Free Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford Page B

away.
    ‘I’m sorry I brought you here,’ Henry offered as they walked to the edge of South Main, where they would split up for their separate walks home. ‘I’m sorry our big night was ruined.’
    Keiko halted and looked at Henry. She looked down at his button, the one his father made him wear. ‘You are Chinese, aren’t you, Henry?’
    He nodded, not knowing how to answer.
    ‘That’s fine. Be who you are,’ she said, turning away, a look of disappointment in her eyes. ‘But I’m an American.’

I Am Japanese
    (1986)
    H enry woke to the sound of a police cruiser, its siren wailing in the distance. He’d dozed off a bit, daydreaming, on the long bus ride from Lake View Cemetery all the way back down to the International District – the I.D., as Marty called it. Henry covered his mouth in a yawn and looked out the window. To him the area northeast of the Kingdome was simply Chinatown. That’s what he’d called it growing up, and he wasn’t likely to change now – despite the influx of Vietnamese karaoke clubs, Korean video stores, and the occasional sushi bar, frequented by a mainly Caucasian lunch crowd.
    Marty didn’t know much about Henry’s childhood. Henry talked about his youth only in reflection, as he told stories about his own parents – Marty’s grandmother, mainly. Or occasionally the grandfather Marty never knew. The lack of meaningful communication between father and son was basedon a lifetime of isolation. Henry had been an only child, without siblings around to talk to, to share things with constantly. And Marty was the same. Whatever stumbling methods of communication Henry had used with his own father seemed to have been passed down to Marty. Over the years, they’d both used Ethel to bridge that gap, but now Henry would have to ford the divide himself. He just wasn’t sure what to tell his son and when. For one growing up Chinese, decorum and timing were everything. After all, Henry hadn’t spoken to his own parents, not much anyway, for three years – during the war.
    But now, deep down, Henry wanted to tell his son everything. How seemingly unfair life was in retrospect, and how remarkable it was that they’d all just accepted what they had and made the best of it. He wanted to tell his son about Keiko – and about the Panama Hotel. But Ethel had only been gone six months. Sure, she’d been gone seven years and six months, but Marty probably wouldn’t understand. It was too soon to tell him. And besides, what was there to tell now? Henry didn’t know exactly.
    Thinking of that painted bamboo parasol, Henry did his best to reconcile his feelings – the loss of Ethel, and the possibility of something to be found in the basement of that broken-down hotel. He’d lamented what else might be down there, right under his nose all these years, and wondered how much he could allow himself to hope for, how much his heart could take. But he couldn’t wait any longer. A few days had passed, the news had come and gone. It was time to find out.
    So Henry found himself stepping off the bus three stops early and wandering over to the Panama Hotel, a placebetween worlds when he was a child, a place between times now that he was a grown man. A place he had avoided for years, but now he couldn’t keep himself away.
    Inside, there were dusty workers in hard hats everywhere Henry looked. The water-stained ceiling tiles were being replaced. The floor was being sanded down to its original finish. The walls in the upstairs hallway were being sandblasted. The noise from the compressor alone made Henry cover his ears as he watched dust and grit settle at the top of the staircase.
    Aside from the occasional transient who broke in a back window, or the flocks of pigeons that made their roost in the rooms of the upper floor, no one had occupied the hotel since 1949. Even when Henry was a boy, it had been sparse and half-empty. Especially during and after the war, from around 1942 all the way to V-J