Monday, November 01, 2004
3.
3. Doug - 2004
He rolled over towards the left side of the bed and bumped something soft and warm. He rolled back the other way and opened his eyes. The clock on the bedside table read 5:15 A.M. The lump on the left side of the bead shifted slightly, said something unintelligible, and then rolled towards him. He looked at her face in the half-light of the room. She looked even younger in this light. What am I doing in bed with this girl? He thought about it for a minute, and then decided he would get up. As Doug swung his legs onto the floor of the hotel room, his right knee greeted him with an unpleasant twinge.
He ignored the cane despite the throb in his leg, and walked into the bathroom. He did his morning duty, then walked back out through the room, grabbing his smokes and cell as he went. He suddenly thought he should grab the cane. He turned back to the bed, where he regarded the sleeping form for a moment. Grabbing the cane from the bedside, he brushed aside the curtain and stepped out into the cool morning air. The balcony had a chair and a small table, and Doug sat down and lit a cigarette. As he looked out towards the first light of morning, he was reminded of a favorite song lyric.
“It is five A.M. and the sun has charred the other side of the world and come back to us,” he said to no one as he did some deep knee bends in order to try and work out the kinks in his leg, “and painted the smoke above our heads an imperial violet.” After 15 minutes his knee felt better, and he sat back down in the chair and lit another Camel. The Doug Harris and The Aardvarks 2004 summer tour had grinded to a finish last night, and Doug was tired. What had started out as a 10-date spring club tour had become a full 60-date summer tour after the accidental success of the Aardvarks’ most recent CD, but Doug hadn’t been ready for the rigors of a full tour. Not since Cleveland, anyway.
His cell phone rang, startling him awake. He looked at his watch, and realized that he’d been dozing in the chair for close to two hours.
“Your dime.”
“Doug? Hey, it’s Gary.” Gary Ablett was an old high school classmate, and Doug’s lifeline to his former life.
“Dude, what’s up? How’s things in the 203? Darrell still getting hitched?”
“Yeah, I’m not calling about that, though.”
Doug lit another smoke. “What’s up? Bill talking shit about me again?”
“No, it’s not that either. Listen. Jack’s mom got killed in a car accident yesterday. Have you talked to him recently?”
Doug grimaced and lit up another cigarette. “No, man, not since last year. He doesn’t really talk to me anyway. Not like Charlie. You probably should call him.” He regarded the view. “Listen, I’m right across the Sound anyway. I.’ll be in New Haven by the end of the day anyway. I was coming home for the wedding. Let me know if you need to get a hold of Jack, and I’ll see what I can do.” He hung up the cell phone and sat back in the chair again. He looked at his watch, and figured he would call Jack. No one picked up, and he listened to a message in Japanese which he assumed to be the equivalent of “Leave a message and I’ll call you back.” He hung up and then stood up.
The knee bends appeared to have been undone by dozing off in the chair, so he picked up his cane and walked back into the hotel room. The bed was empty, but the shower was running, so he sat down in the chair next to the bed and turned on SportsCenter. A few minutes later, the girl emerged from the bathroom with a towel on her head and nothing else. He looked away from the TV.
“Hi there,” she said, “I woke up and thought maybe you’d taken off on me.”
“Of course not,” he said, “I wouldn’t dream of leaving a girl in the lurch.” He frantically searched his scrambled brain for her name. Had he even learned it? “I’m a gentleman.”
“Truer words were never spoken. We came back up here last night and you immediately passed out on me.” She kneeled down next to him and took one of his hands and placed it on her breast. “Why don’t you turn off that TV and we’ll make up for lost time?”
Half an hour later, the girl slipped out of his hotel room and headed for the elevator. Doug watched her until she disappeared from sight, then headed back into the bathroom. As he turned on the shower, he looked at himself in the mirror. At 32, Douglas Harrison O’Donnell easily looked ten years older. The accident two years before had left a permanent scar on his face, a thin line running from his right eye almost to his ear. He had been cut open by the microphone stand which had preceded him to the turf at Jacob Field. Now it was a pink line on his face, noticeable to about ten feet away. He wore fake glasses made of window glass in order to cover up the scar in interviews, but soon he’d probably need real glasses.
