Midnight and the Meaning of Love (40 page)

“Keep watching, now, check out their headsets.” Chiasa pointed out that all three of the newly arrived Japanese men were wearing them. They were the kind that sit in and around one ear only, instead of being strapped on both sides. She zoomed in on the four of them, and the lens scanned them from head to toe. The argument with the African teens broke up immediately after the three extra well-suited guys appeared. Then there was a break in the images and all I could see was upside-down hordes of people.

“Keep watching,” Chiasa said. The lens picked back up on the original suited guy leaving Hachiko at 3:00 p.m. sharp. Chiasa obviously followed him to the corner through tens and hundreds of people to the curb. A Crown Vic rolled up at 3:06. The three extra guys were inside, one of them driving, two in the back. The original guy leaned in and talked to them and then walked away. The camera followed him.

“There he is!” Chiasa jumped up from her chair and pressed pause. On the screen was the Japanese Bentley, the back right window lowered halfway. “That’s Naoko Nakamura! That’s him,” she said in a muted but excited tone. She pressed play again. On the screen now was the original suited man. He raised his right hand, shielding his image from Chiasa’s lens. Then she dropped the camera to her side, and all I could decipher was Chiasa’s voice saying
“sumimasen, sumimasen, sumimasen”
before the picture went cold. The camera was off.

We sat quietly. “I can help you,” she said. “You came back alone. So I can see that
you do need some help.
I’ve been paying attention the whole time. So it’s not Iwa. It’s Akemi. Last night, I was at the wrong house. But that’s only because you didn’t trust me. It’s Naoko Nakamura giving you a difficult time.
He
sent the note to the Shinjuku hostel.
He
pretended to be Akemi.
His
men showed up at Hachiko and intended to snatch you. Or at least throw you in the car or have you picked up by police. If you weren’t
so smart
, they would have gotten you.”

She thought some more and added, “But probably not the police. Falling in love with a girl is not a crime, even if her father and friends don’t agree.” She paused again. “As long as
she loves you too
. And
why wouldn’t she
?” Chiasa’s voice trailed off to a low murmur.

From my front pocket I pulled out my wife’s address and phone number in Kyoto.
That’s my next move,
I thought to myself.

“Chiasa, I need you to take care of two things for me. First I need you to call Akemi’s house and ask to speak with Akemi. When she gets on, in Japanese tell her that you are a friend of Mayonaka’s. ‘Mayonaka says not to worry. I’ll arrive in Kyoto tonight. Keep your bags packed. Mayonaka will pay for everything you need. I promise I won’t take too long.’ ”

“That’s it?” Chiasa double-checked. “Introduce myself as a friend now, not the translator?”

“That’s it,” I confirmed.

“Alright, let me give myself a name,” she said, straightening herself in the chair as though Akemi or whomever answered the phone could see her and pass judgment. “Okay, I’m Aya. That’s the name I’ll use, and if she’s not home, then what?” Chiasa asked. “Should I leave any kind of message?”

“Just excuse yourself. Don’t leave any information. Say you’ll call back later,” I told her.

“And if she picks up and asks for you?” Chiasa questioned. I liked that she was so precise.

“After you tell her what I said, I’ll get on and confirm,” I instructed her.

“Okay, give me the number,” she said. I slid it across her desk. Chiasa was sitting still holding the phone number in her hand. Quickly
I pulled out my study cards and began flipping through them for the Japanese words to express myself over the phone.

Maybe Chiasa wanted to memorize it, I thought. She laid the paper down and said the same thing she said when I first met her a few days ago.

“My aunt Tasha said people who don’t trust people end up trusting the wrong people. Who gave you this information?” she asked me.

“What’s up?” I asked her.

“This is not an address or a phone number. Whoever gave you this message misled you.”

“What does it say?” I pushed.

“It’s not cool,” she said.

“Just tell me,” I told her. Then she began to read it to me.

Sorry I cannot give you Akemi-san’s telephone number and address. She wants you to know it. She will believe that you have it, but I have already done too much. I feel great shame. Go home! It is better that you leave Akemi alone so that she can forget. You don’t even speak Japanese. True, you are very handsome, but this is not enough.

