Drafts of a Suicide Note

by Wong, Mandy-Suzanne

  I’d threaten her, I thought. The truth or else. But no, I hung up. What would I threaten with? My client’s godmomma’s daughter’s ex-husband?

  I threw the phone. Delivered some kicks to the underside of my desk. Wondered what the fuck I’d gotten myself into.

  I decided to wait for Nabi in the jacuzzi. When my stomach quieted, I’d come up with a plan. Once I had a plan, I’d put it all out of my mind for the night. Zaru soba for dinner while Nabi talked about her day. Movies on the couch. I’d fall asleep with my head in her lap.

  It was not to be. First I couldn’t calm myself. I felt like pieces of my life were tumbling around me in a shower of broken cutlery. I have never been played the way that woman played me. It made me ashamed to be in my own presence. How could I believe anything I thought anymore? This made me sort of panic, and I had to take more Zo. With a hazy meadow between myself and me, I discerned the only course.

  Get something on UnDoreen. Preferably the truth. At least enough of it to do damage. Begin again, not with what she’d said, what she’d done to me; begin with void and shadow and ask, Who would do this?

  But instead of clarifying avenues of thought, my brain set off flares of anger and disgust, refusing to forget that if I’d begun the day in a sorry condition, I was finishing it in a state worse than contemptible. Unable to strategize, I found my phone, started to call Nabi, beg her to come home. Before I dialed, I noticed she’d left me a voicemail.

  “Hi, baby. It’s about, let me see, two thirty? I’ve been worrying about you all day long so I decided to wrap up the afternoon early, but… Well, Iesha needs me to babysit. She just asked me, it’s totally last-minute, so she can’t find anybody else. Anyway, so both of us came by, dropped off your car, and I—I came up to check on you, but… Well, you’re obviously not here. I hope that means you’re feeling better and you got some sleep. Maybe you went for a swim or something, but I… Okay, listen, baby. Kenji. I’m really worried, okay? You’re not here, you haven’t called me, and this morning you were so upset—Look, I gotta go, Iesha’s waiting outside. But I’ll be at her place, I’ll call you later. Or you can call me anytime, okay? Love you, baby.”

  I played it a dozen times. Transcribed it here word for word. Her forced cheerfulness giving way to tension, impatience, a moment close to tears, and then—then nothing. At two thirty I was with someone who pinned my hands to a dead woman’s bed and seemed to scoop me out, starting at the back of my throat. It crossed my mind to sink below the water and stay there.

  

  AS5.

  mute b/w ruin, semi-glossy

  I’m about nine, watching Masami’s finger wag. Everything you do is a reflection of something greater than yourself. You have an obligation to achieve your utmost potential and so bring honor to the family, the school, and the pair of island nations that give you life.

  Menboku. Eyes, face, reputation, prestige, dignity, honor. Ikka no menboku to naru. To bring honor to the house. Menboku wo hodokosu. To bring honor to oneself. Mi wa ichidai na wa matsudai. Life is for a generation, but a good name is forever.

  And yet: “The opinions of others are often worthless. The house of Okada-Caines is beyond boundaries and borders and the prison of prejudice.” Thus spoke Masami. Barrington said: “Listen to your mother.”

  In efforts to explain this kind of paradox, history just doesn’t cut it.

  Being a Japanese woman precluded Masami from building her corporate empire in Japan. That’s just how Japan was. So she followed Barrington, youthful and hellbent, into Mid-Atlantic exile. She nevertheless believed (all evidence to the contrary, and every time she said it I thought, Cha, you coulda fooled me, don) childrearing to be the exclusive purview of the woman of the house. With help from Filipina maids, after-school programs, classmates’ parents, CAM’s interns, and the chauffeur.