He lifted his right leg onto the vanity and examined his knee. The doctors had said it probably would have healed perfectly if he hadn’t landed directly on it. Instead, he’d done a massive amount of damage to the ligaments in his knee as well as tearing up the muscles in his calf. Six months in a wheelchair and another three in therapy later, he could walk a decent distance without the cane, but he had to have a cortisone shot in the knee before show. Afterwards, it was two hours off his feet and a large ice pack on the knee. He stripped off his boxers and stepped into the shower. He directed the stream at his knee and sighed. Twenty minutes later, he turned off the water and stepped out.
He dressed and picked up the pack of Camels, but then thought better of it and tossed them into his backpack. He took a deep breath, and noticed the scent of her perfume in the air. He hadn’t intended to bring her back to his room. She was very pretty though, and very persistent. She’d also been the exception to the rule, as he’d been trying to stay away from the groupies on this tour. Being a pop star had both advantages and disadvantages, he mused as he cleaned up his junk in the room. He was, after all, able to travel first class, stay in excellent hotels, and take limos to exclusive restaurants. Of course, he also was recognized everywhere he went, rarely had a moment of peace, and generally spent six to eight months a year on the road. Most of his downtime on tour was spent rambling around hotels and green rooms in arenas.
Waaaah, his old high school band mate Bill would have said. You’ve still got more then most pop stars of your type should have. Bill would be right, of course. After ten years in the business, Doug Harris still meant something. You couldn’t say that about some of the bands who shared chart space over the years with him. As he tossed the last of his stuff into the backpack, there was a knock at his door.
“Hey, Phil says get your ass in gear. The bus is leaving.” Doug’s guitarist, Kevin Maurer, stood outside the door. Doug took one last look around, and then left the room. He and Kevin walked down the hall to the elevator.
“Did we have a good time last night, boss?” Kevin smiled. He and Bernadette, Doug’s backup singer, had watched as the groupie worked her magic on the half-drunk Doug.
“I passed out.” Doug leaned on the cane as they waited for the elevator. “And my knee’s killing me this morning.”
“That’s my boy.” They rode the elevator to the lobby. As they crossed the lobby, a few girls whispered and pointed, but no one actually came up to them as they headed out to the bus. Calling it a bus wasn’t really correct, as it was more of a giant RV. Standing out by the bus was a stocky gray-haired man with a bushy mustache.
“Glad you could join us, your eminence.” Phil Kaufman, Doug’s road manager took his suitcase and tossed it into the storage compartment. They boarded the bus, and left the parking lot, headed for New Haven.
He rolled over towards the left side of the bed and bumped something soft and warm. He rolled back the other way and opened his eyes. The clock on the bedside table read 5:15 A.M. The lump on the left side of the bead shifted slightly, said something unintelligible, and then rolled towards him. He looked at her face in the half-light of the room. She looked even younger in this light. What am I doing in bed with this girl? He thought about it for a minute, and then decided he would get up. As Doug swung his legs onto the floor of the hotel room, his right knee greeted him with an unpleasant twinge.
He ignored the cane despite the throb in his leg, and walked into the bathroom. He did his morning duty, then walked back out through the room, grabbing his smokes and cell as he went. He suddenly thought he should grab the cane. He turned back to the bed, where he regarded the sleeping form for a moment. Grabbing the cane from the bedside, he brushed aside the curtain and stepped out into the cool morning air. The balcony had a chair and a small table, and Doug sat down and lit a cigarette. As he looked out towards the first light of morning, he was reminded of a favorite song lyric.
“It is five A.M. and the sun has charred the other side of the world and come back to us,” he said to no one as he did some deep knee bends in order to try and work out the kinks in his leg, “and painted the smoke above our heads an imperial violet.” After 15 minutes his knee felt better, and he sat back down in the chair and lit another Camel. The Doug Harris and The Aardvarks 2004 summer tour had grinded to a finish last night, and Doug was tired. What had started out as a 10-date spring club tour had become a full 60-date summer tour after the accidental success of the Aardvarks’ most recent CD, but Doug hadn’t been ready for the rigors of a full tour. Not since Cleveland, anyway.
His cell phone rang, startling him awake. He looked at his watch, and realized that he’d been dozing in the chair for close to two hours.
“Your dime.”
“Doug? Hey, it’s Gary.” Gary Ablett was an old high school classmate, and Doug’s lifeline to his former life.
“Dude, what’s up? How’s things in the 203? Darrell still getting hitched?”
“Yeah, I’m not calling about that, though.”
Doug lit another smoke. “What’s up? Bill talking shit about me again?”
