On the nights Yuki doesn’t close up the restaurant and come home with aching feet and meager tips, she does the radio show. Grace watches her undo her work-sanctioned white button-down and black tie, and turn soft and pink and relaxed after a shower. She only wears comfy clothes to the radio station, and tonight she tumbles out of her steamy bathroom in black leggings and oversize lesbian flannel and settles on the couch.
Fletcher has been trying to teach Sani and Grace how to play Egyptian Rat Screw for the past hour, still in his suit jacket and tie from school. His hands are covered in paint.
The end of the school year is bullshit, he said when he came in. I just let them finger-paint.
Now he says, “Seriously, how have you guys never played this?” He deals the cards evenly. “Every day at recess I used to wipe the floor with those uppity punks who tried to out-slap me.”
Fletcher is from Queens.
Sani wrinkles his nose and stares warily at the cards being thrown in front of him. His long hair hangs in his face. “I don’t know,” he says, collecting his pile. “There are other things to do when you grow up on a reservation. Egyptian Rat Screw was not one of them. Blame your government for not giving us access to your weird-ass settler card games.”
He looks up when silence falls. “What? Too deep?”
Fletcher sighs. “No. Go on, do you want to give Porter the speech? She’s never heard it.”
Sani sniffs, offended. He’s like a cat, all long, stretchy limbs and wary affection.
“What’s the speech?” Grace asks. “I didn’t know you grew up on a reservation.”
“Well, I did,” he says. He cuts his eye at Grace. “Are you going to ask me what it was like?”
“I’m only half-white,” she argues. “Give me some credit for sensitivity.”
Sani lets out a surprised laugh, leaning into Grace’s shoulder. “You’re not so bad,” he says, resting his head there. He looks at Fletcher. “Teach us how to play this game. We’re going to kick your ass.”
“No kicking any ass,” Yuki says suddenly, looking up from her phone. “I won’t be here to supervise.”
“Can I come with you?” Grace asks, feeling courageous. She wants to see Yuki work. She wants to watch the stories come to life as they move through radio airwaves.
Yuki blinks. “You want to? You’re actually asking to come?”
Grace stares. “Why do you sound surprised? I like hanging out with you.”
“Oh,” Yuki says. “I think I’m having an emotion.” She disappears into her room.
“Rain check on Egyptian Rat Screw?” Grace asks, the three of them staring at Yuki’s closed door.
Sani waves her off. “Go, go,” he says. He throws the cards behind him. “We,” he tells Fletcher grandly, “are going to play Uno to the death.”
Grace leaves them. She knocks carefully on Yuki’s door. There’s no answer, so she lets herself in slowly.
Yuki sits on a small pillow in front of her altar. She has two little crystals in her hand, quartz and another one Grace doesn’t recognize. The room smells like the ocean, like Yuki, like her basil and herbs and little green flowers she lets grow wild on a sacred tabletop.
“Hey,” Grace says softly. She sits down, careful of the crystals and the plants and the magic and reverence that seem to hover here. “Talk to me?”
“I’m sorry,” Yuki says. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. It was a rough day at work, and I realized I just wanted to come home and—”
“And what?”
“You make it feel easy,” Yuki says, “and it terrifies me a little. I had a rough day at work, and I wanted to come home and see you. I wanted to kiss you, and touch you, and, I don’t know, maybe even fuck you if the mood was right. I wanted to let you in.” She presses the two crystals tight into her palms. “I almost wish you would stop making it feel so easy.”
Grace bites her lip. The words warm the pit of her stomach and make her throat dry. She did not just leave Portland because she wanted time, perspective, a breath. She also wanted a girl singing a song that drew her in. “I think it’s a good thing.”
“Do you?” Yuki asks.
“I was scared to come to New York,” Grace admits. “Terrified. But from the first time I heard your voice on the radio, I knew you were a good thing.”
Yuki lets out a long, slow breath. Her flannel shirt hangs off her shoulder. Her hair sticks to her forehead. She is a prickly cactus flourishing in desert heat. “Terrified to come here,” she starts, turning to look at Grace, “but not terrified of me, right?”
Grace folds herself up, knees to chest. Yuki has all sorts of quartz on her little altar. Rutilated quartz and pink quartz and smoky quartz. Quartz is supposed to be a healing crystal. She doesn’t know if all the quartz in the world could heal two lonely creatures in the dark. She hasn’t kissed Yuki yet, not here, because she feels too much like the things in the shadows. Like she could draw blood without trying. She hasn’t kissed Yuki because she is still learning how to be this lonely creature.
“I don’t know yet,” Grace says. This close, Yuki’s eyes are black, glittering pools. Her arms, like armor, guard her heart and her ribs and her soft parts, like she is scared, too. Grace doesn’t want either of them to be scared. “But I wasn’t scared of you in the desert when we put flowers in each other’s hair. I wasn’t scared when a man in a fucking glitter suit asked if I wanted you as my lawfully wedded wife. I wasn’t scared when I said yes.”
