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© Mitchell Cullin
Mitchell Cullin
Earlier, the guy behind the counter at Mac's Pretzels in the mall recognized Takashi Shimura from a picture in the newspaper, and now the woman who works at Full Circle Compact Discs mentions she saw him last night on Action 7 news. "You're all over the place," she says, in the smiley, obvious, I've got you pegged, too familiar way that bugs him. "You're a hero."
"I guess," he says with a shrug. He had been minding his own business, checking song titles on the new Elastic Surf CD--Brain Damage Breakfast, Tomorrow Means Nothing Else, Sit & Spin--when she brushed against him at the display. He thought she looked like an enchantress, all white skin and black lipstick, with a silver pentagram trinket around her slender neck. "Are you a real witch?"
"Sometimes," she says. "When I need to be." So Takashi asks her if the Elastic Surf CD is any good, but she says it isn't. "It's even worse than the last one." Then she mentions how mournful his brown, slightly mismatched eyes appear. "You're fifteen, right?"
"Sixteen in March," he says.
"Hero, you're too young to have such sad eyes."
His sullen expression, Takashi supposes, is the result of nerves and muscles strung too loose. Three days ago, a newspaper article described him as "a soft-spoken teenager with a reserved demeanor." Close enough. After all, he saved six children between the ages of four and thirteen and their two adult babysitters, both in their seventies, from a burning mobile home. One nine-year-old boy died in the house. Now, as the part-time witch reminded him, he is everywhere. Another reporter phoned the apartment yesterday to discuss a human interest story. On Monday, Principal Richardson put an arm around his shoulders and said, "We're proud of you, son. All of us." But the attention is unwanted, forced, altogether disquieting. There was a recent time when he was no one; a slouched, hands-in-pocket boy, ambling around without much bother or notice. He was not a hero then, just a stoner, or a skater punk, depending on the perspective, who most girls didn't talk to in the halls, or even stand behind at the water fountain. Jocks didn't slap his neck in a friendly manner. He could disappear after fourth period without being missed by his peers, and that was only last week. To make matters worse, strangers are suddenly praising him in the mall, as well as noticing his imperfections.
"It's just my face," Takashi explains, then he taps a fingernail against the CD jewel case. "Can I have this?"
The woman's thin, evil eyebrows scoot up her forehead. "Doesn't work that way, sweety," she says, taking the CD from his hand. "God, you're bold." He frowns from one end of his mouth and says nothing as she returns the disc to the display--at least the pretzel guy gave him a free Coke. She begins straightening jewel cases, refiling misplaced CDs, so he leaves her there.
The mall is almost empty, except for a smattering of housewives, delinquents, and energetic geriatrics. School is still in session. At the bookstore, a cardboard goblin and three sinister pumpkins dangle from the ceiling near the magazine rack. Takashi flips through a book on aquarium fish, the same book he always flips through when he comes to the mall (it's too big to steal, but the picture of the Blue-girdled Angelfish is the best he's ever seen), then he finds a paperback for his mother in the True Crime section. It's about the Lobster Boy murder in Florida. There are 16 actual photos, some showing the Lobster Boy as an adult with his plotting wife and stepson, who had suffered years of abuse from the huge, fierce, mutated fists of their provider, a famous carnival oddity in his day. Another photo has the Lobster Boy slumped over and deceased, the fleshy pincers folded under his chin like a pillow, with three neat bullet holes punched in his head.
Takashi lifts his T-shirt and slips the paperback down into his baggy jeans, securing it behind the waistband of his boxer shorts. The proximity of Lobster Boy's relief picture on the book cover, smiling and brandishing those claw hands, pressing rough against his abdomen, imprinting his skin, makes Takashi uneasy. But there is no other way to smuggle it, really, and he wants to give his mother the kind of book she enjoys reading. Anyway, she has been through a lot lately, what with the reporters and everyone in the world calling or coming by the apartment. She deserves a gift. And the Lobster Boy murder is it.
The lone bookseller watches Takashi exit the store with either mistrust or, as Takashi suspects, uncertainty. "Excuse me." A pair of blue, bloodshot peepers gaze through bifocals at the slack-fitting, frayed denim dragging around the soles of high-top sneakers. "Were you on the news?"
