The Emperor of Any Place Read online

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Acknowledgments

  Evan stands at the door to his father’s study. There is a sign at eye level: THE DOCKYARD. It was a present he gave to his father last Christmas, made of cork so that if the house sank, at least the sign would still float. Their little joke.

  He raises his hand to knock — a habit he can begin to unlearn. So much of grief is unlearning. He opens the door, steps inside, and takes a shallow breath, afraid of what might be lingering on the air. But there are only the old familiar smells: Royal Lime aftershave, glue, sawdust.

  This is where he found him.

  He thought his father had fallen asleep. The only sign that anything was wrong was the new model ship lying on its side on the carpet. His father had finished it the evening before — fourteen days ago. Evan had picked up the ship; it wasn’t damaged. He found a space for it on the shelf with the other ships, a couple dozen of them. He placed it there to join his father’s bottled armada. “Not so grand as an armada,” his father had once said. “More like a flotilla.”

  Clifford E. Griffin III, a modest man.

  It was strange doing that, picking up the boat and placing it carefully on the shelf, pretending his father was asleep behind him. Only asleep. There was no blood, no sign of a struggle, just the boat in its bottle on its side on the floor. And his father pitched over his desk, his face strained, his eyelids and jaw tense, rigor mortis setting in. He even died modestly.

  Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. The muscle of his heart had been thickening. Evan had watched his father rub his chest a fair bit, the look on his face more annoyance than pain. And he would get short of breath when he was gardening. That was about it.

  And then that was it.

  Fourteen days ago. No — fifteen.

  Now Evan moves into the room, heads over to the desk, the chair pushed back so hard against the wall by the paramedics that it left a dent in the plaster just under the window. The chair is still there up against the wall. The plants on the sill are dead. One more thing Evan has forgotten to do. There are dried leaves on the floor.

  The ambulance arrived thirteen minutes after he called 911. The fire truck got there three minutes faster. Evan stood shivering at the open front door in his boxers and T-shirt, watching the cartoon-red ladder truck pull into the driveway, wondering whether he’d somehow called the wrong number. Huge men, dressed for putting out fires, piled out of the vehicle, sniffed the air, looked up into the early morning haze for smoke or flames — the kind of stuff they were good at. Then two of them set off at a run around the perimeter of the house — one this way, one that — while three of them entered, so large, they seemed to fill up the place and suck out all the air. Evan thought maybe he was suffocating.

  One of them checked out the Dockyard. Another one found a blanket somewhere and wrapped Evan up in it, made him sit in the living room, trembling even though it was July. The third fireman brought him water in a glass from the kitchen.

  “Is there someone we should call?”

  Evan shook his head. His dad was retired now, so he wasn’t going to be late for work. Oh! The fireman meant family: another parent or auntie, an older sibling — that kind of someone. But there really wasn’t anyone. Not one he could think of right then, that is — right at that precise moment. Just him and Dad.

  The book lies on the desk, precisely where his father’s head had landed. He remembers that now, looking down at the desktop: his father’s sallow cheek against the brighter yellow of the binding. He touches the book tentatively, turns it to face him with the tip of his index finger, like it’s booby-trapped — something that might go off in his face.

  Kokoro-Jima, the Heart-Shaped Island.

  The title is embossed in gold on leather that is pebbly, like sun-smacked sand. The man who phoned this morning had described it that way: sand colored.

  Evan wishes he hadn’t taken the call.

  He should have let it go to his father’s cheery message, a message Evan can’t erase or change because he doesn’t know the drill, because the house phone was his father’s territory — and, anyway, what would he change the message to: “Sorry, we’re not in. Actually, Evan might be in, but if you’re Evan’s friend, you’d call him on his cell phone. Clifford is dead, so don’t leave a message.”

  Fifteen days and counting . . .

  Most of the time he lets the calls go to voice mail. But sometimes he can’t stand the ringing — the jangling of it. “Just fucking go away!” he shouts to the empty house. But then sometimes he answers, just for something to do. And sometimes he doesn’t tell the caller the news, just pretends his father is out. Not that it is comforting to delude himself, but because it is so uncomfortable to tell the truth. Embarrassing, as if you have somehow fallen down in your responsibilities. “What? You didn’t know the walls of his heart were hardening? What kind of a son are you?”

  Anyway. Anyway.

  When he told the truth, it felt as if he were playing this cruel game on the caller — the kind of smart-ass retort you save for telemarketers. “Sorry, the owner of the house is dead. Have a nice day.”

  But this morning he had just said, “He’s not in. Can I take a message?”

  “Do you know when he’ll be back?”

  “Sorry, I wish I could tell you.”

  “Is your mother around?”

  “No. She’s not.”

  “But she —”

  “Left.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. Like when I was three. So . . .”

  “Oh . . .”

  There was the pause where the guy tried to think of something appropriate to say. Evan waited, sharing the discomfort, almost enjoying it. If you’re going to shove a knife into an unsuspecting stranger’s gut, the least you can do is hang around and watch him writhe a bit.

  “So you’re Clifford’s son?”

  “Yeah, Evan.”

