NON-DISCLOSURE

Antoinette

She winced against the glitter of sea and sky through the large window that framed him. The gallery’s restaurant was otherwise empty. He was facing the view, hair and suit the same silver, back straight, a crystal tumbler at his right hand.

Ana’s hair was still wet. She’d barely had the time to take a shower—in fact, she was late—but she felt reckless now, and she didn’t suppose that he would cancel their appointment over a half-hour’s delay. He stood and nodded when she approached. She nodded in return and took the seat opposite him, which was set with cutlery and a plate of something . 

“Empêchement,” she said. “Unexpected change in plans.”

“I ordered poutine,” he said. “Not on the menu, but one of your mother’s favourites. A Montreal specialty. They sent the bellboy to pick up the ingredients.”

Ana’s instinctive response, as it often was with him, was to decline. But in truth she couldn’t recall the last time she had eaten. She had been swept up and spun around; she had been stupid and sorry and heart-sore. Now, like a child returned from an ill-conceived runaway mission, she was simply tired and hungry. She picked up a fork and nudged the cheese-and-bacon-covered potatoes around.

“I’ll assume you’ve chosen not to enjoy the local catch of the day?” she asked.

“You always did have a dark sense of humour,” her father answered.

“Good balance of trace elements in your diet. What is the recommended intake of mercury, I wonder?”

“I finished a steak before you arrived. Not bad. A bit bloody. Your dish, as I understand, is good in preparation for athletic exertion. Or after a long night.”

Ana scowled at him, then ate in silence, staring at the white folder pinned beneath his left palm. He, in turn, continued to look past her shoulder at the harbour, as though enchanted. As though it were preferable to looking at her.

“So I don’t need a key. You have my documents,” Ana said when she had finished, touching her lips with a thick napkin.

“I am here about our deal,” her father said evenly. “It had terms attached, if you recall.”

“Remind me.” Ana laced her fingers.

“You were not to attend alone,” her father answered. “So you can imagine my surprise when I was alerted to the request for access to The Catacombs—”

“Surely they aren’t called The Catacombs—”

“They are. Dramatic, I know. Inspired by the site of the installation.”

“Go on.”

“Imagine my surprise to discover you were on Bijushima whilst your husband was all the way in New Zealand.”

“I haven’t been alone. I have been with—a friend—from Tokyo.”

“Who?”

“Private and confidential,” she answered.

“They haven’t been vetted.”

“I certainly don’t remember that being a ‘term’.”

Her father huffed a laugh to himself in a manner that seemed almost proud. It made Ana’s stomach turn. The poutine had been cold and starchy, more sickening than satisfying.

“When I was a younger man,” he said, “I used to relish the moment when it was clear that we’d won. When we’d negotiated the pants off the other side, and they’d got sloppy. Agreed to things without thinking, without seeing the bigger picture. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. Wild time for commerce. Nothing like that anymore. Not for your husband. It’s all health and safety, work-life balance, all that rubbish.”

“What are you saying?” Ana asked coldly. “That you’re offering a poor deal? I don’t care. I want the documents. I’ve wanted those documents for as long as I can remember. Now our bargain’s due.”

“It never was any fun when one side was impaired.”

“Stop stalling.”

“I have a counteroffer,” he said, “because your core position is flawed.”

Ana sighed. Her neck was cold under her wet hair. Her head throbbed with fatigue. “How so?”

“This isn’t new information.”

“Sorry?”

“You have read these documents already,” he said. “Ten years ago.”

“What?” No. No, he couldn’t mean that. Why wasn’t he smiling anymore?

“Before your—episode.”

The world lurched like a carousel spinning off its axis. Her father continued to speak, but a ringing in her ears drowned him out. She stared at the odd curl of his lips. He asked something. She looked down at the tablecloth, the stained napkin, her hands. The episode? Her stomach twisted. Ana pushed herself up, staggered, then ran, near blindly between the empty tables of the restaurant and to the women’s bathroom. She was just in time to be sick in one of its stalls. 

Classical music played softly. Her eyes stung. Kyou. Where was Kyou? Everything about her. Everything it meant and couldn’t mean felt as though it were pressing against the back of Ana’s eyes. Throwing up felt good. Better. 

She waited where she was a while longer, knees on the floor, her head over the bowl, reflected face wavering over the rank, cloudy water. Ten years ago. She had been seventeen. What he meant was—what he was saying was—it was when she had last visited the island. Some part of her already knew. 

The lights. 

The train tracks.

Ana took a moment to rearrange herself before the long bathroom mirror. Her eyes were shadowed. Her lips were bruised. She checked for marks on her neck or chest and was unreasonably disappointed to find none. So discreet. So invisible. It made her heart hurt. 

She found her father in exactly the same position when she returned. Coffee had been served.

“What’s your counter,” she said weakly.

“Let me tell you the story,” he said, almost gently. “Let me tell you what you’ll find in this folder. Then you may take it. And get rid of it.”

“You’d trust me to do that?”

“We have nothing if we don’t have trust, Antowanetto.”

Ana watched him levelly. He was turning into an old man, she thought. He was losing his sharpness somehow. Some of his grey was turning to white. He was mortal, she supposed, after all.

“Let’s say I’m curious,” she said.