"No," Takashi says, without turning. "Not me." He escapes over a fluorescent lit causeway, and wanders toward the arcade with a sense of some change in himself, a loss of his space and movement, anonymous, separate, and mystifying--the price of celebrity, however meager or fleeting. Takashi figures he must alter his appearance accordingly. Tomorrow, he will return to the mall and drift from shop to shop like a ghost again. A baseball cap will cover his shaved scalp. The nose ring can stay home until all the hoopla passes, and sunglasses are always cool, even on cloudy afternoons like today.
Inside the dim arcade, Takashi pulls the book from his boxers. He moves Lobster Boy to a back pocket, a more agreeable location, where the pages bulge thick, obvious, cumbersome. Advancing toward Samurai Fury, he finds his last two quarters and grits his teeth in anticipation of battle.
*****
Lance is busy concealing wedges of chocolate-flavored Exlax in the wrapping of miniature Hershey bars, a time-consuming and meticulous Halloween prank, when Takashi opens the front door while still knocking. "Get your Jap ass in here," he says in a loud, animated drawl, so affected, so Texan, so obnoxious, and so Lance that it pushes a grin from Takashi's lips. "Who are you this week anyway? Aaron? Mike? Travis?"Since the seventh grade, Takashi has changed his name often, three or four times a month by Lance's estimation. It began as a joke more than anything else. One afternoon he'd go down to the library and get another new library card and show it to his friends the next day. Apple Shimura. Ellen Shimura. King Bee Shimura. Last year he settled on an array of fish names. Thicklipped Gourami Shimura. Sarcastic Fringe Head Shimura. Oily Gudgeon Shimura. Black Phantom Tetra Shimura. The library no longer issues him new cards though, and lately he's been thinking seriously about a permanent and real moniker. Something like Lance. An all-American guy's epithet. Brad. Steve. Perhaps Norman. Norman Shimura. Of course, thanks to the local newspapers and network affiliates, his given name is now well-known all over town, unavoidable and persistent.
"I'm no one," Takashi says, putting himself on the couch beside Lance. "Just me. Just Takashi."
"Sorry to hear that," Lance says, preoccupied. He removes his flimsy, straw cowboy hat, flicks it across the living room, where it almost nails his mother's sleeping orange tabby on the recliner chair. "Damn." He brings a hand through his shoulder-length hair, then dips his fingers into the plastic pumpkin on the coffee table. "I'm about out of Exlax. Think you could give me some help with this?" He retrieves a palm-full of Tootsie Rolls, peanut brittle, and tiny Hershey Bars.
"No," says Takashi, who pays little attention as Lance separates the Hershey Bars from the rest of the candy. There isn't much on the coffee table except the pumpkin, an empty Miller Lite beer can, and the tools of Lance's perverse caper--a roll of aluminum foil, three boxes of laxative, a kitchen knife, and a ruler.
"You skip all day?" Lance asks while dropping the peanut brittle and Tootsie Rolls back into the pumpkin.
"Just after lunch."
Takashi comes to visit Lance when he blows off his afternoon classes. Lance is the wildest person he knows, in the way that a caged bronc can be said to be contained but volatile. He is also funny and stubborn, a high school dropout who lives with his parents and works part-time at High Plains Skate & Cycle.
"Couple of longnecks in the fridge," Lance tells him. "Help yourself. Pop won't miss them. Fucker can't ever remember what he's drunk or not." He spreads the Hershey Bars out in a neat row on the coffee table, takes the kitchen knife, and leans forward to continue his dirty work.
"No thanks, but thanks anyway," Takashi says. "I'm going to the aquarium after Paulo gets home from the assembly." He crosses his legs on the couch, clamps his hands around his ankles, and stares to where a TV broadcasts the ending credits of General Hospital with the volume turned low.
"Shit, don't even ask me to go," Lance says. "No offense, the thought of another fish trip gets me all saggy below the belt. Hey, ask someone about a job there, then you'd be around them fish all the time."
"Wouldn't be so bad," Takashi says without ardor.
