HAYASHI 911

Hayashi-San was the last whole human I saw. My neighbour in the building and the lift. Riding up when I returned from the shop. Black hair, black eyes, black shirt. Old cowboy boots, black pants. Everything about him was hairy. Even the backs of his hands were downy. How well could he know them under that? Could he ever know anything well? Facial features suffocating under a black follicle blanket. Another wannabe musician trying to capture a vibe. No-one had it in the first place. Too old to be flavour of the day. Too young to have retro appeal. Counting the days until he can be something. I never saw him on TV. That is the real sign of success. He probably went through his life angry. Real talent is never appreciated. Never know how right and wrong he was. He didn’t say anything to me, just nodded. He had already pushed the button. I never had a choice.

I stepped out first. Imagining the lift doors slamming shut. Pinning him in a metal vice. Half-in and half-out of the lift. It happened to a kid in Tokyo. Cut in half when the lift dropped. I could never work out how it happened. The floor doesn’t look all that sharp. I felt sorry for the building’s cleaner. Turns up for work with mop and bucket. Ready to deal with a few muddy footprints. Maybe a spilled drink. Coffee; if it’s really bad. ‘I nearly forgot to mention something, Mrs Cleaner. There’s half a stupid boy in the lift. The other half is up on seven. He left a lot of blood. Such a lack of consideration for others. We only laid that carpet last year. I know you will do your best.’ That would have ruined her day. Maybe she didn’t even get a lunch break. The paper didn’t say.

Nothing happens. Of course it didn’t. Hayashi escaped the lift of death with ease. He disappeared down the corridor to the left. The sound of his boots clicked on the floor. The most convincing soundtrack he will ever make. His cadence slowed and died near his apartment. He entered it without looking back. He had no reason to. I didn’t have the scar then.

I flip the page. I want to know what I do next. It is blank. So is the next page. And the one after that. Do I have to draw it myself? Is it showing me what will happen? I push myself up from my futon. Mother hasn’t cleaned my sheets in weeks. She doesn’t care anymore. I have to remind her of her responsibilities. I see her feet most days. Framed by the thin hole in my door. Sometimes I see a hand. Always shaking when she pushes the food through. Her fingers never cross the threshold. The bowl is always halfway through the opening. It is a cheap plastic bowl. It doesn’t shatter. I have tried. The bowl used to be ceramic. A civilized dish with a floral pattern. She over-cooked the rice once. Nothing more than slop. She might have fed it to a pig. She has never been to the country. I went once, on a school trip. The pigs looked happy enough with their slop. A bowl of food without love. Love brings love as life brings life. Her rice had neither. She fed it to me. The seasoning had sunk down into the sludge. A ceramic bowl of bubbling mush. Maybe she thought I was a baby. Am I unable to eat solid food? She has reduced me from a boy.

Years falling back and away like discarded feathers. In her world I am the immortal boy. Easier to remember me that way. Better to think of the food as offerings. Tribute to the dead son she wants back. Not food for the living man she despises. She must do. I can understand that. I hope she does. Then her life can go on. It will give her a purpose. She does not know who I have become. We are strangers in time if not space. I am the boy she once tickled on her knee. Tears of laughter splashing onto her apron. Mine and hers, large and small. Now she has shrunk, withering in her hopelessness. Father is no help, he clutches the remote. I am a program that bores him. I am a network that was disconnected. A pay station he has no money for. There is always another channel on the remote. Escape is just a button push away. I am a show he hates but others love. Running live to air, seven days a week. He never watches, but he knows I exist. He hasn’t seen my character grow. He hasn’t grown older with me. I was his hope and his boy. Cue his despair and my own man.

Men do not eat like pigs. I want to tip it out the kitchen window to land on someone below. They deserve it, all the way down there. Instead, I smashed the bowl against the wall, splashing the globules of rice against the walls like victims of a culinary car crash. I spent hours locating every fragment of china. I cut my fingers on invisible shards. Pressed them down onto the matting. Only way to pick them up. Stuck to my skin with the dust. Diamonds in the dirt. I heaped them carefully before the opening. I pushed the bloody fragments to Mother’s world. They were her problem again. Now the bowl is plastic. It bends but never breaks. It’s much better that way.

I dress carefully. Need to look my best. The t-shirt has yellow patches under the armpits. They have been there since last summer. I can’t smell them anymore. I don’t think I can smell anything. Maybe it is Mother’s cooking. She has drained the love from the food. Then she slides it under my door. I haven’t seen Father’s flesh in months. One black leather lace-up or two on weekdays. His too-white sneakers on Sundays. He polishes them religiously; doesn’t believe in God. Does believe in proper attire though. His generation doesn’t wear shorts in public. They are undignified, even at the beach. I think he even wears pants in bed. I can’t remember what his legs look like. He is doing it again. They both are. They are stealing into my mind. I don’t want to think about them. Sneaking in soft-footed, part of my mental furniture. They blend into the scene. Unobtrusive and comfortable, no ambitions whatsoever. They are nothing but convenience store clerks now. They provide barely nutritious food with resigned looks. All they lack is a uniform. All they have is their unchanging faces. I must remind them about name-tags in future.

My jeans still fit. I don’t eat as much as I did. I don’t get out much either. The nutritional yin completes the sedentary yang. Balance is important. A growing boy must eat. No more bottom of the soup dish seconds. Sometimes no firsts either. I serve myself from what they provide. Tuck the t-shirt into the waist of my jeans. Left side front round to left side back. Right side front round to right side back. Fingertip check meeting points in front and behind. Locate creases. Run fingernails down seams to straighten. Also cleans fingernails. I need to look nice for work today. There can be no distractions. No-one else can do this for me.

One day I realised that something was wrong. Just one day, it had to happen sometime. I was drifting. No nails to keep me in place. I saw a man falling. He fell in September. I was younger then. We all were. We didn’t know. They still don’t. I watched him fall. Tumbling end over end towards his own. He was too far away, thousands of miles. He fell too far; hundreds of feet. His form was tiny inside my monitor. Just thirteen inches across.

Pieces of his world fell with him. Dancing and spinning on the downtown currents. Air-cooled shards of glass and steel. Fragments of flame-licked balance sheets. Singed account books. Scraps of hard currency rendered worthless. A soundtrack of primal screams and groaning metal. The lyrics are never to be forgotten. Hayashi-San dreams of such success.

He didn’t have a name. Perhaps he didn’t need one. I didn’t know him then. Even now I only know of him. He is what he represents. His name is as insignificant as his face. He is just like me. I imagine a face on his body. It is flitting across the pixels, plummeting. I want it to be my face. Want it to be me plunging downwards. I envy everything about him. His pain will be over soon. His story has an ending.

So many people saw him fall. How many imagined him screaming? He became iconic, but no-one knew his name. Books have been written about him. Films as well as TV programs. Hour after hour of slow motion footage. All refining him, showing him more clearly. Still no-one knows him, claims him; wants him. He could have seen the world from up there. One hundred floors up on the mountain top. He had everything but a window that opened. In case of fire, break glass. What chance have I got? All of his riches. All that he could see. He is still just the fallen man. Just like I will be.