Читать книгу Things Were Never the Same Afterward - Mike JD Trial - Страница 4

At one time or another, all of us dream of leaving all the stress of our present lives behind and starting a new life. Occasionally, that opportunity may actually present itself, and if it does, we must act quickly or the opportunity will pass us by. Carol and Tal are given that opportunity.

The afternoon had turned dark as clouds blew in from the Sea of Japan, smelling like sea salt and snow. Tal and Carol stopped loading lumber into their Suzuki pick-up truck as movement up the street caught their eye.

Carol dragged Tal back into the shadow. At the other end of Yumoto village’s short main street a stranger was coming up the road on foot, a backpack on his back, sunglasses on his face. Even at a distance they could tell he was an American.

Tall shoved the last board into the tiny Suzuki pickup truck and they started for home. “He didn’t see us,” Carol said fiercely. “Let’s get back to the studio and lay low until he’s gone. He’ll never know we’re here.” They drove down the narrow track between rice fields to the empty house they’d moved into. Rural Japan had many empty houses as young people moved to the cities.

They hadn’t finished unloading the boards when Megumi’s husband appeared and told them about the stranger.

“Does he know we’re here?” Tal asked.

Satoshi bowed slightly, “Yes.”

Tal and carol exchanged glances. “What did he say?”

“He asked where Tal Roberts lived.”

Carol choked off a gasp, “They’ve found us.” She grabbed Tal in a protective hug. “At least we’ve had these last two years...”

Satoshi looked away, embarrassed by the Americans hugging each other in front of him.

“We might as well face up to it.” Tal said finally, as much to himself as to her. “I’m going to go talk to him. Find out what he knows.”

Tal ran his hand through his thinning blond hair. He was a tall rangy guy, always dressed in worn plaid shirts and jeans. He was the opposite of Carol, who was short, thick, beautiful, with dark brown hair and eastern European eyes.

Leaving Carol staring after him, Tal and Satoshi hurried down the street, the cold, wet wind tearing at them.

The wooden houses and shops they passed were empty. Megumi and her husband Satoshi ran a little store and restaurant, the only one in town. Their shop was a four-meter by four-meter room with a stove, refrigerator, a sink and two low tables on tatami mats.

Like most Japanese of their generation, they hadn’t complained when the American occupation forces confiscated their land and redistributed it. They sharecropped for the new owners during the day and ran the store in the evening. They did a good business and saved enough money to put their son through Meiji University. They knew he would never come back after graduation, and he didn’t. He took a job with the Akita city government, and only came to Yumoto for his annual visit during the Obon holiday in August.

Tal paused outside the restaurant, then ducked under the flapping blue curtains, slid the door open, and went in. He slipped his shoes off in the genkan and left them beside a pair of complicated looking hiking shoes and a worn blue North Face backpack.

The American was seated cross-legged at a table, a tall bottle of Asahi Super Dry beer and a small glass in front of him. He looked up, blue eyes behind wire rim glasses. His trimmed beard, salt and pepper like his hair, split into a grin. “Hello Tal.”

They shook hands. “Hello, Greg,” Tal said.

The wind whipped around the eaves, and the ramen pot steamed on the stove. Megumi set a bowl of steaming ramen in front of Greg. He popped his chopsticks apart and started in on the noodles. “Mind If I eat while we talk? I’m starving.”

Tal pulled over a zabuton and sat down across from Greg. “You’re about the last guy I expected to see in Yumoto.”

“Yeah,” Greg said, “Well…” He ate fast, slurping up the noodles in good Japanese style.

Megumi brought another bottle of Asahi and a small glass for Tal. He topped off Greg’s glass, and Greg did the same for him. They toasted.

“Good to see you, Greg,” Tal said, and was surprised to find he meant it.

“I’m not here by chance, you know.”

Tal laughed. “I guess not. This village is a long way out of anyone’s way.”

“Is that why you’re hiding here?”

“I don’t think of it as hiding. A new life maybe, but not hiding,” Tal said deliberately.

“Relax. I’m not here to cause problems. I’m backpacking the Tohoku circuit. I left Sendai three months ago, came around Aomori, down through Akita, on my way to Ehiji shrine. I’ll be on my way tomorrow.”

