And the smell of sweet perfume
This happened much too soon
She called me to her room...
--Michael Jackson, Billie Jean
I knock, and she opens the door. She's wearing a sweater-- some kind of soft maroon fabric-- and a pair of black jeans. Gold earrings and a braided gold chain around her neck.
She’s beautiful.
"Karai?"
She laughs at my bewilderment. "I look a little different when I'm not playing the Dragon Lady, I know. Or did you think I'd be wearing a kimono?"
"I'm not sure what I thought," I tell her. And it’s true; when the messenger came to our room-- asking for my company, not the others’-- I wasn’t sure if she was offering a reward or a trap. I’m still not.
But everyone else had already taken off... guess they’re more trusting than I am.
But maybe not... I’m here after all. Having dinner.
With the leader of the Japanese Foot Clan.
I don’t even know what I’m doing any more...
“See, this is where we’re having the problem. Right here...” Takumi’s fingers tap the keys with an expert rhythm. His accent is heavy, but his English is very good. Shoulder-length hair, and a weird scar running across his left eye. Looks like the eye’s glass, though Don isn’t sure.
“And you’ve tried the normal encryption...”
“They must have some kind of way into the system. And I can’t figure out what it is.”
Don nods, leans over the keys. “You’ve tried changing the passwords?”
“Every couple hours. New passes on a need-to-know basis...”
“How do you announce the changes?”
“Personally, now.”
“So it has to be something directly in the system...”
Don’s fingers are moving faster now, his eyes lost in thought. Takumi leans over, half his concentration on the screen, the other half on the... person beside him. Karai had told him to pick his brain... but she hadn’t told him he was this good. Takumi likes the way he frowns when he’s thinking, the way the frown eases when he finds something promising; likes the way he leans back when he’s waiting for a test to run.
He realizes after a second that he’s staring.
They’ve set it up as a university; the perfect cover really, as most of their trainees are the right age to be students, and ‘internship’ programs can get them in almost anywhere. They’ve got their own little nightclub, too.
“Did they say it was to the right, here?”
“Must be,” Raph says, “that’s where the music’s coming from...”
They walk down the hallway, cautiously but gaining confidence.
“That should hold for a couple days,” Don says, “but you’re going to have to reconfigure the whole system.”
“Yeah.” He frowns. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of that... it’s like leaving a wormhole in the whole system. And I remember who made me configure the system this way...” He gets up. “I have to let someone know about this... will you help me catch the person who did this?”
Don grins. “Of course.”
“Good.”
“Your brother has found the problem in the system,” she tells me. “Takumi tells me they’re setting a trap right now... it is not who I would have suspected.” She sits back down. “I am in your debt.”
I search my mind, finally come up with “Between allies, there are no debts.”
She smiles a little. “Is that what we are, then? Allies?”
“Perhaps. I hope so.”
Feel like I’m trying to play a chess game blindfolded. Her move now...
“There,” Don says softly. “That should do it...”
“I’m impressed,” Takumi says.
Don laughs, shakes his head. “It’s having another person look at it; that’s all.”
“You hungry?”
“Starving. Got something in mind?”
“Well, we could...” He hesitates for a second. “You are gaisen, right?”
“Gaisen?”
“You know... you like men. You’re a fag, like me, right?”
“Ah...” To say Don is taken aback would be a vast understatement. “Ah... yeah. Yeah, I do. I am. Er...”
“We’ve got a place... not a club exactly, but... look, do you want to come?”
”Sure.” Don looks up into Takumi’s face.
“We could get a pizza...”
"I... I was pleased to hear from you. I have thought about you, believe it or not," she says, smiling a little.
"I... I thought about you, too." I notice her sake cup is empty, and take the tokkuri. She lifts her glass for me, and our hands brush together as I pour.
She doesn’t seem to mind.
And once again I wonder why she invited me alone...
As they get closer to the door, they notice something different about the singers.
They pause for a second, exchange glances.
After a minute Raph shakes his head. “Karaoke? Aw, I don’t think so...”
Mike shrugs his shoulder. “Aw, c’mon. If they’re doing that, they’ve gotta be too drunk to do any damage...”
Raph shoots him a look.
“Physical damage anyway... if it sucks, we’ll go back, okay?”
“Alright,” his brother says reluctantly, and they open the door.
It’s not what she’s saying so much as how she’s saying it; the nervousness when she laughs, the way she keeps touching things, the look on her face when her eyes rest on me.
"Satoru...is different. He has his father's temperament, I suppose...he blames me for his sister's death, says I should never have brought her to America. He's probably right..."