Even if a person has seen them a million times, Takashi figures, the Red-tailed Black Shark, the Raccoon Butterflyfish, and the elongated Coolie Loach are reasons enough to wander the dark, humid aisles of the aquarium at least once a month. At first he had thought that Lance no longer liked going to the aquarium because Paulo is gay and always tags along. But now he realizes that, so passionate is Lance's feeling for all things visceral--the slam of Monster Truck wheels, the crunch of football helmets, the felled buck with the crossbow arrow deep in its neck--he is unable to appreciate the delicate, ornamental qualities of some marine life, unless, as has been the case, a joint is smoked beforehand.
"You and Paulo come around tonight," Lance says. "Mike's bringing a lid over soon as the folks crash."
"I'll see. Maybe." Takashi follows Lance's fingers as he creases aluminum around a measured and cut portion of chocolate laxative. "You know how Paulo is."
"Ah, screw Paulo. Don't get me wrong, he's okay and all, but he sure puts a strain on a good time."
"Shouldn't call him faggot so much, that's all. It bugs him."
"God, it ain't like he ain't queer or nothing. Haven't called him cocksucker, at least to his face. Jesus Christ, son, there you are again!"
Lance is looking at the muted TV. And Takashi is too. An Action 7 news break between soap operas shows the charred hull of the mobile home in daylight, desolate and hollow, with the sky visible through a broken window where the ceiling should be. A quick cut goes to the night of the fire, the mobile home consumed and filmed from across the street, a small crowd of passive spectators on the sidewalk. Then Takashi appears, sooty and stunned and nervous, squinting under the halogen glare of a single video camera's lamp attachment; an arm sleeved in crimson polyester reaches into the frame to aim a microphone at his chin. The mug shot of Snoopy Garcia, the mental case who started the blaze, is inserted, followed by the brief image of paramedics carrying a body bag buoyed with the insubstantial remains of a child. The TV screen fades to black, and then a commercial for Conroy A.C. Auto Service begins. Takashi glances at the plastic pumpkin on the coffee table.
"Now that you're a regular superstar," Lance says, "maybe you'll get pussy. Maybe you can get some chicas to come on over and share that lid with us."
"I don't know, Lance," Takashi replies, sounding mopey and glum.
Lance fixes him with a blue gaze. "Not too happy to mention this, Tak, but you're a real drag of late--know it?" His expression is suddenly stern, reminding Takashi of how Lance scowls in the mosh pit, shirtless, glistening, with elbows flailing, so angry at everything and nothing at all. "Here," he says, "give this to Paulo," and flips a phony Hershey Bar like a coin.
*****
Takashi stands outside Paulo's bedroom window, watching through parted curtains as Paulo, unaware, drops his backpack to the floor, turns the stereo on and up, then belly flops onto his mattress. Hidden behind bushes on the narrow trail that runs between the hedge row and the house, Takashi smokes his last Camel. Inside, Paulo thumbs through some magazine he has pulled from between the bed and box spring, but Takashi can't see what the magazine shows, nor does he really care. He exhales smoke in a steady, directed stream, which dissipates across the window pane nearest his face.The Halloween yards Takashi crossed on his way here--yards where jack-o'-lanterns grinned from porch steps at yellowing lawns--made him think that fall has arrived unwelcome and too soon. With the maples shedding their leaves, the quality of light contrasting gold and dark to greater degrees, and the air becoming sharper, carrying the woodsy aroma of fireplaces burning in the evenings, it's as if, he believes, everything he moves past is steeped in despair. Moreover, he fears he is solely to blame. When he walks under trees, leaves plunge in his wake. The grass his sneakers tramp over cracks and withers. Earlier, a black cat hissed at him from the hood of a Pontiac. No doubt, when he goes near that Pontiac again, the cat will be on its side and dead.
Takashi takes a final drag on the cigarette. He flicks the butt to the ground, stomps it flat, then knocks on the window, half-shouting, "Boo!"
Paulo's head comes out of the magazine, startled, abashed, his mouth turned into a gaping, almost circular black hole betraying the metal of a retainer. He spots Takashi smirking at the window above the headboard of the bed, and slowly his lips loosen. "I'm not letting you in," Paulo says. "Not now!"
"Okay," says Takashi, who lifts and drops his shoulders once, then steps backwards into the hedge.