Her simple words were weighted with insult. Without knowing me, she had decided that I was nothing, nothing but a handsome man. She had boiled down my existence to only the mud I was made of, as though I had no purpose, no faith, no heart, no soul, no business, no talent, no culture, and no place in the world, especially not here in Japan. I sat back in my chair, ran my hand over my Caesar. I dropped my head down, then lifted it back up. Inside of myself I shouted,
Why is this bullshit going on?
But in my posture I remained calm. Chiasa had the decency to look away from my agony. Moments later, I understood that I needed prayer, to quiet my mind. Not just a recitation of words but a consultation with Allah. So I excused myself to the men’s room, washed my face and nose, hands and feet. When I returned, I was left alone in Chiasa’s room. She understood me in this, I thought. In her room facing the west, the direction of the Kaaba, I made my prayer.

Very comforted and soothed after an amount of time unknown
to me, I raised my head from the floor. My eyes and ears readjusted as I turned my head left, then right, and got up from my knees. The humble house, which had been silent before, was filled now with beautiful music. The tones were crisp and clear and soft and soothing and sweet and melodious as they were seeping and pouring through her paper wall. It was not music that I was accustomed to hearing or that I played in my earphones. It was live piano playing and it was obvious even to me, who played no instruments, that it was perfect. She did not interrupt my prayer and I would not interrupt her piano. I walked around her room, seeing Chiasa for the first time, it seemed, even though I had met her days ago and been upstairs in her bedroom for almost two hours. And as I saw, her music spoke to me somehow.

On my right was a wall of photos. On the left was a warrior’s wall of wicked swords, not of the bamboo, but of steel. The kind she wanted to use, the sharp and deadly type, raised up above a bookcase filled with books in both languages. As I surveyed them, I thought her choices were unusual. She wasn’t reading Manga. It was mostly biographies and autobiographies.

I moved toward the right side, pulled in by a poster-size photo of Chiasa, probably around age thirteen, in a marigold ballerina tutu wearing gold toe shoes. She appeared long and slim. She was balancing herself on one leg and standing perfectly straight on only the toes of her left foot. Her other leg was raised and bent, her toe shoe pointed to the inside of her right knee. Her arms were lifted and locked into a graceful positon above her head. Her skin was smooth. But more than all that, the pull of the photo was the way she twisted up her lips and screwed up her face at what had to happen less than a second before the photographer snapped the shot. It was as though she wanted the whole world to know that she hated ballet. Her normally powerful, pretty gray eyes were saying, “I don’t want to dance but I’ll do it just to shut you up.” I smiled.

Beside the vertical ballerina blowup was a long rectangular shot of about 180 Japanese people. On first glance I assumed it was a school photo. On a closer look it obviously wasn’t. There were babies and toddlers and children and teens and mothers and fathers and elders. It was not a casual shot like a family gathered at a reunion or a barbeque. It was more like each of them struck a stiff pose, their clothes crisp and high-quality, someone older resting their hand on someone
younger than themselves almost to keep them still and perfect also. It was outdoors with nature as the backdrop. I wondered what the event or purpose of their coming together was and why she had it posted on her wall. As I surveyed it more, there was one thing that was different from everything else. It was Chiasa’s little black face, floating in a sea of “others.” Everyone in the picture was Japanese, but only Chiasa’s face was sun-kissed. If she had a smile, it wasn’t anywhere to be found in this photo. As I looked at the other pictures she had posted, the feeling in her eyes remained the same.

Suddenly the piano playing softened as though she had gone from playing all the keys to playing only a few at the far end of keyboard, and then just three keys and two keys and then only one. I overheard her speaking in her language. Then a man’s voice began speaking in Japanese, different from the voice of her grandfather. Then her grandfather and she thanked him repeatedly. I pictured her bowing two or three times, as they seemed to do at hellos and goodbyes, and overdo before teachers and elders. Her front door opened and closed, and she rushed up the stairs, excited.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Of course,” I responded.

