Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (5 page)

Henry found a seat on a bench and read through a day-old copy of the
Japanese
Daily News
, much of which, surprisingly was printed in English. There was a going-out-of-business sale at the Taishodo Book Store, and a new owner had taken over Nakamura Jewelry. As Henry looked around, there seemed to be a lot of businesses for sale; others were closed in the middle of the day. All of which made sense, as many of the news articles had to do with hard times in Nihonmachi. Apparently business had been bad, even before Pearl Harbor--going all the way back to when the Japanese invaded Manchuria, in 1931. Henry remembered the year only because his father mentioned the war in China so often. According to the news article, the Chong Wa Benevolent Association had called for a boycott of the entire Japanese community. Henry didn't know what the Chong Wa was exactly, some sort of Chinatown committee like the Bing Kung Association, which his family belonged to--but larger and more political, encompassing not only his neighborhood but the entire region and all the tongs--social networks that sometimes resembled gangs. His father was a member.

As Henry looked at the scores of people milling about the streets, shopping and playing, their numbers belied the hard times, boycotts, and the boarded-up, flag-draped storefronts. Poking through the streets, most of the locals ignored him, though some Japanese children pointed and spoke as he walked by, only to be shushed by their parents.

There were more than a few black faces speckling the crowd, but no white faces to be seen.

Then Henry stopped in his tracks when he finally saw Keiko's face-- or a photo of it anyway--in the window display of the Ochi Photography Studio. There she was, in a dark sepia print of a little girl dressed in her Sunday best, sitting in an oversize leather chair, holding an ornate Japanese umbrella, a bamboo parasol with koi painted on it.

"Konichi-wa,"
a Japanese man, fairly young by the look of it, greeted him in the doorway.
"Konichi-wa, Ototo-san?"

Confused by the Japanese greeting, Henry opened his coat and pointed to his button that read "I am Chinese."

The young photographer smiled. "Well, I don't speak Chinese, but how are you today--looking for a photograph? A sitting? Or are you just looking for someone?"

Now it was Henry's turn to be surprised. The young photographer's English seemed near perfect compared with Henry's own grasp of the language.

"This girl, I go to school with her."

"The Okabes? They send their daughter to the Chinese school?"

Henry shook his head, waving his hand. "Keiko Okabe, yes. We both go to Rainier Elementary--the white school across Yesler Way."

A moment of silence vanished in the car engines that roared by. Henry looked on as the photographer regarded the photo of Keiko.

"Then you both must be very special students."

Since when did
special
become such a burden? A curse even. There was nothing special about
scholarshipping
at Rainier. Nothing at all. Then again, he was here looking for someone. Maybe
she
was special.

"Do you know where she lives?"

"No. I'm sorry. But I see them a lot near the Nippon Kan Hall. There's a park, you might look for her there."

"Domo,"
Henry said. It was the only Japanese word he knew, aside from what Sheldon had taught him earlier.

"You're welcome. Come back, I'll take your picture!" the photographer yelled.

Henry was already down the street.

Henry and Keiko walked through Kobe Park on their way home from school each day, and he knew the hillside park by the numerous rows of cherry trees that lined the streets. Across from the park sat the Nippon Kan Hall, more of a Kabuki theater really, complete with posters for plays he'd never seen, or even heard of--like
O Some
Hisamatsu
and
Yuku No Ichiya--
written in kanji and English. Like Chinatown, the whole area around the park apparently woke up on Saturdays. Henry followed the crowds, then the music. In front of the Nippon Kan were street performers, dressed in full traditional costumes, fighting with shimmering swords that flexed and bent as they cut the air.

Behind them, musicians played what looked like strange, three-string guitars. Nothing at all like the
yuehu
or
gao wu
, the two-string violins that he was used to hearing when the Peking Opera performed a fighting routine.

With the music and the dancing, Henry forgot all about looking for Keiko, though he occasionally murmured the words Sheldon had taught him--
Oh I decky tay ooh ree she
day sue--
mainly out of nervous habit.

"Henry!"

Even through the music he knew the voice was hers. He looked around the crowd, lost for a moment before spotting her sitting on the hillside, the high point of Kobe Park, looking down on the street performers, waving. Henry walked up the hill, his palms sweating.
Oh I decky tay ooh ree she day sue. Oh I decky tay ooh ree she day sue.

She put down a small notebook and looked up, smiling. "Henry? What are you doing here?"

"Oh-I-decky-tay ..."
The words rolled off his tongue like a Mack truck. He felt a wisp of perspiration on his forehead.
The words?
What was the rest?
"Ooh ree she day ...

sue."

Keiko's face froze in a smile of surprise, interrupted only by her occasional wide-eyed blinking. "What did you just say?"

Breathe, Henry. Deep breath. One more time.

"Oai deki te ureshii desu!"
The words came out perfectly.
I did it!

Silence.

"Henry, I don't speak Japanese."

"What ... ?"

"I. Don't. Speak. Japanese." Keiko burst out laughing. "They don't even teach it anymore at the Japanese school. They stopped last fall. My mom and dad speak it, but they wanted me to learn only English. About the only Japanese
I
know is
wakarimasen.
"

Henry sat down beside her, staring at the street performers. "Which means?"

Keiko patted his arm. "It means 'I don't understand'--understand?"

