I’ve always believed that the problem doesn’t lie in skin color, but in this weird cacophony of languages that sounds like the buzzing of bees. Even though Europe has turned into the EU, unless the language becomes one, the invisible boundary of words can never be removed, I think.
When Eriko finished talking and gave a small sigh, I closed my eyes and was able to let her sigh sink into a deep place inside me, a deep place inside my heart. I reflected on the person I’d been to her until this moment, the guy who had been going out with her, halfheartedly, just for laughs, treating the whole relationship like a joke. Although my memories of my moments with Eriko were still few, I ruminated over them, and vividly confirmed in the depths of my consciousness that the woman called Eriko had a beautiful heart, and that she was an honest soul.
However, after a while, even that vividness like the glint of a sunken pebble scooped out of water.
My cup was empty already, and all I should’ve done after that was to bend my left elbow and take a look at my watch, but instead I said, Listening to your story’s kind of making me tired.
Eriko gave me a strange look, so I moved the table with the two cups in front of me to the side, crawled over to her, across the carpet, and said in a firm, unwavering voice, I guess the time for lecturing is over, while raising my hips to bring my face close to hers and stare intensely into her eyes.
Without averting my gaze, I draped my body over hers, but Eriko seemed to have been waiting for me to do just that from the beginning. The scent of her perfume, infused with alcohol, turned me on. After thinking in the corner of my mind that this scent was all there was in the end, I laid my lips against hers.
We fell down on top of each other on the carpet, kissing intensely, over and over.
But that was all.
I arose before long, and took a look at my watch.
For nearly ten days after that, we didn’t have any kind of contact whatsoever. I sometimes thought about calling her, but when I began to think about what I should say, it became troublesome so I gave up on the idea. In the first place, I didn’t know Eriko’s cell number, nor did I know her apartment number. Eriko didn’t know my cell number either. We’d agreed just to call each other’s offices if we needed to communicate, having already decided on a time and place for our next appointment when we parted company. We were both punctual people, and mutually understood that the both of us were looking forward to our next rendezvous, that we considered it a top priority. Still, it was slightly surprising to realize that we were both unaware of each other’s cell numbers, so I was thinking about keeping it in mind to make sure that we asked each other about the numbers when, on December 22, the ninth day since we’d last met, a letter from Eriko arrived in my apartment’s mailbox.
It was a square envelope, formed by folding a sheet of letter paper four-fold; its front was white but its back
bore a pattern of pink stripes and the seal was decorated with golden letters that formed the words, MAY YOU HAVE SWEET DREAMS TONIGHT. It was a somewhat long telegraph, explaining in concise terms that she’d been waiting for me to get in touch with her, that she wanted me to contact her soon—if I still liked her—and that she wanted to see me again. It really read like a template for polite prose.
I was quite surprised that a woman in this day and age would even send a letter. What’s more, the style was so clear and direct—completely free of flowery expressions—that it even felt clunky. I imagined when she might have written this, and wondered about the look on her face at that time, and found it all very amusing.
On the evening of that day, I called her office at once. Without touching on the letter, I just suggested dinner at a hotel the day after tomorrow, on Christmas Eve. Speaking in a businesslike tone, she told me she was already booked for Christmas Eve, so I suggested she simply come up with some excuse and cancel whatever it was, but she replied that it was impossible.
I abruptly began to talk about the weather.
There was a cold wind blowing that day, but otherwise the weather was clear, and it appeared likely that it would be the same tomorrow and the day after, but I asked her to have dinner with me if it rained. Eriko finally softened her tone and said, Reminds me of that story about Kanichi and Omiya, adding, while laughing, that she found it hard to believe it would rain when the fair weather was lasting as long as it was. I told her that in this world there’s rarely an engagement you couldn’t break off and conveyed the name of the restaurant of the hotel and the time I’d be there if it rained. After replacing the receiver in its cradle, I came under the impression that if it didn’t rain, I’d probably never get to meet her alone again.
And then, two days later, Tokyo was hit, from early in the morning, by a sudden downpour.
