That Look

The older Japanese woman — in her late fifties, I suppose — stepped down the short set of metal stairs from the sidewalk to the foyer of the after-hours salon, her head crooning to the left, looking for something. She paused a few feet from the foot of the stairs, quickly scanned to her left and then back to the right, shuffled her feet, paused again. She appeared oblivious to the tall woman in leather trying to direct her by motioning the handle of her long, dark brown whip. “Honey, pay first. Over here,” the tall woman said, slightly bemused, but the Japanese woman either ignored her or didn’t hear. There was a taxi waiting outside, but then it quickly drove away.

When I approached from behind, she picked up again without turning around, perhaps sensing that someone was near, and descended slowly down the stone steps to the door that leads to the hallway and its two toilets. She finally noticed me, acknowledged me, as I reached beyond her to hold open the hallway door that she had already opened. She seemed startled, looking behind her suddenly, suddenly aware, finally aware that someone was behind her. I, too, needed a toilet, but I had traversed this path many times, could probably navigate it blindfolded or in complete darkness, though the varying heights of the stone steps I hadn’t yet memorized.

She, on the other hand, she of the weathered eyes and sour mouth, looked daunted at the head of the trail, afraid even. That look — almost of terror, certainly of concern — from where did it come? To what memories in her past was she clinging? What experiences formed the rope of fear that she seemed to be gripping during her search for a toilet? I imagined that she was not Japanese but Japanese-American, had been born in the States, grew up in a mostly white neighborhood in California, felt torn (especially in her adolescence) between the cultural ideals of her parents and the mostly Americanized versions of her friends and their parents.

She was in her late teens when the government forced her and her family into a camp in the desert of Arizona, and it was there she spent four years of her life cultivating a new idea of what it means to be isolated, to be lost in so many ways beyond the physical. She never fell in love. She was abused periodically by the camp guards who grew bored and exposed their cruelty like thick hair poking out of an unbuttoned shirt. When she was released, she looked back confusedly and with shame beyond the gate, back into the area of thin, makeshift cabins and winced when the rain fell on her head, hands, and neck. She dragged her suitcase with both hands, even though there wasn’t much in it, less than what she had arrived with.

All of this, I thought, must be at the other end of that look, must be the anchor that holds her boat still, trapped in an unwanted harbor. She stepped into the hallway, then turned left a few feet down into the women’s toilet, slowly, hunched forward slightly, her black dress snug against her ribs and hips, like a shawl tied tight against the wind and sand.

Flood: A Very Short Story About Love

The river water had just begun to sag off from the edges of the sidewalk, and she took my hand like it was the handle for a blob of cotton candy, as if she’d rather not get her mitten sticky.

But it’s too late for that, I told her, not sure if she had read my thoughts. She looked at me, confused.

I trudged on, snow crunching like potato chips beneath my feet, convinced that she was playing a game with me. One of those insidious mind games deciphered in the books of R.D. Laing or Dr. Seuss. I can’t remember which. And that is what I’ve heard, anyway. From someone who had spoken to someone else who knew someone who had read at least a few of the paragraphs by one or both of the aforementioned authors.

None of this has been confirmed, I continued in my monologue. Besides that, there is nothing you can do to stop my sweat from meeting first-hand your sweat. If we touch, it’s all over.

Then it’s over, she said, because we’re touching.

That was logic that I could not refute. I let go of her hand, but we didn’t leave each other’s side. We were like two boats escorting each other through the lighthouse-less night, talking to each other through an imaginary phone of invisible cups and see-through string. Sometimes the connection was a little scratchy, but we tried our best, while the sun and moon argued about who cut in front of whom, while the crickets ticked off the lone box on their to-do list.

He Could Have Been the Man

“You’re always answering to someone.” That was the sentiment offered to me in an elevated tone by a man I did not know, a man standing on a corner of a busy intersection in red pants and red sweater, green shoes, and a large, furry top hat, also green but a shade closer to a pine forest under a cloudy sky. The cold wind whipped his large black-and-white scarf which hung loosely around his neck. The left side of his face was a sour red — from the weather or from disease, I couldn’t tell. When the light changed, I decided I was more interested in this man than in moving forward. “What’s that?” I asked. I kept my bicycle still, sat up straighter and let the other cyclists glide by.

“No matter who you are,” he continued, “no matter what you do. And I’m not talking about God. I’m not religious. I’m not talking religiously here. Well, yes, I am talk religiously. But I’m not talking about God. God has nothing to do with this.”

“Unless money’s your deity,” I said. “Unless you worship at that particular alter.”

“No. That’s incorrect.” He adjusted his furry hat and turned to finally look at me, albeit peripherally. “It’s all about results.” He poked a finger into an invisible antagonist in front of him. “Results. Results.”

“Then who do you answer to?”

“To whom do I answer? Is that what you mean?”

“Said differently. Same thing.” I pulled the right pedal of my bicycle up closer to the top of its revolution, rested my foot on it, eyed the red light and the traffic crossing in both directions in front of me.

“It is not the same thing,” he stammered. I could see his teeth, the white and yellow. “Dangling preposition. Whom versus who. Object versus subject. Some do the action, some receive it. See? Results. It’s all about results. We’re all looking for ‘em.” He paused, looked up, looked backed down. Looked up again. “That’s a cloudy sky up there.”

I didn’t know what else to say, didn’t really understand my own intention. “Is that hat big enough to keep you dry?” I offered, not buying my own humor.

He turned to look at me squarely, finally offering his full face. His was an ordinary face. He could have been the man who sells me stamps from behind a bullet-proof window, who pours my pints, who fixes my locks. He stared at me as if I were a room that was too dark for anything inside of it to be seen. He turned back to the invisible antagonist, poked it two more times. We both waited. Maybe for the same thing, maybe for something entirely different.

“Nature,” he finally said. “I answer to nature.” He looked up at the sky. His hat tiltled back, threatened to fall off, like a cartoon boulder teetering on the edge of a cliff. “So, yes. I guess, I do, answer, to God.”