Weasels in the Attic Read online

  “Hey, are you talking about drinks?”

  Behind me, Urabe’s voice filled the room. When I turned around, Saiki was sitting with an oversized book open in his lap. I had no idea where it had come from.

  “I was just wondering if we should open the bottle they brought . . .” Urabe’s wife was blushing.

  “Yeah. Open it up,” Urabe said.

  He got up from the couch and walked over to the dining area. At the center of the table, there was a small tank full of red-bellied fish. Saiki’s eyes were glued to the book and the pictures of tropical fish inside—it was almost like he couldn’t hear us. Urabe’s wife went into the kitchen. The baby was still sleeping in the corner. No crying, nothing. I could hear glasses clinking in the other room.

  “Come on,” I tried to get Saiki to join us. He got up with the book in his hands, then sat down at the table, across from Urabe. I took the seat next to him. Unsurprisingly, I was staring right into another discus tank. This tank was bigger than the others, with two fish inside, swimming close to one another.

  “They’re originally from Asia, right?”

  Saiki held the book in front of Urabe, his finger on one of the pictures.

  “Malaysia. Doesn’t it say that?”

  “How would I know? I can’t read English. Oh, wait. Yeah, it says Malaysia.”

  “Yeah, this sounds like a lot. It’s got to be freshwater, and the pH needs to stay around . . .”

  I couldn’t keep up, so I stopped trying. Urabe’s wife came out with Saiki’s bottle, two little glasses, and a ceramic teacup. She set the glasses down in front of Saiki and me, put the teacup in front of her husband, then rushed back to the kitchen. I could hear the stove clicking on. Urabe uncorked the bottle and filled our glasses.

  “Hey, we need chopsticks,” Urabe called to his wife in the kitchen. “And more snacks. Just bring out whatever we’ve got.” It didn’t seem right to have a new mother running around like that only a month after giving birth. I thought about how I’d have to take care of my wife if she ever got pregnant. Urabe’s wife came back from the kitchen, this time with two pairs of disposable wooden chopsticks and one lacquered set. “This is all we have . . .” She bowed her head as she placed the disposable chopsticks in front of Saiki and me.

  “No worries,” I said with a wave of my hand.

  “No more snacks? Damn . . .” Urabe stood up, went over to a cabinet with a fish tank on top, opened it, and pulled out a plastic bag. He came back to the table, pulled a couple of tissues from a box in front of Saiki, flattened them out on the table, then dumped the bag out over them.

  Dried shrimp.

  “Here we go. Saiki, get your face out of that book. If you want it, it’s yours. Join the conversation, though.”

  Once he finally looked up, Saiki saw the shrimp and jerked back. “Is that . . .”

  “Sure is,” Urabe grinned as he picked a shrimp from the pile and put it in his mouth. I was about to grab one, but Saiki reached out to stop me.

  “What?” I asked, but Saiki didn’t answer. “H-Hey, Urabe . . .” Saiki’s voice shook. I didn’t understand. They looked like ordinary shrimp to me.

  “Why are you looking at me like that? It’s just dried shrimp.”

  “But they’re . . .”

  “Totally safe. I eat them all the time.”

  Urabe bit into another one, took a sip from his cup, then said, “Great stuff.” His giant Adam’s apple slid up and down.

  Saiki turned to me with a serious look and said, “The shrimp . . . are for them.”

  “Them?”

  “The fish.”

  “Oh yeah?” If anything, Saiki’s words only piqued my interest. “I thought fish ate pellets or something.” I thought back to feeding the classroom killifish when I was in grade school.

  “Fish eat all kinds of things. Frozen stuff, live bait . . .”

  “Live bait?”

  “Yeah, crickets, worms, frogs . . . When a bonytongue gets as big as that one, it’ll swallow anything. They all have their preferences, though. You have to find the right food for the right fish.”

  “What do you feed the discus?”

  “Frozen bloodworms. Wanna see?”

  “Guys,” Saiki spoke up before I could. “I thought we were drinking.”

