“You’re right, it was risky, but I think it worked out well, after all,” I said, pointing at the two of us. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and smiled, her eyes growing softer.
“Yes, it did. And you know what else you helped me realize? How much I missed Japan. I had been avoiding coming back because of Maggie’s death, but what I had forgotten was how many great memories I had—of her, of my college days, of all the little things that make this country so unique. Thanks to you, I fell in love with this place all over again.”
I held her hand in mine and gave it a gentle squeeze.
“In fact, I was going to propose something.”
“I’m all ears.”
“I want us to travel a little bit, when we’re done with this—or we could take small day trips during the weekends. I want to show you everything I’ve seen, Amos, and I want to see everything I haven’t seen with you.”
I felt my heart swell with pride, because her words were more meaningful than any I love you.
Lena Andrews was giving me her whole heart, and I wasn’t going to be the fool who threw it away. The intoxicating joy that spread through every cell of my body hit me like a wave, prompting a knot in my throat and tears in my eyes.
I smiled, fighting the impulse to kiss her. I was going to love her for as long as she’d let me, maybe even for the rest of my life, if she was up for that.
“I would love that.”
She raised her glass, and I did the same.
“To you, Amos. Thank you for bringing me back to one of the places I love the most.”
“Where are you going? We can get to the house faster if we take this road.”
“You’re wrong,” she said. “We should keep going straight and then turn right at the fourth intersection.”
It was late, and even though every residential street looked the same, I knew I wasn’t wrong. I had been down this street before, and I knew we could get to the house just as fast.
“It’s the exact same thing if we go down this way. I just walked this way back to the house the other day. Trust me, we’ll get there in the same amount of time. Want to bet?”
“No. I don’t want to.” The tone of her voice had none of the playfulness from earlier in the night.
I frowned, confused.
“Amos…can we please go the other way? Please?”
“Maybe…if you tell me why.”
“I can’t go down the way you want me to.”
“And why is that?” I gave her a cautious look, and she sighed.
“I can’t go down that way because that’s the intersection where the accident happened. A while after we got here, I realized it was much closer to the house than I thought. I haven’t been able to walk by there yet. I haven’t even been able to see if the house where we lived is still there. Trust me, I’ve tried. Every time I get close, I get stuck. I can’t move forward.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, wrapping my arms around her.
“You didn’t know,” she mumbled.
I kept my arms wrapped around her for a few minutes, and then I had an idea.
“Have I told you what I did when my brother died?” I whispered against her ear.
“No. I wanted to ask you about him, but I didn’t want to upset you. I wanted you to be ready to tell me whatever you wanted to.”
“I spent the whole summer locked in my room, sketching and listening to all the music he loved. Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd were his favorite bands. He was young, but he had great taste. I went through all his CDs, and I listened to many of them over and over. There was one song above all that really made me feel close to him.”
“Which one was it?”
“I’ll tell you if you agree to do one thing for me,” I replied.
“Don’t make me walk down that intersection, Amos. Please.”
“I’ll be right there with you.”
“I’m honestly considering taking back every nice thing I’ve said to you tonight,” she joked nervously.
“You’re not serious.”
“Oh, watch me.”
“Come on, Lena. You do want to know which song I listened to, don’t you? Walk with me. I’ll be right here with you. It’s time to release this bad memory like one of those demons in Japanese folktales.”
“This is not an episode of Inuyasha, St. Clair.”
“I know you can do this.”
“You give me far too much credit.”
I took her hand and held it a little bit tighter than usual. Part of me was afraid she’d take off and run away. I could hear her trying to steady her breath, inhaling and exhaling slowly. She shivered, even though it was a muggy July night.
We reached the intersection and she grasped my hand even tighter.
“Was it here? Right at this intersection?”
She gave me a nod, trembling and fidgeting in place.
I pulled my headphones out of my pocket.
Luckily, I never went anywhere without them.
“This is the song I listened to when my brother died. It hurt like a bitch, but it made me feel closer to him. It was the only thing that made me feel a little better.”
Lena listened to me, but as she did, her eyes welled up with tears and she started fidgeting even more. She looked like she was on the verge of making a break for it.
“Stay,” I said. I placed the earbuds in her ears then gently kissed each of her cheeks. It was almost midnight, and there was hardly anyone walking down the street. No one was paying attention to us.
I pressed play, put the phone in her back pocket, and took her hands in mine.
At first, she frowned in confusion.
I nodded. “Just give it time.”
Several seconds later, her eyes widened when she realized what song it was.
When the notes of “Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd started playing, silent tears fell from her eyes, one by one, faster than I could catch them.
She glanced at the crosswalk, the very same one where she’d lost her friend and had almost lost her own life, and then she looked at me, eyes glossy, lips trembling.
I caressed her face and pressed my forehead against hers.