When we finished dinner and went into the room I’d reserved, I trotted over to the bed, which was neatly made up with a dark brown bed cover and two layers of blankets. Folding these blankets over fully to both sides, the dark room, lit only by a pale light filtering through the lace curtains, suddenly seemed to brighten a little because of the exposed bedsheets.
Eriko was standing at the entrance, watching me in action.
I removed my jacket and tie and sat on the bed before beckoning her over. Eriko placed her bag on a small chair in a corner of the room and came very close. Lightly tapping the edge of the bed twice, I motioned to her to sit next to me. Eriko straightened her long skirt and politely complied.
In the dim hotel room, where only the faint noise of the ventilation could be heard, we kissed. Her tongue fluttered in my mouth like a slowly flickering flame, and I sucked in the saliva by moving my lips round and round in circles before slowly tracing her gums with the tip of my tongue. In the gap between her lower lip and the base of her teeth, there was a lot of sweet-tasting drool, so I carefully sipped it.
Taking as much time as possible, I undressed Eriko, one piece of clothing at a time, and Eriko undid the buttons of my shirt, one by one.
Turning on the bed lamp and marshaling the full attention of each and every one of my five senses, I carefully and thoroughly reaffirmed Eriko’s limbs, which were like works of art. Without showing many signs of shame, she just quietly surrendered, with her eyes closed, to my modus operandi and, in time, began to respond with satisfaction.
After we finished I was smoking a cigarette when Eriko, lying on her stomach next to me, peeked at the nightstand’s digital watch and said, It’s eleven already. Two hours had already passed since we’d entered the room.
I’m totally spent, I said, letting out a smoky sigh. A while ago, just as we were finishing, the roots of my teeth tightened all at once; they were throbbing and it hurt like hell. I never experienced anything like that.
You must have been trying so hard. Eriko was chuckling, her bare breasts on my back, her fingers slowly stroking my forehead and hair.
We took out a can of beer from the refrigerator and enjoyed it together, passing the liquid from mouth to mouth.
The beer that goes into your mouth comes out much colder, she said happily, as if she’d just stumbled upon a life-changing discovery.
A little after dimming the lights Eriko confided, out of the blue, as if remembering her distant past, I wonder why I’ve come to like you. When I remained silent, she grumbled, "You’re probably going to tell me there’s no
reason anyway, right?"
I said, drawing her shoulder close, If you came to like me, it’s probably because I didn’t think anything of you—a person like you can’t stand that.
You always say the oddest things, in that perfectly composed voice of yours, with that wise-ass look on your face.
But I guess that’s the part of you I like, Eriko—
But you’ve got to become a little more agreeable from now on, like this person here.
Eriko rubbed against my dick, which had become erect again, with the inside of her soft thigh before falling on me and pressing her lips for a kiss.
It seemed to be raining out
side again, as I heard some light pitter-pattering against the window.
But … Eriko said, releasing her lips and pushing back her long hair, … to think that it really rained.
At that moment, I flinched somewhat, finding in her eyes infinite points of light, glimmering like distant stars. I thought I was going to lose myself in their brilliance, and before I knew it, with my eyes closed, I was winding my arm around her neck and aggressively drawing her slender body closer.
11
ON THE MORNING OF the Sunday we promised to go out cherry-blossom viewing, the incessant ringing of the telephone awoke me. Climbing out of bed, I picked up my cell phone from the charger on the bookshelf and pressed it to my ear.
I’m sorry. I just can’t make it today.
It was Tomomi, speaking in a frail voice.
Oh … I said, half-asleep, unaware at first that I was even standing.
I’m sorry, Tomomi said again.
With the grogginess weighing down on me, I wanted to hang up quickly, but that impulse, if surrendered to, seemed to betray the truth that I really didn’t give a damn about cherry-blossom viewing from the very beginning, so I immediately changed my mind and pressed myself to properly play the part of the disappointed friend.
What? You can’t make it? I began, sounding discouraged before reading the hands on the alarm clock beside the charger. It was still seven.
