Fragile
by Travis Heermann
My day begins with crap. It would be a fit metaphor for the last three days, but I mean it literally. I’m lying in bed, flagellating myself about Kimmie, my mind jumping back and forth between that and the weird incident with the remote control.
Twenty minutes before the alarm is set to go off, a truck starts beeping, backing up in the alley outside my bedroom window. The beeping lasts for at least fifteen minutes, because drivers in Japan are incompetent. The stiff breeze from the incoming typhoon whistles through the open window, ruffling my sheets. Electric motors run and clank. Then it hits me. The most horrendous stench I have ever experienced, like a shovelful of raw sewage in the face. The truck outside is a sewage truck, sucking a houseful of shit through a big blue corrugated hose from a subterranean septic tank.
I reel out of bed, gagging. Someone is puking in another apartment. I hear Candice, a couple of apartments away, yelling in English, “Oh, my god!” Even in disgust, her voice is warm and rich.
I slam the window closed and bury my face in my sheets, but it’s too late. There is no untainted air even in there. I can only wait until the shit-suckers outside finish their job and the wind carries the stench away. But before that happens, I think my lips turn blue.
When I regain consciousness, I sit up and hold my head in my hands. Up half the night with a broken heart and now this.
I stumble around my apartment in a daze. I should put some clothes on. I shouldn’t water the plants on my balcony when I’m naked. Neighbors might talk. As if the blond foreigner doesn’t already give them enough to talk about. “Oh, look, kids! Gaijin-san is naked today.” I have to get ready for work.
I look around for the remote control to turn on the TV, then I see, lying on the tatami, that strange little pile of crumbled plastic, metal, and fiberglass that was once my remote control. Right where I left it after it crumbled into fine gravel for no reason.
I press the power button on the TV directly. The morning newscaster appears and states the obvious. A typhoon is coming, a big one.
I haven’t eaten anything since the party a day and a half ago. The interior of my torso is a vast sour emptiness. The organs must still be functioning, but they all feel pressed to the margins by the endless sizzling ache centered on my heart.
I somehow manage not to slash my jugular while I’m shaving. I put on some bland, colorless clothes, like everyone else in the board of education office wears. Halfway to work, I realize that I should eat some breakfast. I pull out my wallet and rifle through it, but I spent all my cash on things for the party.
From its place in my wallet, the four-leaf clover slides into view, the one Kimmie picked for me in the spring and laminated. Back when I was starting to believe I could have a woman who wasn’t a bitter, mean-spirited emotional cripple. Coming to Japan was my first chance at a new life after the divorce. Kimiko was my first chance in a long, long time with a wonderful woman.
The day she found the four-leaf clover, one of our students put some white flowers in her hat as we sat together on the grass watching them play, and she looked at me with her smile that made my heart ka-lump in my chest. “Kawaii? Pretty?” And I looked into her eyes and said, “Totemo. Very.” And she blushed, and smiled, and looked away. It felt like something from a movie.
You dumbass.
I push the four-leaf clover out of sight, put my wallet away, and go to work.
I come home late in the afternoon. The sky is gray, and the persistent wind is driving its veil of fine, warm droplets. Everyone at the office was having the same inane conversation about the typhoon coming tomorrow. Its presence looms like impending doom, a gigantic swirling octopus sliding northwest across the Pacific.
The ache behind my ribcage throbs. In the refrigerator, there is the six-pack of Corona that she brought to the party. The ache sizzles. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to drink those beers or if they’ll just sit in there, every day for infinity.
So what do I do now? Wait for the storm and hunker down in my apartment like all the neighbors? Pine away? Kick my own ass some more?
All those shared smiles, shared cups of green tea, shared successes, shared missteps. She was a new teacher like me. All my dreams that someday we could be more than working partners, more than friends. All ashes now. And why? I’m the same man today that she worked with all those months. Why? Because now I’ve released into words how I feel about her. It has become real. One simple, but profound, thing. And didn’t she know all along?
