The last time

Jake Ocumanos towers over me. If you stand us against each other, face-to-face, my nose slides in just below his chin while his either pokes me in an eye or stands in the half-forest mess of a space between my two eyebrows. Up close, his face is a mixed-density minefield, a mess of stubble and pockmarks between scars set over sallow skin and brown-yellow teeth from a lifetime of coffee and cigarettes. Unpleasant, to say the least.

We've only been in this situation three times: Once, on an elevator in Los Angeles when he started dating my aunt and was helping us move out of her apartment and into his Chevy Astro and we pressed up against each other between suitcases and boxes of old Harlequin novels destined for the dumpster; then again in the woods outside of Alturas, California, after a night of sleepless drinking on his part, where he charged into my tent, pulled me out, stood me up, and told me I was a miserable failure while the sun rose behind us; and a final time right before I grabbed hold of a desk lamp and broke it against his head, causing opaque glass to embed in his cheeks.

The last time is the most important. When the lamp crushes his face there's a hollow crack followed by the sprinkling of the glass that doesn't stick in his face dropping onto the laminate floor. I step back and drop the lamp. Jake topples onto my particleboard desk, and it breaks down the middle, splinters and dust billowing into the air, as he collapses with it to the ground.

When Jake meets me for the first time at my aunt's home in Los Angeles he is pleasant. He smiles broadly and musses my hair. I smell his aftershave and it tastes like metal in my my mouth. My aunt tells me this is Jake and he's a good man and strong and he's going to take care of us because she knows how I've lacked for a strong male presence in my life since my father died in the car wreck with fire and smoke and the bright, spinning lights from every direction. I smile and so does my aunt because I believe she's genuinely happy. This is fifteen years ago.

I stand over Jake. Each day I more closely resemble the picture of my father that I keep in my wallet, bulbous nose to bushy eyebrows down to the broad shoulders and pooch of a stomach that slumps over any belt I wear. Although and distended by age, signs of the chiseled, ex-Army man remain. He's entirely square, forehead, jaw, chest, body. I kick him. Don't you dare, I scream, because you've never been my father.

My aunt laments our arguments. Disagreements, she calls them. Jake strikes my face and I feel the heat of his hand and collapse to the ground. She clucks between parsed lips and sips her coffee and orders me to get up already because I'm embarrassing myself. Jake recoils like an undercard boxer having downed his over-matched opponent, retreating to his corner, seeing if I'll answer the count. Inevitably I get up and slide away, and he watches contentedly as I go.

36,000

There's only so far to go when you run. Physically I can go anywhere, up to the sky to hurl thousands of miles in a handful of hours until the world melts and people I don't recognize drone in odd tongues and scrutinize my passport in lazy attempts to determine whether I am the man with long hair and sallow skin under poor light on the picture. Mentally it's the same, between diving into a book or my mind while eavesdropping on nearby conversations about vacation plans and retreating through wet glass windows as I stare into darkness and only the flashing light on the tip of the plane's wing is visible against the unlit night.

The Airbus rocks as we hurl through the air. Flying terrifies me, and I feel like a bullet loaded in a gun pointed into the air by someone with a sick smile and dubious intentions. I half expect the cabin to depressurize the second we achieve cruising altitude, just as the speakers chime to life and the Captain begins announcing in a tired voice thick with forced attentiveness that we've reached some absurd height and it's now okay to rattle about in our hurtling tube if you need to stretch or use the bathroom or ask for peanuts because you haven't eaten in days and you can't wait for the in-flight service and the carts whose wheels squeak, pop, and lock as attendants in pastel suits push them forward like miniature battering rams.

I order double bourbon and water. I use the water to down a single Vicodin and then sip my drink. The man next to me wears a wrinkled black suit with a blue cream tie. He connected in Los Angeles, he explains, through Boston from Bangor, Maine and he's really tired, but he also notes that he can't sleep on planes and then apologizes for prattling on while he drinks generous gulps of Coca Cola. He's awash in caffeine, a string-less marionette. I lean forward in my seat and press my cheek against the cool window glass and bourbon split drips down my chin.

If the plane depressurizes the emergency oxygen masks will drop; they remind us at the outset you're supposed to assist those around you who need help before you tend to yourself. I imagine a scenario more vivid, with the emergency door many rows ahead blowing off into the sky for no logical reason whatsoever. The smell is vivid and welcome, fresh and wet, but everything else is disaster. Several rows of passengers and chairs and Skymall magazines fire out like the opening's the mouth of a blunderbuss. The suction pulls my hair but little else since I'm advisably strapped into my seat. My neighbor, Coca Cola and all, joins the exodus, and as he exits the plane the soda leaves his hands and he's left alone to have his eyes adjust to the screaming darkness as he becomes gyroscopic through the clouds before colliding with the ocean that hits like concrete. I decide to not help him first if the oxygen masks deploy at some point during our journey, and instead spend the next thirty minutes imagining how fast the plane could drop in the event of a disaster like fire or terror or the finger of god flicking us from the sky while I wring a Skymall into a tube and tense at each patch of turbulence.

