She nodded. “I swear, this city is killing me. I just feel so inhibited here. I imagine America, and I see myself doing anything, doing everything. Maybe I can drive there, if someone invents a car with hand controls. And I want to scuba dive. Why not? You don’t need legs for that. And skydive…why shouldn’t you be able to skydive in a wheelchair? You think falling is any harder for me? It’s easier.” She paused and looked around. “I just have to get out of here first.”
I didn’t know about scuba diving and skydiving, let alone all the rest. But why disabuse someone of her dreams?
I saw a park bench next to an old, gnarled tree, bathed in the shadows cast by one of the lights set out along the path. “Do you want to sit? I mean…shit, I’m sorry, I keep doing that.”
She shook her head. “Don’t be sorry. I like it. That you see I can go for a walk in the chair. And that sitting next to a park bench isn’t the same as being in the chair.”
“Thanks for that. I’ve been feeling a little stupid at times.”
She looked at me in a way I couldn’t interpret. “You’re not stupid.”
I positioned the wheelchair next to the bench and sat close to her.
“All right,” she said. “So now you have to answer your own question. What is it about jazz? I saw you tapping your feet and nodding your head. Did you like it?”
“A lot, yeah.”
“Why?”
I told her about how it had made me feel…that feeling of longing for something I didn’t even know I lacked. And how I was struck by the way the music had created this sense of kinship and commonality in a room full of strangers, all of us feeling the same thing.
“Yes,” she said, when I was done. “That’s it, exactly.”
“Was this your first concert?”
“Yes. And it’s exactly what I imagined it would be like. No, better. It was really special. Thanks for taking me. Thanks for…encouraging me.”
I felt myself blushing and looked down for a moment. I didn’t want to look like an awkward kid with her.
But she spotted it anyway and laughed. “Are you blushing?”
Shit. “I didn’t think you could see it, in the shadows.”
“I couldn’t. But then you looked down.”
“Oh, great,” I said. We both laughed, then were quiet for a moment.
I looked at her. “Can I ask you something personal?”
She brushed a hair back from her face. “Sure. If I don’t want to answer, I won’t.”
“How…were you born that way? Or did something happen? You said ‘injury’ before, so…”
There was a long pause. Then she said, “I was sixteen. On my way home from school. A car hit me from behind.”
A strange, clear sympathy opened up inside me. But I didn’t know how to express it. I only said, “I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. “I don’t even remember it. I woke up in the hospital.”
“Did they catch the guy who did it?”
“Oh, yeah. He totaled his car trying to get away afterward. Drove it into a wall. I got this, and he didn’t have a scratch on him.”
I didn’t say anything.
“He was drunk. But it turned out he was also a big-shot politician. A lot of connections. His people offered my parents some money as an apology. But really to keep their mouths shut and not make trouble.”
“Damn.”
“My parents wouldn’t take it. They wanted to see the guy in jail. But then some other people came to the house and recommended my parents take the money.”
“Yakuza?”
She nodded. “So what could my parents do? They took the money and signed some papers. It wasn’t even enough to cover the operations I needed.”
I thought about the four yakuza I’d killed earlier that day. I suddenly wished I could do it again. Well, I’d be going after Mad Dog soon enough. And Mori, another big-shot politician. The thought was both grim and glad.
“Where are your parents now?”
“They’re gone. They were old. They had me late — they thought they couldn’t have children, and then after all those years they wound up with me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t keep saying that, or I won’t tell you any more sad stories.”
I smiled a little, for her benefit. “Do you remember the name of the guy who hit you?”
She nodded. “Nobuo Kamioka. I’ll never forget it.”
“Do you…I would want to kill him.” I didn’t mean to say it. It just bled through somehow.
She was quiet for a moment. “My father felt like that, I know. And I guess I did for a while, too.”
“Not anymore?”
“I don’t know. At some point, I learned not to think of it that way. I believe in karma.”
“Do you?”
“Yeah. I believe in the end we get paid back what we deal out.”
I hoped that wasn’t true. “Has Kamioka been paid back?”
“I don’t know. I don’t really think about it. I’m not responsible for someone else’s karma. I just want to live my life, be grateful for what I have and not be bitter about what I don’t, you know? Focus on the future, not the past.”
I nodded. “I think that’s a good attitude.”
“But you don’t share it?”
“I’d like to.”
There was a pause, then she said, “You know, you were pretty intimidating with that drunk guy the first time I saw you. You were so calm. Like hurting him or not hurting him was just a kind of…equation. But then with me, you’re awkward and sweet. I can’t figure you out.”
I shifted on the bench. “There’s nothing to figure out.”
“Yes, there is. I can tell you’re hiding something.”
“I don’t think so.”
“What do you do for a living here, anyway? You’ve never mentioned it.”
“Well, that’s part of this jam I’m in.”
“The one you’ve nearly sorted out.”
“Is there another one I don’t know about?”
“I don’t know — is there?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s just the one.”
“You’re not going to tell me?”
I realized this was always going to be a problem if I tried to keep one foot in the dark and the other in the light. I’d been naïve in not facing it earlier, and I should have been prepared for it, because now Sayaka was asking me the most ordinary of questions and I had no answers.
“I…was in the military for three years.”
“What military?”
I was reluctant to say more. America’s war in Vietnam was hugely unpopular among young people in Japan. I didn’t want her not to like me. And I didn’t want to have to explain myself, either. But I didn’t see how to avoid the subject anymore.
“The American military. Army.”
“You mean Vietnam?”
There it was. I nodded.
“You were in Vietnam?”
I nodded again.
“What did you do there?”
How do you answer something like that? I said, “I did all the horrible things people do in wars and that they’re uncomfortable talking about afterward.”
“Did you kill anyone?”
It was weird. I was so used to feeling younger than she was. Now I felt older.
“It was a war, Sayaka. Killing people is what you do in a war. Unless you’re in the rear, which I definitely wasn’t.”
“I’m sorry. You said you didn’t want to talk about it.”
“It’s okay.”
“But you did bring it up.”
And suddenly I felt like the younger one again. “Just to point out that what I’ve been doing here is a kind of…holdover from contacts I made there.”
“You mean spy stuff?”
I looked at her. She was just curious, she wasn’t judging me. “I don’t want to lie to you,” I said, “and I don’t want to get you in any trouble by telling you things you shouldn’t know. I don’t know how I got mixed up in it all exactly. I mean, outside what I learned in the military, I don’t have a lot of skills. I don’t have anything to fall back on. And this opportunity came along, and I just took it. And one of the things I like about you is that you’re not connected to any of it. And I…and I don’t know what I’m trying to say, and I’m going to stop.”