Rainfall

“Are you suggesting that this line could be tapped?” he asked, and I recognized the old subversive sarcasm in his voice. He was telling me to assume that it was.

“Okay, good,” I said. “Lobby of the Hotel Okura, next Saturday, noon sharp.” The Okura was a ridiculously public place to meet, and Tatsu would know that I would never seriously suggest it.

“Ah, that’s a good place,” he answered, telling me he understood. “I’ll see you then.”

“You know, Tatsu, it sounds crazy, but sometimes I miss the times we had in Vietnam. I miss those useless weekly briefings we used to have to go to — do you remember?”

The CIA head of the task force that ran the briefings invariably scheduled them for 16:30, leaving him plenty of time afterwards to chase prostitutes through Saigon. Tatsu rightly thought the guy was a joke, and wasn’t shy about pointing it out publicly.

“Yes, I remember,” he said.

“For some reason I was especially missing them just now,” I said, getting ready to give him the day to add to the time. “Wished I had one to attend tomorrow, in fact. Isn’t that strange? I’m getting nostalgic in my old age.”

“That happens.”

“Yeah, well. It’s been a long time. I’m sorry we lost touch the way we did. Tokyo’s changed so much since I first got here. We had some pretty good times back then, didn’t we? I used to love that one place we used to go to, the one where the mama-san made pottery that she used to serve the drinks in. Remember it? It’s probably not even there anymore.”

The place was in Ebisu. “It’s gone,” he said, telling me he understood.

“Well, shoganai, ne?” That’s life. “It was a good place. I think of it sometimes.”

“I strongly advise you to come in. If you do, I promise to do everything I can to help.”

“I’ll think about it. Thanks for the advice.” I hung up then, my hand lingering on the receiver, willing him to understand my cryptic message. I didn’t know what I was going to do if he didn’t.

21

THE PLACE I’D mentioned in Ebisu was a classic Japanese izakaya that Tatsu had introduced me to when I came to Japan after the war. Izakaya are tiny bars in old wooden buildings, usually run by an ageless man or woman, or a couple, who lives over the store, with only a red lantern outside the entrance to advertise their existence. Offering refuge from a demanding boss or a tedious marriage, from the tumult of the subways and the noise of the streets, izakaya serve beer and sake long into the night, as an endless procession of customers take and abandon seats at the bar, always to be replaced by another tired man coming in from the cold.

Tatsu and I had spent a lot of time at the place in Ebisu, but I had stopped going there once we lost touch. I kept meaning to drop by and check in on the mama-san, but the months had turned to years and somehow it just never happened. And now, according to Tatsu, the place wasn’t even there anymore. Probably it had been torn down. No room for a little place like that in brash, modern Tokyo.

But I remembered where it had been, and that’s where I would wait for Tatsu.

I got to Ebisu early to give myself a chance to look around. Things had really changed. So many of the wooden buildings were gone. There was a sparkling new shopping mall near the station — used to be a rice field. It made it a little hard to get my bearings.

I headed east from the station. It was a wet day, the wind blowing mist from an overcast sky.

I found the place where the izakaya had been. The dilapidated but cozy building was gone, replaced by an antiseptic-looking convenience store. I strolled past it slowly. It was empty, the sole occupant a bored-looking clerk reading a magazine under the store’s fluorescent lights. No sign of Tatsu, but I was nearly an hour early.

I wouldn’t have come back, if I’d had an alternative, once I knew the place was gone. Hell, the whole neighborhood was gone. It reminded me of the last time I’d been in the States, about five years before. I’d gone back to Dryden, the closest thing I had to a hometown. I hadn’t been back in almost twenty years, and some part of me wanted to connect again, with something.

It was a four-hour drive north from New York City. I got there, and about the only thing that was the same was the layout of the streets. I drove up the main drag, and instead of the things I remembered I saw a McDonald’s, a Benetton, a Kinko’s Copies, a Subway sandwich shop, all in gleaming new buildings. A couple of places I recognized. They were like the ruins of a lost civilization poking through dense jungle overgrowth.

I walked on, marveling at how once-pleasant memories always seemed to be rendered painful by an alchemy I could never quite comprehend.

I turned onto a side street. A small park was wedged between two nondescript buildings. A couple of young mothers were standing by one of the benches, strollers in front of them, chatting. Probably about goings-on in the neighborhood, how the kids were going to be in school soon.

I circled around behind the new shopping mall, then came back through it, along a wide outdoor esplanade bright with chrome and glass. It was a pretty structure, I had to admit. A couple of high-school kids passed me, laughing. They looked comfortable, like they belonged there.

I saw a figure in an old gray trench coat coming toward me from the other end of the plaza, and although I couldn’t make out the face I recognized the gait, the posture. It was Tatsu, sucking a little warmth from a cigarette, otherwise ignoring the damp day.

He saw me and waved, tossing away the cigarette. As he came closer I saw that his face was more deeply lined than I remembered, a weariness somehow closer to the surface.

“Honto ni, shibaraku buri da na,” I said, offering him a bow. It has been a long time. He extended his hand, and I shook it.

He was looking at me closely, no doubt seeing the same lines on my face that I saw on his, and perhaps something more. This was the first time Tatsu had seen me since my plastic surgery. He must have been wondering at how age seemed to have hidden the Caucasian in my features. I wondered if he suspected something besides the passage of time behind my changed appearance.