  “Come on, just try one. It’s real good. Way healthier than most of the junk people eat.”

  I grabbed one and took a bite.

  “These aren’t roasted, are they?”

  “Nope.”

  The smell was better than the taste. It was edible—just a little on the salty side.

  “Not bad.”

  Saiki looked at me in disbelief. “Man, I didn’t know you had it in you.”

  “What? It’s just shrimp. It’s not a cricket or anything.”

  “It’s all fish food,” Saiki said as he took a sip from his glass.

  Urabe’s wife came out holding a steaming plate with something flat and yellow on it. It had to be eggs. Urabe looked at the plate, then at his wife, and asked, “Did you remember to season it?”

  His wife nodded.

  “Tell you what . . . Should we just order a pizza?”

  “A pizza?”

  “I’m going to the store. I’ll be right back,” Urabe’s wife said in a small voice. She nodded at us, then left.

  “What about the baby? What if she wakes up?”

  Urabe shook his head and said with a mouthful of egg, “Won’t happen. She never cries. I always thought having a baby would be a huge pain. I thought she’d keep me up all night, but it’s been a real breeze.”

  “You just don’t wake up,” Saiki said. “You’ve always been like that. Remember when we went on that trip for school? We took your sleeping bag, took off your clothes, and wrote all over you with a sharpie. You still didn’t wake up.”

  Urabe laughed.

  “Yeah, that was messed up. When I got up that morning, the teacher really went off on me, but why? All I did was sleep . . .”

  “I bet she cries every night. You just sleep through it. Anyway, how’d you end up with this beautiful girl? She walked into the store? Then what? You said something to her? Did she come up to you?”

  “Well, not exactly,” Urabe said with a grin. “I’d say she came up to me, but I don’t want to sound full of myself. Hey, this isn’t half bad. She’s a good girl, but not the best cook . . .”

  “What difference does that make? If she’s that young, right?”

  Saiki looked at me and I nodded along.

  “She’s a real catch.”

  “You think? When she told me she was pregnant, I kind of freaked out. I never really thought about starting a family or anything. But to be honest, it’s not that bad.”

  “Frankly, I’m surprised her parents gave you their blessing. It’s not like you have a job or anything.”

  I grabbed a chunk of egg with my chopsticks and put it into my mouth. Beyond the sugar and soy sauce, I thought I could pick up on some sesame oil. In no time, Urabe had poured another full cup of sake for himself.

  “So what if I don’t have a job? It’s all about money, and I’ve never had any problems on that front. Technically, I get a salary anyway. From my dad’s company.”

  “Screw that.”

  “Taxes, man. It’s the least I can do to help out with the family business.”

  I didn’t want to come home drunk. I didn’t want to show up like that, then have the usual talk with my wife. I listened to Urabe and Saiki go back and forth. I occasionally brought my glass up to my mouth, but never had more than a sip.

  Urabe looked at my glass, then at me. “Not much of a drinker, huh?”

  “Oh, he’s a real lightweight,” Saiki answered for me. I just nodded as if I wasn’t bothered.

  “That right? He’s got the
face of a drinker,” Urabe said. I stroked my cheek. “What do you think you’re gonna feel?” Urabe cackled as he topped off his drink and Saiki’s.

  “Your wife said you’re researching discus genetics?”

  “Well, I’d hardly call it research. Just picking mates, observing the results.”

  “So a lot of thought goes into pairing them?”

  Urabe took a second to think. Saiki had the same book out again. He was propping up his cheek with one hand and poking at the pages with the other.

  “Maybe. In a way, there’s a lot of intention behind it. At the same time, it’s pretty intuitive.”

  “It’s too hard to explain,” Saiki added, even though he was barely listening.

  “It’s the same for people, though.” Urabe stood up and walked over to the tank with his cup in his hand. “We meet at school, or work, or maybe a store. Wherever it is, there’s just a random group of individuals, right? Within that group, you find your mate. If you were in a different group, you’d end up with a different mate, right? But we never dwell on that. We live our lives in the groups we have—in our cities, our countries, even though we didn’t choose them. Know what I mean? We like to tell ourselves it’s love, that we’re choosing our own partners. But in reality, we’re just playing the cards we’ve been dealt.”

