A tampon for a pencil, Habara thought. Perhaps that was what he should write in his diary that day: “Love Thief, Pencil, Tampon.” He’d like to see what they’d make of that!
“I was there in his home for only fifteen minutes or so. I couldn’t stay any longer than that: it was my first experience of sneaking into a house, and I was scared that someone would turn up while I was there. I checked the street to make sure that the coast was clear, slipped out the door, locked it, and replaced the key under the mat. Then I went to school. Carrying his precious pencil.”
Scheherazade fell silent. From the look of it, she had gone back in time and was picturing the various things that had happened in order, one by one.
“That week was the happiest of my life,” she said after a long pause. “I scribbled random things in my notebook with his pencil. I sniffed it, kissed it, rubbed my cheek with it, rolled it between my fingers. Sometimes I even stuck it in my mouth and sucked on it. Of course, it pained me that the more I wrote the shorter it got, but I couldn’t help myself. If it got too short, I thought, I could always go back and get another. There were a whole bunch of used pencils in the pencil holder on his desk. He wouldn’t have a clue that one was missing. And he probably still hadn’t found the tampon tucked away in his drawer. That idea excited me no end—it gave me a strange ticklish sensation down below. The only way I could quell it was by grinding my knees together under my desk. It didn’t bother me anymore that in the real world he never looked at me or showed that he was even aware of my existence. Because I secretly possessed something of his—a part of him, as it were.”
“Sounds like sorcery,” Habara said.
“You’re right, it was a kind of sorcery. That hit me later, when I happened to read a book on the subject. But I was just a high school student then, so I didn’t think about things that deeply. I just let my desire sweep me along. I knew if I kept breaking into his house it would prove fatal in the end. If I got caught in the act, odds were I’d get kicked out of school, and if word spread it would become difficult to go on living in this town. I told myself that over and over again. But it didn’t make any difference. My mind wasn’t working properly.”
—
Ten days later, Scheherazade skipped school again and paid a second visit to the boy’s house. It was eleven o’clock in the morning. As before, she fished the key from under the mat and opened the door. Again, his room was in flawless order, the bed perfectly made. First, she selected a pencil with a lot of use left in it and carefully placed it in her pencil case. Then she gingerly lay down on his bed, her hands clasped on her chest, and looked up at the ceiling. This was the bed where he slept every night. The thought made her heart beat faster—she found it difficult to breathe normally. Her lungs weren’t filling with air and her throat was as dry as a bone, making each breath painful.
Scheherazade got off the bed, straightened the covers, and sat down on the floor, as she had on her first visit. She looked back up at the ceiling. I’m not quite ready for his bed, she told herself. That’s still too much to handle.
This time, Scheherazade spent half an hour in the room. She pulled his notebooks from the drawer and glanced through them. She found a book report and read it. It was on Kokoro, a novel by Soseki Natsume, that summer’s reading assignment. His handwriting was beautiful, as one would expect from a straight-A student, not an error or an omission anywhere. The grade on it was Excellent. What else could it be? Any teacher confronted with penmanship that perfect would automatically give it an Excellent, whether he bothered to read a single line or not.
Scheherazade moved on to the chest of drawers, examining its contents in order. His underwear and socks. Shirts and pants. His soccer uniform. They were all neatly folded. Nothing stained or frayed.
Everything clean and in perfect shape. Had he done the folding? Or, more likely, had his mother done it for him? Probably his mother. She felt a pang of jealousy toward the mother who could do these things for him each and every day.
Scheherazade leaned over and sniffed the clothes in the drawers. They all smelled freshly laundered and redolent of the sun. She took out a plain gray T-shirt, unfolded it, and pressed it to her face. Might not a whiff of his sweat remain under the arms? But there was nothing. Nevertheless, she held it there for some time, inhaling through her nose. She wanted to keep the shirt for herself. But that would be too risky. His clothes were so meticulously arranged and maintained. He (or his mother) probably knew the exact number of T-shirts in the drawer. If one went missing, all hell might break loose.
Abandoning that idea, Scheherazade carefully refolded the T-shirt and returned it to its proper place. The process required extreme care. Unnecessary risk had to be avoided. In its stead, she took a small badge, shaped like a soccer ball, that she found in one of the desk drawers to go along with the pencil. It seemed to date back to a team from his grade school years. It was old and likely of no particular importance. She doubted that he would miss it. At the very least, it would be some time before he noticed that it was gone. While she was at it, she checked the bottom drawer of the desk for the tampon. It was still there.
Scheherazade tried to imagine what would happen if his mother discovered the tampon. What would she think? Would she demand that he explain what on earth a tampon was doing in his desk? Or would she keep her discovery a secret, turning her dark suspicions over and over in her mind? What would a mother like that do under the circumstances? Scheherazade had no idea. But she decided to leave the tampon where it was. After all, it was her very first token.
To commemorate her second visit, Scheherazade left behind three strands of her hair. The night before, she had plucked them out, wrapped them in plastic, and sealed them in a tiny envelope. Now she took this envelope from her knapsack and slipped it into one of the old math notebooks in his drawer. The three hairs were straight and black, neither too long nor too short. No one would know whose they were without a DNA test, though they were clearly a girl’s.
