The Winter Quarters

by Anna Veriani

  “Yikes. So I shouldn’t ask how fame is treating you?” When she hugged him, she seemed strong, moving with a lion’s grace instead of the light, doe-like touch of her aunt and grandmother.

  “I mean, it’s great,” he said automatically. “And how’s the inn been?”

  “Our beloved Okami tried to get me to usurp the throne,” Risa said cheerfully.

  “Huh?”

  “Don’t worry, I already told Hiro,” she said, brushing it off. “It was after all that coming out stuff. Gaaaay.” She grinned, looking precisely like a female Hiro. “Hiro’s mom straight up tried to make me heir to the inn. Which I didn’t want. But then Hiro’s dad and my dad found out and were all, ‘A woman isn’t getting this inn!’ And then I was like, ‘Excuse me? Maybe I do want it,’ and then Obaachan stepped in and said the inn goes to Hiro. And then you showed up,” she finished happily. “Hi.”

  “Oh, shit. Hiro didn’t tell me any of that,” Kai said. He couldn’t help but feel a little betrayed.

  “No one in my family wants this getting out.” She shrugged. “Except me. I don’t care. I’m a blabbermouth—not as bad as Shinsuke, but still,” she said.

  “Is Shinsuke here?” He was another younger cousin, and Kai could only picture him fourteen years old and obsessed with Pokémon.

  “No, he’s at some art festival thing in Kyoto.” She fingered unconsciously at her kimono belt, and Kai wondered if she was still in the habit of hiding cigarettes under there. “He’s going to be happy to see you. We’ve both missed you—”

  “Risa, little cousin.” Hiro wheeled over, gracefully gesturing toward the dining hall door. “Could you see if my mother needs help overseeing the next course?”

  “You know she doesn’t, and you’re too late,” Risa said shortly. “I already spilled all the family drama to Kai.”

  Hiro shot Kai a helpless look.

  “And I wanted to ask Kai for a favor,” she went on.

  “We don’t ask guests for favors.”

  “Kai isn’t a guest.” She rolled her eyes and looked at Kai. “You know about my band.”

  “The Jammin’-sens? You’re still playing?” After her high school graduation, Risa had visited Hiro and Kai in New York during their senior year. She’d brought her band, two other girls from the same high school, to perform at every open mic night they could find in the city. Never mind that she didn’t speak English well—Risa charmed roomfuls of strangers with her shamisen. Kai remembered watching her and thinking, I could live in Manhattan two dozen years and never belong like she does.

  She’d learned to play the traditional instrument from her grandmother, but the Jammin’-sens made songs about the passing of the seasons and the transience of cherry blossoms sound like classic rock ’n’ roll.

  “Indeed we are. In this inn. Tonight,” Risa said.

  Kai turned to see how Hiro took this.

  “The guests love them.” Hiro shrugged. “Our grandmother does not.”

  Risa fluttered her eyelashes at Kai. “Kai, darling, dearest and oldest friend of my big cousin?”

  “Don’t, Risa,” Hiro warned.

  Risa ignored him. “Would you be so kind as to ask Obaachan to give you a nice, long nighttime tour of the garden? While she’s out, my group will set up. As long as we’re playing before she gets in, she won’t have a gracious way to end our show.”

  “Tricking our grandmother. Nice one,” Hiro said. “Kai, don’t feel obligated to do anything.”

  “I don’t mind,” Kai said quickly. “And I want to hear a few songs.”

  “Yes!” Risa high-fived him. “You’re still awesome, Kai!”

  She bounded off before Hiro could object further.

  THE garden was chillier than it’d been before sunset. It was oddly bright for the hour, a thin blanket of snow reflecting the moonlight. Obaachan had changed out of her kimono and into galoshes, standing inches deep in the muddy, freezing pond with a rake and net. Kai knew it was freezing because he wore borrowed rain boots—Hiro’s, which were massive on him—and was collecting dead leaves from the water with an identical rake.

  “No one else ever thinks to get the gardening maintenance done at night.” Obaachan was so small and wrinkled that Kai worried she might break if she breathed, but she moved with the ease of someone who’d been laboring her whole life. “It’s so much easier when the guests are eating. You don’t have to spoil their view.”

