Dirty Laundry (20 page)

He slicked back the sleeve of his T-shirt, exposing more of his right arm for me to see. The pale of his skin was banished beneath vivid colors and deep, shadowy blacks. Covered from shoulder to wrist, his arm was a collage of three animals and natural elements.

An Asian stylized rat sat on his upper arm, its fur dotted with bright pink cherry blossom petals. Farther down, a battle-armored horse ran strong past his elbow, its tail flowing down to tangle around the ends of a brilliant-hued rooster. Interspersed between the animals were more flowers, strange, wide-frilled petals of blues and yellows.

“This is our mother’s birth year. I had this done for her. My art, but my teacher did the ink.” Pointing to the rat, he smiled again, softer and more wistful than before. “She was very young when she went away with your father. Not quite eighteen and, really, not very ratlike. Most Rat Year people adapt easily to new environments. Our mother… didn’t. She couldn’t stand to be away from her home. I think it’s why she finally left.”

He spoke of a woman I never knew existed. As far as I knew, Ryoko McGinnis died on my birth day or soon after that. To my knowledge, she’d never held me… never spoke my name out loud. Now here was a man with my mouth and Mike’s eyes telling me she thought of me… thought of my brother… even after abandoning us to our father.

“The horse—that is Mikio. From what I can tell, he’s truly a Horse. Very energetic. Very cunning. I like him. He seems strong.”

“You haven’t met him?” More than a bit confused, I looked at a brother I’d never imagined having. “I thought you were staying with him.”

“I came a day early,” Ichiro admitted softly. “I wanted to see you. To talk with my brother who seems to hurt inside. Just the two of us. Without Mikio stepping between us to shove us together. He seems to like maneuvering things. Very much the Horse, no?”

“I don’t know. Neither Mike or I are very Japanese. Hell, up until I met my… Jae, ramen and takeout sushi was the most Asian thing I was around.” I picked at the pie again, spearing a berry from its guts. “Jae… a friend of mine said something about birth animals once, but I wasn’t paying a lot of attention.”

Mostly because I’d been stripping his jeans off of him at the time and sucking at the dip in his belly.

Ichiro touched at the spot where the horse’s long tail curved into the rooster’s bright red tail feathers. “This is you, Kenjiro. The rooster. Of the two of you, she was more worried about you. That your father would move too much. Roosters are social creatures. They need people around them, long-time friends. She worried you would only have Mikio for company.”

“He’s not bad company,” I confessed. “Once you can get him to stop bossing you around.”

Ichiro grinned at me. “I’ve had him pushing at me. He’s hard to resist.”

“A swift kick in the nuts worked when we were kids. Can’t do that now. He’s got a wife. Too much damage there and they won’t be able to have kids.” Staring at the art covering his arm, I was at a loss about what to say first. “Why did you ink that on you?”

“Your birth signs?” Ichiro pursed his mouth when I grunted a yes. “Because I didn’t know you… didn’t have you. I needed you with me… needed
umma
… our mother with me. It was how I kept you close to me. You are my brothers. My family. Even if I didn’t know you, I carried you with me. Does that make sense to you?”

“Yeah, it makes sense.”

My shame soured the sweetness of the blueberries in my mouth. The colors of his ink blurred, and swallowing didn’t seem to get the chunk of emotion clear from my throat. I had to look away, focusing on a loose button on one of the pillows. Neko slammed her head into my arm, nudging me from my thoughts, and I looked up to find Ichiro staring at me, his face a calm mask. His hand was still on his tattoo, stroking at the images he’d laid down under his skin. Lacking our faces, he’d given himself as much of us as he could reach, mythical creatures drawn from our births and our places in his life.

Would it be so horrible to have another brother? Would it be so bad to have someone else to turn to when life got too tight around me? There was only one way to find out. The ultimate test of family, a few spoken words whispered over the space between us and I’d know if Ichiro was someone I could have in my life.

“Did Mike… Mikio… tell you I’m gay?” My breath was caught between my throat and my lungs. A trail of fears burnt down through my stomach. I took my gaze off of the pillow and met my brother’s gaze full on, watching him process what I’d said.

He ran his hands through his hair, another one of my own habits, oddly familiar but strangely freaky to see someone else’s hands… hands too much like my own. Everything about him was too much of me, too much of Mike. I was having difficulties sifting through the similarities to find the Ichiro bits amid the chaff.

