Last Call
That night in his dreams, Connor rode the Nankai line through the terraced countryside to Kudoyama. Up the hill from the station, two blocks past the Post Office, around the corner and down the alley, he stopped in front of the tavern. The curtain hanging over the entranceway was decorated with a sake kanji. He stepped inside.
“Aye, laddie!” a voice called out. Connor turned around. The speaker waved to him from one of the café tables. “Could use a third.”
He approached the table. A Stetson sat on the empty chair to the man’s right. Connor said, “You Connor McKenzie?”
“That’s me, son.” He spoke with a thick Scottish brogue. The Scotsman plucked the Stetson off the chair. “Take a load off.”
Connor set the furoshiki on the table—he still hadn’t managed to rid himself of the thing—pulled out the chair and sat down.
“Sam here’s dealing.”
Sametaroh Oh smiled a small, knowing smile and dealt five cards three ways. Connor picked up his hand. Four aces, queen high. No one had anteed or bet, so he laid the cards down on the table, face up.
“Well, hell,” his great-great-grandfather said. “No sense betting against that hand.”
The samurai scholar gathered up the cards, shuffled, and dealt again. This time Connor collected four aces, king high.
The elder McKenzie said, “A man’s got to wonder about the point of this game.” He gave the younger Connor a wink, tipped back in his chair, and laced his fingers together behind his head. The third round of cards slid across the table. As Connor went to gather up the cards, the Scotsman leaned forward, chair legs thumping hard on the floorboards. He said in a low voice, “’E’s dealing you nothing but aces, son. When ye getting in the game?”
Connor fanned the cards out in his hand. A royal flush, this time, in hearts. These guys weren’t subtle.
He sat on the weight bench next to the water heater and stared at the unfinished drywall. Working with Glenn had motivated him to tape and plaster the kitchen walls before leaving for Japan. He really should prime and paint them one of these days.
What’s the rush? Always the McKenzie question. Think it over, take your time, analyze, evaluate. And then ask for a second opinion.
All this dithering and second guessing must strike his ancestors as so much nonsense. Sametaroh Oh had established a family legacy during the dissolution of the Tokugawa regime and the burgeoning days of Japan’s Pacific empire. Connor’s great-great-grandfather journeyed six thousand miles from the windswept Orkney Islands to follow after a strange American religion with roots in the New World no deeper than his own.
These were carpe diem kind of guys. He wasn’t.
But the fact remained: he didn’t really have any decision to make. He possessed all the forensic tools a four-year education had bestowed on him, could dissect the syllogisms and factor down the transforms to their atomic constituencies. And it didn’t make a particle of difference.
What mattered was how often he turned to say something to her and realized she wasn’t there, how every morning he woke up expecting her by his side. He could no longer imagine living without the vibrant expectation of her smile, the light in her eyes, the touch of her hand, the intimate warmth of her body.
The only real question was: Why wait?
Connor went to the kitchen nook and ran a glass of water. It was Reading Day. He’d promised to pick up Elly at eight-thirty. He had the morning shift at the Center, and the rest of the afternoon to study for finals on Friday.
After lunch, Melanie came to the library to cram for the Japanese 301 final with Elly. At 3:50, Elly’s watch beeped. “Office hours,” she said in a librarian’s whisper.
Connor accompanied her to the JKHB and then camped out at the Center. When he returned to the TA office at five she was still busy with her students.
“Another half hour,” she told him.
She collected him at twenty past. “What was your major when you first came to BYU?” she asked him on the way out.
“Engineering, like my dad.”
“That’s quite a shift, engineering to linguistics.”
“Left brain to right brain.” He traced a line across his skull from one ear to the other. “You didn’t go to the MTC, did you?”
She shook her head. “I was deemed sufficiently fluent.” At Ninth East she said, “It’s too nice to go in right away. Let’s walk through the park.”
They crossed the outfields and found a cool, shaded place on the slope beneath the cottonwoods. Neither of them spoke for several minutes. The life of the park played out before them as if on a giant, outdoor stage.
“I met your great-great-grandfather again last night.”
Elly smiled and squeezed his arm. “I thought maybe you did. I missed dreaming about you. What did he say?”
“He just dealt cards. My great-great-grandfather McKenzie was there too. He did all the talking. He didn’t like the way I was playing. I kept ending up with these winning hands, four of a kind, aces, right off the top of the deck. Finally he wonders aloud when I’m going to raise the ante.”
“I’m not up on my poker metaphors.”
“You know what Aunt Wanda says about McKenzie men, how it takes us forever to make up our minds—”
“You can’t make up your mind?”
“No, I’ve made up my mind. It’s deciding what to do next, which I suppose is the same thing. To bet the house, as the metaphor would have it.” He turned to face her. “I’m being obtuse. I know what they’ve been saying all along.” He looked into her wide, brown eyes. “I haven’t ever done this before,” he apologized. “So it’s going to come out all wrong—”
Elly raised her hand and pressed her fingers against his lips. “No,” she whispered, “not now.”
Connor froze. Then he nodded.
Elly averted her eyes, embarrassed by her cowardice. “I’d better go home,” she said. “Melanie is expecting me.”