  To be an Asada was to think of others all the time. Kai regarded the murky depths of the pond. His occupation necessitated a lot of time spent thinking about his hair, his clothes, his physique. Entire teams of people were paid to spend even more time thinking about him. It was impossible not to fall into bad habits when your job was quite literally all about you.

  “I’d like to help while I’m here, if you think I wouldn’t be getting in the way.” He pulled up a heavy catch of leaves and emptied them into the trash bag outside the pond.

  “You’re helping right now.”

  Kai blinked. “Oh.”

  Obaachan smiled, looking serene in the dim lighting. The glass doors were lit behind her, some inn workers scurrying down the hall inside. “You were always a good boy, Kai. So much gentler than the other children. The other boys would be outside wrestling, and all you ever wanted to do was serve tea and sweets to the guests.”

  Heat made its way to Kai’s chilled cheeks. “Did you think I was weird?”

  “Different, not weird. I thought you were sweet. Hiro’s different, too.”

  Kai knew there were some things people weren’t supposed to bring up with each other. Most of his life in New York was spent avoiding talking about anything serious. But he’d never held back with Obaachan—not when his parents were divorcing and he was half-estranged from his own grandparents; not when he came out to her when he was thirteen; not when he cried in her arms the night before his mom made him leave for New York. There were some relationships that didn’t weaken with time. He said, “Risa told me Hiro’s parents and uncle aren’t sure they want him to inherit the inn. Because he’s gay.”

  She shook her head. “My sons don’t care one bit who’s gay. I raised them better than that. They just can’t picture it: how Hiro would pass the inn on, what it might mean for our business.”

  “He could adopt.”

  “There are plenty of solutions, none of them typical, and that scares old people.”

  “Does it scare you?”

  “No,” she said flatly. “I told my sons they were embarrassing themselves, arguing in front of their children about whether a woman or a gay man is less unfit to run the inn. I told them a gay person’s already helped run it once, so they might as well give the business to the boy who was raised to keep it going.” She sniffed. “Risa is a smart young woman, but she doesn’t want to be tied to the inn. I know she sneaks her friends into the onsen when she thinks I’m not looking. They’re all covered in hideous tattoos, even the girls.” She shook her head and scooped up another small pile of leaves. “Hiro would never invite in someone with tattoos.”

  It seemed very much like Obaachan cared more about the tattoos than any other issue, but Kai carried onward. “I told Hiro that, too. That in a thousand years, there has almost definitely been a gay Asada heir before. It only makes sense.”

  “The last Okami was gay,” Obaachan said.

  “Exactly! See? I—” Kai froze. Obaachan was scraping the fallen foliage that was stuck to the lichen-slick edges of the pond. “Obaachan. You were the inn’s last Okami.”

  “Yes, that’s correct,” she said mildly.

  “But you….” Married a man. Had kids. The words that passed through Kai’s head were stupid. It felt surreal to be talking about this with her; he had never once thought of Obaachan in this way. She was always grandmotherly, and children didn’t wonder about their grandmothers’ romantic preferences.

  “It was the 1950s. My father was a farmer up north, in Takamatsu. Becoming the wife of the prestigious Asada-sa
n of Asada Ryokan was my way out of being a farmhand forever,” she said. “And Asada-san—Hiro’s grandfather—was intelligent and kind. He read books. He wrote poetry. He was handsome, even if I was never moved by his looks in the way other women were. So when the matchmaker set us up, I agreed.”

  “Were you happy?” What he meant was Are you happy now?

  “Yes.” Such a simple, easy response. “My sons and grandchildren mean more to me than anything in the world,” she said. “And my husband became my best friend, over time. But I know what it’s like to be in love. And I was never in love with him. I’ve lived a good life, but I missed that part of life.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Kai. “I never knew.”

  “Don’t be sorry, Kai-kun. That was the choice I had in my day. Hiro has more choices, though. I’m making sure of it. He’s making sure of it.” She scooped up her rake and tossed the pond gunk into the trash bag. “He’s going to love and be loved and know every part of life.” She nodded vigorously to herself. “And so are you.”

