Bicycle Days (4 page)

Alec nodded his head slowly, looking at her dark eyes. “That’s okay.”

She smiled faintly. “Yes. Perhaps it is.”

The coffee machine was in the communications room. Alec stood beside it, fixing himself a cup. Electronic noises buzzed around him. The fax machine slowly spit out a document. One of the secretaries leaned over the copying machine, adding more paper. A man in a lab coat peered into the circuitry of a PC terminal, then back into his tool bag. The nondairy creamer had stuck to the bottom of the jar. Alec tried to loosen it with a spoon.

Takahara flew by, heading down the hallway toward another part of the office. Ten seconds later, he was standing next to Alec, grinning.

“It was you, Alec-san, so I stop. Maybe we have lunch together? I know very good soba restaurant. Very delicious and very close. So, we go?”

Alec managed to scrape out a half-spoonful of powder. He stirred it into the coffee and took a sip, thinking about his options. No one else had invited him to lunch. And Takahara was blocking the doorway.

He said, “I would like that very much, Takahara-san. Thank you for asking.”

As they walked out, Alec threw the coffee in the trash can. Bowl and mouth were connected by long strands of pasty white soba. Chopsticks were held poised in midair at the median, offering limited structural support to the wavering band of noodles. Droplets of brownish broth hung suspended on every surface, waiting. And then the noise began, the noodles disappeared, the drops splattered.

* * *

The soba shop was small and crowded. The walls, tables, and counter were made of plain wood of identical grain and color, as if they had been carved from the massive trunk of a single tree. Red paper lanterns with dark touches of Japanese calligraphy hung lightly from the ceiling beams. The counter was filled by a row of solitary men in dark suits, who bent their heads down into the large ceramic bowls of noodles and slurped loudly until there was nothing left. They departed in a hurry, their jackets still half-off, wiping invisible droplets of broth from their chins with the crumpled corners of paper napkins. Other dark-suited men stepped forward to fill the empty spaces. Orders were barked out in semicode, heaping bowls of hot or cold soba were served up from behind the counter. A customer called roughly for a raw egg.

Seated at one of the few tables, Alec studied Takahara’s broad, flat face. Yet all he saw was the mouth, cavernous and hungry. And the noodles, limp and helpless, being sucked up and devoured. They had just been served, and Takahara was nearly finished. Alec had not started yet; it was hard to eat with all the noise, as though a huge mouth were sucking on a melting popsicle right next to his ear. He noticed a spot just below the collar of Takahara’s textured, sky-blue button-down shirt where the broth had splattered and, behind it, the outlines of a sleeveless T-shirt.

Alec tried to make noises when he ate. With his chopsticks, he dragged the soba from the bowl to his mouth and pursed his lips like a fish; he sucked in hard. The noodles moved a little bit, but not with the same snap as Takahara’s. He wondered if he
was relying too much on his teeth, chewing instead of sucking. He caught his breath and tried again. Movement was a little better, but there was still no noise. His face felt hot and sticky. He decided to forget about his teeth and concentrate on his lungs; noise would only come with power. The soba stood suspended from his chopsticks, hesitant, like a snake charmer’s rope.

Takahara looked up from the remains of his food when he heard the sounds coming from Alec’s mouth and gave a faint grunt of approval.

On the way back to the office, Takahara grew talkative. He complained that being put in the same office with Kawashima, a woman, would make his rise to the top of Compucom more difficult. He said that Boon didn’t understand how unfair this was to a thirty-seven-year-old Japanese man like himself, who was already divorced, who had expenses and a lonely life. He lived in an apartment in Ikebukuro, sometimes alone, sometimes not. When he wasn’t working or in his apartment, he spent his time sailing. He had bought a boat after reading that women are secretly excited by the water. But he usually ended up going out alone, because most women were like Kawashima, old and boring.

“I am too sensitive for most women,” he told Alec with sad eyes. “Do you have a sister?”