“No, it’s not that either. Listen. Jack’s mom got killed in a car accident yesterday. Have you talked to him recently?”
Doug grimaced and lit up another cigarette. “No, man, not since last year. He doesn’t really talk to me anyway. Not like Charlie. You probably should call him.” He regarded the view. “Listen, I’m right across the Sound anyway. I.’ll be in New Haven by the end of the day anyway. I was coming home for the wedding. Let me know if you need to get a hold of Jack, and I’ll see what I can do.” He hung up the cell phone and sat back in the chair again. He looked at his watch, and figured he would call Jack. No one picked up, and he listened to a message in Japanese which he assumed to be the equivalent of “Leave a message and I’ll call you back.” He hung up and then stood up.
The knee bends appeared to have been undone by dozing off in the chair, so he picked up his cane and walked back into the hotel room. The bed was empty, but the shower was running, so he sat down in the chair next to the bed and turned on SportsCenter. A few minutes later, the girl emerged from the bathroom with a towel on her head and nothing else. He looked away from the TV.
“Hi there,” she said, “I woke up and thought maybe you’d taken off on me.”
“Of course not,” he said, “I wouldn’t dream of leaving a girl in the lurch.” He frantically searched his scrambled brain for her name. Had he even learned it? “I’m a gentleman.”
“Truer words were never spoken. We came back up here last night and you immediately passed out on me.” She kneeled down next to him and took one of his hands and placed it on her breast. “Why don’t you turn off that TV and we’ll make up for lost time?”
Half an hour later, the girl slipped out of his hotel room and headed for the elevator. Doug watched her until she disappeared from sight, then headed back into the bathroom. As he turned on the shower, he looked at himself in the mirror. At 32, Douglas Harrison O’Donnell easily looked ten years older. The accident two years before had left a permanent scar on his face, a thin line running from his right eye almost to his ear. He had been cut open by the microphone stand which had preceded him to the turf at Jacob Field. Now it was a pink line on his face, noticeable to about ten feet away. He wore fake glasses made of window glass in order to cover up the scar in interviews, but soon he’d probably need real glasses.
He lifted his right leg onto the vanity and examined his knee. The doctors had said it probably would have healed perfectly if he hadn’t landed directly on it. Instead, he’d done a massive amount of damage to the ligaments in his knee as well as tearing up the muscles in his calf. Six months in a wheelchair and another three in therapy later, he could walk a decent distance without the cane, but he had to have a cortisone shot in the knee before show. Afterwards, it was two hours off his feet and a large ice pack on the knee. He stripped off his boxers and stepped into the shower. He directed the stream at his knee and sighed. Twenty minutes later, he turned off the water and stepped out.
He dressed and picked up the pack of Camels, but then thought better of it and tossed them into his backpack. He took a deep breath, and noticed the scent of her perfume in the air. He hadn’t intended to bring her back to his room. She was very pretty though, and very persistent. She’d also been the exception to the rule, as he’d been trying to stay away from the groupies on this tour. Being a pop star had both advantages and disadvantages, he mused as he cleaned up his junk in the room. He was, after all, able to travel first class, stay in excellent hotels, and take limos to exclusive restaurants. Of course, he also was recognized everywhere he went, rarely had a moment of peace, and generally spent six to eight months a year on the road. Most of his downtime on tour was spent rambling around hotels and green rooms in arenas.
Waaaah, his old high school band mate Bill would have said. You’ve still got more then most pop stars of your type should have. Bill would be right, of course. After ten years in the business, Doug Harris still meant something. You couldn’t say that about some of the bands who shared chart space over the years with him. As he tossed the last of his stuff into the backpack, there was a knock at his door.
“Hey, Phil says get your ass in gear. The bus is leaving.” Doug’s guitarist, Kevin Maurer, stood outside the door. Doug took one last look around, and then left the room. He and Kevin walked down the hall to the elevator.
“Did we have a good time last night, boss?” Kevin smiled. He and Bernadette, Doug’s backup singer, had watched as the groupie worked her magic on the half-drunk Doug.
“I passed out.” Doug leaned on the cane as they waited for the elevator. “And my knee’s killing me this morning.”
“That’s my boy.” They rode the elevator to the lobby. As they crossed the lobby, a few girls whispered and pointed, but no one actually came up to them as they headed out to the bus. Calling it a bus wasn’t really correct, as it was more of a giant RV. Standing out by the bus was a stocky gray-haired man with a bushy mustache.