“Good,” he answered. “Because in this file you will find autopsy photos. You will find medical notes that speak of multiple sites of organ damage and failure. You will see your mother treated like an object of investigation. A foreign creature. You will find notes on the costs of the train line delays paid by my company. You will find notes on the clean-up that occurred. You will find reference to a woman on the tracks.” 

He cleared his throat. “It will not tell you whether she fell, or whether she jumped.”

Ana found that her breathing had become shallow. She wasn’t able to speak. She nodded for him to continue.

“So I offer you my story. I believe she jumped,” he said, “and I believe it was because of me. I was indiscreet. It was a mistake. When she found out, I refused to let her leave with you.”

In the end, Ana returned to Tokyo with her father without argument. She was comforted by the required use of headsets in the helicopter. He tried to chat with her over the two-way, but she switched it off and closed her eyes and he gave up. Her thoughts were messy, drunk. The chopper blades puttered away eternally. She slept.

Alone in her apartment that night, Ana thrust open the curtains, turned off the lights, and paced beside the window. She willed the stars to appear as fiery as on Bijushima, but the city sky was over-exposed by light pollution. It would erase them; she knew that. She knew, but still it appalled her. 

She couldn’t remain there. It was too awful. 

Everything led her to a velvet-lined room in a dingy neighbourhood, where she waited alone. There was a grotesque abundance of cushions about her. Dated saxophone music played in the background. Every so often, she was sure, she heard a moan or a sigh. It was awful, truly, that this place existed, and she in it. She sank sideways against the pillows and closed her eyes. It would be only for a moment. Only a moment.

“Antoinette?”

The room was dark. It had a dangerous scent: perfume, liquor, smoke. Her head buzzed as she sat up, drawn towards the voice of the other person, who was—

Kyou. Dressed in a suit of undertaker’s black, she gave her crooked smile, looking a little worried.

“You’re disguised as Kai,” Ana said.

“I’m at work,” Kyou said, sitting a small distance away. That hurt. “I brought water and the house sake. But perhaps you need some coffee, or—?”

“No. I need you—to talk to you.”

“Okay,” Kyou said warily.

“My letters. Do you still have them? I just—I thought I wanted to read them—but I don’t know. I have—I have a file that I promised not to look at. Would you?”

“Read it?”

“Yes.” Ana produced the white folder from her purse, then tipped it in Kyou’s direction.

“Now?”

“Please.”

Kyou slid her thumbnail beneath the seal of the envelope within in a painfully gentle motion. She gathered the papers in her hands and looked over them one by one with slow reverence. Every now and then, her brow would crease—in concentration or concern, Ana couldn’t tell—and then shuffle the page to the back and move on to the next. 

Finally she asked, “What would you like to know?”

“I want you to decide,” Ana answered. “Tell me what you think I need to know. After that I will keep my promise and get rid of the documents.”

“Okay,” Kyou said again. “Some of this is in English. Do you think your husband might be better—”

“No. Not him.”

“Okay.” Kyou nodded, speaking in a tone that Ana had heard her use with for a half-drunk Natsuko. “Okay, that’s fine. I’m going to use a translation app for some of this. Give me a moment.”

Ana did. She drank some water, then, becoming increasingly nervous in the silence, started on the sake. 

“These are records of your mother’s death,” Kyou said. “It was a suspected suicide on the train tracks of a central Tokyo station. In the morning. There are photos, and—” Kyou paused to shuffle through, “for the most part, I don’t think they’re worth seeing, but—”

“But?”

“In one—if you cover part of it—it looks as though she’s sleeping. She appears—” Kyou looked up at Ana, seeming to weigh her words. Infuriating.

“Tell me.”

“Like you,” Kyou answered. “Like you do, still dreaming, in the morning. When it’s hard to tell whether you’re smiling. And what you’re smiling for.”

“Oh,” Ana said quietly.

“And there’s a note, in English and Japanese. It says:

 

I have to go. I cannot stay. It’s time that I must fly away. 

If you are a man who holds all the world, a man who is a god, then give it all to her. Spoil her with kindness. She is a box of precious items, a thing dearest to me. 

Tell her this is an accident. Many steps have led to this accident. She doesn’t need the details.

I cannot stay here; it makes me too lonely to speak. I cannot leave without her. You won’t allow her to leave with me. I can understand. She is precious. I am torn in half. If I stay, my sadness will wash over her. Drown her. I will be bad for her. I cannot stay.

Tell her often how I love her. Tell her that my love for her is vast. Far vaster than the span of a life. 

I love Antoinette.

 

Kyou looked up, hesitated, then said, “I will always, always love Antoinette.”

The air left the room, and all of the colour and sound. All of it was sucked out except the light that illuminated Kyou, dressed as a stranger, holding a piece of paper. 

And then something rocked through Ana—a full body reaction that she couldn’t control:  a laugh that became a sob. She turned her face away and pushed a hand over her mouth. Not here. Not with her. But of course it was too late, and Kyou moved in and gathered her up. She stroked Ana’s back and made comforting sounds. They sounded like ‘Nn, nn,’ but Ana couldn’t be sure.

They had promised that it would end on Bijushima—whatever it was—because of course it must. There were John and Natsuko and whoever else in Kyou’s life that Ana hadn’t dared to ask after. But promises made in haste were fragile things. Ana, tear-streaked and exhausted, pulled back. The patience and kindness in Kyou’s face were almost unbearable. 

“Will your flatmates be out tomorrow?”