Pure Heart

"'Could you take a picture of me, please?' was what I said," said Eric. His buddy, Garry, smiled, while splitting the hundred dollar bills into two piles. "That's how you said it? That's a really good Chinese accent you had," commended Garry. "Here," he said, giving one of the piles to Eric. The Asian man nodded, and said, "Thanks. But it wasn't supposed to be Chinese. I was going for the Japanese theme. I even slightly bowed. I had my fat, ugly glasses on, too." He casually counted the bills and stuffed it in his pocket.

"Want some tea? I got Japanese ones, too!" asked Garry.

"Sure."

They sat down in Garry's small but cozy living room, decorated in the minimalist approach, barely anything but what there is is obviously expensive and well thought through. The table is a thin slab of oak wood painted in black, with thin silver edge circumscribing it. The chairs, all four of them, are also of the black and silver theme.

"You completely redid your living room," commented Eric as he sat himself down.

"Yeah, I could finally afford to do it, after all this time."

While Garry prepared the tea in the even tinier kitchen, Eric kept quiet; he was looking at the box of matches in his hands. There's a strike mark on it. He didn't smoke; it was one of his tools. Despite the waning number of smokers in the country, he still believed that one way to win over a smoker was offering a light.

He offered the light to that woman, Cindy. His eyes caught her standing behind the barricade overlooking the East River, with full view of the Brooklyn Bridge and the financial district of Manhattan on the other side. There were a lot of people yesterday, Sunday. Normally there would still be a lot of people already. It was a beautiful, late summer day, the sky had not a single bit of cloud, and its blueness was nearly perfectly reflected in the river and on the skyscrapers.

But yesterday was particularly crowded because there was a little concert with a local Brooklyn band, and a lot of young people joined the families that normally frequented this Brooklyn Bridge Park. The band set up their makeshift stage in front of the abandoned red brick factory that, along with most other buildings here, used to power the economy of the borough. Soon it would become some luxury loft for the young and wealthy looking to get out of the chaos of Manhattan, but still have a view of it. Eric had thought about getting one of the lofts once preorder was possible.

But he didn't come here to scout out a future property for himself. He was wearing a white baseball hat with a tiny Japanese flag on it, the red dot that made him unmistakably Japanese, and his Canon Powershot hanging at the very center of his chest over white polo made it ever more obvious to others what he was doing. Two teenagers walked past by him, stared at him from behind and giggled and pointed. By the time he saw Cindy, he was almost done with his job. He was satisfied. He heard some commotions, but the place was so noisy and crowded that he wasn't in trouble.

"Watch out, it's hot," warned Garry. It wasn't necessary, since Eric drank tea all the time.

"So what happened afterward? You said you spent the whole rest of the afternoon with her," asked the tea maker.

"She, of course, agreed. It was really crowded. And she couldn't really take a shot of me with the skyscrapers or the bridge behind me without people coming between us. So I suggested that we walk over to the part closer to the entrance, away from the music that was also getting really loud. She agreed. I could see she was troubled, but not because she was annoyed with me. On the contrary, as soon as I asked her for the favor, I could see that familiar look I always see in people who are lonely, who needs company, at least that moment. So we moved over to where the rocks were, the walk way towards the park. There were fewer people streaming by. She finally took a picture or two."

Eric was interrupted by Garry's announcement that three minutes was up and the tea was done brewing, so that they should remove their respective tea strainers with the steeped leaves inside. Eric agreed. He took a first sip; his mind was more peaceful now. He was feeling a little guilty before, he realized, now that this new found peace appeared so unexpectedly.

And with that, he continued his story, while his host listened attentively, at times a little lost in some thought, as Eric could tell.

He looked at the preview on the screen of his Canon Powershot and smiled that big Asian smile (or Japanese, as he believed). He then commented to Cindy, "Your camera must take better picture than mine."

She blushed, and asked, "Why?", knowing full well the answer.

"It's so big and, uh, awesome looking," said the Asian man in his forties. He asked, while putting his little camera away, "What is it?"

"I am not sure. I just asked my brother to pick one out for me online and I bought it."

Eric took a curious look and said, "Ah, this is a professional grade camera, better than my sister's camera, which is only semi-professional. Must be very expensive."

He, of course, knew exactly how much it was. But let her have her glory. She blushed even more and said, "Oh, it's just money. It's not really my.... Well."

Eric looked up with his eyes above the heavy lenses of the glasses and saw that she was looking into some blank spot between them. Her blush was fading, and so was the proud smile. He waited for her to say something, and she did. She smiled and asked, "Where did you learn to speak such good English?" That question was inevitable. They started slowly walking, both having spotted an empty bench but neither actually proposed sitting in it. But there was a force that brought them there as a laser guides a missile. On their way to sitting down, he explained that he was visiting his sister, a much younger one, who was working just across the river in the financial district.

"Where is she?"

"She is working," said Eric.

"Sorry?"

Eric deliberately made his accent thick to elicit that response from her. He repeated his answer. Then she said, "But today is Sunday." He looked away, smiling that fake Asian smile and said, looking across the river, "She is a very busy woman. We haven't spent much time together these two weeks. She works seven days a week. But we get to have dinner almost every night together."

"I am sorry," said Cindy. There was a moment of silence between them, and the she said, "My name is Cindy Johnson," and she extended her arm to him, but she suddenly blushed, wondering, probably, if that wasn't culturally insensitive to a people that used to bowing. He looked at her hand a little puzzled and then shook it, and said, "My name is Yuko Akimoto."