  When Urabe got close enough to the tank, the fish inside gathered together and came toward him.

  “I bet they’re hungry.”

  “They just ate,” Urabe said as he came back to the table. His cup was empty again. “Hey, I almost forgot. I’ve got a story to tell you. It’s a sad one.”

  “No sad stories, thanks,” Saiki replied as he flipped through the book.

  “Fine, a funny story . . . Back when the shop was still open, there were days when I’d go back into the stockroom and everything would be all over the place. Bags of fish food I had up on the shelves would be down on the floor, ripped open and half-eaten.”

  “Oh yeah?” Saiki’s eyes didn’t leave the book.

  Urabe just kept going. “At first, I had no idea what was happening . . .”

  I’d only had a sip or two, but Urabe filled my glass to the top. I watched the liquor dribble down the side, then I reached for another shrimp. Once I’d had one, I found myself wanting more. Saiki wasn’t saying anything, so I jumped in. “Well?” Urabe stuck out the tip of his white tongue, licked at the corner of his mouth, then went on.

  “I kept putting everything back, but the same thing happened the next day, and the day after that. Then one night, I heard a crash. I went downstairs to see what it was. I could hear rustling in the stockroom, and the door was open . . .”

  “You left it unlocked?” Saiki glanced up at Urabe with only his eyes.

  “Why shouldn’t I? It’s just a little room for storing fish food.” Urabe took another bite of egg. “Anyway, I stood there for a second, wondering if I should go in. I guess I felt like I had to. I grabbed the steel bar that had the shutter key on it and burst in.”

  “What was it?” Saiki asked, putting the book down.

  Urabe locked eyes with Saiki, then me. He smirked, then continued. “It was a girl, in her underwear.”

  “Huh?”

  “Yeah. This grade-school girl, staring at me, chewing on something. Her eyes were glowing. It was like she was looking right through me.”

  “And she was in her underwear?”

  “Yeah. A sheer slip over white cotton underwear. When I threw open the door, she didn’t even flinch. She was just looking at me. Then I turned the light on and saw what she was eating. Dried shrimp. Just like these.”

  I put another one in my mouth and bit into the crunchy shell.

  “We were just standing there, so I asked her something and she answered me. I couldn’t believe it.”

  “Wait, what did you think she was gonna do?”

  “No, you had to see her. She looked like one of those kids, you know? Like she was mute or something. She had that kind of look. She wasn’t much of a talker, but we could communicate, so I asked her what was going on. She told me she lived in the neighborhood. She didn’t have any money. No food, either. Her mom worked nights, so she was always home alone with nothing to eat. That’s why she snuck in.”

  “But why there?”

  “I guess she came by earlier in the day, when the shop was open. It sounded like she’d set her sights on one of the fish. Crazy, right? Think about it. This little girl outside my shop, staring at these exotic fish swimming around in the tanks, salivating. Anyway, yeah, that was maybe six or seven years ago.”

  “Come on, I’m not buying it. There’s a convenience store right down the street. She could—”

  “She tried,” Urabe said with a smile. “She’d already been caught stealing there.” Urabe drank everything in his cup, filled it, and took another gulp. “She was poor. It was just her and her mom. I felt bad, so I gave her a bag of shrimp. She bowed at me a bunch of times, then ran off. She probably waited for her mom to get back and split it with her. Anyway, shrimp’s good for you. Lots of protein.”

  “Wait a second,” Saiki reached for the bottle and poured himself another round. “If you knew that, why didn’t you give her an actual meal? Or, I don’t know, money? Why would you send her home with fish food? Isn’t that kinda messed up?”

  “Hey, if I gave her money, she’d definitely come back for more. Wouldn’t that be worse?”

  “She came back anyway, right?”