  Was he? He didn’t know what it was like to be in love. He’d dated enough during university, but every time someone had started to get serious with him, he’d panicked at the prospect of having less time to hang out with Hiro. Their friendship had always seemed more important than temporary dates. Then graduation came, and the show, and James Duffy. He’d been lonely for a while.

  “Are you all tired out?” she asked, clutching her rake.

  “Not at all,” he lied.

  “We’re nearly finished. The pond will sparkle tomorrow. You know,” she added thoughtfully, “if you wanted to help tomorrow, you could. Not just the inn—maybe Hiro, too.”

  “Of course,” he said quickly.

  “Are you still interested in tea serving?” she asked. “I know you’re not a little kid anymore, but….”

  “If you need a tea server, I’m here.” Assuming he could do the job. He hadn’t actually been much of a tea server as a kid. The women of the inn had done the real work while he’d wandered around and basked in the adults making a fuss over him.

  “And it might be good for Hiro’s mother to see,” said Obaachan. “A man serving tea—what Hiro’s husband might look like, once he marries. If it goes smoothly, then Hiro’s parents will have one less excuse for making his life difficult.”

  “That’s a genius idea, Obaachan,” Kai said. “Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

  “We’ll find a kimono for you to wear tonight.” She stuck her rake in the ground and launched herself out of the pond, water dripping from her boots in rivulets. “But first let’s go inside and catch the tail end of Risa’s little rock show.”

  “What? You knew?”

  Her eyes twinkled. “She never would have fallen for the shamisen if she hadn’t thought I disapproved. Young people are like that.”

  Kai snorted. “Are we?”

  “Well, not you and Hiro,” she said, as Kai took her hands and helped her extract her feet from her boots. “Just all the rest.”

  Chapter Four

  IT was a packed Brooklyn-bound B train, and he was standing in its center, begging for something. He didn’t know what, only that his mouth was going, “Please, will somebody help me?” No one did. Part of him thought lucidly, I’ve dreamed this before; I know what happens next. Even so, his chest ached with hurt when he heard someone laughing at him.

  It was another Kai, both himself and not himself, sneering cruelly in his face.

  “Please, can you help me?” Kai asked frantically, even as the other Kai continued to laugh.

  When the other Kai spoke, he had James Duffy’s voice. “You shouldn’t be allowed here. No one wants to look at people like you.”

  The other occupants of the train materialized as if they’d been there all along: Hiro, Risa, Obaachan, Shinsuke from when he was fourteen. There was his own mother, Kimi, staring at him in horror, and Hiro’s father, regarding the other Kai with knitted brows.

  “This isn’t me!” he cried out. He gestured to his other self. “Please, look at me—I need help—”

  “Kai? Kai, wake up.” Hiro spoke from his subway seat, and something shook Kai’s shoulder. “Kai, you’re having a nightmare.”

  His eyelids flickered. “W-what?” Hiro’s face was inches above his. Oh, God. Had Hiro heard him laughing on that train?

  “You were crying in your sleep.” Hiro’s thumb brushed Kai’s cheek, collecting a single tear. All at once Kai registered fully that it was a dream, the same dream he’d been having since September, and relief flooded through him. He wasn’t a homeless beggar; neither was he the cartoon villain version of himself that his subconscious kept conjuring up.

  “Just a weird dream,” he said, wiping at his eyes.

  “Do you want to go back to sleep?”

  Kai took a moment to get his bearings. The sun was rising outside; the sky was a light blue, the first hint of dawn. It was early, but he’d also fallen asleep early, jet-lagged.

  “No,” he said. “Can we turn on the space heater?”

  “Yeah.” Hiro rose up, scooching across his own futon, which was inches from Kai’s, and plugged in the heater. “I’ll get us some tea.”

  Hiro’s hair was messy. He needed to shave, his lips were chapped, and his pajamas were rumpled. Somehow Kai’s entire day felt made just for having seen him like this.

  Kai remembered that he had to meet Obaachan early to prepare for the morning check-in. Having a reason to get out of bed brought him even further out of his nightmare.

  He wanted to surprise Hiro, so he hadn’t mentioned his conversation with Obaachan.

