“That’s what they said.”
I thanked him and hung up. This was going to take some hard figuring.
I went out walking again.
June quit three months ago, but I slept with her not two weeks before. She gave me her telephone number, but when I called it, nobody answered. This made my third call girl—first Kiki, then Mei, now June—who’d disappeared. All of them somehow connected to Gotanda and Makimura and me.
I stepped into a coffee shop and drew a diagram in my notebook of these personal relations of mine. It looked like a chart of the European powers before the start of World War I.
I pored over the diagram, half in admiration, half in despair. Three call girls, one too-charming-for-his-own-good actor, three artists, one budding teenage girl, and a very uptight hotel receptionist. If this was anything more than a network of casual relationships, I sure didn’t see it. But it might make a good Agatha Christie novel. By George, that’s it! The Secretary did it! Only who was laughing?
And who was I kidding? I didn’t have a clue. The ball of yarn tangled wherever you tried to unravel it. First there were the Kiki and Mei and Gotanda threads. Add Makimura and June. Then Kiki and June were somehow connected by the same phone number. And around and around you go.
“Hard nut to crack, eh, Watson?” I addressed the ashtray before me. The ashtray, of course, did not respond. Smart ashtray. Same went for the coffee cup and sugar bowl and the bill. They all pretended not to hear. Stupid me. I was the one running amok in these weird goings-on. I was the worn-out one. Such a wonderful spring night, and no prospect for a date.
I went home and tried calling Yumiyoshi. No luck. The early shift? Or her swim club night? I wanted to see her badly. I missed her nervous patter, her brisk movements. The way she pushed her glasses up on her nose, her serious expression when she stole into the room. I liked how she took off her blazer before sitting down beside me. I felt warm just thinking about her. I felt drawn to her. But would we ever get things straight between us?
Working behind the front desk of a hotel, going to her swim club—that gave her satisfaction. While I found pleasure in my Subaru and my old records and eating well as I went on shoveling. That’s the two of us. It might work and then again it might not. INSUFFICIENT DATA, PROGNOSIS IMPOSSIBLE. Or would I wind up hurting her too, as I did every woman I ever got involved with? Like my ex-wife said.
The more I thought about Yumiyoshi, the more I felt like flying up to Sapporo to fill in the missing data. At least I could tell her how I felt. But, no, first I had to untie some critical knots. Things were half-done. I didn’t want to keep dragging them around with me. A half-gray shadow would cloud my path for the rest of my days. Not entirely ideal.
The problem was Kiki. I couldn’t get over the feeling that she was at the heart of it. She was trying to reach me. In my dreams, in a movie in Sapporo, in downtown Honolulu. She kept crossing my path, trying to lead me somewhere, leave me a message. That much was clear. But nothing else. Kiki, what did you want from me?
What was I supposed to do?
I could only wait, until something showed. Same as ever. There was no point in rushing. Something was bound to happen. Something was bound to show. You had merely to wait for it to stir, up from the haze. Call it a lesson from experience.
Very well, then, I would wait.
I got together with Gotanda every few days after that. After a while, it became a habit. And each time we met, he’d apologize for keeping the Subaru so long.
“Haven’t plowed the Maserati into the sea yet, have you?” he joked.
“Sorry to say, but I haven’t had time to go to the sea,” I parried.
Gotanda and I sat at a bar drinking vodka tonics. His pace a little faster than mine.
“I bet it would feel great, though. Plowing it into the sea,” he said, raising his glass to his lips.
“Like a cool breeze,” I said. “But then you’d only get yourself a Ferrari.”
“I’d ditch that too.”
“And after the Ferrari?”
“Hmm, who knows? But sooner or later, the insurance company’s going to want a word with me.”
“Insurance company? Who gives a damn about your insurance company? You got to think big. Go for the grand sweep. This is fantasy, not one of your low-budget movies. Fantasies don’t have budgets, so why be middle class about it? Go wild! Lamborghini, Porsche, Jaguar! The sky’s the limit! And the ocean’s big enough to swallow cars by the thousands. Let your imagination do its stuff, man.”