"Stupid, get back here!" Paulo crawls across unmade sheets to the headboard. When he flips the latch to open the window, he is standing on a pillow with the weight of his wafer-sliced body, his socked feet, testing the springs of the mattress. Takashi stares up at him as he climbs through the window and tumbles to the bed. "We've got a front door," Paulo says.
"I know that," Takashi says. He stretches out on his side, lets his legs dangle over the edge of the mattress, and pushes off his shoes. Paulo's magazine is crumpled beneath his rib cage, so he extracts it carefully, smoothing a few pages before taking in the contents.
"Be warned," Paulo says, shutting the window. "Not so sure it's your thing. No tits." He pulls the curtains together, then places himself alongside Takashi, the magazine between them and their propped elbows.
"Weird," Takashi says. His fingers keep a careful distance from the men in the magazine, who are posed alone in a locker room shower, naked, or in a state of undress--a T-shirt slung across wide shoulders, a jock strap or boxer shorts pushed around muscular thighs, seductive bodies, youngish, lean, with hard-ons and shaved balls. "Where'd you get this?"
"It's a secret," Paulo says. "I can't tell. My aunt said she'd murder me."
But Takashi knows all about Paulo's aunt in Lubbock, the lesbian who owns a used bookstore near Texas Tech. He knows about Paulo too, because during their freshman year, Paulo finally admitted that he was queer. They were getting drunk at Lance's place, playing poker one night, doing shots of Cuervo, when Lance said, "If you could screw any chic on the planet, any ol' one, who would it be? My pick is Cindy Crawford. Cindy Crawford, or that whacked chic who married that ancient millionaire guy."
"What's-her-name Nicole Smith?"
"Yeah, her too."
"Damn, I'm not sure," Takashi said. "Probably someone like Demi Moore, I guess. Ione Skye's good."
"I just like guys." Paulo paused. "Don't know why. Just do. The dead guy from Joy Division is hot. So is Keanu."
And it never seemed like a big deal to Takashi. Why would it? He wasn't really surprised anyway, especially after how Paulo went on and on about Morrissey, or how he started crying over the phone once when reading the lyrics of "Late Night, Maudlin Street" like it was poetry. Even Lance, for all his dumb jokes about fags farting come in hot tubs and dyke nuns with crucifix-shaped dildos, didn't appear too shocked by the revelation, saying only, "That's different, Paulo. Okay. No problem. Who gives a fuck, right? Deal the cards, Tak."
A few more revelations followed, but not on that night. There was the time Takashi and Paulo passed a joint while sitting in swings behind their old junior high. It was summer, and the afternoon was overcast and unseasonably cool. Takashi blew smoke into Paulo's mouth twice, something Lance called "a Colombian kiss," and afterwards, as they set off across the playground, Paulo said, "Don't freak, but I think I'm in love with you."
"No, you're not," Takashi told him. "You're horny is all. And you're baked."
That August, Paulo shaved Takashi's head with electric clippers he had stolen from Walgreens. Morrissey, pouty and aloof in black and white, scrutinized from four posters--one on each of Paulo's bedroom walls--as Takashi sat in a chair with a towel hung around his neck and bare chest, his coarse, black hair getting mowed away in clumps.
Later in the evening, after Paulo had bleached his own head with a peroxide developer, Takashi found himself staring at the spinning blades of a ceiling fan from Paulo's bed. His smooth scalp felt sensitive, cold against the pillow he shared with Paulo, who still reeked from the vinegar rinse he had used on his new mess of blond hair. They talked about the approaching school year, friends they were looking forward to seeing again, and how great it'd be if they both finally got laid. Then Paulo admitted to having a painful crush on Lance. "It's making me nuts, Tak. I used to think he was pretty gross, really gross, but it's not like that now." This confession sent a tiny surge of jealousy through Takashi, which seemed at once shameful and ridiculous. But Paulo said he couldn't help it, and that lately, when he went around to Lance's house, it was becoming harder and harder to just speak to him like a friend. "I turn into this dork, all stupid and shit, and he knows it too."
"Don't worry about it," Takashi said. "You'll find someone else. This year, ten bucks says so. We'll both find someone good."
They continued to talk into the night--about their high scores on arcade games, the mysterious Planet X that is rumored to lurk behind the sun, and who made a better Dracula, Christopher Lee or Gary Oldman--until Takashi shut his eyes while opening his mouth to yawn.
