you need a job. And I need extra hands.
You want me to work for you? I said.
I’m here to spend time with you, I said. Before you fucking die.
Sure, said Eiju, and we’ll spend more time together if you make yourself useful.
He told me about the bar. About the money he’d made off it and the blood he’d thrown into it. Eiju called it his baby, the one thing he had left—which, by itself, had me curling my fucking toes—and when I asked him for its name, my father said it, and I blinked.
No, I said. The bar’s name.
You heard me, said Eiju. Mitsuko.
I made a fist and then I unmade it and I watched Eiju watch me do that. I wiped my eye sockets with my palms.
But I also took stock of the liquor. I chopped the daikon and rinsed the rice. Eiju didn’t serve many meals—the main thing was booze—but his regulars made requests, and he was a big fucking baby about turning them down.
* * *
I didn’t ask Eiju what made him so amiable with his patrons or what those motherfuckers had that his family didn’t.
I didn’t put up a fight.
At the end of the day, he was terminal. Pancreatic cancer. That was his diagnosis. Playing along was the absolute fucking least I could do.
* * *
The bar’s stairs were busted as fuck. So I usually heard Eiju as he scaled his way up the railing. Whenever he opened the door, he wore this big-ass smile on his face. The sounds of Osaka seeped into the cracks, disappearing altogether when the lock clattered behind him.
Gonna be a good night, he said, tossing his jacket.
I’d catch a sleeve before it hit the ground and stash it under the counter. Eiju’d start rearranging bottles behind me.
The entire bar was about the size of my living room in Texas. We kept six stools across one counter and the place usually found itself fucking packed. Eiju’s clientele came from all over the neighborhood: businessmen on benders, and hostesses on their breaks, and college types, and taxi drivers, and singles wasting the witching hours.
They all knew Eiju and his bar.
But none of them knew he was dying.
I’d ask if he’d taken his meds in the morning, and Eiju would say, What meds, and I’d say, Fuck, and Eiju just waved that off.
Shut up, he said. Didn’t you come here to relax? Stress’ll make you even fatter.
But later on, I’d find my father’s prescriptions in that jacket. I’d count them out on the bar top. He was always up-to-date.
* * *
One night, early on, we were cleaning the bar side by side. Mondays were pretty slow but that didn’t shift our routine. So we swept and we wiped and we dusted and we shined and Eiju whistled the whole time, or he’d play D’Angelo or Sade or Toni Braxton or the Isley Brothers or whatever the fuck else he’d been feeling for that day.
Eventually he asked if I’d prepped the sandwiches. I told him they were done.
And the limes? said Eiju. The potatoes? The batter?
Finished, I said. Oil’s out and everything.
Good. What about the cheese?
What cheese?
We’re frying cheese tonight.
You’re fucking with me, I said.
I am most certainly not fucking with you, said Eiju. It’ll be tonight’s American special. We’re celebrating our American guest.
Then he started laughing, a rolling thing that blanketed the bar.
The laugh morphed into a cough.
The cough sloped into a hack.
Eiju started choking.
I’ve never been the guy to hop a bar top but I did that anyway.
When he finally settled down, I sat by his side, rubbing at his back. Eiju winced, and I told him to breathe easy, to inhale.
But then, out of nowhere, the coughing stopped. And his grimace led to tears. And the tears slipped into a laugh.
Eiju started laughing again.
He pointed at my face.
You should’ve seen yourself, he said, still laughing. Holy shit!
So concerned! he said. Where the hell’s my actual son!
* * *
Eiju stood half a foot shorter than me. Already looking thinner than the day I’d flown in.
He treated everything like a joke but the punchline was that he’d reached stage four.
No surprise sat waiting in the wings.
I knew what to expect.
I knew how this would end.
* * *
My first morning in Japan, I asked Eiju if he knew he was dying. Did he truly, functionally, see that? Did he understand? Did he know the stakes?
He stood across from me in pajama pants, yawning, tugging at the drawstrings. His breath smelled like cigarettes.
Of course, he said.
But so are you, he said. So is everyone else.
Think of it as a race, he said. I’m winning by a mile.
That’s bullshit, I said. You’re bullshit.
Maybe, said Eiju.