My Vicodin hits as the cart passes by again and I feel suddenly lighter, like my head is a balloon and it doesn't matter if the plane splits in half because as the world falls away I'd keep on floating over the Pacific and land at Tokyo Narita without difficulty, only a little wet from the rain. I select vegetarian lasagne because I mistrust mass-produced and packaged meat served at 36,000 feet. I finish my bourbon and I'm rolling. After what might be several minutes but is more likely only a few seconds, I realize the flight attendant has asked me a question and awaits my reply. She smiles with broad, polished teeth. I smile back too-wide and emit a sound that's more a gurgle than a laugh.

Soon the cabin lights dim and people begin to sleep. My neighbor and I remain awake and we get to talking about more than whether either of us can float home in the event of sudden splitting or a water landing. His name is Allen something and he sells refrigerators in Bangor, Maine, where he lives with his wife of fifteen years, Janet, and their three children, Smith, Elizabeth Anne, and Donald. He got into refrigerators because his father got into refrigerators and it seemed like a reasonable solution to life after returning from serving in the First Gulf War. Refrigerators, he sighs, what a life. He laments his lost youth, lost physique, a lost girlfriend, lost time, lost dreams, and a lost edge in his mind which feels duller by the day no matter how much caffeine he pumps in.

I don't know if his name is Allen. He spoke, but I didn't listen. Between the pills and the booze my mind drifted away between lucidity and a blurry, drool-covered haze. The rest of the details are suspicions I fill in between a few choice words I do hear, including "refrigerator" and "First Gulf War." For all I know he's not served a day in his life. Between the stocky frame and extra chin and thinning hair pasted into a weak comb-over, "Refrigerator Salesman from Maine" does feel correct. Smiles and nods, and he's content to carry my end of the conversation as long as I feign attentiveness and grunt in the correct tones in appropriate places. He never does explain why he's going to Japan, I think.

Allen flags a stewardess and upgrades from Coca Cola to bourbon, like me. We clink glasses and toast how remarkable it is to be blasting along somewhere north of 500 miles per hour. He points to my glass but shake my head. The last thing this airline needs is someone losing consciousness somewhere between Alaska and Hawaii above empty Ocean and having to divert the plane to Juneau or Honolulu or wherever's closest because they don't want the bad press that comes with someone like me dying mid-flight. Instead I shake my head, close my eyes, and feign sleep until he shuts up and becomes engrossed in Skymall, no doubt planning how his family would find a ceramic garden gargoyle adorable, or a pet or more likely himself could use a silicone mat to more easily collect clippings during his misadventures in grooming. After an indeterminate length of time I hear his gently breathing coalesce into soft snores, and I look over and his chin is folded down onto his tie knot. The plane rocks and his can falls over, spilling the last drops of his soda next to his chicken with rice.

Down the stairs

There's only so much to it, stars in her eyes, and then gone, on an afternoon train from Shinjuku. I'm drunk. So is she. We hold each other for a length of time between awkward and desperate, and then she pushes me away and the doors close and the wind whips my hair into my eyes as the train fires out of the station like a bullet from a gun straight into my chest. I reel, slugged, against a tile wall. No one else in the station, not the hurrying businessmen, not the frazzled mother with three loud children, not the tourists lost in a map they turn every which way in attempted comprehension, notices the exchange or the heartbreak that blows past my lips, my living death rattle.

I flee the station depth and emerge into unwanted sunshine that fries my eyes. Despondent, I stumble toward a cigarette vending machine, where I purchase a pack of Mild Sevens and immediately smoke three, bang, bang, bang. My head swims in confusion and nicotine and beer. I decide to roll through it and fall into a bar whose name eludes me. When I say fall I do mean fall; I miss the fourth stair and tumble down five more, collapsing in a heap at the bottom.

The bartender rushes to my aid. He is impossibly tall, or I hit my head and my mind is hopelessly muddled, or some likely combination of the two. He pulls me into a sitting position and says several sentences that don't process correctly. I believe him to be asking me about the Hanshin Tigers, and I answer that I'm not from Osaka but would take a beer if he has the game on. He gets me to my feet and asks me, perhaps not for the first time, how does my head feel. I nod. It hurts. I lie and say everything's fine.

I ask for a beer and he helps me to the bar. Shouldn't we get you to a doctor, he asks. Nonsense, I say, never felt better in my life. I need a beer more than I need idle hands prodding idle body parts and asking if this hurts or if that hurts or how many fingers am I holding up or please turn your head and cough. He places a large, black Asahi and a small glass before me. Both hands reach for the beer and bring it to my lips and I drink and the cold liquid flows into my stomach and pieces my head back together.

The bartender says his name is Daisuke. He is only a little less tall than I first thought, with arms and legs disproportionately larger than his surprisingly-compact frame. Despite the features that would have made him an awkward teenager, he moves smoothly, cleaning glasses, replacing them on the shelf behind him, and a handful of other motions that pass in a blur. Kunichi, I say back. He pushes an ashtray on the bar and lights a Lark cigarette. I start to reach for my Mild Sevens but stop halfway and ask him for one of his Larks instead. He hands me one and holds out a lighter, flame already springing from the tip. I take pleasant ash and heat into my lungs.

I finish the first beer and he hands me another. I drop a mess of coins on the counter and he scoops up enough to cover the drinks, leaving several behind. He asks why I'm drinking so hard so early. Is it early? I slam a balled fist onto the counter, making the coins rattle. Because I damn well need to. He doesn't press the matter further.

