Читать книгу Made In Japan - S. Parks J. - Страница 14

They reached the door of Ziggy’s café. Jess hammered on the glass, but no one heard, or else she had deafened them in her efforts to be heard.

‘Miho’s asleep.’

‘So Miho’s a friend?’

‘It’s her café. She’s great. Opens early and adores Americans. Some days she’ll let me eat without paying. So I wanted to tell her we’ll be two for breakfast after the bar shift.’

‘But I haven’t decided.’

‘Come on. I need some company down there. You’ll thank me.’ The prospect of the basement bar had grown no more attractive than at first. Jess needed her company and chance had thrown her no other allies.

They gave up on any response at Ziggy’s café and as they left Jess had to draw Hana from the path of a noodle delivery scooter strafing them at speed. She seemed surprised that she didn’t know to watch for them.

‘And you are a bit Japanese, right? So you are coming home,’ Jess continued, essentially thick-skinned but perhaps she needed to be.

‘Not really.’ Hana’s response was quiet.

Last night, getting out of the taxi, any expectation that she might be coming home had evaporated.

The noodle biker waved an apology and drove on with his ramen soups swinging behind him.

Hana waved back. ‘I have never been to Japan before.’ She couldn’t see why further justification was needed.

‘So the trip’s about you?’ What Jess lacked in subtlety she made up for in perseverance.

Hana could do without the analysis. But she smiled. Would anyone go travelling and leave themselves behind at baggage carousel? Was it an omission, not to have checked the occupancy rates, thus landing Jess as a roommate? But she was warm and kind of vital. And Jess did have local knowledge. Drawing her back to this, she asked, ‘So where will I find the local temple?’

Jess had never been and saw no urgency to go on Hana’s first day. She stopped at a blinking vending machine; she would need coffee before they took another step.

Hana refused either the chemically warmed or the ice-chilled can. And as if she sensed she was weighing her up, Jess bent over posturing like a sage and rolled the cold can across her forehead for comic effect. ‘Wait a minute,’ Jess said to the ground. She had found a small kitten cowering with the wind-blown trash under the vending machine. She picked it up and nestled it against her ear, walking on.

‘Wait. Won’t it belong to someone?’

‘It’ll take a holiday just for a day or so.’

‘And Noru won’t mind?’

‘Who would tell?’

Hana smiled at her new friend’s independence.

‘Where exactly did Naomi live?’ The cat was tucked under Jess’s arm.

‘I don’t know but she would have known this main street.’ Hana wondered how much would it have changed; the racket of piped music, the disarray of wares halfway across the street, signs so numerous they had become wallpaper hopelessly competing for attention.

‘You look like her?’ Jess asked.

Idly Hana imagined there might be someone on this very street that might just remember her mother and recognize some similarity, some feature or in the way she walked.

‘A bit. Not really. We enjoyed the same things. We were similar in that way.’

‘You were?’

Hana nodded and pursed her lips, and for once Jess caught the subtlety that she had lost her and said she was sorry.

Hana went on quickly. ‘She lived here when she worked on the teahouse. Around eighty-nine.’

‘So …’ Jess registered with the strike of a can hitting the pocket of the vending machine.

‘So the teahouse is important.’

‘But you are looking for your father?’ Jess tugged at the ring pull on the can.

The suggestion winded Hana. The faceless man that was her father had been a completely unacknowledged presence for so long that she had edited him out of her existence in the way that he had surely done for her. How could this stranger not realize that she shouldn’t ask? There was a time when she believed her mother had not known who her father was. A faceless one-night stand in Tokyo? But she knew Naomi too well to really believe it.

At first she didn’t respond and then replied, ‘No,’ to Jess’s open skepticism.

‘Miho’s coffee is better than this,’ Jess concluded resignedly.