"Yuko Akimoto?" asked Garry, one of the few times he interrupted. "Does that even mean anything?"

"I have no idea, why does it matter?" And he continued on with the story.

She was from the capital city of South Carolina, Columbia. "The biggest city, however, is Charleston," she added. "I hope you understand me all right; I tend to have a Southern accent, but here I try to limit it."

"I understand you fine, don't worry. My sister's husband is from Tennessee, I can't remember where, exactly, a name too hard to remember."

"Yes, some places in America the names are weird, because they are Indian names, like 'Chattahoochee', name of a park that we share with Tennessee."

"Are people in Tennessee strange?" asked Yuko.

Cindy paused with a confused frown and said, "I don't suppose more than other folks, why?"

"My sister's husband. That's my brother-in-law, in English?"

She nodded with growing curiosity to what he was going to say next. He cleared his throat a little, raising the suspense by a notch and said, "I don't think he's good to her, to my sister. He doesn't spend much time with her. I know she's busy, too busy for her brother visiting from Nagasaki, but I know she misses him, and complains privately to me that she wishes he were around more. But she said he's not around, not only because he's a busy architect, but because he, well."

He paused, with a bitter coldness in his eyes and his expressionless face lost some of the color. He took this opportunity to observe her, who was for a while paying attention to him and now there was some light in her eyes, a light not of hope or joy, but sorrow, as if it were a blue light searching in the darkness, not for life, but for death. She was in her late thirties. Her hair had nice highlights, but at the root he could see there were a lot of white hair. There were some wrinkles around her eyes, but her blue eyes were beautiful, whatever the expression she might have. She was wearing a white blouse, as opposed to T-shirts that most tourists here wore, the blouse had simple, floral decorations around the collar. And instead of a pair of shorts from Old Navy, she was wearing a yellow skirt. She was an attractive woman for her age, and if Eric weren't on business, he would have flirted with her. But perhaps that was what he was doing, too.

"Why is that weird?" asked Cindy.

"I believe a man should always love his wife, no matter what. My grandparents loved each other, but my grandfather was in the war, with America. My grandmother stayed in Nagasaki, waiting for him to return. He never did, and she perished when the atomic bomb dropped on the city. My parents were luckily already sent to the countryside when that happened."

She was visibly moved. Her blue eyes were watery. She looked away. He noticed her left hand, which was rested carelessly on her big camera case. Her hand was slightly tanned, but not in that disgusting way that many out-of-state tourists look, walking lobsters, as he had told his buddy, Garry. There was an air of elegance in her, not only in the way she was dressed, but in the movements she made, whether walking, taking a photo, or just turning her head slightly. Her face was very thin, but not in a sickly way. Her lips a little too pale, and a little too thin.

"I am sorry to hear that."

"No, don't be. That was long ago, before I was born. I only wanted to say that my parents taught us that we must love the special person we decided to have in our lives," declared Yuko. That's something Eric really believed in. He had told Gary one time that no matter how many heartaches he had gone through, how many betrayals, on both sides, once he got married he would be faithful, as his parents had been. Gary didn't say anything, which, Eric knew, meant he didn't believe him.

"That's easier said than done," said Cindy. He noticed she moved her index finger slightly, caressing the lens cap of the camera.

He knew what to ask next, "So are you a photographer?"

She seemed a little startled. She looked at him with some renewed curiosity and answered, "Not really. I have been fooling around for a while, actually almost when they first came out with the pocket size digital cameras. My first one was a Fuji, from nine years ago. But I never dared to buy an SLR until now, especially not a professional grade." She looked down on her camera. He smiled and said, "Nine years. You must be really good. I would love to see some of your photos."

"Oh, I will send you my Flickr site. I think some are really good. My brother, his name is Nate, thinks I could sell some of them. He said I have a good eye."

"You have beautiful eyes," said Yuko, taking a chance that she would think he was just a tactless foreigner.

She blushed and smiled without looking at him. Then that smile disappeared quickly. She sighed and said, "Thank you."

After some easing moment of silence went by during which they both pretended to watch people coming in and out of the park, now mostly leaving, he said, "I see you are married. Does your husband think you have good eyes?"

It was provocative, it was deliberate, though she didn't know it was deliberate. She looked at him with an expression that was ineffable but not unexpected. She was wearing her ring on her other hand, which was obviously how he knew. She looked away, and didn't protest his inquisitiveness.

She said, "My husband doesn't really care. He got me the Fuji, and I was happy. But I realized over the years that he did so to keep me busy so I didn't bother him."

He frowned, looking very perplexed.

"You wanna hear my story?" she asked, in the heaviest accent yet. Her blue eyes were turning gray and her fingers were making more of the little movements, even more rapidly.

"If you want to share, I am happy to hear," said Yuko.

"It ain't a long one. We've been married for fifteen years, and we dated seven years before that. I know it sounds cheesy, but he's been my best friend forever. Now, I want to say first that I don't think he ever cheated on me. But that doesn't matter, it seems. Just five years into the marriage, he said one day to me that he no longer loved me. And that was all he said before walking out. I thought he left. I was devastated. That night in bed, thinking I lost my best friend for reasons I couldn't comprehend, and then I heard the door close. And then the familiar footsteps up the stairs and then the bedroom door. He smelled like alcohol. I pretended I was asleep. I wasn't afraid he would hit me or something, like lots of men from where I am from are known to do. But worse than getting hit, I think, is getting yelled at, and he did that a few times. Only that day he finally told me he didn't love me anymore. So there he was just mumbling while taking off his clothes. He crawled in bed. I was filled with fear and sadness. He didn't touch me, he just fell asleep. And from that day on he didn't look at me much and hardly touched me. That was ten years ago."

