“Nothing,” I said with a languid gesture at the library. “I’m all tied up in you now, you know that. Thing is, you’re tied up in me. You broke into my house too. That much I can prove. You didn’t even wait a day before you started trying to threaten me.”
We sat there smiling like a couple of potheads, each trying to outlast the other in a contest of phlegm. We cuddled our secrets and might’ve left it there, a pair of thwarted crooks making each other sheepish. Let bygones be bygones. The idea made me weary and disheartened. Char rubbed my thigh as if for old times’ sake.
“I need to know, Kenji.”
“I’ve shown you everything I can.”
“Not yet. But you will.”
She watched my hands clinging for dear life to gold and purple silk. She smiled a blues singer’s smile. We spoke in bluesy voices.
“How’d you know where I live? I’m not in the book.”
“I’ll find a way, you know. I always do.”
“You feel like talking to the cops, it’s all right. It won’t matter. Thing about this little backwater, everybody knows me.”
“Oh, is that right?”
“Nobody knows you. They’ll say you’re just an expat trying to throw your weight around, undermine an upstanding local businessman. I’m just telling you how it’ll look.”
Her supermodel smile. Perhaps a bit diluted with the pity she reserved for those she deemed unworthy in the end. And one teensy-
weensy unintentional flaw.
“Tell you what,” she said, giving my shoulder a pat. “You want to negotiate. I get that. You’re entitled. But you’re in no shape for it now.”
“There’s nothing to negotiate.”
“So what you’re going to do is sleep on it.” Another pat.
“Char,” I said, “she died. I know it’s hard to live with.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow. You tell me where she is and what you want.” And a kiss on the forehead.
Char got up to leave. I made a stupid grab at her hand, then I had to rush to the bathroom. Nabi’s dress tumbled to the floor, where I left it.
Char and I are two of a kind. That’s the only reason I saw. Fascination would’ve blinded any other man. But I detected a teensy-weensy tensing. Flash in the eyes as of a dagger concealed beneath a coat. That wordless flash was a promise to bring me down; and the same instinct, the same intimacy, that revealed it in the first place warned me not to underestimate it.
There was a hidden blemish on my garish sketch of my own untouchablity. My word against another’s would probably vanquish at Court Street and Victoria, but there is one person—one person alone could torpedo it and sink it. This person has more money and connections than Char will ever dream of.
How much did the dragon know about Aetna Simmons’ death? How far would she go to keep it mired in shadow?
Just so it’s clear. To ensure my own protection, I had twenty-four hours to instigate a game of wits against a diabolical power and emerge victorious. And I’d never been so sick in my life. Hanging out with my head in the toilet, I grew evermore disgusting to myself. It may sound impossible to be enraged and despondent at the same time, but I was, and the longer I sat there, the worse it got, building like the synchronous tension and weakness in my stomach, rising like the chill that came just before I vomited.
AS7, that’s how I felt. That gush of ire like a retch or a long wail. This was the beginning of the protracted explosion of her suicidal rage. Violence and vengeance. You’d have to be high to miss the flying accusations. But Aetna also blames herself, maybe most of all, and cloaks her self-revulsion in vitriol aimed not quite truly outwards. It’s her own fault that she’s trapped. Trapped in what, she doesn’t say, but this is the outcry of someone out of options. The capital letters. Is there any more flagrant representation of impotence and futility? Is there anything more helpless than a scream without sound?
Taken together, these capitalized words form a demented imperative. A note within a note? Two notes in one? Maybe for two different readers? Before drafting my essay I spent an entire night gazing at those capitals, straining to hear into their silence. A point of no return furiously scrawled blood-red on an abnormal canvas.
The W-2. With that, she signs her name. Clocktower’s name. Delegates responsibility. Having no idea she’d send a minor pill-pusher to meet his demon.
Perhaps I thought things couldn’t possibly get any worse. I can’t convey how impossible it was not only to shove myself into a suit and drive to Hamilton without puking but also, reeling from my thorough disgrace, to steel myself for a confrontation I’d meant to avoid for all eternity at any cost.
