The sky seemed dead since all the planes stopped flying.  Osamu looked up at the empty blue and wondered why he was bothering.  Even if he could find the perfect tuna it wouldn't be sushi-grade by the time they got it back to Seattle.  Nothing made sense anymore any ways and he thought, maybe, that was his reason for this trip.  Maybe it didn't matter what happed to the tuna.  It was simply enough for him to see it and know that they were still out there in the cold Atlantic and that maybe someday he'd have them back at his restaurant.  For now he simply needed to see, feel, and smell one, just to know.

The road before them opened up into a sea of tall brown grass, swallowing the horizon.  Frank gripped the wheel of the navy-blue fifty-eight convertible, somewhat singing a Cole Porter song.  The melodies floated out of his mouth in a rush of gin and tonic laden breath, making mostly vowel-like sounds.  He seemed lost in the vast expanse of nothingness that made up a great deal of the country, a far cry from his kind of town.  A woman's voice, angry and terse, barked out of the radio, something to do with justice of some kind.

"Osamu, I'll tell you what . . . there's something sexy about a broad with that kind of kick to her."  Frank looked right at Osamu, smiling and ignoring the road, as he mumbled this through his fine white teeth.

"Hey!"  This scream was the first thing Osamu had said for at least fifty miles.  Not being able to drive and talk simultaneously, Frank had passed a telephone pole by inches.

Osamu clenched his right fist rubbing it over his face, as if he could grab hold of the fear-induced anger and pull it out of his nose or mouth.  He planted his feet firm and flat as he brought both his hands, rolled into tight fists, down to his sides and tried to breathe deep in an attempt to slow his heart rate.

"Okay, here's the deal . . . I have to get to the ocean.  I have to get the perfect fish, and if you cannot drive . . . please, let me."  Osamu was looking directly at Frank.  He needed some kind of response.  Frank simply looked ahead with a somewhat dazed smile gently spread across his face, which in such close range, was far more weathered than Osamu had ever imagined.  "Are you listening to me?"

Frank moved his entire upper body with the steering wheel, showing a once lost now found swagger known by few.  "Dolly . . . now there's a woman.  I doubt they make women like her in Japan.  Hell, they don't even make them like that here anymore."  He smiled off into the distance before them.  "Boy, I'll tell you Osamu, I owe it all to her.  She was always getting my name in a local paper for one reason or another.  The best mother ever to get into the PR business."

As the sun began to burn a brighter red, it became heavier.  Too heavy for the September sky to hold as it sank into the barren earth behind them at a remarkably slow pace.  They continued east.  They both knew the Atlantic was out there, waiting for them.

Frank turned on the headlights and lit a cigarette as the dark night made its way into the automobile.  The highway wind pulled streams of smoke out of the cigarette to be lost in the black Ohio air.

"This place is so stupid and there is nothing here!  I cannot believe you got us lost."

"Hey, Osamu, how was I supposed to know that 465 in Indiana was a giant circle?  Kooky!"

"For three days?!"

Frank thought about trying to argue as he watched a spray of ashes dance briefly in his rearview mirror.  However, Frank knew that he had repeatedly told Osamu that it was all in his head when he insisted they had already passed Indianapolis.  "We'll be there in no time!"  Frank had told him with a smile.  Now there was nothing but flat darkness as they passed Toledo.  Besides, what was the point?  Why argue?  Getting through PA would be hard enough on both of them.

As they rolled towards the Keystone State, Osamu thought about his restaurant.  He wondered why he didn't make a soy sauce stalk for each of the fish in the showcase.  That's the way it was done traditionally.  He put his head to his rolled up window and felt the vibration of the road in his teeth.  Hell, he thought, even in Japan no one does that anymore; it's too much effort.  It seemed everyone, now, knew life was too damn short and random at best to be taken seriously, yet he couldn't help but feel as if he were a failure.  Then he wondered why he had his window rolled up.  What was the point if the top was already down?

"Osamu, you ever hear of Frank "I am the Law" Hauge?"  Frank smiled as he inadvertently made crazy eights over the white dotted lines of the highway.  Giant red and white radio towers and their blinking lights grew into the black, cloud-covered sky.

"No."  Osamu wanted nothing to do with Frank, and he prayed for state troopers.

"He was a good man . . . did great things.  That cat did more than his part to keep us free.  Without people like him prohibition might've never been beaten.  Osamu, I know you're a Jap, but still you're young and people your age could never truly appreciate a man like Hauge.  It has nothing to do with where you're from.  Kids like you just can't stick it out.  'Vote early and vote often.'" Frank chuckled.

"What the fuck?  I mean what are you saying?"  Osamu's accent came on strong whenever he said, what the fuck.

"Perseverance.  Perseverance my friend."  Then Frank began to sing to himself, "A trip to the moon . . . on gossamer wings. . . ."