She paused, looking into some blank space and the finally said, "That was really long ago. And we are still living together like strangers. I mean, I cook for him after I come back from work and he eats the food in the kitchen alone. I know enough to leave him be. And after a few years I just got used to it. It's funny how you just get used to something no matter how bad it it is. But was it really bad?"

"It was," said Yuko.

She was startled as if woken from a dream. She turned to look at him, imploring an explanation with her eyes. He continued, "Two human beings should not live like this."

She had no reaction. She waited a little more and then continued, "Then he lost his job. That was when he started shouting a lot, in the house. I didn't know what to do. I didn't really have friends I could count on. My Mother was really old and she had more trouble than I did. One time I tried to touch him, to comfort him, and that was the only time he said, 'I despise you.' I froze. I couldn't move, and the hatred in his eyes confirmed it. He was a little drunk, but not too much, not more than other times. He pushed my comforting arm away, stood up and walked out without eating his dinner. I cried. That night I was hoping I would hear the door close and then his footsteps up the stairs and then, in whatever for he was in, taking off his clothes next to the bed. But that never happened. I fell asleep around dawn and woke up just a couple of hours later.

"I found him in the living room watching some documentary on the History Channel later that week, four days later, I counted. He didn't even look at me when I walked in. I said 'Hi' but when he said nothing, I restrained myself from telling him how much he worried me, how much I missed him."

By now she was groping for a pack of tissue in her purse, and after tearing one out and drying her eyes and blowing her nose, she continued, without noticing that Yuko was there, listening and watching her attentively. "That was four years ago. I lived my life this way, with a stranger that I found myself loving more every day. A girlfriend from a long time ago told me that men always like women a lot more in the beginning, and then their love slowly declines while the women's slowly increases, and eventually, the man, who once was so passionate about winning the woman's heart, no longer wants her while she feels so attached to him that she can't imagine her world without him. I thought that was stolen from some country music, in fact, probably lots of country music sung by women. Now I was realizing my life was turning out this way. My husband hated me.

"But I don't understand why he didn't leave me. Why he didn't divorce me. It can't be because he was unemployed. He could find another job. He was a professional. Eventually he could find a job."

Two little kids screamed at each other while frolicking around their parents, who were sharing an ice cream on a cone. Eric thought the ice cream probably belonged to one of the kids who got tired of eating it. He turned to Cindy and said, "How about we get ourselves an ice cream. I saw one around the corner down the street."

She smiled, and nodded, before blotting off the rest of her tears. "How do I look?" she asked. He smiled behind those huge glasses and said, "Most beautiful." She blushed.

She asked if he was married. He smiled and shook his head, and said, "I can't."

She was predictably confused and asked for an explanation. He said, "I don't trust people. I don't trust that at least one of us wouldn't do harm to the other. Married couple is supposed to love each other forever, no matter your culture. Otherwise, why marry? But I know enough stories that I think people can't make that promise for real; people aren't gods."

"So you could only marry a god?" she asked. He giggled, which made her smile.

"I was dating this girl from my company. I work in one of the many divisions of Honda. I was in love with this girl from the beginning, but one day, I realized we were living in such casual ways that I no longer felt any meaning to our common existence. If I am making myself understandable. So I told her I had to be alone, to find myself again, without any promise of a return later," he said, then with a pause, he said to Cindy, "I suppose you think I am a bad person, like your husband."

She turned to look at him. They were now in front of the ice cream shop. Understandably, with the warm weather and just human desire for sugar rush, there was a line. So they waited. She said to him, in an almost stern way, "My husband isn't a bad person. And neither are you."

"But you think at least what I did was bad."

"No. You were being honest. At least you said something, you spoke out your reason."

"Well, she didn't like it. It didn't help. She went crazy. She was angry and devastated. We were together for only four years, but like many good Japanese girl of her background I was her first love. Or lover, at least. I don't even know if she really loved me, maybe at the end, like you said about men and woman."

"Wait, is this Jenny you are referring to?" asked Gary. Interrupting again.

Eric gave him a dirty look, to which Gary reacted with a smile.

"She is understandably angry, but that doesn't change you who are."

The sun's rays were waning. The shadows were noticeably longer than when he first saw her standing there, leaning agains the guardrail alone. The breeze from the sea not too far from here brought in the briny scent of the busy world of shipping. He nodded though not in any convincingly agreeing way. They ordered their ice cream cones and he fought successfully to pay for it. "I hope it's not too chauvinistic," said the Japanese man. She shook her head and said, "It's rare in these Yankee places to see such gentlemanly behavior. My Pa taught me how to be a good Southern Belle, though I never really managed to do everything, I at least know what to expect from a good Southern gentleman, and there ain't any here." He smiled and thanked her.

He convinced her to go in because he said, "In Japan we avoid the sun; most people, including men, carry an umbrella when it's sunny, so I hope you don't mind that we go inside." She smiled and said, "Of course not. But the proper English word is a 'parasol.' I hope you don't mind I tell you something new about our language." He thanked her again.

In the air conditioned interior, he picked the table at the far corner. It was by the window and the sun light was shining in with a soft glow. There was quite a long bit of silence between them, both seeming to be lost in thought. Then she finished her story. "Then a month ago, I came home and found a large, thick envelop. It had my name on it, written in a stylized way, the way he would write it during the first five or six years we were dating before we got married. Inside I found $5,204. And a note."

