And what about me?
My peak? Would I even have one? I hardly had had anything you could call a life. A few ripples. Some rises and falls. But that’s it. Almost nothing. Nothing born of nothing. I’d loved and been loved, but I had nothing to show. It was a singularly plain, featureless landscape. I felt like I was in a video game. A surrogate Pacman, crunching blindly through a labyrinth of dotted lines. The only certainty was my death.
No promises you’re gonna be happy, the Sheep Man had said. So you gotta dance. Dance so it all keeps spinning.
I gave up and closed my eyes.
When I opened them again, Yuki was sitting across the table from me.
“You okay?” she said, concerned. “You looked like you blew a fuse. Did I say something wrong?”
I smiled. “No, it wasn’t anything you said.”
“You just thought of something unpleasant?”
“No, I just thought that you’re too beautiful.”
Yuki looked at me with her father’s blank stare. Then silently she shook her head.
Yuki paid for dinner. Her father had given her lots of money, she informed me. She took the check over to the register, peeled a ten-thousand-yen note from a wad of five or six, handed it over to the cashier, then scooped up the change without even looking at it.
“Papa thinks that all he has to do is fork over money and everything’s cool,” she said, piqued. “He’s real dim. But that’s why I can treat you today. Makes us even, kind of, right? You’re always treating me, so fair’s fair.”
“Thank you,” I said. “But you know, all this goes against classic date etiquette.”
“Huh?”
“On a dinner date, even if the girl is paying for it, she doesn’t run up to the register with the bill. She lets the guy do it, then pays him back, or she gives him the money ahead of time. That’s the way to do it. Males are very sensitive creatures. Of course, I’m not such a macho guy, so I don’t care. But you ought to know that there are lots of sensitive fellows out there who really do care.”
“Gross!” she said. “I’ll never go out with guys like that.”
“It’s, well, just an angle on things,” I said, easing the Subaru out of the parking space. “People fall in love without reason, without even wanting to. You can’t predict it. That’s love. When you get to the age that you wear a brassiere, you’ll understand.”
“I told you, dummy. I already have one!” she screamed and pounded me on the shoulder.
I almost plowed the car into a dumpster, and had to stop. “I was only kidding,” I said. “It was a stupid joke, but you ought to give your laugh muscles some practice anyway.”
“Hmmph,” she pouted.
“Hmmph,” I echoed.
“It was stupid, that’s for sure,” she said.
“It was stupid, that’s for sure,” I said.
“Stop it!” she cried.
I was tempted not to, but didn’t, and pulled the car out of the lot.
“One thing, Yuki, and this is not a joke. Don’t hit people while they’re driving,” I said. “You could get us killed. So date etiquette lesson number two: Don’t die. Go on living.”
On the way back, Yuki hardly said a word to me. She melted into her seat, and appeared to be thinking. Though it was hard to tell if she was asleep or awake. She wasn’t listening to her tapes. So I put on Coltrane’s Ballads that I’d brought along. She didn’t utter a word, barely noticed anything was on. I hummed along with the solos.
The road was a bore. I concentrated on the taillights of the cars ahead. When we got onto the expressway, Yuki sat up and started chewing gum. Then she lit a cigarette. Three, four puffs and out the window it went. I was going to say something if she lit up a second, but she didn’t. She could tell what was on my mind.
As I pulled up in front of the Akasaka condo, I announced, “Here we are, Princess.”
Whereupon she balled up her wad of gum in its wrapper and placed it on the dashboard. Then she sluggishly opened the car door, got out, and started walking. Didn’t say good-bye, didn’t shut the door, didn’t look back. Okay, a difficult age, I thought. She seemed like a character out of Gotanda’s movies. The sensitive, complex girl. No doubt, Gotanda could have played my part loads better than I did. And probably Yuki would be head over heels in love with him. It wouldn’t make a movie otherwise. Good grief, I can’t stop thinking about Gotanda! I reached across her seat and pulled the door shut. Slam! Then I listened to Freddie Hubbard’s “Red Clay” on the way home.
