The Winter Quarters

by Anna Veriani

  “I remember you somehow turning our kitchenette into an old-fashioned washoku joint, yeah. Like water into wine.”

  Kai looked away, embarrassed. “It’s like that. For my assistant and me. I cook lazy stuff—oden, soba, grilled fish. Leslie goes to Sunrise Mart with my list each week.”

  “He’s cute and he cooks too,” Hiro said. “What a guy.”

  A half hour later, Hiro parked the truck in the empty parking lot of a restaurant called Suzuki Shokudou. He opened the door, inhaling the nippy sea salt breeze.

  Dried blowfish swung from the door as they stepped in. The restaurant was a one-room shack with three short-legged tables, and both Suzukis—Goshujin and Okusan—were waiting for them. Okusan led them to their table.

  “Well, aren’t you handsome,” she said to Kai.

  Kai must have received compliments about his looks all the time, but when it came from Okusan, he blushed brightly and stammered his thanks. Goshujin waved at them from behind the front counter, where he was cooking, and Okusan left and came back with two hot cups of tea.

  “Cheers,” Hiro said. The tea burst with flavor in his mouth, warming him to his bones.

  Ten minutes later Okusan emerged with a hot pot full of steaming Hokkoku sweet shrimp, mushrooms, carrots, and dark brown dashi broth. Every meal Hiro had eaten here was the kind of unforgettable meal he would think about years later, but right now all he wanted to do was watch Kai.

  As Kai closed his eyes and chewed, he looked like he was floating on a river of pure pleasure. Kai swallowed, then flicked his tongue out to lick his lips.

  “This is fucking fantastic,” he declared in English.

  “Fucking fantastic,” Goshujin repeated from behind the counter, the words thickly accented.

  “Are you American?” Okusan cocked her head, sitting on a barstool at the counter.

  Kai paused, then shrugged. “I grew up in Kanazawa,” he explained. “My mom is Japanese. But my father is American, and I went to high school and university in the States.”

  Hiro was worried they would say something gauche, as elderly people sometimes did, and make Kai uncomfortable, but Okusan merely nodded and went back to the kitchen to bring them more tea.

  Chapter Seven

  AT what point had he begun to think that the only good things in the world were high-end Manhattan restaurants with household-name chefs and paparazzi waiting outside? In some ways he felt like the food he’d eaten at Asada Inn and Suzuki Shokudou was the first truly good food he’d eaten in years. It filled him up like spiritual nourishment, and their entire lunch cost less than two thousand yen. He’d never eaten lunch in Manhattan for under twenty dollars, period.

  The rice paddies Hiro drove them to were at the foot of a mountain, in which tilted stones were lodged in the soil to prevent earthquakes from destroying the crops. What should have been purely utilitarian construction looked like a woven pattern in the mountainside. Harvest season was over and the paddies were bare, but the brown still looked beautiful amidst the entire countryside of green. The truck bumped and twisted up the road until they were outside a thatched-roof house, cracked flowerpots and conch shells lining the stone walkway.

  An old woman, so small and bent that Kai panicked to see her move, hobbled out the front door toward them. She had gray hair cut short, and big, round glasses with thick black frames that magnified her eyes, making her look like an adorable aged scholar.

  “Wait, Ya-san!” Hiro said. “Let us come to you.”

  Thick storm clouds were forming overhead, the air full of a certain spark, like the world was holding its breath.

  “I can come out,” she admonished. “What use am I if I can’t leave my own front door?”

  “Go get her before she falls,” Hiro muttered to Kai, heading toward the back of the pickup truck.

  Kai bowed. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  She surveyed him with her owlish eyes. “You’re an awfully good-looking one, aren’t you?”

  God, old people sure were something.

  “I’m Kai,” he said. “Please take my arm, Tokuda-san. I’ll help you back toward the house.”

  “You can just call me Ya, dear. Everyone always has.” She grabbed on to his arm with surprising strength. Maybe she wasn’t so fragile after all.

  They shuffled at her pace into the house, taking off their shoes and entering her kitchen. Hiro came in behind them carrying two massive baskets. A gust of wind blew outside, and the shoji doors shook.