* * *
• • •
I would’ve called Ben when I landed at Itami, but my phone died. And then I missed the first rail into the city so I had to grab another ticket. And I was so worried about blowing that train, too, that I didn’t touch my charger, didn’t look away from the clock, and I just plopped down by this German family standing on the platform, arguing between themselves, while a Korean couple stood beside them, and this white lady cried into her hands and out of nowhere a pretty Black woman zoomed by us with this rolling suitcase, like, she was walking sprint-fast, in heels and a blue dress, and I was still wondering how that was even possible when I barely caught the train and I made it to Shin-Osaka station, but then, like, two minutes later I missed the next line to Namba, and then I caught a line headed the exact opposite way, toward Kyoto, and then back down toward Tennoji, which is when rush hour hit, and about thirty minutes later I got off on the wrong stop, again, but I was less than a mile from Eiju’s apartment, the man I hadn’t seen in a decade, the dying one, and I’d been traveling for over twenty-four hours, so I was spent, out of my fucking mind, and I wasn’t thinking about much else by then, or anything at all, really—but that was a mistake, the whole fucking thing was a mistake, I’d left Ben with Ma, and I’d left Ma in the middle of nowhere, and I hadn’t called my boyfriend at home, and home was the only place I wanted to be, even if, technically, I was already there, I had already made it, I was finally back home.
* * *
We met at this party. I’d already seen him on an app. And I walked right up to him, squeezing his shoulder, because Ben had exactly nothing to drink and of course I’d had way too much.
He’d been laughing in his profile pic. It hadn’t look forced.
And now, here he was. IRL. In a flannel
and khakis.
When I asked who he’d come to the party with, Ben nodded vaguely at the crowd.
The mob carried you over?
No, he said. Just one mobster.
Well, I said, are you fucking this particular punk?
And that’s when he finally looked at me.
Ben made a face, one I would learn the mechanics of in the future. I’d recognize what brought it on and how long it lasted. I’d figure out how to defuse it. Each of its nooks and crannies.
But at first, I didn’t know shit.
So I just tilted my beer, cheersing him.
I’m a little fucked up, I said.
Don’t worry about it, said Ben, raising his water.
My day off and all.
Ah. Go figure.
And our conversation should’ve ended there.
I should’ve drifted back toward the kitchen, and we should’ve gone on with our lives, however the fuck they would’ve unspooled.
But then, Ben said, Does that mean you don’t get many?
Many what, I said.
Days off.
Let’s just say I make them count.
Ben considered me like he was solving some sort of equation.
My friend is the host’s cousin, he said. I wasn’t doing shit tonight, so she dragged me along.
Well, I said, as far as drags go, you look just fine.
You’d be surprised, said Ben.
Or maybe you wouldn’t, he said, more to himself than to me, and he looked back at the crowd, but before I could jump on that, Ximena waved from around the corner.
She winked at me, smiling. Glowing in a skirt and this letterman jacket.
Ben made another new face.
Looks like we’ve got mutuals, I said.
Just a friend of a friend, I said.
An ex, I added.
But you got Ximena in the divorce, said Ben.
I think she dabbles between the two of us.
Kanpai, said Ben, clinking my bottle with his cup, before he slipped around my shoulder, into the living room, and right the fuck out of my life.
* * *
That night I drove home with another guy. I don’t remember much about him, but he was definitely white. He told me I was his first, and I said, First what, and he said, You know, except I genuinely did not. Sometimes, you forget how people are. And then he reminded me. But before this whiteboy fucked up the rest of my evening, I put my mouth on his mouth, and my palms on his ass, and he jammed his knuckles in my khakis, and the two of us were off.
We fucked. It sucked. He came once, and then once again, and I jerked off on his stomach until I decided nothing was happening.
* * *
When I woke up the next morning, he was still knocked out on the mattress. I slipped into his kitchen thinking I’d fix us some omelettes. Scramble some eggs. Maybe he kept scallions. Peaches. Fuck. You never know, sometimes folks surprise you.
But this guy didn’t. He was predictable. All I found in his fridge was a tub of protein and half a Hershey’s bar stuck in the wrapper.
* * *
Back at my place, off West Alabama, the kids next door played tag on the driveway. They were chasing this cat and the cat was letting them. They’d named him Bruno, but also Gabriel, Victor Hugo, and Señor Gato. When their father, a heavy dude, came outside for a smoke, he called the cat over. It sat on its ass while he rubbed its belly. Once the cat looked my way, so did everyone else.
I showered and got my shit ready for work: the apron and the T-shirt and the jeans. I held a part-time gig at one restaurant and a part-time gig at a coffee bar. On weekends, I played cashier at the grocery store. None of it was bearable. But the money wasn’t atrocious. That shit gave me something to do.
