CHAPTER 56 – Sukiyaki

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Fifth Avenue on Christmas Eve at ten-thirty was not the same as the same time mid-January. In the final hours, the crowds thinned, the last of the late-service churchgoers dispersed, couples held hands more intimately, seeking out shopfront mistletoes, and panhandlers grew more aggressive, knowing that tomorrow would be brisk business indeed.

In between the gaps left by the crowd, a slip of a girl returned to Central Park.

Eppie ran against the wind.

If the astute coach of a sporting team were present to witness her, they would have observed the unprofessional gait of a young woman pumping across the concrete and brick-textured paths in long, unbroken strides. Like a supercharged Camry, her [Strength] and [Agility] roared, sending power through her Common Project shoes, a punishment no fashionware was ever intended to receive.

The frigidity of December hit like a board. Her youthful lungs pulled in air that had been sitting in a freezer and expelled superheated steam.

At night, the park was a hostile country. It existed like a dungeon map in a survival game, for the ancient streetlights were readily swallowed by the tree lines. From light to dark, then dark to light, she pounded through the frost-hardened path until she reached the Conservatory Water.

Exothermic exchange, in the form of mist, rose from her cheap coat, which kept jack shit preserved. I really should have taken the Maxmara. She shivered.

“[Causality] to [Stamina],” she said under her breath. Her body silently switched gears. The exposed parts of her neck steamed. If a Mangaka from Kumamoto could see her now, he would be inspired by a [Muse].

Eppie ran a short circuit. No Henry. No Jellicle Cats.

She ran north. The reservoir path. The North Meadow. Her feet found the route from the morning.

At the 102nd transverse, she was breathing audibly, her internal organs taxed in a way that even [Stamina] couldn’t entirely suppress, at least not in this cold. She wasn’t tired, but her body was burning. It needed something. Calories, maybe. Electrolytes. Water.

Her wounds from the pot toss had healed, a natural function of her enhanced metabolism.

At 105th, the Vanderbilt Gate was dark.

She stopped.

The benches were empty.
She swore.

She pressed her face to the gate. The garden beyond was dark and still, the bare wisteria arms of the pergola black against the sky. It was no longer aesthetic. It looked Gothic.

She slid along the perimeter wall to the east toward the maintenance building. The wind came off the meadow and kissed her side like a razor. If she were a normal girl, she would have collapsed.

“HENRY—” she used her Cooper voice. “HENRY SENSEI—”

Henry, where—

“Meow?”

Her ears perked up.

Freshly regurgitated from the feline dimension, Kimi, Tanaka, and another cat she didn’t recognise emerged on the perimeter wall like the Three Fates of Greek Tragedy, untouched by the tree’s shadows.

Kimi raised her paw, a single paw, like a small God beckoning her to come, her eyes catching the amber light so that one was orange and the other was emerald.

“Where’s Henry?” Eppie’s question erupted as steam.

Kimi showed her butthole. Follow.

She scaled the wall after two attempts, mimicking a scene she had seen in a Jacky Chen movie. She almost tripped thanks to her Stella McCartney, and so made a mental note for Mirabelle to tell the designer that the winter skirt was poorly fashioned for midnight parkour.

Eppie landed with a thump, her knees and ankles absorbing enough force to crack were it not for her magically inclined body. Kimi moved swiftly, and she followed, threading the bare hedge, the maintenance building, the stone flanks, rounding the corner until she faced the garden wall.

It was warmer here.
Of course! She realised. This is where the city’s heating elements ran. The service tunnel was sheltered from the wind, sleet and snow. It was the natural place for the homeless to gather.

With one hand, she scooped up Kimi, then rounded the corner.

Her $500 fashion boats skidded to a halt.

The passage was occupied. They were not alone.

She saw them, three men, two against the wall, one standing, all looking at her with dark eyes that glimmered against the amber light of the utility building. They knew she was coming because she had crashed through the garden. They studied her, her clothes, the winter skirt, the thinness of her arms and legs. The cheap coat. The bandages. Her tiny stature.

Comparatively, they were enormous. Not the way of fat men, but men in survival gear, and in survival mode. Having grown soft on $36 Four Seasons cheeseburgers, she had forgotten the city had people who couldn’t afford Central Park hot dogs.

One of the men held a length of pipe. He was as tall as Lim and twice as terrifying.

She scooped up Tanaka.
She raised Kimi and held both cats like Uzis.

“MEOW?” Kimi protested. Are you serious? It meowed. Et tu, Brute?
“Meow…” Tanaka was resigned to his fate. Such was the cost of the canned fish.

Eppie gulped.

Three-on-three?
She wasn’t Lim.
One good hit from that pipe…

As a little lady, she had to do this the hard way.

“Hello, Sirs…” She said to the men, her voice soft and feminine, laying down the groundwork to inspire parental affection. “I’ve come… to find my lost cats.”

Kimi struggled. Tanaka, for his part, accepted this new position with the composure of a creature who had seen life’s tragedies play out daily.

The man with the pipe stared.
Then he stared at the cat.
She lifted Kimi threateningly. Don’t make me do it!

“Are you lost?” he said finally, his voice like rolling rocks. “No lies.”