She left his house and went straight to school, arriving in time for her first afternoon class. Once again, she was happy and content for about ten days. She felt that he had become that much more hers. But, as you might expect, this chain of events would not end without incident. For, as Scheherazade had said, sneaking into other people’s homes is highly addictive.
—
At this point in the story Scheherazade glanced at the bedside clock and saw that it was 4:32 p.m. “Got to get going,” she said, as if to herself. She hopped out of bed and put on her plain, practical white panties, hooked her bra, slipped into her jeans, and pulled her dark blue Nike sweatshirt over her head. Then she scrubbed her hands in the bathroom, ran a brush through her hair, and drove away in her blue Mazda.
Left alone with nothing in particular to do, Habara lay in bed and ruminated on the story she had just told him, savoring it bit by bit, like a cow chewing its cud. Where was it headed? he wondered. As with all her stories, he hadn’t a clue. He found it difficult to picture Scheherazade as a high school student. Was she slender then, free of the flab she carried today? School uniform, white socks, her hair in braids?
He wasn’t hungry yet, so he put off preparing his dinner and went back to the book he had been reading, only to find that he couldn’t concentrate. The image of Scheherazade sneaking into her classmate’s room and burying her face in his shirt was too fresh in his mind. He was impatient to hear what had happened next.
—
Scheherazade’s next visit to the House was three days later, after the weekend had passed. As always, she came bearing large paper bags stuffed with provisions. She went through the food in the fridge, replacing everything that was past its expiration date, examined the canned and bottled goods in the cupboard, checked the supply of condiments and spices to see what was running low, and wrote up a shopping list. She put some bottles of Perrier in the fridge to chill. Finally, she stacked the new books and DVDs she had brought with her on the table.
; “Is there something more you need or want?”
“Can’t think of anything,” Habara replied.
Then, as always, the two went to bed and had sex. After an appropriate amount of foreplay, he slipped on his condom (she insisted that he use one), entered her, and, after an appropriate amount of time, ejaculated. Their sex was not exactly obligatory, but neither could it be said that their hearts were entirely in it. Basically, she seemed intent on keeping them from growing too enthusiastic. Just as a driving instructor would not want his students to show too much enthusiasm about their driving.
After casting a professional eye on the contents of his condom, Scheherazade began the latest installment of her story.
—
As before, she felt happy and fulfilled for ten days after her second break-in. She tucked the soccer badge away in her pencil case and from time to time fingered it during class. She nibbled on the pencil she had taken and licked the lead. All the time she was thinking of his room. She thought of his desk, the bed where he slept, the chest of drawers packed with his clothes, his pristine white boxer shorts, and the tampon and three strands of hair she had hidden in his drawer.
Once her break-ins began she lost all interest in schoolwork. Her heart was no longer in it. In class, she either fiddled with the badge and the pencil or gave in to daydreams. When she went home, she was in no state of mind to tackle her homework. Scheherazade’s grades had never been a problem. She wasn’t a top student, but she was a serious girl who always did her assignments. So when her teacher called on her in class and she was unable to give a proper answer, he was more puzzled than angry. Eventually, he summoned her to the staff room during the lunch break. “What’s the problem?” he asked her. “Is anything bothering you?” She could only mumble something vague about not feeling very well. After all, she could hardly come right out and say, Well, to tell the truth, there’s this boy I like, and recently I’ve been breaking into his house in the middle of the day to steal his stuff, a pencil and a badge so far, which I secretly fiddle with during class and space out, and that guy’s all I can think of these days. No, her secret was too weighty and dark to reveal to anyone—she had to bear it alone.
—
“I had to keep breaking into his house,” Scheherazade said. “I was compelled to. As you can imagine, it was a very risky business. I couldn’t walk that tightrope indefinitely. Even I could see that. Sooner or later, someone would find me there, and the police would be called. The idea scared me to death. But, once the ball was rolling, there was no way I could stop it. Ten days after my second ‘visit,’ I went there again, as if my feet were moving on their own. I had no choice. I felt that if I didn’t I would go off the deep end. Looking back, I think I really was a little crazy.”
“Didn’t it cause problems for you at school, skipping class so often?” Habara asked.
“My parents had their own business, so they were too busy to pay much attention to me. I’d never caused any problems up to then, never challenged their authority. So they figured a hands-off approach was best. Forging notes for school was a piece of cake. I knew how to copy my mother’s handwriting, so I would write a simple note explaining why I had to be absent, sign it, and affix her seal. I had explained to my homeroom teacher that I had a medical problem that required me to spend half a day at the hospital from time to time. Since the teachers were racking their brains over what to do about the kids who hadn’t come to school in ages, they weren’t too concerned about me taking half a day off every now and then.”
Scheherazade shot a quick glance at the clock next to the bed before continuing.
“I got the key from under the mat and entered the house for a third time. It was as quiet as before—no, even quieter, for some reason. It rattled me when the refrigerator turned on—it sounded like a huge beast sighing. The phone rang while I was there. The ringing was so loud and harsh that I thought my heart would stop. I was covered with sweat. No one picked up, of course, and it stopped after about ten rings. The house felt even quieter then.”
