Chapter
seventeen
I called McGraw. I didn’t know where he was at that hour, but an embassy staffer put me through to him.
“It’s done,” I told him.
There was a pause. “It looks the way it needs to look?”
“You’ll read about it in the paper tomorrow, I’m sure.”
“I’ll look forward to that.”
“You owe me two more files.”
“If I read in the paper what you just told me I’ll be reading, they’re yours. Meet me tomorrow morning. You know the Nakagin Capsule Tower?”
I’d read about the tower. Completed that year, it had caused a lot of excitement in Japan as an example of a movement called metabolism, which claimed to be a new approach to building and habitation, fusing architectural concepts with those of biological growth. Each of the Nakagin’s residential units was individually attached, upgradeable, and replaceable—supposedly the future of human urban living. Today, only a few of the one hundred forty capsules are still inhabited. The rest are used for storage or office space, or have been abandoned entirely, and the building itself feels like a ghost, a monument to an ideal that was promised but that never came to be, its exterior dark with rot and rust, its once bright circular windows dull as cataract-covered eyes, an Ozymandias of a structure standing mute and helpless and alone while the city fathers who blessed the building’s birth now dither over plans to bury it.
“Yeah. I know it.”
“In front, ten o’clock.”
I didn’t like him telling me what to do. “You better have those f*cking files,” I said, and hung up.
I got back on Thanatos and headed off, thinking about where I should stay that night. I felt like Sayaka would take one look at me and know what I’d just done, or at least know I’d done something. But that was ridiculous. There was no mark of Cain. Or, if there was, I was already wearing it. In spite of everything that was going on, I wanted to see her. No, not in spite of…because of it. I didn’t have anything else right then. I didn’t want to lie awake alone in another anonymous room, with nothing for company but my own thoughts and nothing to look forward to but another set of files and another set of kills. I wanted something outside all that. I wanted something to look forward to. I wanted her.
I rode Thanatos to Uguisudani, parking near the station as usual and walking to the hotel. Sayaka looked up when I came in and smiled. I couldn’t help noticing the newness of both those behaviors. Ordinarily, she’d hear the door and pause before looking up from her textbooks, obviously caring more about studying than she did about who might be coming in for a room. And she’d never smiled when she saw me.
“I wondered whether you were going to come back tonight,” she said, as I walked up to the glass.
I smiled back. “It’s my home away from home.”
“Yeah? Well, you weren’t here last night.”
“Were you worried about me?”
She rolled her eyes theatrically. “Don’t get cocky.”
In fact, I didn’t feel cocky, though I was glad she seemed to be showing some interest. I just didn’t want her to ask anything more about where I’d been.
“Anyway,” I said, “here I am.”
“I guess this means you haven’t sorted out that jam yet?”
“I’m…getting closer.”
She looked at me. “You okay?”
I should have deflected it. Instead, I said, “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. You look…different. Tired or something.”
“Well, I am a little tired.”
There was an awkward moment of silence. She said, “So…a stay?”
“Yeah. The usual.”
I gave her the money and took the key. I was about to turn and go when she said, “In case I don’t see you in the morning—tomorrow’s my day off. Well, night off.”
Impulsively I said, “Yeah? You want to do something?”
She laughed. “You are feeling cocky.”
“I’m serious. How about dinner?”
Her laugh faded, and she looked at me with a directness and honesty I found half moving, and half intimidating. “Look,” she said. “I can’t get around well.”
“I don’t care.”
She nodded. “I know you don’t, and I won’t deny that’s something I like about you. But if you think you know what it’s like to go out with me, you don’t.”
I was mildly giddy at her protests. They all struck me as practical, and practical concerns could always be addressed, right?
“Why don’t we find out?” I said.
She was still looking at me so directly. “Because, Jun, finding out for you might be embarrassing for me.”
I realized what she was telling me wasn’t easy for her. That tough facade she always presented…it was a kind of armor. And she was removing some of it now. It was exciting, encouraging. And it also made me feel strangely honored, and in her debt. She was trusting me, and I had to show her I was worthy of that. Had to be worthy of it.
“I really don’t think there’s anything about you that should ever be embarrassing,” I said. “At least not to me.”
She smiled. “That’s sweet.”
“I mean it.”
“I know. Thanks.”
I shook my head. “Don’t thank me. Just let me take you to dinner.”
She laughed. “Okay.”
“Okay, great! I’ll find a place that’s…ground floor. You know, no stairs. What kind of food do you like?”
“I like everything.”
“Sushi?”
“I think sushi’s included in ‘everything,’ yeah.”
“Okay, I’ll find a place. Where do you live?”
She shook her head as though in amazement that I could be so dense. “Close by.”
“Oh. Right. Of course. Well, how about if we meet in front of JR Uguisudani Station? North entrance? Seven o’clock?”
She nodded. “Okay.”
I couldn’t help grinning. She rolled her eyes again and went back to her studying, the armor firmly back in place.
Except that I’d seen underneath it. A little.
I took the longest, hottest shower I could stand, then soaked in an equally scalding bath until the water began to cool. It relaxed my body, but my mind wouldn’t follow suit. I was excited about dinner with Sayaka and I tried to focus on that, tried to use it to eclipse everything else. But I couldn’t. Not entirely.
I felt…bad. Not as bad as I supposed I should. But maybe my mother’s efforts at Catholic indoctrination hadn’t been quite as futile as I’d told myself. I felt like I’d crossed some line tonight, done something I would need to account for, expurgate, confess. But I’d also felt the same way after my first combat kill. It had passed then, and I imagined it would now.
What was different, I thought, was that up until now, everything had been sanctioned by war. Well, the chinpira in Ueno hadn’t been war, but it had been self-defense, and that’s close enough. Even the civilians—and there had been civilians, and I would carry that with me forever—it had all been under the rubric of war; it had all been hot-blooded. I had been a soldier, my presence in battle sanctioned even if some of what I’d done had crossed a line, even if some of what happened had slipped out of my control. No, because some of it had slipped out of my control. As opposed to now, when I was being fully deliberate. That was the difference, and I felt like understanding it was important.
What was strange, and unsettling, was that none of it felt remotely as awful as it should have. I should have been wracked by conscience, tormented by guilt, appalled that I had done something enormous, irrevocable. I should have been gripped by what that poet said—“The awful daring of a moment’s surrender / Which an age of prudence can never retract.” I should have known I had crossed a bridge too far, and arrived in a land offering no hope of return passage.
Instead, mostly it felt like just another step, an incremental movement along a path I’d been traveling for years.