“Sorry about that! If I don’t do my piano lesson—that’s the one thing that’ll make my mother show up here. So I do it.” I thought her comment was strange and sad. “It’s half an hour until sunset. Should I cook? You didn’t even eat the breakfast I made for you.” She frowned dramatically.

“What’s this?” I asked her pointing at the rectangular shot.

“Family photo,” she answered, turning suddenly serious.

“What about your father?” I asked cautiously, knowing that it was too personal a question, but seriously wondering how she could have a wall plastered with photos from top to bottom but no trace of the one she talked about openly, affectionately, and constantly. She walked over and stood facing the photo wall. Then she pointed to a patch of Polaroids.

“My father sent me this on my eighth birthday.” It was a picture of the huge globe she had seated in the center of her room. “This was when he went to Germany.” Then she moved her finger and said, “This was from ninth birthday.” I moved closer in to where she was standing and looked. It was a red Schwinn bicycle. Then she pointed
to another. “And this was for my tenth birthday.” It was a karaoke machine with Chiasa standing in front of it holding a microphone. “That’s when he was stationed in Saudi Arabia.”

As Chiasa showcased her gifts of all types, she said, “My father promised to give me whatever I ask for each year on my birthday. It’s like one wish a year that I always look forward to. There is only one thing I’m not allowed to ask for, and he didn’t make up that rule until
after
I asked for it.” She smiled a melancholy smile. I just looked at her. I knew she would tell me if she wanted to. “One month before my twelfth birthday I asked if he could come home on my twelfth birthday to celebrate with me. I told him that was all I wanted. He was in Afghanistan. He told me that I’m not allowed to ask for that because he is working and that he is helping so many people around the world. So it’s selfish to ask him to stop helping them and come see me. Besides,” she said, “my father says he will always come home to me at some point each year.”

“Does he?” I asked.

“Yep, I wait and I wait and eventually when his work is finished, he comes.” She smiled. “So aren’t you wondering what gift he gave me on my twelfth birthday instead of coming home?” She turned to me, excited. I didn’t look back to her Polaroids.

“Probably that big piano downstairs,” I guessed. She frowned.

“
No!
I hate playing the piano. My mother brought that thing. Look!” She stepped in front of the picture she had been blocking. It was a beautiful black mare standing strong in a wide open field of glistening green grass.

“She’s beautiful,” I said staring, and I meant it.

“I love riding her. She’s at the stables in Nagano. I go there on breaks and holidays when I’m not fighting in tournaments.” I imagined her on that horse galloping through the wide open fields at a high speed. As my mind wandered further, I snatched back the image and refocused. She was up to her sixteenth birthday now. “That’s my bike. You saw it today.” She smiled.

“No,
that’s
your bike,” I said pointing to her ten-year-old gift, the red Schwinn. “This is a mean-ass racing machine for pushing the limits,” I told her, while again admiring the electric-blue color.

“My mother hates my motorcycle. But when I ride it, I feel free,” Chiasa said.

I knew what I was doing, collecting information on this girl who had become too close and too necessary to my life in two and a half days. I was forming a more detailed picture of Chiasa. Like usual I would take a few hours to think and feel and then I would decide to trust—or move on with my solo style.

“Seventeen is coming up. What’s your wish?” I asked her.

“I’m still thinking,” she said. “It might be something that is impossible for Daddy to get for me. But he’ll like that. He loves a challenge and he’ll say nothing is impossible once he decides on it.” She paused a minute. “My grandfather says you feel like my father,” she said strangely.

“I look like him?” I asked her.

“No, you feel like him,” she said softly. “Anyway, he’s in the military, not like a low rank. He can’t be photographed, so my pictures of him are held in my heart.”

Carefully, I listened. “Not a low rank,” she had said.
Of course not,
I thought to myself. He had to be some secret service type. Probably he pushed himself up from the bottom, though. No, I refigured; his position was so top secret, even Chiasa didn’t know the truth. Or maybe she did. I knew for a fact that regular army guys and even other military types take photos. I had seen plenty—especially in the homes of customers I delivered Umma Designs clothing to. But I didn’t ask for an explanation concerning her father. How could I, when I wouldn’t answer one personal question about my own father, not to anyone other than Umma and maybe Naja or my wife?