Eleven Twenty-Three by Jason Hornsby Page B

information from,
man?” I finally ask. “Jasmine?”
    “Mitsuko.”
    I try to find something to say.
    “ Mitsuko told you that?” I ask,
knowing this has to be a trick. Mitsuko will hardly admit what
happened between us even to herself, let alone her brother. “She
told you we slept together?”
    “Well…sort of. When I mentioned you coming
home a couple of days ago, she said you really bothered her.”
    “So? Maybe I do. I tend to bother some
people.”
    “It’s just been my experience that the people
who bother my sister the most are the ones she’s had sex with.
That’s my evidence, which I know is scant—but I just wanted to
know.”
    “How would you feel about it if we did?”
    “I already told you I wouldn’t care. This is
a small town, and it’s a beach town to boot. We’re all bound to
trip and fall into the hands of the wrong person eventually.
Melodrama must inevitably ensue. That’s what beach towns are for.
Didn’t you watch the OC ?”
    “California, here we come?”
    “That’s the one. But anyway, did you
sleep with my sister?”
    “ No ,” I answer. “That would be a
terrible mistake. I would never.”
    Hajime stares me down for almost fifteen
seconds before nodding and taking in the neighborhood again. I
exhale, unsure how long it’s been since I last breathed.
    “Good, Layne,” he finally says. “Because
actually, I would be a little irked if that were true, just
because it turns what’s already a primetime drama with our group
into a full-blown daily soap opera. That kind of bad business could
get a lot of people into a lot of unnecessary ill will. But maybe
you’re right. Maybe she just doesn’t like you. She’s a vile young
woman, at times.”
    “You think so?” I ask. “I always thought she
was kind of nice.”
    “You definitely haven’t slept with her
then, have you?”
    We chit-chat about other things after he says
this, but inevitably it just leads back to Hajime’s
conspiracy-of-the-week, just like before we left. He asks if I have
noticed how often there are commercials on TV nowadays advertising
new drugs that will help us be normal again. He mentions nasal
decongestants and sleep aids and pills for sex and depression and
mood swings and restless legs and life’s endless barrage of minor
plagues and major hopelessness. He asks me if I have made the
connection between the planes in the sky above our heads that dump
the sickness down on us and the prescriptions and sprays and creams
that cure us thereafter. He asks me if I have noticed signs of a
total merge of business, government, and medicine.
    He asks me if I am afraid for our future.
    I shake my head no to all of his questions,
but it doesn’t matter. What we say out loud and what our faces
inadvertently confess are two different things.
    Tara pulls up in her rickety Cavalier just as
Hajime is about to launch into a rant about what’s wrong with the
surveillance business since I have been gone.
    “Listen,” I say under my breath, “I don’t
want to go too far tonight, man. I need to stay clearheaded for the
funeral tomorrow morning.”
    “We’ll be good,” Hajime says. “Nothing too
heavy for the repatriated this evening.”
    “And don’t mention the fight to Tara. It’s
more than likely a situation better discussed later, and not with a
head full of drugs or Ouija board-induced night terrors.”
    Tara gets out of her car and begins heading
up the driveway toward us. She appears slightly less angry but edgy
and ready to inebriate herself.
    “Maybe you should ask the Ouija board for
advice on your relationship,” he suggests.
    “Maybe you should not be the weirdest person
I’ve ever met, Hajime.”
    “Yeah, maybe,” he chuckles. “Hello there,
darling.”
    “Hello, boys,” Tara says, nodding. Her
leaning eyes and frizzy strands of stray hair inform me that she
had too many glasses of sangria at her parents’ house. She stops at
the foot of the porch and takes a quick glance at both