Why? Anything urgent come up? My mind finally began to clear.
It looks like I’m about to find the right nursery at last, Tomomi said.
Lately, she was frantically trying to find a nursery school for Takuya. The boy had been unable to get adjusted to the nursery he’d begun attending in April last year, and since the new year began, he’d been absent for days. Even though Takuya liked this particular nursery’s policy of permitting the kids to remain barefooted all year round and play to their hearts’ content with just one shirt on, even in winter, it still didn’t suit him in the end, apparently. So Tomomi had to look for a new nursery, but there were only a few in the neighborhood, which all happened to be full. She ended up welcoming the new year without any closure on the matter.
But then, she told me, late last night she received a call from an acquaintance who had been helping out with the search, and she was going to go together with this person this morning to the office of a certain member of the ward assembly to ask him to negotiate her boy’s entry into a particular nursery on her behalf.
Actually, we were already rejected once by this place, but my friend told me, with the help of this ward member, we stood a chance, even though it’s still all up in the air.
When I told her, in that case I could just go see the cherry blossoms with Takuya alone, she responded very coldly, I’m supposed to take Takuya along too.
Well, I guess it can’t be helped then. The cherry blossoms are going to be mostly gone by next week, so I guess there’ll be no flower-viewing this year.
Having said that, I was still pleased about the prospect that Takuya might get into a new nursery, so I added, Hope it works out well, and hung up.
I canceled the alarm setting and slipped into bed. While privately thinking what a lucky break it was—since I’d been extremely tied up with work this week and had gotten exhausted more and more—I fell asleep again.
When I woke up, it was one in the afternoon.
I got out of bed, went to the kitchen, pulled out a can of beer from the refrigerator and sat on the table and drank. No sooner was I halfway through the beer than I turned my face away from the budding brightness pouring through the veranda, toward the empty, six-tatami mat space, where the partitioning was open. I suddenly felt down, taking in the dismal darkness I saw in there.
I wondered why the beer tasted terrible. I thought I should’ve gone out to see cherry blossoms today, no matter what.
I felt that if it was going to turn out like this, I should’ve invited Raita or Honoka to come along.
Eriko was in Los Angeles on a ten-day trip since the previous week. Apparently, she was put in charge of handling the styling of a certain singer’s promotional video, and was excited about it when she left. She’d terminated her contract with her company at the end of last year and gone completely freelance from this April. She was very pleased to have landed a major project right away.
Honoka and Raita rarely visited these days. Honoka seemed to be quite exhausted from all the job-hunting she’d begun since the latter half of last year. Apparently, she’d been turning to Eriko for advice about one thing or another, even staying at her place sometimes.
But she’s finally thinking about her own future, so I feel she’s become very emotionally strong. Eriko was
being optimistic, as always.
Raita, on the other hand, had no choice but to live precariously from day to day, with Torimasa having gone bankrupt. While the recession was partly to blame, the primary reason for the shutdown was because his boss suffered a stroke as soon as the New Year holidays began, and even though his condition had improved, the left half of his body remained paralyzed, making him unable to attend to the demands of running his store in the way he used to. Consequently, the boss, along with his wife, was preparing to retire to Kagoshima, his birthplace, sometime next month after selling off the store and the land. Raita had to search for an apartment immediately, as well as worry about finding a new job, and since he had to scrape up the money to take care of the moving expenses, he seemed to be working part-time jobs all day long, every day.
I had some drinks with him last week in Nakano—the first time in a month—but he didn’t seem all that well; his cheeks had become hollow and he had a constant hacking cough. As usual, we both guzzled down the drinks, and I was drunk halfway through, but Raita was heatedly cursing the producer, Terauchi.
That old fart, he goes—‘Good riddance! That damn shop going bankrupt is the best thing that could’ve happened to you. It’d be a shame to see a man like you waste away in obscurity, hidden in that damn shop. You agree, don’t you? Deep down inside, you see what I mean, don’t you?’—I tell you there’s something wrong with that dude, never opening his piehole without saying, that damn shop, that damn shop.
