Jonathan Lethem - Motherless Brooklyn

The doors to the kitchen swung open, and Julia came out. She too wore a robe, and she wore it splendidly. It was her haircut that was a little jarring. She’d shaved her long blond hair down to military fuzz, exposing the black roots. Her face underneath the fuzz looked exposed and raw, her eyes a little wild to be without their veil. She picked up a menu and brought it to my table and halfway across the floor I saw her notice who she was bringing it to. She lost only a little something from her stride.

“Lionel.”

“Pisspaw,” I completed.

“I’m not going to ask you what you’re doing here,” she said. “I don’t even want to know.” She passed me the menu, the cover of which was thatched, a weave of bamboo.

“I followed Tony,” I said, putting the menu gingerly aside, wary of splinters. “And the giant, the killer. We’re all coming up here for a Frank Minna convention.”

“That’s not funny.” She examined me, her mouth drawn. “You look like shit, Lionel.”

“It was a long drive. I guess I should have flown into Boston and-what’s your trick, rental car? Or catch a bus? This is a regular vacation spot for you, I know that much.”

“Very nice, Lionel, you’re very smart. Now get lost.”

“Muscongaphone! Minnabunkport!” I gritted back a whole series of Maine-geography tics that wished to follow these two through the gate of my teeth. “We really ought to talk, Julia.”

“Why don’t you just talk to yourself?”

“Where’s Tony?”

“He’s- Tugboat! Tunaphone! -he’s on a boat ride.” It sounded so pleasant, I didn’t want to say who with. From the vantage of Yoshii’s high window I could see Muscongus Island at last, wreathed in mist on the horizon.

“He should have come here,” said Julia, without a trace of sentiment. She spoke as someone whose thinking had taken a very practical turn in the past day or so. “He told me to wait here for him, but I can’t wait much longer. He should have come.”

“Maybe he tried. I think he wants to get to Fujisaki before someone gets to him.” I watched her as I dangled the theory, alert for any flinch or fire that might cross her expression.

It was flinch. She lowered her voice. “Don’t say that name here, Lionel. Don’t be an idiot.” She looked around, but there was only the hostess and sushi chef. Don’t say that name -the widow had inherited the dead man’s superstitions.

“Who are you afraid of, Julia? Is it Fujisaki, really? Or Matricardi and Rockaforte?”

She looked at me and I saw her throat tighten and her nostrils flare.

“I’m not the one hiding from the Italians,” she said. “I’m not the one who should be afraid.”

“Who’s hiding?”

It was one question too many. Her fury’s crosshairs centered on me now, only because I was there and the person she wanted to kill was so very far away, working her by remote control. “Screw you, Lionel. You fucking freak.”

The ducks were on the pond, the monkeys were in a tree, the birds wired, the fish barreled, the pigs blanketed: However the players in this tragic fever dream ought to be typed zoologically, I had them placed together now. The problem wasn’t one of tracing connections. I’d climbed into my Tracer and accomplished that. Now, though, I had to draw a single coherent line through the monkeys, ducks, fish, pigs, through monks and mooks-a line that accurately distinguished two opposed teams. I might be close.

“Will you take my order, Julia?”

“Why don’t you go away, Lionel? Please.” It was pitying and bitter and desperate at once. She wanted to spare us both. I had to know from what.

“I want to try some uni. Some- orphan ocean ice cream! -some urchin eggs. See what all the fuss is about.”

“You wouldn’t like it.”

“Can it be done up as a sandwich of some kind? Like an uni-salad sandwich?”

“It’s not a sandwich spread.”

“Okay, well, then just bring me out a big bowl and a spoon. I’m really hungry, Julia.”

She wasn’t paying attention. The door had opened, pale sunlight flaring into the orange and pink cavern of the room. The hostess bowed, then led the Fujisaki Corporation to a long table in the middle of the room.

It all happened at once. There were six of them, a vision to break your heart. I was almost glad Minna was gone so he’d never have to face it, how perfectly the six middle-aged Japanese men of Fujisaki filled the image the Minna Men had always strained toward but had never reached and never would reach, in their impeccably fitted black suits and narrow ties and Wayfarer shades and upright postures, their keen, clicking shoes and shiny rings and bracelets and stoic, lipless smiles. They were all we could never be no matter how Minna pushed us: absolutely a team, a unit, their presence collective like a floating island of charisma and force. Like a floating island they nodded at the sushi chef and at Julia and even at me, then moved to their seats and folded their shades into their breast pockets and removed their beautifully creased felt hats and hooked them on the coatrack and I saw the shine of their bald heads in the orange light and I spotted the one who’d spoken of marshmallows and ghosts and bowel movements and picnics and vengeance and I knew, I knew it all, I understood everything at that moment except perhaps who Bailey was, and so of course I ticced loudly.

“I scream for ur-chin!”

Julia turned, startled. She’d been staring, like me, transfixed by Fujisaki’s splendor. If I was right she’d never seen them before, not even in their guises as monks.

“I’ll bring your order, sir,” she said, recovering gracefully. I didn’t bother to point out that I hadn’t exactly placed an order. Her panicked eyes said she couldn’t handle any banter right then. She collected the bamboo-covered menu, and I saw her hand trembling and had to restrain myself from reaching for it to comfort her and my syndrome both. She turned again and headed for the kitchen, and when she passed Fujisaki’s table, she managed a brave little bow of her own.

A few members of the corporation turned and glanced at me again, ever so lightly and indifferently. I smiled and waved to embarrass them out of giving me the once-over. They went back to their conversation in Japanese, the sound of which, trickling over the carpet and polished wood in my direction, was a choral murmur, a purr.

I sat still as I could and watched as Julia reemerged to take their drink order and pass out menus. One of the suits ignored her, leaned back in his seat, and transacted directly with the sushi chef, who grunted to show comprehension. Others unfolded the spiny menu and began to grunt as well, to jabber and laugh and stab their manicured fingers at the laminated photographs of fish inside. I recalled the monks in the Zendo, the pale, saggy flesh, the scanty tufts of underarm hair that now hid behind the million-dollar tailoring. The Zendo seemed a distant and unlikely place from where I sat now. Julia went back through the kitchen doors and came out carrying a large steaming bowl and a small trivet with daubs of bright color on it. With thesehe threaded past Fujisaki, to my table.

“Uni,” she said, nodding at the tiny block of wood. It held a thick smudge of green paste, a cluster of pink-hued shavings from a pickled beet or turnip, and a gobbet of glistening orange beads-the urchin eggs, I supposed. It wasn’t three bites of food altogether. The bowl she set down was a touch more promising. The broth was milky white, its surface rippled from underneath by a thick tangle of vegetables and chunks of chicken, and decorated on top by sprigs of some sort of exotic parsley.