The bar is small and the walls are covered with framed portraits of American actors and actresses, past and present. What's with the pictures, I ask. The bartender smiles and swings a broad hand in a quasi-theatrical gesture. You're in Bar Hollywood, he says, fitting for your grand entrance, don't you think? I sip my beer. Most of the pictures are old, with stars from before either of us was born. The frames are all wood and several shades of brown. Half the pictures are monochrome, and most of the rest are faded. Where did you get all these, I ask. We finish our cigarettes around the same time and we each light another. Lots of places over lots of time, he says, never stop looking for another right shot for my little bar.

Oe

We search the forest until the shadows stretched longer and Ueda insisted darkness was imminent. I follow Ueda closely and, after a final hour of stumbling across low roots and uneven terrain, we emerge into the parking lot where we began our adventure nearly eleven hours before. Ueda pats me on the back and we drive off in his navy blue Toyota Camry.

That night Ueda takes me into the heart of Fujikawaguchiko, to a bar called Lionheart's. It's called that, Ueda noted, because of the prominent mural of a pride of lions above the bar. When I go inside, it's impossible to miss; under-lit by warm orange-yellow light, the mural catches eyes and draws people deep into the room until they're faced by a mountain of a man, Kunichi Oe, who offers you beer and sake and something to nibble on. How can we refuse?

Oe laughs as his friend arrives and flies out from behind the bar to consume Ueda in a bear hug of an embrace. They could not be more opposite. Ueda is a thin, bony man with a dour expression who, in the wrong light, looks like he might be another Jukai specimen. Oe is jovial, everyone's favorite uncle, with round everything culminating in a blushing face specked with drops of sweat.

Ueda gestures with a grin to me. It's the first time I've seen him smile all day. Fresh meat, he says. Oe nods solemnly and puts a hand on my shoulder. Did you see any, he asks. Yes, I say.

A bottle of Suntory appears and Oe fills a lowball glass halfway with the pale amber liquid. I light a Lark and inhale a third of the cigarette as Oe fills two more and then hands Ueda and me glasses while keeping one for himself. To those of us left behind, he says. I close my eyes and force down a mouthful of whiskey.

Everyone has a first time, Ueda says, and it's always different and special and difficult. His was before I was born, he says with a sigh, in 1981. He sips his whiskey. Back then he worked as a salaryman in Tokyo, grinding out a long existence for a communications company as a strategist and copyeditor. Days and nights were long, but he relished the pace and the thrill that came with honoring the company and his family with each success. He rose quickly and his work compiled. He tips in a larger mouthful of whiskey as his eyes glass over. It was glorious, he says.

One of his co-workers at the time was a man called Kentaro Awaji, a heavyset man with a stutter but an impeccable sense for written words. Awaji was diligent but not cut out for the hectic life. Each late evening in Shinjuku bouncing between bars with his co-workers wore on him. Ueda didn't notice it at the time. I regret it every day of my life, he sighs.

Awaji killed himself after a client presentation went wrong, causing their company to lose face and a valuable account. What exactly happened remains a haze, Ueda says. Regardless, the company was furious and a despondent Awaji retreated to Jukai and took his life. I found the note, Ueda says, on Awaji's desk.

Ueda finishes his whiskey and motions for me to give him one of my Larks. He stuffs it between his lips and I light it up. I finish mine and fire up another. Oe watches us silently between sips of whiskey, which flush his cheeks and nose to even deeper shades of red.

Jukai is a vacuum, Oe pipes up, just like the Sahara Desert or deep space. Some enter and escape just fine, the prepared. Oe's throat rattled as he downs half his whiskey in a single, impressive gulp. Others, he says, enter knowing they're about to be swallowed up, and that's exactly what happens. You never see them again except traces of what might have been, a backpack, a water bottle, a small note.

I ask Ueda if they ever found Awaji. He shakes his head. They never found his body, he says, which surprised him consider that Awaji wasn't a small man. But, he says as he rotates the cigarette in his lips, smart and determined people can make it so they're never found.

More whiskey appears and we drink. Then Oe opens a bottle of sake and pours three glasses. I worry he neglects his bar, but an associate has taken over behind the counter, allowing us to retreat to a quiet corner. Ueda smokes more of my Larks and Oe lights up from a pack of Seven Stars. We sit in silence and drink. It gets easier, Oe says. I don't respond, as my mind retreats to the man in the maggot-lined suit who is still out there, forever absorbed by the Jukai.

Ueda

There isn't anything I can do except stare through the trees and attempt to turn right-angled shadows into memories of faces gone by, picked clean by both nature and time. Trees encircle me and roots grab at my feet, threatening to drag me down to join them in pockets underground where the earth is wet and dark and the air tastes sour. Ahead, Ueda urges me to keep my feet and keep my pace; he jokes that the last person dropped off the back of one of their groups ended up lost in the forest overnight. He laughs as he says this.

Under the watchful eye of Mt. Fuji, trees and vines spring from ash-rich soil and water trickles through porous, black rock. Jukai is a forest of memory, Ueda says. As we scramble over root and rock he points aside on the trail, to a small plastic pile. Within he digs out two water bottles and a thin, mold-eaten paper booklet. The cover's mostly gone, but Ueda holds it up to a streak of light and examines its sides and flips through its pages. A suicide manual, he says, grunting with satisfaction. They find these scattered across the wood, a trail of expectations and truths. Not everyone goes through with it, Ueda says as he drops it and presses on.