  “Evan. Hi. My name’s Leo . . . Leo Kraft?” He waited in case the name rang a bell. “I’ve been leaving messages. I don’t mean to be impatient, but I really just wanted to know whether the book arrived?”

  “The book?”

  “Yeah. It’s called Kokoro-Jima. Have you seen it? It’s yellow, hand-bound — kind of sand colored.”

  And immediately Evan saw it in his mind’s eye. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s here.”

  “Oh, good. Great.” He could hear the relief in Kraft’s voice. “Thanks. Listen, could you ask your father to get back to me when he gets a chance?”

  “I’ll —” Evan stopped. There was only so long you could carry on the charade. “I’ll do what I can,” he said. An odd thing to say, come to think of it.

  And now here he is in the Dockyard, staring at the book, his father’s last resting place, this hard pillow. He half expects to see an impression on the cover, a stain of drool. The thought makes him woozy. He leans hard against the edge of the desk. Get
s his breath back. He picks up the book, feels the warmth of it from the sun streaming through the window, through the dry spines of the dead plants. He opens it, and there’s a letter. He sinks into his father’s chair, unfolds the letter, and reads.

  Leonardo Kraft

  4586 Santa Cruz Road

  Menlo Park, California 94025

  June 21, 2014

  Dear Clifford:

  Thanks so much for getting back to me. Here’s the book. As you will see, my father lavished attention on it. I believe it was one of the most exciting projects he ever undertook in a lifetime of many accomplishments. I only wish he had lived long enough to complete the goal he refers to in the prologue. And I wish he’d lived long enough to dispel the shadow that hangs over the story’s ambiguous and disturbing conclusion. As I might have mentioned, he held off bringing the book out, hoping for answers, but when your father proved to be so obstinate, he went ahead. Leaving us with a mystery.

  What happened to Isamu Ōshiro?

  I think, when you’ve read the book, you’ll see why this is a delicate matter. As I mentioned, Griff has not replied to any of our inquiries. You said he was “difficult.” What more can we do? We cannot proceed without his approval; our legal counsel has made that point abundantly clear.

  If you could prevail upon him to talk to us, we would be so grateful. If going to see him would help, we will of course reimburse you for any expenses.

  Please let me know that you received the book. Thanking you again for your help, I am, most sincerely,

  Yours,

  Leo Kraft

  Evan leans back in his father’s swivel chair, lets the letter fall to his lap.

  Griff has not replied to any of our inquiries.

  That would be the infamous Griff, all right: his father’s father.

  We cannot proceed without his approval.

  Evan wonders who “we” is — a we that includes lawyers. Proceed to do what? A creepy feeling comes over him. He leans forward. Thinks hard. As if he has some inkling of what this is about. Something his father said. Something was on his father’s mind that last day. What was it?

  Evan gets sidetracked. Happens a lot, lately. It’s that word “last.” He thinks how weird it is that you can suddenly pin that adjective to something. At the time, it didn’t feel like the last day — the last anything. It was just Thursday, July third. No big deal. A sunny early summer’s day that drifted into a soft evening, a warm night. Evan wasn’t going to be starting his job at Hardboiled Inc. until July fifteenth. It was going to be very cool: printing T-shirts, which was a change from flipping hamburgers as far as summer jobs go. But for the time being, it was pure holiday time. He’d been at Rollo’s with the guys all that afternoon.

  Just Thursday. The evening before the morning when . . .

  There were no big plans for the summer except for the job and, before it started, a little road trip with his dad. Now it wouldn’t happen. It would never happen. There were these things to unlearn; a whole lot of Never to get used to.

  He goes limp. The letter slips from his lap and flutters to the floor. He stares at it. Then his eyes drift back to the book, lying in his shadow. If he leans away, the cover blinds him with sun glare.

  There is a bookmark lying on the desktop. Another Christmas present from Big Spender Evan. It’s a slip of glossy cardboard with a 3-D pair of feet in socks and Top-Siders hanging off the bottom end, so that when the marker is in a book, it looks as if there were a person in there who has been squashed. Except the bookmark is on the desk. What does that mean, Sherlock?

  Well, Watson, it suggests Clifford had finished the book. Finished it and then died. Evan thinks back to that Thursday, two weeks ago. His father had been obsessing. Obsessing about his father. Evan leans back in the chair, which squawks in protest.

  He understands grandfathers only as a concept. He’s never met Griff, but he is going to very shortly and the irony is kind of astounding. If his father had not been so preoccupied with Griff the day before he died, Evan isn’t even sure he would have remembered whether the old man was still alive. So when concerned friends began to say he should contact his grandfather, he did it, obediently, in a kind of a trance. That was another part of grief: the kind of stupor he found himself in a whole lot. Days of daze. Good to have a relative around to pick up the slack, even if it’s one you’ve never met and your father hated. Hmm. There was a gap in the logic there, somewhere, but . . . well, logic had not been trending in his life lately.

  And so Griff is coming. And now Evan can’t help wondering if he has made some very big-ass mistake.

