Austin, Texas
Three years had passed since Kenji Koga last set foot back on Japanese soil. The occasion was his father’s funeral. The August sun glared mercilessly that day, and the air soon turned steamier than a freshly pound rice cake. It was a pity the relatives and acquaintances had to gather in requisite black like a band of ravens. They were there not because they particularly lamented the death of a wonderful man. They were there, as in most other funereal occasions, because they were socially compelled to be there.
Such was the case with Japanese society. Social constraints, and the malignance of them, permeated into almost every aspect of human activity, in some cases providing comfortable order, in others – suffocation. Of course, every society has its constraints if it wishes to avoid anarchy. But Japan seemed to carry its constraints too far – much too far. Only the youngest generation seemed to be able to break away at times, at the risk of being labeled outcasts for the rest of their lives. This was why Koga had left the island nation, swearing that he would never return as a Japanese citizen. Needless to say, he was a full-fledged American when he solemnly stood by his father’s coffin.
The ceremony proceeded like a snail on a hydrangea leaf as if to test everyone’s capacity to endure the humidity and heat, culminating in almost incomprehensible speeches concocted by Koga’s zealously religious uncle and the presiding Buddhist monk. The occasion was nothing short of intolerable, but Koga had no one to blame but himself because he had allowed his uncle to make the funeral arrangements.
Being the only child in the family, Koga had a responsibility, according to the Japanese norm, to stand looking properly remorseful by the coffin. He was to politely greet the relatives and neighbors, whose names and faces Koga did not recognize, but who nevertheless were obligated to appear properly sympathetic. In a sense, he had grudgingly succumbed to the social pressure yet again, paying a total sum of $40,000 to the greed-fraught funeral parlor and the monk.
But Koga really didn’t give a damn what the relatives and neighbors thought of him or his father. He had come back home to say good-bye to his father just the way he had said good-bye to his mother two years earlier and his grandmother ten years before. He knew that he had loved and cared about the man more than anyone else there on that muggy day, or anyone anywhere else for that matter.
Koga might have appeared inattentive and distracted, but he was really paying attention to a throng of cicadas chorusing among swaying leaves on the gnarly oak trees that abundantly and lusciously graced the funeral grounds. Oddly enough, Koga felt that only the teeming cicadas reflected the pain and sorrow which dwelled in the deepest portion of his heart. None of the guests there on that day could have known that, in a symbolic but the truest sense, Koga had died with his father.
***
In the three years since the funeral, Koga had taken on some insurance fraud cases and routine employee background checks. He had also handled several marital infidelity cases and gone through a bitter divorce himself. The city of Austin, Texas, had been on a path of exponential growth for close to a decade, making it a particularly attractive place to live for opportunistic lawyers and private investigators like Koga. Eleven years in business, he had seen some rough times, financially that is, but the business had really picked up in the last half dozen years or so. Thanks to his clients whose spouses had been unfaithful or untruthful in one way or another, Koga had been able to purchase a house in the hills of West Lake, and thanks to his own unfaithfulness to his wife, he had to give it up. It was a sad business altogether.
His client base had usually consisted of those who belonged in the upper echelon of the society. They had been professors, doctors, lawyers, bankers, and some big shots from high-tech enterprises. His fees leaned toward more expensive, but he had believed, and thus far apparently his clients had also believed, that his reputation and track record had justified the price tag.
A condominium off Sixth Street was where he lived all by himself since his cat had died the previous winter. The two-bedroom apartment was big enough for a single man even though he was using one of the bedrooms as his business office. Since he had come to the U.S. at the young age of eighteen, except for the marriage that had lasted for four years, Koga had lived alone most of the time. He dated a few girls in town after his divorce, and certainly enjoyed their companionship and physical attributes, but usually he had been content being by himself. In the last few years, the only human being he saw on a consistent basis was Esperanza, a friendly middle-aged Mexican-American lady who came to clean his apartment every week.
Cindy, his ex-wife, had frequently accused him of being a born loner, a misanthrope, and he had taken it as a compliment. Of course, that was not to say that he had never felt lonesome. Sometimes he felt loneliness so profound that he drove around town, which was not exactly a thrilling experience, just to be among other people.
But in general, he prided himself on his emotional independence, which, to him, was just as important as physical and financial independence. Being a private eye meant being emotionally strong. He had a job to do, and in order to accomplish the task, with a few exceptions, he had to forego human emotions. Inevitably, the job had made him a cold and uncaring man on the surface. Seeing so many deceptions in so many ways had made him less inclined to trust others. In fact, perhaps somewhere down deep, he nihilistically believed that only fools trusted in others.
In his younger years, Koga had thought about his future. He used to make meticulous long-term plans and had looked forward to carrying them out, but now he was basically living for the present, looking for quick results. If anything good happened to him, he was happy; if not, he didn’t cry about it. If he died tomorrow, he knew he wouldn’t be missed by anyone – a comforting thought in one sense, a terrifying prospect in another. But either way, he didn’t really care. Long before, he had stopped questioning what life was all about.