Someone to Watch Over You

On a cold April afternoon, Tae, who was still in in her pajamas, with a padded hanten over her shoulders, had just finished her lunch when the doorbell rang.

“Hello, um, I’m here to check your bathtub,” said a squeaky voice over the intercom.
She looked at her calendar. “Isn’t the appointment for tomorrow?” she asked.
“No, you’re down for today. I’m booked tomorrow and for the next few days.”

She rushed to her front door, grabbing the paper bag that had been sitting unopened next to a vase of flowers on the shoe cabinet. “Just a moment,” she called through the door before hurrying upstairs to her room, where she put on a pair of corduroys, a tattered turtleneck, and a sweater, then affixed her cloth face mask.

Going back downstairs, she looked into the bathroom to be sure all was spick-and-span. Like the rest of the house, it was perfect—what with her using only a broom, duster, and rags once her vacuum cleaner broke at the start of the year. After seeing the endless footage of mud-and kelp-drenched television sets everywhere following the tsunami, she’d sworn off any new electronics.

“I’m sorry to keep you waiting,” she said as she opened the front door. “Thank you for coming.” The handyman was a head taller than her and looked a dozen years younger than her forty-six years. He was wearing eyeglasses and a gray mask wrapped around his jaw.

“It’s this way,” Tae said, as the man stepped into the brown slippers he had brought with him and followed her into the house. “The problem started last week. The water won’t drain when I go to empty the tub.” She led him to the wet room—which had a bathtub and washing area next to it—where a faint light floated in through the small, frosted window.

Tae had lived in this house only since the last year. She had moved back to town after nine exhausting years in Tokyo, when her mother was hospitalized for malig- nant lymphoma. Her mother didn’t make it through the summer, and in the fall her father died of a heart attack. So the house was now hers. Each day, she painstakingly removed every last stray hair from the bathroom drains with duct tape. Once in a while she’d notice an unpleas- ant sewage odor, but she ignored it. She tried not to think about the darkness on the other side.

She wanted to tell the man that the clog wasn’t her fault, but she also didn’t need to make excuses to someone she would never see again.

“I’ll get started then,” the man said, dashing back to his car and returning with some equipment, including a plunger and a bucket.

“Thank you,” Tae mumbled and went to her room, where she opened the paper bag that she had left untouched for two weeks. It was from the man from Tokyo.

The gift box inside was covered in a sheet of noshi, with calligraphy that read:
Best wishes, H. Honma

Tae peeled off the noshi and yellow-green wrapping to find a rectangular black tin container with a lightning pattern. She opened the lid and lifted off first the layer of bubble wrap, then the sheet of tissue paper, to find an assortment of individual packets of senbei. Some rice crackers were wrapped in nori, and others were speckled with black sesame or sugar crystals. In each packet was a tiny envelope of silica gel.

Curious about the handyman’s progress with the drain, Tae held her breath and tiptoed halfway down the stairs. She listened to the sludge of tangled hair and grime from the bodies of her family members through the years being pumped out of the drain and extracted with a pop, like a hit off a bat.


The man occasionally let out a whistle—hoo, hoo, hoooo—to the rhythm of marching army boots. Tae could feel his disdain, could hear him thinking: “This woman is so lazy. Living alone, unable to keep things clean. Especially these easily overlooked spots.” She went back to her room. She was staring at the senbei on her desk when a trium- phant voice called out, “Think I’m done here!” sending a jolt up her spine. She plodded down the stairs and peered into the wet room. The man’s gray mask was now black with sweat. He nodded at her, turned on the shower and pointed the nozzle toward the drain.

Wordlessly, the two watched as the stream of water landed on the pale blue tiles before being swallowed into the deep black hole of the drain. Over the sound of the shower, which was like rain at the start of a storm, Tae could hear their breathing overlap. Suddenly self-conscious, she started to perspire, though she’d barely moved a muscle.

Tae paid the handyman his due in an envelope, and, as he was tucking it into his pocket, she handed him the bag. “This is a gift I received,” she said. “Will you take it?”

“Are you sure?” he replied, as he pulled the tin of senbei out. Setting the empty bag down, he pried open the lid of the tin, then pulled off the bubble wrap and tissue, and proceeded to plunk himself down on the front door mat. Tae instinctively stepped backward toward the living room as he tore open a packet, pulled out a palm-sized nori-wrapped senbei, yanked his mask down to his chin, and took a big bite. The cracker had gotten a little stale, from the sound of it, but he chomped through it anyway, crumbs spilling from his half-parted lips.