He lay back on the hillside, feeling the cool grass. He could smell the tiny Japanese roses everywhere, dotting the hill with patches of yellow stars.

"Whatever it was, Henry, you said it beautifully. What's it mean?"

"Nothing. It means 'What time is it?' "

Henry glanced at Keiko sheepishly and saw the look of suspicion in her eye. "Did you come all the way over here to ask me what time it was?"

Henry shrugged. "A friend just taught it to me, I thought you'd be impressed, I was wrong--what kind of notebook is that?"

"It's a sketchbook. And I
am
impressed, just that you'd come all the way over here. Your father would be mad if he knew. Or does he?"

Henry shook his head. This was the last place his father would expect to find him.

Henry normally hung out at the waterfront on Saturdays, with other boys from the Chinese school, haunting places like Ye Olde Curiosity Shop out on Coleman Dock--looking at the real mummies and genuine shrunken heads, daring one another to touch them. But since he'd begun attending Rainier, they all treated him differently. He hadn't changed, but somehow, in their eyes he was different. He wasn't one of them anymore.

Like Keiko, he was
special.

"It's no big deal. I was just in the neighborhood."

"Really? And which neighbor taught you to speak Japanese?"

"Sheldon, the sax player on South King." Henry's eyes fell to the sketchbook.

"Can I see your drawings?"

She handed him her small black sketchbook. Inside were pencil drawings of flowers and plants, and the occasional drawing of a dancer. The last one was a loose sketch of the crowd, the dancers--and a profile of Henry from the host of people below.

"It's me! How long did you know I was down there? You just watched me the whole time. Why didn't you say anything?"

Keiko pretended that she didn't understand.
"Wakarimasen.
So sorry, I don't speak English." Joking, she took her sketchbook back. "See you Monday, Henry."

Bud's Jazz Records

(1986)

Henry closed the yearbook in his lap, setting it on the carved cherrywood coffee table, next to the framed photograph of him and Ethel on their thirtieth wedding anniversary. To Henry, her smiling face looked thin, gracefully hiding a certain sadness.

In the photo she was in early remission, but still was missing most of her hair from the radiation treatments. It didn't fall out all at once like you see in the movies. It came apart in uneven clumps, thick in some places, smooth in others. She'd asked Henry to use a set of clippers and shave it all off, which he did, reluctantly. It was the first of many personal moments they would share together. A long sabbatical into her day-today care, part of the mechanics of dying. He'd done all he could. But choosing to lovingly care for her was like steering a plane into a mountain as gently as possible. The crash is imminent; it's how you spend your time on the way down that counts.

He thought about moving on but didn't even know where to begin. So he went where he'd always gone to stimulate his senses, even as a little boy--a place where he always found a little comfort. He grabbed his hat and jacket and found himself stalking the dusty aisles of Bud's Jazz Records.

Bud's had been a fixture on South Jackson, near the old Pioneer Square, for as long as Henry could remember. Of course the original Bud Long didn't actually own the place anymore. But the new guy, a grizzled fellow with sagging hangdog cheeks like those of a partially deflated Dizzy Gillespie, filled the part amiably. He tended the record counter, where he readily answered to the name Bud.

"Haven't

seen

you
in a while, Henry."

"I've been around," Henry said, flipping through a rack of old 78s, hoping to find something by Oscar Holden--the Holy Grail of Seattle's jazz recordings. The apocryphal story was that Oscar recorded a master-session 78 way back in the thirties, on vinyl, not wax. But of the rumored three hundred printed, none survived. None that anyone knew about anyway. But then again, almost no one knew who Oscar Holden
was.
Seattle greats like Ray Charles and Quincy Jones had moved on to the fame and fortune of Celebrityville. Still, Henry daydreamed that he might find a vinyl copy someday. And now that CDs were starting to outsell records, the used LP bins at Bud's were overflowing with new used records every day.

If one still existed, someone was bound to throw it out, or trade it in, not knowing what that dusty old recording meant to avid collectors like Henry. After all, Oscar
who?

Bud turned the music down a bit. "You ain't been around
here
, 'cause I'd have seen you if you were around here." Something modern was playing, Overton Berry, Henry guessed, from the deep melancholy of the piano.

Henry thought about his absence. He'd been a regular for most of his adult life, and part of his youth. "My turntable was broken." And it had been, so it wasn't a lie.

Besides, how do I tell him my wife died six months ago--no sense in turning Bud's Jazz Records into Bud's
Blues
Records.

"You hear about the Panama Hotel?" the old dealer asked.

Henry nodded, still thumbing through the rack, his nose itchy from the dust that always settled in the basement record shop. "I was standing right there when they started bringing all that stuff up."

"You don't say?" Bud rubbed his bald black pate. "I know what you're always in here looking for. Oh, I gave up looking for Oscar myself. But it sure makes you wonder, doesn't it? I mean they board up that whole building, what, around 1950? And then that new owner buys it, goes inspecting, and finds all that
stuff
sealed up all those years.

Newspaper says there ain't much of value in there. No gold bars or nothing. But it makes you wonder ..."

Henry had wondered nonstop since he'd watched them bring up that first steamer trunk. Since the owner had spun that Japanese parasol.

Henry fished out an LP by the Seattle jazz drummer Webb Coleman and set it on the counter. "I guess this'll do it."

Bud slipped the old record in a used Uwajimaya grocery bag and handed it right