Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (16 page)

...," pointing to his son and soon-to-be daughter-in-law.

She nodded and waved them on as she kept talking on the phone.

Heading down the old stairwell, Marty was getting impatient again. "Um, where exactly are we going, Pops?"

Henry kept telling him, "Wait and see, wait and see."

Through the heavy, rust-hinged door, Henry led them into the basement storage room. He flipped the light switch and the makeshift string of utility lights crackled to life.

"What is this place?" Samantha asked, running her hands along the dusty stacks of suitcases and old boxes.

"This is a museum, I think. It just doesn't know it yet. Right now it's sort of a time capsule from before you were born," Henry said. "During the war, the Japanese community was evacuated, for their own safety
supposedly.
They were given only a few days' notice and were forced inland to internment camps. A senator at the time--I think he was from Idaho--called them 'concentration camps.' They weren't that bad, but it changed the lives of many. People had to leave everything behind, they could take only two suitcases each and one small seabag, like a duffel bag." Henry approximated the size with his hands. "So they stored their valuable belongings in places like this hotel, the basements of churches, or with friends. What was left in their homes was long gone by the time they returned--looters took everything. But most didn't return anyway."

"And you saw all this, didn't you--when you were a boy?" Marty asked.

"I lived it," Henry said. "My father was
for
the evacuation. He was excited about

'E-day' as many called it. I didn't understand it completely, but I was caught in the middle of everything. I saw it all happen."

"So that's why you never came back to Japantown---just too many bad memories?" Marty asked.

"Something like that," Henry said. "In a way, there was nothing for me to come back to. It was all gone."

"But I don't get it, why is this stuff still here?" Samantha asked.

"This hotel was boarded up with the rest of Japantown. The owner himself was taken away. People lost everything. Japanese banks closed. Most people didn't come back. I think the hotel changed owners a few times, but it stayed boarded up all these years--decades in fact. Ms. Pet-tison bought it and found all of this still here. Unclaimed.

She's trying to find the owners. My guess is that there are things here belonging to thirty to forty families. She waits for contact, someone to come forward and claim, but very few have."

"There's no one left alive?"

"Forty years is a long time," Henry explained. "People have moved on. Or passed on, I'm afraid."

They looked at the stacks of luggage in silence. Samantha touched the thick cloak of dust on a cracked leather steamer trunk.

"Pops, this is fascinating, but why are you showing us this?" Marty still looked a little confused eyeing the rows of boxes piled to the ceiling. "Is this what you really brought us here for?"

For Henry, it was as if he had stumbled into some unseen room in the house he

had grown up in, revealing a part of his past Marty never knew existed. "Well, I asked you to come here because I could use your help looking for something."

Henry looked at Marty, seeing the dim ceiling lights flicker in his son's eyes.

"Let me guess, an old forgotten Oscar Holden record? One that supposedly doesn't exist anymore. You think you're going to find one here, in all this stuff from, what--forty-five years ago?"

"Maybe."

"I didn't know Oscar Holden made an album," Samantha said.

"That's been Pops's Holy Grail--rumor is they printed a handful back in the forties, but none survive today," Marty explained. "Some people don't even believe it ever actually existed, because when Oscar died, he was so old even
he
didn't remember recording it. Just some of his bandmates, and of course Pops here--"

"I bought it. I
know
it existed," Henry interrupted. "But my parents' old Victrola wouldn't play it."

"So where is it now, the one you bought?" Samantha asked, prying the lid off an old hatbox, wrinkling her nose at the musty smell.

"Oh, I gave it away. Long time ago. I never even listened to it."

"That's so sad," she said.

Henry just shrugged.

"So you think one might be in here? Among all these boxes? One might have survived all these years?"

"That's what I'm here to find out," Henry said.

"And if so, who did it belong to?" Marty interrupted, wondering. "Someone you knew, Pops? Someone your old man didn't want you hanging out with on the wrong side of town?"

"Maybe," Henry offered. "Find it and I'll tell you."

Marty looked at his father, and the mountains of boxes, crates, trunks, and suitcases. Samantha squeezed Marty's hand for a moment, smiling. "Then I guess we'd better get started," she said.

Records

(1942)

When Henry told Keiko about his wild ride down South King the night before, she burst out laughing. She searched the lunch line and giggled almost as hard when she saw Denny Brown appear. He wore a defeated scowl, like an angry, whipped mutt. His cheeks and nose were scabbed over from where his face had skidded along the pavement after his fall.

Denny disappeared into the herd of hungry kids. They stampeded by making their normal abnormal faces as Henry and Keiko dished up a gray mess that Mrs. Beatty soberly called Spam a la king. The bubbling sauce had a subtle green tint to it, almost metallic in its sheen, glossy like a fish's eyeball.

All week long, they scraped out the empty steamer trays and dumped the leftovers in the garbage. Mrs. Beatty didn't believe in saving leftovers. Ordinarily, she had Henry and Keiko place the food scraps in separate buckets, to be retrieved by local pig farmers, who used the dregs as slop each night. This time, though, the leftovers went in the regular garbage cans. Even pigs have standards.

By Monday, lunch was back to the same routine. In the storage room, Henry and Keiko sat on a pair of upturned milk crates, splitting a can of peaches and talking about what had happened at the Black Elks Club the night that Keiko's English teachers had been arrested and how the curfews were affecting everyone. The papers didn't say much.

What they did say about the arrests got lost in the big headline of the week--that General MacArthur had miraculously escaped the Philippines, proclaiming: "I came out of Bataan and I shall return." Buried beneath that news was a small column about the arrest of suspected
enemy agents.
Maybe that was what Henry's father had been talking about. The conflict that had seemed so far away suddenly felt closer than ever.