Then she turned to her purse, opened it and took out a piece of paper with scribbling on it. She looked at him and said, "You can read it, if you want. It's not long." He accepted it with two hands, looking very solemn.

After carefully opening it as if it were some letter of grave importance for him, he read it. Then when he was done, he carefully closed it and handed it back to her in both hands. Looking down on the table he said, in a low voice, "I am sorry. I am sorry you have to hear the same man's story from me earlier."

Her eyes had a film of tears waiting to flow out as she put the letter back in. It was true. How ironic that he offered the same explanation. Except that her husband needed all these years to figure out for himself that he no longer loved someone he became too depended on, that he needed all these years to get up the courage to leave her so they could both have a fresh start. And what pained her the most, and Yuko knew too, was that all this time he knew her more than she imagined he did. At least that he believed she was a good enough photographer, "better than what even your brother would give you credit for" was what he said. And for this reason, he was leaving all his savings in cash with her, so she could start off a life as a photographer without him. Finally, he wrote, "I hope you will forgive me."

"Do you?" asked Yuko, "Forgive him?"

"Of course," she said,"There's nothing to forgive. He finally understood something I just didn't want to admit. I was guilty of inaction." She said, with a forced smile and not daring to look at any face, especially not the one in front of her.

Her eyes were suddenly getting redder. He looked out the window, sighed, engulfed in thoughts, and then said to her, "What I like about you is that you are not like me. I mean, you trust people. You see the good of every person. You are one of the few people who can forgive as easily as you can breathe, and you can see the stars without having to worry about the dark spaces between them."

"That sounds really Japanese," interrupted Gary for the last time.

"Do you understand that, Cindy? You are a good person. A true diamond in the rough."

The redness in her eyes erupted into clear, long teardrops, rolling down her alabaster rosy cheeks, and along with them all the sorrows that had been penned up. She got up with her purse and said, "Excuse me, I need to go to the lady's room. I am sorry, it's very rude." He was already standing up now, being the Western gentleman that he is, and said, "Please, you should never apologize again for your own pain. Please go and do as you need to." She didn't have time to reply with a smile. The pain was too much, and she turned towards the bathroom.

"What do you think she did after that?" asked Gary.

Eric, finishing his cup of tea, said, "I think she must have thought about her mother, her friends, her brother, all the people she couldn't, for some reason, reach out to. That's what I saw in the beginning."

"That helplessness you mentioned?"

"Yeah. That deep-seated desire to have someone to talk to."

Eric grew quiet, hardly noticing that his buddy was clearing up the table for him. And from the kitchen, putting the stuff in the dishwasher, Gary said, "Did you enjoy your experience? I mean, you usually don't spend all this time and to this depth on a job."

He simply said, "Yes." He was lost in thoughts. He wondered about her. He wasn't worried about how she would feel after discovering that her expensive camera and all the accessories inside the camera case were gone, along with the Japanese man. Or if she called the police. She thought about what he said to her. That she was a good person. He wondered if he really believed what he said. He never said this to someone and actually meant it, because he didn't believe anyone was good. This time he had to think a little harder, to come up with some explanation that had nothing to do with the goodness of a human being. He wanted to think that she was simply an imbecile, too naïve, which made her such an easy target. But something baffled him. It was what his friend said.

He took his leave with his buddy in crime, who assured him that they would get a really good price on the merchandise from the South Carolinian woman. Before he left, he asked Gary for one thing. "What?" "The chip in the camera." Gary looked at him for a second, but said nothing before going to his desk from which he fetched the chip for his friend. Eric didn't need to thank him, then he simply left with a wave of goodbye. On his way down the stairs he asked himself again what Gary noted, that he spent so much time in this business transaction, as they call their jobs. If that woman was such an imbecile, why he bothered to listen to her whole story?

Coming out of the apartment in Tribeca, he took a deep breath. The outside light was similar to when he left the ice cream shop the previous day. He looked at the people walking by, the old people, the young people blabbering on phones, the messengers on bikes, people hauling something to the shop across the street. He wondered how many of these people were good.

Image of Failure

The left corner of her mouth is still healing from the cut. Coincidentally, the left corner of the mouth of her son also has a wound, but from some insect bite occurred during his sleep. She is resting in a calm afternoon at the southern edge of the main park in San Telmo, feeling the breeze caressing her face, soothing, to some extent, her cut, whose saltiness her tongue sometimes can still taste. Her little son is fast asleep now. She had to drag him out of sleep this morning earlier than usual because she wanted to be here when the festival started. The local and foreign tourists would be here, and their rosier mood may open up bigger wallets.

Her name is Alma, a name her mother had given her to remind herself that her "soul" had left her when she had given birth to this girl whose destiny would be no different from her own. Alma's son cried most of the way on the train from the slums where they were living. She was embarrassed to have woken up her sister, whose night shift meant she could only start sleeping in the early morning. She had been embarrassed for as long as she had stayed with her sister, started when her husband abandoned her and his son. Her sister tried to hide her frustration, but she saw everything wrong with her own life mirrored in Alma's life, except that Alma was even more disgraceful, having no job and an extra burden of a boy.

She did have a job, in the sense of obtaining financial resources. Her job was to perfect begging, that entirely debasing and infinitely more humiliating work of asking for what you don't deserve. She had been doing this for nearly a year now, and she had gotten very good at it, using her son as the best starting bargaining chip. She only hopes that her son will remain cute for a little while more, and that when he no longer attracted the sympathy of those with real money, he could start working.