The lines on her face grow more pronounced when she talks about her daughter. It makes her look older, though it does nothing to mar her beauty.
I watch her fingers travel from her collarbone to the space behind her ear again and excuse myself.
I get into the bathroom, shut the door behind me, splash cold water on my face.
Though that’s probably not where I need it most...
I look at myself in the mirror... at the stranger who’s lived in this shell since Splinter died.
But really, he’s not a stranger.
He’s just the things I hid from my sensei... from myself.
We’d be babysitting Shadow, and Casey and April would come back...
Watching them together felt like a knife in my chest sometimes. I would brush it aside; we all did, trying to be happy for them. Trying to forget our own desires, our own pain.
Impossible, of course. Why did I ever think I could push it all away?
As Takumi had warned him, it’s not really much of a club; a stereo, some tables, a bar. They dump the pizza on a table away from the stereo.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” Takumi says, picking up a slice of pizza. It’s called an Idaho special; mashed potatoes and mayo. Sounds nausea-inducing to Don, but Takumi insists it’s good, and it did sound better than the sweet corn...
“Why do you have an earring? I didn’t think they’d let you do stuff like that...” He bites into the pizza; not bad, actually.
“They don’t, if they expect you to do field work. But you can’t be scarred and do that. So I get to have piercings and shit...” Takumi’s hand strays unconsiously to the gold hoop in his ear. “And Karai said I could stay on, work with the computers.”
“What happened?”
“Lost a fight,” he says simply. “Never liked the fighting much, but my face seems like too much a price to pay.”
“You look all right still,” Don says, and wants to bite his tongue until it bleeds. His eyes keep straying to that earring, to Takumi’s slender fingers...
"I did a lot of stupid things after she died," Karai says, "and I'm still paying for them." Her smile is bitter. "And it weakened me, I know that. The Foot would send me more warriors if they weren't afraid I'd lose control of them. They'd rather see which way the wind blows than lend their support to a failing leader."
And I look at the way the fabric rests on her breasts, at the sweater stretching up and resting against the bones of her neck. And my hands ache to touch her.
This is suicide.
But, as Mike would say, what a way to go...
And they’d thought it was loud from the outside.
The music hits Mike and Raph like a blow; the bass throbbing against their shells, the vocals threatening to take out their hearing.
People on the dance floor, moving with the trained grace of ninja, touching...
Impossible to look away; impossible to leave. Raph finds the bar and grabs each of them a beer.
“... I spend a lot of time with this crowd. Too much time, probably.”
Don looks around. Most of them are middle-aged men, nervous, quiet, cold. No drag queens to speak of, at least none he’s seen, and not much life, or joy, or personality. A far cry from the bars in Northampton and the city he lurks around on costume nights.
“Most of them are married,” Takumi says softly. “Kids, a lot of them.”
Don shakes his head. “I don’t get that.”
Takumi tilts his head, considers for a second. “You have to remember... here, you do what you’re told to do. What you’re expected to. Fifty, sixty years ago, maybe they wouldn’t have felt as much... what’s the word, pressure? Pressure to marry, to live what the West thought of as a conventional life. And now it’s changing, a little. But when a lot of them were growing up... not being married wasn’t an option, you know?”
“I guess,” Don says, reluctantly.
“It’s strong here, the pressure to conform. Stronger than I think it ever was in your country.”
“But you didn’t--”
“But I’m younger. And look at me. What am I doing? Giving head to married men.” He leans back. “Making it easier for them to conform.”
Don reaches out without thinking, touches his hand.
He’s ready to move it back and apologize when Takumi turns his head and smiles at him.
Don realizes with a shock that this is how everyone else lives; these smiles, this flirtation. For half a second the world opens up to him, showing him a glimpse of what he barely knows exists; people falling in and out of love, touching each other, crowded rooms, streets you can walk on in the daytime...
Takumi’s fingers moving to touch his.
Self-pity has never been Don’s style, so he pites Takumi instead; alone in a way he has never been, oddly grateful for their mutual attraction.
Don wonders what it would be like to kiss him.
And there’s a small hope deep inside him that Takumi’s wondering the same thing...
"Leonardo," she says. "When we met...when you thought you were going to die at my hand... I was... impressed. And I was fascinated..." She bites her top lip thoughtfully.
I rest my fingers on her hand.
She reaches over and touches the side of my face...
Her mouth is just inches from mine now.
I can sense the sake on her breath.
She might be the only woman I ever touch.
I can’t handle this...
"So," Takumi says, coming back with the beers and grinning, "they bet me twenty thousand yen I wouldn't kiss you."
Fifty bucks American, more or less. "Twenty thousand, huh?"
