by Jeremy Bates
“Where?” she said, standing also.
“Where?”
“Where are you going? To the manga kissa?”
It was not an innocuous question; it was a challenge.
“Yes,” I said simply.
“You took it too far, Gaston.”
I nodded but didn’t say anything. How had I expected her to react? How would I have reacted had our roles been reversed, and she’d dumped this madcap revelation on me?
“Goodnight,” I said, the word wrapped in genuine sadness. I slid open the glass door.
“Don’t go,” she said quietly.
I looked at her. She didn’t seem confused or bemused anymore. Not angry either, not exactly—more like…frightened.
“I want to hear more,” she said.
∆∆∆
We retook our seats and I spent the next ten minutes explaining to her in detail everything I’d been through since boarding Flight JL077. She did not laugh or deride or argue. She listened quietly until I’d gotten it all out.
Finally she spoke her verdict:
“I believe you, Gaston.”
∆∆∆
I wasn’t sure I’d heard her right. I’d been so certain she would say the opposite I had to ask her to repeat herself.
“I believe you,” she said.
“You do not have to say that for my benefit.”
“I’m not saying it for your benefit.”
“You believe I am from”—oh hell just say it—“another dimension?”
“You do not seem like you are joking.”
“No, I am not.”
“Why would you make all this up?”
“I would not.”
“So I believe you.”
“I might be crazy.”
“That crossed my mind. But you don’t seem crazy either. Nothing about you seems crazy.”
“I might be a good actor.”
“I said I believe you, Gaston!” she blurted. “Why are you trying to change my mind?”
“I am not. Of course I am not.” I cupped my face with my hands and rubbed my eyes. “It is just that…it all feels so crazy. Sometimes I accept what I have told you, and sometimes I cannot accept any of it. I cannot get my head around it. And that makes me…”
“Feel crazy,” she said.
“But I am not. I know I am not. I did not imagine being interrogated by the immigration officers. I did not imagine the detention center. This black eye, it is not made up. This conversation…I have never had a conversation that feels as real as the one we are having right now.”
Okubo leaned forward and took my hands in hers. “I do not believe in ghosts,” she said. “But if I saw one tonight with my own eyes, if I saw one and was convinced it was not an illusion or a hallucination, I think I would have no choice but to believe ghosts existed, despite how much a part of me would want to spin it otherwise. I guess what I mean is…sometimes there is no choice but to believe.”
“Even in the impossible?”
“Even in the impossible.”
She leaned a little closer and squeezed my hands. I squeezed hers back.
And then her lips were on mine.
We ended up in her bedroom, on her futon, right alongside the giant-sized Winnie the Pooh. There wasn’t room for the three of us on the mattress, so I grabbed the bear by an ear and tossed him aside.
“Jealous?” Okubo teased.
“Immensely,” I replied.
It wasn’t long before our clothes were off and we were tangled up together beneath the sheets. Naked, Okubo seemed somehow smaller, more delicate than she had been previously. However, she was anything but submissive, and we were both slick with sweat by the time the curtains had drawn on our sexual acrobatics.
I showered first, given the stall could only accommodate one of us at a time. Afterward, lying on the futon in the bedroom, I heard the water clunk on and rattle through the building’s old pipes as Okubo began her shower. The repetitive, gushing sound lulled me to sleep, and I barely registered Okubo slipping beneath the covers a short time later, snuggling tightly against my body.
Chapter 31
I woke at some unknown hour, my sleep murdered by a vague yet haunting dream filled with laughter and friendship, snow and death, regret and loss.
The bed was unfamiliar. I made out Okubo’s silhouette next to me. I recalled what I’d told her earlier, and more importantly, her reaction.
She believed me.
Or she said she did. She could very well be humoring me. But if that was the case, she’d have to accept the alternative that I had some serious mental issues. Why would she want such a person around? She wouldn’t.
Which meant she likely did believe me.
Or at least wanted to.
“Are you awake?” she asked me, her voice sharp in the darkness.
“I did not mean to wake you.”
“You didn’t.”
My hand found her bare thigh beneath the covers. I stroked it gently.
“Are you seeing someone, Gaston?”
My hand froze. “No,” I said.
“No one?”
“No.”
“If you are, please tell me.”
Where was this coming from?
I said, “And you keep teasing me about being jealous…”
“Who’s Smiley?”
At the mention of Smiley’s name, a fissure filled with nostalgic affection cracked inside my chest. The dream I had just awoken from flashed vividly in my mind. I pushed myself up to my elbows. In the faint moonlight seeping through the window, I could see Okubo’s eyes were open. “Was I talking in my sleep? I was told I do that sometimes.”
Okubo twisted onto her side to look at me. “Who told you that?”
