“Not guilty. Got to say, I think Bucks has done more good than evil…”
“Seriously?”
“Beats McDonald’s—they only want families, family money. At least Starbucks is open to all types. People of all creeds and classes…”
“Starbucks was sort of exclusive… at least at first…”
“But it’s different now. Men and women, all ages, go to Starbucks—and they go for the coffee. It’s not like other chains, like Doutor, where people go to smoke. I dunno. My verdict: Starbucks has raised Tokyo’s quality of life.”
“I can get behind that.”
“Of course you can. It’s almost like, like Starbucks set us free.”
“Shit… That’s it.”
“What’s what?”
“Starbucks set us free…”
“Wait, from what?”
“From life’s unwritten rules. Like, suck it up, deal with it. All that. Now you can go to Bucks… Enjoy a caramel macchiato…”
“Yeah yeah yeah. The killers smelt the coffee—and woke up. Like, ‘I should end that fucking liar’s life. Fuck it, his wife had it coming, too…’”
“I guess that’s one kind of enlightenment…”
We sit there in silence for a minute.
“Pretty sure we cracked it.”
“Cool.”
Case closed. Time to celebrate. We open a bottle of sparkling wine and pour it into the Starbucks cups I’d prepared as evidence. We put the lids on and watch the bubbles ooze through the slits. Then we raise our grandes and take a swig.
Pop, pop, pop. Goodbye, my year 2000.
BOAT EIGHT
AND KEEP YOUR HEAD UP
Hello.
I imagine this letter comes as a surprise. We’ve never met, but please read this to the end. I’ll get right to it. You once knew someone very close to me.
My sister.
My older sister. Technically, we’re half-sisters. We have different fathers. But that has nothing to do with what I want to tell you.
I’m a lot younger than my sister. I’m only nineteen. I started taking care of her as soon as I finished high school. Like a nurse. It was a long battle. Over two years. But it’s over now. In the spring, I’ll start college somewhere. The only reason I can even think about going to school is because she’s gone.
She passed away in the fall.
What she had wasn’t the sort of thing that gets better. But the hardest part for me (and the most painful part for her) wasn’t the hopelessness, not really. It was the contradiction—the fact that she had to keep getting treatment even though things were never going to turn around. I don’t know. Maybe “contradiction” isn’t the right word. Everyone knew how it was going to end. But she still spent the last two years of her life in pyjamas and slippers…
I loved my sister. That’s why I didn’t mind looking after her. She told me all sorts of stories. She let me into her life. It was almost like being in love. How can I put this? Nursing someone means being their shadow. Her routine became mine. My own life was a total blank, and it was filled with my sister’s memories. Something like that. Like I became the book of her life.
And in that book you play a major role.
I know it’s hard to believe, but I’m serious. You may not even remember her. You’ve probably forgotten her name, her face—everything. You only had a month together, and it was back in grade school.
In the mountains.
“But,” she told me, “that’s where I was saved.”
You saved her.
She told me that many times. In her own words: “He was the one who taught me to talk with the world. To speak so that others could understand. Until the summer of sixth grade, I was only sleeping—living in a dream world. Then he came along and woke me up.”
She called you her summer-school sweetheart.
After that summer she had a normal life. She got married—maybe a little earlier than most people get married these days. She was in her early twenties. A couple of years later, she found out that she was sick.
But fate’s not bad or good. A few months after she started going to the hospital, we were in the waiting room, flipping through magazines. That’s when we saw this article—“The Café Vanishes”—which was about this place you used to run. It had your name in it, and a small photo of you. (I have to say, it didn’t look like you wanted to have your photo taken.)
My sister knew it was you, right away.
I’m glad I found a way to reach you. Now that I have, I need to say something from my sister:
“Thank you.”
And, from me, too. Thank you. For everything you did to make my sister thankful. I learnt a lot from her—about courage, about love. My sister lives on, inside of me. Can I tell you the last thing she said to me?
“Stand tall—and keep your head up.”
I’m enclosing something for you—from her and me. I know it’s strange, since we’ve never even met. I just wanted you to have it. My sister really loved this CD. She was always listening to it—even at the hospital, on headphones. Her favourite was track eleven. It’s a standard number called “On a Slow Boat to China”.
I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but her husband was Chinese. He runs a small import business in Yokohama.
That’s probably what kept pulling her back to that track. She was always listening to it.
Up to the end.
Goodbye. I hope this letter reaches you.
LAST BOAT
TO CHINA
I tried using a map, but no luck. The topography was unclear. If I’m reading the compass right, I’m somewhere west of the Amami Islands. But no ocean means no islands…
The East China Sea is nothing but desert. But I keep my head.
I learn what I can from the campers—where I can get my hands on potable water, cans of food, etc. Bartering is dangerous business, but sustenance is necessary. It just drives home the point—you do what you can to stay alive.
Sometimes surviving means flirting with death.
I check my water supply, drink the bare minimum. In these parts, they sell water in 1.5-litre bottles with Diet Pepsi labels on them.
The sun is my greatest enemy—I try to stay out of its way. And there are nomadic tribes all around (some are just bands of savage children), so I can’t afford to drop my guard. Sometimes I stumble upon the aftermath of their marauding deeds. I see paw prints. Some gangs must be running attack hounds.
When I regained consciousness, I spent two full days walking. No leads on any waterways. Then, this morning, I looked up at the blue blue sky—there were birds flying right over me.
I heard a steam whistle. A weird whistle—kind of like a tenor sax.
Then, way off in the distance, I saw the shape of a ship.
No, I tell myself, it isn’t that far. Do the math. It’s headed this way, right? Got to get a read on the sail. Got to get ahead of the ship. Got to start footing it.