“Glad you could join us, your eminence.” Phil Kaufman, Doug’s road manager took his suitcase and tossed it into the storage compartment. They boarded the bus, and left the parking lot, headed for New Haven.
Prologue: 1 and 2
Prologue
1. Charlie - 2004
It was still dark when he left his place. The only rink time Charlie Ferris could get, even in August, was at 5:00 A.M. The best way he could get time for himself was to go to the local rink near his house and skate anonymously on one end of the ice while a peewee hockey team practiced on the other end. He realized that if he lived anywhere other then Portland, he’d probably be able to get time at a less ungodly hour, but it felt right, somehow. As a teenager, he’d practiced as early as 4:00 A.M., and it had made him more driven, more willing to push his body to the limit in order to win games.
He was a free agent, and a 33-year-old free agent, at that, and so he wanted to keep himself up. Normally, he would be getting himself ready to go into camp, but the Player’s Association and the owners had thrown a monkey wrench into that idea. But he wasn’t really willing to fly to Europe, as several of his teammates had done, and he wasn’t about to sign an AHL deal and go get his ass whipped by kids half his age.
Maybe it was time to pack it in. He woke up some mornings with arthritic pain in his shoulder and back from a career of banging boards and taking crushing hits for his paychecks, and there were days when he didn’t get out of bed at all. That had chased her away, he thought as he put his bag into the trunk of the 2001 Honda Accord that he’d bought with his last signing bonus. The Accord was about all he had left from the old days, as his ex-wife had taken his house and a good chunk of his salary when she went. Thankfully, he’d trusted Gary to hide away a lot of his money in real estate and investments, so that he wasn’t too bad off.
He drove down the road to the ice rink, the local AM news station droning away as he considered his options. He’d had a fairly full career, winning one Stanley Cup as a hired gun, and leading the league in goals one year and assists the next. He wasn’t a Hall of Fame lock, but he’d had enough of a successful career to ensure that he’d probably have a second career afterwards as a coach or announcer. Provided there was another season, of course. The looming lockout/strike/whatever had put a serious crimp in his plans for the year. So workouts and sitting on his investments, it was.
When he pulled up to the rink, he was the only person in the parking lot. He checked his watch to make sure that he wasn’t too early, then went up to the door. No one was anywhere to be seen, and just as he was about to get back in the Accord and drive away, he noticed an envelope sticking out of the door. As he pulled it out, he noticed it was addressed to him.
Charlie - Please do me a solid and open the rink.
I have to go out of town tonight, and won’t be
back until around eight or nine. Jeremy will be in by
six, but I didn’t want you to miss your ice time.
The note was signed “K”. Karl Harper was a retired minor league referee who ran the local peewee league as well as the rink. Karl and Charlie were casual drinking buddies, and Charlie usually had the run of the place in exchange for a couple of rounds at the Moosehead. Charlie shrugged and walked back to his car to get his bag. He went to the locker room, changed into his workout uniform but not his pads, and then went to the ice. He skated a few laps, then set up the targets as the peewee players began to hit the ice. He shot pucks for about 20 minutes, then skated over and chatted with the peewee coach for a bit. By that time, Jeremy, Karl’s son, had arrived to start opening the rink for real.
After a shower and a quick cup of coffee with Jeremy, Charlie left the rink and headed back to his apartment. He plopped on the couch, resigning himself to another day of nothing going on, when the phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Charlie? Charlie Ferris?”
Charlie didn’t really recognize the voice on the other end. “Who’s asking?”
“Charlie, this is David Shanahan. I was calling because I was wondering if you might know how I could get in touch with Jack.”
Charlie rolled his eyes. Jack Shanahan was an old high school teammate of his who had bolted the country for Japan after college. David was his uncle, a high-powered attorney in the town where they’d grown up. He thought about just saying no and hanging up, but something about David’s tone of voice got the better of him. David sounded as though someone had died.
“I might have a number where you could try to get him, Mr. Shanahan. What’s going on?”
“Jack’s mother was killed in a car accident yesterday, Charlie. Any information you could give me would be very helpful.”
“Anne’s dead? Oh God. Yeah, I’ve got a number for Jack, Mr. Shanahan, let me find it.” He dug around his cluttered desk until he unearthed a beaten Filofax. He found the card with Jack’s Tokyo address and phone number and gave it to David. “I was actually already going to be in New Haven this week, you know. Darrell Masters is getting hitched the day after the funeral.”
