Bicycle Days (10 page)

I
t wasn’t a dream. Once, twice, three times Kawashima rubbed her wet hands down the front of Alec’s T-shirt. She started at midchest and pulled downward to his navel. The little finger of her right hand brushed against his nipple. He almost shivered. Three times, then her hands were dry. Laughing, she said: “Now it is your turn, Alec.”

Alec moved his eyes from her hands to her face. “My turn to what?”

“To make sushi,” she said.

It wasn’t a dream. They were alone in Nobi’s apartment, making sushi. The afternoon hadn’t begun this way, just the two of them. Nobi had not mentioned her when he invited Alec to lunch. He said only that another friend might show up, but he didn’t say who. It wasn’t until he was already inside the one-room apartment that Alec: saw her. The kitchen was separated from the rest of the room by a three-part screen painting of an emerald-green Chinese dragon. Above the screen the back of a
woman’s head was visible. She was looking down, concentrating on something, her shoulder-length hair falling away to expose the pale skin of her nape. Her hand reached up absently and tucked a few loose strands of hair back behind her ear. Alec stood still in the doorway, watching her, certain now who she was. He felt Nobi’s hand on his shoulder, guiding him into the room.

“Alec, you must know Kiyoko Kawashima,” Nobi said. “Yes? She is my old friend.”

Alec said, “Old friend?”

“Yes. Like a sister. Our fathers have been in business together for many years.”

She had turned at the sound of their voices. Her body remained hidden by the screen so that it appeared as if her long, graceful neck rose straight from the fiery coil of the painted dragon. But the image only lasted a moment. Then she was around the screen and whole again, dressed in a lavender skirt and a white blouse open at the throat.

She was looking at her feet. “Alec.”

Alec said her name, Kiyoko, trying it out for the first time. Nothing came to him after that. They stood in silence for a few seconds until Nobi brought out folding chairs so the three of them could sit down. And then Nobi was telling the story of his and Kiyoko’s friendship, the history of their growing up together. Alec listened quietly and tried to think of something interesting to say. Words slipped away from him. All he could think of was his fifth-grade teacher, Miss Sherwood, how full-breasted and maternal she had been, but sexy too, and how confused she had made him feel. He had found it almost impossible to talk to her. She would call on him in class, and often he would open his mouth only to find that nothing came out. Entire days where he didn’t speak to her, couldn’t speak to her, unless he absolutely had to. Nights where he dreamed about her. And never being able to tell her—not even feeling able to answer her questions in class. For a whole year. A feeling that didn’t seem all that far away now, with Kiyoko sitting next to him in the little apartment. It never occurred to him that fifteen
minutes later she would be drying her hands on the front of his shirt.

It was Nobi who made the difference. He checked his watch and stood up, announced that he had forgotten to buy sake for lunch. He left before anyone could offer to do it for him. They watched him go. Kiyoko looked as alarmed as Alec felt. He smiled nervously at her. She said she had to finish preparing lunch, got up, and went around the screen. Alec studied the painted dragon.

He was looking at the back of her head again. He guessed he would know it well by the end of the afternoon. It seemed somehow more possible to talk to her this way, with the dragon between them. He wondered whether she thought so, too. Then she spoke.

“I am making sushi, Alec.”

“I like sushi,” Alec said. His tongue felt as useless as when he had said her name for the first time.

“At this moment, I am cutting pieces of
maguro,
what you would call tuna. I am using the knife of my grandmother.”

“One of those long heavy ones? Like a sword?”

“Yes. You must not cut the fish the way you cut other things. Not too hard or too soft. Not too straight.”

Alec was still looking at the back of her head.

“Now the rice,” Kiyoko said. “And then wasabi. A small amount, because the taste is very strong. Too much wasabi and the fish has no taste.”

Alec could picture her hands. There was grace and lightness in them, in her long fingers. They were swift and they touched everything. Fish was not simply cut, but caressed. Like soft clay, rice was sculpted into small, rounded blocks, wasabi dabbed on as though it were paint, the final touches of color.

