Bicycle Days (9 page)

He began to daydream, sometimes for hours at a time. He became good at it. He went places and did things and never told anyone about any of it. Often he was a famous child actor or a tennis star. Or both. He owned a motorcycle and rode it across the country. He stopped in places where he had never been before, but where everyone seemed to know him. And then he rode off again. He never needed anything else; he took it all with him wherever he went.

One afternoon, he went with his class on a trip to a children’s museum, where a traditional Japanese house had been built. He saw plastic figures dressed in stiff robes sitting around a low table. There was no other furniture, and he thought it must be strange to live in an empty house. And the floor wasn’t really a floor at all, but large woven mats placed together with no space
in between. The teacher told him that the mats were called
tatami,
and that Japanese people never wore their shoes inside the house. When Alec took off his shoes, he felt the reed floor tickle his feet; it moved when he did, as though it were alive in some way. And it smelled good, like running barefoot in the country.

The house was all clean emptiness and he felt close to it, as if he knew it. The wood was what he thought wood should look like, it wasn’t painted or stained. There weren’t any pictures, only tall, beautiful flowers in a bowl with white pebbles. The flowers sat on a shelf in one corner of the room where the table was.

When he got home that day, Alec told his mother he didn’t want to wear shoes inside the house anymore. But she didn’t ask him any questions this time about what he had seen and done and felt. She just smiled absently and touched his hair.

She never asked him about Japan, so he never told her how often he thought about it. Never told her that the motorcycle dreams were all gone now, that he was no longer a famous child actor or a tennis player. He never mentioned how a family had grown out of the picture of the house he had seen. It was his family—a second family—and they lived in Japan, which was his, too, because it looked just the way he thought it should, all wood and reed and tall, beautiful flowers. He had a sister in his new family, and they played cards together. His Japanese parents stayed home most of the time, as though neither of them had a job at all. And no one ever mentioned how different he looked from everyone else. Not a single word about it.

A
lec had not expected to be where he was the next weekend, away from Tokyo, standing on the slatted porch of a family-run inn overlooking the resort area of Yamanaka Lake. The trip had been Boon’s surprise gift to everyone in the office: a company offsite designed to strengthen their fraternal ties and loyalty to Compucom. The result had been a Saturday spent locked away in meetings to discuss future business strategy. But it was almost evening now, and the meetings had finally ended. Alec stood alone on the porch. Behind him, through the sliding glass door, the rest of the Compucom staff had gathered in the Western-style living room for coffee.

Alec took a deep breath, closed his eyes. The air was just beginning to cool. He thought he could smell the color of the pine trees as they darkened with the passing of the day’s light, each successive shade of green somehow richer than the one before it. He noticed the odd pattern of the trees when he opened
his eyes again. They were rooted to the hillside at all angles, a permanent and respectful audience for the lake below. A luminous cone of clouds rose straight up in the distance, almost obscuring the dark blue silhouette of Mount Fuji.

Alec heard the door behind him slide open and then closed.

“It is very beautiful tonight,” Kawashima said softly, standing beside him.

He turned, saw her face pale against the dusk. “Yes, it is. Makes you wonder how people can ever stand to live in Tokyo.”

“My mother’s family is from the country, from northern Japan. Sometimes I feel that is where I belong, not in Tokyo.”

“I’ve heard the north is practically a different country.”

“In some ways, yes,” she said. “The people there do not see the land as something to defeat or sell for billions of yen. They understand that it is their history and culture. And so they treat it with respect and try not to change it. We should all be more like that, I think.”

She was looking intently at something in the distance. Alec followed her eyes and saw a hawk soaring powerfully above the trees. Its flight was leisurely, rising and falling, utterly trusting in the air currents.

“In the north these birds are everywhere,” Kawashima said, still staring at the bird. “No other animal is so free, so strong and beautiful. When I was small, I wanted more than anything to become this bird, so I could always be strong and fly where I wanted.” She looked quickly at him and giggled, a little girl’s embarrassed laugh. “But that is silly to speak of now.”

“There’s nothing silly about that.”

She looked at him then.

He turned to look out over the woods, which had suddenly grown dark with shadows. “I used to imagine things all the time when I was a kid. To the point where that was all I’d do some afternoons—just sit and make up things. And I think I remember every one of those daydreams. Maybe it’s because at that age they feel as if they’re the only things that really belong to you. I mean, you don’t need anyone else to imagine something, just
close your eyes and you’re somewhere else, someone else. There’s a lot of freedom in that. The problem is it’s never real. But it’s not silly.”

“When you were small, Alec-san, what did you want to become?”

The question surprised him; he looked up and caught her eyes for an instant. “I don’t know. I guess it’s not what I wanted to become so much as where I wanted to be. I think I just wanted to be someplace that felt as if it belonged to me—the kind of place that I would think of whenever I heard the word
home.”
He paused. “But I guess
that’s
silly: home run, hometown, homework … there’s no end to it. No wonder I’m crazy.”

Confused, she smiled and shook her head. She crossed her bare arms to keep herself warm. “You are very strange, Alec-san. You make jokes when inside you want to be serious, I think.”

“It’s what I do when being serious gets scary,” Alec said. “You can think you’ve thought something out to the point of understanding yourself. But then sometimes things come out while you’re talking, and you realize that if you keep going, all you’ll discover are how many things you really don’t understand.”