It was later, around six-thirty. Alec sat at his desk, wondering whether it was all right to leave for the day. He had spent most of the afternoon copying phone numbers onto his Rolodex and filing the papers he was supposed to read. As Boon had explained it, Alec was to be the assistant manager of Compucom’s government and industry relations within Japan. This was a relatively new position, and Boon had emphasized the fact that Alec was only the second person to fill it. The original
man had not been young enough, Boon felt, to keep up with the constant eating, drinking, and late nights that the job required. His marriage had broken up.

Alec took a deep breath, telling himself to take time and see how things developed. He felt someone looking at him, turned, and saw Park, who occupied the adjacent desk. Park was in fact much nearer to Alec than the position of his desk would have indicated: for some reason his glasses weren’t quite right, and he tended to lean very close to whomever he was talking to.

Park was Korean but had been raised partly in Japan. He had already spent two years in the Korean military, received a law-business degree from a prestigious Japanese graduate school, and earned a black belt in judo. Alec had learned these facts from Boon, who had recently hired Park but still seemed to be trying to figure him out.

Park sprang back when Alec turned to face him, almost falling over in his chair. His eyes blinked continuously. “I am very sorry, Mr. Stern,” he said in English. “I hope I did not disturb your work.” Park spoke fluent Korean, Japanese, and English, though his English tended to be a bit textbook.

“No, not at all,” Alec said. “I wasn’t doing anything. Just sitting.”

Park nodded his head slowly. “I understand, Mr. Stern.”

“Please call me Alec if you want. I mean, you were in the military and have a graduate degree. I just graduated from college.”

Park’s head moved up and down again. “I am Korean, Mr. Stern, so I feel more comfortable if I call you ‘Mr. Stern.’ I hope I am not rude.”

“You’re not rude at all, Park-san,” Alec said. “In fact, I sort of like being called ‘Mr.’—it doesn’t really happen that often.”

Park’s face was inching closer again. “I understand, Mr. Stern. If I may ask, where are you currently residing?”

“In Takadanobaba. You know, on the Tozai line, near Shinjuku. The company arranged for me to live with a Japanese
family for the summer. Then maybe I’ll move to my own apartment.”

Park put his face within a few inches of Alec’s. “You are living close to Shinjuku,” he said in a half whisper. “Have you yet to visit those wonderful places they call ‘Turkish bath’?”

“Actually, I haven’t yet. I just got into Tokyo last night. But I’ve heard they’re interesting. How about you? Do you visit them often?”

“All the time,” Park said. “Many things relax.”

Alec picked up a calculator pen from his desk, began clicking the point in and out with his thumb.

“Perhaps sometime we go together?” Park’s eyes were blinking very fast now.

“Sure, Park-san. I’d like that a lot.”

Park didn’t smile but still managed to look pleased. He pulled his face away from Alec and stood up. “Would you like tea?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“It is good for the digestion,” Park said, and walked away.

Alec watched him go, feeling suddenly the weight of his exhaustion, the way he had felt it the night before when the Hasegawas were all speaking to him in Japanese, drowning him with questions.

Park returned with the green tea, muttering something about its being an aphrodisiac. Alec nodded encouragement, thinking about caffeine. He thanked Park, took the mug, and held it under his chin, letting the steam bathe his face. Around him, keyboards clicked furiously as the secretaries tried to finish their last letters before quitting time. Behind this noise, the printers buzzed from the terminal room, and people on the telephone seemed to speak louder just to be heard. The desks appeared to have drawn even more tightly together; there was no room to move.

Alec closed his eyes and thought of home.

I
t was simple at first, a kind of still-life: sky the color of smoke; a crowded street; a small boy and his mother, holding hands. And then the picture began to fill itself out. Like an old film, it flickered to life.