"Yeah."
"So how much do ya get for sleeping with me?"
"They didn't offer. No way to confirm it unless they watched..."
"Damn," Don says, laughing. "I thought we'd rake it in..."
"And who says I'd sleep with you anyway?"
"Well, if you'll kiss me for twenty thousand..."
"Who says I was going to do that?"
“Would you have told me if you weren’t?”
“Well,” he says, trying to act innocent, “probably not...”
Mike and Raph have been trying to get Casey to explain what it’s like: kissing a girl, sex, all of it.
“I can’t,” Casey keeps saying. “Words cannot describe it. Sorry, guys...”
He was right...
“Leonardo,” she says, breaking from me. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I know,” I tell her, touch the side of her face. Our lips meet, again.
As if I could say no now...
"Wall shake it up bay-bee now, twist and shout..."
Raph says, "I've seen some strange shit, but that's gotta take the cake."
"What?"
"A drunk Japanese chick tryin' to sing in English with a friggin' British accent."
"Wanna do something?"
Raph shrugs his shoulders. Mike walks over to the DJ.
"You ready?"
"You know I've never done this before, so give me a little latitude, okay?"
"What?"
Damn American slang. "Cut me some-- ah, don't expect too much."
"Okay," he says, and puts his hand on Don's neck. "You sure you're ready?"
"Sure I'm--" he says, and the kiss cuts him off.
You know, when they have the kissing scenes in the movies, they're so boring, just two people sucking on each other's faces like they're covered in chocolate or something and you fast forward it half the time to get to the good stuff.
This isn't a kissing scene, it's real, and Don can't believe the way it feels, his whole body's tingling and he pulls Takumi closer and what he really doesn't believe is that Takumi's touching him, has his hand on Don's leg, pulling it towards him-- please--
One of the guys says something in Japanese and taps Takumi on the shoulder.
"He says we've earned the money," Takumi says, laughing, breaking away from Don.
Don sucks his breath in and manages to smile.
“All right, we have a new singer... wait, two new singers.”
“Singing? Hey, I’m just here to make him look good.”
“Raph, just get your ass onstage, okay?”
Takumi lights a cigarette and glances at the empty pizza box, at the ashtray...
His eyes travel to Don.
They sit there staring at each other for a couple of minutes.
Takumi blows the smoke out through his nostrils. "You wanna get out of here, have some coffee?"
"Sure..."
“I have a room. And a hot plate, and a coffeepot..."
“Great,” Don says, staring at him, only slightly overwhelmed.
"I was educated," Mike sings, leaning into the crowd, "from good stock..."
Raph can’t believe he’s up here. Singing karaoke with the Foot Clan, yeah, this is bright, if Leo finds out he’ll have our ass for lunch...
And since when did I give a shit about that?
“...when I start lovin’, oh, I can’t stop...” Mike is eating this up. On his bad days he’s got enough energy to put Belushi to shame; now he’s bouncing around the stage, grinning manically at the women, shaking his hips with lusty enthusiasm. To Raph’s amazement, the girls are eating it up, hamming along with him, making gestures that at least in America are dangerously close to obscene...
He sips the coffee, looks over at the other end of the futon.
Takumi is watching him, smiling.
Don doesn’t think he’s wanted anything this much before in his life.
“You know, this is a futon.” Takumi pushes a tendril of hair off his face. “It folds out.”
“You can’t--”
“Can’t what?”
“You can’t really...”
“What?” He’s moved closer, is almost touching Don now.
“You want me?”
He puts a hand on the back of Don’s neck. ”Yes.”
Mouths meet, then bodies; Don leans back, instincts he didn’t know he had taking over, Takumi moving over him, straddling him, hands on the plates of his plastron and caressing lower, Don pushing the hair away from Takumi’s face, touching his skin, impossibly thick fingers brushing against the scar and teasing the hoop in his ear...
Mike opens the beer, scans the crowd again. "What about her?"
"Too skinny."
"So?"
Raph shakes his head. "They still look like moving targets to me."
One of the girls who’d been up by the stage when they were singing moves over to them, smiles.
Mike smiles back.
I glance over at the clock by Karai’s bed; twelve-twenty five. I want everyone back here by midnight. Not a moment after. And no excuses. We have to be careful here...
Did I really tell them that?
“Do they always sing when they’re drunk?”
She nods.
"So whadda they do when they're too drunk to sing?"
"They're never too drunk to sing," she sighs.
"What's your name, anyway?" Mike asks.
"Sahoe." She smiles at him.
He holds out his hand. "Wanna dance, Sahoe?"