After waking the next morning, I went to the train station. Before nine and Shibuya was swarming with commuters. Yet despite the spring air, you could count the number of smiles on one hand. I bought two papers at the kiosk, went to Dunkin’ Donuts, and read the news over coffee. Opening ceremonies for Tokyo Disneyland, fighting between Vietnam and Cambodia, Tokyo mayoral election, violence in the schools. Not one line about a beautiful young woman strangled in an Akasaka hotel. What’s one homicide compared to the opening of a Disney theme park anyway? It’s just one more thing to forget.
I checked the movie listings and saw that Unrequited Love had finished its run. Which brought Gotanda to mind again. I had to let him know about Mei.
I tried calling him from the pink phone in Dunkin’ Donuts. Naturally he was out, so I left a message on his machine: urgent. Then I tossed the newspapers in the trash and headed home. Walking back, I tried to imagine why on earth Vietnam and Cambodia, two communist countries, should be fighting. Complicated world.
It was my day for catching up on things.
There were tons of things I had to do. Very practical matters. I put on my practical-minded best and attacked things head-on.
I took shirts to the cleaners and picked some up. I stopped by the bank, got some cash from the ATM, paid my phone and gas bills, paid my rent. I had new heels put on my shoes. I bought batteries for the alarm clock. I returned home and straightened up the place while listening to FEN. I scrubbed the bathtub. I cleaned the refrigerator, the stove, the fan, the floors, the windows. I bagged the garbage. I changed the sheets. I ran the vacuum cleaner. I was wiping the blinds, singing along to Styx’s “Mister Roboto,” when the phone rang at two.
It was Gotanda.
“Can you meet me? I can’t talk over the phone,” I said.
“Sure. But how urgent is it? I’m right in the middle of a shoot right now. Can it wait two or three days?”
“I don’t think it can. Someone’s been killed,” I said. “Someone we both know and the cops are on the move.”
Silence came over the line. An eloquent silence as only Gotanda could deliver. Smart, cool, and intelligent. I could almost hear his mental gears whirring at high speed. “Okay, how about tonight? It’ll have to be pretty late. That okay?”
“Fine.”
“I’ll call you around one or two. Sorry, but I won’t have one free minute before that.”
“No problem. I’ll be up.”
We hung up and I replayed the entire conversation in my mind.
Someone’s been killed. Someone we both know and the cops are on the move.
A regular mob flick. Involve Gotanda and everything becomes a scene from the movies. Little by little reality retreated from view. Made me feel like I was playing a scripted role. Gotanda in dark glasses, trench coat collar turned up, leaning against his Maserati. Charming. A radial tire commercial. I shook the image off and returned to my blinds.
At five, I walked to Harajuku and wandered through the teenybopper stalls along Takeshita Street. There was plenty of stuff inscribed with Kiss and Iron Maiden and AC/DC and Motorhead and Michael Jackson and Prince, but Elvis? No. Finally, after visiting several stores, I found what I was looking for: a badge that read ELVIS THE KING.
Then to Tsuruoka’s for tempura and beer. The sun went down, the hours passed. My Pacman kept crunching away at the dotted lines. I was making no progress. Getting closer to nothing. Even as the lines seemed to be multiplying. But lines to Kik
i were nowhere to be seen. I’d been sent off on detours. Energies expended on sideshows, never on the main event. Where the hell was the main event? Was there a main event?
Free until after midnight, I went to see Paul Newman in The Verdict. Not a bad movie, but I kept losing myself in thought and losing track of the story. I was expecting Kiki’s naked back to appear on screen at any moment. Kiki, Kiki, what did you want from me?
The end credits came on and I left the theater, hardly having any grasp of the plot. I walked, stepped into a bar, and had a couple vodka gimlets. I got back home at ten and read, waiting for Gotanda to call.
I eventually tossed my book aside and lay back in bed. I thought about Kipper. Dead and buried, quiet in the quiet ground.
