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chapter three
eastbound & down
SANNOH , JAPAN
My flight from Toronto to Tokyo was eleven hours of pure hell.
I was sandwiched between a young mother and her sobbing baby and a middle aged white guy who snored to loudly. My flight from Tokyo to the S.W.O.R.D District was even worse: the tiny passenger plane looked so rickety that at any second I thought I'd be screaming mayday and seeing my stepfather again in the afterlife.
I was shaking on my feet by the time I got off that second plane in White Rascals territory, in a private airfield behind a condo high-rise. I was paler than normal and thought I was about to be sick as I bought an apple juice from a dopey looking pilot with his bright green hair piled on top of his head in a towering beehive-like bun.
I caught a cab outside some place called Club Heaven, a nightclub that never seemed to close, Japanese dance music vibrating through the white marble walls. I was eager to get away from the chaos offered by the W District, but it still didn't solve my ever-pressing question of where I was going to stay while I was in the S.W.O.R.D District.
I wasn't even sure how long I'd be in the country, and was hoping to score a cheap room in a hostel or something, sorta a-la 'Strangers From Hell', but without the psychotic neighbors. Mind you, I was still only on episode two.
Sannoh seemed like it was, perhaps, the calmest area of the S.W.O.R.D District. The quiet streets and food stands reminded me of the small marketplace I used to go to with Yuki in New Mexico.
It felt like home. Something familiar.
I thanked the driver, handing him a handful of yen to cover my fare as I readjusted my corduroy bucket hat and grabbed my suitcase from the trunk, consulting the small folding map of Sannoh that I'd picked up at the private airfield, only one destination in mind.
The Itokan Diner. Tatsuya and Naomi's family diner.
I had no idea what I was hoping to find there, but I figured there had to be at least one person willing to talk to me about my stepfather.
And a stable internet connection so I could console my mother and tell her that I had landed safely in the S.W.O.R.D District.
Itokan was a homely place, and somewhere hard to miss. The entire street outside the modest building was packed with motorcycles, a welcome sight as I recalled a time when Yuki and I had gone on a motorcycle trip out of state, heading off to Texas. It was before we had both gotten sober, and Yuki had roped himself into one hell of a bar fight, leaving with a brand new cowboy hat and a broken nose, as well as a misdemeanor assault charge that cost us seventy-five bucks in fines.
My mother made him sleep on the couch for two days before he realized that the drinking just wasn't working for him anymore.
Of course, it wasn't working for me either, but my stubbornness was the one quality I picked up from my real father, a sweet-talking drifter with what my mom called 'the eyes of a devil' from Oklahoma who was simply passing through when he met my mom at a Nickelback concert, back when her hair was dyed a blinding red and her jeans had more holes than Swiss cheese.