What could he do? She is thinking now, during her rest. The breeze has stopped and the heat of the February afternoon regains its torment. She is smart enough to be sitting in the shade. She looks across the street and sees a familiar face standing in front of touristy Cafe Britanica. He is probably a tourist, she isn't sure. She asked him the previous day for money. He spoke to her. He wasn't the first person to speak to her instead of either dispensing the meager change or ignoring her altogether. And so she wasn't quite surprised; in fact, she had learned that if the target showed any interest, then the sale was already made and the only difference now was to make it more interesting so that the reward might be greater. It worked exactly like that yesterday. She smiled at him. She isn't entirely pretty, and she knows it. The women in central Buenos Aires could afford to eat well and dress well and get the best makeup, world too foreign for her to really even think about. The pretty women had been the meanest to her, often outright hostile, rarely giving her attention, let alone a few coins. This man paid attention to her. And so she smiled. Her freckles moved along the changing muscles of her face, even her eyes gleamed a little as she answered his questions, which she also had gotten used to from those few that had been curious. While his attitude was understandably condescending, she was grateful for the attention. Sometimes, she felt alone. Like this morning in the train when the boy was screaming, or in the bus after the train, when the boy was quietly sleeping. She was most lonely when she was tired, like having walked the whole morning and afternoon begging and preparing for constant disappointment.

Today she managed to avoid thinking about her boyfriend, the father of the sleeping boy. But most days she thought about him.

That man standing in front of Cafe Britanico is carrying, as he did yesterday, a huge camera. She thought about her brother, Elias, whom she hadn't seen for a few months, but have heard about from time to time. He had lost his job the last time she saw him and since then, supposedly, he had been steeling. It's a wonder she hasn't seen him since they both would be operating in the same touristy areas, especially today when there is a sea of people not being careful about what they are carrying. She wondered if he would dare to steal this man's camera.

She is a little startled when she realizes that while staring at his camera the man has at some point started staring at her. She can't help letting out an embarrassed smile. He tips his head a little to acknowledge her, and she smiles back. The last thing he said to her yesterday was, "Take this, give the little boy something to eat," as he handed her a 10-peso bill. That was enough to feed the boy a day, but she thought the comment was strange, almost comical. She didn't understand why. She was embarrassed, nonetheless.

She looks away even though instinctively she would have wanted to go over there and greet him, perhaps he would give her more money, or at least, some attention. She thinks about her brother. Oh, Elias, where are you? She looks at the sleepy face of her son.

"How old is he?" the man asked yesterday.

She wonders why people care. Why people care to know. Is curiosity so powerful that it could engender pittance of money? She didn't ask him any questions, even though he was quite curious enough. She is curious why he is now standing there, looking around, inspecting the surroundings. The festival is a few more blocks down. He isn't sitting. She doesn't understand.

She thinks about her brother again.

The boy coughs again, and by doing so waking up, giving out a murmur, and starts to inspect his surroundings. She managed to get quite a bit of money today from the festival and it's not over yet. She can get more. It is time. She looks again to the direction of the cafe and sees that the man has started walking across the street towards the some nondescript point. She wonders where he is going now. What luxury some people have for going nowhere and not having to worry about the means of getting somewhere. What luxury to be freely going anywhere without either a past to shackle their feet nor a future to wall in their existence. She caresses the forehead of her son, falling in love momentarily with his eyes, which do not look like hers.

Her legs are tired from carrying him the whole day, everyday. But work must go on. She stands up and walks past a group of old locals gossiping about people she would never know or meet. She is a walking failure with a shadow cast by the whims of the sun and the world. But she continues to walk and work in the only way she knows now. At least another five hours left before she would hop on the bus and then the train back to an ever sullen sister. She thinks one more time about that big camera the man was carrying, and wonders, if a picture had taken of her and her boy, how unrecognizable it would be to her.

Sunrise over Sunset Park

It was a long night. I fell asleep at some point among that forest of machines, humming without a break. I remembered seeing my Dad putting in a tape when the program changed. It looked complicated, with all those buttons. Complicated only because I was tired. I normally excel quite well with machines. But I was tired. I had finished my homework, even though I had the whole weekend to do it. My Dad taught me to never procrastinate, God knows what disaster would await me that would prevent me from doing my homework if I waited till Sunday night. So I had finished my homework and watched a little bit of the programming he was putting on. It was probably a little past eleven at night.

I woke up briefly when he told me it was time to go. Waking up in an unfamiliar place always creeped me out. Maybe it had something to do with waking up one morning before sunrise to say goodbye to my Mother before being apart from her for six years. But that's another story. I just always feel weird waking up by someone at the wee hours of the morning.

The guy taking over the next shift was there. I didn't see his expression. I am not even sure if it was a woman or not. My Dad took my hand gently and spoke to me softly, telling me to get my bag and quickly leave so the man or woman could do his or her work. I dragged the bag onto my back and than dragged my body out the room and through the corridor.

I came to see where he slept at nights when when didn't come home. Or not before I went to sleep. And often he would wake up with us to take us to school before going to his other job, which I have seen because I would meet him there. It was near the school. But I had never seen this job he had in the famous Empire State Building. Unlike the building, my Dad wasn't a tall person. Very soon I would be much taller than him, but that was probably more due to better nutrition in my childhood than in his. He was raised during postwar China and I was raised at the start of the famous economic reform that propelled China to the awesome global power it is today. He was more muscular than me, but that didn't take much since I was very scrawny, not out of malnutrition, just that I was built that way and I was never put through any physical hardship. My Dad, though raised malnourished, I think, had to do a lot of lifting since we immigrated to this country. Before this job he was working in a grocery store lifting heavy crates of boxes instead of books when he was a teacher back on the other side of the ocean.

