KJ
Online Special
Untied
by
Kelly Luce
That night at the cheap
sushi place in Osaka, Yumiko was complaining about her boyfriend
with impressive fluency. As her English teacher,
I had noticed that she spoke best when upset—it took her mind
off making mistakes.
The trouble with the boyfriend was that Yumiko didn’t really love him.
He was boring; he didn’t kiss hard enough. She’d just convincingly
used the word “ambivalent,” in fact, when a purple running shoe
rounded the bend behind a tub of wasabi. I blinked and it was still there,
unhurriedly cruising the conveyor belt.
“…but love is not everything and I am getting old.” She bit
her glossy lower lip. “You understand, Natalie?”
Maguro, shrimp, melon slice, wasabi, shoe.
Yumiko saw it too. The running shoe crept by, its frayed laces dangling over
the edge of the counter, brushing the hot water taps.
Laughing, I turned in my seat to look at the other diners. The room was wide
and white, with four rows of blood-orange seats lining the snakelike progression
of the sushi track. The atmosphere was like that of a diner. The ceiling spewed
out fluorescent light over the constant noise—children squealing, waiters
singing welcome, men barking orders into tableside speakers. And from above,
plucks of koto music floated down like the voice of an old Japanese grandma
reminding everyone where they’d come from.
“I wonder what kind of person wears a purple shoe,” Yumiko said without
smiling. She paused to brush her long braid over her shoulder. “I think
the chef will be very angry. Don’t you think so?”
I was still laughing. “This is truly awesome.”
“It’s not funny.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “He’s busy in the back.”
“Yes, you’re right,” she said, and relief spilled over her
face. She scooped a heap of ginger out of a plastic bin on the table.
I peeked across the restaurant. A few people were smiling and pointing.
“Did you know that I’m afraid of typhoons?” Yumiko said abruptly.
“Typhoons?”
She nodded.
“What do typhoons have to do with anything? Oh, let me guess—you
were hit by a shoe during one?” When I’m bored at these lessons I
get punchy. Students tend to like it though, as if sarcasm is an advanced move,
and I as their teacher have chosen that moment to unveil it.
“Ha, ha, ha,” she said. “I don’t know,” she continued,
scratching her cheek with the end of her chopstick, “but when I was young
I remember my father telling me about people who died in floods and tsunamis,
and how the water is so strong and can just carry you away and you disappear
forever.”
“Well, we are only two hundred miles from the coast,” I said. “Can’t
be too careful!”
It was our third meeting. Yumiko was a secondhand conversation student, passed
along to me by an Australian friend who was going back home. I was the only
girl around willing to take on privates, and Yumiko refused to study with a
male teacher. Not that she ever wanted to study, per se. Rather, I was beginning
to think she was in the market for some foreigner validation. God knows why
she thought she could get it from me.
I craned my neck and tried to see to the end of the belt.
“But I’m still afraid,” she went on. “When a typhoon
comes I stay with Satoshi and he makes me feel safe. So that’s very good
for me. I can marry him and not worry.” She lowered her eyes.
I looked for a sign of the running shoe while I spoke. “But you just
said he doesn’t treat you well. He got paint job for his motorcycle instead
of taking you out on Valentine’s Day. Why not find someone you really
like? You should try to be happy, right?”
She didn’t say anything.
“Well, anyway. I think typhoons are actually a lot of fun. Everything is
closed and you can stay home from work and watch movies while it rains outside.”
She looked across the restaurant. “My father thinks Satoshi will be a
good husband.”
I shoved a thick slab of salmon and rice into my mouth. The fish was a little
oily, and everything melted on my tongue. I reached for another piece while
I was still chewing, then realized Yumiko was waiting for me to say something.
I swallowed.
“Your dad has spent more time in the U.S. than you have,” I said. “Is
he really trying to arrange your marriage?”
“He is a friend of Satoshi’s father. And my mother was very traditional.
He has always tried to be like her.” She had added a bead of wasabi to
her soy sauce and was mixing it together, targeting every green fleck in the
dish. I didn’t know much about her mother’s death, just that she
had died very suddenly when Yumiko was seven or eight. I remembered her telling
me that her father had been spending about five months a year in Seattle at the
time, working for a restaurant. He brought her there often, and eventually pulled
her out of school in Osaka to attend a private school in Seattle. She said she’d
hated it, she’d missed her friends, but she didn’t complain because
she knew her father was lonely.
