I knocked on the glass. The man looked up from the knife he was sharpening and squinted. “Closed,” he said, in Korean-accented Japanese, around his cigarette. “Come back tomorrow.”
The man was obviously
zainichi
, as I had hoped. Ethnic Korean, marooned in Japan after the Korean War, welcome in neither country, and belonging to neither. Beholden to neither.
“I can’t wait until tomorrow,” I said, pulling a ten-thousand-yen note from my wallet and pressing it up against the glass. “Are you sure you can’t help me now?”
He looked at me over the tops of his spectacles for a moment, then set down the knife he was working on and stubbed out the cigarette. He didn’t look dangerous, but still I was glad he had laid down the weapon. It implied a certain baseline trust without which there wasn’t much hope he’d be willing to help me.
He walked over and stopped on the other side of the door. “What’s the emergency?”
“I need to learn how locks work.”
He squinted. “You’re locked out?”
“No. I just want to learn.”
The squint deepened. “You want to be an apprentice? I don’t need one.”
“Not an apprentice. I want you to teach me.”
“You sure you’re not just locked out? It would be faster for me to let you in than to teach you to do it yourself.”
“I told you, I’m not locked out. I don’t know anything about locks. I want to learn. I’ll pay you.”
He looked at the ten-thousand-yen note, an encouraging hint of greed in his eyes. “Sure, I could teach you. But I’m not cheap, you know.”
I realized I should have held up a smaller bill. But too late now.
“All right, teach me.”
“Come back tomorrow.”
“No. Now.”
“Are you crazy?”
“Do I seem crazy?”
He grunted. “Crazy people don’t always seem crazy.”
I realized I had no answer for that. Instead of even trying, I knelt and slid the bill under the door. I stood. “I want to start learning now.”
He stooped to retrieve the note, then straightened, silently examining it for a moment. He pulled a rag from his pocket and blew his nose so loudly the building practically shook. Then he cleared his throat, put the bill and the rag back in his pocket, glanced behind me, and, doubtless against his better judgment, opened the door.
“Is it all right if I come in?” I asked, not wanting to alarm him by entering too suddenly or without his explicit permission.
He squinted, which I guessed was his default expression for incomprehension. “How am I going to teach you if you stand out there?”
Fair point. I stepped inside and he locked the door behind me. Then without another word, he cleared the knives he had been sharpening and began pulling a variety of detached door locks from various drawers and shelves, placing each on the table in a row before retrieving yet another.
“How’d you know it was door locks?” I said.
He glanced at me. “Are you a bicycle thief?”
“No.”
“Car thief?”
“No.”
“Safe cracker?”
“No.”
“Then it’s door locks.”
The guy was shrewder than he looked. I realized I had given too much credence to the scrawny body and the obvious age, and had underestimated him. Watching him set up what would be our makeshift classroom, I wondered whether there would be some value to that. Getting people to underestimate you. Not letting them see what was under the hood. Preventing them from seeing it coming. I thought of the Japanese expression
Nō aru taka wa, tsume o kakusu
. The hawk with talent hides its talons. It had always been just that for me, an expression. But for the first time, I felt an inkling of what it might really imply.
He finished assembling what he was going to use for the lesson and blew his nose again. My ears rang from it and I hoped it wasn’t a habit of his. Though I sensed it was.
“I don’t have another chair,” he said, shoving the rag back into his pocket. “Why don’t you sit?”
“No, no, that’s fine. I’m happy to stand. You go ahead.”
He nodded and sat on the other side of the table. I realized a second late that he knew I was going to demur, but this way he got credit for being courteous and the more tangible benefit of the use of the chair, too. I was beginning to think he was a clever old bastard. Which didn’t bother me a bit. I certainly didn’t want a fool for a teacher.
“We’ll start with the basics,” he said, pulling out a set of lock-picking tools from a drawer and adjusting the swivel light to his satisfaction. “The most common type of door lock is a pin tumbler. All the locks on this table are examples.”
I looked at the locks he had assembled. “How long will it take?”
