I opened my mouth to put another question to him, but before I could, Dad asked, "You sure you don't want to tell me what's really going on with your brother?"
Dad's tone was genial enough, but I knew this was him changing the subject to something I didn’t want to talk about, so I’d stop asking him questions about something he didn’t want to talk about.
Message received.
It was early September. Still warm outside.
But suddenly I felt cold. Maybe it was because of the train's AC, or maybe it was because of the conversation. Either way, I tried to button up my dark blue uniform jacket—only to remember that wasn’t an option for me anymore.
I'd discovered the past Monday that my jacket no longer fit over my chest. I'd gained even more weight over the summer break and a couple of bra sizes.
"What's going on there?" Dad asked when I gave up on buttoning my jacket.
My cheeks warmed. Explaining that your school uniform jacket no longer fit because your breasts were too big wasn't a conversation any teenage girl wanted to have with her father.
"It's fine," I answered.
Dad regarded me with the same concerned but skeptical look he gave Byron earlier. "Tell you what, how about if I take that jacket of yours to the tailor while you're meeting with the Chinese boy? I know a place near our house that can get it turned around for you in a couple of hours. Just give it to me now, so I don’t forget."
My heart filled with relief. This is what I loved about my dad. My mom would have lectured me forever about needing to lose weight, but Dad just offered to get my jacket taken out. No questions asked. Real soldier.
"Thanks, Dad," I said, taking off the jacket and handing it to him.
We spent the rest of the train ride talking about innocuous things like what mom might be making for dinner and my first week back at school for the second term of my last year in Japanese high school.
About twenty minutes later, we walked up to the front doors of a sleek Roppongi high rise. Dad told the doorman that the tenant on the top floor was expecting us in Japanese. We were waved right inside to an opulent lobby filled with modern furniture and giant chandeliers. Another doorman escorted us to a bank of elevators, inserted a card, and pushed a code on the elevator's number panel before wishing us a good day in English.
The higher the elevator rose, the more nervous I felt. It didn't even ding when we reached our destination. The doors just slid open, revealing a hallway lined in gorgeous black and gold brocaded wallpaper.
At the end of it, there was a single door with a man almost as broad as my father standing outside. He looked to be about Dad's age. Maybe a little older. He wore a shiny suit with an open-collar shirt, and I noticed a colorful tattoo proudly displayed on his chest as we approached.
My dad automatically spread his arms out when we stopped in front of the guard. And when his pat-down was done, Dad indicated I should do the same?
Okay, what kind of tutoring job required a weapons check? I did as Dad said, but faint alarm bells were going off in the back of my head.
My pat-down went a lot faster than Dad’s. Just three perfunctory claps down my sides.
Afterward, the guard smiled and introduced himself in Japanese as Donny.
“My daughter’s got DON in her name, too,” my dad told him, voice affable like they were already old friends. “But it’s spelled D-A-W-N,”
“Oh, we are twins!” Donny answered with a laugh.
I discovered then that my Japanese listening comprehension had gotten way better over the years since we’d moved to Tokyo. Even though Donny and Dad spoke way faster than my classroom teachers, I laughed, understanding what they said. And I could even tell that the guard spoke with a foreign accent.
Chinese, maybe. Like the boy I would be tutoring, the one who wanted to learn ASL so that he could go to college in the USA someday.
Donny opened the door for us just like the doorman downstairs. But this time, my dad hung back.
"I'm going to go take care of your jacket. See you at home, okay?" He gave me a significant look as he said this, one I easily translated: “Be cool.”
Wait. My father was really going to leave me alone here? With these weapon-checking strangers? I wanted to call after him. Beg him to stay with me like I did my mom the first day of kindergarten.
But he was already halfway back to the elevator. And I didn't want to embarrass him. Or myself.
Taking a deep breath, I walked through the door that Donny was holding open for me.
My first sight of the apartment replaced the alarm bells with utter amazement.
This place had to be at least ten times as big as the one I shared with my family in Adachi-Ku. The living room alone looked like it could fit our entire apartment inside it. The same gorgeous wallpaper from the hallway covered the walls. And I was no interior design expert, but all the furniture looked expensive and ultra-modern. It was all sparkling white with sharp edges.
"Right this way," Donny said, interrupting my gawk fest. He led me down another hallway, but this one wasn't wallpapered. In fact, it was completely bare.
No pictures of family or A+ homework on display like at our apartment. Just two white walls. Japanese minimalism, maybe?
But something told me it wasn’t. I thought about how my father never gave the downstairs doorman a name. Also, how Donny pretty much invited me, a seventeen-year-old he'd just met, to call him by his first name. Sure, he was Chinese, but that was almost unheard of in Japan.
Whoever lived here, they were rich and very, very anonymous, I concluded. As crazy