“How did you find out I was here?”

“After you disappeared, Susan hired a search service to see if—I dunno—there was a lot of confusion over the hotel fire. Pacific Life was very reluctant to pay your life insurance; the Tokyo police report was ambiguous. I did a little discreet pressuring, and they eventually paid your estate.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

Greg looked at his bowl. “You renewed your pass-port. As your corporate attorney, I was able to get the American embassy to release your address to me.”

“Susan know?”

The gas heater hissed, wind buffeted the eaves and there was an occasional rattle of sleet on the sheet metal roof.

“Susan’s dead.”

One emotion chased another across Tal’s face. “I guess, in a way, I’m not surprised,” he said finally. He sat staring at the tabletop for a long time, remembering how things had once been for him and Susan.

“I wish things, had been different,” Greg said.

“So do I,” Tal said. They sat silently sipping their beer. “You can stay with us tonight,”

“Thanks,” Greg said. “You ever going back to Santa Monica?”

Tal shook his head. “Not likely, but who knows?”

Greg drank his beer in silence. When he set his glass down, Tal topped it for him.

“You’ve got some money there, you know,” Greg said quietly.

“Oh?”

“That valve design you came up with, the one with the little micro ceramic spheres? About three months after you disappeared, Syntech made us an offer on the pending patent. I negotiated the deal. Twenty six million dollars.” He shook his head. “It seems like another lifetime. I can hardly remember the satisfaction that brought me. Maybe there wasn’t any. By then, I wasn’t feeling much of anything.”

“Sorry,” Tal said, puzzled. “I feel like I should apologize for something.”

Greg started to say something, then stopped. He slurped up the last of the soup from his bowl, then slid over to a more comfortable position leaning against the wall. “Is that sleet I hear?”

Tal nodded.

“Why are you smiling?” Greg asked.

Tal rubbed his thin blonde hair. “My mind keeps looking for the Greg I remember. The intense young corporate attorney, Armani suits, Mercedes, martinis on the terrace at Abiki’s.”

“A different person. You, too, I think.”

“This town, backcountry Japan suits me.”

Greg lifted his beer glass in what was almost a toast. “You seem satisfied. You said ‘us’ a minute ago.”

“Yeah,” Tal said. “Carol’s an American from Wisconsin. We’ve been together a couple of years now. We’ve leased an empty house—lots of them around—converted part of it to a studio. She’s a painter. Me, I’m a handyman for the old folks here. When they saw the progress I’d made on our house, I could tell they wanted me to help them with their houses.” He smiled. “They are too polite to ask, so I just started doing it. I like them and I’ve learned a lot from them. They never complain, no matter how difficult things are, and I try to be like that.”

Tal laughed out loud then. “I’m the entire Yumoto city maintenance department,” he said. “I’ve repaired all their houses, this shop, their cars. None of them have any money, and I don’t want any. They give us food, supplies, the things we need. Sometimes they give us family mementos from pre-war. It breaks your heart that their kids aren’t interested in that stuff. I’ve never felt this kind of satisfaction before. I like working with wood, the linearity, the clean scent, the clarity of a job finished.” He stopped, embarrassed. “Carol and I met in Tokyo. Back when we were both different people living a different life. You remember I was over here to talk to the firm making those ceramic spheres?”

“That little Kyocera subsidiary.”

“Right. Carol was a buyer for a department store in Milwaukee.”

* * *

Tal thought he’d have the hotel bar to himself, but there was a woman, an American, sitting by herself at a table by the window overlooking the Tokyo smog, fingering her empty Compari and soda glass. When Tal passed behind her, she must have thought it was the waiter. As she looked around, their eyes met.

“Hello,” Tal said noncommittally. He slumped into a chair three tables away, ordered an Asahi Super Dry, and sat staring at the hazy sky beyond the tinted glass.

“Still hot outside?” she said, no doubt feeling, like him, that she should say something to be polite.

“Humid as July in Florida.”

“You from Florida?”

He shook his head, “No. Los Angeles, Santa Monica. You?”

“Milwaukee.”

Without preamble, they drifted into a desultory conversation. Drinks came and went. Tal moved to her table.