"Sure," she says, and he hands the beer off to Raph.
"Hold that for me, will ya?"
"Long as ya don't mind it being empty when ya get back."
Takumi is vaguely aware of a pounding-- not them this time, somebody next door... probably the noise...
And then Don’s tongue finds something new to do with the ring in his ear and he decides maybe he’ll deal with it tomorrow...
He watches Mike dance with Sahoe, both of them smiling.
He tries to convince himself he’s not jealous.
A girl comes up, giggles, must not speak much English, but she smiles at him, points at the dance floor. "What the hell," he says, finishes off Mike's beer, takes her hand.
“Will you stay?”
She touches my arm. I nod, put my arm around her.
I try not to ask myself how many others have done this; how many others might follow me.
But I cannot stop myself from wanting her. Not for a few hours, or a few days...
Wanting her as a lover. As a wife.
As my own. Mine.
Her breathing is evening out; she must be falling asleep. She stirs a little, rests her face against my shoulder.
I won’t leave.
She is probably the last-- the only-- woman I will ever touch.
I should be grateful. I am grateful.
But there is an ache with it, and an anger, and a longing.
A longing I know I can never satisfy...
“What time is it, anyway?" Raph whispers to Mike.
"'Bout three-thirty."
"Shit. When were we supposed to be in?"
"Don't remember. Midnight, I think."
"You ready?"
"Sure," Mike says, swings the door open.
No lights. They tiptoe cautiously into the room.
After a minute, they both come to the same conclusion.
"Where the hell could they be?" Raph asks.
"Don must still be with that guy..."
"So where's Leo?"
Mike shrugs his shoulders. "Let's just get to bed."
"No," Raph says, and snaps the light on. "I'm stayin' up."
"C'mon, Raph, why don't we get some sleep..."
"No way. If they'd been here, they'd be sitting up with all the damn lights on, and we'd have to listen to some friggin' lecture about how they were worried sick about us, and I'm damned if I'm gonna let them get away with this." He flicks the TV on. "I bet Kung Fu's on somewhere in the world..."
"Look, I didn't figure this'd be anything..."
"I'm leaving tomorrow--"
"Yeah. I know."
"Right..."
He puts his arms around Don's neck and kisses him again.
"But if you guys come back around, you better come see me."
Raphael's bitching about the injustices of the universe when Don finally walks in.
"I mean, we're the fun ones, right? Don's okay, but he's a wallflower, and Leo can never get that stick outa his ass--"
"It sucks to be us, I get it, will ya shut up?"
Raph's about to smack him when he realizes the door's opened. "'Bout time," he says.
"Isn't that Leo's job?"
"He ain't here, so you're stuck with us."
Don frowns. "Seriously? I figured--"
"Yeah, we came in a while ago, thought the same thing," Mike says.
"Probably somewhere trying not to have fun," Raph says, and they laugh, a little nervously.
Mike frowns. “I’m starting to get worried.”
“I... I imagine he’s fine,” Don says, remembering what Takumi had told him.
She wakes up a little with the caress, and I meet her lips with mine.
"Ai..." She winds her arms around my neck again. "You're never satisfied, are you?"
"That's the first time anyone's ever made that a compliment," I murmur, moving my mouth toward that soft skin at the nape of her neck.
Raph asks, "So didja get lucky?"
"Like I would tell you," Don snaps, instead of the 'no' they'd been expecting.
"So he did get lucky," Raph says, grinning.
Don doesn't say anything.
"Almost looks that way," Mike teases, "doesn't it?"
Mike and Raph circle in. Mike asks, "Was he any good?"
"Shouldn't we be getting some sleep?"
"You haven't answered the question," Raph says.
"I just told you that I wouldn't say--"
"Well, if you were saying, would you say he was any good?"
"Mike--" Don socks him with one of the pillows.
Raphael's laughing too hard to do anything but try to slap Don off Mike, but Mike comes to his own defense, grabs the pillow away and starts swatting back. Even Don starts laughing after a while, and Mike takes advantage of it, really pounds him, and then Raph grabs him and they're holding Don down, all three of them laughing, and Mike says, "Well?"
“Well.” Don gasps for breath. “Answered one important question about anatomy...”
And Mike thought he’d done pretty good getting Sahoe to slow dance... “Yeah?”
“Prostates.”
“Prostates?”
“Yes.”
“Yes as in... yes?”
”Yes.”
“Oh my...”
“That was so much more than I wanted to know,” Raph complains, smacking Don with a pillow. Don laughs.
“What, you wanted to find out for yourself?”
A second assault with the pillow, and they all start laughing again, and eventually the laughter fades and they’re just lying there in a heap.