The next thing I knew the room was flooded with silence. Waves of helplessness washed over me. I needed to rouse myself. I closed my eyes and counted from one to ten in Spanish, ending in a loud finito and a clap of the hands. My own spell to conquer helplessness. One of the many skills I’d acquired living alone. Without these tricks I may not have survived.
It was twelve-thirty when Gotanda called.
“Things have been crazy. Sorry about the late hour, but could I ask you to drive to my place this time?”
No problem, I told him, and I was on my way.
He came down immediately after I rang the doorbell. To my surprise, he really had a trench coat on. Which did suit him. No dark glasses though, just a pair of normal glasses, which gave him the look of an intellectual.
“Again, sorry this had to be so late,” Gotanda said as we greeted each other. “What a day it’s been. Incredibly busy. And I have to go to Yokohama after this. A shoot first thing in the morning, so they booked me a room.”
“Why don’t I drive you there?” I offered. “We’d have more time to talk, and it’d save you some time too.”
“Great, if you’re sure you don’t mind.”
Not at all, I assured him, and he quickly got his things together.
“Nice car,” he said as we settled into the Subaru. “Honest, it’s got a nice feel to it.”
“We have an understanding.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, nodding as if he understood.
I slid a Beach Boys tape into the stereo and we were on our way. As soon as we got on the expressway to Yokohama, it began to drizzle. I turned on the wipers, then stopped them, then turned them on again. It was a very fine spring rain.
“What do you remember about junior high?” Gotanda asked out of nowhere.
“That I was a hopeless nobody,” I answered.
“Anything else?”
I thought a second. “You’re going to think I’m nuts, but I remember you lighting Bunsen burners in science class.”
“What?”
“It was just, I don’t know, so perfect. You made lighting the flame seem like a great moment in the history of mankind.”
“Well of course it was,” he laughed. “But, okay, I get what you mean. Believe me, it was never my intention to show anybody up. Even though I guess I did look like a prima donna. Ever since I was a kid, people were always watching me. Why? I don’t know. Naturally I knew it was happening, and it made me into a little performer. It just stuck with me. I was always acting. So when I actually became an actor, it was a relief. I didn’t have to be embarrassed about it,” he said, placing one palm atop the other on his lap and gazing down at them. “I hope I wasn’t a total shit, or was I?”
“Nah,” I said. “But that’s not what I meant at all. I only wanted to say you lighted that burner with style. I’d almost like to see you do it again sometime.”
He laughed and wiped his glasses. With style, of course. “Anytime,” he said. “I’ll be waiting with the burner and matches.”
“I’ll bring a pillow in case I swoon,” I added.
We laughed some more. Then Gotanda put his glasses back on and turned the stereo down slightly. “Shall we get on with our talk, about that dead person?”
“It was Mei,” I said flat out, peering out beyond the wipers. “She’s been murdered. Her body was found in a hotel in Akasaka, strangled with a stocking. Killer unknown.”
Gotanda faced me abruptly. It took him three or four seconds to grasp what I had said, then his face wrenched in realization. Like a window frame twisting in a big quake. I glanced over at him out of the corner of my eye. He seemed to be in shock.
“When was she killed?” he asked finally.
I gave him the details, and he was quiet again, as if to set his feelings in order.
“That’s horrible,” he finally said, shaking his head. “Horrible. Why? Why would anyone kill Mei? She was such a good kid. It’s just—” He shook his head again.
“A good kid, yes,” I said. “Right out of a fairy tale.”
He sighed deeply, his face suddenly aged with fatigue. Until this moment he had managed to contain an unbearable strain within himself. Yet, even fatigue was becoming to him, serving as a rather distinguished accent on his life. Unfair to say, I suppose, hurt and tired as he was. Whatever he touched, even pain, seemed to turn to refinement.
“The three of us used to talk until dawn,” Gotanda spoke, his voice barely a whisper. “Me and Mei and Kiki. Maybe it was right out of a fairy tale, but where do you even find a fairy tale these days? Man, those times were wonderful.”
