Midnight and the Meaning of Love (39 page)

“
Hai
, that one,” she confirmed.

I stood thinking. “I need you to get to Shibuya by one forty-five,” I announced.

“It’s almost one. Shibuya’s close, four stops from here on the Yamanote line,” she said.

“Are you riding your bike?” I asked.

“No, Shibuya is crazy. There are so many people there! The train is easier. What do I do at Shibuya?” she asked.

“Go to Hachiko just like the note says. What is that anyway, Hachiko? Is it a café or a restaurant?” I asked.

Chiasa laughed. “No, it’s a dog!”

“A dog?”

“It’s a famous statue of a dog. Everyone in Japan knows it. Also it’s a meet-up spot for lovers and people all around the world looking for new lovers.” She monitored my response. My jaw tightened at her description. Yet the good thing about her words was that now I felt sure that Akemi had not left that note.

“Go there and film at that exact location. If you see a Japanese girl there waiting, sixteen years old, wearing the most expensive shoes available in Tokyo, carrying a mean-ass handbag and with a smile that is only second to her beautiful eyes, that’s her. Introduce yourself and tell her you are the translator for Midnight and that she should meet me in Yoyogi Park. I’ll be there at three p.m.” I planned aloud as I spoke. I was fairly confident that I would be bringing Akemi to meet Chiasa in Yoyogi Park and not the other way around.

“Where in Yoyogi, at my house?” Chiasa asked.

“On the bench in the park outside your house,” I told Chiasa, whose eyes were also intense and lovely, although I had the feeling that no man had ever told her so. She hesitated for some seconds and then we both walked, headed to Shinjuku station, where we separated and went in different directions.

Thoughts about the power, range, and reach of Naoko Nakamura raced through my previously calm state of mind. Still, I was at ease feeling that I had gotten the better of him. Only thirty hours after my arrival at Narita Airport, I had invaded his territory and didn’t have to snatch or seize his daughter the way he had. She came eagerly, passionately to me, separating herself from his idea of me. She had chosen me over him, again. Besides, I knew his address, and now that I had seen Akemi, I could climb into her tent anytime. So I suppressed his name and face from my mind’s eye.

In Roppongi early, I played with the idea of getting a haircut. I had not even powered up the clippers that Ameer’s father gifted to me. My last cut was four days ago before game time. But when I leaned my face against the barber’s window and saw a place packed with exclusively Japanese heads and four elderly Japanese barbers, I decided against it. Maybe tomorrow. Why experiment and fuck up my head right before meeting my wife in the brilliant Tokyo sunlight?

* * *

Pink pumps, I recognized her shoes. She was not my wife, but she was wearing the pink pumps that had been outside my wife’s house last night. So I paid attention. She seemed nervous, took quick glances my way, and then dropped her head down and continued to walk in my direction as she appeared to be watching her own feet. It was five minutes after two. She passed me by. As I watched her, I caught
her looking back. She tried to play it off but soon turned back toward me. Now she looked up at me and then toward the café situated behind me. She walked past me again. My eyes followed her into the café. I looked around the outside to see if Akemi was approaching from any direction. But she wasn’t.

When I checked the café window, Pink Pumps was still standing there watching me. I went over. As I entered the café, she moved away from the window to a back booth. I hesitated to walk up on her. She seemed like she was fragile, might break in half or, worse, start screaming for the police. So I went to the cash register instead, ordering coffee I would not drink. When I turned back to take a look, she was speaking to a waitress softly in Japanese. She stood up and both girls began bowing to each other. I couldn’t interpret what was happening. I left the café to check again for Akemi.

“Mayonaka.” The name spoken in that way in the Japanese accent and a soft tone sent a rush and a current through me. I turned to check the voice with the person. It was Pink Pumps. “Follow” is all she said, not looking up at me or even acknowledging my presence. I followed her. She walked down into a side street and ducked into a photo booth and closed the curtain behind her. I stood outside the curtain.

“Akemi-san was taken away this morning,” I heard her voice say in English, but I had to strain to hear and listen.