“Yes, I know. I talked to Gary Ablett, who gave me your number as well as the number of that ridiculous musician friend of yours. Now I won’t have to call him, thank God. Gary said that you’d all be in town, but he didn’t have any idea about Jack.”
“Well, none of us have seen him since graduation. His heart was never really here anyway.”
“Indeed. Well, thank you anyway, Charlie. I hope your labor situation resolves itself soon.” Charlie hung up the phone and sat stunned for a minute. He’d always liked Jack’s mom. She seemed very down to earth, a lot like his mom had been. Without realizing it, he wiped a tear away from his eye.
2. Jack - 2004.
A solitary figure stepped off the express train and began trudging down the platform toward his home. It was about 5:00 A.M. Tokyo time, and Jack Shanahan was thankful that he didn’t have a class today, as he was bone tired. He’d made the mistake of agreeing to sit in with a friend’s combo in Shibuya, a good ride down the line from Kami-Itabashi, but he’d ended up playing until almost three A.M. Two hours later, he was trudging his way back to his studio apartment to pass out for about four hours.
He walked up to his small apartment building and climbed the stairs to his third floor studio. Unlike a lot of gaijin he knew, Jack was happy to live in a small, near-closet-sized apartment that he paid about 45,000 yen a month for. He opened the door to his apartment, picking up the small sheaf of mail on his entryway floor, and took his shoes off and placed them on the mat. He put on his slippers and walked through the kitchen into his living room. He paged through his mail quickly, pulling out the mail that belonged to Craig, the new ESL teacher who lived two buildings away. (He and Craig, the only two gaijin in the immediate neighborhood, tended to get each other’s mail.) Craig had only been in the neighborhood a month, so Jack figured he’d be seeing Craig’s mail for a while.
Jack had gotten used to strange occurrences like that in Japan. Being a gaijin, even when you didn’t think of yourself as one anymore, led to a number of strange things. People moving away from you on trains. Not being allowed into many bars(though he’d stopped being offended by that a long time ago.) And of course, most of the girls he met thought he was some kind of low level yakuza functionary. But he loved Japan anyway. He had ever since he was a kid. Part of him thought that it had as much to do with the Godzilla movies and Japanese animation that he’d been watching since he was little, but a part of him had always felt out of place in the States.
At ten, he badgered his mother to let him take kendo lessons. At twelve, he was learning to speak Japanese, and by the time he finished high school, he’d become fluent enough to make a nice semi-illegal living subtitling anime tapes imported from Japan for a friend of his. He went across country to San Diego State University upon the recommendation of a bootlegger friend. Upon graduation, he flew across the ocean. He spent the first two years teaching English as a Second Language courses to bored high school students, then found himself as a Coordinator for International Relations in the Japan English Teachers program. He sat behind a desk all day, spoke almost nothing but Japanese, and made a nice living for almost three years, before being recruited to his present job, teaching English courses at a university in Shibuya. He was fairly frugal with his yen, mostly buying food and manga, and taking the trains or riding his bicycle everywhere. He’d long stopped frequenting the expat bars and clubs where “short-timers” came to gripe about how little Japan was like the U.S. He found himself a nice Japanese girl who didn’t mind being seen with him, a jazz combo who needed a pianist, and had picked this little hole in the wall in which to hide himself. Life was good, he thought as he stripped off his shirt and lay down on his futon. He thought about calling Mie but he figured she’d just get mad at him for staying out so late. He was just about asleep when his phone rang.
“Mosh-moshi?” he asked sleepily.
“Uh, hello?” The voice on the end was American, East Coast accented. In his sleepy haze, Jack didn’t recognize the voice.
“Do you realize what time it is? This had better be good.”
“It’s 3:00 P.M. Eastern time, which makes it about 5:00 A.M. tomorrow morning. Is this Jack?”
Jack, now a little more awake, stared at the phone. “Uncle David?”
“Jack, you need to come home. Your mother has been killed.”
“WHAT?!?” Jack, now bolt upright, began shaking. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I’m sorry to have to break this to you this way, Jack, but your mother was killed in a car accident yesterday. How soon can you be on a plane?”
Jack sat and listened to Uncle David in a daze. Five hours later, he and Mie were sitting in business class on a JAL flight headed for Los Angeles. There they would change planes and fly from L.A. to Bradley International in Hartford, where someone would be waiting to drive them to New Haven. New Haven, he thought as he sipped a cold Kirin and tried not to think about the hard couple of days ahead, I never thought I’d see New Haven again any time soon.