I couldn’t take the chance that if Char and Masami were in this business together, the predator might entice the ikiryou to attack. And I had no time, I was certain they would strike within a day; the assault could take almost any form.
Perhaps my strategy was to sneak into the mountain through a disused cavern. I knew it’d be impossible to infiltrate the dragon’s lair and avoid the dragon, but I hoped to arm myself as best I could as I wended my way to my doom. Erik knew nothing, but Barrington would’ve been at her side as she wined and dined Jim Falk. Even if the glorified bellhop had no sensitive details, before he rang for his acknowledged ruler and befanged protector I might hound him into revealing useful vagaries. Did he know Char, for instance? Did Falk know her, or had her nefarious maneuvering slipped beneath his radar?
I had in mind a hazardous bluff: fishing for information while pretending to know all. This was unwise to say the least. Perhaps I thought I could convince Masami that threatening my credibility would endanger her own: if she knew about Empyreal, I knew about Clocktower. Maybe I supposed the shock of my appearance out of the blue, after years of painstaking evasion, would numb her percipience. Did I really expect Masami, force and begetter of nightmares, to unwittingly connive with me against herself?
It’s true I can no longer quite discern my strategy. I’d understand if you surmised that I flew to Hamilton with no strategy at all, nothing in my mind except despair, wrath, and revenge, stricken by the realization that my peril and Aetna’s were hopelessly intertwined as for all intents, I had no one else. How’s that for risk management?
I arrived late in the afternoon. Just looking at the place turned my stomach. Bermudiana Road, dainty and smug between XL’s glass monstrosity and a hunk of Bank of Butterfield’s marble. The four-storied pointy structure with wings spilling out of it. The soft pink and yellow paint always makes me think of tongues and aging teeth. The building insists on local architectural traditions; stubborn about white cornerstones, arched windows, ornamental portholes, white roofs with ridges looking almost fluffy on the multiple turrets. Atrium with palmettos, fountains, and skylights, a gaudy diamond in a top-heavy crown lined with cedarish panels. Her office is the summit of one of the turrets. His is directly below, a private lift and staircase in between.
Aetna died for this. To protect this place, the mountain. So the goblins living in it could pretend to shine some inborn, gracious light upon the world, that their sheer relevance might seem to outdo everyone else’s. Power, money, an army of yes-men. For that kind of treasure and the ideology of thieves, Aetna made a travesty of history. How many did they dishonor, undeserving and unknowing, for a little extra cash that they’d blow within a month?
All of it was an insult. By the time I met Barrington’s sleek, upwardly mobile assistant, my charm reserves were drained. I demanded as the eldest brat of Barrington’s progeniture to speak to him forthwith. The “executive assistant” jacked up her eyebrows, already loathing me, picked up the telephone, and murmured into it. When she hung up, she pointed to a heavy door.
I didn’t knock, just barreled in, which made the shock much greater.
They were all there. All of them.
She was behind his desk, he in a chair like a visitor o
r secretary, Erik-Katsuo standing. They’d all just finished laughing, you could see it on their faces. Laughing at me, I knew at once. Fresh-oiled snickering, secure in the opulence they’d cheated out of others by making Aetna lie to them. Flaunting it while she and I eked it out in shadow, hazarding, toiling, dying, so they could sprawl in the sunshine streaming through the picture window and stare at me. I knew Aetna like a lover. Through her I saw right through them. And still they had the gall to stare and (except Masami) feign astonishment, having never in a million bubbly, laughing nights suffered any premonitions of this awful moment, having never once known dread. The way Barrington looked at me, I might’ve been a mail boy who’d sauntered into a board meeting. Erik tried to cover his outrage with a sneer. He glanced at Masami as everyone, naturally, waited for her to speak. And when her eyes fell on me, I froze.