I set my iPod to run a repeating parade of hurtin’ songs to resonate this pain and work it to the surface like an embedded splinter. I have to get it out of me. American country music is as alien here as a six-foot-three blond guy, but it does what it does best. Recollections of school-boy love and foolishness, when desire could be so focused that it burned holes in your heart, and every moment that your mind went still even for a moment, her face was right there. That was a different girl, a lifetime ago, but you remember.
You dumbass.
Every time I allow my mind to go still, she is there, like the reflection in a Zen pond. Keep the pond churning, so you can’t see her.
I sit on the bed and keep my eyes turned outside toward the darkening sky. The warm wet wind blows through the screen onto my arms and my face. But my awareness turns relentlessly inward, incessantly rehashing, wishing I would have done it all differently.
The way she brushed her face against my shoulder when I joked around with her, a furtive, purposeful touch, testing the feelings, as she laughed into her hand.
Those sparkling brown eyes, brimming with intelligence and caution.
My intellect wonders how long I can feel this way before some instinct for self-preservation kicks in and forces me to think or do other things.
#
A Corona is in
my hand, and the sky is dark. Maybe I’ll just sit here and
get drunk alone like every other poor broken-hearted sod.
Then I hear feet scrunching on gravel. Standing in one of
the squares of light spilling from the apartment building
onto the gravel driveway is Candice. A previous problem
crush of mine that, thankfully, my friend Sean solved by
dating her. She waves at me from two floors down. She has
one of those smiles that gleams like the sun, giving warmth
to a room or blinding you to everything else around.
“What’s up?” she says. “You were pretty quiet at work
today.”
“Just sitting here waiting for the storm.” I’m not going to
ask her over. “Want to come over for a beer later?”
“Nah, I can’t
tonight. Japanese class.” Candice Chien calls herself a
Hong Kong Kiwi. She grew up speaking New Zealand English
and Cantonese, but neither of those languages has much in
common with Japanese. She’s as gaijin
as
the rest of us, but with a cooler accent.
I nod. “Next time.”
“Hey, how’d it go with your girl?” she says.
The ache sizzles again. The beer bottle shatters in my
hand.
Profanity erupts out of me. Foaming beer and strange,
smooth pellets of glass spill between my legs, across my
bed.
“What happened?” Candice calls out.
“Spilled my beer is all.” I sit in the cold puddle of wet
glassy sand and foam, so stunned I can’t move, only think
about how best to extricate myself.
“I’m gonna get moving,” she says, “Don’t wanna be late for
class.”
I wave her away as the darkness swallows her. Sean is one
of the luckiest guys I know, and I’m almost always happy
for him.
My blankets are soaked with beer. My shorts feel like a
saggy wet diaper. For the next few minutes, I’m so worried
about cleaning up the mess that I don’t think about how the
bottle shattered in my hand. And the remote control.
#
My
keitai
is
ringing the tune of “Vader’s Imperial March” from under a
stack of papers on the table.
When I answer, Sean’s voice comes over the phone. “Hey,
buddy, whatcha up to tonight?”
“Cleaning, I guess.”
“Candy’s off to class tonight so she’s not coming over.
Wanna come over for a beer and a movie? I got
Army of
Darkness in the VCR,
beer in the fridge, and chicken on the grill.”
“Sure, what time?”
“Any time.”
“OK, just gotta clean up a bit first.” I hang up the phone,
roll my blanket into a ball and carry it out to the
balcony. I shake the glimmering granules out into the wind
and bushes below.
I stop and look at the Coronas I left out on the counter.
In my head, my Ex’s voice intrudes, seven thousand miles
away now, dripping with acid and vehemence. “You stupid,
shallow sonofabitch. All you want is the lovey-dovey
tickle-belly shit! You’ll never have a woman like that! Are
you fucking her?”
I shake away the voice. Being alone is better than having
to listen to that ever again. That thought makes some of
the ache go away. I’ll go cry in my beer over at Sean’s,
and he’ll tell me I need to go get laid.
#
Sean says,
“Buddy, you just need to get your cock rubbed.”