"You are sooo stupid!  God!"  Osamu had picked that up over the years, living in America.  He didn't believe in God at least not in the way of Christians, Jews, or Muslims.  He wasn't sure what he believed in or anyone else, for that matter.

They passed a large American flag with no stars, saturated by floodlights, hanging like a lifeless body protruding from a hangman's noose.  Frank lit another cigarette.  Before long, under the cover of darkness, they rolled over the Pennsylvania border, leaving Ohio in the distance like a fever-induced daydream.

"Listen Osamu . . . the way I see it we should get some grub now.  Then we won't need to eat again until we get there.  If I eat now I can hold out another few hours.  What do you say pal?"

Osamu thought about not speaking, because Frank would do whatever he wanted regardless, but then realized that a response would be a proactive way to halt any more diarrhea of the mouth on Frank's part.  "Sure."  Osamu said this pulling his upper lip over his top row of teeth.

They pulled the car into a rest stop and Frank made his way straight for the diner tossing the keys up in the air with his left hand and grabbing them with a quick sideways swipe with his right hand.  Osamu lingered behind stretching near the gas pumps where Frank had parked.  The night was pleasantly cool, and the pavement was wet even though all of the clouds were behind them in Ohio.  Osamu gazed up at all the stars.  Out in the middle of nowhere they were all bright.

Eventually Osamu made his way into the giant diner and looked around for Frank.  The tiles on the floor had to be a good forty years old and Osamu wondered why he even bothered trying to find Frank.  He was at the end of the counter lost in the empty space, speaking to the waitress, who smiled innocuously as she fussed with a coffeepot and then the register with one hand and her hair and her ass with the other.  One of the small jukeboxes sang to the empty dinner informing everyone that they were merely dust in the wind.

Soon Frank noticed Osamu standing off in the distance and waved him over.  They were buddies.  The waitress smiled some more as Frank made some comments about Osamu being Japanese.

Frank ordered a B.L.T., a classic, and Osamu had a tuna fish sandwich.  The light in the diner was a pale white, and reminded Osamu of a science fiction movie filmed in the sixties.  Frank and the waitress exchanged pleasant comments about the state of the world as Osamu remained silent.

"So where you headed?"  She stood in a counter pose with one hand on her hip as she said this in conjunction with chewing gum and pouring Frank a little Joe.

"Osamu here . . . " Frank tilted his head towards Osamu without looking at him.  " . . . Needs to get to the coast."

"Really."  She seemed intrigued, yet Osamu never raised his head or as much as cleared his throat.  

"Kid doesn't talk much.  English ain't his first language."  Frank smiled and with that she shrugged and walked off as the two men listened to each other chew.

Before long they were back in the car, traveling due east.  Frank had the car moving at a healthy pace of ninety miles per hour.  Osamu was craning his neck to get the rush of air coming over the windshield, anticipating the first hints of salt.  The road was empty, no traffic in or out.

Frank took a drag from his cigarette and blew the smoke out into the lazy night sky and remembered back.  He thought about Hoboken, Newark, and New York as they were and as they never would be again.  Despite these recollections and the reasons why they were just that, he wouldn't truly admit the new state of things.  Everything has always been as it is, and that's they way it had to be.

"I tell you Osamu, you must feel really lucky to be here."

The comment caught Osamu off guard.  He was half asleep and then startled by the rising sun before them, illuminating western New Jersey at the horizon.  "Yes, lucky."  He said this not even really able to remember the question.

"All you guys have to eat back there is rice, right.  Just look at how much of everything there is here."

"Yes."  Osamu, with his head rested against the passenger side window, clanked his teeth, as they hit a pothole and then rolled down his window.  He felt a bit trapped and overwhelmed by the openness of the land around him.  Soon giant trucks were moving along the road with them, and before long a sign welcomed them to the garden state.

As the sun became warmer, more cars merged onto the highway from unknown places, like insects or schools of fish.  Osamu watched people in other vehicles staring blankly ahead as they took sips of coffee from their travel mugs.  The hum of engines, machines, all around him lulled him in and out of timid slumbers.  He turned and looked over at Frank who was taking a sip from a flask.  The flask was made to look like a set of binoculars.  The road became thick with traffic, and before long Manhattan loomed in the distance.  Osamu prayed for the salty aroma of the sea, only to be rewarded with the sweet smell of a passing landfill.  Gulls filled the sky.  Frank was becoming more alive.  His eyes lit up as the buildings became larger.

"Here we are my friend!"  Frank smiled, twisting towards Osamu with his right elbow on the driver's side headrest.

Osamu looked out before him trying to make sense of things, trying not to explode with anger.  Fading back into the waking world from some putrid, distant realm of sleep, he turned his head slowly from side to side knowing he had to be misinterpreting his survey of the scene.  "This is a joke?"  He made his voice low.