  “Your friend looks like the Shining Prince, Hiro. Where did you find him?”

  “We grew up together,” Hiro said. “And he doesn’t need any more compliments. It’s all going to his head these days.”

  She regarded Kai carefully with her curious eyes and declared, as if she were speaking an objective truth, “No. It’s not going to his head.”

  “I brought you some things.” Hiro uncovered one of the baskets, revealing dried mushrooms, konbu, and a corked decanter of plum wine.

  She looked through it carefully, analyzing each piece. “So many goodies, Hiro. We should enjoy a hot pot.”

  “You don’t have to share,” Hiro said quickly.

  She gave him a stern look that shut him up. Such a tiny, imperial woman. She reminded Kai fondly of Obaachan.

  “If you insist.” Hiro bowed his head slightly in gratitude. “If it’s all right, I’ll load my truck now. I’d like to get it done before it rains.”

  “Your rice is where it always is.”

  Hiro went to slip his shoes back on, and Kai made to follow, but Hiro said, “I can get this myself. Just relax.”

  “I can carry a bag of rice,” Kai said, annoyed.

  “I know you can. But keep Ya-san company, okay?”

  “I haven’t had much company lately,” Ya-san said. “My husband passed away three years ago, and no one comes around often except to pick up orders or visit his grave.”

  Kai swallowed. He didn’t like thinking about this little old lady living on a hill all by herself. The growing storm shaking the doors and windows made it feel even sadder.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” he said.

  She shook her head. “He was a good man, but it was bound to happen. He always overworked.” She surveyed her kitchen. “It would be good of me to start cooking so that Hiro has something hot to eat when he gets in, but I don’t feel like it.” She shrugged and adjusted her glasses. “Would you like to see my library?”

  Kai gaped, taken aback.

  “I’m not very good at waiting on people,” she said frankly. “Are you?”

  “Er….” His job involved being waited on, not serving others. Then he thought of yesterday, how rewarding it had been to serve tea at the inn. There was something about thinking about other people’s needs that relaxed him. “Sometimes I like to try.”

  “You can make the hot pot, then,” she said. “Let me give you a tour first.”

  Kai followed her. She led him to a small but beautiful library, short bookcases stacked with rows and rows of books. Kai scanned the shelves, eyes immediately resting on a copy of The Tale of Genji in modernized Japanese. There was a shelf full of local authors, too—the ghost tales of Izumi Kyouka, Tokuda Shuusei’s dry realism, Fukuda Chiyo-ni verses. Kai paused on a volume of poetry.

  “Who was Tsuru Akira? He was from Ishikawa?” All of the other authors on the shelf seemed to be.

  “He was from the city of Kahoku,” she confirmed. “He wrote poems during the thirties, protesting the war, and he was arrested.” She took the book from Kai, flipping idly to a short poem that had been heavily annotated. She added, “Just like Hiro’s great-grandfather, in fact.”

  “Really?”

  She nodded. “Mr. Asada was an ardent pacifist. He was famous—or infamous—in Ishikawa during his time. He loved Japanese tradition, rejected the West, but also rejected the war. I remember him from my girlhood. My parents thought he was a genius. Here.” She pointed across the room. Above the bookcases, framed ph
otos were hung on the wall. “I have his portrait.”

  It was startling how much Hiro’s great-grandfather looked like Hiro. It was a sepia photograph, faded with age but depicting a man who had Hiro’s same wide cheeks and square shoulders. He wore a full kimono, layers upon layers, and sat cross-legged on the floor.

  “He was named Hiro, too, wasn’t he?” Kai asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Your collection is incredible,” he said. “Not just the books.”

  The pictures gradually progressed through time, gaining tinted hues of color. Kai stepped forward, transfixed by a photograph of two women. One of them was leaning against an antique car. She was petite and thin-waisted, wearing a classic 1950s A-line dress that billowed around her. A wide-brimmed sun hat cast one of her eyes in shadow, while the unconcealed half of her face was bright and sparkling. She was looking down at a woman who lay on the hood of the car. The second woman crossed her ankles, wearing figure-hugging, high-waisted pants. A cigarette hung between her lips. Her hair was short, and she was giving a crooked, mischievous smile up at the woman looking down at her.

