Bicycle Days (22 page)

Alec looked down at his beer.

Mark cleared his throat. “Anyway, Dad gave me the money for the trip.”

“You asked him for it?”

“Not exactly. I just kind of mentioned it, and he encouraged me. I think he hopes I’ll become interested in international finance.”

Alec smiled. “Have you seen him much?”

“No. He and Janice have been in Florida since about the time you left. They’re talking about maybe moving down there permanently.”

“Florida?”

“You should know about that.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means that maybe you should’ve written a letter or called or something. Then you might know a little about what’s going on with the family. Mom’s going crazy. She says she hasn’t heard from you even once.”

Alec felt suddenly tired. “No, she hasn’t. I’ve been meaning to write to both of you. But things have been incredibly busy. It’s no excuse. I just haven’t thought about much outside of what I’m doing.”

Mark didn’t say anything.

“I’ve been working a lot,” Alec said. “More than ten hours a
day. The deadline’s coming up on this report I’m writing on high-tech trade. It’s for the head office in New York, so I’m feeling some pressure.”

“And what else?”

“What else have I been doing? I don’t know. A lot, I guess.”

“It might help if you made at least some attempt to explain it.”

“What do you mean,
help?
Help what?”

“Nothing,” Mark said. “Forget it.”

They were quiet after that, eating and drinking. Alec hated the way Mark ate his food, the way he pulled the small pieces of grilled chicken and vegetable off the wooden skewers with his fingers. When the yakitori was almost gone, Alec took a long swallow of beer and cleared his throat.

“Maybe a lot of what I’m doing here has to do with having a clean slate,” he said. “I mean, you get here and no one knows who you are or what you’ve done, except that you have a college degree and a job. That’s all they really care about at first, you know, like a stamp of approval of some sort. But after that it’s up to you. You move in with a family and start your job. You meet people. You speak another language. And then you wake up one morning a few weeks later and realize that you’ve made some friends and that you know your way around a little bit, and it seems almost like a natural occurrence. It’s as if you suddenly realize that your slate’s not clean anymore, that it’s covered with new people and places, new ideas that belong to you and nobody else. I guess it’s all about making things your own.”

Mark deliberately finished his beer. “And you feel like you’ve done that—made things your own?”

“Yeah, I guess I do. Some things, at least.”

“You still haven’t told me what those things are.”

“Not things, really. People and places. Like the family I live with—I feel like they belong to me in a way, especially the mother. We understand each other. And sometimes even my
boss, Joe. And my girlfriend. The house I live in. My neighborhood.”

“You have a girlfriend?”

Alec grinned. “Yeah.”

“American?”

“No, Japanese. She’s thirty-three.”

“That’s old,” Mark said.

“I don’t think so,” Alec said. “How about you? You have a girlfriend these days?”

Mark shook his head. “I told you, there’s really not a whole lot going on at home.”

“Things will pick up.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“They will.”

“Who are you to tell me that?”

Abruptly, Mark spotted a waiter and waved him over with a sweeping gesture of his arm. Alec saw several people at a nearby table look over. He felt his stomach tighten, looked down at his plate. The waiter appeared but wouldn’t look at either of them. Mark pointed to the skewer in his hand.

“More chicken teriyaki,” he said loudly in English.

“Mark, let me do it,” Alec said quietly.

Mark ignored him. “More chicken teriyaki,” he repeated to the waiter.

Alec coughed. “Yakitori.”

Jabbing the skewer into the air, Mark said, “Fine. I don’t care. More chicken yakitori, then. And more beer.”

The waiter didn’t move or acknowledge the comment. His face was expressionless. Alec let the silence sit for a few seconds before repeating Mark’s words, this time in Japanese.

The waiter turned and left. Noise seemed to become a part of the room again, though Alec wasn’t positive it had ever really stopped. He and Mark were quiet for a while, cautious, pausing like two blind men at opposite corners of an intersection, sensing between them the presence of something foreign and hidden and
dangerous. A man walked by the table. Alec watched him, glad to have something to do. Tight and uncomfortable, his body felt as if it belonged to someone else. He sat back, took a paper napkin from the tabletop dispenser, and touched it to his forehead. It came away wet.

Mark gestured toward the soaked napkin. “Muggy as hell in Tokyo, huh?”

“Worse than the city,” Alec said.

“That reminds me. You get a ‘Hi’ from Jake.”

“Yeah? When did you see him?”

“Couple of weeks ago. He’s an investment banker now, working ninety-hour weeks. I ran into him in a midtown coffee shop. We had barely talked five minutes when he said he had to rush back to the office. He said he’d give me a call.”

“Are a lot of your friends doing that kind of work?”

“Yeah. Just about all of them.”

“Mine, too,” Alec said.

Mark looked away. “Jake was my best friend at school, Alec. For four years he always had time. Now he doesn’t even know what the hell I’m doing. When I ran into him, he asked me how I liked my job at the bank, started talking to me about bond issues. Can you believe that? More than a year after graduation and he just assumes that I’m working at a bank like he is. He doesn’t know anything about me. None of those guys do.”

“Then to hell with them.”

Mark laughed, but it was bitter. “Right: to hell with them. So then what? I sit at home and play backgammon with Mom.”

“You never wanted a job in business anyway. Remember a couple of years ago? You told me you wanted to be a writer. I read one of your stories. You were good, Mark. Everyone thought so.”

“I thought so, too,” Mark said. “And I was wrong. I sent off a few stories to magazines. That was three months ago. You know what I’ve heard? Nothing. Not even from Mom’s friend at
The New Yorker.”

