Terror (19 page)

“Wow,” I said again. They called it a
compound.
“How long have you had this place?” I asked Masato. “Weren't you in Costa Rica?”

Masato walked toward the house, ignoring my question. Then he turned back. “I'm sorry, but I won't be able to show you around. Kaori, however, knows the house very well and can show you everything.” He smiled. “Make yourself comfortable.”

I turned back to Kaori, who was pulling my bag from the trunk. There was nothing in it, really, except all of my essentials—money, wallet, fake ID, keys to Hiro's house and Cheryl's burned-down house, neither of which I'd been inside in ages, and a change of underwear.

Kaori inspected the bag. “This is all you brought?” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. “I, um, travel light.”

“Where's all your makeup and stuff? And clothes?” She cocked her head like a terrier, parting her lips a little.

“Well…,” I said. Did Kaori know nothing about what I'd gone through?

“If this is all you've got, we need to go shopping right
away,” she said. “We'll have to make a list. But anyway, let me show you around.”

All of a sudden I felt someone's eyes at my back.
Piercing
me. Trying to stay completely relaxed, I turned around slowly to look.

No one.

“What's the matter?” Kaori asked.

I looked right and left. And then I looked up. There, just under the eave of the roof, was the red eye of a video camera. I swept a gaze through the whole compound. Glittering video eyes extended as far as I could see.

I swallowed hard. We used to have video cameras in our house. But only at the front and back doors, for security. I remembered my father hadn't wanted to install them. He'd insisted that a bodyguard and dogs were good enough. But Mieko had insisted, saying cameras would make her feel much safer.

But these cameras didn't make me feel safe at all.

“Come on,” Kaori said, ignoring the cameras. “Let's go to your suite first. We'll get you settled.”

The red eyes followed me up a winding staircase into a separate wing of the house. The inside was as opulent as the outside: marble floors, expensive-looking furniture, ornate statues of Buddha in two different corners, strange art on the walls—huge paintings, canvases that were as big as the whole room. In one room there was a whole canvas of red. Some of the paint rose from the canvas in goopy globules. I shuddered. It reminded me of blood.

Upstairs on the walls were serious-looking black-and-white photographs of men and women. We got to one that looked familiar. I squinted. “It's Mieko,” I whispered.

There she was in a frame, looking much younger, a sly smile on her face. Her hands were clasped in her lap. She didn't wear a wedding ring.

“Oh yeah, aren't these pictures crazy? Apparently they were taken by Akira Kurosawa,” Kaori whispered. “You know, when he wasn't making movies.”

“Do you know this woman?” I asked, pointing to Mieko.

“Sure,” Kaori said flippantly. “I've seen her around.”

A shiver went through me.
Mieko.

“Do you know anything about her?” I asked.

Kaori glanced at me. After a moment she said, “Not really.”

We passed another photograph of a man whose face was creased into a stern scowl. There was something about him that looked like Hiro. I squinted. Maybe it was his father? But why would a picture of Hiro's father be in Masato's house?

I couldn't ask Kaori; she was far down the hall. “Wait until you see your room!” she said.

I met her inside and gasped. Everything was bathed in white. An enormous feather bed, a white armoire, a big flatscreen TV in a cool gray. White curtains and carpet. On the white-tiled bathroom counter a neat line of white Kiehl's soaps and white-bottled Tommy Hilfiger and Michael Kors perfumes. Sephora and MAC makeup on a little shelf above the toilet. The tub a pearly white swimming pool.

“Wow,” I said. “I had no idea Masato was … this rich.”

“He's a very successful man,” Kaori said, smoothing out the comforter on my bed.

“And … what is his business?” I said, not too loudly. I didn't know exactly what Masato did for a living, although I had heard he ran my father's business interests in Central America. But after seeing the entire mammoth house, the sports cars, the video cameras, the expensive electronic gadgets, I had a feeling Masato wasn't entirely legitimate. A nervous twinge rushed through me.

“Here's your meditation room.” She pushed open a door to a little room practically made out of windows. I stepped in and looked around.

A white yoga mat was laid out perfectly on the floor. A fountain bubbled in the corner. A mirror went from floor to ceiling on one wall.

“I do yoga in the morning, and we could practice together in here if you want to do it, too,” Kaori said, stretching her hands up to the ceiling.