Afterward, still soaked, I sat my ass on the sofa. Checked my phone, opened the app. Scrolled to Ben’s profile.
But it was gone. I’d starred it and everything.
I closed the thing and opened it up again. The only thing left was a gap in its place. Not even a digital memory.
* * *
• • •
My first morning in Osaka, Eiju didn’t even speak to me. I spent one hundred and twenty-two minutes looking for his shitty little apartment by the train station. Once I’d passed the same fucking alley a fourth time, this lady smoking beside a FamilyMart waved me down from the corner, and later, I figured out that she owned a bookshop by the complex and she’d known Eiju for years. Sometimes, she brought him eggs from the market behind their building.
But that day, she was just some lady.
She wore this big-ass scowl.
You look lost, she said, in Japanese.
What? I said.
You look lost, she said, again, a little slower.
Oh, I said. I feel lost.
When I pulled out Eiju’s address, her features softened. She pointed above us.
You’re kidding, I said, and the lady laughed.
You’ve already made it, she said.
But you’re still lost, she said.
* * *
And then, like some Netflix Original shit, while I stood warming my hands by the steps, I watched Eiju lock his door through the railing, rooting around in a messenger bag, fiddling with his key chain, peering at the sky over my head.
For a long fucking time I had this dream where I’d spot the man and he wouldn’t recognize me but I never thought I wouldn’t recognize him. That’s just a thing that would not have happened.
It started once he split from our apartment in Bellaire.
I dreamt about my father back when I was a kid, snuggled beside Ma, when I couldn’t sleep by myself for the first year after he left.
I dreamt about my father while I slept beside who knows how many fuckers.
I dreamt about my father in my own bed, hanging off the mattress, snoring beside Ben.
I dreamt about him the night I left Houston.
I dreamt about him on the plane ride over.
And now, here he was.
Here.
Here here.
Here here here.
Right there. In front of my dumb fucking face.
Solid as the ground below me. And I recognized him.
* * *
I watched Eiju pat his pockets for keys.
I watched him tug on his hoodie.
I watched him reconsider.
He gave this little wince. But that was it, nothing else.
I leaned on the stairs. Waited for him to crash into me.
* * *
My father nodded my way as he passed.
Then he walked a little farther, nearly turning the corner.
And then I watched him shake his head.
Flip right around.
There wasn’t any anger on his face. Just the barest confusion.
Then, recognition.
And then he was pissed.
* * *
I thought he’d hug me or grab my arm or punch me in the face, but none of that happened.
My father’s first words to me in sixteen years, in his loud Kansai dialect, were: What the fuck?
* * *
• • •
Eiju’s bar didn’t get its first customers until around ten. That’s when the streets were at their apex. A few hours before the trains finally stopped for the night. The temperature dropped to a chill and you couldn’t see your breath but I’d blow on the windows anyway, tracing my name or a plane or stick figures fucking until Eiju finally told me to cut that shit out.
One night, we ran through that very same routine. I was mopping the tile. Eiju wiped at the counter.
You’re not a fucking child, he said.
I’m your fucking child, I said.
* * *
Ha
na and Mieko usually arrived first. They were coworkers at some advertising joint. They’d sit side by side, ordering two rounds of sake apiece, showing up straight from the office, where they worked into the evening, throwing faded jean jackets over their blouses, and whenever they stepped through the bar’s sliding door, without fail, they laughed and laughed and laughed.
My first night at Mitsuko’s, Hana asked me, straight off, if I was my father’s son.
Eiju shined some glasses beside me. His face said, Say no.
Everyone asks me that, I said. Think of me as a nephew.
Shit, said Mieko. Eiju’s got plenty of those.
All nephews and no sons, said Hana. Like some sort of gigolo.
But you’re not from here, she added, turning back to me.
It’s that obvious?
No offense, said Hana.
It’s fine, I said.
Your Japanese is blocky, said Mieko. Like you learned it from a book.
But good for a foreigner, said Hana.
Should be better than good, said Eiju, pouring the women another round.
No excuse, he said.
There are plenty of excuses, said Hana. I dated an American once.
Shit, said Mieko. You did.
He was the worst, said Hana.
Holy shit, said Mieko. The worst.
He thought he knew the way things worked here, but he didn’t. Not really. And I wanted to say, it’s okay! You don’t have to pretend! I appreciate it, but don’t.
You couldn’t take him anywhere, said Mieko.
He’d cause these scenes, said Hana. He had to know everything. And he needed you to know that he knew everything.
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