Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (28 page)

S
heldon didn't have much time left, Henry knew for certain. With his friend's failing health, the desire to go to New York to find Keiko would have to be put on hold. It had been forty years, he could wait awhile longer – he would have to wait.

At the Hearthstone Inn, Sheldon had enjoyed a steady stream of visitors – family, friends, and former co-workers. Even a few loyal music fans who recognized his place in the paved-over history of Seattle's once-vibrant jazz scene.

But now most of his well-wishers had come and gone. They'd paid their last respects to a man they loved. Just his family remained, along with the minister from Sheldon's church, trying his best to comfort the family.

‘How is he?' Henry asked Minnie, a silver-haired woman ten years the junior of the old sax man.

She hugged Henry in the doorway and let go, but still
held on to his elbows. Her wrinkled eyes puffy, showing the redness from so much crying, her cheeks still damp. ‘It won't be long now, Henry. We know that. I know that. We're just so ready for him to have his peace, to not be in any pain,' she said.

Henry felt a quiver in his lip, something that surprised even him. He bit his tongue and stood up taller, not wanting his tears to add to Minnie's grief.

‘Is this your doing? The music, I mean? The record?'

Henry felt horrible. He'd taken the record, and now everyone knew it was missing. He held it tight under his arm, beneath his coat to keep it out of the misty rain that filled the Seattle air. ‘I … I can explain …'

‘No need to explain, Henry, I mean' – she was searching for the right words – ‘it's amazing, like a miracle, really. Listen. Can you hear it? It sounds like a miracle to me.'

And for the first time in forty years, Henry heard it. Playing in Sheldon's room was the long forgotten song he'd first heard in the Black Elks Club. The Oscar Holden song he and Keiko had shared. Their song – but Sheldon's too. And it was playing, loud and clear.

Walking into the room, Henry saw a woman standing there. In his mind's eye, he thought it might be Keiko, her caring smile was almost as bright. But it was Samantha, sitting next to an old portable record player, the boxed kind you could check out of the public library years ago. On it spun a complete vinyl recording of Oscar Holden's lost classic ‘The Alley Cat Strut,' the song he'd dedicated to Henry and Keiko.

Sheldon lay unconscious, drifting in and out of that gray, empty space between life and whatever fate had in store
for him next. Beside him were an assorted collection of kids and grandchildren, many of whom Henry recognized from earlier meetings or from the photos Sheldon had proudly shared when he and Henry would get together over the years.

‘I like Grampa's record,' a little girl confided. Henry estimated her to be about six, a great-granddaughter perhaps.

‘It's wonderful, Henry,' Samantha said, smiling with bright eyes wet but hopeful. ‘You should have seen him smile when we put it on and played it the first time. Like he'd been wanting to hear this, needing to hear this, all these years.'

‘But …' Henry took out the broken record he held in his coat. ‘Where?'

‘
She
sent it.' Samantha said it with a glowing reverence, like a bit player in awe of a featured performer about to set foot on the main stage. ‘Marty found her living on the East Coast, and she asked about you, asked about everyone, Sheldon too. And when she found out, she sent the record immediately. Can you believe that? She kept it all those years, the Holy Grail you knew existed.' She handed Henry a note. ‘This came for you.'

Henry hesitated, not quite believing what he was hearing. He gently tore open the envelope. He felt as though he were sleepwalking as he read Keiko's words.

Henry folded the letter with trembling hands, unable to continue. He had had a hard time revealing the true nature of what was found in the dusty basement of the Panama Hotel that day. He'd felt as if it might tarnish the way his son looked at him, or the way he might look at his mother. But in the end, as in so many of Henry's father-and-son moments, he'd had it wrong. Marty wanted him to be happy. To Henry, Keiko was lost in time, but to Marty, a few hours of research, a few phone calls, and there she was, alive and well, living in New York City, even after all these years.

Henry smiled, reached out, and grabbed hold of Samantha's hand. ‘You're amazing.' He struggled to find the words. ‘Marty has done well. Amazingly well.'