He laughed. “Well, it certainly lightens me up.”
“Me too, especially since it’s not my car and not my imagination,” I said, then asked how things were going with his ex-wife.
He took a sip of his drink and looked out at the rain. The bar had emptied out except for us. The bartender had nothing to do but dust the bottles.
“Things’re going okay,” he said meekly, under a whisper of a smile. “We’re in love. A love affirmed and consummated by divorce. Romantic, isn’t it?”
“Isn’t it, though. I might faint.”
He chuckled.
“But it’s true,” he said.
“I know,” I said.
That was the general drift of conversation each time I saw Gotanda. What we talked about was too serious to treat anything but lightly. Most of the jokes weren’t terribly good, but it didn’t matter. It was enough that we could joke, that there were jokes between us. We ourselves didn’t know how serious we were.
Thirty-four is a difficult age. A different kind of difficult than age thirteen, but plenty difficult. Gotanda and I were both thirty-four, both beginning to acknowledge middle age. It was time we did. Readying things to keep us warm during the colder days ahead.
Gotanda put it succinctly. “Love. That’s what I need.”
“I’m so touched,” I said. But the fact was, that’s what I needed too.
Gotanda paused to consider what he’d said. I thought about it as well. I also thought about Yumiyoshi. How she drank all those Bloody Marys that snowy night.
“I’ve slept with so many women, I can’t count them. You sleep with one, you’ve slept with them all. Hell, you go through the same motions,” said Gotanda after a while. “Love’s what I want. Here I am, baring my sentimental soul to you again. But I swear, the only woman I want to sleep with is my ex-wife.”
I snapped my fingers. “Incredible. The Word from Above. O Light Resplendent. You’ve got to hold a press conference. Make your I-only-want-to-sleep-with-my-wife proclamation. Everyone will be moved beyond tears. You might even receive a citation from the Prime Minister.”
“No, this is Nobel Prize material. Not something the common man can do.”
“You’ll need a frock coat for the ceremony.”
“I’ll buy it. Put it on my expense account.”
“Sanctus tax deductum.”
“I’ll be on stage with the King of Sweden,” Gotanda went on. “I’ll declare it for all the world to hear. Ladies and gentlemen, the only woman I want to sleep with is my wife! Waves of emotion. Storm clouds part; sun breaks through.”
“The ice cap melts, the Vikings are vanquished, the mermaids sing.”
Ah, love. We both lapsed silent, meditating on its grandeur. I had a lot to think about. I had to make sure I picked up some vodka and tomato juice and Lea & Perrins and lemons.
“Or then again, maybe you won’t receive an award,” I piped up. “Maybe they’ll just take you for a pervert.”
Gotanda considered that. “Maybe. We’re talking neo-sexual revolution here. The masses might rise up and trample me to death,” he said. “I’d be a sexual martyr.”
“The first actor martyred to the neo-sexual revolution.’
“Martyred and never to sleep with his ex-wife again.”
Time for another drink.
If he had a spare moment, Gotanda would call and we’d go out or he’d come over to my place or I’d go over to his. The days passed. I’d resolved not to work at all
. I couldn’t be bothered. The world was doing very well without me. Meanwhile I was waiting.
I mailed Hiraku Makimura the balance of his money and receipts from the trip.
The next day I got a call from Boy Friday, begging me to take it all.
It was too much trouble to go through the whole back-and-forth bow-and-scrape routine, so I gave in. If it made the Master happy, who was I to argue? And before you could say “money in the bank,” Makimura had sent me a check for three hundred thousand yen. Also in the envelope was a receipt marked FOR SERVICES RENDERED—FIELD RESEARCH. I signed it, stamped it with my seal, and posted it. Back to the wonderful world of expense accounts.
I placed the check for three hundred thousand yen on my desk to appreciate 8¾% dust.
The Golden Week holidays came and went.
I called Yumiyoshi a number of times. She was always the one who determined the length of the conversation. Sometimes we talked for a long time, other times she’d simply say, “Busy, got to go now,” and hang up. Or if a silence hung on the line too long, she’d cut me off without warning. But at least we talked. Exchanged data, a little at a time. And one day, she gave me her home phone number. Progress.