Kintaro Ueda is a nervy man, long and twitchy. He moves slowly, deliberately through the forest, with an easy caution that speaks to his expectations and familiarity with these woods. Each step resets the mop of hair atop his head, and he often must brush aside the strands that run down his forehead. He carries a black military-style pack filled with water, dehydrated food, a flashlight, and an emergency health kit in case he or others become lost or are stranded overnight. Never seen use, he proudly states. Ueda is here because he lost his son to suicide in 1994, and each year since he comes out twice per month to assist with weekend anti-suicide patrols.

The forest is a lattice of wood and shadow that trap and hold back heat like a mesh net. I cannot see the sun and become disoriented easily. Compasses spin endlessly due to the metals in the earth. That's what Ueda claims, anyway. He bounds with confidence that increases with each step, almost gliding, with a happy grimace on his face formed through clenched teeth.

My job is to hold the camera, an old Samsung model chipped at the edges from several drops, but still reliable. Walking behind Ueda, I snap still shots of our progress and each discovery he makes. He picks up a severed section of rope formed into a small noose and holds it away from his body for me to shoot. I ask why is it left behind if they find a body. They job's not to collect trash, he says, setting it back on a bed of leaves at the base of a bushy, tall Japanese cypress.

Around mid-day on my watch we eat lunch in a small grove. We sit on broad roots under wide hemlock fir that grow close together and are lined with fuzzy, green moss. I eat four granola bars and a handful of mixed nuts. Ueda munches leisurely on a ham and cheese sandwich and stares absently through the trees. I ask him what he's thinking about. Past trips into the forest, he says in a soft voice. The forest is quiet, without the sounds of the usual animals that scurry underbrush or other signs of humanity. I ask if the Jukai is truly haunted, but don't get an answer.

Several hours later we find the corpse of a man. He's been dead a month or less, Ueda guesses. His exposed skin is leather, stained brown and pocked with white maggots that writhe in an excited feeding frenzy. The smell is astounding and drives me to tears. What remains of a threadbare, black polyester suit has become tatters, strips of fabric that dangle from bloated flesh. Souvenirs are scattered around the remains. A half-open purple backpack contains two empty soda cans and a worn paper map of the region. There is neither a wallet nor other identifying documents for this nameless man.

Ueda clamps a handkerchief to his nose and mouth and points at the body. Shoot, he says.

Leaves in his eyes

Sleep was impossible. I turned off the lights, put my head on the pillow, and burrowed under my blankets. The images found me all the same, ripping back each layer until we were alone in the darkness and everything was naked.

First it was his hair, black with touches of grey at the temples and in streaks like veins of silver. Despite the darkness I saw it perfectly. From there his eyes lit up, brown dots in the void, followed soon by the rest of his face, which appeared thinner and more worn than I remembered.

I was trapped. Opening my own eyes was useless and I realized that, in the night, this room was unsafe. His gaze locked on and each direction I looked, there he was, waiting. There wasn't sadness in his face; it was more apprehension, like he was concerned more for my well-being. The idea turned my stomach, that, even in death, my brother was protecting me.

The longer I watched his face the thinner it grew until his eyes receded into his skull and his jaw hung slack. It tipped forward slightly, revealing the rest of his body, a scarecrow patchwork of leathery skin and bleached bones under a loose, threadbare black suit. I recoiled in bed, bunching myself into a fetal ball, shouting at the image to go, but it only grew worse as the broken lips like dried pieces of wood began to move. No sound came except for a weak clicking like two stones knocking together.

A wind blew and I heard the rustling movement of leaves as they appeared before my eyes, rolling in like a fog under his feet until it appeared that his body stood on a cloud. The pile was stained orange and blood red, dry and bundled densely. It was still for a moment, and then it began to flow upwards, climbing his legs, consuming him bit-by-bit until, devouring suit, hips, stomach, arms, elbows, chest, and neck, until only his head remained.

His mouth opened again and leaves poured out, running wet and sticky down his chin, joining the rest of the flow as it rose up his face, past his eye sockets and hair, until he was gone, nothing but another part of the pile. Then the leaves surged again, this time forward, somehow through space, toward me. I screamed but no words came and I looked down and realized my body was already covered in leaves that were slowly crawling up my legs. They were heavy and cold and made my skin tingle and burn.

I awoke in the start. My waking nightmare had folded into dreams. The sun rose red, like it was covered in bright fall leaves.

Hospital

The days are hot and long. I am seven and standing in a room where everything's white, from the floor to the walls to the sheets on the bed. My dad sits in a stiff wood chair that wobbles when he leans back and to the left. He buries his head down in his hands and locks everything in place, controlling sobs so the tears only drop to the linoleum. The buttons of his plaid shirt are undone and it flaps down to his waist, sucking away from him each time the door across from his chair opens or closes.

I don't want to be here. It isn't fear. I felt fear once, but that was when the situation was further out of my control. I don't want to be here because there isn't anything to come from it. Nothing will stop dad's tears from carving microscopic river valleys in the floor, and nothing will bring mom back.