His apartment is redolent with the smoky aroma of the
charcoal grill and sizzling chicken breasts. We’re standing
on the balcony, overlooking the narrow, overgrown parking
lot of our apartment building. The bushes below almost
reach his second-floor balcony. The stiff wind from the
coming storm stokes the coals to bright orange heat and
thankfully keeps the standard overabundance of mosquitoes
under cover. I tip back the Asahi Super Dry and let it flow
down my throat as I lean over his balcony railing.
Sean continues, “Go to a club. I would recommend Happy
Cock. Dance. Pick up a girl. Get your mind off things. You
got too much pent-up emotion after everything you been
through.” He’s half an inch taller than me, with a wild
shock of red hair, broad shoulders, still built like a
University of Alberta linebacker. He’s even more freakish
in this country than I am.
He is talking about my divorce; he watched me go through
the final, bitter stages. And he is right about everything,
but it doesn’t matter. Intellectually, I know the best cure
for a broken heart is a new girl. But the new girl I wanted
is gone now. I give a half-hearted snort, “Yeah, maybe I’ll
even find one that speaks English.”
“Speak the ‘language of love,’ buddy. The right attitude,
the right moves, and you can be making out on the dance
floor without saying a word.”
“Not in the right frame of mind for that.”
“So has she called you?”
“Nope. I’ve sent four text messages and called her
twice.”
“Not good, eh?” His Albertan accent comes and goes. “So you
gonna tell me what happened?”
#
What happened
was, we stood on the balcony together in the warm
late-summer night. A couple of tiny black bats dipped and
wheeled, their squeaks barely audible, chasing mosquitoes
in the breeze. She held a glass of red wine in her fair,
smooth hand. Inside my apartment, the party thrummed with
music and conversation. Kimmie sidled up next to me. The
heat of her arm brushed against mine. My head buzzed with
beer and shochu,
and sublime warmth whispered through my veins from the
point of contact.
“Thanks for inviting me,” she said. “You have a lot of
friends.”
Yes, and all of them just “friends,” especially the women.
Candice was in there with Sean. “I’m glad you came.”
“Me, too. I’m always happy when I see your name on the
schedule at my school.”
Silence fell between us, and my heart was hammering. My
ears burned. “Kimmie, I ...” I met her gaze for a moment,
then looked away. God, my mouth was dry. “I had a great
time the other night.”
She smiled. “Me too.”
Jesus, what was I trying to say? I’ve loved you for months?
Every day at your school was a joy because you were there?
I’m so happy that my divorce is over so I can be with you?
I snatched her hand and began to stroke her soft, porcelain
skin.
She tensed.
I squeezed harder. She was going to pull away.
“I don’t know what to say. I’m so nervous,” I said.
“Do you want to say something?” Her accent was almost
perfect. I sighed, closed my eyes for a moment, and let it
go. A jumbled deluge of English and Japanese. Everything I
felt for her, all at once.
When my drunken confession petered out, she firmly
extricated her hand from mine. Her back was stiff, and she
would no longer meet my gaze. “You’re a very nice man,” she
said. “But I don’t feel that way about you. I’m not ready
for a boyfriend.”
#
“I don’t
remember much of what she said after that,” I tell Sean.
“You told her all that before you ever kissed her?”
I nod. He looks away and scratches his head, glancing
askance at me. “Ah, man. Let me tell you something,
buddy...” And he goes off into a litany of advice, most of
which I already know I’ve broken. Play it cool. Don’t try
too hard. I scared her off. End of story.
“Getting a girl like that is like fishing,” he continues.
“You got to use the right kind of bait. You had that one
hooked – I could tell the other night – but you jerked on
the line way too hard, and now she’s gone.”
The beer bottle bursts. Beer and glass fall into the
bushes.
“Whoa, go easy, slugger!” he laughs. “What the hell did you
just do?”
“The bottle broke somehow.”
“That must be some grip you got! You been working out, eh?”
He laughs again and tosses me another bottle. “Quit wasting
beer!”
I open the next one, gingerly, and when I’m not taking a
drink, I set it down. A small voice niggles at the back of
my mind, “Helloooo!
The remote! The bottles!” But I can’t
think about it now. My gaze lingers on the bottle. I don’t
touch it for a while.
He’s telling me how he caught Candice. I watched it happen
when she first washed ashore last year into our little tide
pool of gaijin.