By the time he finally decided to approach her, he was too late. He had missed the performance. He walked around the screen to find her already washing her hands. They were just as he had imagined them. Thinking of a television commercial he had once seen, he said: “Great hands.”

She turned to look at him. “I do not understand.”

“I mean, you have beautiful hands.”

Kiyoko began to giggle. “I think you must be crazy, Alec.”

“I’ve heard making sushi does that to people—makes them crazy.”

She was turning off the faucet. Still giggling. Shaking her head. Hair flying loose.

“Or maybe it’s the wasabi that does it,” Alec said. “Strong stuff.”

She was laughing now, holding her dripping wet hands out in front of her. Alec saw her eyes move from her hands to him. That was when she did it: dried her hands on the front of his shirt. Once, twice, three times. It wasn’t a dream. He didn’t see her even look for a towel.

She told him it was his turn to make sushi.

“It’s too late,” he said, pointing to the platter full of sushi she had made. “You’ve already done it.”

“I have not yet made
maki.”

“I like
maki.”

“Good. Then you can make it. Yes?”

Alec felt his head nod up, then down.

She handed him a small, flexible mat made of thin strips of bamboo tied together with string. He placed it flat on the counter. Over it he fitted a paper-thin square of dried seaweed, called nori. He stuck his hand into a cooking bowl half-filled with cool, sticky rice. He groped for a handful, then squeezed too hard. The grains molded together, became indivisible in his palm; the consistency of rough mud. He cursed quietly and dumped it in the trash can. Kiyoko put her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing. Alec looked at her, trying not to smile.

“You’re making me nervous. How about if you stand on the other side of the screen until I finish?”

“That is the way it used to be with women in Japan,” she said, suddenly serious. “Always hidden behind screens.”

Alec nodded, unsure how to respond. He grabbed another handful of rice but this time hardly squeezed at all. He imagined
he was holding a live bird. He piled it on the sheet of nori, then spread it out by patting lightly with his fingertips. Now there were three layers: bamboo, seaweed, rice. Wasabi was next, making little streaks of green on the white of the grains. And then the tuna and cucumber, both of which Kiyoko had already cut into long thin strips. As though preparing to seal an envelope, he wet his fingers and rubbed them along one edge of the sheet of nori. Then he began to roll up the bamboo mat. He did this slowly, using his fingers to realign the nori and to poke little bits of rice and cucumber and fish back into the tube that was forming.

Kiyoko said, “It is very large, Alec. Maybe there is too much rice.”

Alec finished rolling. Now that he looked at it, the tube did appear to be thicker than usual. He tried to flatten it using his palm as a spatula. A light tearing sound came from inside.

“It’ll be fine,” he said. “Nothing to worry about.”

Kiyoko smiled. “I am not worried.”

“Good. Okay, here we go.”

Alec quickly unrolled the bamboo mat. The
maki
was inside. He carefully picked it up in both hands. “How about a bite?”

She had not stopped laughing since the unveiling of his creation. “You are supposed to cut the
maki
into pieces, I think.”

“Pieces. Yes.” He picked up the sushi knife and sliced off a misshapen circle of
maki.
Palm up, he held it out to her. She reached to take the piece, but Alec lightly closed his fingers around it.

“Here. Let me feed it to you.”

Kiyoko shook her head.

“Why not? Just one bite.”

She didn’t move away.

“Kiyoko,” he said. “Please.”

His arm was still out toward her, but bent at the elbow now, closer to his body. He opened his fingers again. The
maki
sat on his palm, looking battered and pasty. He watched her take a
small step forward, watched her dancer’s neck as it extended toward him, her mouth smiling as it opened to take the food from his hand. And it seemed the most natural thing in the world to touch her, to reach out with his free hand and touch her neck, to slide his fingers down until they found her breast. He held her for an instant and felt as if it were not hours he had waited, but ages, longer than his time in Japan.