Her skin is still rosy, like she's been out in the cold too long only to happily come inside to a warm fire and hot chocolate with little marshmallows. Dad said she's resting, but that's a lie.

She died. Her breathing was shallow and sporadic and she struggled until there were no more breaths. At the point she stopped breathing dad's lungs exploded and he choked in the biggest breath I've ever seen anyone take. He did that five times, each one the slightest bit bigger than the last, before falling into the chair.

My woolen trousers make my legs itch and crawl like they're covered in bugs. I want to move but I don't want to disturb the silence. An invisible barrier blocks the open door. Each nurse that walks by the room slows but doesn't enter; they look at me and my father's rocking body, and mumble something about how sad it is and how it never gets any easier. We can't hear the words but we don't need to because we've heard them before.

I walk to my father. I smell his Old Spice and Barbasol shaving cream. In the last several days he refused to leave mom's side, not even to see me out of the hospital when grandma came to take me home at the end of the day. Each night he half-slept in two chairs pushed together, he said, so he could be near mom. And each morning he rose with the sun, bought coffee from the vending machine at the end of the hall, and, without showering, applied fresh deodorant and shaved.

He flinches when I put my hand on top of his head. The tears flow freely for another minute and then he looks up, his eyes a bundle of fire. He smiles but somehow it comes out wrong.

"Hey there Benny," he sniffs. "Sorry." He wipes under his eyes. "I'm so sorry."

I don't respond and stare at the floor. Dad picks me up and sits me in his lap facing mom. He buries his face back in my back and I feel the heat of his breath and his tears with each sob that jerks both of our bodies.

Marunouchi

The Marunouchi Line from Shinjuku is a swarm. I fail to find a seat and stand between the shut door and a man whose umbrella pokes my leg so hard I imagine it's a packet dripping with sarin and he's a jittery Aum Shinrikyo member steeling himself against the inevitable fury. Four pricks and he's certain. Sarin drips down my leg, pooling under my loafer, quickly becoming an invisible wisp that claws its way unseen up suits and slacks and jeans until its forcing everyone in our train car down dark tunnels in their eyes until nothing's left.

Of course the man isn't an Aum Shinrikyo member. Random wickedness exists in the world for fits and starts on crazed minds that spread the gospel like smallpox. People might not be born into it, but visions have a way of sliding a knife across your temple and peeling everything back. After a particularly violent stab into my ankle I glower visibly enough that the man gets the idea and threads his way through the crowd, to another train, rather than incur my continued wrath.

Each person infected with Sarin on that day carried tidings with them, on their clothes and in their hair, across trains, into offices, shaking hands and embracing friends, co-workers, or complete strangers. It wore them like a suit, and rode them like they rode the train, across Tokyo in a flash. Before anyone knew that they weren't just sick with the flu hundreds, thousands were sickened and several were drawn down a darker road.

A woman next to me sees my protests and smiles in sympathy. I try to smile back, but it melds with my scowl to become more of a panicked, teeth-gnashing uncertainty. She laughs, more a anxious reaction than genuine amusement at being crushed in a tube alongside the weirdo who imagine sarin scenarios involving hapless salarymen clutching 500 yen umbrellas with metal tips for dear life.

The doors open at Yotsuya station and I fall out of the train. Literally. As I step out my feet become entangled in another's and I spill onto the floor face-first. My teeth absorb the blow, wobble, and hold. I taste blood. The people in the train gasp back in too-sincere horror until the doors slip closed and the train blasts off once more, carrying their uncertain indignation away toward Akasaka.

I lay on the ground, feet threatening to dangle over the tracks if I slide further back. A station attendant eventually notices how I'm not getting up and comes to ensure I'm not going to get him in trouble with his supervisor by being either dead or drunk or a delinquent. He offers his white gloved hand and I rise. He gives me a stern look, having decided I'm neither dead or drunk. I can barely make out his pupils through the smears on his thick, metal-framed glasses.

This man is dedicated. This man is serious. He rises early and commutes to this station, where he has worked for years with the train company. In the evenings he goes home to his wife and children, eats a nice, hot meal, and relaxes. He's attentive; nothing about his navy and white uniform is out of place. We move away from each other and I look back. He walks with urgency although his destination is only a few meters away.

I imagine the sarin again, dripping from bundled newspaper in his hands as he forces it into a waste bin, unwittingly sending him down a one-way street he never envisions until it's a pained blur and the last thing he ever sees.

Suntory

The world is a tunnel, a corkscrew slide with opaque walls where children slide and scream in delight as someone, anyone awaits their arrival at the bottom. Megumi leads me by the hand down narrow corridors stained with spit and ash and spilled beer. Every movement met with swaying protest, my equilibrium undone thanks to the tender directives of Suntory Holdings Limited. My lips take aim and try to clamp down on a Seven Stars cigarette floating clumsily in my left hand, but I fail and the stick splits in half and tobacco explodes over my lower lip.

We slump in two chairs facing a wall plastered with colorful pictures of men and women dressed in clothes I don't recognize. A woman brings me more Suntory, served up in a highball glass. The liquid is smooth and the color of melted amber and it moves in a hurry down my throat. Megumi touches my elbow as I swallow and the off-yellow mixture dribbles down my chin and onto the table we share. Her skin is yellow too under a spotlight, partially from her tan, partially from the whiskey that somehow defies gravity until my pupils are two fish in bowls of stinging putrescence.