Mark cut the air with his hands, as if to wipe away what he
had just said. “But that’s not even the point. The point is that things change after graduation, practically overnight. People change. They get busy and go off to wherever to do their own thing. And I’m left hanging, watching all of them, with time on my hands to run into them in coffee shops and ask them questions about themselves, about how it is they’re so brilliantly focused and motivated in their careers.”

A different waiter arrived with fish yakitori and beer. Alec felt a wave of anger and frustration; he knew he had ordered chicken. He silently watched the waiter leave, hoping he would see him smile. Mark removed a bite-size piece from one of the skewers and chewed it but didn’t seem as though he cared very much what it was.

Alec touched him on the arm. “Have you talked to Mom and Dad about any of this?”

“Are you kidding?” Mark sat back, looking weary, and rubbed his eyes with his hand. Alec saw him take three deep breaths before speaking. “There’s really nothing for me at home right now. I mean nothing. Mom and I don’t seem to have much to say to each other anymore. She and Jerry go out to their dinner parties and come back and I’m still up watching “Letterman” or something. But that’s it, you know? Hi, how are you, good night. And that’s not enough. It’s like my life—or whatever you want to call it—isn’t even my own. The apartment isn’t mine. The TV isn’t mine. I don’t work. I hang around like an ape. And as long as I won’t work for him, Dad’s not even in the picture. He’s out of there, doing his own thing like everyone else.”

“At least he gave you the money for the trip,” Alec said, and hated the way it sounded.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Mark said. “So I get two weeks away from all the crap. Two weeks. That’s all I kept thinking before I left: two weeks and then I’d have to go back. And after thinking about it, I realized that there wasn’t much point to going back. I mean, no job, and all the guys from school are spread out all over the place. There’s just you, and you’re over
here. And as for the job, I suspect I’d have as good a chance of getting one here as at home.” He paused, looked intently at his hands. “So, I’ve decided to stay here for a while.”

The last sentence came out as an exhale, frantic and uncontrolled. For once, Alec forgot to worry about small talk and silences. He wasn’t bothered when Mark closed his mouth and leaned back in his chair with his arms folded. And it hardly concerned him that he was expected to say something in return, something warm, sympathetic, inviting. He fingered the rim of his glass and stared at the table without seeing it. Something bad was happening. That was all.

“You’re not going home?” He was surprised to hear his own voice.

Mark was sitting up on the edge of his chair now, searching Alec’s face. “That’s what I said.”

“For how long?”

“I don’t know yet,” Mark said impatiently. “Not the rest of my life or anything. But a while.”

“So where are you going to stay?”

“Actually, I thought we might live together. You know, find an apartment somewhere.” Mark paused. “It’s not like we haven’t lived together before.”

“No, it’s not,” Alec said.

“So what do you think?”

“I can’t think right now, Mark. Okay? Not right now.”

“Tomorrow night, then.”

“Can’t tomorrow. I promised my girlfriend I’d see her.”

The smell and sound of food cooking on the grill had faded away; the room was almost empty. Alec’s face felt flushed, as if he had been walking for a long time in the sun. He closed his eyes. Yet, in his thoughts, it wasn’t the sun he felt but the night, its darkness resting just beyond the window. For the moment, it seemed too much. Everything did.

“So how are the Mets doing?” It was on his mind when he opened his eyes; it was the only thing he could think to say.

“Second place, five behind the Cardinals.” Mark’s voice had gone flat, dead. “Shit,” Alec said.

The restaurant was closing. Finally, Mark shuffled on his seat, as if to get up. He put both hands palm down on the table. “Alec,” he said quietly. “I think it’s been a long day for both of us. Why don’t we get out of here?”

Alec nodded his head. In silence, they paid the check.

And then the door was open and they were in the street. They watched the cars speed by, their movement straight and free. Holding hands, young couples walked unhurried along the sidewalk. Life moved with them.

T
he next night Kiyoko was waiting for him in the doorway of the apartment she shared with her aunt. He reached out to kiss her. She brushed her hair against his cheek.

“I am happy to see you,” she said.

“Me too,” he said.

It was hard to speak, she looked so beautiful. Her white kimono was printed with wildflowers, a garden of color spreading the full length of her body. An obi ran the course of her waist like a deep red river of silk. Her black hair hung in a shining band to her shoulder blades.

She knelt down, began unlacing his shoes.

“I can do that,” Alec said.

She handled his feet as if they were delicate animals. “Tonight I will do it for you.”

“You disappeared from the office after lunch.”

“I had meetings,” she said. “And today I went home early to try to become beautiful. I have been nervous.”

“You
are
beautiful.”

“No.” She was removing his jacket, his tie, putting them on hangers.

He said, “I guess this means we’re eating in.”

“Yes.”

“And your aunt?”

“She is with my parents.”

“That’s wonderful.” He reached for her.

Kiyoko smiled but shook her head. “You must be patient, Alec. I am an older woman, and tonight I would like to do something for you. But you must let me. You must wait. Now, please come.”

She led him by the hand down the hallway and to the right, through the eating room, and into another small room that was bare of furniture. Alec breathed in the fresh, reedy scent of new tatami. In the center of the room, an iron kettle was warming inside a brazier of unpainted clay. An alcove of rusticated bamboo shelves stood off in one corner. The wood had been stained so that the knots and holes in its surface appeared like dark eyes looking out from the white plaster wall behind. A single iris arched upward from a painted bowl filled with white pebbles, reaching and then dipping, like the lovely, flowing neck of a swan.

“The iris is my mother’s favorite flower,” Alec said.

“It is also my favorite,” Kiyoko said. “At the Meiji shrine here in Tokyo there is a beautiful iris garden with forty thousand flowers. Sometime I would like to take you there.”

“I would like that.”

Kiyoko went out and returned carrying a thin cushion and a black yukata. She placed the cushion on the tatami at one end of the room and handed him the yukata.