“No,” Eppie used her theatre voice, and a cloud of breath accompanied the word. “I’m looking for someone. An old Japanese artist. He hangs with the cats.” She held Kimi slightly higher, as if presenting credentials. “This is Kimi. She brought me here.”

“Meow—HISSSS—” Kimi twisted her body, scratched her hand, then fled into the deeper recesses of the room. FUCK YOU! The cat said.

Eppie nursed her hand. Tanaka stayed put.
The atmosphere between them grew incredibly awkward.

The three men exchanged a look. A visual shorthand among the survivors of the winter apocalypse.

The leader, pipe in hand and a blanket across his shoulders like a barbarian’s cape, stifled a laugh. “You looking for Henry?”

“Henry Kiritani,” Eppie said. “Yes.”

He relaxed. He lowered his weapon.

“You’re his family?” the third man asked. He was older, a grey beard in a wool cap, watching her with hungry eyes.

“Jamison, are you blind?” the leader snapped at the old timer. “She’s white.”

“It’s dark… Bogdan,” Jamison protested.

Eppie raised both hands, allowing Tanaka to cling to her K-Mart coat. “I met him this morning. I fed his cats. He gave me drawings.” She paused. With the cat hanging from her, she was aware she looked slightly unhinged. “I fed him katsudon. It was extra large.”

The seedy guy gave her a leering, lopsided grin.
Eppie realised she sounded even more unhinged.

“Look. I have a hotel room. I want to bring him with me.”

The men laughed. Not the friendly kind.

Jesus Christ. Eppie wanted to slap herself. I should just shut up.
It’s the cold. The cold was pulling all the blood from her brain.

In the silence, the leader looked at her, then at the cat, then at each other. Tanaka began to purr at a frequency that said: “She’s with me, hoss.”

Bogdan sighed. “Okay, come in. But you can’t tell anyone we’re here, and don’t wake the others.”

“Thank you,” Eppie said with immense relief, her eyes still on the pipe.

“You first,” the second man said.

She set Tanaka down. The cat walked ahead.
The man called Bogdan stuck the pipe into the garden.

She followed the cat.

Ahead, the passage narrowed further, and the air grew warmer and more humid. In the dim light of the access walkway, she saw the crumbled body of her artist against the wall.

It was Kiritani-san.

He was sitting rather than lying, his back against the stone, his greatcoat pulled around him, the ushanka down over his eyes. His chin had dropped to his chest. His hands were in his lap, still holding the canvas satchel with its bundles of pens he scavenged from God knows where.

He was warmed by the cats.
Six cats, Kimi among them, who now judged her.
Kimi stepped over Nobu and walked over until she stood over Tanaka.

Tanaka rolled onto his belly.

Finally, Eppie breathed. The heat escaped her in a great, billowing cloud of fog, changing from her slow exhalations to something long and relaxed. Her face looked drunk as more [Causality] transformed into [Stamina]. It certainly would not do to collapse among the homeless men, no matter how amicable they might be at this moment. After all, she was wearing $500 shoes.

As for Henry, she could see the cats on his chest rising and falling. The man was asleep.

It was the breath of an old, exhausted body in deep sleep.

She crouched, one bandaged hand braced against the wall, the corner of her eyes on the men and her eyes on an eighty-seven-year-old artist sleeping in a corner with six cats, inhaling cat fur.

Then she crouched in front of him, put her hand very gently on his knee, and said, in Japanese:

“Mr Kiritani. Please wake up.”

Her artist’s eyes opened before her hand fully landed on his knee.

The reaction was so quick that Eppie’s hand shot back to avoid being bitten, scattering the cats on his chest. It was only then that Henry’s reaction slowed, becoming more like that of an eighty-seven-year-old man.

Now, with the disorientation of someone dragged from deep sleep, Henry’s eyes fluttered until he was fully awake. His hand moved to the satchel strap.

“It’s-a-me,” Eppie said in stuttering Japanese. “Katsudon.”

A pause. His eyes adjusted to the light. He looked at her, her bandaged hands, the wild hair, the entirely implausible fact of a teenage girl in this corner, in this hour. Something in his face settled, memory, maybe, Eppie hoped.

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“Why are you here?” Henry’s words slurred.

She helped him up. His body was light, his back hard and full of bones, even with the puffer and the surplus jacket between them.

“It’s twenty degrees,” she said. “I couldn’t leave you.”

“What are they saying?” Someone behind her said. “They’re speaking gook.”

“Shut up,” Bogdan snapped. The rest of the men fell silent.

“It’s twenty degrees,” she repeated. “And you’re old.”

The artist made a sound that was not quite dismissal and not quite acknowledgement, a gruff Samurai refusing to yield to the reality of his old age.

“Do you sleep here every night?” she asked. The more she felt his back, the lower her heart sank. Considering how she felt running here…

“Tokidoki na,” Henry grunted, his accent ancient and thick. “Sometimes, the security comes.”

“How often?”

“Often enough.” Finally, the man sat.

She knelt on the ground beside him, her knees confined by her skirt. The air wasn’t too bad here, but the ground leeched heat from the body. The texture of the stone through the fabric was brutal, and hers was a Stella McCartney!

“Kiritani-san,” she switched to formal Japanese. “I know someone who will be very interested in your work, your art.”