"The tides do funny things.  The boats should be in any time now.  We can go someplace and have a drink."

"No."  Osamu dragged out no quite long.  "Where are we?"

"Long Island."  Frank smiled at Osamu and looked around shrugging his shoulders.  "Where did you think we were . . . Timbuktu?"

For a while after that neither one of them spoke.  They simply looked straight ahead.  Silent.  Osamu tried to make sense of this.  He tried to tell himself that Frank was so drunk that he had driven them to a quarry or a dump by accident, but he knew better.  Some boats sat patiently in the dry cracked earth as the sun beat down on their barnacle covered hulls.

"Frank."  This was the first time Osamu had uttered Frank's name since the trip began, and at the moment it was all he could manage.

"There's no need to worry Osamu.  The tide will come in any time now."

"I want to go home."  Osamu said in a quiet voice with his head tilted down.

"Listen."  This was all Frank said for quite awhile as he turned the engine and began to put the boat of a car in drive.  "We'll find those tunas my friend."

"What are you doing?  The ocean is gone!  This trip is over!  I will not drive with you anymore!  Stop and let me out, I will take a taxi to the train.  It's time to go home.  It's over."

"Nonsense."  The car bucked up and down as Frank pulled it out into the dried up bay and the whole thing shook as he put his foot to the gas peddle.

Osamu crouched placing one foot on his seat and looked back towards the shoreline with panic.  For an all too brief moment he contemplated jumping from the moving car then slowly sunk back into his seat, silent, looking forward.  Frank maneuvered them through garbage, fish carcasses, and sunken boats.

"Everything is different now."  Osamu didn't break his intent forward look to turn and face Frank as he said this.  "We shouldn't be out here.  Frank, please turn back.  This is bad."

"Osamu, relax.  We have nothing to worry about.  You want that fish and we deserve to get it."  Frank had the flask out again.  "Besides, at the first sign of the tide rolling back I'll turn us around."

"Frank, please . . . we have to turn around.  There is no point to this anymore.  We should go back now."  The timber to Osamu's voice had changed.  For the first time since the journey had begun he addressed Frank as a human.

"Don't be ridiculous!"  Frank lit a cigarette, as North America grew smaller in the rearview mirror.  The sky grew dark and Osamu closed his eyes and drifted off unable to watch Frank navigate the ocean bottom in the blackness.

"What . . . have you been driving all night?"

"Osamu, who needs sleep?  Have a drink."  Frank hands Osamu the flask.

Osamu looks at the flask for a moment, as if he can't quite comprehend it then reaches out and takes it from Frank's hand.  It is another few minutes before he puts it to his lips and lets the contents run down his throat.  "Where are we?"

"Headed east.  I can smell the tuna my friend.  Before long we'll be knee deep in them.  They can't hide forever Osamu.  A little perseverance is all we need."

The tires are kicking up giant clouds of dust all around them.  Osamu thinks he can smell something in the engine burning, transmission fluid, oil, something.  However, he can't bring himself to raise his concerns with Frank.  Osamu looks at him and wonders why this trip has always been so important to Frank.  He wonders why Frank can't let go, move on.  For the first time since the trip had started on the corner of 12th and Denny back in Seattle, Osamu isn't angry with Frank.  In fact, he feels sorry for him.  He wants to ask Frank to stop the car so he can give him a hug and tell him not to be so scared, that things always change.  All we need is a good nights sleep and then we can move on again, Osamu thinks.  He asks Frank for a cigarette and takes another swig from the flask before pushing in the car lighter.  A slight breeze kicks up as Osamu puts the cigarette between his lips and lights it, listening to the faint crackle of something dry burning.  He blows some smoke out into a low oncoming rumble.  Slowly, Osamu turns his head towards Frank only to see him content and looking forward.

"Frank."

"Yeah."

For a few moments Osamu thinks of what he could possibly say then mumbles out a never mind and sinks back into his seat and his smoke.  A rumbling grows louder and louder, and the once subtle breeze is now strong.  The smell of salt runs over them and Osamu shifts his weight, as the butterflies in his stomach grow more rambunctious.

"They're coming Frank."

"I know."  Frank responds with a smile.  A fine mist blows into the car extinguishing the last few drags of Osamu's cigarette.  "Kooky."  Frank whispers.

This is the last thing either says before the rush of water consumes them.  Swarms of tunas swim by the car.  A Skip Jack nicks Osamu's right cheek.  A slight sting abated by his inundated senses.  The bitter cold of the Atlantic is gone in an instant as it subsides to a balmy hush devoid of boundaries.  

Author Bio

J.  Morgan Sciarrone has lived in Boston, Osaka, Japan, New Jersey, and Northern Ireland.  He currently lives and teaches in Seattle with his Xoloitzcuintle, Mortimer.  At the moment he is working on finishing his second novel and doing whatever is necessary to keep insanity at bay.