Midnight and the Meaning of Love (32 page)

At the astronomy boutique, I copped a powerful pair of waterproof, fogproof, shockproof Nikon binoculars for $250. When I got to my target, I eased on my sunglasses and entered like I belonged there. Confident, I strode in like a paying customer. Perched on the thirty-second floor of a building adjacent to Naoko Nakamura’s, I adjusted the button that put the powerful binocular lenses into focus. Although the windows of the Nakamura building, the top executive floors, were covered by expensive wooden vertical blinds preventing me from seeing in, I could see through all the other windows. I looked into his place, brought so close into my view that it cast the illusion that I could just extend my arm and touch it.

I learned very little. The Nakamura building was just that, a well-built tower of expensive offices and well-dressed employees. Sprinkled in between were high-end restaurants, tearooms, and lounges. Every now and then the lens would capture suited smokers gathered in a specific area or workers conferencing at the watercooler. I peeped also what seemed like a company gym stretched out over an entire floor with all kinds of equipment and in steady use. There was one place packed with pets and another floor with loads of lit-tle children—and their chaperones or teachers. No one was using the staircases. I assumed their elevators were in full rotation, but I could not see those. The parking decks were on the lowest floor. I could view tops of cars, but cement walls shielded the car bodies. I saw some medical offices and thought to myself,
Here is a man who seems to have thought of everything, a veteran of years of “thought battles.”
My mind began to race as I tried to determine what exact advantages I might have.

Akemi’s father was my opposite it seemed. He was high-profile like an elephant that stands thirteen feet tall and weighs 8,000 pounds. I told myself,
He can’t avoid being seen. His every moment shakes the
earth. He’s so high-profile, in fact, that he must be discussed and written about in Tokyo and throughout Japan all the time.
Whatever business or events where he would appear
must
be reported, I figured. And further, if I could locate him at a specific place and time at a public event, perhaps my wife would be there also. I had to maneuver to use his high visibility against him, I concluded.

I left the hotel where I was posted as soon as I caught Chiasa in my lens outside the Nakamura building shooting footage of a gang of school kids, most of them holding two fingers up to form a peace sign. She looked happy and excited magnified in my lens. She was real comfortable giving them directions about how and where to stand. She even convinced a girl to climb on top of a statue.

* * *

“It’s done,” she assured me. “But we’ll have to go to my house to watch the footage. That’s the only way you can play the tape. And I got these.” She handed me a short stack of flyers, papers, and newsletters, as well as a map.

“Put ’em in your bag and hold ’em for me. We gotta get to Roppongi Hills,” I told her.

“Roppongi Hills,” she repeated. “Expensive taste,” she murmured. I pulled out the second Tokyo address I had for Naoko Nakamura. I was hoping it didn’t end up being a business complex like this one. I was still hoping to discover my wife there. As we moved through the streets of Ginza, Chiasa pointed out things in English and then told me the Japanese word for those things She began with the binoculars.
Sougankyou
she said.

sky—
sora

tree—
ki

car—
kuruma

bus—
basu

man—
otoko

woman—
jyosei

student—
gakusei

store—
misé

book—
hon

window—
mado

building—
biru

motorcycle—
baiku

police—
keisatsu

When she said a word that I had already learned from flipping through my study cards, I would call it out before she could translate it. The little word game was helping my language lessons to stick.

When we both saw a kid drinking bottled water, Chiasa smiled and we both said,
“Mizu.”
Chiasa crossed both her forearms into an X to show me that she remembered that there’s no drinking anything until sunset.

On the amazingly clean train with the carpeted cushions, I viewed the digital commercials and professional postings but was unable to decipher exactly what the hell was going on. I stood challenging myself to try and figure out what product was actually being promoted through the Japanese ads. Chiasa broke my focus.

“Is she looking for you? Or is it only you looking for her?” Chiasa asked, as she sat and I stood over her on the train. Her questions were spoken slowly and softly, as though she was formulating the words at the same time these thoughts occurred in her mind. I knew for sure that she was piecing things together with each speck of information I told her or she observed. I liked that better than telling her my whole story up front.

“Is she an older lady or is she a teenager like us?” she continued. “What does she look like? I mean is there anything special about her or something that stands out, like a scar or a mole or something? Do you have a photo of her?”

“It doesn’t matter if she is looking for me because I’m looking for her,” I answered automatically. “When she sees me, all her feelings will be revealed.” I believed this and was waiting anxiously for Akemi’s live expressions. “She’s sixteen, same as you. She’s five feet nine inches in her hundred-thousand-yen heels and five-four when she takes them off. Her skin is flawless. She has no scars. She has a beauty mark on the inside of her right thigh,” I recalled and smiled. “Her soul is mysterious.” “Her spirit is sweet. Her smile is like sunrise,” I said aloud, but as I spoke, I was also thinking to myself, reminding myself of Akemi.

Chiasa sat silently for the remaining ride. In my silence I wondered,
Is Akemi looking for me? Of course she is. That’s why she called each day for seven days, my apartment, the dojo, my sensei.

Does she know that I’m here in Tokyo? Would she believe that I would come to her home country? Did Iwa Ikeda let her know?

Akemi, I need you to leave me some clues, little traces of yourself,
I thought.
And I will leave you some clues also. Something to shake your heart and let you know, “Your man is here.”

* * *

“Roppongi is like Washington, DC,” Chiasa said, as we stepped from underground. “There are a lot of embassies here, like the Chinese embassy, the American embassy, and the Dutch embassy. And as you can see when you look around, here is where you will see a lot of people from different countries. Foreigners like Roppongi because of the nightclubs, hostess bars, and the girls.”

“How would you know that?” I asked her seriously.