He set one of the locks in a vise. “To understand the mechanism? Five minutes. To learn to pick a pin tumbler lock slowly, in good conditions? An hour. To learn to open different locks fast, with different tools, in different circumstances? A long time. When you can open a lock in the dark and wearing gloves, you’ll know you’re good.”
“Why would I ever want to do something like that?”
The guy laughed. He knew exactly why I might want to do something like that. But luckily, he didn’t care.
I looked around the shop, suddenly fascinated. “How’d you learn how to do this? Locks, I mean. And fixing things.”
He looked at me, perhaps pleased that I was seeing something more than just the facade. “I hold things in my hands,” he said. “I ask them how they work, and I listen to what they say. And then I take them apart, and put them back together. I’ve been doing it since I was a little boy.”
I looked at him, trying to imagine him as a little boy. Yes, I thought I almost could. It was like suddenly seeing him…more completely. Three dimensions instead of just two.
“Can anyone do it?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Not many people do. They’d rather come to me. No one has ever asked me to teach him before.”
The comment made me feel strange. Sad for the old man, but also mildly awed. A lifetime of learning, and he was about to share it with me for only ten thousand yen. That just a moment earlier I’d been irritated at myself for not driving a harder bargain made me feel vaguely ashamed.
The time went by quickly. Sometimes he would offer a suggestion—slow it down, easy on the torsion wrench, start with a different pin—but for the most part he watched me in silence, apart from periodic ear-splitting nose blows. At the end of an hour, I was reliably, if somewhat slowly, opening the various locks he had set out in front of me. It actually wasn’t that hard—mostly a question of understanding the mechanism, and of patience and deliberation. After I had defeated each of the locks twice, he nodded. “You have a good touch,” he said. “I think if you practice, you can understand the way things work.”
I resolved that I would. And not just locks. Other things. Everything. As he said, it was just a question of practice. And mindfulness, of course.
I bowed, long and low to show my respect, then straightened. “I have a good teacher,” I said. In Japan, complimenting a teacher would be considered rude—where would the student get the idea that he’s in a position to opine on the quality of his superiors?—but it felt like the right thing to say to someone who’d never been a teacher before. And besides, he wasn’t Japanese.
He returned the bow. “There’s not much more I can teach you. About pin tumbler locks, anyway.”
I smiled, taking this to mean it was either time for me to go, or to pay more money. “If I come back sometime, will you teach me other kinds of locks?”
He squinted and rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s difficult, being so busy.”
Busy?
I thought. It looked to me like he didn’t have anything more to do than sit here all day, tinkering with the appliances people brought him to fix and the knives to sharpen, maybe periodically rousing himself to let into a house someone who’d forgotten a key.
Then I realized. He was just haggling. It was the way this particular thing worked.
“Really?” I said. “Even on the same terms? Ten thousand yen an hour?”
He blew out a long breath as though he was about to make the most difficult concession in the history of negotiating. And maybe he was—because he must have known he could milk me for more than that. But he didn’t. Instead, he just said, “Well, I suppose I could make some time. You’re a good student.”
I stood to go. “Oh, one more thing. Can I buy a set of those lock picks from you? To practice with.”
He squinted. “You’re not a licensed locksmith. It would be illegal.”
I wondered what he would produce if I asked to see
his
license. But I realized that by “illegal,” he merely meant, “expensive.”
“How about another ten thousand yen?” I said.
He rubbed the back of his neck again and looked pained.
“Twenty thousand?” I said.
The old guy must really have taken a shine to me, because he didn’t squeeze me for more than that. I thanked him sincerely for his time and expertise, and told him I would see him again. Then, armed and dangerous with my new skills and new tools, I made my way back to Thanatos. It had been a long and eventful day, and I was looking forward to a good night’s sleep at the hotel in Uguisudani. And to seeing the girl, of course. It would be the third time we met, so hopefully she would finally tell me her name.
chapter
thirteen
T
he girl was there when I walked in. If she was surprised to see me, she gave no sign of it. She gave no sign of anything, in fact.