A low moan not unlike a wild animal’s escaped from him, and Tae stared. Feeling her eyes on him, the man turned, bent over, then suddenly started coughing. And then choking. The senbei had gotten caught in his throat. “Water, water,” he managed to whisper.
Tae rushed into the kitchen and quickly filled a glass from the tap. Placing it next to the hunched man who was now heaving, she inched back across the hallway to resume her position by the living room.

“Thank you,” the man wheezed, and gulped down the water. She got him another glass. When he finished it and seemed to be all right, he stood up and bowed. “I’m sorry, I’m very sorry, I do apologize,” he said over and over. “I haven’t had anything to eat… for three days. I should have been… more careful… with the senbei. I’ll buy some food on the way home.”

“Yes, please do,” Tae murmured, her back glued to the living room door.
The man bowed again, the tin in his hands. Then, squinting at Tae, he said, “I’m guessing you saw my post- card, and that’s why you called me… but why? Isn’t there someone closer to you?”
“Uh, yes, I don’t… I didn’t think about it.”
“Well, I thank you. Oh, but since I’m here… I heard about the guy from Tokyo… the old guy who died mys- teriously the other day… at the dry cleaner’s just down the hill from here. Please be careful.” Bowing deeply, he turned and left.

Moments later, Tae heard the roar of his engine grow distant.

Tae in fact had been thinking about that old guy from Tokyo.

Precisely a week earlier, at around noon, when the chilly weather had returned and she couldn’t get out of bed, she heard a piercing siren slice through the air and come to a stop near the dry cleaner’s. She had a bad feeling. Keeping her storm shutters closed and the lights turned off, she’d remained in her room for the rest of the afternoon.

She could hear someone going up and down the creaky steel staircase of the dry cleaner’s building until sundown, though maybe she imagined that.

Tae had not left her house in a few days, having enough food and necessities at home. She finally stepped out yes- terday afternoon and walked by Blue Sky Dry Cleaning, where she saw the same tired bench that had always sat in front of the store. There were no Keep out signs, nor was anything roped off, but she noted that the mail slot on the upstairs apartment door was sealed with blue tape, the same as it had been before Honma moved in. In the short time he lived there, Tae had never seen him come or go; she wouldn’t have recognized him if she passed him on the street. Since she never left her house at night, she didn’t know if his lights were ever on.

The old guy who died mysteriously.

Tae switched on the TV and watched two afternoon talk shows she had no interest in, then rose to her feet. She opened all the windows and sprayed disinfectant in the spaces the handyman had occupied, wiping down the doorknobs. By the time she finished her laundry, the sun was starting to set.

She had a small serving of rice left in the freezer, so she decided that dinner would be ochazuke with umeboshi, along with a dish of steamed carrots, daikon, and taro, which she dipped in miso she had made herself. As she slurped on her ochazuke, it occurred to her that a soupy dish like this might have been easier to swallow and digest for someone who hadn’t eaten in three days. All she could think about at the time, of course, was getting him out of the door as quickly as possible.

*

Shinobu had learned about the Blue Sky Dry Cleaning incident the night before on an anonymous online forum where prefecture residents posted gossip. He noticed that the dry cleaner’s in question—the address was there for all to see—was near the house he was scheduled to visit the following day. When he got there, the clogged drain he’d been called to fix didn’t require much maintenance. He took his time, knowing he had no reason to hurry.

The woman who’d thrust the gift of senbei on him— the tin had the label of a shop in Ginza—was wearing a plum-blossom-patterned cloth mask that looked hand- sewn. She had thick glasses and the pale skin of someone who hadn’t seen the sun in months, reminding him of a paperclay doll.

Hideki Honma of Setagaya Ward, age 69

The man was rumored to have died by hanging himself, or maybe it was carbon monoxide, or could it have been slit wrists in the bathtub? He was derided by everybody for having moved here in the first place. He shared a name with Shinobu’s former boss at the cleaning company where he used to work. They were about the same age, though the boss was from Adachi Ward in Tokyo.


A former pharmacist. Unmarried, no immediate family. According to a local news site, the man had an affinity for the Tohoku region and had visited frequently over the years. His long-desired move to the area happened to coincide with the outbreak of novel pneumonia cases in Tokyo. A virus was starting to spread around the country and had already claimed the lives of a few notable people, but there had been no reports of infection in Iwate prefec- ture—at least, not yet. The man from Tokyo had signed a lease for a condominium, but the condo residents held a meeting and decided that he needed first to quarantine in temporary housing—which was this abandoned apart- ment—until they could be assured he was not a carrier of the virus. And that was where he had died, though the actual cause remained unknown.

He was said to have chosen this town after he became friendly with locals he’d met at the several izakaya he frequented, but those “friends” were apparently unable to come to his aid.