  And that’s just how Barrington wanted it. Barrington had too much to do to bother with sons. Top of the list was proving to Masami, his exotic pet (who called him shujin and swore up and down that he was the bona fide head of the family) that he, yes, he, Barrington Caines, was CAM’s de facto bossman. He failed. Nobody out-muscles Masami in business. Even Erik could’ve told him that. Eventually the sumou wrestler of greed belly-slammed Barrington’s pride. He threw himself on the mercy of the dragon and vented his frustrations on Bermuda’s politics. Which really is a shame because by that point I was old enough to appreciate what he harangued about but not fortified enough to dissociate important issues from Barrington himself. After all, this was the guy who evinced greater affection for the Bermuda Industrial Union than he did for his sons.

  Research indicates that Japanese parents expect offspring to imitate their behavior. Yes, I tried to get JSTOR to explain. When I had access to JSTOR. When people at Harvard still liked me. I consulted the great digital oracle of scholarship in panicky moments which really called for a life vest. Like when Masami said: “You will have a limited time in which ikka no menboku to naru in the way that you see fit. If the time expires and you do not succeed, you will be made to do so in the way that I see fit. Rather a sturdy rooftop tile than a broken jewel.” Barrington said: “Give Back To Bermuda.”

  Research also indicates, in addition to an elevated rate of paternal absenteeism in Bermudian families, that Japanese mothers do not punish their children or force them into things. Rather a child learns to fear his mother’s disappointment. Bermudian parents, likewise, have been shown to prefer discipline via anxiety and guilt over all other tactics.

  Then again, I’m sure any Japanese person could find a million reasons why Masami ended up in exile, corporate empire notwithstanding. And no one who finds out I’m Bermudian ever believes it. JSTOR was flummoxed too.

  All this came up for the first time when I went for an MA-PhD instead of business school, which meant throughout my tenure as a grad student, I had to endure being told that the literary arts were not my calling and the fact would hit home sooner or later. For two years I suspected Masami of telling my professors to discourage me. I wasted so much time trying to catch her in the act. I’d come up with leading questions designed to make people let slip that they’d accepted a bribe from the Okada-Caines family despot. When I qualified to enter the PhD program, she observed that I had two degrees from Harvard but had yet to publish a single word, and she thought professional writers would consider that a failure.

  That’s when I began to understand Masami’s notion of success. (Barrington’s too, but whatever.) If I thought about it too much, it seemed paradoxical and murky. But it was really quite simple.

  Money.

  I lived in a shabby place in Inman Square. I had a Harvard teaching fellowship with such a meager salary you’d be justified in calling it charity work. That winter I fell down some steps in my apartment building. Broke my arm, had to quit waiting tables at the Harvard Faculty Club. And the fellowship covered tuition but not health insurance. I couldn’t work off campus without breaching the draconian terms of my visa. I depended on Masami’s stingy annuity, which would’ve gone to pay tuition if not for the fellowship. Either that or starve.

  My apartment was on the second floor of a three-story, barn-like structure. The stairwell was always dark. Everyone clung to the walls, even those who’d lived there longer than I’d been alive. And they were all artists. Ever preoccupied, they tracked in mud and snow. The landlord never cleaned it up. That’s why I fell. There were rats. The landings stank. I think something died in one of the corners. Nobody wanted to get a flashlight and find out. Nearby was the Zeitgest Gallery where I rubbed shoulders with the avant-garde. Composers, concrete poets, installation artists, and a sort of docent with a pigeon on her head. The pigeon seemed to look at me with pity.

  Picture a blob of a man who never leaves his apartment. He’s a genius-level chemist with consultancies at MIT, Harvard, and a bunch of pharmaceutical companies. He lives on the third floor of a certain r
at-infested hovel in Inman Square. He’s divided the lower stories into six closety flats. He leases them to financially challenged introspectives, usually artists. And oh yes, he makes designer drugs in his apartment. Nobody minds. It’s that kind of building. Most of the tenants are too loopy to realize. Just a whiff of the lobby is enough to do the trick.

  During a particularly low point in my life, that chemist was my landlord. He became my mentor, too. We discussed Hardy, Meillassoux, Badiou, my tale of menboku and woe. Thought at first he wasn’t listening, bent over some petri dish or a centrifuge. But he said, “It’s not about honor. It’s about praise and gratitude. It’s about people going gaga over you, groveling for your attention. You want that, come work for me. Grovel they will and pay you for the privilege. In Barbados you must have—”

  “Bermuda.”