Alec thought it funny that he recognized himself by his walk—even then, at five years, there were signs of the heel-to-toe rock, the slight side-to-side swagger. And his mother, with her usual briskness, slowed just enough to allow for the shortness of his legs. They were walking along Fifth Avenue, just in front of Rockefeller Center. She held his hand through his thick wool mitten. Holding hands was their lifeline, she said—protection from the crush of the Christmas crowd come to see the skating rink and the great tree.

Alec’s hand was sweaty and he was tired and he didn’t like all the people. He wanted to go home. She told him to stay close, tried to pull him to the left, around a dense crowd that had formed in the middle of the block. But he was already moving
to the right, in his own direction, and the crowd came between them, moving into them, forcing them apart. He heard her call his name, and the fear in her voice jabbed at him. But by then he had felt the mitten pulled off his hand, and he knew that she must have been holding it still, even though he could no longer see her through all the people.

The world changed suddenly after that. He was no longer attached to someone who was life-size, big enough for the world and all its dangers. Now he stood alone, and his smallness terrified him. He moved in frantic circles, pushing into the crowd, looking for his mother. He wondered whether or not she would keep his mitten. He began to cry. The crowd of people moved like a flooded river, branching out, creating distances around him.

Finally, Alec stopped moving and waited. He watched and listened. Shiny black shoes scraped and battled against one another, while thin, pointed ones sounded like teeth against the cold sidewalk. Skirts and pants rustled close to his ears, the bony knees coming at him, threatening.

The darkening sky pushed down on him, making him even smaller. A bell was ringing somewhere and, behind it, a faint voice over a loudspeaker and the hum and rattle of passing cars. Alec continued to cry, but he was patient, too, as though time might wait for him. He noticed that the sidewalk was dirty. And then he noticed a pair of gray pants coming toward him—a suit that looked soft, like his father’s. The pants led to a pair of black shoes that looked shiny but old, as if they had been worn many times before.

Alec raised his eyes and saw the face of a man who looked about the same age as his father. The face had the warmth he wanted, and he stepped in front of the man, but couldn’t speak when he tried, because he was crying too hard. The man stopped walking then and bent down. Alec felt the long arm come around his shoulders, sheltering him from the people rushing by, soothing him with the gray softness. He felt himself being lifted up onto the man’s shoulders and knew that he was connected to
the world again. There was too much happening at once, and he could only point when he saw his mother at the edge of the sidewalk, his mitten held tightly in one hand. She stood in front of a Salvation Army sign, beside a skinny man dressed as Santa Claus. Again and again, she called out his name, while Santa Clause rang a bell and sang Christmas carols.

It seemed to Alec that it took a long time to finally reach her. He wasn’t being carried anymore. And then she was holding him, his red face hard against her chest, both of them crying. It would never happen again, she said. Never. Never, Alec said. He turned around, but the man in the soft gray suit had disappeared into the crowd. There was only Santa Claus, his bell ringing and ringing.

But there was more to it than that.

There was the way people used to tell them how much they looked like each other, Alec and his mother. It seemed back then as if they couldn’t walk more than a couple of blocks without someone—usually an old woman or a shopkeeper—saying how remarkable it was, how perfect. Alec’s hair had been lighter then, like his mother’s, and the women would touch his head with their wrinkled hands and scrunch up their eyes and pucker their lips at him, until he thought they looked like the fish swimming in the tank in his room. He didn’t mind it, though. He could see how everyone liked her, how pretty they thought she was. And it was enough to make him feel as though he were holding her hand even when he wasn’t.

Alec was seven and eight and nine and ten in those years, but somehow he always felt younger than he knew he was. Often it was his brother, Mark, who made him feel that way. Mark was only a year older, but he was much bigger; already he had the beginnings of their father’s broad shoulders and his strong cheekbones and jaw, his dark brown, curly hair. Looking at his brother, Alec felt none of the flush of pride that came to him when told that he looked like his mother. He felt only that there
would always be someone older and bigger than he was, someone to stand between him and the wider, more important world.