“How much do you know about Japan,
oniisan
?” Ichiro slid forward until he was at the edge of the sofa cushion and reached out to touch my knee. I jumped at the contact, startled by his fingers on my leg.

“I know that not all sushi is raw and rice shouldn’t be instant,” I said, shrugging. “Other than history, a total pissed-off fucking hell feeling about atomic bombs being used, and what seems to be a weird obsession with a big-headed cat with a bow on its head, not much.”

Ichiro laughed, a husky sound rolled with mirth. “Sanrio owns Japan’s soul. I’m sure of it.”

“That’s who makes the cat?” I snorted when he nodded. “Thing gives me the creeps. All of them. Their heads are fricking huge.”

“I think it’s an acquired taste, or maybe you have to be a little insane. Japanese women love her,” he agreed. Ichiro’s laughter soon dissipated from his mouth, leaving his face somber. Skimming his hands over his arms, he said. “What I’ve done to myself… how I wear my life on my skin… isn’t welcome in Japan. Too many people associate tattoos with violence… with criminals. I cannot go into a public bath, and if I ride the subway with my arms exposed, people recoil from me. Even as tightly packed as the trains are, they skirt around me and avoid touching me. To them, I wear violence on my skin, and most Japanese are very troubled by that. I
disturb
their lives by having my art on my skin.”

“That’s insane.” I bit my lip, suddenly hearing my words from Jae’s point of view. “Sorry, I’m too… American sometimes. It’s hard to take a step back sometimes. What about your family there? They know you’re not like that, right?”

“My own father is….” He paused, taking a breath. “My family is very traditional. They pride themselves on being traditional. From my great-grandfather on down, they all believe the bloodline should be pure Japanese, clean of any influence or heritage that is not Japanese. To them, I’m an abomination… an aberration of culture. Who I am… what I have on my skin… what I choose to do with my life… distances me from them. Their doors are closed to me. I am barely tolerated in my father’s house, and if he is able to have another son with his new wife, I’m certain he would turn his back on me as soon as the cord is cut. So I understand how you feel about being shoved out for being who you are… what you need to be.”

“But you
chose
this,” I pointed out, gesturing toward the tattoos. “You didn’t have to do that to yourself.”

“Life is not always a choice. Your loving men isn’t a choice, not inside of you,” he replied softly. “Could you have lived a life without men in your bed? Yes. You could have buried your want of men deep inside of you and sought out women. Would you have been happy? Probably not. Your true self would eat you up from inside, poisoning your blood with self-hatred until you could no longer breathe through the stink of your rotting soul.”

I nodded, lost in his words. “So, you feel like you didn’t have a choice. You couldn’t be anything but… this… you.”

“No, I couldn’t be… won’t be anyone else but me.” He softened the bitterness of our conversation with an engaging smile. “Tokugawa Ichiro, inker of tattoos and reviled son of his family.”

It was confusing. He’d purposely stepped outside of what’d been expected of him… of who he was supposed to be. There’d been a small part of me that still wished I’d been born straight, a part of me that denied the normality of my homosexuality. It’d been a malevolence inside of me, a cancerous longing bred up from society pressuring me… from my parents’ rejecting me… and an innate need to just be…
normal
. Because being gay… even loving as deeply as I’d been loved and have loved… still wasn’t
normal
yet. I hated feeling that way… hated having that whispering need to be like everyone else slicing up my happiness. Life would have been easier if I’d just been… straight.

But then I wouldn’t be me.

I wouldn’t trade the touch of Jae’s mouth on my skin for the world, and my heart thrummed with the thought of touching him again. The normal I’d been judged against had never been mine. Never would be mine. It was as much of a
normal
as anything else, and fuck anyone who couldn’t see that, couldn’t embrace that as a truth.

Maybe Ichiro really didn’t have as much of a choice as I’d thought.

“Why did you do it, then? Why did you choose… this?” It seemed such a trivial thing. Tattoos were common here, meant next to nothing, and in some places like the hipster-hippie coffee shop across the street, I’d expect the barista to have them, almost as if to validate who they were. In essence, Ichiro’d chosen to be his own kind of gay, pushing himself out of his family. “If you knew they were going to be assholes about it, why did you do it?”