His mind was too full to notice how rigid her body became the moment he touched her, how quickly she slipped away from him. Too full to even realize that the
maki
was still in his hand. It was not until she had turned away from him and moved to the other side of the kitchen that he understood what had happened. But by then it was too late. He heard a key turning in the lock, the door swinging open. Nobi entered the apartment with the rustling of plastic bags and the clinking of glass bottles. He swept into the space, waved to Alec above the screen.

“Too many people,” he said. “The crowds were very big. And things here? How is lunch? I also bought beer.”

Alec nodded, looking at the floor. “I’d say we’re just about done here.”

Nobi came around the screen carrying the groceries. “That is good. I am hungry.”

Kiyoko stood at the edge of the kitchen, her back turned. She seemed very far away to Alec. Nobi was between them, humming to himself as he unpacked the bottles of sake and beer.

Alec said, “I guess I’ll wash up before lunch, then.”

Nobi stopped what he was doing long enough to point behind him toward the door. “I am sorry, but it is not private. Because of ministry housing, yes? To the right and down the hallway.”

The bathroom was empty. Alec splashed his face with double handfuls of cold water. Drops splattered his shirt. It seemed the coolness was the only thing that could relieve him. More and more water. He let it splash into his short hair, into his ears, down his neck. The tiled bathroom echoed like an indoor pool. The emptiness gave back to him all his sounds and movements, his splashing and breathing, until not even the coolness could
take him away from himself. All because she had dried her hands on his shirt. Because now he knew exactly what it felt like to touch her.

He turned off the faucet and, his hands still dripping wet, went out the door and back down the hallway to the apartment.

Nobi was waiting for him alone in the doorway. “Kiyoko apologized many times, Alec, but she said she had to leave on business.”

Alec didn’t move. “What business? It’s Saturday.”

Nobi shrugged. “She said she just now remembered something she promised Mr. Boon she would finish by today. She was very sorry. I am also sorry.”

“Yeah. Me, too. I was only gone a couple of minutes.”

Alec noticed for the first time that Nobi’s futon in the corner of the room was moss green in color, and that the dining room table, which was set for three, was in fact a gray metal desk taken from the Ministry of International Trade and Industry. He stepped past Nobi into the room and saw that there were only two windows, both without blinds, that the lights were all bare bulbs, that the walls were made of rough concrete. He looked toward the kitchen, to where he and Kiyoko had stood together only minutes before, and thought how ridiculous the painted screen looked now in the naked light of the room and how utterly stupid it was for the bathroom to be down the hallway to the right, a couple of minutes away.

Nobi was looking at him with an odd expression on his face. “Perhaps we should go out for lunch,” he said.

T
he area was called Kabuki-cho. The business appeared to be sex. The guide was Park. The weather: raining, mid-July heat.

Alec stood stiffly in front of a run-down building, holding his umbrella so that it partly covered his face. Beside him, a Japanese man wearing a plaid sports jacket called out to passersby to come and sample his show. Alternating between Japanese and halting English, he graciously offered a free look downstairs. Park was a taker. He disappeared down a steep set of stairs.

Alec peered out from under his umbrella. The sex shops and pornographic movie houses around him were lost in the buzz and glow of multicolored neon. It spread over the rain-wet streets and cars, over the moving pedestrians and their black umbrellas, over the corner vending machines, until the entire neighborhood was bathed in eerie fragments of wild, electric color. Shrill voices announced opportunities for sex and voyeurism. Quick, eager hands closed around crisp bills and
whisked dark-suited men down into unseen basements. The men were of all ages, many still dressed in their business clothes, as solemn and upright as rush-hour commuters going home to their wives. Alec thought they looked like obscene moving advertisements, these men, caught in the flashing neon of sex shops, their destinations etched in their faces like smiles. Then it occurred to him that he must look even worse: a dirty young man straight from Times Square. He was almost relieved to see Park emerge from underground.