1. Charlie - 2004
It was still dark when he left his place. The only rink time Charlie Ferris could get, even in August, was at 5:00 A.M. The best way he could get time for himself was to go to the local rink near his house and skate anonymously on one end of the ice while a peewee hockey team practiced on the other end. He realized that if he lived anywhere other then Portland, he’d probably be able to get time at a less ungodly hour, but it felt right, somehow. As a teenager, he’d practiced as early as 4:00 A.M., and it had made him more driven, more willing to push his body to the limit in order to win games.
He was a free agent, and a 33-year-old free agent, at that, and so he wanted to keep himself up. Normally, he would be getting himself ready to go into camp, but the Player’s Association and the owners had thrown a monkey wrench into that idea. But he wasn’t really willing to fly to Europe, as several of his teammates had done, and he wasn’t about to sign an AHL deal and go get his ass whipped by kids half his age.
Maybe it was time to pack it in. He woke up some mornings with arthritic pain in his shoulder and back from a career of banging boards and taking crushing hits for his paychecks, and there were days when he didn’t get out of bed at all. That had chased her away, he thought as he put his bag into the trunk of the 2001 Honda Accord that he’d bought with his last signing bonus. The Accord was about all he had left from the old days, as his ex-wife had taken his house and a good chunk of his salary when she went. Thankfully, he’d trusted Gary to hide away a lot of his money in real estate and investments, so that he wasn’t too bad off.
He drove down the road to the ice rink, the local AM news station droning away as he considered his options. He’d had a fairly full career, winning one Stanley Cup as a hired gun, and leading the league in goals one year and assists the next. He wasn’t a Hall of Fame lock, but he’d had enough of a successful career to ensure that he’d probably have a second career afterwards as a coach or announcer. Provided there was another season, of course. The looming lockout/strike/whatever had put a serious crimp in his plans for the year. So workouts and sitting on his investments, it was.
When he pulled up to the rink, he was the only person in the parking lot. He checked his watch to make sure that he wasn’t too early, then went up to the door. No one was anywhere to be seen, and just as he was about to get back in the Accord and drive away, he noticed an envelope sticking out of the door. As he pulled it out, he noticed it was addressed to him.
Charlie - Please do me a solid and open the rink.
I have to go out of town tonight, and won’t be
back until around eight or nine. Jeremy will be in by
six, but I didn’t want you to miss your ice time.
The note was signed “K”. Karl Harper was a retired minor league referee who ran the local peewee league as well as the rink. Karl and Charlie were casual drinking buddies, and Charlie usually had the run of the place in exchange for a couple of rounds at the Moosehead. Charlie shrugged and walked back to his car to get his bag. He went to the locker room, changed into his workout uniform but not his pads, and then went to the ice. He skated a few laps, then set up the targets as the peewee players began to hit the ice. He shot pucks for about 20 minutes, then skated over and chatted with the peewee coach for a bit. By that time, Jeremy, Karl’s son, had arrived to start opening the rink for real.
After a shower and a quick cup of coffee with Jeremy, Charlie left the rink and headed back to his apartment. He plopped on the couch, resigning himself to another day of nothing going on, when the phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Charlie? Charlie Ferris?”
Charlie didn’t really recognize the voice on the other end. “Who’s asking?”
“Charlie, this is David Shanahan. I was calling because I was wondering if you might know how I could get in touch with Jack.”
Charlie rolled his eyes. Jack Shanahan was an old high school teammate of his who had bolted the country for Japan after college. David was his uncle, a high-powered attorney in the town where they’d grown up. He thought about just saying no and hanging up, but something about David’s tone of voice got the better of him. David sounded as though someone had died.
“I might have a number where you could try to get him, Mr. Shanahan. What’s going on?”
“Jack’s mother was killed in a car accident yesterday, Charlie. Any information you could give me would be very helpful.”
“Anne’s dead? Oh God. Yeah, I’ve got a number for Jack, Mr. Shanahan, let me find it.” He dug around his cluttered desk until he unearthed a beaten Filofax. He found the card with Jack’s Tokyo address and phone number and gave it to David. “I was actually already going to be in New Haven this week, you know. Darrell Masters is getting hitched the day after the funeral.”