The highball vanishes and so do we, down a stairway, around a corner, and into orange lights alongside the Sumida, which roils in blackness that mirrors the clear, starless night. Large and yellow, the dried-out moon hangs in defiance. I feel I should say something profound, but my breath is hot and tastes bad, so I keep my mouth shut and just listen to Megumi's long breaths like air being forced from a bellows and the scuffs of her boots on the concrete as she inches closer to me.

I try again with my Seven Stars, and this time I find success as the stick is forced between my lips. Megumi takes one for herself and lights both. The air is smoke and a mix of her perfume and lip gloss that muddles in my nose and comes up cotton candy and everything else in the world is still except for the gradual trail of smoke as it floats from ashen tips and from our lips. Then, movement. We fly across the river and into a crowded train where we rock back-and-forth against annoyed salarymen and wide-eyed tourists who think it's all such good fun.

Disembarking at Shinjuku, suddenly the stars return, a smear of bright lights, from gas giants to distant novas. I focus my telescope eyes as best I can, squinting and propping myself on Megumi as she props herself on a metal railing while other couples scuttle past, dodging us like we're a car stalled in traffic. We eventually get things restarted and putter to an udon stand. Megumi orders two egg-and-onion bowls and we slurp them down between ashen-suited men between bars or Pachinko parlors. When the food is gone I throw down a handful of money and we explode off on another adventure.

Deliverance

Underground is nothing. I ride the Emperor's bronze chariot in plain sight, entombed above ground, buried in plain sight among bartenders schoolchildren awaiting a bus that never comes, stuck with dirt and terracotta slowly peeling away like rind from an orange. My eyes are resolute and true and I swallow fire like a professional without a contract begging the world to give him a second chance on a life he dreams awake each morning only to drown in the sludge that remains at the bottom of his coffee cup. If I try to read fortunes from this same sludge it melts the brown enamel paint before burning a hole in the table that bores deep into the ground until it partially fuses with the core of the world and makes everything spin so fast until the days grow shorter and the government mandates a nine day work week before the three day weekend where we'll go to the coast and hold hands and watch the waves thread together and crash ahead of the candy apple sunset.

I suck a candy drop and hold your hand. The world is butterscotch Chanel, and when you laugh your perfume jumps from your neck and caresses my cheek and insists that the world is mine and so are you.

Butterscotch Chanel shocks me awake and I see the sun flee behind adjacent apartment buildings, stolen each day by charlatans I'm powerless to stop. There's nothing left in the mirror except a skeleton inside a terracotta guard animated by convenience and fate, so I shave and brush my hair and drink canned coffee that tastes like yesterday and the day before and a blur of time until memory clouds like a cataract and the only thing left is to guess a direction and proceed to the train station and ride the Hibiya Line to Roppongi and ride the escalators in billion-yen leviathans until the security guards decide I'm too much of a nuisance and sternly point to the exit. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

I wash ashore in Shinjuku, a dejected castaway, and salve wounds at pocket bars where bubblegum twenty-somethings laugh and mumble nothings like Shakespearean lovers packing sonnet pistols. I slam two Suntory highballs and regain momentary sympathy and recall a fleeting scent that floats on the tides as it carries time and memory out to sea like so much flotsam.

Things distend. I stretch across stalls where attractive women coo seductive offers staked together, yakitori on the grill, and salarymen inhale noodles in water-oil broth while others line up awaiting their turns grasping Seven Stars cigarettes like sailors lost at sea with only the thin rubber of a flimsy lifeboat between them and a gentle response. I prefer Marlboros.

I bypass the horde and slide into a Cafe de Crie tucked between dueling pachinko parlors. Inside each man ordering coffee is worth ten packs of cigarettes, and I breathe deep and imagine the odd looks I get when I close my eyes and seem to be enjoying myself too much. The woman behind the counter gives me the withering not-another stare as I wobble in place and squint up her bright yellow board with blue letters before attempting a self-effacing laugh while trying not to stare at her breasts.

"Cappuccino?" I mumble-ask.

She pretends not to hear me and looks past my face to the next suit, an older man whose wobble I recognize as the Suntory shake, evidenced further by the burst capillaries of someone who dips in a bit too early and often. His grey three-piece suit is a nice accessory. I look back at him, and his response grunt shakes loose his glasses enough for them to slide gradually down the bridge of his nose.

"Can I help you?" Her impatience endears.

"Cappuccino," I say with more flair.

She rolls her eyes and moves aside to make my drink. She's somewhat gorgeous, I decide, chocolate-skinned and creamy in complexion and movement. My pockets hemorrhage hundred-yen coins and I hold myself up on the counter and await deliverance.

The mail

A click. A displeased grunt. Paper shoots through metal and my mail slot spits out a mess. Thin sheets entice with cardboard meals. South Dakota return addresses announce exclusive offers. For me. How nice. I stare through the window adjacent to the mail slot and catch my reflection. If only my parents had prudently named me "Current Resident."

Rain slicks the brick walkway up to my front door. The mailman trudges onward, back to me, wearing every possible shade of blue, head trained on the wet concrete, plotting no missteps. Wind rustles leaves and rattles the tin flap over the mail slot.