We turned to the mirror. I looked at my reflection next to Kaori's. She seemed like a teenybopper in her bright green retro-looking baby tee and white Diesel jeans. Next to her, even though my chi had been rearranged, I still looked ragtag and exhausted. Hiro had given me a geisha cut a while back; it was starting to grow out and looked horrible. The short bangs were now getting long and fell into my eyes. My roots were black against the orangish blond. My eyes looked huge and cartoonish. I looked like a deranged Powerpuff Girl. Powerpuff Girl Gets Out of Jail.

“It's all so beautiful,” I said. “I don't want to touch anything.”

I slumped onto the bed and laid my head on the pillow. Kaori sat down next to me. “You know what else we should do?” she said. “Movies. I haven't seen a movie in like a million years….”

“Kaori,” I said after a while. I'm sorry, but I'm really, really exhausted. I think I want to sleep.”

Kaori stopped in midsentence. “Oh!” she said. “Of course. You must be totally jet-lagged. Okay, if you need anything, I'll be in the meditation room.”

The meditation room had a window that looked right into my bedroom. Was she going to watch me from in there?

I sat on the bed for a minute, looking around the room. Not a hair was out of place. There wasn't a speck of dirt on the carpet. The pillows were white and flawless. It was the cleanest, purest, whitest room I'd ever been in. The whiteness made me think of Mieko. She would wear head-to-toe white around the house to please my father. White flowy dresses, white shirts, and even white shoes. I'd always thought she'd looked like a ghost in all that white. Her face was always so pale and serious; she never spoke. She floated around the house soundlessly. Sometimes I wouldn't even know if she was in the room or not.

As I gazed around the blinding white room, I could hardly catch my breath. I sat on a white bed, surrounded by white walls, with Mieko's eerie picture only yards away from me, too close for comfort. For a brief, shivery moment the room felt like a coffin.

It's strange to be here in my father's house. He built it with his materials, his hands. But there is more now. A bigger garden, an extra wing. New cars. When I called him saying that I was coming home, he seemed pleased.

My mother calls me into the chashitsu, the little room in the garden where we have our tea. She has always been relentless in getting the details perfect. Her life has changed since I was a little boy, but she has always had complete control over her tea ceremony. She is very proud of this.

She looks old; there are lines around her eyes. I wonder what the years I've been gone have done to her. For years I did not call them. I was told not to. I wonder what my mother knows. What she thought when I was away. Did she think I was dead?

“Purify your mouth and hands,” she says in a soft voice, as if I had forgotten the steps of the ceremony. I wash my hands and my mouth. Then she leads me through the chumon into the tea room, which is set and lit with soft lanterns. Here we are in the spiritual world of tea. The physical world has dropped away. She slides the door closed; I latch it. We do this wordlessly.

She raises the fukusa and purifies the scoop and tea container. Her brow is relaxed, but she is in deep meditation. This is her only respite, I realize. This tea room. She must know a lot. She ladles the hot water into the tea bowl, folds the fukusa, rinses the whisk. She places three scoops of tea in my cup, then adds hot water. I nod.

Finally she speaks. “You look tired,” she says. “Did you have a hard flight?”

“Not really,” I say.

“What have you been doing all this time?” she asks.

“Working hard,” I answer.

“Your body looks sound and strong,” she says, taking a sip. “Your father says that there were some tasks you had to attend to while you were away?”

“Yes,” I answer. “Yes, but that's done. I'm back now.”

She nods, as if in approval. “Your father has been expecting you, “she says. “He is happy that you've changed your mind.”

I start to speak but stop. I am filled with so much misery for a moment that I can't even speak.

“He knew you would not stay in the United States forever,” she says.

“Yes,” I say.

“You look so tired,” she says again. “What is it?”

What can I tell her? That I have thrown something away so precious—something that I will never get back again? That I must find Heaven, but if I find her, will she want me back? That I am having trouble choosing between what I love and what my family expects of me, even though I think it is wrong? I am not a bad person, but everything around me now is bad. Wherever I turn, there is evil. I don't know what to do. Any decision I make will be the wrong one to someone.

My mother and I don't talk about these kinds of things. And we especially wouldn't in the tea room. This is not the place. I sit back and close my eyes and hum softly, trying to ease myself into meditation. During the
tea ceremony one must only talk about the significance of objects, the philosophy of the yin and the yang, the spirit of the tea.

“I just need rest,” I say finally. And then in English: “And I need Heaven to understand.”

She looks at me, her eyebrows raised. She doesn't understand English. We drink our tea in silence.

HIRO