Looking at Sheldon, Henry sat on the edge of the bed, his hand on his friend's arm, watching his rattled breathing. His body shutting down, laboring for each breath. Sheldon looked hot and feverish; his body was losing the ability to regulate his own temperature. He was burning himself up.

As Henry watched his dying friend, he listened to the record, waiting for a saxophone solo he hadn't heard in four decades. As the band slowed and the brittle recorded melody kicked in, Sheldon opened his eyes. He looked up, as if regarding Henry.

Sheldon's mouth moved, straining to get the words out. Henry moved in, placing his ear close, to hear Sheldon's whispered words. ‘You fixed it.'

Henry nodded. ‘I fixed it.'
And soon, I'm going to fix everything
.

Three hours later, with Minnie at his side, surrounded by a lifetime supply of family and grandchildren, Sheldon opened his eyes again. Henry was there, Marty and Samantha too. In the background the strains of Oscar Holden and the Midnight Blue echoed in the shadowed corners of the room. The lungs that had once powered the sounds of South Jackson, playing to the delight of a generation, breathed slowly one last time and whispered the final notes of his song.

Henry watched Sheldon's eyes close and his body lighten, as if his entire frame were waving a slow goodbye.

Beneath the simple bars of the tune playing, Henry whispered to no one but the spirit of his friend, ‘Thank you, sir, and you have a fine day.' 

H
enry had never been to New York City. Oh, sure, maybe once or twice in a dream. But in full, waking reality, it was a place he’d thought of often over the years but never allowed himself to visit. It seemed a world away. Not just across the country or on another coast, but someplace beyond the horizon, lost in another time.

In the forty-dollar cab ride from La Guardia Airport, Henry held the complete Oscar Holden record on his lap. It had been played at Sheldon’s funeral. The same one he had hand-carried on the plane from Seattle – his one piece of carry-on luggage, a conversation piece everywhere he went.

When he explained where the record came from, its unique history, and the circumstances of life at the time, people always gushed their amazement. Even the young blond woman sitting next to him on the plane, who was flying to New York on business, couldn’t believe he was hand-carrying the only
remaining playable copy. She’d forgotten how horribly cruel the Japanese internment was. She was in awe of the Panama Hotel’s survival. A place of personal belongings, cherished memories, forgotten treasures.

‘First time to the city?’ the cabdriver asked. He’d been eyeing Henry in the rearview mirror, but his passenger was lost in thought, staring out the window at the brick-
and-mortar
landscape that rolled by. A nonstop ebb and flow of yellow taxis, sleek limousines, and pedestrians who swarmed the sidewalks.

‘First time’ was all Henry could manage to say. Marty and Samantha had wanted him to call first. To call ahead. But he couldn’t bring himself to pick up the phone. He was too nervous. Like now.

‘This is it, twelve hundred block of Waverly Place,’ the driver called out; his arm, which hung out the open window, pointed to a small apartment building.

‘This is Greenwich Village?’

‘You’re looking at it, pal.’

Henry paid the driver an additional thirty dollars to take his bags one mile over to the Marriott, where he’d drop them off with the bellman. A strange thought, trusting someone in the big city, Henry noted to himself. But that was what this trip was really all about, wasn’t it? Blind faith. And besides, he had nothing to lose. What were some luggage and a change of clothes compared with finding and fixing a broken heart?

The apartment building looked old and modest, but a flat there still probably cost a fortune compared with the simple home Henry had occupied in Seattle for the past forty years.

Looking at the address Marty had given to him, Henry
went inside and found himself on the eighth floor, a Chinese lucky number. Standing in the hallway, he stared at the door of Kay Hatsune, a widow of three years. Henry didn’t know what had happened to her husband. If Marty knew, he hadn’t said.

Just that Kay was indeed … Keiko.

Henry looked at the record in his hand. When he took it partway out of the sleeve, the vinyl looked impossibly new. She must have taken impeccable care of it over the years.

Putting the record away, Henry straightened the line of the old two-piece suit his son had set out for him, checked his hair and the shine of his shoes.

He touched his face where he’d shaved on the plane.

Then he knocked.

Twice, before he heard the shuffled steps of someone inside. A shadow fell across the eyepiece in the door, then he heard the tumble of the locks.