“I chose to ink myself… to ink others, because it speaks to me. I crave bringing a piece of another person up out to their skin with my art. To me, tattooing means I touch someone’s heart and find who they are, leaving it behind after I am done.” His shrug was elegant, a bird sweeping through the air toward the horizon. “So in this,
oniisan
, you and I are the same. You love men and I love ink. We made the choice to live as we are… not as others want us to be. So the question is, Cole Kenjiro, can you accept me as I am while I learn to accept you as you are?”

W
E
BOTH
agreed we’d need time to get to know each other. First thing we’d work on was what to call one another. He went by Ichi, and I’d never been Kenjiro. Mike was on his own. He’d be Mikio the Horse until the end of time if he didn’t speak up. I’d asked if a jackass counted as a horse. Ichi said he’d look into it but didn’t think it would fly. At least not for Mike.

He was so similar to me in so many ways, but in others, so different. Mike was going to have a hell of a time bossing Ichi around like he did me. Maddy was going to love him. Walking him out to his rental car, I gave him better directions to the double Ms’ house than his GPS did. Avoiding the 405 during its reconstruction was key. No mapping program ever took into account the asshattery of Los Angeles’s roadwork.

Bobby was driving up just as Ichi was getting into his rental car. My supposed best friend eyed my younger brother’s ass as he climbed into the sedan. His eyes sparkled with sexual awareness at Ichi’s long legs, and he even bent forward to catch a last glimpse of my brother’s face.

“Nice.” He whistled under his breath as Ichi drove away. “Decided to toss aside your—”

“Shut the fuck up. That’s my brother.” I elbowed him and pushed him up the walk. “And no, Jae’s not going anywhere, you fucking asshole.”

“Just saying, damn.” Another whistle and he strolled up the walk toward my front door, his meaty fists in his jeans pockets. “Your mother grew some pretty boys.”

“Thought you weren’t into Asians.”

“I can make exceptions.” Bobby winked and smirked. “I did for you.”

I’d already put away the rest of the pie and wasn’t planning on offering any to Bobby, especially after he ogled Ichi. More concerned about finding a cold beer in my fridge, he shoved aside Claudia’s pastry for a couple of Guinness Black Lagers. After popping one open, he took a sip and swished the brew in his mouth.

“Kind of… coffee-ish,” he declared, passing me the other. “I like it.”

“Thanks. I’ll sleep better tonight knowing you like my beer.” I cracked open the Guinness, padded back to the living room, and took back my place on the couch. “What’d you drop by for?”

“To check up on you.” He slumped down on the other end of the larger sofa, dislodging Neko from her bath. She gave him a foul look and stomped down the cushions to knead at my lap. “See where you are on this stupid case you’re determined to break your fucking head on. Unless you want to talk about your hot brother—”

“No, not talking about Ichi.” I shut Bobby down. “He’s not gay. Or even if he is, quit being a perv.”

“Never know till he tries,” He took a sip of beer and nearly choked on it when I shot him a foul look. “Okay, Princess. I’ll back off. Just joking.”

“Shit’s turned around in my head right now, dude,” I explained softly. “I don’t need more crap to deal with, okay?”

“Yeah, I know.” Bobby’s voice softened, and he leaned forward and pulled me into a one-armed hug. It felt good to be touched. Even as rough as he usually was, Bobby gave good hugs. I didn’t know I needed one until his arm was around my shoulder. He took my beer and placed it on the chest with his, then tugged me nearly into his lap so he could get a better grip on me. “There’s been a lot of shit on your plate, kid. You sure you want to take on this thing with the fortune-teller?”

Lying against Bobby’s chest, I could feel his heartbeat through my shoulder blades, and the sound throbbed through to my chest. Hooking a leg up over the arm of the sofa, I contemplated dropping the investigation.

“Heh, I can see that look on your face.” His chuckle rumbled into my spine. “You can’t walk away from this, can you?”

“No, not really,” I admitted. “It’s not just that I am pissed off someone killed that girl in front of me… because I am… really fucking angry that she died. Someone took her away from her mother. And for what? Nobody knows. This is all fucked-up to hell, Bobby. I can’t just let it go. It’s not fair to Vivian or to Madame Sun.”