Love Love (31 page)

In the basement office of their headquarters building, he and Satoru drank from the same sake cup, and he was now a yakuza, though he didn't feel any different.

“Tattoo,” Judy said.

“Unfortunately, yes.”

Because money wasn't an issue, Roger found the best tattoo artist in the city, and the man was fast. Still, it took a week to complete his dragon design, and another week for Roger to be able to move normally.

Of his month as a member of the yakuza, Roger spent a quarter of it filing paperwork in the office. And after he'd recovered from his tattoo, his only responsibility was to go to the horse track each morning and make various bets for Satoru.

“It was no different than any other brainless job,” Roger said. “Almost like a corporation, the way they held meetings where they talked about the current budget and upcoming financial forecasts and whatnot. I had as much chance as a worker at Apple running into Steve Jobs as meeting Yoshinori Watanabe, who was then the
oyabun
, the head boss of the Yamaguchi-gumi. I never even saw a picture of him.”

“I thought you joined the yakuza for life. Like the only exit is inside a coffin.”

He laughed, then dropped his voice down a notch, emulating the baritone of the movie previews voiceover, “In the sinister world of the yakuza, there is only one way out. But Roger Nakamura has a different plan.”

“Roger, that's pretty good! If you ever run out of money, I think you've found your calling.”

“Thank you. Maybe if I'd been some higher-up guy, they would've flinched, but I was nobody. Satoru felt sorry for me, and I think he was actually glad to see me leave. I still talk to him about once a month.”

“Was that the phone call you received on our first date?”

Roger nodded. “He invests some of my money. Not in anything illegal—like I said, he's a real smart guy, and he's done well for himself in the Nikkei exchange, which is really saying something considering how terrible the Japanese economy has been for the last twenty years.”

After his underwhelming stint in the Japanese underworld, Roger returned to the States, no better off than when he'd left, but not any worse, either, and if he had an ally, it was the passing of time. He knew he would never get over the loss of his parents at such a young age, but every day was a new day, and money was something he'd never have to worry about. At the urging of his lawyer, Roger got himself
a trio of help: a cook, a maid, and a psychiatrist, all of whom he'd employed throughout his twenties. But the year he turned thirty, he let them go.

“Why?” Judy asked.

“I got better. I wanted to live the life of a normal person, and I'm still here, so I guess it worked out.”

And this was the Roger of now, this man sitting across from her with his feet up on the wicker table, his ankles loosely crossed, leafing through the sales circulars in the Sunday paper. What a strange life he'd led, and now she was a part of it, a part of that strangeness. Where was he going? Where was she headed? She had no idea where or why or how. Maybe some of Roger's indifference was rubbing off, because she was okay with the not knowing, at least so far.

20

S
aturday night, September 1988. Kevin couldn't remember the exact date, but it was the first day of the Summer Olympics in Seoul, which for some odd reason was held in the fall of that year. Kevin was excited because for the first time in more than six decades, tennis was officially included as part of the games, but that wasn't the only reason why he'd been looking forward to this day.

“He's your older brother?” he'd asked his mother.

“By two years,” she'd told him. “Just like you and Judy.”

His name was Myung Hoon, and he was flying in from Korea for business. Kevin had never met him before, and he could hardly wait for him to arrive. After vacuuming the carpet and mopping the floors, he and Judy showered, then dressed to impress, Kevin putting on his argyle vest over his ironed shirt. His sister wore a black dress to go with her black nail polish, her color of choice now that she was fifteen and grumpy.

“You forgot your bow tie, Poindexter,” she said when they reconvened in the living room.

“And how many funerals will you be attending today?”

“Just stop smiling for a minute. I mean he's just her brother, not fucking Santa Claus.”

“You're not even a little curious?”

Judy shrugged, plopped onto the couch, then turned on the television. When he saw she was about to change the channel, Kevin snatched the remote out of her hand.

“The VCR is recording that,” he said.

“Whatever.”

She crossed her arms and watched the massive procession of Olympians walking slowly around the stadium track and waving at the cheering crowd. It was Sweden's turn to be on camera, its blue
and yellow flag flying high, and Kevin caught a glimpse of his favorite tennis player, Stefan Edberg, his spiky blond hair turning silver every time a flash popped.

Underneath Judy's disaffected demeanor, Kevin was sure she was just as intrigued as he was to meet Uncle Myung. Theirs being a nuclear immigrant family, visits from the extended Lees were as rare as a comet sighting. The last time was so long ago that Kevin could hardly recall his grandmother, not that he even wanted to. All he could remember from her brief stay was her demand that he massage her legs, so he did, feeling as if he were performing some strange custom as he kneaded her tissue-thin skin.

Thankfully, when Uncle Myung arrived with his parents from the airport, he did not want a massage. He was as short as his own little sister, but what he lacked in size, he made up in energy. For a tiny guy, he was unexpectedly strong. He gave Kevin a bear hug and lifted him off the ground a couple of inches, and he even elicited a genuine giggle from Judy when he gave her the same airy treatment.

“Gift!” he said, pronouncing it
ghee-poo-too
. He pinned a small fuzzy figure on each of their chests. It was a friendly, smiley tiger, making a peace sign with its right hand and wearing a black derby on its orange head.

“
Hodori
,” he said. “Name,
Hodori
.”

“
Ho
is
tiger
in Korean,” his mom said. “
Dori
means boys. The mascot for the games.”