Her arms circled around my waist and she pressed her face into my chest, crying for a good minute. Then, when the song was over, she pulled back.
Lena wiped her tears away and attempted a smile.
I smiled back, wondering if she was okay.
“Are you all right?”
“I will be,” she sniffled.
I tried to say something, but she placed a finger on my mouth and an earbud in my ear. I had put the song on repeat and it was playing all over again.
She stared at me for a moment then took a fistful of my shirt and pulled me down to her, brushing her lips against mine.
Her kiss was gentle and sweet at first, and then it turned rough, possessive, all-consuming. She needed to feel me, and I wanted to be there for her.
I loved her. I wanted to give her everything.
I wanted to free her of her ghosts, of her painful memories. I wrapped my arms around her and cupped her ass.
She pressed her body against mine even more.
Her lips were breathing me in, as if she couldn’t get enough. She didn’t want to stop, and neither did I. We kept on until someone appeared at the other end of the crosswalk and made their way toward us.
We moved out of the way. Lena cleaned her tear-stained face and looked around, as if in a daze.
“You were right—that did help, if only just a little.” She smiled uneasily, her beautiful pink lips raw from kissing and curled up in a smile.
Then, her eyes fell on mine and she said something I hadn’t expected her to say.
“Come on, let’s go see if the house where I lived is still there.”
LENA
I pressed the crosswalk’s button just like I had that night. I wiped my tears away once more and searched my bag for tissues. Thankfully, I was never out of those, since free
tissues outside train stations were one of Tokyo’s most popular forms of advertising.
Amos held my hand as we waited for the green light. There were no cars, but I wasn’t going to risk it.
We were still sharing his earbuds, and we kept listening to “Wish You Were Here” over and over. Amos started singing along, and then I joined him.
“Why do you think there is a whole forty seconds of nothing before the actual song starts?” I asked him. “And why do you think David Gilmour had to clear his throat on the track?”
He laughed, and the smile that stretched across his face reached his eyes.
“I have no idea. Maybe that was the best take out of all the ones they did.”
“But they could have cut that part out, right? Why didn’t they? I mean, it’s still beautiful, but it’s…”
“Unusual,” he said, and his gaze locked with mine. “I agree, but even though the song starts in an unusual fashion, it doesn’t take away from the beauty of it, don’t you agree?”
I nodded. “So, you listened to this song a lot when you lost your brother?”
He turned to look at me. There was a certain aura of sadness in his eyes that broke my heart, and yet, they were still so beautiful, even when he was feeling melancholic.
“It was the only one that seemed to make me feel better.”
“It’s a great song.”
“Is it working for you?” he asked.
“It’s helping…a lot. You are helping.” He gave me a sweet, warm smile.
The streets were deserted, so I leaned in and kissed him right on the corner of his lips. He breathed out a laugh and then pulled me into a hug.
We kept walking.
“I never thought I’d make it all the way over here, Amos. I’m not saying I want to start walking down this street every day, but…I don’t think I will purposely avoid it anymore. Oh, we’re close. It was right over there.”
We walked scarcely a hundred feet, and there it was.
The neighborhood’s landscape had changed quite a bit. Only a few traditional houses remained, including the one where Maggie and I had stayed.
It reminded me of the house from the movie Up, a tiny home surrounded by tall apartment buildings.
There were no lights on, and the gate was locked.
It hadn’t looked new by any means when we’d lived there, but it looked a bit more run-down than I remembered.
Then I noticed the metal bar across the shutters.
The place was empty.
No college kids, no adventurous travelers spending a few months in Japan.
“It’s empty,” I said out loud.
“It looks like it, doesn’t it?”
“I wonder why they haven’t demolished it yet.”
“Perhaps the lot isn’t big enough for a whole apartment building.”
“Perhaps.” I’d never gotten to return to it after the accident because our contract had already ended. Our things had been packed and put in storage by the rental company.
I held my hand around the bar of the iron gate and mentally said my goodbye to the house. I turned to Amos and smiled at him, grateful.
He looked at me with a confused expression.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I don’t know how you do it. I don’t know how you know what’s good for me and what I need when I need it, but you do.”
“I just took a guess.”
“It was a good one.” Tears sprang up again but I blinked them away. I felt sad and nostalgic, but I was happy, too.
I was so thankful for him.
He’d become so much more than a physical attraction, was so much more than a kindred spirit.
I didn’t believe in soul mates, but if I had, Amos St. Clair would have been it.
Four months went by.
I loved fall in Japan.
The red leaves of the Japanese maples made the town so magical. I especially loved going to Ueno Park. I would have gone with Amos every day if we had the time, but all we did during the week was work and work and work some more.
We’d finished the second volume of Aiko.
Now we only had one left. I still didn’t know what was going to happen in the end.
Both Ishikawa and Akane were still being incredibly secretive with the script.