"Stay over," Paulo said.
"I better not."
"I won't try anything, if that's what you're thinking. I promise."
Takashi sighed. "You don't have to promise. I know you won't."
And soon they were sleeping side by side, Paulo under the sheets, Takashi on top of them. In the morning, when Takashi stirred first, he felt the warmth of Paulo's body radiating through the bedding, intense and strangely comforting, like a wash of laziness on a summer's day.
But now it's October, and anything to do with summer feels like much less than a distant memory. Takashi turns to the cover of Paulo's magazine--Manmusk, Hot & Young...& FULL of Spunk!!! "You're right, this doesn't float my boat." He shakes his head some, frowning, then glances to Paulo. "Let's go to the aquarium."
Paulo lets his elbow drop and falls back on the mattress. "I'm not really up to it, Tak. Not today, I think."
"How come?"
"I don't know. Nothing personal. I guess I'm tired is all."
"That's okay," Takashi says miserably. "Doesn't bother me. We don't have to."
Paulo sniffs the air, "Man, your feet stink," and waits for Takashi to deliver an insult in return.
But Takashi says nothing. He sits up in the bed, dumps the magazine on the floor, then folds his legs, bringing the soles of his feet together. He pushes his shoulders to the headboard, and stares down at his lap. Almost imperceptibly, he begins to rock.
Paulo rolls over and looks sidewise at Takashi. "Oh, god, I nearly forgot to tell you," he says, "Principal Richardson mentioned you at the assembly this afternoon, gave this sappy little speech about you, said he wanted to recognize you for your heroic efforts. Sounded pretty retarded to me. Then he asked you to stand, but you didn't because, duh, you weren't there. Everybody was all clapping and stuff too. You should've been there, Tak."
"Don't matter," Takashi says. "Glad I wasn't, to be honest. It's all shitty anyway, and I can't go anywhere any more without someone telling me how awesome I am or what I'm like--and I'm not really happy about anything, Paulo, because it all sucks anyway." He suddenly looks bewildered, frightened. The image of the single body bag comes to mind, somehow too real, moving across a TV screen. He has seen it played over and over again since the night of the fire. His mother even videotaped the news segment for posterity. "Screw it, if someone calls me a hero again they'd better watch it," Takashi murmurs. "Call me a hero again and I'll fuckin' rip the top right off their heads like a psycho. I mean it."
"Sorry," Paulo says warily. "Damn, where'd that come from?"
"I'm bad luck is all and I can't sleep," Takashi says, after thinking it over. "I'm just grumpy."
"Tak, you did a good thing. Everything's fine."
"Nothing's fine with me, Paulo. Nothing at all. So are you going to the aquarium or not?"
"Sure," Paulo says, nodding. "If it'll make you happy, I'll go."
Takashi stops rocking. "Thanks," he says.
*****
In the Asian Rain Forest room at the aquarium, Takashi gazes into a murky tank, and Paulo at another. They are the only people in this dank place, with its mossy-colored walls and deep-set marine aquariums filled with decaying vegetation. The tanks are fed by a waterfall (constructed of plaster and chicken-wire), which, Takashi is always quick to mention, helps boost oxygen levels underwater.
As Takashi studies a Chinese Sailfin Sucker, pursing his mouth and cooing quietly at the fish like it's a baby, tapping his fingers against the glass to get its attention, Paulo senses none of the weariness or pessimism that his friend displayed before coming here. It's as if Takashi has made a wonderful, calming shelter for himself at the aquarium. He can go to it, escape among the marine life, and nobody can mess with it. In fact, while buying tickets in the gift shop, Takashi didn't appear at all bothered when the Hispanic girl working at the counter said, "I know who you are. You're that guy, right? You saved those kids."
Takashi just half-smiled, saying, "Yeah," with a solemn expression, and Paulo thought he looked embarrassed, perhaps even a bit flattered.
"We got something in common," the girl said. Her face was coated with too much makeup, which was so different from her natural skin color that it appeared as if she had dabbed pink paint all over a brown, pocked terrain. "You know my cousin."
"Who?"
"Snoopy. Snoopy Garcia."
