Kaz was right. I didn’t feel much. But I did produce a howl that contained every scale I’d ever practiced, every swinging, sorrowful tune I’d ever played. I couldn’t look at my hand. Kaz showed about as much emotion as a person who’s just boned a chicken. He shook out one of the white cloths and dropped it over the mess on the table. Then he wiped the nata down with the other and put everything back in Goto’s briefcase. He tucked the plane ticket into my shirt pocket.
“Keep pressure on it,” he said. “You’ve got ten minutes before it really starts to hurt. And don’t forget the fingertip. Sometimes they can sew them back on.”
I saw Kaz’s back going through the door. I never saw the others leave. I wound the blood-soaked cloth around my hand and stumbled after them. But they had flashlights, and I didn’t.
I don’t know how long it took me to find my way out of the market. A bank of windows high up near the roof let in enough of the sickly glow of nighttime Tokyo for me to navigate the labyrinth. I was like the ball in a pachinko machine, bouncing off tables and tanks until sheer chance brought me to the right door. I staggered into the humid fug of Tsukiji and collapsed onto a polystyrene container the size of a coffin. Then I clutched my ruined hand to my stomach, doubled over and had a good cry.
I was in a country where I didn’t speak the language. Inside a bloody rag was a finger joint to be sewn back on, fast. In the middle of the night. In a hospital that, for all I knew, might look like any other office building. I could be forgiven a few tears of rage and pain and sadness, and there was nobody around to be offended. Or to help. No Kaz doubling back to save me. No Akiko, an angel of mercy in a silver Acura. No Momo cradling my head and assuring me it was all a big misunderstanding. I remembered the pathetic vomiting kid on the train, ignored by everyone, falling to his knees on the platform. That was me now, another disgusting, damaged gaijin cast adrift in an indifferent city. I’d become invisible.
And my hand had started to throb. Kaz had been right—the reaction was delayed, but the pain was finally arriving. If I was going to save my finger, I had to know how bad it was. How much blood was I losing? Did I even have the fingertip?
I pulled another squeaking box in front of me, laid my damaged hand on it and carefully loosened the cloth. No fingertip rolled out. Maybe I’d left it on the table, or maybe it had fallen on my way out of the market. Now it was official. I would never play the piano again.
But no fingertip meant no urgency. With applied pressure, the bleeding would stop. Everything that was going to happen to me had happened. I had some wandering around to do until I found a hospital, but the worst was over. Probably the bleeding was slowing down already. It didn’t hurt that much.
I lifted my hand and carefully detached the cloth. I steeled myself to look.
My fingertip was in there after all. But it was still attached to the rest of my finger. The blood was coming from a slice across the top of the knuckle, not from a stump. All I needed was a Band-Aid.
I’d been had—again.
I found a taxi outside the warren of shops in Tsukiji and convinced the frightened driver to take me to my apartment. I grabbed my passport, a change of clothes and my stash of tips from Goto’s bar. Then I paid the driver the equivalent of a hundred dollars for the ninety-minute ride to Narita International Airport. The sun was rising when I got there, a pale egg yolk in a dirty-yellow sky. I bought some Band-Aids and cleaned myself up in a sparkling washroom. Then I wandered through the shopping concourse until I found a restaurant that served a Western breakfast.
They’d booked me to Vancouver, then through to Nanaimo, and given me just enough time to collect myself and go. But no more. I had to hand it to Kaz—in Japan, even the yakuza were efficient. And generous too. When I checked in, I found I was traveling business class. No baggage? Not a problem, sir. Everyone smiled. Everyone was polite. Uniformed Tokyo Girls bowed me down the jetway.
I was sipping a Sapporo before the rest of the passengers were even seated. I held my aching finger against the cold can. I was going to have a nasty bruise, but that was all. If there’d been a piano on board, I could probably have played it. A text lit up my cell phone just as the plane started to push back. Kaz’s timing, as usual, was impeccable.
I owed you one, the message said. That particular nata is a collector’s item. It was made for a movie about yakuza back when there were no digital effects. You can’t even see the join where the blade slides up. Sorry if it cut you. Enjoy your flight.
The flight attendant gently relieved me of my beer can and handed me a fresh one. Her smile seemed to come from the heart. The man in the seat across from me wore headphones the size of grapefruits. Outside on the hot tarmac, three maintenance men bowed as we passed.
“Did you enjoy your stay in Japan?” the attendant asked. The engines started, and the big plane began to lumber forward.
“Parts of it,” I said.
Had Kaz pulled me out of the fire? Or had I just been taught a carefully choreographed and exquisitely embarrassing lesson? I typed, Did Goto know? Then I sat back, and the plane began to rumble and rattle toward the runway.
But Kaz never wrote back.