I had no idea what was going to happen to the characters, and everything was up in the air. There were so many remaining loose ends to tie up.
I wondered if everything was going to work out in the end.
At the end of the second volume, Aiko Matsumoto had decided to return to Japan just as her best friend had decided to go look for her in France, where several fans had said they’d seen her playing in a jazz bar.
The publishing company had started an insane marketing campaign. We’d catch glimpses here and there on trains, TV, and big advertising screens, and Ishikawa’s name and the heroines were plastered everywhere.
In five months, Supaa– was going to publish the three volumes all at once.
We were stressed and overworked.
My hand had never had to work so hard for such a prolonged time.
I knew the symptoms—my carpal tunnel was back.
Back home, I had been scrupulous about not overworking my hand and using reflexology and acupuncture.
Here, I just didn’t have time to take care of it, and the last ten days had been particularly stressful.
For reasons unknown to me, Ishikawa was in a bad mood.
As far as we’d been told, the first two volumes were great and the publishing company was perfectly happy with them.
Before our rough patch, we had been on schedule, so I didn’t understand what was wrong with her. I was doing my best to follow her instructions, but nothing I did worked. Nothing I did was good enough for her.
I’d thought we were on good terms, but that week she’d been bitchy toward Amos and me on several occasions. I was trying to be patient because I didn’t want to make the situation worse, and even Hiroyuki seemed to walk on eggshells.
Her bad moods and bad manners were hurting me, and Amos had noticed it. He wasn’t happy about how she’d been behaving. On Wednesday evening, after ten long, stressful days, my wrist started hurting so bad it reduced me to tears.
Amos was having none of it.
“Lena, you need rest. If you keep working while it’s hurting this bad, you’re going to permanently fuck it up. You’re not going to be able to draw anything worth a crap if you’re in this kind of pain, anyway. I say we take a couple days off.”
“We can’t. We’re too behind already.”
“We can and we will.”
He told me to pack a bag while he made arrangements for us.
I had just taken some pain meds and I was too numbed by the pain and the medicine to even have the energy to argue.
I absent-mindedly packed a bag with enough clothes for a few days.
“Where are we going?”
“Kyoto,” he replied. “I found a nice place with a memory foam mattress,” he said with a grin.
Amos’ initial enthusiasm for the futon, the traditional style of bed, had worn out quickly. It wasn’t the worst, but it wasn’t the most comfortable, either. After a while, it got old. He’d gone online and purchased an affordable memory foam mattress, which we were now both using.
It was worth every yen, especially when we spent so much time sitting and straining our backs all day long.
“I have a friend who’s a massage therapist in Kyoto,” I told him.
He frowned, perplexed. “You never said you had friends here.”
“Well, I knew a few people. I lost touch with most of them, but I’m still in contact with Yuri. We used to work together at the same restaurant. Maybe she could see me and help me with my carpal tunnel. She’s an expert in natural healing.”
“Good. Call her, message her, whatever—let’s just make sure she can see you. We need to do something about your wrist.”
AMOS
I wished I could have done more for her.
Besides a few moments of weakness, Lena seemed to be taking her pain in stride.
What I found strange and unusual, considering what had just happened, was the delighted smile on her face. She kept glancing at me from her seat—we’d gotten on the Shinkansen to Kyoto about thirty minutes before—and kept distracting me from writing an email to Marty with her alluring, playful blue eyes.
She’d smile, open her mouth as if to say something, purse her lips, and then do it all over again.
I breathed out a laugh and shot her a confused look.
“What is it? Is there something you want to tell me?”
A small smile appeared on her face again. Her eyes were bright, joyous—not what I’d expected, especially since I knew she’d been in pain for days.
“I’m surprised, that’s all. I’m a little taken aback from what you did back there—at the house, I mean. That was ballsy. And hot,” she said, a dreamy look in her eyes, her smile drawing me in again.
I sighed and smiled back nervously, running a hand through my hair.
“I hate how she’s been treating you. How come you’re not mad about it? I would have imagined you’d be pissed.”
She shrugged and turned to the window just as we entered a tunnel and the train was surrounded by blackness. She rolled her eyes, annoyed, and then let out a long breath.
Her gaze met mine again.
“Somehow, I can’t bring myself to be mad at her.”
“Why not? She’s been terrible to you.”
“She’s nearing the end.”
“People don’t die from Parkinson’s. She could still have a decent, long life…if she’d finally stop smoking like a chimney.”
“I don’t mean the end of her life. I mean the end of the manga. She’s not ready to be done with Aiko. That’s what’s making her act out.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. Why wouldn’t she want to finally get to the end?”
“Because there’s nothing else to look forward to. Think about it: she’s been drawing for years and has always been working on something new. Once this is over, she won’t have any new projects coming up. She’s not in the condition to draw anymore. From her standpoint, she’s got nothing left.”
The Art of Us Page 23