  Evan walked along Plateau Crescent pulling a Radio Flyer Big Red Classic. It was dusk. The wheels on the Flyer went round and round, the only sound on the block but for the hiss of the lawn sprinklers, the odd bark of a dog, and the sound of Jeopardy! on someone’s TV set. A neighbor bearing an uncanny resemblance to Mr. Rogers chatted over his fence to a neighbor also bearing an uncanny resemblance to Mr. Rogers. Neighbots.

  Behind them the traffic hummed in C-flat major on the Don Valley Expressway. Don Mills, an island of calm, the most ordinary place in the world.

  There was a Fender Mini guitar amp loaded on the wagon, a guitar case strapped to Evan’s back. With Scott leaving for the summer, they had figured it was time to put the band in cold storage.

  “Cold Storage would be a better name for us,” Scott said.

  “Except that people might confuse us with Coldplay,” said Rollo. Ha-ha. It was often like this at practice. They came up with way more names for the band than actual songs: Resin, Omar Kayak, Boys without Handlebars, The Frenzied Gnomes, Cold Storage.

  He stopped outside 123 Any Place, waved at Lexie Jane Reidinger mowing the lawn next door. The Reidingers on the right, the Guptas on the left, and the Griffins in the middle. Three pretty-well-identical houses with three different-colored doors. Lexie waves back. Everybody in Any Place waves back. The lights were on in his house although it was only dusk. Dad was framed in the dining-room window sitting at the table, looking as if he was ready to launch a new ship. Evan walked up the driveway, peered in the window — a Peeping Evan. His father didn’t look up.

  Sometimes his dad brought all his model-making stuff out of the Dockyard and worked while he ate his dinner. A change of scenery. The bare bulbs of the candelabrum above the table shone down on his balding head. The camera of Evan’s eye zoomed in, slowly. There should have been some seafaring music as background to this nautical scene. “Yo, Heave-Ho, Dad.”

  It struck him how odd it was that you could live with someone, day in, day out, and then suddenly see them like this, so clearly. Dad was wearing his ancient Axis: Bold as Love T-shirt: Jimi Hendrix and the boys in Day-Glo orange, blue, and pink printed over gold foil. The tee was stretched taut, the logo cracked and faded over his expanded belly. Not much gold left. It was hard to think of Clifford as lean, sporting John Lennon glasses, paisley bell-bottoms, a strip of linen wrapped around his forehead with a peace sign on it. It was hard to think of him with hair.

  Evan parked the Radio Flyer by the crumbling back step in the carport and hefted the amp through the screen door and into the kitchen.

  “That you, Ev?”

  “Got it in one, Dad.”

  His father was not only wearing Axis — he was listening to it. “Little Wing” was playing. My dad, he thought, hopelessly trapped in the sixties. Evan left the amp by the door with the flip-flops and his father’s mud-stained gardening clogs. He stripped the guitar from his back and leaned it against the amp. There was stir-fry on the stove: chicken, broccoli, mushrooms — all shining and glutinous. He scooped a bowlful and threw it in the microwave.

  “There’s stir-fry,” said Dad.

  Evan smiled. Clifford E. Griffin III, always just that one beat behind.

  “What’s this one?” asked Evan. He stood, bowl in hand, across the dining-room table looking at the tiny boat his father has inserted into the neck of a dimpled scotch bottle.
r />   “A frigate,” said Dad.

  “Frigate,” said Evan. He said it again a couple of times.

  “Sounds like you’ve got a frog in your throat,” said Dad, without looking up.

  Evan took a seat, examined the miniature ship. “Looks a lot like the last one,” he said.

  “It won’t,” said Dad, bending in close to do some tricky maneuvering with tweezers. “They all look pretty much the same until you get the masts up and the sails unfurled.”

  “Is that a valuable life lesson, Dad?”

  “It is. Glad you noticed.”

  “You’re very dependable that way, Dad.”

  “I am. When do I ever miss an opportunity to impart the wisdom of the ages to my impressionable son?”

  Evan worried the meat off a piece of gristle, then spit it out onto the table. Dad frowned but he didn’t protest. It’s just us boys, thought Evan — and, anyway, the table was covered with newspaper, littered with tiny tools, a tube of glue, saucers of paint. And an unfinished bowl of stir-fry left to harden.

  “The Cutty Sark was a clipper. This is going to be the USS Constitution.”

  “Frigate,” said Evan.

  “Correct,” said Dad.

  “You Got Me Floatin’” ended and “Castles Made of Sand” came on, psychedelic guitar warped and weaving through a phase shifter. Evan watched as his father pulled a thread and the masts rose steadily inside the bottle, like some kind of strange butterfly unfurling its wings. A tiny contained ship that wasn’t going anywhere. Just like my dad, thought Evan fondly.

  His father stopped what he was doing, looked up. “I learned something interesting today,” he said.

  “Something even more interesting than a frigate?”

  “Way more,” said his father. “It’s about Griff.”

  It took Evan a moment. “Your father?”

  “The infamous Griff.”

  “Right,” says Evan. “The infamous Griff. He was a general or something, right?”

  “A sergeant major. And you do not make mistakes like that around Griff.”

  Evan stopped eating. “You mean he’s coming here?”

  “Hell, no!” His father looked up as if Evan had just announced an alien invasion. “What made you say that?”