—
Scheherazade spent a long time stretched out on his bed that day. This time her heart did not pound so wildly, and she was able to breathe normally. She could imagine him sleeping peacefully beside her, even feel as if she were watching over him as he slept. She felt that, if she reached out, she could touch his muscular arm. He wasn’t there next to her, of course. She was just lost in a haze of daydreams.
She felt an overpowering urge to smell him. Rising from the bed, she walked over to his chest of drawers, opened one, and examined the shirts inside. All had been thoroughly washed and dried in the sun, then neatly folded and rolled like cake. They were pristine, and free of odor, just like before.
Then an idea struck her. It just might work. She raced down the stairs to the first floor. There, in the room beside the bath, she found the laundry hamper and removed the lid. Mixed together were the soiled clothes of the three family members—mother, daughter, and son. A day’s worth, from the looks of it. Scheherazade extracted a single piece of male clothing. A white crew-neck T-shirt. She took a whiff. The unmistakable scent of a young man. A mustiness she had smelled before, when her male classmates were close by. Not a scintillating odor, to be sure. But the fact that this smell was his brought Scheherazade unbounded joy. When she put her nose next to the armpits and inhaled, she felt as though she were in his embrace, his arms wrapped firmly about her.
T-shirt in hand, Scheherazade climbed the stairs to the second floor and lay on his bed once more. She buried her face in his shirt and greedily breathed in the sweaty fragrance. Now she could feel a languid sensation in the lower part of her body. Her nipples were stiffening as well. Could her period be on the way? No, it was much too early. Was this sexual desire? If so, then what could she do about it? Was there a way? She had no idea. One thing was certain, though—there was nothing to be done under these circumstances. Not here in his room, on his bed.
In the end, Scheherazade decided to take the sweaty shirt home with her. It was risky, for sure. His mother was likely to figure out that a shirt was missing. Even if she didn’t realize it had been stolen, she would still shake her head and wonder where it had gone. Any woman who kept her house so spotless was bound to be a neat freak of the first order. When something went missing, she would search the house from top to bottom until she found it. Like a keen-nosed police dog. Undoubtedly, she would uncover the traces of Scheherazade in her precious son’s room. But, even as Scheherazade understood this, she didn’t want to part with the shirt. Her brain was powerless to persuade her heart.
Instead, she began thinking about what to leave behind. Her panties seemed like the best choice. They were of an ordinary sort, simple, relatively new, and fresh that morning. She could hide them at the very back of his closet. Could there be anything more appropriate to leave in exchange? But, when she took them off, the crotch was damp. I guess this comes from desire, too, she thought. She sniffed them but there was no odor. Still, it would hardly do to leave something tainted by her lust in his room. She would only be degrading herself. She slipped them back on and began to think about what else to leave. What should it be?
—
Scheherazade broke off her story. For a long time, she didn’t say a word. She lay there breathing quietly with her eyes closed. Beside her, Habara followed suit, waiting for her to resume.
At last, she opened her eyes and spoke. “Hey, Mr. Habara,” she said. It was the first time she had addressed him by name.
Habara looked at her.
“Do you think we could do it one more time?”
“I think I could manage that,” he said.
So they made love again. This time, though, her body was very different from before. When he entered her she was soft and wet. Her skin was taut too, and it glowed. Habara guessed that she was reliving her days of breaking and entering. That memory must be very vivid. Or perhaps it wasn’t a memory at all; perhaps she had actually gone back in time to
her seventeen-year-old self. In the same way she revisited her former lives. Scheherazade was capable of that sort of thing. She was able to direct her incredible storytelling powers at herself. Like a master hypnotist hypnotizing himself by looking in a mirror.
The two of them made love as never before. Violently, passionately, and at length. Her climax at the end was unmistakable. A series of powerful spasms that left her trembling. She looked entirely different at that moment: even her face was transformed. For Habara, it was like peering through a crack to catch a brief glimpse of Scheherazade in her youth—now he had a good idea of what she had looked like then: the woman in his arms was a troubled seventeen-year-old girl who had somehow become trapped in the body of a thirty-five-year-old housewife. Habara was sure of it. He could feel her in there, her eyes closed, her body quivering, innocently inhaling the aroma of a boy’s sweaty T-shirt.
This time, Scheherazade did not tell him a story after sex. Nor did she check the contents of his condom. They lay there quietly next to each other. Her eyes were wide open, and she was staring at the ceiling. Like a lamprey gazing up at the bright surface of the water. How wonderful it would be, Habara thought, if he, too, could inhabit another time or space—leave this single, clearly defined human being named Nobutaka Habara behind and become a nameless lamprey. He pictured himself and Scheherazade side by side, their suckers fastened to a rock, their bodies waving in the current, eying the surface as they waited for a fat trout to swim smugly by.
“So what did you leave in exchange for the shirt?” Habara broke the silence.
She did not reply immediately.
“Nothing,” she said at last. “Nothing I had brought along could come close to that shirt with his odor. So I just took it and sneaked out. That was when I became a burglar, pure and simple.”
—