“I had a friend who came here and got rich working at a hostess club. She needed a certain amount of money, so she said she was going to work as a hostess for two months. But then she liked the money so much, she never came back to school. She even missed her exams and her graduation.”

“Sounds like it paid much more than delivering pizzas,” I said without thinking.

Chiasa stopped walking. “You and I are scheduled to fight tonight. I’ll get you back for that comment. You know that wasn’t right,” she corrected me, softly yet sternly, with no joke in it.

“You’re right. My bad. I take it back. I was completely wrong,” I said sincerely.

“Hostess bar work does pay more, but a girl has to dress in a nightgown or like a long, flowing, phony dress, and she has to drink liquor all night long even after she is already drunk. And she has to flirt with the customer so that he will stay in the club and keep ordering more drinks! If I would’ve worked with my friend, I would have earned my whole tuition for flight school in less than a month. But I don’t drink liquor, I don’t smoke, and I can’t flirt with a guy that I don’t really like. I’d rather fight him!” she said, caught up in her mounting emotion.

“Like how you want to fight me?” I asked.

She smiled, embarrassed for the first time. She paused and answered softly, “I don’t want to fight you because I don’t like you. That’s not my reason.”

I didn’t follow up and ask her why she did want to fight me.

“Besides, if I were a hostess, my father would kill him.”

“Kill who?”

“The customer! Any one of them or maybe even all of them. He would find him, kill him, kill the owner of the club, blow the club up, and if I did something like that, he would probably kill me too!” She said it calm and matter-of-fact.

“He made me promise to tell him before I give my virginity away. My father said the right man has to be strong enough to stand in front of him and explain why he wants permission to be with his daughter. If the one I choose can’t face my father, then I’ll have to walk away from him completely.” She gestured with her right hand, waving it across her neck to show me that a coward had no chance of winning her.

Chiasa was becoming more than a feminine outline in my eye’s view. She was like a drawing that was just beginning to be filled in with shades and colors. I respected her this minute more than five minutes ago. No smoking, no drinking, no fake flirt, sixteen and still a virgin. In her father’s absence she was maintaining his rules and conditions for her living. In my father’s absence, I was trying to do the same.

We walked and climbed the several steps to Roppongi Hills under the beam of the sun until we reached the top. “Need water?” I asked Chiasa. Her breasts were rising and falling faster than regular breathing.

“I don’t if you don’t,” she said. “Once we get to the top of that winding staircase over there, we’ll arrive at your address. But I think you should decide now if you want me to walk through and film the location like in Ginza or whether you want to actually go over there and inside. Or maybe you want us to go in together. I can speak in Japanese for you if you have something to say or ask.”

I didn’t answer right away. I was thinking.

“This girl who you are looking for, she must speak English, right? Otherwise how would you even know her?” she questioned.

“I’ll wait here, you walk through the whole block. Make sure you
capture everything, the address, the place to the left of it and to the right and in front and behind. Even any cars parked over there. Get it all on film,” I directed her.

“Easy,” she said, as we approached the stairs. “I got this now.”

* * *

I made the Dhuhr prayer on the winding staircase of wide, clean cement. There was a peace and stillness in Roppongi Hills, which seemed to be the residential extension of Roppongi. Here, everything was blossoming or had already blossomed. The mansions were sturdy and well built. People here seemed to spend more money on expensive designer doors, security walls, and iron fences than on the land itself. Each property was high-quality but condensed. I couldn’t see from the outside looking in any pools or huge courtyards, backyards, or play areas. They were showcasing amazing nature more than anything else, orchids and pansies and roses and exotic plants and flowers down to designer bushes and rock gardens. All of the trees were magnificent expressions of Allah. I could see that luxury vehicles were routine here, and every one of them glistened as though they were washed, polished, and buffed as many times a day as I made my prayers.

Strolling, I came up on a merchant alley modeled with miniature stores and short doorways. Quietly people walked in and out, purchasing an array of items. I imagined that these people were house servants, maids and cooks, or drivers sent here and there to make purchases for their wealthy employers. In the Sudan when I was young, our servants were sent to market daily. Umma always made sure they bought the best and freshest from the butcher, halal of course. After a few months of living in the United States, I could detect any dish prepared with old meats. The taste of the fresh kill was completely different than meats that had sat out, then been frozen, then defrosted and frozen over again, which were the way most Americans seemed to be accustomed to handling and consuming their flesh.

In a tiny market I purchased peanut butter ground from peanuts right in my presence, as I waited, also, a few bananas and oranges. I had not seen any halal restaurants yet, and these were items I could trust, just in case I had nothing for breaking the fast at sunset. I already knew that I would not allow Chiasa to prepare my meal tonight.
She hadn’t offered to, but I could see there was a possibility that she might. I didn’t want to eat from her hand. Umma would say, “Food from a woman’s hand to a man’s mouth makes the two of them familiar.”
I wanted my wife to serve me
. Until that was possible, and while out here in Japan, I would be fed by stangers at selected restaurants or I would shop at food markets and feed myself.

Easing around the corner, I caught sight of a lone building on a short hill that towered over all the other residences. I took the short walk up. When I arrived in front, I entered the building behind a young boy with a bike. His hand was shaking as he tried to hold on to his bicycle while opening the locked door. His bike fell, but he got the lock opened. He held the open door with his foot and leaned over to lift his bike. He then tried to balance himself and push his bike through as he walked. He looked up at me when he felt the weight of the door he was holding disappear. He bowed his head slightly to thank me and pushed his bike in smoothly down a short corridor and further down a short ramp. The elevator arrived. I got in. On the top floor I walked off, found the stairwell, and climbed a few steps to the roof. A workman was on his break up there, hiding out and smoking a cigarette. I acknowledged him with a nod and acted calm and cool like I lived here.