“Taken away by who?”

“Father.”

“Taken where?”

“Kyoto.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Maybe for school. Maybe for keep away.”

“Keep away?”

“From you. I don’t know.”

“Who are you?” I asked, but she was silent. “Who are you?” I asked again.

“You don’t believe?” she asked me strangely. “Okay, I leave now.”

“Wait,” I said calmly. I stood thinking. “When was she taken?”

“Early morning surprise,” she answered.

“What did Akemi tell you to tell me?”

“Akemi-san is berry sad. She say ‘sorry a thousand times.’ She say her father is too determined.”

“What did her father do to her?” I asked.

“Father give Akemi-san eberything. But now he say no more money, no more trabel, no more credit card, no more bank account. No more freedom.”

“Why?”

“You will never understand. You are foreigner. This is our way.
This is Japan
,” she said. It was the strongest tone that she used through the whole conversation. Then three Japanese boys gathered and hung back behind me at the photo booth and waited as though I was on line to use it also.

“How come you find out to meet Akemi here at two o’clock?” she asked. I had to repeat her question to myself to dissect it. She was trying to figure out how Akemi and I had communicated and set up a meeting. Now I knew.

“Are you Iwa?” I asked her. But she was silent.

“Can you give me Akemi’s address in Kyoto, a phone number or something?” I asked her.

“I give. You will find on the seat when I leave here. Time’s up, I go,” she said.

“Wait, why did you come to me?” I asked, since she was obviously nervous, uncomfortable, and didn’t even want to face me.

“Akemi-san do bad thing to fall in love with you. Dishonor to her father. Dishonor to my father, our family and friends. But I think she not recover from this love. So I give in to help Akemi-san.” Her little fingers emerged and she ducked from behind the curtain, keeping her face turned away from me as though I had not already seen her clearly. She left and never looked back. I didn’t chase her. The important thing was the address and telephone number. I yanked back the curtain and picked up the paper that she left for me. Everything was written in kanji. No problem. I sped over to Yoyogi to meet Chiasa.

“This is so much better than pizza, piano, and practices,” Chiasa stated with her excited softness. She sat down on the bench in Yoyogi Park beside me holding my camera like a baby.

Deep in thought, I didn’t speak right away.

“Let’s go to my house. You have to see this,” she said, standing up again. “Besides, I have to keep myself occupied to keep my mind off our fast!”

That’s the opposite of the Muslim mind-set, I thought to myself. We want to keep our mind on the fast, its meaning, its reasons, and on making our prayers. Although I had been steadfast in not taking food and water from sunrise to sunset, I knew I was wrong for not being focused on Ramadan. My mind was jam-packed with winning back my wife.

Chiasa removed her shoes at her front steps. “You can leave your sneakers here,” she said. “No one will steal them and I have some slippers for your feet.” I paused at the bottom of the three cement steps leading to her front door.

“His bicycle is there. Grandfather is home. You can come in,” she said happily. On the inside of the door was a shelf with racks of house slippers wrapped in plastic. Chiasa opened a pair and bent down to place them on my feet.

“Thank you. I got it,” I told her, sliding each foot in one.

“Okay.” She smiled halfway, slid into her slippers, and shouted,
“Tadaima!”
We both entered her living room.

An ebony grand piano absorbed most of the space in her humble house. It glistened as though it had just been polished moments ago
and appeared to be more expensive than everything else they had, combined—furniture, floor mats, and decorations.

“Konichiwa, Ojiichan,”
I said, afterward recalling from my study cards that I had just called him “grandfather” as though he were my own and
not
by his proper name.

He spoke
“Konichiwa …”

“Grandfather welcomes you,” Chiasa summed up his words.

“Arigato gozaimashta,”
I thanked him.

Chiasa said some words to her grandfather, then turned toward me, saying, “Drop that here,” referring to my luggage. I laid my duffel down and my Jansport. I was both hesitant and anxious. I felt inadequate about entering a home for the first time, empty-handed. I was a newcomer and should present a gift. I felt at the same time anxious to talk with Chiasa and get on my way to Kyoto.