She went to her swim club twice a week. Which I found, to my dismay, still brought on moments of jealousy. Handsome instructors and all. I was as bad as a high school boy and I knew it. And what was worse, I was afraid she knew it. Jealous of a swim club? That’s ridiculous. You’re so immature. I was afraid she’d never want to see me again.
So whenever the subject came up, I held my tongue. Though not talking about it only inflated my paranoia. Visions of the instructor—Gotanda, of course—keeping Yumiyoshi after class for intensive one-on-one sessions. His hands supporting her chest and abdomen as she practiced the crawl. His hands caressing her breasts, easing between her thighs. But it’s all right, he says.
It’s all right. Don’t you know? The only woman I want to sleep with is my wife.
Then he takes Yumiyoshi’s hand and puts it on his crotch. She begins to massage it. An underwater erection, like coral. Yumiyoshi is in rapture.
It’s all right. Don’t you know? The only woman I want to sleep with is my wife.
Idiotic, yet that’s what came to mind whenever I called Yumiyoshi. As time went on, the vision got more and more complex, with a whole cast of characters. Kiki and Mei and Yuki put in guest appearances. As Gotanda’s fingers stroked her body, Yumiyoshi became Kiki.
“Listen, I’m just a plain, run-of-the-mill person,” Yumiyoshi said one night. She seemed particularly drained after a long day’s drudgery. “The only difference between me and anyone else is my name. Otherwise I’m the same. I’m just working behind the counter of a hotel day after day, pointlessly wearing down my life. Don’t call me any more. I’m not worth the phone charges.”
“But I thought you liked hotel work.”
“I do.”
“But?”
“The work is fine. But sometimes, I think the hotel’s going to eat me up. Just sometimes. I ask myself, if I’m here or not, what’s the difference? The hotel would still be there. But not me. I’m out of the picture. That’s the difference.”
“Aren’t you taking this hotel business a little too seriously?” I asked. “The hotel’s the hotel, you’re you. I think about you a lot, and sometimes I think about the hotel. But never together. You’re you, the hotel’s the hotel.”
“You think I don’t know that? I know that, but people get confused. My private life and my identity get dragged into this hotel world, and then they get swallowed up.”
“It happens to everyone. You get dragged into something and you lose track of where one thing ends and the other begins. You’re not the only one. It happens to me too,” I said.
“It’s not the same thing, not at all,” she declared.
“No, maybe not. But I can still sympathize, can’t I? Because, I mean, there’s something about you that’s very attractive.”
Yumiyoshi went silent, out there in the telephone void.
“I … I’m frightened,” said Yumiyoshi, verging into sobs. “I’m frightened of that darkness. I’m frightened that it’s going to come again, soon.”
“Hey, what’s going on with you? Are you all right?”
“Of course I’m all right. What did you think?” She was clearly sobbing now. “So I’m crying. Anything wrong with that?”
“No, nothing at all. I was merely concerned.”
“Can’t you just be quiet?”
I did as told and Yumiyoshi cried until she couldn’t cry anymore, then she hung up on me.
On May seventh, Yuki called.
“I’m back,” she announced. “Why don’t we go out for a ride?”
I tooled the Maserati to the Akasaka condo. But when Yuki saw the car, she wrinkled up her face unpleasantly.
“What’s with this?”
“I didn’t steal it, don’t worry. My car fell into an enchanted spring and what do you know? The fairy of the spring appeared looking like Isabelle Adjani and asked, ‘Was that a gold Maserati or a silver BMW just now?’ And I said, ‘Neither, that was a copper Subaru,’ and—”
“C’mon, bag the stupid jokes,” said Yuki. “I’m asking a serious question. Where the heck did you get this thing?”
“I traded temporarily with a friend. He needed to borrow the Subaru, for personal reasons.”
“A friend?”
“You may not believe it, but yes, I do have at least one friend.”
She climbed into the passenger seat, took a look around inside, then made a funny face. “Weird car,” she said. “Dopey.”