For the rest of the evening, the three adults chatted while the Olympic Games Opening Ceremony dragged on in the background with dances and fireworks. His dad opened up a bottle of Chivas Regal he'd been saving, and soon the men's voices got a little louder. Judy went to bed, but Kevin stayed up, pretending to watch the television. He'd planned to surreptitiously observe Uncle Myung, but something odd happened: He ended up watching his mother. For as long as Kevin could remember, she had been the caretaker of their household, probably because she was the one who spoke fluent English while his dad struggled. His father still made his share of decisions, especially when it came to money, but Kevin always considered his mother their benevolent leader. But in front of Uncle Myung, whom she referred to as
ohpa
, the Korean term for an older brother, his mother did something he'd never seen her do: fan her hands delicately in front of her mouth when she laughed. And she laughed a
lot. Even though Kevin couldn't understand what they were saying since they were speaking Korean, he knew her girlish giggles were a gesture of respect more than humor. Just the way she sat in her seat, ready to spring into action for any little thing her brother wished—who was this woman?

A few days later, Uncle Myung was gone, and so was this other version of his mother, but Kevin never forgot that night. There had been this whole other person inside his mother, someone he did not even know existed.

A
s Kevin waited underneath the curved wooden sign that read
CHEZ: PANISSE
in Berkeley, he thought of his mother and Uncle Myung. Would he, too, change into a different Kevin when he came face-to-face with his new sister? Half sister, he supposed, since they shared a father, but not a mother. He was going to ask Norman for a photograph of her, but Kevin stopped himself. Knowing what she looked like meant he'd have the upper hand, and he didn't want that. Or, more accurately, he did want it—control, as always—but this time he fought it, and it felt good to let things be, for them to be equals.

Would she be like Judy, arriving half an hour late? He hoped not, because according to Claudia, this was one of the best restaurants in the Bay Area, if not the entire country. In the morning, Kevin had tried to be vague about his plans, but Claudia wouldn't have any of it.

“What, were you afraid I was gonna force you to take me along?”

“Well,” he'd said, “yes.”

“You had every right to worry, but looks like it's your lucky day, because I'm not allowed in there anymore.”

Claudia insisted it wasn't her fault. She'd ordered the lamb special, but they'd just run out, so Claudia stood up and asked the dining room if anybody would like to give up their dish for a thousand dollars.

“I can see you doing that,” Kevin said. “Easily.”

“It made the woman who volunteered very, very happy.”

“And you were happy, eating what you wanted to eat.”

Unfortunately, it was the last meal she'd have there, as word got back to Alice Waters, the proprietor of the restaurant, who personally called Claudia to say that what she did at Chez Panisse would never happen again.

“So there might be a poster of me at the hostess's podium, for all I know,” she said. “Do not serve this woman, she's armed and dangerous with a checkbook.”

As Kevin waited for Denise's arrival, he watched a mother and a daughter at an ATM across the street. The mother lifted up her girl so she could swipe the card and punch in the PIN. Claudia, too, had been as young as that girl once, and the more Kevin thought about it, the more he believed her current philosophy of doing what she wanted, no matter the consequence, was a deeply childish behavior. Like the way the adult Michael Jackson had tried to re-create his lost childhood, maybe purchasing that last rack of lamb was Claudia's Neverland.

Kevin checked his watch, and now it was noon on the nose. So officially, Denise was late, or was she right on time? Because here was an Asian woman walking toward him right now, heels clicking on the sidewalk, long hair billowing like a dark curtain. Except, like all the Asian women who had passed him so far, she was too young to be his sister. He knew there were a lot of Asians in California, but it seemed as if every other person he saw today was one. Maybe it was the university, which probably had a fair number of Asians in its population, and thinking of all those book-smart black-haired folks strutting to class with their backpacks in tow, talking of math proofs and chemical formulas and the hidden meaning behind some unreadable Shakespearean play, sent a wave of unease over him. As an Asian, he'd been an anomaly, terrible at math and not much better at any other academic endeavor.

He was saved by his body and his mastery of it. The thing that most people didn't know was how much intelligence it took to perfect an athletic maneuver. Adjustments both inside and outside the body had to be made on the fly, and that ran beyond the realm of the physical. Sometimes the TV commentators compared tennis to chess, except Kevin thought that was a disservice to the players, because chess geeks weren't outside, battling for four hours under 120-degree heat, drenched in sweat and out of breath.

In a way, he was not unlike his father, who'd always been good with his hands, building a deck all by himself, repairing the engine of his riding mower . . . except Kevin was forgetting, yet again. He didn't have any of his railroad engineer father's genes, just the sad DNA of
his porno dad and mom. If he had picked up anything, it was purely nurture, not nature, and the lie that was his childhood gnawed at him. Would he always feel as if he was robbed?

“Kevin?”

She was an Asian Barbie doll. There was no other way to describe this woman, this perfect creature of made-up beauty. Her face didn't have a single blemish on it, a Photoshopped sheen to her skin, and her bright red lips were like two pieces of molded rubber. If she stayed in the sun for a little while longer, he was afraid her face would start melting like the villain's at the end of
Raiders of the Lost Ark.

“You must be Denise,” he said, and they did the awkward dance of a handshake segueing into a hug. She smelled like a fresh bouquet of flowers. Norman had told him she was three years younger than him, and it was obvious she took care of herself. She was wearing a yellow sundress, and her bare arms were tan and toned, the sort of body that belonged to a health-conscious California girl.

They went in and sat upstairs, just beyond the bustle of the kitchen, a pair of vest-clad waiters jockeying to grab their dishes from the counter. On the shelf next to Kevin sat an overflowing pot of white and yellow chrysanthemums. He tucked a tendril of leaves around another to stop it from grazing his forehead.

“It's all about nature and sustainability here,” Denise said. “They've always gotten their meats and vegetables from local farmers. Nobody really did that before Chez Panisse.”