“Chotto Matte,”
I said. I bent on one knee to open my bag. I dug in and pulled out one of the gifts that Umma had prepared, “for anyone who is good to my son.” I opened it and pulled out the sterling silver case of Umma’s homemade cigarettes. I approached him, holding the case with both hands on either side, presenting it. I said,
“Kori wa present o Ojiichan notamani.”
(Grandfather, here is a gift for you.) Both he and Chiasa smiled with great surprise. Chiasa clapped for me. Her grandfather stood up all smiles himself, thanking me. I looked beyond the smiles, feeling that I had done the right thing but wondering if on the inside they thought my beginner’s use of the Japanese language confirmed that all foreigners are fools to be tolerated as tourists only for a short period of time.

I eased up the steps uncomfortable at being invited and allowed to enter a young single female’s bedroom, and also under the watch of her grandfather. His eyes followed me up, but once I reached the top, there was no way for him to survey me any further.

The second floor was sealed off by what appeared to be a paper wall. I looked up and saw that it had thick metal borders, which lined the top, sides, and bottom. Chiasa placed three fingers in a slot and slid the wall all the way from left to right. Her amazing room had been revealed. She entered first, moving past a four-foot-tall textured globe. She used one hand to set it off spinning. “I know the name of every country on every continent and even most of the major islands,” she said.

I didn’t comment. I thought it meant that she had a sharp mind and unusual discipline but must’ve also been lonely to dive into such study.

“I always wanted to know for certain where in the world my father was and exactly how much distance there was between us,” she told me as she set up the television, VCR, and camera.

“You have to see this …” She pressed rewind.

Her bed was a thin and narrow mattress laid in the furthest corner of her room on the floor, topped off by a peculiar pillow. It didn’t seem like she could sleep comfortably.

“So beautiful, who’s this?” Chiasa interrupted my thoughts. Umma’s face was paused on her television screen. “She looks like a film star,” Chiasa remarked.

“
Umi,
my mother,” I answered, using the Arabic word for mother rather than
Umma
, which is my mother’s name.

“
Honto!
Really,” Chiasa exclaimed and touched the screen with two fingers as though she were touching Umma’s skin. Chiasa seemed to be on pause like the picture. Then she bowed down to my Umma as though she were here in the room with us. As Chiasa stood up, she pressed fast forward.

“Here it is!” She pressed stop, then play. My mind dumped every other thought and focused. The screen was bursting with hundreds of people or perhaps thousands, mostly Japanese, mostly young, but all types streaming in between them. I could see the unimpressive Hachiko statue off in the not-too-far distance. People crowded around it together, yet it seemed as though each of them was there alone, just in the same space. Also standing near the statue were groups of people talking to each other, waiting for each other, or looking for ones missing. Chiasa caught one mother’s panicked expression and mission as she searched for someone, probably her child. I could see that Chiasa trailed her with the lens around the area of the Hachiko. From the film I understood now that Shibuya was an extremely overcrowded space, even more so than Shinjuku station, but what else?

“There he is, now watch him,” she said, a moment later. It was easy to notice him, because she had captured him in the lens and zoomed in. He was a well-dressed Japanese man with a concentrated stare and pronounced jawline. He stood still in the swelling, swarming crowd and looked hard, moving his head and eyes in tiny measures.

“So while I was looking for the hundred-thousand-yen shoe girl, I found him,” Chiasa said.

The man’s shoes were quite expensive and complemented his suit. After about forty-five seconds of shooting him from every angle, the camera followed him a few feet only, where an African man was standing alone. The Japanese man spoke to him, but his words were inaudible in the rowdy crowd. He placed a hand on the African guy’s shoulder. The African guy turned around and talked to him for about three seconds. The Japanese guy returned to his original spot. He searched around again. He moved in the opposite direction, to the other side of Hachiko, and approached another dark-skinned man. The same thing happened. By the fifth try, the young black guy he approached was standing with some friends. He began barking on the Japanese guy and then three more suited men appeared from the crowd to the Japanese guy’s rescue.