“You do not sound happy,” Kawashima said.

He shook his head. “Maybe waiting is harder when you don’t know what you’re waiting for. But there’s got to be something out there—something worth the wait. Sometimes I think the idea of it is almost more important than whatever it might turn out to be. Anyway, I’m going on too long about this. Maybe we should go inside.”

She dismissed his last words with a slight frown. “You said that when you were small you desired to be in another place.” Her voice was steady and quiet. “What place?”

They were almost touching. “Right now this porch looks pretty good to me.”

* * *

The next day there were no meetings—Boon said he wanted everyone to relax and enjoy themselves, that he had another surprise. He led them down to the lake after breakfast. The sky was cloudless. As he emerged from the dense cover of the pine trees, Alec saw Mount Fuji. The distant peak was snow-capped, but not completely: like the full moon, there were traces of a human face, thin scars and discolorations where the snow had melted. And like the moon, the peak appeared suspended above an invisible base, disembodied.

At one end of the lake, families lay along a bare strip of beach under striped umbrellas. On the paved path, a narrow band around the lake, children expertly weaved their bicycles through the crowds of pale, middle-aged men and women in hats and sunglasses. Boon led the group to a dock where an elderly man with one cloudy eye rented pedal boats, each one in the shape of a swan. The huge birds flocked expectantly, the long necks arching gracefully skyward, the glass orbs catching the sun as the boats bobbed gently on the water.

When Boon went to pair everybody up, Alec turned, found himself standing next to Kawashima’s office-mate, Takahara. He groaned inwardly, remembering the disturbing ferocity with which Takahara had eaten soba during their one lunch together. But there was no time to change position in line. Like Noah’s animals, they stepped by twos into the great white birds. The old man winked his cloudy eye and sent them off with a strong shove.

Once out on the lake, Alec turned to Takahara, who was busy watching the stem of ash on his cigarette grow longer.

“We might go faster if you pedal, too.”

Takahara was wearing a maroon velour warm-up suit. Thick-rimmed sunglasses covered most of his face. With the part that was still visible, he looked surprised.

“Me pedal, Alec-san? I am sailor, not bird boater.” He turned back to his cigarette; the ash was improbably long.

Alec looked carefully at the cigarette, at the face, at the velour suit. “I see,” he said.

“I should be in big sailboat,” Takahara said.

“You’re telling me.”

Takahara didn’t get it. “With many women.” He gave Alec a conciliatory leer.

Ahead and to the right, another swan boat moved steadily along. There was a glint of sunlight reflecting off glass, and Alec knew it must be Park. Drawing closer, he saw that Kawashima was with him, her hair tied back from her face. Moving slowly in opposite directions, the two boats drew momentarily abreast of each other. Park and Kawashima smiled and waved, Alec returned the gesture. Beside him, Takahara remained inert. Looking over his shoulder, Alec caught a glimpse of Kawashima’s legs working the pedals, her white cotton shorts cuffed at the thigh. He hoped he would dream about her that night, so he could be alone with her. This time he would kiss her.

Takahara threw the stub of his cigarette into the water. Within seconds, he had lit up a new one. “And so, good thing not be in bird with those two. Eh, Alec-san?”

Alec looked over at him, at the legs that weren’t pedaling. “Actually, they looked to me as if they were having a good time.”

“Good time?” Takahara scoffed, thick smoke pouring out of his nostrils. “Not good time. Terrible time. Why?” He laughed. “Because he is Korean. And she is a strange woman. Yes, very bad to be in that bird.”

Alec tried to keep his voice neutral. “You’re wrong. She’s not strange, and neither is Park.”

“I tell you, Alec-san, she is strange. Yes, old and strange. And he is Korean, and Korean and Japanese for long time do not like the other. Japanese are always very good. But Koreans are not so good; always, they work so hard, and do not laugh. They see Japanese and become angry that we have better living.”

Alec wondered whether Takahara’s idea of better living had something to do with his freedom to wear maroon velour warm-ups; or to smoke more cigarettes than any human on
earth; or to attack more unsuspecting females in the berth of his boat than Bluebeard himself had ever managed.

“So why don’t you work for a Japanese company?”

“It is simple,” Takahara said, cigarette still burning between his middle fingers. “At Japanese company, there is no freedom, no weekends. I have no time to go sailing, or ask women to come to the water.”

Alec’s legs were killing him. He glared at Takahara, whose warm-up suit looked as if it had just been pressed. It took all his restraint to keep from hurling him into the water.

Takahara grunted. “You have girlfriend, Alec-san? Maybe beautiful American girl?”

Alec said, “No, she’s Japanese. A model who’s secretly related to the imperial family.”

“What?”

“Nothing. A joke. No action for me.”

“No action? You should buy boat, Alec-san,” Takahara said, and started laughing loudly.

Alec punched him playfully on the arm. “That’s funny, Takahara-san.” He turned away from him to look at Mount Fuji in the distance.

Takahara noticed him staring at the mountain. “Fuji-san is beautiful today. Eh, Alec-san? Maybe later, we drive to snack bar at top.”

Alec could not take his eyes off the luminous peak. The swan boat drifted, leaving only the hint of a wake.