“Yes, I know. I talked to Gary Ablett, who gave me your number as well as the number of that ridiculous musician friend of yours. Now I won’t have to call him, thank God. Gary said that you’d all be in town, but he didn’t have any idea about Jack.”
“Well, none of us have seen him since graduation. His heart was never really here anyway.”
“Indeed. Well, thank you anyway, Charlie. I hope your labor situation resolves itself soon.” Charlie hung up the phone and sat stunned for a minute. He’d always liked Jack’s mom. She seemed very down to earth, a lot like his mom had been. Without realizing it, he wiped a tear away from his eye.
2. Jack - 2004.
A solitary figure stepped off the express train and began trudging down the platform toward his home. It was about 5:00 A.M. Tokyo time, and Jack Shanahan was thankful that he didn’t have a class today, as he was bone tired. He’d made the mistake of agreeing to sit in with a friend’s combo in Shibuya, a good ride down the line from Kami-Itabashi, but he’d ended up playing until almost three A.M. Two hours later, he was trudging his way back to his studio apartment to pass out for about four hours.
He walked up to his small apartment building and climbed the stairs to his third floor studio. Unlike a lot of gaijin he knew, Jack was happy to live in a small, near-closet-sized apartment that he paid about 45,000 yen a month for. He opened the door to his apartment, picking up the small sheaf of mail on his entryway floor, and took his shoes off and placed them on the mat. He put on his slippers and walked through the kitchen into his living room. He paged through his mail quickly, pulling out the mail that belonged to Craig, the new ESL teacher who lived two buildings away. (He and Craig, the only two gaijin in the immediate neighborhood, tended to get each other’s mail.) Craig had only been in the neighborhood a month, so Jack figured he’d be seeing Craig’s mail for a while.
Jack had gotten used to strange occurrences like that in Japan. Being a gaijin, even when you didn’t think of yourself as one anymore, led to a number of strange things. People moving away from you on trains. Not being allowed into many bars(though he’d stopped being offended by that a long time ago.) And of course, most of the girls he met thought he was some kind of low level yakuza functionary. But he loved Japan anyway. He had ever since he was a kid. Part of him thought that it had as much to do with the Godzilla movies and Japanese animation that he’d been watching since he was little, but a part of him had always felt out of place in the States.
At ten, he badgered his mother to let him take kendo lessons. At twelve, he was learning to speak Japanese, and by the time he finished high school, he’d become fluent enough to make a nice semi-illegal living subtitling anime tapes imported from Japan for a friend of his. He went across country to San Diego State University upon the recommendation of a bootlegger friend. Upon graduation, he flew across the ocean. He spent the first two years teaching English as a Second Language courses to bored high school students, then found himself as a Coordinator for International Relations in the Japan English Teachers program. He sat behind a desk all day, spoke almost nothing but Japanese, and made a nice living for almost three years, before being recruited to his present job, teaching English courses at a university in Shibuya. He was fairly frugal with his yen, mostly buying food and manga, and taking the trains or riding his bicycle everywhere. He’d long stopped frequenting the expat bars and clubs where “short-timers” came to gripe about how little Japan was like the U.S. He found himself a nice Japanese girl who didn’t mind being seen with him, a jazz combo who needed a pianist, and had picked this little hole in the wall in which to hide himself. Life was good, he thought as he stripped off his shirt and lay down on his futon. He thought about calling Mie but he figured she’d just get mad at him for staying out so late. He was just about asleep when his phone rang.
“Mosh-moshi?” he asked sleepily.
“Uh, hello?” The voice on the end was American, East Coast accented. In his sleepy haze, Jack didn’t recognize the voice.
“Do you realize what time it is? This had better be good.”
“It’s 3:00 P.M. Eastern time, which makes it about 5:00 A.M. tomorrow morning. Is this Jack?”
Jack, now a little more awake, stared at the phone. “Uncle David?”
“Jack, you need to come home. Your mother has been killed.”
“WHAT?!?” Jack, now bolt upright, began shaking. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I’m sorry to have to break this to you this way, Jack, but your mother was killed in a car accident yesterday. How soon can you be on a plane?”
Jack sat and listened to Uncle David in a daze. Five hours later, he and Mie were sitting in business class on a JAL flight headed for Los Angeles. There they would change planes and fly from L.A. to Bradley International in Hartford, where someone would be waiting to drive them to New Haven. New Haven, he thought as he sipped a cold Kirin and tried not to think about the hard couple of days ahead, I never thought I’d see New Haven again any time soon.