Especially with bullies like Chaz, Carl Parks, and Denny Brown still out there waging war on the playground. Even though no one ever wanted to be the Japs or the Jerrys, they usually made some little kid play the enemy, hounding him mercilessly. If they ever got tired of it, Henry never saw it. But here, in this dusty storage closet, there was shelter, and company.

Keiko smiled at Henry. "I have a surprise for you," she said.

He looked at her expectantly, offering the last peach, which she speared with a fork and ate in two big bites. They shared drinks of the sweet, syrupy juice that was left.

"It's a surprise, but I'm not going to show it to you until after school."

It wasn't his birthday, and Christmas had been months ago; still, a surprise was a surprise. "Is this because I'm storing all your photographs? If so, no need, I'm happy to--"

Keiko cut him off. "No, this is for taking me to the Black Elks Club with you."

"And almost getting us thrown in jail," Henry muttered sheepishly.

He watched her purse her lips and consider that comment, then dismiss his concern, beaming at Henry. "It was worth it."

Together they enjoyed a moment of silence that was interrupted by a knock on the half-open door. Scientific proof that time sometimes passes all too quickly.

"Shoofly shoo." That was Mrs. Beatty's way of telling them to get a move on.

Time to get back to their classes. After lunch she usually thundered back into the kitchen, working her teeth with a fresh toothpick, sometimes holding a copy
of Life
magazine--rolled up like a billy club or a fish bat. She used it to swat flies, which she left lying there, their flattened guts smeared on the metal kitchen counters.

Henry held the door for Keiko, who let her hair down and headed back to her classroom. Henry followed, looking back as Mrs. Beatty settled in with her magazine. It was last week's issue. The cover read "Bathing Suits in Fashion."

After school they pounded erasers, wiped desks, and mopped the bathrooms.

Henry kept asking about Keiko's surprise. She coyly deferred. "Later. I'll show you on the way home."

Instead of walking south toward Nihonmachi, Keiko led him north, to the heart of downtown Seattle. Every time Henry asked where they were going, she'd just point to the massive Rhodes Department Store on Second Avenue. Henry had been there a few times with his parents-- only on those special occasions when they needed something important, or something that couldn't be found in Chinatown.

Rhodes was a local favorite. Being in the massive six-story building was like taking a life-size stroll through the Sears catalog, but with a certain charm and real-world grandeur. Especially with its massive pipe organ, which was played during lunchtime and dinner, special concerts for hungry shoppers--at least it had been until a few months ago, when the organ had been dismantled and moved to the new Civic Ice Arena over on Mercer.

Henry followed Keiko to the audio section, a corner on the second floor with cabinet radios and phonographs. There was an aisle with long cedar racks of disk records-

-which to Henry felt lighter and more fragile than shellac records. Shellac supplies had been limited, apparently-- another conscript of the war effort--so vinyl was now being used for the latest hit music, like "String of Pearls" by Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw's

"Stardust." Henry loved music. But his parents had only an old Victrola. I doubt it'd even play any of these newer records, Henry thought.

Keiko stopped in front of one of the rows of records. "Close your eyes," she said, taking Henry's hands and moving them to his face.

Henry looked around first, then complied. He felt a little awkward but covered his eyes anyway, standing in the middle of the record aisle. He heard Keiko shuffling in the racks and couldn't resist peeking through his fingers, watching her from behind for a moment as she flipped through rows of records. He squeezed his eyes shut as she turned around, holding something.

"Open

them!"

Before his eyes was a shiny vinyl record in a white paper sleeve. The simple, pressed label read: "Oscar Holden & the Midnight Blue, The Alley Cat Strut."

Henry was speechless. His jaw hung open, but no sound came out.

"Can you believe it?" She gushed with pride. "This is our song, the one he played for us!"

Holding it in his hands, he couldn't believe it. He'd never known an actual recording artist--never met one in person. The only famous person he'd ever seen was Leonard Coatsworth, the last man on the Tacoma Narrows Bridge before it bucked and bent and crashed into the water. Coatsworth had been on the newsreels, walking down the middle of the twisting bridge. Henry saw him ride by in the Seafair Parade and thought he was just an ordinary-looking fool. Not a performer like Oscar Holden.

Sure, Oscar had been famous on South Jackson, but this was
real
fame. Fame you could buy and hold in your hand. As he tilted the perfect record, he looked at the grooves and tried to hear the music again, the swinging sound of the horn section, Sheldon on saxophone. "I can't believe it." Henry spoke in awe.

"It just came out. I saved up to buy it. For you."

"For us," Henry corrected. "Besides, I can't even play it, we don't even have a record player."

"Then come to my house. My parents want to meet you anyway."

The thought of her parents wanting to meet him left him feeling flattered and shocked. Like an amateur fighter being given a shot at a prizefight. Excitement, custom-fit with doubt and anxiety. Fear too. His parents probably would have nothing to do with Keiko. Were her parents that different? What could they possibly think of him?

Henry and Keiko took the record to the checkout counter. A middle-aged woman with long blond hair pulled back under a clerk's hat kept busy counting change at the register, sorting it into a larger tray.

Keiko reached up and set the record on the counter, then opened a small purse and pulled out two dollars--the price of a new record.

The blond clerk kept counting.

Patiently, Henry and Keiko waited for the clerk to finish counting what was in her till. She made detailed notations of the amounts, writing on a sheet of paper.

While he and Keiko waited, another woman came up behind them, holding a small windup wall clock. Henry watched in confusion as the clerk took the clock, over his and Keiko's heads, and rang it up. The clerk took the money and handed the change back, and the clock, in a large green Rhodes shopping bag.