I stared at the road ahead, Gotanda stared at the dashboard. I turned the wipers on and off. The stereo played on, low, the Beach Boys and sun and surf and dune buggies.
“How did you know she’d been killed?” Gotanda asked.
“The police hauled me in,” I explained. “I’d given Mei my business card, and she had it deep in her wallet. Matter of fact, it was the only thing on her with any kind of name. So they picked me up for questioning. Wanted to know how I knew her. A couple of tough, dumb flatfoots. But I lied. I told them I’d never seen her before.”
“Why’d you lie?”
“Why? You were the one introduced us, buying those two girls that night, right? What do you think would’ve happened if I’d blabbed? Have you lost your thinking gear?”
“Forgive me,” he said. “I’m a little confused. Stupid.”
“The cops didn’t believe me at all. They could smell the lies. They put me through the wringer for three days. A thorough job, careful not to infringe on the law. They never touched me, bodily, that is. But it was hard. I’m getting old, I’m not what I used to be. They pretended they didn’t have a place for me to sleep and threw me in the tank. Technically, I wasn’t in the tank because they didn’t lock the door. It was no picnic, let me tell you. You think you’re losing your mind.”
“Know what you mean. I was held for two weeks once. Not pleasant. I didn’t get to see the sun the whole time. I thought I’d never get out. It gets to you, how they ride you. They know how to break you,” he said, staring at his finger-nails. “But three days and you didn’t talk?”
“What do you think? Of course not. If I started in midway with ‘Well, actually—,’ it’d be all over. Once you take a line, you’ve got to stick by it to the end.”
Gotanda’s face twisted again. “Forgive me. Introducing you to Mei and getting you caught up in this mess.”
“No reason for you to apologize,” I said. “I thoroughly enjoyed myself with her. That was then. This is something else. It’s not your fault she’s dead.”
“No, it’s not, but still you had to lie to the cops for me. You got dragged into the middle of it. That was my fault. Because I was involved.”
I turned to give him a good hard look and then went straight to the heart of the matter. “That isn’t a problem. Don’t worry about it. No need to apologize. You got your stake and I respect it, fully. The bigger problem is, they weren’t able to identify her. She’s got relatives, hasn’t she? We want to catch the psycho who killed her, don’t we? I would have told them everything if I could. That’s what’s eating me. Mei didn’t deserve to die that way. At the least, she should have a name.
”
Gotanda closed his eyes for so long I almost thought he’d gone to sleep. The Beach Boys had finished their serenade. I pushed the EJECT button. Everything went dead silent. There was only the drone of the tires on the wet asphalt.
“I’ll call the police,” Gotanda intoned as he opened his eyes. “An anonymous phone call. And I’ll name the club she was working for. That way they can get on with their investigation.”
“Genius,” I said. “You’ve got a good head on your shoulders. Why didn’t I think of it? But suppose the police put the screws to the club. They’ll find out that a few days before she was killed, you had Mei sent to your place. Bingo, they’ve got you downtown. What’s the point of me keeping my mouth shut for three days?”
“You’re right. You got me. I am confused.”
“When you’re confused,” I said, “the best thing to do is sit tight and wait for the coast to clear. It’s only a matter of time. A woman got strangled to death in a hotel. It happens. People forget about it. No reason to feel guilty. Just lie low and keep quiet. You start acting smart now, you’ll only make things worse.”
Maybe I was being hard on him. My tone a little too cold, my words too harsh, but hell, I was in this pretty deep too. I apologized. “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to light into you like that. I couldn’t lift a finger to help the girl. That’s all, it’s not your fault.”
“But it is my fault,” he insisted.
Silence was growing oppressive, so I put on another tape. Ben E. King’s “Spanish Harlem.” We said nothing more until we reached Yokohama, an unspoken bond between us. I wanted to pat him on the back and say it’s okay, it’s all over and done with. But a person had died. She was cold, alone, and nameless. That fact weighed more heavily than I could bear.
“Who do you think killed her?” asked Gotanda much later.
“Who knows?” I said. “In that line of work, you get all types. Anything can happen.”