I walked over to the window. “Hey,” I said, demonstrating my creativity.
“Hey,” she said back. Somehow it sounded better coming from her.
“Well, I’m back.”
“I can see that.”
She looked good in her usual way. Ponytail, sweatshirt, no makeup.
“I mean it’s our third meeting.”
She wrinkled her brow. “Can I ask you something?”
“I guess so.”
“Why do you keep coming here?”
I couldn’t very well admit that it was because I wanted to see her, and I couldn’t think of anything else, so I said nothing.
“I mean, the first time, I had no idea. I just figured you needed a place to spend the night for some reason. You’re a little younger and less corporate-looking than most of the clientele, but I figured, I don’t know, maybe your girlfriend threw you out.”
I didn’t say anything, and she went on. “The second night I told myself the same thing. But now I’m thinking, either you’re in some kind of trouble and trying to hide from it, or this is about me. Or both.”
Jesus
, I thought. I’d been focusing so much on my own needs, my own outlook, that I hadn’t considered what things must have looked like from her perspective. That failure to consider the view from the other side was stupid. Here, the penalty was nothing more than embarrassment. In another context, the penalty could be considerably worse.
“It’s a little bit of both,” I said, not knowing how I could coherently suggest otherwise.
“What kind of trouble are you in?”
I was a little disappointed she was more interested in that side of the story. “Nothing I can’t handle.”
She laughed. “How many people do you think have been in over their heads, and said that right before they drowned?”
I didn’t have an answer for that. I said, “Are you going to tell me your name?”
“Why do you want to know my name so much?”
“I don’t know. I keep thinking of you as ‘the girl at the hotel.’ It just seems demeaning.”
I was trying for funny, but she didn’t laugh. Instead, her lips parted and her eyes narrowed and she looked at me for a long time, like she was
really
looking at me, like she was trying to figure something out.
Then the look was gone, replaced by a frown. “To which of us?”
“Well, I meant to you. But I guess to both.”
Another long moment went by. I thought she wasn’t going to tell me, and that I should probably give up. But then she sighed and said, “Sayaka.”
I liked it. It suited her. Without thinking, I said, “Hi, Sayaka.”
I immediately regretted it, thinking she would make fun of me for saying something so lame. But instead, she said, “Welcome back, Jun. Just don’t expect any mints on the pillow, okay?”
I couldn’t tell if it was just a joke, or if she was letting me know I wouldn’t be waking up next to her. Or both.
“Do you work here every night?” I asked.
“I have a day off now and then. Do you stay here every night?”
I shrugged. “Like you said, I’m in a little bit of a jam. I need a place to stay while I figure it all out. It’s not a girlfriend, though.”
I realized that was actually a stupid thing to add. It would have been just fine if she figured my taste for stays at love hotels had to do with a domestic problem. I didn’t need her speculating, or asking, beyond that.
“Well,” she said, “I hope it’s nothing too serious.”
“I’ve seen worse,” I said, which was true. I’d been chased by a North Vietnamese battalion in Cambodia. So far, at least, I’d take the yakuza any day.
“So…a stay?”
“Yeah, as usual.” I pushed the bills under the glass, and she slid a key in the other direction.
“You know,” I said, “I think I’m going to have this whole thing straightened out pretty soon. At which point, I won’t be coming by anymore. But I thought…I found this great coffee place today, in Shibuya. You ever feel like a cup of coffee?”
She flushed, and for a moment, a look of consternation crossed her face. Then she said, “It’s nice of you, Jun, but…no.”
Damn. I’d really thought she was going to say yes. “Are you sure?”
She nodded. “I’m sure.”
I should have just taken the hint. But it seemed like she was interested, somehow. I didn’t get it. Without thinking, I said, “Why? It’s just coffee. I know I’m a little younger, but…”
There was an awkward pause. “It’s…hard for me to get around. Shibuya’s a little far.”
I felt like an idiot. “Shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t even think of that.”
She smiled at that. “I know you didn’t.”
“Well, how about if I could find a place closer by?”
She laughed. “Maybe.”