So I dragged my small, elementary school body behind his short but stout body. He was wearing that thin, beige jacket that he had been wearing since the first week of his arrival in the country and that he would continue to wear for the next six, seven years. Fashion really isn't part of our psyche, just look at Mao, and add to it that you're from a peasant background. All of our clothes were passed on from the rich families my Mother and Grandmother worked in as live-in housekeepers. At times I must have looked like some preppy boy heading straight to Yale or Harvard, which at the time were dreams for my parents, any immigrant parents from the old country.

In the elevator, which was, understandably, empty, I was slightly more awake. My Dad seemed tired, but he was able to utter something, "You are too tanned." Meaning, I looked too much like a peasant, too much like before coming here. It was true. I used to spend a lot of time outdoors, doing many mischievous things between school and home. Now that I lived in what my parents deemed the most dangerous city in the world, I have been indoors a lot. Besides, it was nearly winter and I still wasn't used to the cold, having experienced this country's winter only once.

I didn't say anything to his remark. He was right. I have spent too much time outside in the sun. I simply won't do it again.

Then the memory became foggy. There was some image of the 34th street station, the sharp stink of urine, which was still better than the noisome pungency of the homeless, of which there were many two decades ago. My dad steered us clear of these islands of social jettisons. Or he must have, he always did, but I was too sleepy. I do remember the feel of his powerful grip on my pathetically tiny right wrist. Nowadays I see that hand, still looking a little powerful, but so wrinkly, the skin so thin and weak. But back than, even when I was tired and sleepy, I felt his hand, I felt safe.

Then I fell asleep in the D train. The clunky old N-train before it was remodeled. I am sure the one we took had been showered with lots of uncreative graffiti. Back then there were lots of more angry New Yorkers and a lot less police control over spray paint. Still, I didn't notice. I sat next to my Dad, between him and the window, I fell asleep in safety, though in retrospect, riding the New York City subway two decades ago at 6 in the morning was a little weird, even for the city that never sleeps, and by then people were starting to go to work.

For us, we were getting off work. My Dad must have fallen asleep too soon after I did. He always slept. My memory of him, besides being angry, is either he was eating or sleeping. He didn't talk much, watched a lot of TV, and smiled only in front of people or discovered he was embarrassing himself.

So when I woke up after the train stopped I saw him dozing off. I looked out and saw the first ray of sun. The sky was a dark blue. Soft light. The station we were pulling out of was Fort Hamilton Parkway. I thought I missed the ride over the bridge. I always prepared myself for the ride over the Manhattan Bridge. Crossing bridges brought a curious mix of excitement and fear, probably because a while back my dad and I fell off a bridge into a little dike during the monsoon season. But this time I missed the bridge, missed the gigantic East River that seemed eternally gray seen through the train tracks below me whenever I crossed the bridge.

We were almost home, almost in Sunset Park where the latest wave of Chinese immigrants settled. It's the hidden Chinatown that was hidden only to everyone else but the Chinese. I yawned and looked around me. the car was a little empty; many other Chinese were dozing off. There were no other ethnic groups. I was in the Chinese train. The houses lining the train tracks seemed to be sleeping too. The only sound I heard was from the humming of the rusty subway train ferrying us through unknown neighborhoods of unknown ethnic groups, "foreigners" who didn't speak Chinese, or like very much people who did. But I wasn't thinking about anything negative. I was simply admiring the tranquility of the Brooklyn houses in the twilight that would give way to a lot of noise in this city that was just taking a brief nap. The chimneys of the town houses, the plethora of graffiti, the nearly empty streets, in a strange harmony with the interior of this train car, with my mind.

I took one more look at my right, where my protector was. When he dozes off he does look at peace. He frowns, as if even in his dreams he is troubled. I noticed it then, though it would take me many many years later to really think about why. But I noticed it then, and all I did was rest my head on the window and fall asleep again until his soft voice woke me up once more when the train was slowing down towards our stop.

Delayed Falling

Sometimes you realized, too late, of course, that you had fallen in love.

What makes you realize it?

Something simple. Like waiting for the bus and you see someone wearing a T-shirt of the bar where you were talking to that friend you had known for years and that you were saying goodbye to. You didn't realize it then, when she smiled at you for the last time, and that you were too wrapped up in the sentimentality of the farewell, among friends, that you had fallen in love. Now you want to write to her, but you won't because you know it's too late.

Or something simpler. You are walking, and you see a small, yellow maple leaf in the middle of early summer, on the pavement. You remember that day when you spent the cool autumn afternoon with this young man who told you his childhood and listened to you speak about your philosophies. That little leaf is like your love for him, present now, but soon, inevitably, will be swept into oblivion.

Or something more complicated. You are alone in your bedroom, in your unmade bed, you're in tears for one of the simple reasons we find ourselves drowning in our own tears, and besides you is your best friend, who merely caresses you and reminding you, in the caress or in the gentle voice, that you aren't alone, and drifting in that river of tears, unwilling to abandon ship, is that flame of connection to your best friend, wanting, suddenly, to claim the road of eternity.