In that instant everything—my whole life, really, which she’d swept away with a shake of her head—rose up in front of me like a mirage. I watched it dissipate all over again, the ground beneath me disappearing to become the black place of my nightmares where I’d lived for far too long in the grip of that gaze full of hate.
For decades I’d imagined the day I’d stand before them with something that cowed them. And now look: here I am. Surrounded, all of them looking. And where’s my blazing sword and dazzling shield? What do I have that will astonish them so blindingly they must avert their eyes, those stares tumble to the ground?
Ten suicide notes. A ghost. You, Aetna. And what’s all this but confirmation that those people even have command of life and death? I stand there like a crooner who’s lost the tunes and all the words in a stadium of thousands.
“Well, what is it?” she said. Her words went into me like needles.
“Money,” grunted Barrington.
“No, never. Never,” I said.
“Mochi, are you sick? He don’t look too good, okaa-san,” said Erik. He giggled.
“Out,” I said. “This doesn’t concern you.”
“Stay, Katsuo,” said Masami in brisk Japanese. “Kenji, what do you want?”
Not for a second did she take her eyes off me. Nausea shuddered through me as I drew myself up.
“It’s come to my attention that this company has dealings, that is to say, does business of some kind, as it were, with Clocktower. The insurance company.”
Heat in my face. My voice was thin. And Clocktower was not the place to start. I sounded like a total fool.
“Maybe, maybe not,” said Erik (Japanese). “It’s confidential.”
“I’m not asking, idiot. I’m telling you I know that CAM does their investments.” I insisted on English throughout this doomed exercise, probably just because.
“Yeah, and so what?” The little parasite clung to Japanese, glancing at his handler with every word that passed between us.
“Where did you learn this?” said Masami (Japanese).
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “You take their money, you make it make more money, so when they make money, you make money.”
“That’s kind of what asset management means,” said Erik.
“What’s wrong with you?” said Barrington. He didn’t mean Erik. “You forgot how to use the telephone? You come barging in here—”
“Quiet,” said Masami (flawless English). “I still don’t understand what it is you want.”
Erik added, “Or why you suddenly care—”
“Quiet.”
“It’s for an essay,” I said. “A story.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” mumbled Barrington. He clung to English out of ignorance.
“If Clocktower committed fraud to make more money, and—”
“What?” Erik and Barrington, the former’s merry laughter. “Onii-san, let me take you out to eat, come on, you look like you could use it. We’ll talk it all over, whatever’s on your mind, you and Kiki and a little drinky-chan. Come on, come with otouto, Momma’s busy—”
“What’s that got to do with us?” said Barrington.
“And if you knew about it,” I said pointedly. Letting the idea fester like a stench.
Erik exploded in giggles. Barrington went still. His face. Like I’d punched him in the gut. Like he had any right to pretend to know what that feels like. The man actually raised his arm, pointed at the door as though we’d all forgotten where it was. “Leave this building right now.”
“Or what?” Me. “No Dad just—” Erik. We both spoke at once, but I was louder, I was shaking with anger. I turned on Masami: “How much do you know?”
She was calm as a sated kami in a shrine. She spread her hands, which meant she knew everything or nothing.
“Char Richards,” I said. “Aetna Simmons.”
“He’s drunk,” said Barrington. “He’s on something.”
Masami ignored him. She looked into my eyes and delivered her verdict.
It was the same look. When she gave me the sword that was supposed to be a quill. That look.
She said, “You have no idea what you are saying.” And something burst in me.
“That’s what you always say, it’s what you’ve always assumed, that I don’t have a clue—well, I know everything about this, everything, there are documents—”
“Enough. Your father is correct. You’re ill. No one understands what you’re attempting to imply. Go home and go to bed.”
A hand on my arm, Erik. “Time to go, onii-san.”
“If you speak about this nonsense to anyone again, you’ll regret it.”
She turned to the window. Masami turned her back on me.
I gave Erik a shove that sent him reeling, his arms wheeling like the helm of a doomed ship.
