Shaken Up

“Your English is great,” I told her as I asked for a to-go cup. 

I was doing a three month exchange program, studying the faut lines in Japan. She was a barista at a cafe. I was alone. The other students in my program had gone home already.

“Your English is alright,” she smirked.

She had been raised in Hong Kong. Saki had a playful smile, one that made her eyes smile, too, like crescent moons. She had a round face and a button nose, and was skinny, but toned. Saki and I did all sorts of things when we were together — we went to shrines and museums and udon shops and drank too much and fell in love. Saki lived alone. The bottom floor of her apartment was home to a used bookstore and the smell of dust clung to her walls. Everything in Saki’s apartment was patched together with duct tape. Her TV only worked on certain days. She believed in life. She put potted plants on the bookshelves and had framed paintings on the walls. She loved pop art. She dog-eared all her books. She was messy. We stayed up until dawn and whispered secrets into the sheets. We stood out on her balcony and smoked cigarettes as her laundry -- underwear and blouses and blue jeans — billowed in the wind. We talked about who we wanted to become. We talked about ourselves. At dawn, the sun rose and the noise came with it. I gave her my coat to keep her warm. We smoked more cigarettes. Then I went back to America for fall semester. 

“I still haven’t heard from her,” I say, tapping my pencil against my biology textbook. I adjust the angle of my desk lamp, a spotlight over the pages. 

“Who, your made up Japanese girl?” says Paul. He laughs at himself. 

Paul strums a quiet chord. He’s sitting on his bed with his back against the wall. His electric guitar is not plugged in. Above him is a peeling poster of Jimi Hendrix. 

“She’s not made up,” I say. I flip him off without looking. 

“Seriously, though, Noah,” he says, “This earthquake, it’s no joke.” 

“Earthquakes happen all the time in Japan,” I remind him.

“Not just Japan, dude. Haven’t you been reading the news? They said half of Asia totally collapsed.”

Asia may have caved in. Not the United States of America. It may be the end of the world, but I have a midterm I haven’t studied for. 

“I tried calling her a bunch of times and it went straight to voicemail,” I say as I adjust my glasses. I uncap my pen and underline an important sentence. All of the words are beginning to look the same. With a sigh, I close my notebook, fanning myself with the collar of my t-shirt. 

 It’s hot in our dorm, even with the window wide open, and it smells of boyish sweat and old pizza. I can hear a commotion in the courtyard, a chatter tight with tension that only occurs when something big happens. 

“Call her again, so I know she’s real,” Paul says to the back of my head. 

“Alright, fine,” I say, putting down my pencil.

“You won’t,” Paul guffaws, “You won’t.” 

I stand up and turn around so I am straddling my desk chair. That way I am looking Paul in the eye when I hold up my phone and dial Saki’s number. The phone rings and rings, the noise filling up the entire room. I hold in a breath, Paul does, too. International minutes cost me. 

“See?” Paul says, slapping his thigh with his palm, “There’s no way —”

“Can you hear me?” comes a voice on the other end of the line. 

It is a familiar voice, Saki’s. Her accent is not American — there is a slight shift in pitch at the end of her sentences; she is vivid and terse and powerful. As if her English comes from everywhere at once. 

Paul mouths, holy shit. He sits straight up, gripping his guitar firmly by the neck. He shoves his fist into his mouth, eyes wide. 

“Can you hear me?” she repeats.

“Saki?” I say, so quietly it comes out like a breath. 

“Uhuh, it’s me,” she says. I can barely hear her over the noise on her end. Many voices speak over each other in foreign tongue. She is in a place with walls, a place where sound echoes. 

“Hold on, let me — let me, uh, just give me a second,” I say. 

I don’t look at Paul. I scramble out of the room, jogging down the hallway and slipping into the stairwell. I sit down on the stairs and bring the phone to my ear, holding it close. There is no natural light here. I am lit up in fluorescence. 

 My voice bounces to the high ceilings, “I heard about all that stuff on the news, and you haven’t picked up in awhile, so I thought —” 

“I’m okay. My apartment’s destroyed,” she says, “It’s seriously crazy around here. They’ve got rescue teams everywhere. It’s horrible, I mean, I’m at a shelter right now with about five-hundred people and we’re just packed into this building. The city is completely destroyed and there are so many bodies — I mean, I just, it’s really terrible. I don’t even know what to do. And it’s like this all over Asia, Korea, China, Vietnam, wherever. I don’t know if you saw the news, but these earthquakes, they’re very strange, Noah. They’re spreading to the West.”

I think about what she said. I exhale a breath I didn’t even realize I had been holding. 

“How are you — what are you gonna do?” I ask. 

“I’ll be fine. I’m not sure what I’ll do next, but I’m thinking— wait, hold on—”

Saki pauses and switches languages. It is distant, the clipped sound of her Japanese on the other line. Saki sucks in a breath. 

“Saki?” I say. Saki replies loudly into my ear.

“Oh my— okay. Wow. Someone just told me that there was another earthquake. In Europe. They were right, it is spreading West. Like some sort of chain reaction. Crazy.”

“What?” I say, scratching my temple, “That’s not possible.”

“They’re saying it has something to do with the fault lines. Aren’t you the geology major?”

Saki is living through the end of the world, and I am waiting for my inevitable doom.

“I’ll— let me fly to you or something. I want to see you,” I say.

“Are you crazy? You need to be somewhere safe,” she scoffs.

“But I— I just, don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“Nothing will. I survived. Just worry about yourself.”

“Why haven’t you been texting me back?” I ask. I bite down hard on my lip, squeezing my eyes shut. You idiot, I think to myself.

Saki breathes out.

“I’ve been busy,” she says.

“Oh,” I say quietly, cradling the phone to my cheek, “Okay. Yeah, me too.”

“I had a nice time with you, Noah. I did. And I know we said we’d keep in touch, but we’re living in different places.”

“I just want to talk to you, Saki, even if it’s just as friends.”

“We’re talking now.”

“I’ll fly to you,” I say.

“The airport fell apart,” she tells me.

“I’ll take a boat, then,” I say. Saki laughs at that, but it is a strained and exhausted laugh. Softly, she says, “You don’t have to do that.”

On the other end of the line, an alarm blares. A child lets out a piercing wail. People begin to speak louder, a collective panic.

“Look, I need to go,” Saki says.

“Will you let me know what’s happening? That way I won’t worry about you," I say.

“I will."

"You promise?"

"Promise," she tells me, "I need to leave."

"Bye."

"Bye, Noah."

“Goodbye,” I say. I hang up.