But all this sentimentality doesn't mean much in the present when it's all in the past. That is what Sandra is thinking as she goes through her grandfather's scrapbook. Her mother mentioned it to her one time. She had never seen her grandfather, but this scrapbook was one of the few items he had left behind. He didn't have many things at the end of his life. He spent his last ten years traveling, as an octogenarian that caused not little worry for his family. He had always traveled, but never thought it was enough. And he didn't do wild things like climbing Mt. Everest. Sandra's mother, his daughter, said one time while slicing cucumbers in front of the attentive eight-year old girl, that the old man didn't believe in doing extraordinary things. He said, "Every extraordinary thing we think of is done by someone, in fact a lot of people." It's true, a lot of people have climbed that blasted mountain. Even quite a few have gone to outer space, and grandpa was never interested in going to the moon.

What he was interested was, according to Sandra's mother, "doing what was extraordinary for me." "Me" being the old man Sandra never had the opportunity to meet. Funny how "extraordinary" didn't mean meeting his one and only granddaughter. They said he disappeared in the Amazons somewhere, while "hanging out" with one of the tribes, according to his journal found later.

The scrapbook had every small thing one can imagine from the most mundane journeys. Bus tickets, ski-lift tickets, lots of boarding passes, museum passes, advertisements for shows. The scrapbook could not have given a full picture because it relied on things that were printed, and there were surely places he visited that didn't have printed material. But what caught Sandra's eyes were the brief inscriptions next to some of the items. Next to a metro pass for Paris was "she posed in the submarine." Next to the brochure for eco-tour in some volcano in Costa Rica was "we played hide-and-seek." Next to a card for tango lessons in Buenos Aires was "I sang, she danced, sort of." Sandra's mother said the "she" wasn't the same woman. Grandpa divorced quite early, and Sandra's mother claimed that the reason was the wife wasn't such a traveler and didn't like his inattentive heart. Sandra could relate. Still, she imagined further. She imagined the different women Grandpa was with on these journeys. Like the one next to a plastic display of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, "I cried, she comforted me." Probably he didn't cry because of the game. He might not have even been in Beijing during the game, but Sandra imagined he was suffering, like all men were capable, and he indulged in the comfort of a woman he had trusted, somehow.

It's too bad, in some sense, that he didn't leave any letters that might betray his personal life a little more. His journal from the Amazons was a fresh one, and all his previous journals had disappeared from his apartment, or had disappeared with him. The rest of the family didn't seem to care. At least Sandra's mother had always been resentful of the divorce, blamed it entirely on grandpa (after, of course, she stopped blaming herself). She never mentioned that grandpa expressed regret to her. Sandra imagined that that's what men do, at least apologize to their children torn apart by a divorce. At least at some point. Her father did that, several times, over many years since divorcing her mother. But Sandra's grandpa never did, she imagined, or if he did, it wasn't enough for his daughter to mention it, to consider it with enough weight.

Next to a corner of an envelop with canceled stamps from Serbia (when it was just Serbia and no longer some fake form of united Yugoslavia), it was "she made it, but I'm alone in the sands." "In the sands," she imagined a desert. In the Sahara? The Arabian peninsular, or back here in the US? Or more exotic, like China. The Gobi. Who was she? A different woman. She imagined a train station, one of those really old and dilapidated ones in old movies, except that it was in modern times in a corner of the world that still hasn't woken up to modernity. She didn't even know what grandpa looked like, for no picture of him was kept, or probably taken. He must have been a handsome man to be with all these women. He was smiling. He was the one leaving, because he's always the one leaving. And she, a beautiful but subdued woman, was on the platform, waving goodbye. It was probably a train station in Dhaka. Do they even have trains in Dhaka? And where is Dhaka anyway? Just sounds romantic, and cruel.

He smiles, almost belittling her suppressed tears and roiled face expression. They had a fight but they made up. They held hands in the waiting room before, where the fan was trying to cool the room in vain. It was hot, even though there weren't many passengers. And he was doing what was to him extraordinary: "connecting with a human being", which was written in red, the only time, next to a small cutout from a magazine of a little boy and a little girl, both dressed like adults, holding hands, black and white. She imagined that was what he meant by "extraordinary." At some point they stopped holding hands. They were, in her mind, not lovers. Grandpa actually didn't have many "lovers", or if he did, it was all very carnal. It was only after the train had left the platform, after it had traveled many days, weeks, months, even years, that it had occurred to grandpa that it was more than carnal, or that a simple late night conversation, the last of its kind with a given woman, was more than just a conversation, that he had fallen in love and that it was too late to savor it fully. She imagined him tasting the best honey in France, would it be in Provence? She read somewhere that the lavender honey was amazing there. He would be tasting it while running to the train, no, the tram, something cool, and that he would not have the time savor it, and the the most minute taste of it returned only later to make him regret not taking the time to savor the whole tablespoon given to him by a beautiful French woman.

But she wouldn't just be someone he had met that afternoon in a beautiful French countryside market. She would actually be a friend with whom he had spent all his entire week in that countryside talking. It was another extraordinary experience.

She knew he had a camera; one of the entries, which was next to a restaurant receipt in Berlin, a cafe, was "her eyes finally captured on digital." If he was like her, he would appreciate the power of eyes, he would be able to pierce any eyes and see the soul of the human being within. He was in this Berlin cafe, during the day time, of course, and it was a cool cafe, like the many she had seen in postcards and travel books. He was trying to take a photograph of a woman with whom he had amazing philosophical conversations. She had dark, red-dyed hair, white but not pale, dressed extremely artsy, and she, too, didn't know she was in love with him, a man who could pay dear attention to you but not when he isn't looking at you. She would feel the pain of regret the night she went home after seeing grandpa the last time.

