Espresso Love (A Dystopian Japan Novel) #Wattys2014

Double Entendre

"Do I look like I'm in trouble? I'm not in trouble."

"It doesn't seem that way to me. I see a frightened, confused twenty two year old, who is my son. I was concerned, do you know how concerned I was?" She eases guilt into me too effortlessly.

My jaw clenches. "I've been fine for many years, and we haven't spoken for so long. Why now?"

"Because I'm your mother."

"And?"

"I have the right to speak with and see my son."

"Sure didn't seem like you ever wanted to."

I look at her. In her eyes, now that I can see her clearly, is much sorrow and loneliness. Written with total clarity so that I can't miss it, yet inexpressible in words. I begin to regret my own.

"I didn't have much choice," she says finally. But doesn't elaborate.

We sit there in silence. She's looking at me and I'm looking at the table. There's a crack down the middle of the wooden surface, much like the one in my old apartment.

Then something seems to snap in her, a shift in gears deep within. Her voice changes and takes on a different tone. A voice I almost couldn't recognize, with a hidden strength that I had never noticed. "Things are changing. The world is coming to an end. It's not the way it seems anymore, Nao-kun. We may never see each other again."

I don't say anything. I look at her incredulously. Her words ring in the air, like the buzz of a dragonfly.

She sips from her tea. It's hot. I stand up and make myself one too.

"What do you know about me?" I say.

"Enough." She says. "There's something you need to know."

I pour hot water into a cup. I add a teabag.

"This girl you're with, she's bad news." She shows me a photograph. I snatch it out of her hand. It's Shizuka. Light honey brown roasted hair like coffee, brushed impeccably. She's looking straight ahead at the camera, without a trace of a smile.

"I'm looking for her." My voice is a murmur.

"Don't look for her."

"Why?"

"I've lost your father. I don't want to lose you in the same way."

I say nothing. All around silence presses in on us like a wall that reaches up into a cone shaped teepee. Her words rise to the top as if in a single pillar of smoke.

"I'll tell you about the contract."

"Okay, tell me about the contract."

Chitose Maeda takes a deep breath, her eyes seem to simmer with concern. "Listen to me, not as your mother, but as someone who wants to help you."

I sit down with my tea and cross my arms. "Fine."

"You were told that I signed you over to the contract when you were seventeen. Alot was happening at the time. Some things at your school, and other things in the world. Like Black Monday, Bloody Friday, Sichuan Earthquake, Beijing Olympics, stock market crashes and bankruptcies. The massacre in Virginia Tech and later in Akihabara. Barack Obama elected as the 44th President of United States. The inauguration of the Large Hadron Collider. David Foster Wallace committed suicide. The Cause was founded that year. Even now, before I got here, the Cause had occupied the Senkaku Islands attempting to start a war."

There's a deafening silence immediately after. Everything sinks like deposit. I don't know how she could retain such coherence and memory if she had been under Processing. She is nearing sixty, yet her memory is intact it seems.