  Kai stared at it. It felt like art; it was so moving. They were the cool embodiment of youth from another era, women ready to conquer the brave new world, and they were obviously, deeply, and joyfully in love.

  “Hiro’s grandmother and I,” Ya-san said. “Just before we both got married.”

  Thunder cracked so near to the house that it boomed like an explosion. The door and windows shook; kept shaking, for perhaps a full ten seconds, and then the rain came down like a waterfall from the sky. Poor Hiro.

  I know what it’s like to be in love. Obaachan’s voice echoed in his head. She’d told him that with such confidence, with the same amount of certainty that the long-haired woman in the picture had. This was a woman who knew exactly what love was like.

  Obaachan insisted that her family’s inn buy rice from a lonely old woman who lived three hours north. It seemed so surreal, though. Kai couldn’t imagine how he would ask. Were you by any chance in love with Hiro’s grandma? It was too personal, too unlikely; Kai decided not to try.

  “You were both so beautiful,” he said, filling up the silence.

  “Aiko is the most beautiful woman who has ever lived,” Ya-san said firmly. “I’ve been alive close to a century, and she is the strongest, most intelligent person who has ever walked on this planet.”

  Oh. Well. That pretty much answered it.

  Thoughts whirred through his head. This was Obaachan’s other half, up here in the Noto peninsula, and they were both widowed and not together. Why? He had no idea, but he couldn’t ask.

  Say something, say anything, Kai mentally urged himself.

  “She must have been an amazing Okami,” he said vapidly.

  But Ya-san turned the vapidity into something real, as she seemed to have a knack to do: “She was the best of the best. She turned the Asada Inn around right when it was on its final leg.”

  “Its final leg?” Kai said.

  “Asada-san,” she said, leaning her head toward the portrait of Hiro’s great-grandfather, “lost his neighbors’ business when he was arrested during the war. He became a notorious eccentric. Even after the war, when his views were suddenly in vogue, people were put off by him. His daughter-in-law won everyone back.”

  “Do you think she enjoyed it?”

  “It was her calling,” Ya-san said. “I used to stay with her just after she got married. She was the warmest, most hospitable Okami. Behind the scenes, she was scrupulous, diligent, and uncompromising.”

  Kai could easily imagine it. “You stayed friends?”

  Ya-san smiled sadly. “It was a new phase of life. She was so busy, and soon she didn’t have time for me. We… gradually fell apart. I met her children when they were born, but besides that there seemed little reason for us to see one another. I remember holding her second son in my arms and thinking, ‘We’ll never be as we once were.’ And I was right.”

  The words chilled Kai. Kai felt like he was nowhere close to getting married, let alone to starting a family. As long as the whole world thought he was dating James Duffy, he was pretty much doomed to singlehood. But Hiro was going to find someone. Probably soon, as the pressure mounted for him to take over the inn. Hiro would raise kids.

  Would Kai, decades from now, be looking at some old photograph of him and Hiro and thinking about how they had fallen apart? What moment would he pinpoint as the end of their friendship?

  “When was the last time you saw her?” Kai asked.

  “She came up for my husband’s funeral,” Ya-san said. “The trip was hard on her. And I felt so guilty feeling the slightest glimmer of happiness on a day when I should have been so sad. I asked her not to come again. That was three years ago.”

  Kai looked at her. It was so rare that anyone was much shorter than him, but she was smaller than he was, and so fragile. Too alone. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Nothing to be sorry for,” she said. “Seeing you and Hiro makes me happy, though.”

  “It does?”

  “Yes. Two inseparable friends. Not even the reality show has kept you apart.”

  Kai froze. He’d felt this feeling before. This was one of the unreal moments of his life when he realized that a person he thought was a stranger knew more about him than he had imagined. That miscalculation, the assumption he was anonymous—it had happened with waiters, tailors, neighbors, dates. When would he stop making it?

  “You know who I am?” he asked.

  “Kai Ledging. Ishikawa-born author. I bought your book.” She nodded toward the local writers’ shelves.

  He gasped, spotting the ridiculous book and wondering if he’d missed it on purpose, if only subconsciously. Its pink spine was so unusual in a library full of pale paperbacks.

