It was when she turned 24. She finally stopped being an asshole and reached out to me.” As Scott’s saying this, swirling his scotch around in the tumbler, Danny looks out towards the view beyond the double-height, plate glass windows — the 270 degree expanse of Tokyo at sunset, with the pale, pink and white silhouette of Mount Fuji looming in the background.
“Around last year. Cass had a work trip here. Yeah, she took me out over there,” Scott continues, pointing his chin left towards the general direction of the sleek, curved granite and glass towers of Roppongi Hills undulating in the golden evening light. “She bought me dinner and a couple of beers, all on her expense account. Imagine that,” he chuckles, before suddenly stopping, flashing a furtive, embarrassed glance at Danny.
Danny — who’s in Tokyo on a work trip — is the one who had suggested meeting here for drinks, direct messaging Scott when his meetings finished earlier than scheduled — im done early tday. meet @ ny bar, park hyatt? happy hr @ 4? Danny then saw the blinking bullets immediately flicker on, linger a bit, then blank out. In that moment of digital hesitancy, he thought about Scott just getting by in the outskirts of Tokyo on an English tutor’s salary. Danny then texted — corporate a/c. my treat.
Danny wasn’t sure what to expect. It had been almost ten years since Scott had split from his ex-wife Katherine, Danny’s cousin. After years of simmering tensions, the catalyst was Scott discovering Katherine’s infidelity from her work messages, which Katherine forgot could be intercepted on the family computer if she didn’t log-off her remote access. In this case, it was their daughter, Cass, then 13, who had discovered them first, then showed them to Scott.
“Mr. Daniel, another round?” the bartender asks, motioning at the near empty tumblers.
Danny looks at Scott, raising one eyebrow, and Scott nods. As the bartender turns away, Scott raises an eyebrow back with a wry smile “So, when did you become Mr. Daniel?”
Danny is the name Scott knows him by. It’s the nickname Katherine told him to use when his parents had sent him from Xiamen, Fujian, a small port city on the east coast of China, to live with her family in Vancouver to attend high school. A name less likely to get him bullied, compared to his parent’s childhood nickname for him — Dan-dan, the favourite food he called out for as a toddler (“egg, egg”). Though it turns out that it didn’t matter what his name was — his halting English, lack of athletic ability and shorter than average height had made him bait for bullies. Bullies who looked like Scott and his rugby teammates in high school. But Scott hadn’t been a bully. At least back then.
“You know, it’s the more respectable name for a middle-age guy,” Danny responds.
“Yeah, well, a successful middle age guy,” Scott says, glancing at Danny’s watch, imposing and weighty on his wrist, gleaming stainless steel in the evening light. Danny suddenly feels self-conscious — the watch was a present to himself when he got promoted and received a half year’s salary bonus last year for his extraordinary client billings. A signal of achievement and arrival to other guys with generous corporate travel budgets, many of whom still walked, chest out, with the ease of the high-school jocks they once were. The way Scott used to walk before his marriage and life fell apart. What was Danny trying to prove here? He should have left his watch upstairs in the room safe.
Scott continues, “You must come here a lot for the bartender to know your name.”
Danny feels his cheeks flush, “No, no, that’s just part of the service — the staff is well trained here.”
Danny doesn’t want to admit how often he’s been travelling to Tokyo the last few years, without contacting Scott. He had wanted to reach out to Scott before. On the cusp of middle age, Danny has the outward totems of success — career, family, house with a manageable mortgage, plus that watch — but inside he feels like something’s missing. The ease of a familiar old friend from the past he could just hang out with. Someone who had once shown him a different side of life. Sure, there are work colleagues and clients Danny regularly goes out to drinks with, but those times feel more performative, part of a corporate ritual with expectations to meet. He misses the unspoken simplicity of being able to just hang out with someone familiar with a shared history, drinks in hand, with no pressure to talk or posture about anything in particular. But are he and Scott even friends, especially after everything that has happened? Were they ever even friends to begin with? He isn’t sure, but part of him is hopeful.
In high school, and even now, Danny had wondered what it would be like to be someone like Scott — popular, athletic, admired by other guys, approached by girls, so at ease with himself. For Danny, life in Canada always seemed like work — working to learn English, to lose his accent, to get the best grades, to get a good job, to justify his parents’ sacrifice. Later, he also worked at thinking of something funny or self-deprecating to say, to try and divert from the other person’s unease. Because no matter how much he tried to fit himself into some idea of being Canadian or American, when surrounded in rooms or spaces where people were mostly white, he would invariably be the one whom people would ask “Where are you originally from”?
It suddenly occurs to Danny that Scott is the one who direct messaged him first — hey, danny boy, long time no speak. saw from ur IG ur coming to tokyo. u have time to catch a drink? If Scott has been getting his travel updates via his Instagram posts in the past, why is he only reaching out now?
“Well, you Mr. Daniel have certainly moved up in the world,” Scott says, looking expansively around the lofty bar space on the 52nd floor. Like an American tourist visiting an old, grand cathedral in Europe, admiring something from a family past that’s now long gone and foreign to him.
— Francis Chang is a Chinese Canadian who was born in Tokyo, grew up in Vancouver, worked in Hong Kong and returned to Vancouver again with his family. Chang previously practised law for more than 25 years and now focuses on writing, as well as leadership coaching and consulting (fc2focus.com).
You can read the rest of Francis Chang's story "Absent Fathers" in Issue 301 Autumn 2024. Order the issue now:
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