The slow stream of words wound on, deepening descriptions of hard work, success, and too little satisfaction. Two strangers, chance met, far from home and alone, in need of absolution.

Dusk came and the lights of Tokyo spread to the horizon. They had dinner together at the French restaurant on the twentieth floor of the hotel. They went to his room and slept together, not making love. Later, in the darkness, they woke and resumed their conversation.

“I want more than anything else to work at my art,” Carol said. “Before it’s too late. I believe I have some talent, I certainly have the passion, and I know that for people like me with modest talent, it takes years of practice to find your voice. My greatest fear is that I will run out of time.”

Tal started to speak when the fire alarm went off. They lay still for a while waiting for it to stop, and for the annunciator to reassure them it had been only a test. But the electronic klaxon continued. Tal got up, pulled on his pants and went to the door. People were moving silently down the corridor and into the stairwell. There was a smell he could not identify in the air.

“This could be the real thing. Let’s dress and go.”

Outside, fire trucks arrived in a roar of clashing lights and ear-splitting sirens. They retired to a Star-bucks across the street, ordered Macchiatto’s, and watched the activity.

She pointed. “Look, there’s the fire.” Smoke had begun to boil out of a couple of windows on the tenth floor. Glass fell into the street.

Tal craned his neck. “A big one, too. This hotel’s going to be out of business for a while.”

They sat silently for a moment.

“I think I’d like to be out of business for a while, too,” Carol said so softly Tal could barely hear. “I changed hotels just last night. Nobody knows I’m here. I’ve got my passport and my money with me. I can disappear…”

“Me, too.” Tal patted the breast pocket of his jacket. “An opportunity to step outside of time.”

They watched the whirling lights of the fire trucks, lost in their own thoughts, comfortable in silence. After a while, they walked to the train station and took the next train out of Tokyo. It happened to be going north.

* * *

Tal refilled Greg’s glass. “You said something about some money a minute ago.”

“Yeah. The Syntech buy-out money put our company way into the profit zone for that year. You were a millionaire for about a year. But Susan was clamoring for more. She had her share, plus some more as your beneficiary, but she wanted the options on your shares, which were now worth several million.”

Tal started to say something, changed his mind, drank the last of his beer and called “Mo ni pon” to Megumi. She brought two more bottles of Asahi.

“So Susan was rich. That’s what she always wanted.”

Greg’s expression changed a little. “Well, yes, but she wanted more. It took me several months to get your options converted and sold. Actually, eight months and two hundred thousand dollars in legal fees to be exact.” He glanced at Tal. “It was always a little ambiguous as to what had actually happened at the Tokyo hotel fire since your body was never found. The official Tokyo police report lists you as presumed dead.”

Tal shrugged. “Let me guess. As soon as Susan got the money, it was more clothes, remodel the house, cosmetic surgery, vacations to all the stylish places, and a new car.”

“Two cars, actually. Susan ran through seventy-five percent of the money in a year. I was holding the rest in a trust. I’ll never forget the afternoon about a year after you disappeared. I was in the lobby of our office talking to a client when I saw her drive up in her black Mercedes 600SL convertible, her hair all silvered, big sunglasses, looking like a fifties movie star. But the funny thing was, it worked, heads turned when she came into the room. She was there to sweet talk me out of the rest of the money.”

Tal said nothing.

“I gave it to her,” Greg said.

“She wasn’t always that way,” Tal said slowly. “Not back when I first met her. Long time ago.”

“She became…” Greg searched for a word, “harsh, more driven. Very strange, since she now had what she always said she wanted. I think maybe she was realizing that her hunger couldn’t be satisfied with money. She didn’t know what to do about it. She was drinking pretty heavily by then.”

“Is that how she died?”

“Yeah,” Greg studied his glass. “Three in the morning, too much to drink, driving too fast, she ran through a red light and hit another car. Turned out the other guy was drunk, too.

Megumi cleared the empty glasses and started washing them. The wind boomed outside, rattling the sheet metal roof. Greg and Tal stared at the tabletop, neither talking for some minutes.

“She died at the intersection of 12th and Melrose,” Greg said finally. “Just a block from where we rented that office when we first started out in business, remember?”

“Yeah.”

Megumi was standing patiently near the door.