  “Here you go.” Hiro handed him a steaming cup of barley tea, then reached for the electric kettle to pour his own. “I’ll have to head out in a little while. I need to pick up fresh snow crab and oysters from the market.”

  “Oh. Will you be back before ten?”

  Hiro looked at him curiously, and Kai realized he sounded oddly specific.

  “Probably in and out all day,” he said. “Do you need me?”

  “Of course not,” Kai said, gulping down his tea. It felt oddly like it stayed in his throat, his stomach a solid block. He pushed himself to his feet. “I’m going to take a shower.”

  He made it all the way to the hallway before it hit him: a sudden, violent pounding of the heart. It was like all the air was being sucked out of him, his lungs two useless vacuums. He clutched his chest.

  Hiro was behind him in a second.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Kai gasped. Heart palpitations rocked through him. They were unpleasant, but he was used to them. They often knocked him awake in the early hours of the morning, when he lay alone, tangled in his sheets, listening to the sounds of late-night Brooklyn while his heart raced so hard it felt like a small earthquake was shaking his bed.

  He’d been tested for asthma twice in the past two years, getting his lungs x-rayed. Last September he’d called up his network-supplied doctors in the middle of the night, convinced his throat was closing up. Something seemed wrong with his trachea, his lungs, his esophagus—he wasn’t sure. Every time he was examined, doctors told him he was fine. His assistant, Leslie, told him his symptoms sounded like panic attacks to her. Her own doctor had diagnosed her with those shortly after Kai hired her, but everyone who treated Kai just repeated that he had nothing to worry about.

  “Just feels like I can’t breathe,” he said. “But I can. I’m fine. It’s just in my head.”

  He’d been convinced he was dying the first few times it happened, but if this feeling were going to kill him, it would have done so over a year ago.

  “You are fine,” Hiro confirmed soothingly. Kai probably should have found that tone of voice condescending, but it felt good to have someone say it.

  Hiro held Kai from behind, wrapping his arms around his chest until his palm, huge like a bear paw, was pressing directly above Kai’s heart.

  “Is this okay?” Hiro asked.


  “Yeah,” Kai whispered. He wasn’t sure what was happening, but it could keep happening. Hiro’s hand was moving slightly with the racing rhythm of Kai’s heart, thump-thump, thump-thump.

  Hiro pressed his chest against the back of Kai’s head. “Breathe with me, Kai.”

  He took a deep breath.

  “I—I can’t.” Everything felt so tight; it was impossible to fit that much oxygen into his lungs.

  Hiro didn’t say anything. He just kept breathing, kept feeling Kai’s pulse. He was everywhere: the heat of him, his size, his chin brushing Kai’s hair. It was like Kai was being swaddled in a Hiro blanket. His inhalations and exhalations were deep and steady. Kai tried to follow them, slowing his own shallow gasps.

  If Hiro let go, Kai was going to break. He wasn’t sure how, only that it was true. He couldn’t shake the feeling the dream had given him—and it was such a stupid dream. He was pretty sure half the people in the train car weren’t even real-life Asadas, just made-up faces conjured by his subconscious. But when he’d been sleeping, it all felt so intense, and he’d brought that intensity into the daylight hours.

  “Shh, Kai. You’re okay,” Hiro whispered.

  Kai nodded stiffly. His breathing was deeper. Not quite matching Hiro’s, but no longer its opposite.

  He wasn’t sure how long they stood there. Just that by the time his breaths slowed to Hiro’s pace, he could no longer remember when breathing had seemed like such a struggle. He never could, once the feeling passed.

  Hiro moved his hands up to Kai’s shoulders. Kai didn’t move, like none of this would be awkward as long as he didn’t turn around and look at Hiro’s face. Hiro squeezed him, a good, long hug that warmed his insides like steaming tea, and let him go.

  As soon as he was released, Kai said, “We never speak of that.”

  “Too late,” Hiro said. “Already tweeted about it. Everyone knows.”

  Kai chuckled, the strange spell between them broken, and punched Hiro in the arm. He headed toward the bathroom, the sounds of Hiro’s laughter erupting behind him.