I ran to Bull’s Head, didn’t know what else to do. By the time I got there, I had three texts from Erik: Need 2 talk!! Call me!! Nabi was waiting. She’d been calling me all day, she said, message after message; was I still upset, had I been sleeping? I got out of the car, and only then did she observe: “Baby, you look awful.”
“You drive, Nabi.”
All the way home I had my head against the window. She pestered me till I mumbled about stomach flu, which after a long silence she insisted was her fault: “…didn’t want to hurt you…last thing I’d ever…you’re taking everything so hard…this suicide business…” She pressed the point till we were on the steps. The puke was gone. Her arm around my waist, Nabi noted my fine suit, alarmed that I’d dressed up and gone to town in my condition; there must have been some emergency—had our lawyer called? All I did was shake my head. She stopped with one foot out of her shoes.
“You went there,” she said. “You saw her. Your momma.”
“And the others.”
“Baby, why? Why today when you’re not well?”
“Because she knows something. He does too. All I did was mention Clocktower, and they threw me out. Leave the building, he says—”
“Clocktower? Excuse me, what about your promise?”
“Yeah, well, what about you? When’s the hearing?”
“Bye, you best just rest yourself. If you think—”
“Look, I can’t do this.” Striding to the bathroom, I passed the library. Turned around, chose a shelf at random, swept the books onto the ground. One left: Minima Moralia. I grabbed it, stormed into my study with Nabi pulling at me, hurled Adorno’s reflections from damaged life at the Tiffany lamp. It crashed onto the floor (I thought, Freedom has contracted to pure negativity), I picked it up and smashed it against a wall and smashed again (infinite abasement of living), expensive glass flying everywhere (and the infinite torment of dying). I sat down, breathless and sick, and Nabi grabbed me by the chin: “Kenji, this is crazy, what’re you doing, baby?!”
Well, the question seemed to me an aporia. I looked away, but Nabi’s sharp inhale said she saw it all: fury and hatred, nausea, fear, and hatr
ed, hatred. She saw me look around for something else to ruin; she plopped herself down on my thigh and held me, burying my face so all I could see were the fibers in her suit. She didn’t ask anything more, didn’t say any more, and I wanted to hate that too but couldn’t, what with the effort of holding down my stomach and not screaming like some animal stuck in a steel-jaw trap.
In the bathroom I scarfed down the shit I’d hidden in my suit. Feeling unglued, I kept thinking I wasn’t supposed to need so much shit on Mondays, but I couldn’t face Nabi again without something holding me together. I sat on the floor in the shower with my face in my hands, begging the shit to hurry up and burrow deep.
She wouldn’t hear any remorse, darling Nabi. She led me straight to bed. Maybe I remember her hand on my forehead, trembling. I fled into oblivion as fast as I could.
Given the aforesaid, I understand why Nabi’s not answering back. Still, I don’t want to understand it. I’ve just sent what appears to be the twenty-first text message to skitter from my phone to hers in this endless night.
The sound was like the wind rattling a window. It slogged through the quagmire in my brain and touched my consciousness only because Nabi already had. She wasn’t asleep. She was playing with my hair.
“Can’t be someone at the door,” she said.
It came again, too insistent for the wind. I thought of Char, sat up.
“Mercy, what time is it?”
“Quarter after one. Stay here, okay? Don’t worry.”
She quit biting her lip only because I kissed her there. I went out in my boxers.
The shutters were open; there was only a light breeze. I checked them anyway, checked the peephole. Goosebumps sprang up all over me.
The presence of the man outside the door could only mean one thing. But instead of shoving my desk against the door (the wiser course), I opened it.
Yuuto Motomura. Masami’s live-in butler and chauffeur. No Bermudian would condescend to such a gig. Every time his work permit comes up for renewal, she advertises, nobody applies. This is going on about thirty years. We bowed stiffly to each other. Motomura, the silent type, looked over his shoulder.
Drafts of a Suicide Note Page 25