The scrapbook was always a passage to her imaginations. They weren't wild imaginations. They were her own "extraordinary" imaginations. She did it only in her bedroom because, although her mother knew she had it and went through it often, she didn't like it. Sometimes she would vent on her and reminded her how cruel a man he was, and then often it would end up being a tirade against men in general. Sandra understood by now that her own view of men had been shaped by her mother's views and her own sentiments have entered a perverse harmony with her mother's. Sandra's own life with men, though not long since she was still in high school, has been rocky, even though she hadn't realized at that point that it was perfectly normal for teenagers to have relationship troubles.

Still, she had a strange mix of loath and love for this man she had never met or even heard from. Or even seen except in wedding pictures she had managed to dig out somewhere. But what he looked like after that she had no idea. But she felt a yearning to meet him. Sometimes she even wondered if he was possibly still alive, and perhaps she would travel out of her cocoon of the Connecticut suburb and travel the world to find him. She smiled just at the thought of her mother's reaction, losing her only daughter to a man who started all the troubles in the family.

Other girls rebel against their mothers by getting in trouble with boys or drugs or at least come home late. Sandra's rebellion was subtle, quiet, a cold rebellion like the cold war, her desire to get to know the biggest and oldest black sheep in the family. And since she had no resources to travel the world to find at least his grave, she had to content herself with going through the scrap book over and over again.

Water before Bed

The lamp in the shape of an ice cube. The dim orange light illuminating from within makes it look like a glowing igloo in the cold, blue night. She almost shudders at the thought of it. She picks up the glass of water next to it, and drinks a few sips, letting the cold, still chlorinated water from the tap to wash down her dry mouth and throat. The cold touch of the glass reminds her that it has been sitting here for a few hours now, in the cool, early summer night. There is no clock in the living room, but she figures it must be four in the morning. Besides the lamp is a smaller wicker jewelry box that he had given her as a surprise gift a year ago. She has forgotten that it came as a gift, until now. With the free hand she touches the surface of the wicker. She touches the metallic pin with a metallic butterfly welded on one end. She imagines that the pin is cold even though her fingers are too tired to really notice such subtleties.

With the hand still clutching the cold glass of water, she drinks a few more small gulps, without taking her eyes off the wicker jewelry box, but at the same time without really thinking about the object she is now caressing with the other hand. She is lost in thoughts as if the touch of each thread on the surface of the box reminds her of a thread of memory in the past three years they have been together. The wicker object, she now remembers, is the last thing he had given to her, and it is also the last surprise he had given her. After that, many things have happened, and not even on their anniversary and her birthday did he remember to give her anything. Still, she didn't mind. Somehow, however, she remembers the absence of presents.

She opens the wicker as she puts the glass of water back in nearly exactly the same place she had picked it up. Inside the box is a pile of jewelry and two foreign bills. One is from India, a big bill, the second largest denomination, worth about $10, or the monthly wage of many poor villagers. Who told her? No one. She was on the Continental flight back from Delhi; they were probably somewhere over Siberia, almost over the Arctic. She was woken up by something, one of the many sporadic noises in the sleepy airplane. She was reaching for a used tissue paper in her right pocket but instead she pulled out this 500 rupee bill that she didn't know she had. She thought she only had little coins left. She thought about the people she had met, her experience in that country of seemingly bottomless misery.

And she remembers it now.

It's a little too late for such contemplative thoughts. She notices the other bill is the two-dollar bill he had given her when they first met three years ago. He knew she was a foreigner, and he wanted to impress her with a two-dollar bill. She was, despite her nonchalant appearance, thoroughly impressed, less by the bill of questionable authenticity, but more by the light and depth of this man's eyes. She was quietly drawn to him the way he wanted but at the time failed to see.

And now he was sleeping, snoring, in that other room. She suddenly can hear him and feels a shudder again, a real one, and she looks to the glowing igloo in front of her. She lets out a sigh and takes the cold glass of water again. She reaches for the switch with the other hand and turns off the igloo. Her space suddenly becomes dark and empty, even though she knows exactly where everything was, including space. They've lived here for a little over a year but the space always makes her feel disconnection. She thinks it's them, but she doesn't want to think about it.

In the darkness she walks quietly the short corridor linking the living room to their bedroom. Every step taken she feels the different joints and muscles working at the soles of each foot. The one taking the weight, how it uses each part to absorb the light weight she is putting in, offset by the muscles of the trailing leg. And by doing she she walks extremely quietly, almost calculatingly. She isn't trying to avoid waking him up; he's now snoring so loud that dropping a pan on the tiled kitchen floor might not be able to compete. She is just trying to feel each step she is taking to return to this bedroom.

At the threshold of the bedroom her eyes, which by now have become accustomed to the low light coming through the windows, see the silhouette of the man she has been with for, well, only three years. The silhouette is familiar, but not necessarily in the warm and endearing way. That too, yes, but also in a vexing way that she can admit only in the safety of darkness where nothing and no one could see her face or read her heart. She stands there a little more, wiggling a little her toes, the ones she can wiggle, at least, in order to feel the floor, feel the interface between the corridor and the bedroom. She lifts her glass of water and drinks two more sips. She knows by the feel of the weight that there is probably just two more medium gulps left. She could turn around and go to the kitchen to get more water. But she knows that she would do so as an excuse.

Letting her right arm that's holding the glass of water fall slowly to her side, she enters the bedroom. A slight breeze enters, swaying her silk nightgown slightly. Tonight, like all nights in recent memory, he had not noticed how sexy she had made herself.