Takashi nodded. He imagined Snoopy's dirty blue baseball cap, the camouflage pants with holes at the knees, his toothless grin as dry grass burned under the mobile home on that Saturday night. When Takashi happened upon the scene with his skateboard, Snoopy was on the sidewalk, watching the fire and laughing, hoping that the wind-whipped flames would bring Gotam, the chief of a thousand demons. Takashi didn't learn about the Gotam weirdness until he read the story in the Sunday edition: "I saw the spirit in the fire. I just stood there, and he was happy," Snoopy told the King County Register. "I didn't want to hurt anyone. I just like looking at fires, to see Gotam and make him happy." The paper said Snoopy had been setting fires since he was twelve.
"He's absolutely whacked," Takashi told the girl.
"For certain," she said. Then, because it was nearly closing time, she let Takashi and Paulo go on into the aquarium without paying for their tickets.
Now Takashi thinks about the Chinese Sailfin Sucker. The basic color of the original species is golden brown; the one in the tank before him is of a pinkish rust hue. Three wide, dark bands cross the body vertically, the last covering the short caudal peduncle and mixing into the spread caudal fin. The head is small, and an eye is milky-white, indicating blindness. "This dude's old," he says to Paulo, who is making faces at the huge, torpedo-shaped Koi several feet away.
"How old do fish get anyway?" Paulo asks.
"Depends on what ones you're talking about."
Paulo moves toward Takashi. He stops in front of a tank full of Anemonefishes, the fish which live among the tentacles of sea anemones. The water in this tank is clear, seemingly cleaner than any of the other tanks in the room. Paulo immediately notices a small, tomato-colored Fire Clownfish floating still above the waving reach of the anemones. He taps the glass, but the Fire Clownfish is unresponsive; its compressed body rolls over like a leaf falling in slow-motion. "Check it out," he says, and Takashi steps up behind him. Paulo points. "What's it doing?"
Takashi rests his chin on Paulo's shoulder. "It's dead."
"Shouldn't it float to the top?"
"Some don't," Takashi says, leaning his head against Paulo's ear.
*****
Outside of the aquarium, Takashi and Paulo go in opposite directions after performing their ritual handshake (slap palms together, touch thumbs, curl the fingers in, pull back so the fingers lock together for a moment, separate), and Takashi reluctantly starts home. And even though he walks an extra block to avoid the street where the fire occurred, Takashi can't help but think about how the mobile home melted around him like a marshmallow--or at least that's the way he remembers it. He had called into the house, but no one answered. The front door was unlocked, so he rushed inside to see if anyone was trapped. In the living room, his attention was drawn to the ceiling, to where flames rippled overhead. Waves, he thought later. Upside-down waves on a crazy ocean.
Takashi found the children and their elderly babysitters sleeping on two queen-sized mattresses in a back bedroom--a total of eight, four to a bed. "It was weird, like they were all having the very same dream," he told Paulo and Lance. "Like they'd just finished playing and just zonked out all at once." And despite the violent blaze, he roused them and single-handedly got them to the sidewalk, where Snoopy Garcia danced and hooted nearby in ratty sneakers.
It wasn't until the following morning that Takashi realized what he'd done. "I got scared then," he explained to a reporter. "I didn't sleep that night. I kept thinking about the boy. How'd I miss him. I mean, he was in there somewhere, I know that today. But when they removed the body, that's when I knew I'd missed one. The whole thing was confusing--flames were moving up the walls, across the roof. Stuff was melting. It was like a marshmallow."
When Takashi gets home, his mother shakes her head and sighs from where she works a jigsaw puzzle at the kitchen table. She is a short, compact, plump woman. Her hair is thin and swarthy, combed straight back from a widow's peak. In Japanese she tells him Principal Richardson called. In English she says, "He said your attendance hasn't been consistent, at best." She mentions the assembly, adding that Principal Richardson told her Takashi's truancy shouldn't overshadow his heroism.
"I'll do better," Takashi promises. "I've got all these things in my thoughts. I'll get it together." Then he takes the Lobster Boy paperback from his rear pocket and hands it to her. "Looked like something you'd like. I got it new." The pages are bent in places, the binding split.
