Bicycle Days (25 page)

Mark took a piece of sushi in his fingers and popped it in his mouth.

“It is unusual that both brothers like sushi,” Mr. Hasegawa proclaimed.

Still chewing, Mark shook his head. “Sushi is popular in America. There are many more people just like us.” He looked at Alec. “Go ahead. Tell him.”

Alec translated. Again, Mrs. Hasegawa smiled at him, saying how pleased she was that his Japanese had improved so much. But no other words followed, only the muted sounds of people eating. Alec waited for more praise without knowing it, his ears transformed into a kind of vacuum, hungry, sucking him in.

Down the stairs and out the door, they walked into the thick blanket of night air. The lit streets and slumbering buildings soundlessly released their accumulation of heat from the past day. There was no breeze to dissipate it, and Alec felt the muggy air cover his skin like a damp cloth as he led Mark on the long walk to the Takadanobaba subway station.

Alec knew the route as he knew no other part of Tokyo. He knew that there, on the opposite corner, the Okunis kept their dry cleaning shop open an hour longer than the others. And he knew, because Mrs. Okuni had told him, that the fish market
two blocks down sold the best fish in the neighborhood. And that three shops beyond that, in the front room of their house, a man and his son ran a first-rate bicycle repair business. They opened earlier than most other shops, at six in the morning. The man wore round, bookish glasses, and his head was shaved like a Zen monk’s. He always nodded wisely as Alec passed by each morning, and Alec had often found himself wishing for a bicycle just so he could watch the man repair it.

The walk to and from the subway station had become second nature to him. Twice each day, its length and pace provided a time to move and think, telling him by his own step how he felt that morning or night. And gradually the neighborhood absorbed him, one shop and streetlight at a time, painting him with its singular, electric colors.

But tonight things seemed eerily quiet, as if somehow the evening had overstepped itself, grown late too quickly. Fewer people roamed the long, narrow avenue. Like the release of residual heat from the pavement, a hush had risen over the shops and streets of the neighborhood, bringing with it a sense of lifelessness that Alec observed as he might a thundercloud in the distance.

They walked in silence for a while. Mark kept some distance between them, his head down, watching his feet move in long, deliberate strides. Looking upward through the sharp groove of the avenue, Alec saw the formless haze of the moon, wondered if it would be raining when he woke in the morning. When he finally spoke, he was surprised by how calm his voice sounded.

“Why did you do that?”

Mark looked up, his eyebrows arched, as if he had just realized that he wasn’t alone. He stopped walking. “Do what?”

Alec stopped a few feet ahead of him, turned around. “Don’t do that—play stupid. Not now. You know what I’m talking about. You were rude as hell tonight.”

“Yeah? What did I do that was so rude?”

“Your whole goddamn attitude. You were condescending to my family and a pain in the ass to me—trying to manipulate me
in front of them. What gives you the right to do that? To stick your nose in my life like that?”

“You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“I don’t? Okay. Fine. How about we forget the whole evening? Just forget about everything that happened tonight. How about that? The only thing I ask for in return is that you leave me the hell alone.”

Mark took a sudden step toward him, and Alec flinched, thinking he might be hit. But nothing happened, and he hated himself for still being scared of his brother.

“Yeah, just forget it,” Mark said. “Sounds good, doesn’t it? Seems to me you’ve become pretty good at forgetting. In fact, it’s probably the thing you do best these days. The skill you display when you talk about
your
family and
your
house is really something. I bet most people would never even guess that you’re not talking about your real family or your real house—that you managed to forget both those things a long time ago. Not just anyone could pull that off, Alec. You should be proud of yourself.”

“Cut it out.”

“Why should I? Why bother? I’m only here for two weeks, remember? So why not try to remind you of some things? Why not try to show you that what you have here isn’t necessarily what you think it is—that your Japanese family isn’t really your family at all and that their house isn’t your house? I’ve got nothing to lose. Not really. When I take off you can forget everything all over again and go back to believing whatever you want.”

“Be quiet.”

“And stop being so goddamn controlled. That’s bullshit like all the rest of it.”

“No, this isn’t bullshit,” Alec shouted. “The way you acted at dinner was bullshit. And your sarcasm is bullshit. You want a goddamn fight? You want a fight so you can beat the shit out of me the way you used to? Is that what you want?”

Mark didn’t say anything. Alec looked at him hard for a
moment, then started to turn away. Mark grabbed him by the shoulders. “Maybe I don’t know what I want. And maybe you don’t, either. Has that ever occurred to you? No, you think you’re so goddamn sure what Japan means for you—how it’s the one place where you finally feel like you belong, where there’s a family that really cares for you. But let me tell you something: you don’t know half of what you’re so sure you remember about our family—about your real family. Not everything happened just the way you think it did, and not everyone’s the same person you remember from before. Things might not be so great at home, but that’s not the point. I guess it’s my fault for thinking that family still meant something to you. And my fault for thinking you’d be there for me when I needed you. But life’s too short to waste time thinking about family, isn’t it? And you’re too goddamn selfish. Just be careful you don’t get the same treatment if you ever try to come back home.”

Alec wrenched himself out of Mark’s grip. “And who made you arbiter? Huh? Of our family, of my life here. You talk big, but you don’t know anything about any of it. Do you?”

“I know
you,”
Mark said, his voice suddenly quiet.

“Maybe you think you do, but you don’t. Not anymore, anyway.” It was too much; he was crying, the tears fighting their way out. “I mean, what do you know about my life here? You sit at a dinner and think you know it all. No, you know nothing. You don’t know what I do, what I think, who I am.” He pointed to a small shop across the street. “You couldn’t give a damn that this is my neighborhood—that I
know
people here. But right now it means everything to me. There isn’t a morning that I don’t walk by and wave to the shop owners, or go in to talk. They know who I am and where I’m from. What’s happened—and this is what you just don’t get—what’s happened is that they’ve become a part of my daily existence here and I’ve become a part of theirs. I’m here, not anywhere else. I
live
here.”