As the door opened, Henry felt the warmth from the inside windows shining through, illuminating the darkened hallway. Standing in front of him was a woman in her fifties, her hair shorter than he remembered, with an occasional streak of gray. She was slender, and held the door with trim fingers and manicured nails. Her chestnut brown eyes, despite the lifetime she wore in the lovely lines of her face, shone as clear and fluid as ever.

The same eyes that had looked inside him all those years ago. Hopeful eyes.

She paused momentarily, not completely recognizing him; then her hands cupped her mouth – then touched her cheeks in surprise. Keiko sighed, a confession in her smile.
‘I’d … almost given up on you …’ She opened the door wide for Henry to come in.

Inside her tiny apartment hung an assortment of watercolors and oils. Of cherry blossoms and ume trees. Of lonesome prairie and barbed wire. Henry knew the paintings were all Keiko’s. They had the same touch, only a grown-up version of the way she’d expressed herself as a girl. The way she remembered things.

‘Can I get you something, some iced tea?’

‘That’d be nice, thank you,’ Henry answered. Amazed that he was having this conversation, and that it sounded so normal, like a natural extension – a follow-up to where they’d left off forty years earlier, as if they hadn’t each lived a lifetime apart.

While she disappeared into the kitchen, Henry was drawn to the photos on her mantel, of her and her husband, her family. He touched a framed photo of her father, in an army uniform, a member of the famed 442nd. He and a group of Japanese American soldiers were standing in the snow, smiling, proudly holding a captured German flag – written on it were the words ‘Go for Broke!’ Henry found a tiny silver frame nearby. He picked it up and wiped a thin coat of dust from the glass. It was a black-and-white sketch of him and Keiko from Camp Minidoka. He had a peaceful, contented grin. She was sticking her tongue out.

Minidoka was gone now. Long gone. But she had kept the drawing.

Near a window, an old stereo caught his eye. Next to it sat a small collection of Seattle jazz recordings – vinyl 78s of Palmer Johnson, Wanda Brown, and Leon Vaughn. Henry carefully
removed the record he’d been carrying and gently placed it on the turntable. He turned the old dial, watching the label begin to spin as he delicately set the needle in the outside groove. In his heart music began to play – Sheldon’s record. His and Keiko’s song. Complete with bumps and scratches.

It was old, and hollow sounding, imperfect.

But it was enough.

When he turned around, Keiko was standing there. The grown-up woman Keiko had become – a mother, a widow, an artist – handing him a glass of iced green tea, with ginger and honey from the taste of it.

They stood there, smiling at each other, like they had done all those years ago, standing on either side of that fence.

‘
Oai deki te
…’ She paused.

‘
Ureshii desu
,’ Henry said, softly.

Though this is a work of fiction, many of the events, particularly those dealing with the internment of Japanese Americans, did occur as described. As an author, I did my best to re-create this historic landscape, without judging the good or bad intentions of those involved at the time. My intent was not to create a morality play, with my voice being the loudest on the stage, but rather to defer to the reader's sense of justice, of right and wrong, and let the facts speak plainly. And while I strove mightily to be true to those facts, the blame for any historical or geographical errors lay firmly at my feet.

Because many people have asked, let me say, yes, the Panama Hotel is a very real place. And yes, the belongings of thirty-seven Japanese families do indeed reside there, most of them in the dusty, dimly lit basement. If you happen to visit, be sure to stop in at the tearoom, where many of these
artifacts are on display. I highly recommend the lychee blend – it never disappoints.

Bud's Jazz Records is there too. Just down the street, in the heart of Seattle's Pioneer Square. It's easy to miss but hard to forget. I popped in once to take some publicity photos. The owner simply asked, ‘Is this for good or for evil?'

I said,
‘Good,'
of course.

‘Good enough for me' was his smooth reply.

However, if you're stopping at either place looking for a long-lost Oscar Holden recording, you might be out of luck. Though Oscar was certainly one of the great fathers of the Northwest jazz scene, to my knowledge, a vinyl recording does not exist.

But, you never know …