“Now that you mention it, the owner said the same thing. Although his words were slightly different.”
That shut her up.
I pointed the Maserati south, toward Shonan. Yuki wouldn’t speak. I played a Steely Dan tape on low and drove with care. The weather was clear and warm, so I was wearing an aloha shirt and sunglasses, and Yuki had on a pink Polo shirt. It was like being in Hawaii again. In front was a livestock truck full of pigs, their red eyes peering through the slats at us. Could pigs distinguish between a Maserati and a Subaru?
“How was it in Hawaii after I left?” I finally asked.
Yuki shrugged.
“Things go all right with your mother?”
Another shrug.
“Get your surfing down?”
Still another shrug.
“You look real healthy. Perfectly tanned. Like café au lait, all smooth and delicious.”
Shrug.
You couldn’t say I wasn’t trying. I was trying everything.
“Is it your period or something?”
The same.
So I shrugged back.
“I want to go home,” Yuki said. “Hang a U.”
“This is an expressway. Even Niki Lauda couldn’t manage a U-turn here.”
“Then exit someplace.”
I turned to her. She looked exhausted suddenly, her eyes lifeless and unfocused. Perhaps a bit pale too; it was hard to tell through the tan.
“Want to stop and take a rest?”
“I don’t want a rest stop. I want to go back to Tokyo. Now!”
We got off at the expressway at Yokohama, then headed back on going in the opposite direction. When we reached Akasaka, Yuki asked if we could go sit somewhere. So I parked the Maserati in the lot, and we walked to the grounds of Nogi Shrine and found a bench.
“I’m sorry,” said Yuki, trying to be reasonable. “I felt sick. I didn’t want to say anything, so I held it in.”
“You don’t have to hold it in. I know how girls get. I’m used to it.”
“It’s not like that!” she shouted. “That has nothing to do with it! What got to me was riding in that car. That stupid car!”
“What’s wrong with the Maserati? It’s not such a bad car. It handles real well, rides pretty nice too. True, a bit too flashy for my simple tastes. Even if I could afford it, I guess I’d never buy a
car like that.”
“I don’t care what brand that car is. The problem’s that car. Couldn’t you feel it? It was icky. I was suffocating. I could feel a pressure in my chest, and in my stomach too. You didn’t feel it?”
“No,” I said. “Although I got to admit, I don’t feel one hundred percent comfortable in it. I thought it was because I was used to the Subaru. You know, you like what you’re used to, but that’s not this pressure you’re talking about.”
She shook her head. “No, it’s not that at all. This is something real peculiar.”
“Is this more of your …?” I cut myself short. I didn’t want to say anything that sounded condescending.
“Yeah, it’s more of that. I felt something.”
“Well, what was it? What did you sense in that car?”
Yuki shrugged yet again, but this time she was talking. “It’d be easy if I could explain, but I can’t. I can’t picture it. There’s just this feeling—a heavy, dark, awful lump of pressure in me. And it’s totally …” Yuki searched for the word, hands on her lap. “It’s wrong! I don’t know what’s wrong. But something’s wrong. I couldn’t breathe in there. I tried to ignore it, I thought maybe it was jet lag or something, but then it got worse and worse. I don’t want to ride in that car ever again, you hear me? Get your Subaru back.”
“The Curse of the Maserati,” I intoned.
“This is no joke. You shouldn’t be driving that car,” she said, very seriously.
“Okay, okay,” I gave in with a smile. “I know you’re not kidding. I’ll try not to drive the Maserati too much. Or maybe I should go sink the thing in the sea?”
“If possible,” said a grave Yuki.
It took Yuki about an hour to recover from this shock to her system. We sat on the bench, and she rested her chin on her hands and kept her eyes shut. People passed through the grounds. Old folks, mothers with children, foreign tourists with cameras strung around their necks. Occasionally, a salesman-type or salaryman would stop and take a breather on a bench near us. Dark suit, plastic briefcase, glassy stare. Ten minutes later, he’d be off beating the pavement again. By most standards, a normal adult should be working at this hour, and a normal kid should be in school.