Grace reaches out, hoping desperately that Yuki will reach back, and she does. She does. Yuki opens her palm, and Grace takes one of her crystals. “I don’t want to be scared of you, Yuki Yamamoto.”
“Then don’t be,” Yuki says, voice quiet and low and reverent. “I looked it up, you know. I looked up how to get an annulment. Printed out the paperwork and everything. Even filled it out and signed my name. But then you called me, and I ripped them up.” She places her crystal on the altar like an intention. “I don’t want to be scared of you, either, Grace Porter.”
Grace lets out a small laugh. “We’re kind of a mess.”
Yuki shakes her head. “On my show I asked ‘Are you there?’ All the lonely creatures that were listening said yes, and it turns out you were one of them,” she says. “Us lonely creatures have to stick together.” She taps at the matching band on Grace’s ring finger. She reaches up to touch a glinting key, the one nestled against Grace’s chest that feels so a part of her that it thumps in time with her pulse. “You’re my mess now, and I’m yours. No take-backs.”
Grace told her parents she was coming to New York for research. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, she said. Maybe that part wasn’t a lie. “Then can I come with you to do your show?” she asks. Let me in, she thinks. I will try to be your good thing, too.
Yuki smiles. Her eyes are dark and her teeth are sharp. She is a lonely creature of the dark. Grace doesn’t want to be scared. “Yes,” she says.
This part is easy.
Yuki’s radio station is an unassuming building. The guard at the front desk hands Yuki a key.
“Need me to lock up?” she asks. “You know I love having so much power, Jarrell.”
The guy, Jarrell, rolls his eyes. “Babysitter fell through. I’ll owe you one.”
Yuki waves him away. “Go be a responsible parent,” she says. “Is Little Jay still working on that history paper?”
Jarrell nods. “He says Tudor England is, and I quote, ‘a white people soap opera,’ like I got any idea what he’s talking about. They ain’t teach no damn Tudor England when I got my GED.”
Yuki laughs, leaning against the desk. “Tell him to text me, and we can talk it through.”
Jarrell glares at Yuki as he leaves. “Don’t let me find out you’re turning my son into a history major like you.”
“He’ll thank me when he’s in debt up to his eyeballs all for a useless degree,” she says. “Night.”
“Night,” Jarrell calls, “to you and your friend.”
He turns the light off and waits until Yuki locks the door behind him. “I didn’t know you were a history major,” Grace says quietly. “You never told me that.”
Yuki leads them down a long dark hallway, until they get to a door hanging ajar. “Like I said,” she starts breezily, “completely useless for the real world. My classes taught me some of the first stories I used for the show, though. Yay for secondary education.”
Grace follows her inside. There’s a brown-skinned girl with headphones on and her feet up on a small desk. She gives them a peace sign and keeps tapping at her phone.
“That’s Blue,” Yuki says, flicking the girl on the forehead. “She makes the magic happen.”
Blue takes one headphone out. “She means that literally. After two years, she still has no idea how any of the controls work.”
“Host,” Yuki says, pointing at herself. “I don’t need to know those things. Also, this is Grace. We’re married. It’s complicated.”
Blue lets out a low whistle. She looks Grace up and down. “This is why all your stories have turned so romantic lately, huh?”
Yuki screeches, embarrassed and flushed. “Can you go set up, please? Do that magic stuff you claim to do?”
Blue puts her hands up. She flips her cornrows and beads and disappears to the other side of the studio. “Whatever you say, boss.”
Yuki stares up at the ceiling when she leaves, refusing to make eye contact with Grace. “What do you do when you hate all your friends?”
“Kill them,” Grace says. She settles into a chair in front of a whole switchboard of lights and commands. “Can I ask you something?” she says carefully, her mind on a different conversation.
“What?” Yuki starts taking notebooks out of her backpack. “You gotta ask Blue if you want to know how any of this shit works.”
“Not that,” Grace says hesitantly. She turns around, watching Yuki. “Why didn’t you pursue history? And I know,” she cuts in, when Yuki opens her mouth, “it’s totally hypocritical of me to ask. I studied astronomy for eleven years, and I feel more disconnected from it than ever. So, I get it. But, why didn’t you?”
Yuki keeps her head down. “Do you think I have a sob story, Grace Porter? I don’t look up at the stars and wonder if Asada Goryu is thinking about me in the afterlife or anything.”
“Impressive name-drop, but ouch,” Grace says. She leans an elbow on the desk, careful of the switches.