He’s the kind of guy who knows how to work the ladies. He’s
masterful, and it mystifies me. Where do you learn how to
do that? To his credit, he loves Candice, and they’re
happy. It took a woman like her to become his first serious
girlfriend.
I’m silent for while, carefully sipping my new beer while
Sean finishes up with the chicken.
Then he says, “Do you love her?”
My mind instantly returns to the face in the Zen pond. The
water has stilled, and her smile heats my insides back to
sizzling. I force a shrug, and a lid goes over the sizzle.
“How do you feel?” he says.
“Like I’m falling apart.”
We spend the rest of the evening watching
Army of
Darkness. The Japanese
title is Captain
Supermarket, but all the
great lines are still there. I’ve always loved this flick,
but it helps my mood only a little. The only other thing
that shatters is my plate as I hold it in my lap when Bruce
Campbell says, ‘Gimme some sugar, baby!’ and kisses the
girl. In an instant, Kimmie is in my head, and the next
instant the plate crumbles in my hands like brittle clay.
Sean stares at me, his gaze flicking from my face to the
ruins in my lap. Strange combinations of emotions drift
across his features. I sit there, perplexed, until I
recover and jump to clean up the mess. He tries to make
light of it, but his gaze never leaves me. How can I tell
him this is the fourth time something like this has
happened? I excuse myself as soon as the movie is over.
On my way down the stairs, I meet Candice coming up to
Sean’s. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard them
having sex. They’re both vocal. Our apartment walls are
thick concrete, but the window glass is thin.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hey.” I pass her and continue into the night.
My head is buzzing again. The stiff breeze caresses my bare
skin, and it feels good. I walk across the street to the
four-hundred-year-old Shinto shrine, wishing I could find
the inner tranquility that Japanese religion is so famous
for. I sit down on the stone railing surrounding the
massive, ancient camphor tree that is the heart of the
shrine. Everywhere around is modern Japanese society, but
here in the shrine yard is like a movie set in the 16th
century. The lone fluorescent bulb on the caretaker’s shed
flickers against the dark wisps of blowing leaves.
I sit on the stone rail, feeling its cool coarseness under
my palms, trying to breathe tranquility into my lungs, into
my life, when something soft and warm brushes my leg. The
wind almost drowns the cat’s “meow”—or “nyaa” since it is a
Japanese cat—but it rubs against my leg with a lonely zeal.
I smile and reach down, stroking its gray ears. Its
exuberant purring vibrates through my fingers, and a stab
of unsought, unbridled emotion rips through me. My eyes
tear up, and my throat clenches.
And the cat dissolves into a pile of coarse gray sand.
Oh. My. God.
I reach down and run my fingers through the cat. It feels
like beach sand. Jesus Christ. I just killed a cat. It
looked so surprised. The shock of it drives the hurting
away. I sit there for a long time, my clothes starting to
soak through from the fine rain. Remote control, plate, and
beer bottles. So I can disintegrate inanimate objects
somehow. But now, living things, too. Holy Christ, what
happens if I touch Sean, or my boss? Or the whole goddamn
apartment building comes down?
For the first time in days, my mind snaps into clarity.
Every single time, the disintegration happened at a spike
of emotion. Is that the key? If so, is controlling my
emotions the answer? I think about all the years with my
future-ex-wife where I kept my emotions clamped in a vise,
until the day I just had e-fucking-nough. So I have a
practiced hand at controlling my emotions. Maybe I could
get through this without killing anybody. Maybe the pain
would eventually go away and take this strange power with
it.
“Sorry, kitty,” I say, then I go back into the building.
#
Later, I lay in
bed trying to read a novel. Calmly. The drone of the wind
rises as the night stretches. I turn on the TV, and I’m
rewarded with a weather report. My Japanese is good enough
to catch about half of what they’re saying. The eye of
the taifuu
will make
landfall about nine tomorrow morning and pass almost
directly overhead. That means it will be a long night, as
the worst of the wind and rain pass through before the eye
arrives.