  He was just getting started on the mercantile aspect of his operation. He had one other broker, a stock trader living at the Ritz on Tremont. The idea of a Bermuda market titillated both of them. They said I had the looks, the cultivation, and the attitude to make a success of it.

  “I mean, visiting the Bahamas obviously—”

  “Bermuda.”

  But I had no desire to return to the island. I trained with the Tremont guy and looked for clients at the universities.

  Money, yes, but that took time. I began it because it was glamorous and cold-blooded. Menboku ga nai: without honor.

  In case you’re wondering, it would’ve been pure idiocy for me to call this guy at Inman and ask him if he’d hired a second Bermudian broker. First of all, he would’ve consulted me before the fact. Second, that question would be tantamount to an admission that I’d lost control of my turf. Let me make myself clear: cautious does not begin to cover it with this guy. If he thought there was one iota of a chance that I’d exposed us to unnecessary risk, my brokering days were over.

  That’s why in lieu of drowning I dragged myself to this ridiculous party at Dockyard. It was a function for accountants. They had soca and limbo. Needless to say, I turned down the invitation the moment I set eyes on it. Cozy night with Nabi or the back end of a conga line?

  But circumstances changed. Hauling myself out of the jacuzzi and getting high enough to hug people cost me quite an effort, the end result of which was a hideous mistake; but there was nothing for it. While soaking I received a distress message from a client, begging me to attend the party and bring the girl with the green eyes.

  Code for Empyreal.

  It was one of the coveted apartments behind the National Museum, perched on ocean’s edge at Bermuda’s last western frontier. Seventeenth-century limestone, cannons from the period, tunnels, black iron gates. A view of open sea, coruscant cruise ships lumbering from New York and Fort Lauderdale to moor at our Royal Naval Dockyard. And a sky swept clean by oceanic winds. An effulgent throng of stars, an opulent celestial sphere almost lent an insinuation of elegance to the Accountant General’s Cuban-cut aloha shirt, the punch bowl, and the pineapple cubes run through with little paper parasols.

  I was in no mood to appreciate any of this. Neither was my client, Gavin Moniz, who met me in the parking lot and followed me around like a bad smell.

  Gavin isn’t an accountant. He crashed the party because I’d told him that as much as I respect him as a too-rare introvert, I am tired of delivering to his messy bachelor pad. The place smells like stale spinach. Start mingling, I told him, or get someone to clean. He elected the former and the gathering of accountants.

  I went along with it because Gavin lives by Empyreal but can’t actually afford it. I’ve known him to spend weeks sleeping at his office to avoid his landlady, having given me her share of his paycheck and then some. I didn’t think he had the stomach for brokering, but addicts often have hidden caches of nerve.

  It also happens that Gavin is a corporate investigator. Not too many people know him; he’s one of an anonymous team that gathers info, writes reports, and leaves the finger-pointing to the team leader. Being in need of information, I wanted to speak to him at length, so the idea was to get the other clients over with and then retire with Gavin to some corner. But Gavin was convinced I’d forget him if he didn’t dog my every step. I knew no one would talk to me if I had that fool pinned to my behind like a placard. That may be why I didn’t learn a thing. Try as I might to banish him to the punch bowl, he was insistent. That’s how he’d been taught to treat a lead.

  You see, Gavin’s with BRMS. His team leader is Martin Furbert.

  That’s where things got tricky. With his Empyreally enhanced creativity, Gavin could probably come up with several takes on any particular question, and he wouldn’t betray my confidence. Martin, however, runs a ship so tight it could fit into a bottle. Hence Gavin’s dependency on controlled substances.

  I needed an oblique angle that not even Martin could use to tie Gavin’s inquiries to me. I told him I’d come upon an opportunity to do business with someone at Clocktower (no specifics), but I suspected that the company was under investigation. Something to do with death benefits (no details). I was sure Gavin could appreciate that I didn’t want anything to do with anything that might put me in the path of some undercover copper. I wanted names, records, anything of interest. Didn’t mention UnDoreen, but part of me expected that Gavin would find her grinning in front of stars and stripes with a shiny little shield on her chest, and that part of me wanted to kick something. Preferably myself.