  “That is very, very ghostwritten,” he said, cringing at how embarrassed he sounded.

  It’d been published just after the first season of the show. His mother arranged everything, attracting a prominent literary agent and concocting, with the help of a ghostwriter, a mix of anecdotes about fame and “revealing” stories about Kai that were mostly fabricated and entirely idiotic. The book had maybe ten thousand words and twice as many pictures. Kai had never flipped through the whole thing.

  “It’s not very good,” she admitted. “Still. You’re quite the curiosity.”

  “I’m not,” he mumbled.

  “No one expects a boy from Ishikawa to become famous in America. Most people don’t even know enough about Ishikawa to understand how strange that is,” she said. “But I do wonder if you enjoy it? America is so different.”

  “I’m incredibly fortunate,” Kai blurted, a PR-trained, knee-jerk reaction.

  “Sure,” she said dismissively. “But don’t you miss your home? Hiro mentions you every time he visits.”

  “He does?” Kai was instantly hungry for details. “What does he say?”

  Her eyes flickered, perhaps unconsciously, toward the photograph of her and young Obaachan. “That you’re in a new phase of life. You’re so busy, and you don’t have much time for him anymore.”

  “Thanks, Ya-san.” Hiro appeared in the doorway, his hair soaking wet.

  Kai startled just as he had when the thunder had cracked.

  “It must be pouring,” Ya-san said.

  As if on cue, the rain pounded down like drums. The house shook again, and Hiro said, “My weather app says it’s going to hail any moment now. I think we need to head south before it gets worse.”

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll see you out.”

  “Can you help me tie the tarp over the rice in the back, Kai?” Hiro said.

  “Yeah, of course.”

  Ya-san watched them from the front door. Rain was coming down in sheets, so thick that Kai would have worn goggles if he had some. They struggled to tie down the tarp, protecting the sacks of rice from getting wet. They had just secured it, as soaked as if they had jumped into the ocea
n, when Kai felt the first stinging impact of a hailstone.

  The sky flashed and rumbled, and Hiro put his arm around Kai like he wanted to shield him.

  “I’m not driving you down the hill in this,” Hiro said. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “It’d be equally dangerous for you,” Kai pointed out.

  “Yeah, but I’m not the one whose beautiful body is insured for a pretty seven figures. Come on. Let’s go back inside.”

  Secretly Kai was glad to have Hiro lead him, steadying him when he slipped on the walkway.

  “YOU’LL have to stay the night,” Ya-san said. The news reporter on her little TV was saying it would thunder, rain, and sporadically hail for hours. They showed a map of Ishikawa, helpfully covered in raindrops and umbrellas. “It’s buri-okoshi, you know.”

  The waking of the yellowtails. This was thunder, snow, and hail, which coincided with the annual migration of the yellowtails in Ishikawa. Locals said that the claps of thunder woke the fish and reminded them it was time to get going.

  Hiro frowned, looking at his phone. “The inn’s phone lines are down. My parents will probably assume we’re stuck up here for a bit, though.”

  “Good thing you brought food,” Ya-san said, “and two strong boys to cook it, too.”

  JAZZ played from a small wooden radio on the kitchen counter, and Kai filled soup bowls with a ladle. He’d prepared a hot pot full of the things Hiro had brought: mushrooms, seaweed, carrots, and dried fish. Hiro made side dishes of oden too, stewed konnyaku, quail eggs, daikon, and fish cakes in dashi broth. Everything was still steaming as Hiro set the table and poured cups of tea.

  “My food’s not going to be very good,” Kai apologized as he placed a bowl in front of Ya-san. “I cook a lot but never seem to get any better at it.”

  “Kai, it smells amazing,” Hiro said.

  “It’s nothing,” Kai said quickly.

  “Hiro, isn’t it obvious? This boy is trying out for the role of inn host,” Ya-san said. “Criticize his cooking. It’s the only thing that’ll make him happy.”

  Kai laughed. Hiro only looked up at him from the table. There was a stark, pained look in his eyes that lasted maybe a quarter of second. Then he composed himself and laughed his Hiro-laugh, the one that showed all his teeth. But Kai knew what he’d seen.