“If your dad’s so into marriage, why doesn’t he marry someone
else?”
“I don’t know. He never talks about it.” She snorted. “He
only talks about me getting married!”
I saw the high heel only as it reached Yumiko’s right shoulder. It was
black and it reflected stripes of light. There was a yellow flower bursting
off the toe strap.
She gasped. “The chef will be so angry!” Her eyes were wide and
her tiny nose flared. “We should leave, maybe.”
I laughed, listening as the key of the restaurant changed from flat to sharp,
with high-pitched tones of wonder winding through the place. “No way
we’re leaving now! Look!”
Across the aisle, a woman was wiping the face of a tiny baby in a booster seat.
The little girl behind her had slipped off her shoe and was reached up toward
the moving belt. Her smile, stretched to its limits, burst into a shriek of
laughter as she carefully set the shoe down. She stood up on the bright plastic
seat and leaned over the plates of sushi to watch it disappear.
“I cannot believe that girl!” Yumiko said, chewing on the end of
her chopstick. She paused. “Just watch what her mother will say.”
The mother finally did turn back to the girl, who was still leaning against
the counter. She looked at her daughter standing in the seat, and took one
look at her bare foot before she threw her head back, giggling. She spun back
to the baby in the booster seat, who was now kicking his feet, riding an imaginary
bicycle. Off came a green knitted bootie. From mother’s hand to daughter’s,
and onto the belt between two pieces of eel.
I grinned at Yumiko, who was still chewing absently, and bent down.
“No! Stop! Don’t do it please.” Her voice was desperate. She
put down the mangled chopstick.
“What’s wrong? This is funny. Come on, everyone’s laughing.
I patted a passing green tennis shoe.
“We should really leave now. The chef…“
“Why are you so worried about the chef? It’s not like we’re
at a classy place.” The air was fluorescent and humming and I breathed
it down. I felt high.
“My father was a chef before my mother died. So I know about chefs.”
“Really. Just relax.”
“I think I’m going to call Satoshi.” She reached for her phone.
Her hand trembled. I reached across the table and touched her arm.
“Yumiko, come on. There is nothing to be afraid of here. No one’s
getting hurt. Look, there’s that little girl’s shoe, it’s even
blinking.” The heel of a tiny show passing by had a flashing red light
embedded in the sole. I smiled. “Do you think that means it’s extra
fresh?”
All around us, groups were shouting, laughing, taking plates off
the conveyor belt in order to make more room for the shoes
that were beginning to crowd
it. Waitresses continued buzzing, whisking beers and soup bowls with the
efficiency of worker bees.
Yumiko pulled her arm away from me and cradled her phone in her palm. I stared
at her. My jaw tensed up. She could leave with her handbag of problems if
she wanted to be stubborn. I looked around the restaurant. One woman stood
up and
aimed her cell phone at the parade of footwear. Click. People were talking
to strangers. A guy with long pink hair had his leather boot up on the table
and was struggling to unlace it.
Yumiko had to try three times before she pressed the right button. I heard
Satoshi pick up. Yumiko’s voice shrunk and she spoke quickly. She stopped
and listened for a long time, her face unchanging.
Then the room went silent. Yumiko looked up and gasped. I turned around as
the last of the six sushi chefs in white uniforms filed out from behind stained
orange curtains.
The one in front was a tall man with bushy gray eyebrows and deep lines around
his mouth. He walked to the front of the restaurant where he hopped nimbly
onto the bar.
He wore one purple running shoe, laces tied in a neat bow.
Yumiko closed her phone on Satoshi’s voice without taking her eyes from
the man. As the noise level of the restaurant billowed up towards hysterical,
Yumiko smiled. Her phone rang. She looked at me; we both looked at the phone.
The room broke into applause and instead of answering the call she swung her
legs around to stand up on her seat along with me and some other customers.
We whistled and whooped.
Her phone was still ringing.
Kelly Luce's
short story "A Sort of Deadline" is featured in KJ #73. Her collection
of Japan-related short stories, Ms
Yamada's Toaster, won
the 2008 Jackson Award from the San Francisco Foundation, and her
work has
been recognized by fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and Jentel
Arts. She lived for three years in Kawasaki and Tokushima, Japan,
and is currently at work on a novel set in Shikoku. This spring,
she will be the Writer in Residence at the Kerouac House in Florida.
She can also be found online, at the Crazy
Pete's Blotter.
Copyright
held by the author
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