I spy an error. At the intersection of brick and concrete lays a fallen solider, a single letter slipped from the carrier's satchel. It awaits help, half-consumed by a depression in the concrete where water puddles; none comes. The man is parked down the street and I hear his mail truck sputter to life and depart.

I open the door. Droplets whip sideways onto my forehead and arms. I shield my eyes with a hand and slip-slide down brick to the street. My robe and slippers are vanity, soaked sponges before I make the sidewalk. Each movement is an Olympic trial in agility to prevent disaster.

The letter is wet but not irredeemable. Water soaking through the envelope drips down my arm, under my robe, under my cuffed sleeve, under my watch. I slide the half-pulp mass under my shirt and retreat. The oil in my hair wages a losing battle and surrenders to the inevitable as chunks of itchy brown droop down my face.

Survival. Inside I peel off my clothes until only my boxers remain; the rest go in my bathtub in a pile above the drain. I watch my clothes and pretend I have contracted a nefarious melting disease where my loved ones can only gasp in horror as what's left of my life trickles down the drain.

I recover the letter, lay it on my bathroom counter, and deduce. The return address is melted by rain, but the recipient address is still visible and that of my neighbor three houses down. A Statue of Liberty "Forever" stamp peels up from the envelope, glue half-dissolved.

Inside the envelope I find one note and one mass of wet paper. The mass used to be a note, I suspect, torn to pieces, now fusing back together thanks to the rain. Thick black ink in heavy strokes bleeds away and stains my hands. I set this pile aside to dry.

The note, on the other hand, is intact if damp, a purple Post-It folded in half and scratched with thin blue think from a fast hand. I unfold and read:

"Here's your letter back. Stop writing to me. Any more and I'll go to the police."

The conversations we don't have

"Last night I awoke in the middle of the night and had a mild panic attack," I said.

Brillson sipped his coffee and fingered the smoldering cigarette in the ashtray. "Something in a dream get you?" he asked.

"Maybe. You know when you're still in the dream but you know you're in the dream? That few seconds of lucidity before you wake up and can distinguish between what's real and what's imaginary?"

"Sure," he said. "So it was a dream?" He picked up the cigarette, inhaled smoke, and held it in, awaiting my reply.

"Not exactly." I shoved my hands in my pockets and leaned back in my chair until it teetered on two legs. "After I awoke and lay there and tried to fall back asleep, but my mind drifted. Somehow it got to trying to think about what it was like the moments after someone dies."

"It's dividing by zero." He exhaled and tapped his forehead with his thumb. "Breaks the calculator."

"My legs were jellied at first, then it was as if they were filled with jittering ants. I get to the point where the lights go out and then there's a blank spot, like a missing film reel at the end of the movie, and then the credits roll."

Brillson pursed his lips and tapped ash. "Can you remember anything from the dream?"

"No." I sighed. "But after I calmed down the only thing on my mind was Jeff Bridges' in that remake of True Grit."

"Jeff Bridges," he said flatly, somewhere between confusion and indignation. "Go on."

"There's a scene in the movie where he's in an old hideout of a shack in a canyon deep in the Choctaw Nation interrogating a couple of bandits he's caught, one young and one older. Long story short, the older bandit turns on the younger, cuts off the younger one's fingers, and stabs him in the chest."

"I never saw it," Brillson admits. "His fingers?"

"Just one hand," I say. I put my chair back on all fours and motion to my lips. Brillson hands me one of his Seven Stars. "The younger bandit's barely a man, and he dies right there in that shack."

"What about the one who does the stabbing?"

I light the cigarette and breathe deeply. "He gets shot in the face by Jeff Bridges."

"Oh."

What happens next

Nothing happens next, says the skeleton, says me, except to get undressed. My skin speckles and my limbs go rigid. Rain falls on the flaps of tent and sounds like an army of impatient old men in expensive ties rapping fingers. I can't decay fast enough for them.

My skin blanches and becomes like wax. If you want to try a staring contest, says the skeleton, now's your last chance for a long time. Soon I'm the only one left and to stare into sockets is to glance the universe's uncertainty mixed with bone. Blink and you miss my eyes saying a quick goodbye and fade away in a puff, a bad rainbow of maggots and rot.

Things would go faster outside of this tent, but it frames the picture too perfectly to complain for more than half a sentence, or a wistful moment under a sleeping bag as foam drips from my mouth at some point in the not-too-distant past.

Time is a consideration. Then it's a windup into a sinking Hideo Nomo split-finger fastball, darting out of reach just when you thought you had it figured. Strike three. Stand in the batters box. Look indignant at being fooled so badly. Turn your head to the umpire. Grouse. Walk back to the dugout. Slap on the butt. Good try. Get him next time.

I meet a man, a skeleton like me. His glasses sag down on his nose and his jaw is clenched shut. He fears failure and my success exacerbates his worry. The 5,000 yen suit that cloaks his true form is thin and stained, candy apple where he cut himself on a branch and brown sugar, hands in the dirt. He pushes the glasses up his nose and apologize for the intrusion.

Thoughts become thin, bourbon with too much water. I reach for my head but the skeleton laughs. The air in here is piped-in from last summer's family picnic in Mitaka Park, a cooler left in the sun and then the storage space, sealed better than an astronaut's suit. I lament for wind and leaves and crawling critters in the mulch.

