public bath. The lingering scent of hot water made him swivel his head, and he watched her white ankles receding into the distance.
He came to a cheap wooden apartment building, its cracked mortar wall aslant. The smell of broiled fish wafted on the breeze. Climbing the iron exterior staircase, his feet made a high-pitched noise. Washing machines and plastic garbage cans cluttered the hallway on the second floor. A cat curled in a basket attached to a bicycle watched him cautiously, its eyes sparkling in the darkness.
Mitsuo rapped his knuckles on a door. Someone moved inside, and he heard footsteps on tatami.
"Chii?" It was his father's voice.
"It's me." Mitsuo could sense his father gulp.
"Are you alone?"
"Yeah."
"Door's unlocked." Mitsuo stepped inside. His father, Matsuzo, had on a T-shirt and a cotton vest. Stubble covered his face. His eyes had a sharpness Mitsuo had not seen before.
"Whaddaya want?"
"Show some manners! I'm your son, remember? You could at least offer me a beer." Mitsuo brushed his way past his father and into the room. The bare light bulb made the tatami look yellowed and old. Playing cards were strewn on the floor. Apparently, his father had been divining his fortune. Mitsuo turned over a cushion and sat atop it cross-legged in the center of the room.
A reddish purple kimono hung on a wall. The six-mat room was tiny but orderly, displaying a woman's touch. The window frames glistened. Mitsuo supposed that Chii washed them every day.
Without offering a glass, Matsuzo set a bottle of beer on the mat in front of his son. Froth ran over the top of the bottle and down the sides, spilling on the mat.
Mitsuo went to the kitchen. It too was immaculate, and the stainless steel sink gleamed. He returned with two teacups. "This how you spend your time, huh, playing cards alone? You could at least buy yourself a TV."
"I like things quiet. Chii comes home at two. It's dawn before we get to bed."
Mitsuo gave his father a serious look. "Is there any money left in the account?" Matsuzo nodded, and Mitsuo continued, "Tetsuo wants three million yen. Says he's entitled to it cause he's the oldest. I think he's right."
"So you're here about money." His father squatted to rub his stubbly chin against his knee, making a scratching sound. Mitsuo gazed at his father's nearly bald pate.
"That bar's gonna go bust, you know," Mitsuo said. "Nobody comes in. That woman of yours just sits around, knitting a sweater. Says she wants to finish it by winter, but with all the time on her hands she'll have it done in no time."
"How's your mother?"
"Great. Working at a construction site. Young men around her all day. Hah, you should see how happy she looks. I think if you crawled back to her she'd probably throw you out."
The beer was almost completely froth. An unseen mouse was gnawing something in the room. A child cried in the distance. Mitsuo wondered if his father honestly didn't know how much trouble he was causing, or that he was being manipulated by a shrewd woman. Did he plan to let all the money they'd received trickle away like water?
He softened his voice as though to reason with a child. "Why don't you come back? I'll make things right at home, just leave it to me. The hothouse is doing great, and I could use your help."
"I'll help you in the afternoons. While your mother's away at work." He grinned and sipped his beer as though drinking hot tea.
"You old bastard! Stop screwing around! I'm trying to help you, don't you get it?" Mitsuo jumped to his feet, spilling the contents of his teacup in the process. The spilt beer formed a pool on the tatami and reflected the light from the bare bulb. Matsuzo got a rag from the kitchen, murmuring, "Chii isn't going to like this at all."
When he returned to Roman, Koji was gone. His car was still at the school, so Mitsuo assumed he went drinking somewhere else in the neighborhood. Mitsuo wasn't in the mood to drink anymore, so he took a taxi home. His mother was watching TV, waiting up for him. Granma had gone to bed.
As Mitsuo stood in the front hall, Tomiko called from the half-open mahogany door, "You've got a girlfriend? Do you? Tell me all about her. You don't have to hide it. You're getting to the age where you should think about marrying." Tomiko's eyes were bloodshot, the result of too much time in front of the TV, and her face shone with cold cream.
Mitsuo woke when someone slapped his cheeks. Prying his eyes open, he peered into Granma's wrinkled face hovering above his. Sunlight flooded the room like a flock of tiny birds gliding above his head. Granma kept repeating, "The co-op guy's here!"
Mitsuo clambered out of his futon bed and went downstairs, dressed only in his briefs. The man told him, "The price of tomatoes is going up. You need to ship them out in a few days. Why don't you get to work earlier?" He handed him a slip of paper and sped off on a motor scooter.
The paper was his account statement. At the co-op, tomatoes were delivered in standardized plastic containers, the fruit was judged and its quality recorded in the computers. After that, the tomatoes were shipped to market. The co-op paid the money into an account, from which it automatically deducted the costs of fertilizer and agricultural tools. Mitsuo had set up an account in his name alone after his father ran off with the family's savings.
Granma hollered at him from the kitchen, and Mitsuo shuffled in and slid into a seat at the table. The dried squid, peanuts, and cod roe were exactly where he had left them the previous night. The film on the roe had dried and the color had faded. Breakfast was cold, hard rice and mackerel, a repeat of the previous night's dinner.
Granma's bony hand trembled as she held a match to the gas range. The instant the flame took hold she recoiled as though her hand had been scorched. "I always feel I'm lighting a bomb when I use this damn thing. It's gonna kill me, I tell you. Ever since we got rid of the old stove I've been afraid this new contraption is gonna cause a fire. Yeah, we had the prayers said all right, but I'm still worried. Ah well, I've lived long enough; I'm ready to go whenever."
Mitsuo's only response was a few perfunctory grunts to show he was listening. It was too much trouble to actually say something, since he would have to shout to make himself heard. He nodded, and Granma went on with her soliloquy.
"There's nothing for us old folks to do but die. It's all for the best. Look at this: you send out tomatoes and what do you get? A piece of paper. What's the world coming to? And those brokers can't be trusted. Like with chestnuts, one of them brokers would always give your grandpa short weight, so he got angry and decided to fight back. You know what he did? He handed over the chestnuts in a smaller container, and made sure he stuck his thumb in the bag when they were being weighed. Yeah, your grandpa was a smart fellow, all right."
Mitsuo continued nodding and finished his bland breakfast. He scooped his work clothes out from the corner where he'd tossed them in a crumpled ball. Dried dirt cascaded to the floor. Offended that he'd stopped listening, Granma sullenly shuffled into the living room and turned on the TV. Mitsuo left the house to the roar of a newscast.
Smothering heat enveloped him the moment he pulled back the vinyl door of the hothouse. The air was stultifying. He rolled the vinyl up from the earth and opened the skylights. In winter he had to make sure the seedlings received enough heat, and