Having finished, Raita turned toward me and said, Naoto-san, could you believe that guy? The nerve! Here’s what else he said—Raita put his arm all the way around my shoulder and spoke into my ear in a weird voice, mimicking Terauchi. ‘Hey there, Kimura, you know you can become a way bigger star than that Kubozuka guy in no time at all, so why don’t you just take my word for it and jump into the world of television, huh? Come on now, why don’t you?’
Laughing, I wriggled out of his grasp and teased, Hey, you never know! Surprisingly, you just might have the talent to become an actor.
Raita became straight-faced and spat out, Stop it! You’re making me sick!!
Knowing how tenacious Terauchi could be, I’m sure he took the opportunity to try to persuade Raita again when he heard he was out of a job. It wasn’t surprising, really, seeing how driven Terauchi was to win over Raita, but it still was a tough break for the guy, considering that it was Raita whom he was trying to persuade—the young man was one heck of a hardheaded dude. Perhaps it was just as well, though. For someone like Terauchi—someone who unwaveringly believed that everyone in the world wanted to get on television and become famous—being rejected by Raita may have been just the lesson he needed all along.
I got to know Terauchi at a seminar on politics and the economy, which was sponsored by a certain media insider. I thought it was rather unusual for someone in the drama field to come to such a seminar, but according to him, The people working in drama today are such shameless ignoramuses. Without knowing the difference between the House of Representatives and the House of Councilors, they blissfully have actors refer to Councilors as Representatives.
We became friends only around the end of the year, after we both attended the year-end party held by the organizer of the seminar. Although the first party ended
without incident in an Akasaka restaurant, when we stepped into a room of a gorgeous mansion in Motoazabu specially arranged for the second party, there were five topless porn actresses, dressed only in loincloths, waiting for us to take the party in a completely vulgar direction. Still, up to the point when the girls put on a clumsy travesty of a striptease, things stayed charming. But shortly thereafter, after the alcohol started to take effect, when the tensions of about fifteen partygoers began to ease, the entire scene began to show signs of a wild orgy. Even the men began to strip down to their waists, one after another, and take turns putting the girls on their laps; among them, there were those who untied the loincloths of the girls against their will—it took three to do that—and there were even those who began an impromptu photo session with a small instant camera provided by the organizer.
I was exercising tact in my exchanges with the girls and waiting for the right time to leave, when Terauchi, who was seated next to me, put on a sour expression and said, Mr. Matsubara, let’s flee this hell hole, double quick.
The two of us slipped away from the room and drank the rest of the night away in Roppongi, having become kindred spirits. It was that night when I came to know, plainly from his mouth in the form of a confession, that he was gay, and that he’d never laid a finger on a woman in his life.
"Although that’s not the reason why I entered the world of show business, I must say that for gays like myself,
showbiz is someplace like heaven …"
I came to like him at once, finding his strangely warm manner of speaking novel and fresh.
Well, he’s not such a bad guy at heart, you know.
When I thoughtlessly defended Terauchi in that way, Raita got worked up, which was unusual for him.
But who the hell does he think he is, telling me he was happy to see ‘that damn shop’ go bankrupt, that it was good riddance? The boss and his wife have always gone out of their way to protect that shop, you know. Maybe I’ve already talked to you about this, Naoto-san, but eighteen years ago, the boss lost his only son, who was four years old, to cancer, and ever since then he’s been taking care of his wife, who’s been constantly on the verge of a breakdown, while breaking his own back to keep the shop going. As for me, he said he loved me like his son, believing me to be his stand-in, and began to train me from scratch at a time when I was going astray. Then here comes this insensitive faggot with his rude remarks, hardly aware of the circumstances. At any rate, the bottom line is that folks like Terauchi, and even you, Naoto-san, are elites, right? You fellas graduated from first-rate universities and entered first-rate companies and earn top-notch salaries, right? People like that can never understand the hardships of folks who survive by skewering several hundred pieces of meat every single day, charging just a hundred yen per stick.
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