His mother holds the book at arms length, studying Lobster Boy's picture on the cover through her trifocals. "Good grief," she says. "Good lord." Then she sets the book aside while explaining about what she'd seen on the afternoon newscast. A stray cat in Boston had saved all her kittens from a burning building. "She went right on in and carried each one out. Just like you did. Burnt her all up too. But she's alive and recovering, and the kittens are fine. That's amazing, huh?"
"Wow," Takashi says involuntarily. "I think I'm going to lie down." He kisses her on the forehead. She pats the side of his face.
"Say hi to your father before you do. Are you hungry?"
"No. Maybe later."
In the living room, Takashi shakes a prayer bell five times at his father's funeral alter--a small shrine in an alcove near the TV which consists of fake chrysanthemums, worship candles, a bronze incense holder, two Shinto bells sent as a gift from his uncle, and a gold-plated urn. The centerpiece is a rather stern photograph of his father in a teak frame. He lights a stick of incense with a candle, then bows his chin once at the photograph. His father glares helplessly through wire-framed glasses with an abstracted, expressionless face. The man's receding hairline is graying, but well-kempt. It is an official portrait, a passport picture, enlarged, grainy in black and white. He has been gone for almost six years, but the ghost of him still lingers in the apartment.
In the study that also doubled as his father's dressing room, some clothes hang on a hook beside a kimono. There is a pocket watch on a dresser. An unfinished, handwritten manuscript (The Aquarist and Fishkeeping) sits on his desk. On the walls, high up, are framed citations, one of them reading: Letter of Commendation. Dr. Kenji Shimura is hereby given recognition for twenty-five years of devoted service. March 23, 1978. Signed: Chairman, Federation of American Aquatic Societies.
Takashi inhales the pungent smoke drifting off the incense. "Hello," he says to his father, "and goodnight." Then he pads along the hallway to his room, where the door stands ajar and the evening shadows touch everything.
When Takashi clicks on the lamp by his bed, he sees that his mother has been here. A folded stack of laundered jeans and T-shirts are on the floor. She has made his bed. He throws himself across the mattress, and sleep comes quickly, sinking into him without any effort or resistance. It is a heavy, brief slumber, and he stirs three hours later feeling anxious. Then he goes down the hall to the bathroom. The rest of the apartment is pitch-black. He had left his door open, and returning toward his room, he doesn't bother to put on the hall light. The door of his mother's dark room is also open, and as he is passing by her voice comes to him. "Are you up?"
"For a little while," he says.
"There's chicken in the kitchen," she says. "In the oven."
"Okay. Thanks."
He hears her mattress creak as she turns in the sheets. "You need to sleep more. It's not healthy not to sleep like you do."
"I know," he says. "I will."
Takashi goes on into his own room and shuts the door. Alone in the hero's domain, he thinks. It is an amusing thought. At the end of the day, the hero is alone with his careful crayon drawings of marine life littering the walls on construction paper. He thinks he might as well be in someone else's space, because nothing here really seems like it ever belonged to him. The box-kite suspended from the ceiling with fishing wire, the posters of New Order and The Sex Pistols and Nine Inch Nails, the skateboard leaning against a stereo speaker--none of it suggests a connection to him, and he's not sure why. It's as if layer upon layer of his self has been seared away during the week, leaving him raw and exposed and restless. This isn't altogether a bad thing--the possibilities are just beginning to creep into his mind. His bedroom is all kid's stuff, but he isn't. And no one, he knows, should feel as alone as he does now.
It is almost midnight. Takashi finds a plate of chicken wings in the oven. Then he sits in his mother's chair at the kitchen table, gnawing away, and fiddles with the puzzle pieces before him. She has nearly finished this jigsaw, which appears to be an autumnal scene with aspens on a mountainside. The Lobster Boy book is exactly where she left it--the cover turned facedown on the table--but he could care less.
Right now Lance is getting stoned, Takashi thinks. But the last thing he wants to do is be with Lance, smoking a joint and talking loud. Paulo is by himself in his room with the radio on. And it's quiet outside.
Takashi has decided. In a few minutes, he will leave. He'll go to the sidewalk, loosing himself in the anonymity of night, and wander past the glowing, smiling pumpkin faces. This is how his day will conclude--crawling through Paulo's window to where a warm place waits. And Paulo won't mind, after all. But first he must finish eating.
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