  “Well, yeah. She showed up a few days later, in normal clothes, during business hours. I didn’t give her anything that time. There were customers around. After that, she started coming to the stockroom at night. Whenever I saw her, I’d give her another bag of shrimp. She was probably coming once a month or so . . .”

  “That’s really messed up.”

  “It’s funny—that’s what it is. I only gave her fish food, but she kept coming back.”

  “Then she must have been in real trouble when you closed shop for good.”

  “I dunno.”

  The door opened and Urabe’s wife came in carrying some large plastic bags. “Welcome back,” I said. She looked up, apparently surprised, and said, “Thanks.”

  She let go of the bags digging into her arms and spread everything out on the table.

  Urabe reached for a pack of fried chicken. “You didn’t have them heated at the store?”

  “You can eat it cold,” I said without thinking.

  Urabe’s wife took the pack of chicken and headed silently into the kitchen. I could hear the microwave start. In the meantime, Urabe tore into a pack of pickles, plucked out a piece of eggplant, and stuck it in his mouth.

  I looked at all the food Urabe’s wife had brought back. Dried squid, peanuts, takoyaki, and a few other snacks. My eyes landed on a bag of rice crackers.

  “Help yourself,” Urabe said. I opened the bag and put one in my mouth. The soy flavor was so strong that I was forced to wash it down with sake. Urabe saw me and said, “Yeah, that’s the spirit.” As soon as I set my glass down, he filled it. There was a loud pop in the other room. Urabe’s wife ran into the kitchen to open the microwave. Saiki opened the book again and held it up so Urabe could see.

  “Hey, where’d this fin come from? The parents?”

  “Well, it’s some kind of a mutation.”

  “Out in the wild?”

  “It’s not like mutations don’t happen in the wild.”

  Urabe’s wife came out with a few pieces of fried chicken on a plate, looked at me, and smiled. I smiled back, then looked down at the chicken. All the pieces had lost their shape.

  “Was his wife representing the family?”

  “No.” Saiki paused for a while on the other end of the line. “His dad was. She wasn’t even at the service. I looked for her, but . . .”

  “Maybe she
was at home with the baby?”

  Saiki took a few seconds to answer. “It looks like they weren’t actually married.”

  “Wait, you mean the baby wasn’t . . .”

  “No, it was Urabe’s. I wanted to know more, but I couldn’t exactly ask anybody about it . . .”

  I remembered her slim body and large breasts. The baby asleep in my arms, warm and damp.

  “What happened to Urabe, though? Was he sick?”

  “I guess we’ll never know,” Saiki said with a strange finality.

  Neither of us said anything for a while. Then Saiki sighed into the receiver. “I can’t take funerals like this. We were the same age, you know?”

  “What happened to all his fish?”

  “I guess his dad called a pro to see what he could sell, but it sounds like Urabe was dead for a few days before anyone knew anything. By that time, most of the fish were beyond saving.”

  “What about the discus?”

  “Who knows. He had so many, too. His dad asked me to take whatever I wanted, but . . . I dunno, I couldn’t do it.”

  It occurred to me that I should take a pair—a male and a female.

  “Don’t do it. I know Urabe made it look easy, but they’re tricky fish. Breeding them is a real pain in the ass. You’ve never even changed a tank, have you? They eat bugs, too. Your wife would hate that.”

  That night, my wife had gone to bed an hour or two before me. When I got into bed, she was crying. She got her period again. “This isn’t working. We need to know what the problem is. We need to get your sperm tested . . .”

  “Consider it done,” I said as I got under the blankets. My cheeks were still warm from the beer I’d had. My wife turned away from me. I reached out and stroked her back. Even under the blanket, her back felt hard and bony. After a couple of minutes, I couldn’t hear her crying anymore. I pulled the blanket up to my neck.

  How did Urabe die?

  I thought about the newly hatched discus I’d seen at his house. I shut my eyes and I could see it in my mind, shaking its ribbony tail, rising and falling in the water. I knew what Saiki was saying, but I still wanted a pair for myself. I just wanted to see what kind of offspring they’d have.