Yuki’s mouth twitches in amusement. She spins around to match Grace’s rhythm. “I paid for college myself,” she admits. “My parents wanted me to do something practical, you know? Like, business or law. If they were gonna pay for it, it had to be something worthwhile, you know? They’re first-gen immigrants, so they think the American dream is something that actually exists. They weren’t going to let me follow my dreams and study medieval history or, like, fucking astronomy.” She glances at Grace. “No offense.”
Grace smiles, wry and bitter. “My father wanted me to study medicine. He ended up helping me pay for my undergrad and master’s programs, but I was on my own for my doctorate. Then he walked out of my graduation ceremony, so I think he still made his opinion of my degree quite clear.”
“A fellow family disappointment,” Yuki says. “I took out a bunch of loans I keep deferring, and now I’m a waitress with a radio show.” She grabs her notebook and turns away, making small notes in the margins. “No sob story, I told you.”
Grace watches her, her fellow lonely creature. Whereas Grace looked up and thought, This is where I belong, Yuki looked into the past and thought the same thing. Now they’re both sitting in an old radio station, reaching out into the unknown dark.
“Now, I have a show to start,” Yuki says, firmly closing the subject. “Are you ready?”
Grace leans forward. Yuki’s handwriting is atrocious. “What are you talking about tonight?”
“You’ll see,” Yuki says. She pushes the sleeves of her flannel shirt back to reveal the tattoos that run up her wrists. Blooming flowers wind around her forearms like ivy around an old, haunted house. She has one behind her ear, too, a small cluster of petals that reminds Grace of the first signs of life after winter. Little buds peeking through thawing dirt and melting snow. She puts her headphones on, and it gets covered up. “I need to have some secrets.”
Blue raps on the window and gives Yuki a thumbs-up. She presses a button, and the control panel turns orange and green and yellow.
It is like magic, and Grace feels goose bumps.
“Good night to my fellow lonely creatures out there, waiting patiently in the dark. My name is Yuki. Are you there? I hope you’re listening.”
Grace holds her breath.
“I’ve talked a lot about loneliness,” Yuki says. “We are lonely creatures in a big, big world.” She tucks her hair behind her ears, and though she speaks of loneliness, she is on display here in her little, dark studio, an open book. “Loneliness stems from a lot of things—uncertainty, self-preservation, fear. But what about loneliness that stems from something different? What about the creatures relegated to the dark because of deviation?” Grace curls up in her chair and watches as Yuki weaves her dark tale.
“I’ve told you there are a lot of monsters that lurk in Japanese culture,” she says. “When we used to visit home during the summer, my grandmother always told me stories. She told me once about the Yamauba. They were old women pushed to the very edges of society and forced to live in the mountains.
“Even as a child, I wondered why so many of the bad things, the scary things, were women. I asked my grandmother once, and she told me it was the way of the world. Sometimes monsters became women, because women who deviated were monsters. I didn’t understand that until later.
“But the Yamauba, these were horrifying monsters in the shape of women. They were old and childless. They lured young pregnant girls up to their little shackled homes, promising safety and warmth, and then they ate their babies. They saw these crying, red, screaming creatures that stormed into the world, these things the Yamauba could never create themselves, and they ate them.”
Grace leans forward, mesmerized. Yuki is able to find humanity in monsters, or maybe she gives monsters their humanity back. She says here is a terrible, horrifying thing, and holds it up like a mirror to anyone listening.
“There were more stories. The Yamauba would sneak down from their homes and eat children in the village when their mothers were gone. It is strange that the Yamauba, old and barren and childless, seemed so enamored with children. It is strange that one whose belly has never stretched is still so eager to make it full.
“But this is not just a story about women and their expectations. This is not just a story about monsters, born from being unable to contort and fit into the small box we have given them and suddenly are afraid of what they have become.
“This is a story about how deviation from the norm can create scary, monstrous things. What my grandmother didn’t know was that years later, society would still create Yamauba. We would still be seen as dark, terrible things simply for refusing to fit a particular narrative. Perhaps the truly terrifying thing is to step away from what you’re supposed to do and what you have planned. Perhaps you, the monster that you are, find yourself feeding on what you could not bear yourself.
“Perhaps Yamauba were created because we did not want to name something we brought forth with our own hands,” Yuki says. “Perhaps flesh-eating monsters are simply people who break their molds and their boxes, and find themselves demanding all they have been denied.”
Yuki motions at Blue and Grace blinks, eyes aching, like she is waking from a terrible and deep sleep.
“My name is Yuki,” she hears. “Good night, my lonely creatures. Are you listening? Are you there?”
I am here, says the darkness inside Grace. I am listening. It takes shape. With each rejection, each uncertain move, each deviation from how she is supposed to fit inside the plan that has been made for her, it twists and contorts. It consumes itself.
It has become very ugly, indeed.
“Are you there?” Yuki asks as she signs off.
I am here, the darkness says. Its voice sounds eerily like Grace.