The leaves in the trees sound like distant applause, and
the wind moans through the cracks in the windows, the
cracks in the doors, even through the mail slot. Clear
coagulating droplets spatter the window. There is an ‘X’
duct-taped across the three-foot glass pane to reinforce
the glass against the force of the wind. A dog somewhere in
the dark howls like a lost soul.
#
It’s one a.m.
and my keitai
is
ringing. Who’s calling me now?
The
caller ID says, “CANDICE.”
“Hello?”
“Hey, I didn’t wake you, did I? I saw your light was on.”
Her voice sounds shaky.
“Nope. What’s up?”
“Are you busy? Can you come over for a minute?”
“Sure.”
After throwing some clothes on, brushing my hair, swishing
a little mouthwash, and a quick dry-shave, I’m out the
door—calmly, serenely—wondering what she wants at this time
of night. The warm rain mists areas of bare flesh as I walk
across the parking lot to her side of the building. The air
smells like the sea, and I think I detect a hint of sea
salt on my lips. The gravel scrunches with moisture under
my flip-flops.
Candice opens the door on the first knock, and I slip off
my flip-flops and step into her small apartment. It’s
structurally identical to mine. Concrete walls,
tatami
floors,
sliding shoji
doors to
partition the space. Otherwise the difference is stark.
Drawings and paintings, her originals mixed with famous
prints, splash her walls with bright colors. I’ve been here
several times, but there’s always something different. She
likes Monet. Photos with bikinis and grinning faces, warm
hugs and good times. The floor and kitchen are in disarray,
and the sink is full of dirty dishes, but somehow the place
feels cleaner than mine, warmer. I imagine for a moment
that if all the lights were turned out, Candice’s inner
luminosity would keep the shadows at bay. I can smell her,
too, warm and fresh and sweet. Her short black hair is
pulled into a stubby ponytail. A sketchbook lies on
the tatami
in
the middle of the living room floor. A half-finished pastel
of Sean’s portrait. I’m no art critic, but I can see she
has talent.
She’s wearing pink flowery pajama bottoms and a white tank
top, exposing a couple inches of taut midriff. A red thong
peeks out over the low-slung pajama elastic. I try not to
look at her breasts as they stretch the thin tank top
beyond legal limits. Breasts like that are unusual for an
Asian woman. “What’s up?” I say.
She crosses her arms across her chest, smushing her breasts
together but covering the prominent nipples. “The wind blew
my window off the track. Can you help me put it back in? I
can’t do it.”
“Can’t Sean help you?”
Her voice is clipped, and I hear that shakiness again.
“He’s in bed.” She points me to the window beside her bed,
the same window as in my bedroom, except hers is masked by
tasteful blue drapes fluttering in the breeze. One look
tells me that the sliding window is indeed off its track,
but it should be easy to put back in place. A little
wiggling, a little lifting. I reach for it, then stop. It’s
glass.
I stare at it for a while. Calmly. Controlled.
Candice prompts me gently to action. “Can you get it?”
“Yeah.” I take a deep breath and begin to jimmy the
windowpane back into place. I take all possible care. If it
shatters, the storm will have unfettered access to her
bedroom. And there is no way to fix a broken window at this
time of night. A typhoon blowing through an open window all
night long would all but ruin everything in the apartment.
She hovers behind me, inching closer.
I notice I’m holding my breath as I try to put the
windowpane’s sliders back on their little rail. Just
breathe.
Suddenly, it’s in place. And still whole. A massive sigh
slips out of me, and relief washes like warm water through
my hands and face.
She claps her hands with glee, jumps up to me and hugs me
from the side, rubbing up against my body. “Oh, thank you
thank you thank you!”
I can’t help but feel her generous breasts and her pubic
bone rubbing against me through the gauzy cotton. How would
one of those breasts feel in my hand? My ears buzz with a
strange, muffled heat, like I’m wearing ear muffs and
trying to listen to a conversation. I accept the hug, and a
stab of emotion shoots through me. I begin to bleed inside.
Fortunately she pulls away and says, “You know, I was
watching you and her at the party.”
“Oh?” I turn away and busy myself with checking the window.
The wind is still rattling it like a baby’s toy. “Gonna be
hard for you to sleep with this noise.” I look around and
find some paper to fold up and put in the cracks, to
tighten the fit temporarily.