“We need to go,” Tal said.

They walked through the storm to Tal and Carol’s house. Tal got Greg situated on a futon in the studio, then crawled under the covers with Carol in the bedroom and told her about Greg.

In the night, the wind clattering the sheet metal roof woke him from a dream of Susan. Her black Mercedes lay wrecked in the foggy Santa Monica night, but she climbed out unhurt. She was twenty years old again, wearing jeans and a blue sweater he remembered, her brown hair in a ponytail. She looked his way, smiled a soft smile at him then walked away into the night. Tal lay in the darkness, remembering.

The dawn light was silver on the mountain tops when he woke. Carol brought tea to the studio where Greg was admiring one of her paintings. They ate rice and natto and miso soup and watched the play of light and shadow on the foothills and mountains.

“Greg tells me you were a millionaire for a while last year,” Carol said lightly, not sure how to navigate the waters of the past.

Tal touched her hand, warm from her teacup. “That was some other person. I’m a backcountry carpenter.”

Visibly relieved, she changed the subject. “Lately I’ve been trying to integrate the colors and textures of the old wood I find into my paintings.” She nodded toward a pile of weathered boards on her worktable. “The wood in these old buildings is amazing, the color and grain and texture, sometimes almost silvery, sculpted like sand on a beach.”

They lapsed into silence. After a while, Greg said he wanted to get going. Tal and Greg stepped outside into a windy, brisk morning. The clear air was intoxicating.

“There’s something else I need to tell you…” Greg said. “That last year before I closed the company, I was...”

“Unhappy?”

“Unsatisfied. I had money in the bank. I was paying myself six hundred thousand per year and spending every bit of it, and still felt like I needed more.” He shook his head.

Tal smiled, chuckled, then laughed out loud. “These days Carol and I live on something like thirty thousand yen a month—three hundred dollars.”

Greg grinned. “But happy, right?”

Tal shrugged, “Not always. This work is hard, especially Carol’s. But, as the Buddhists say, hewing wood and drawing water are marvelous activities for clearing the mind. That grinding dissatisfaction I used to feel is gone. I wish I could have shown Susan the way. Too late now.”

Carol came outside beaming. “There’s a gallery up in Aomori that’s sold another of my pieces—I love it!” She laughed out loud and took both their arms. “It’s funny,” she said. “I’d continue painting even if nothing ever sold, that’s what I want to do with my life, but when people buy your work—the affirmation is marvelous.”

She smiled at Tal. “I’ll be forever grateful that when the opportunity to change came our way, we took it.”

Greg shrugged into his backpack. In the strong light, the old wood of the door frame behind him was weathered into ripples like sand on the beach, the color of his silver hair and beard.

“This road goes up through that pass there.” Tal pointed. “Then it follows the river past some really beautiful lakes. About five kilometers from here you’ll start dropping down through the foothills on the other side.”

They shook hands in the bright sunlight. Carol gave Greg a hug and disappeared inside.

“You’ve still got about two hundred thousand in a trust at our old bank back in Santa Monica if you ever need it,” Greg said slowly. His tone changed, and he went on quickly. “Susan and I were seeing each other even before you disappeared. I wished it hadn’t happened. But it did. We stayed together after you disappeared, after the windfall profit, after the company folded, even though neither one of us was really very happy with each other. We were just thrown together by the stress and success of those days. After you left...” Greg stared at the distant mountains. “After you were gone, well, there was nothing left but the money. Susan was driving back to her place from my house the night she got killed. Speeding headlong, drunk, searching for something…” Greg slipped on his sunglasses. “I wish…well…”

“A different lifetime, Greg.” Tal said. “Nobody’s to blame.”

“A few months after she died, I closed my legal practice and hit the road.” Greg took his sunglasses off again. “Most people think I’ve got things backwards. They think you need to know your destination before you start the journey.”

Tal smiled. “Most people.”

They shook hands.

“Have you found what you’re looking for?” Tal asked.

“I’ve found a way to find it.”

“So have I,” Tal said.

“Well, so long. And thanks.”

“See you again?”

Greg slipped on his sunglasses, “Not likely. But then again, who knows?”

He set off down the road toward the mountains, leaving Tal standing there, watching him go.