A young couple walked by, giving them a wide margin of
space, the man positioning his body between his girlfriend and the commotion. Seeing them, Alec stopped talking. The couple moved on, but the silence remained.

Alec turned, started walking again. Behind, he heard Mark pause and then start to catch up. Some people passed going the other way, and Alec ducked his head to keep them from seeing his face. But they paid him no attention. The street was alive with energy now, as if the lifelessness he had sensed earlier had never been real. Cars flashed by, their bodies all polished muscle. Music escaped through the swinging doors of basement dance clubs. Attractive young couples held hands and kissed. It was brilliant and full and fast-moving, this life, and, head down, Alec felt himself and Mark passed by and stranded together.

In silence, they arrived at the entrance to the subway station. Alec spotted a man carrying an umbrella, felt more sure than ever it was going to rain. Vaguely, he wondered if Mark had brought an umbrella with him to Japan.

They both stood for a moment at the edge of the steep stairs leading underground. Fluorescent light rose up from the tunnel, making them squint. Alec noticed that Mark’s eyes were bloodshot.

“Jesus. I don’t know. I’m sorry. Maybe if we …” He stopped, wanting to go on but unable to.

Mark held up his hand, quieting him. “No, don’t. Listen. My plane ticket’s open. I can leave anytime. There’s no sense in, you know, dragging this thing out. I’m going to take off tomorrow.”

“Where are you going to go?”

The question hung in the air. “I don’t know. Maybe Hong Kong. Or Singapore. I guess I’ll figure it out when I get to the airport.”

Alec couldn’t look at him. “Maybe some time apart will help.”

Tears gathered at the corners of Mark’s eyes. “Maybe. I don’t know. It kind of seems like we’ve always been apart, and it’s not like that’s been a whole lot of help.” He paused, looking down the avenue. “I didn’t handle this right. Did I? I mean, with all
the sarcasm and anger and everything. It’s not what I’d planned on happening. I’m not sure how else it could’ve gone, though. All I know is how badly I wanted this trip to work out. I imagined us living together for a while, that we would finally have a chance to be close. But you seem really far away now, more than you ever have. More than when we were young and used to fight all the time, when we almost never said more than a couple words to each other. Maybe it’s better to be silent like that, leave things unsaid. Maybe I shouldn’t have come here at all—not now, anyway. But I did. You can think whatever you want to about that, but I love you a hell of a lot more than anyone in your neighborhood ever will. There’s no substitute for that, not here or anywhere else.”

He grabbed Alec’s hand, squeezed it hard. And then he was down the stairs. Alec watched him disappear into the tunnel.

He turned around quickly, started to walk back the way he had come. He remembered other nights—nights when he had come back from a dinner or party to walk home along this same stretch of sidewalk. He walked fast those nights, singing his favorite songs to the empty street. Walking, singing, he didn’t need or want a single thing more than what took shape in front of him. Everywhere, he could feel the community around him, the neighborhood sleeping four to a room behind the dark, closed shutters. And it was enough.

But he walked differently now and knew that it was no longer enough. From the shadows of the narrow side streets he felt the community pull away from him, withdraw into itself. The houses, boarded up for the night, had lost their warmth. It was as if they existed for no other purpose than to keep him out.

Walking fast, he veered left, past an all-night soba stand. Beyond the light, the street narrowed and became an alley. Head down, teeth clenched, he followed the cracked pavement, turning corners, not knowing where it was leading him. And then space opened up. Aluminum garbage cans stood in a neat row against the side of an unlit building. Light showed itself to him only as shades of darkness. He heard the faint sound of
train doors sliding open and knew that he must be somewhere behind the station. A dilapidated chain-link fence stood off to one side. One of the central support poles had been uprooted, and the frame sagged almost to the ground, a weeping willow of rusted metal. Various parts of the fence lay scattered on the pavement, some obviously torn loose by other people who had stumbled into the lot. Among them was a long tube of steel, rusted, with a heavy joint piece at one end. Alec picked it up.

One by one, he destroyed the garbage cans, the club tearing into their metallic skins, turning them all into heaps of scrap. The noise was explosive, inhuman, drowning out his own sounds. None of it took any effort; it was as if his body had been preparing for this all his life. His muscles were tensed and strong, waiting to be released. The weight of the steel was just right, held in two hands like a club over his head. There was no need to analyze, or to think.

His body began to move before his mind caught up. He was running fast, darting through the shadowy side streets. Once, he stumbled and fell, crashing into a bicycle that stood propped against a darkened house. But then he was up again, his shin all pain where it had hit the handlebars. Above the low houses, he saw the electric haze of Waseda Avenue and headed for it.

Once on the street, he stopped running and checked himself over. The bicycle had torn a hole in the leg of his new pants, the fringes of it stained with blood; and his button-down shirt, once white, was now soaked with sweat and streaked with bicycle grease.

As though caught in the current of a river, Alec moved with the flow of pedestrian traffic. He watched people veer away from him on the narrow sidewalk. Some stepped out into the street just to avoid him, staring from the corners of their eyes as if they thought he was drunk or crazy, or both. He wondered what he might tell them: that he was crazy but not drunk; that he didn’t know where he was; that he couldn’t think of a single song to sing.

And then, suddenly, he felt his face being shoved into the
hood of a parked car, his arm twisted painfully behind his back. Two men were speaking sharply to him in Japanese. It wasn’t until they had handcuffed him that he saw their police uniforms, more neatly pressed than any he had ever seen on TV.

“Book ’em, Danno,” Alec said in English.

Neither one seemed to hear him.