Candice is still talking. “It was pretty obvious that she
was the apple of your eye. She was digging you too.”
I’m folding paper and stuffing it in the cracks, trying not
to listen.
“She’s beautiful and really sweet. So what happened?” I can
feel her eyes on me. Her tone is conversational, but I can
hear the concern.
“Candice, I really can’t talk about this with you.”
“Why not? You’re one of my best friends. Just ‘cause I’m
not a guy? Can’t do the locker room talk with a chick? I’m
sure you already told Sean what happened.”
How many times when I was young, younger than Candice,
before I had met my future Ex-wife From Hell, had I heard
the F-word used on me? Every time like a bludgeon.
You’re such
a good Friend. How many times?
How many more times must I endure it?
I sigh and look out the window into the stiffening
blackness. “Let’s just say it didn’t go well.”
She waits a few moments before she speaks again. “Ah, I’m
sorry. That explains a lot.”
“About what?”
“You were so excited before. The shopping and everything. I
hadn’t seen you that happy probably since we first met. Now
I know why you wanted my fashion advice.” She chuckles with
her warm, full-throated laugh. Then her voice grows soft,
almost a whisper. “Then, at the end of the night, she was
gone, and you looked like someone had just kicked you in
the stomach.”
The silence holds me like a fist. If I speak, I will break.
She comes and stands beside me, putting her hand on my arm.
“You, my friend, are a wonderful man. Someday, there’ll be
a woman who will see it. And she won’t flinch away from all
that love you got in there.” She pokes my arm gently.
My whole body begins to vibrate, buzzing like a swarm of
hornets, steadily, inexorably strengthening until I feel
like I’ve stuck a fork in wall outlet. Can’t she feel the
buzzing under her hand? Could that cat? Clamp down the
vise. Now.
Desperate to change the subject. “So, you and Sean—”
She cuts me off. “Sean was being a dick tonight so I left.”
She crosses her arms.
“It’s none of my business.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “We’re fine. I’ll be happy to see
him tomorrow. He had better know how lucky he is to have
me!” She laughs.
I turn to face her and gaze down squarely into her warm
brown eyes. Long-hidden words spill out. “Sean is one of
the luckiest guys I know.”
She holds my gaze, unflinching, blinks once, twice, then
her mouth drops open, covered by her hand. “Oh, my
God!”
Then she looks away, casting around the room, as if trying
to find answers in the cracks and crannies to impossible
situations. “Oh, my God, that’s the sweetest thing anyone
has ever said to me!” After several moments, the silence
hangs heavy between us.
She looks at me again. I keep my hands firmly in my pockets
and edge away from her.
She says with a big grin. “I love you, too.” She touches my
face.
I stare at her and my mouth hangs half-open. I back away,
and the sizzling sound in my ears drowns out everything
else.
Oh.
No.
Candice’s hand falls off. I see it detach from her wrist
and tumble to the floor, where it shatters into a spray of
coarse particles against the reed floor, like tiny beads of
human-colored glass. She stares at the stump of her
forearm, watching the web of tiny cracks spreading up her
arm, particles beginning to fall away in dreadful slow
motion, pattering to the floor in an accelerating
dissolution. There is no fear in her eyes, only
fascination, amazement. Her legs crumble and give way, and
her torso, her head, even her hair, disintegrate before my
eyes.
The sizzling ache in my torso becomes a searing heat, and I
think I make a noise. It only hurts for a moment, the heat,
as if my body has flashed through a blast furnace and
become molten glass. Then it all begins to crumble away
from me. My fingers, my arms. I can feel my feet becoming
glassy gravel inside my shoes, my legs collapsing under the
weight of my crumbling torso, until I crumple into a pile
of coarse, still matter.
Just a few inches from the pile that was once Candice. Just
a few inches away.
Strangely, I’m still aware, my consciousness clinging to
this little pile. Sometime during the night, the typhoon
winds blow out not only the bedroom window again, but the
balcony doors as well, and the wind lofts our scattering
particles out into the rain.
Copyright
2008 by Travis Heermann