Don closes his eyes and realizes how exhausted he is. “Can I go to bed now?”
“Yeah,” Mike says. “Sure... we should all probably go to bed.” His eyes meet Raph’s. “Otherwise one of us might slip about how late Don was...”
Raph’s glare is harsh, but Mike doesn’t back down. Don looks at them both, wondering what he missed.
“All right,” Raph says quietly. “We’ll go to bed.”
The morning goes badly; all four of them tired and hung over and edgy from the night before, throwing their things together, trying not to knock into each other or mention how late they all got home.
They all jump when they hear the knock.
Leo gets the door. “Karai?”
Their eyes meet for a long time.
“I need to speak to Donatello,” she says gently.
Mike has often been teased about not being the brightest star in the family constellation, but he’s remarkably good at adding two and two. “Shit,” he murmurs under his breath.
Raph asks “What?”
“Later.”
Leo turns away from her, gestures at Don.
When he’s facing Karai, she looks him up and down for a second, like she’s trying to judge something.
“What--”
“Takumi’s dead.” Her eyes meet his, level, even. “He was killed this morning... I thought you would want to know.”
“What...” His mind races to catch up with his ears. “What happened?”
“The... individual who was using the loophole found the trap. I am assuming he wasn’t aware that I knew... he guessed he could silence Takumi and save himself.”
“He guessed wrong?”
“He will be punished,” Karai says firmly. “I can assure you of that.”
Don nods, keeping his gaze on her eyes. He bows, and turns from her. “Thank you.”
He leaves Karai and Leo, still lingering by the door. They exchange glances. Leo mutters something at Karai, they bow, and she’s gone. He reaches over, puts a hand on Don’s arm. “You okay?”
“Guess so... goddamned Foot clan...”
“Can’t blame this one on them.”
Don shoots a look at his brother. “Were you paying attention? Listen to all the things she didn’t say, Leo. Blood used to be avenged with blood in the Foot Clan, remember? ‘He will be punished.’ What the hell does that mean? Or are you too blind at this point to see that?”
“What--”
“What do you think? He'd earned some kind of favor from her? Maybe the guy was a Saturday Night Special...”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Takumi told me. They used to call ‘em her Saturday Night Specials. After her daughter died. Every Saturday night, for months. Young guys... never as young as us before, though. She’d pretty much stopped, Takumi said, he was surprised to see you...” His mind is working faster than his judgement now, calculating to hurt, channeling his anger and fear into his words. “What, she didn’t tell you?”
Leonardo catches his breath and sanity long enough to stammer out an answer. “Is this really necessary?”
"Leo, she's old enough to be your mother..."
"You think I don't know that? You think don't know how stupid this is?" He's practically crying, Don realizes. “Fuck you, Don, okay? You think this is easy?”
“You obviously didn’t have much trouble saying yes.”
Leo opens his mouth and is too angry and hurt to make a sound.
“Okay,” Raphael says, pushing his bulk between them before things get any worse, “who the hell wants to clue me in?”
“Go ahead,” Don says. “Tell him. I’m taking a walk.” He strides to the door, glances back for a second like he’s threatening Leo to say something. “I’ll meet you at the pier, okay?”
Karai doesn’t meet his eyes. “Did you really think you would not be caught? Did you really think you would not be punished?”
Satoru glares at her silently.
“You will be exiled,” she tells him. “You should be grateful I’m not going to kill you.”
Her son looks up and meets her eyes. “Should I? I wonder if you would kill me. I wonder if you’d dare, in the position you’re in.”
She doesn't answer him.
Don breaks the lock open to Takumi’s room, walks in, closing the door behind him. The place was enough of a mess already; now it’s chaos. He put up a fight, at any rate...
He leans his head back against the door, lets go for a second, lets himself hurt.
As if losing Splinter hadn’t hurt enough, it had to be this too...
We just wanted to let it go for a minute. To forget about the pain for a while...
Maybe that’s why he’d gotten so angry at Leo. Leo was supposed to be better than that. As if he was any less-- Don finally settles on ‘human’ for want of a better word-- than the rest of us...
He lets the tears flow down his face for a few minutes, shakes his head to bring him back to himself.
On his way out he grabs Takumi’s half-used pack of cigarettes. A way of remembering him; something no one would miss...
The day’s gotten brighter when he gets outside the building. He blinks at the light.
He thinks about home, about Shadow and April and Casey. They’re probably worried.
No matter how much we may want it to stop and acknowledge what we have lost, the world moves on...
Almost time to meet his brothers. He takes a final look at Takumi’s door and is gone.