  It was ridiculously easy to get Gavin to agree. I didn’t even have to comp him anything. Stupidity, dependence, that’s really what I sell. Not just me either, to be fair. There’s a monkey on everybody’s back. That’s why capitalism works.

  It didn’t take long for Gavin’s shenanigans to go awry. The next afternoon, a Wednesday, I was at my computer skimming a soporific article on states of mind in geriatric criminals. The piece was researched and prepared by a team of psychologists at Cambridge University, among them Doreen Eastbridge. There I was, shaking my head every few sentences—not at what I read but at the fact that anyone would impersonate this manifestly boring person, that I (yes, I) had not only slept with whomever I’d mistaken for this individual but also, thoroughly duped, enjoyed myself shamefully—when there came an email from Gavin.

  hey, far as i can tell ur in the clear, some issues re death benefits and couple other payouts, but all insurance companies have those, they never like to pay, lol, mostly settled out of court, some in front of judge, a couple pending but no open investigations, no suspicions of fraud, not that anyone recorded anyway, no search warrants, no statements, fyi u prolly already know this but clocktower invests premiums with cam so anyone insured with them is also paying u :) guess u want to sell me a policy :) i’m kidding but u better keep us healthy, doctors and undertakers are $$$$ :) safe, g.

  I reproduce this here as the tackiest email I’ve ever received. It wasn’t just tacky in its maltreatment of the comma. It wasn’t just the offensive presumption that I was complicit in whatever CAM was up to. I distinctly told that jackass to specify via text message, not email, a convenient hour, nothing else, at which we might meet in person to discuss what he found. Nothing. Else. On top of that, the idiot emailed me from work. I could’ve strangled him.

  Having spent some time spewing curses in every dialect I knew, I groaned aloud when my phone rang. I looked at it and cursed some more.

  Putting it off would’ve only made things worse.

  “Hey, Martin. Zapnin, bye, y’all right?”

  Clenched teeth. Tight grip on clump of hair.

  “Kenji, yes, how are you? Things are going well. Quick question for you. Gavin Moniz.”

  This is where Martin and I differ. He’s precipitously direct, I’m quite a bit more subtle.

  “Martin, aren’t you in—”

  “New York, that’s right. Guess Nabilah must’ve told you. I get back tomorrow. Now Gavin Moniz, you know him?”<
br />
  “Yeah. We met in Boston. Think I told you.”

  “Right. BC for him, Harvard for you. I just want to know how you got one of my employees to do your dirty work.”

  Pause. Deep breath.

  Martin and Integrity. They are synonyms. Justice and The Facts, yes? Okay. Now, Nabi swore he knew nothing about the time she spent at my place. She was of the firm conviction that any tension between me and him stemmed from nothing more than differences in personality.

  I’m different from a lot of people. But if the accusation came from any one of them, I’d have sidestepped it with finesse and made assets of my adversaries before we hung up. With Martin, I came to a boil in no time flat. “Gavin’s not your employee. He works for BRMS. And what he does in his spare time is none of your concern.”

  “Kenji, in the real world, there is no such thing as what you call spare time. So what Gavin Moniz does is every bit my concern. He’s a member of my team. He answers to my orders. His career is in my hands.”

  “I should think it was in his. And in any case—”

  “You should think. Period.”

  “Martin, if an original thought met you on the street and said hello, you wouldn’t know it.”

  “I beg your pardon, you—”

  “And you’re not my team leader. Period.”

  This is how Martin and I communicate. He steals some of my phrases, I ridicule some of his. Little slap here, little dig there. We often talk over one another. Think boxing kangaroos.

  “Now you and I both know”—a favorite assumption of his—“that when members of my team access certain secure databases, I know about it.”

  “You spy on them.”

  “The server notified me. It’s my prerogative. Look, your address came up. I’d expect you of all people to respect information security.”

  “I’d expect you to respect people’s privacy.”