The tent blurs. If I focus I can see it again. Flaps and zippers ripple and flow in wind. My sleeping bag is yellow.

There are people occasionally. Not like the other skeleton; these are ghosts, men and women. I hear their voices. There's familiarity. I know these people but cannot see their faces or remember their names. I used to have a name. I try to form a single word, but nothing moves and no air passes my lips.

The skeleton cackles; it's all I hear.

My skin feels funny.

The plateau

I'm naked and thirsty. The water in the reservoir below is a fetid green-brown and full of slimy debris. I sieve a handful of water-muck and take it into my mouth before spitting it out. No use curing thirst if I'm just going to give myself a nasty parasite.

I walk down to the dirt road away from the reservoir. The sky's red and so's the ground. Each step burns as my feet churn loose sand. Scattered obsidian, black needles in a sea of red, would cut deeper if my feet weren't already hardened like mistreated old leather.

The day gets worse. Early chill gives way an insufferable heat. I hide for stretches in cool dirt under large patches of sagebrush so dry the exposed roots have turned mostly white. Shade's insignificant so I curl into a fetal ball to hide as much of me as possible from the angry sun.

I sleep without dreams. When I wake the sun's directly above and my hiding place is overrun with heat. I rise and force myself to walk. In the road I see a cow's bleached skeleton, bones picked clean and scattered as critters searched for anything left over. One of the femurs is broken and looks like it could cut a man.

Hours pass and the road goes mostly north. The sun roasts my head and cooks my brain. I know this area but can't think straight, so I stick to the road and keep walking. Unsteady legs wobble but I hold my balance. Blood takes turns streaming from my lips and clotting until it breaks to stream more. Red lines roll over my chin and down my chest.

Movement is agony. Burnt skin stretches and folds in fiery pain. The sun's halfway down the western horizon on my left and it's hotter than ever. I rest again under a juniper for an hour. I hold my knees and try not to move.

I start out again and, fortunately, salvation finds me as the sun threatens to dip down for the night. Up on the right, maybe a football field's length off the road, there's an old shack with a beater Toyota pickup parked out front. I think I recognize the car. I'm not sure. I veer toward it and nearly reach the door when I hear a man's yell.

"Who that there?" the voice cries.

I try to say anything but the sand in my mouth gums the words, mixes with blood, and turns them to mud.

"Jamison? That you?"

The man was behind me but emerges into my field of vision. First thing I see is his rusted shotgun Then it's his face, scarred leather with a dominating beard. I recognize the man as Old Zeke, who's lived on the plateau his whole life.

I try to nod but end up rolling my head. My jaw goes slack and red spittle hangs off my lower lip for a moment and then falls to the dirt.

"By the Holy Spirit son," Zeke says. "Better get you inside."

Nakameguro

She takes my hand and her body springs to life. Impunity and mischief cross her mind and then her face as she jumps out of her chair. The table rocks and our porcelain cups treble until cold coffee spills over the edges and darkens the cotton tablecloth. Her hand squeezes mine and her eyebrows implore action so I rise too and we flee the bakery before other couples or tired servers can pass public or private judgment.

We sprint the Nakameguro streets. She turns unexpectedly block-to-block and my arms tense like rope but her grip only strengthens and never threatens to let me snap off into adjacent markets or business complexes. I can't breathe and my heart skips but she has enough oxygen and energy for two, as rolling, light laughter bubbles out of her and floats away and she appears to move faster as we ricochet against wet-lit thoroughfares and dark alleys, passing confused salarymen and nothing at all.

She kisses me and my back's arced against a cold stone stair but her lips are soft and warm and taste like bao fresh from the steamer. My hands are braced under me, against steep rubble steps with pebbles that jab my fingers, and hers cup my chin, framing my face for her lips. After each kiss she gasps, inaudible for the rest of the world but I hear it perfectly.

Then we are back on our feet, streaking through a train station, up narrow stairs and through men and women who clutch umbrellas and briefcases like she's clutching my hand while they stare at the ground until we're breezing past them in an explosion of limbs and laughs and sumimasens. My head is back on the stairs and my eyes are on her lips as she turns her head and forms words I can't hear.

We pass a convenience mart and she diverts inside. I buy beer and packaged sushi. She selects a one cup of sake which I also purchase. The clerk is a younger man with thick black hair dotted with early grey. His mouth is scrunched in a sour expression he doesn't spare for us. I return a shit-stupid broad grin that makes matters worse, so we explode from there, food and drink in-hand, like bullets from a gun. We run until she plows us until a narrow building that shoots too high above for me to understand where it ends.

In an elevator ride that never stops she kisses me again, tangling her hands around my back and pushing me against the back panel. The plastic bag slips from my hand and hits the floor, causing her to look down at it and then up at me with an incredulous expression. I laugh and she does too and she kisses me more, hands back on my chin, pulling my face forward like we can't connect quickly enough.

When the elevator opens we're many stories up, looking out on a roof that overlooks Tokyo. She takes the bag in one hand and walks head, leaving me alone in the elevator. A sliver moon rises over Nakameguro, lit and forced up by millions of lights across the cityscape that shimmer like a second universe of stars.

"Are you coming or what?" her voice picks at me as the elevator doors try to slip shut. I grin, force them open, and join her on the roof.