“I have been with other women in the past, chérie.”
“Are you married?”
I hesitated. “Technically, yes, but—”
“What!” She threw the covers off and leapt to her feet. “You’re married?”
“Yes, but—”
Okubo flicked on the light switch and tugged a satin kimono gown over her body. “I think you should leave.”
“Can I explain?”
“Explain? What’s there to explain, Gaston? You’re married.”
“I do not live with my wife. We have not lived together for a year and a half.”
Okubo frowned. “Are you swingers or something?”
“We live separate lives.”
“Why haven’t you divorced?”
“We cannot. My wife is a Filipina. Divorce is illegal in the Philippines. I have tried to get her to agree to divorce outside of the Philippines, but her family is strongly Catholic and holds much sway over her. They believe fervently in the sanctity of marriage, especially since we have a son together.”
“You have a son…?”
I nodded. “His name is Damien. He is four years old. He lives with his mother. I see him every other weekend.”
Okubo drew her fingers along her brow, then down her cheekbones. Her shoulders sagged. She shook her head, exhaling. “I’m sorry for getting so worked up, Gaston. I—I know so little about you…”
“We have only just met,” I agreed.
“One night together… For some reason, it feels as though I have known you much longer.”
“I should have told you about my son. I probably would have last night had our conversation not gone off on such a tangent… What time is it?”
Okubo looked above and past me. I turned to discover a yellow Pooh-face clock on the wall. The hands read: 4:10.
“You and Winnie the Pooh,” I added.
“He is kawaii,” she said.
“Puppies are cute too. That does not mean I am going to go out and adopt a litter of them.”
“Yes, but Pooh-san is not just cute. He holds an enviable worldview. He’s comfortable doing nothing but eating honey. That sounds nice, doesn’t it? Sometimes all I want to do is relax and pamper myself and be myself.”
“Words to live by,” I said, sitting up and stretching. “I know it is early, but I do not think I am going to be able to get back to sleep.”
“I’ll make some tea.”
“Do you have coffee?”
∆∆∆
Not wanting to dress in yesterday’s unlaundered clothes, I tossed them into Okubo’s washing machine and set the cycle. I would have been content wrapping a towel around my waist for the time being, but Okubo insisted I wear one of her satin kimono gowns. It looked ridiculous on me but was admittedly comfortable against my skin.
While Okubo brewed drip coffee and prepared something to eat, I tidied up the balcony, dumping the contents of the ashtray into the garbage and rinsing the wine glasses in the sink.
We sat at the round kitchen table, a plate of leftover steamed rice, pre-made pickles, preserved kelp, and fermented soybeans between us.
“Do you like natto?” she asked, picking up some gooey soybeans with her chopsticks and dabbing them in a wedge of yellow mustard. “It’s really good for you.”
“It smells like old socks.”
“Hence the mustard. It’s so hot it burns your nose and you can’t smell anything.”
I sipped the demitasse cup of coffee Okubo had made me. “Mmmm…”
“You don’t like tea?” she asked.
“At this hour I need something more robust.”
She plucked some more soybeans from the plate and attempted nonchalance: “So your wife’s name is Smiley…?”
“No,” I said. “Smiley was someone I knew when I was younger.”
“How much younger?”
“Twenty-two.”
Okubo’s chopsticks paused halfway to her mouth. “How old are you now?”
“Forty-two.”
“You still dream about someone you haven’t seen for twenty years?”
“Usually they are not dreams. They are nightmares.” I cleared my throat, wondering if I wanted to tell Okubo any more about Smiley. Then I realized that whatever I said would be tame in comparison to what I’d confided the night before. “The last time I saw my friend Smiley was on a weekend skiing trip,” I continued. “I was with four friends. We went looking for an off-piste track. Two of my friends turned back, but Smiley and I pressed on, finding what we thought was the perfect ungroomed slope. Halfway down it I wiped out and set off an avalanche.”
“Oh God!”
“I was buried under the snow for close to ten minutes until Smiley dug me out. She saved my life.”
“Oh my God, Gaston!”
“Unfortunately, we could not find my skis. I told Smiley to go for help. She would not leave me. I should have…” I shook my head. “I should have insisted she go…”
“What happened?” Okubo asked quietly.
“I thought we could walk back the way we had come. That was Mistake Number One, because the walk was a lot more difficult than I had imagined. The deep snow, the trees, the cold. When it became dark, and we still did not know where we were, I suggested we make a burrow in the snow to wait out the night. Mistake Number Two. We began to freeze within the hour. I suggested skiing down the mountain in the dark, tandem, me standing on the back of Smiley’s skis. Mistake Number Three. A little way down we hit a half-buried log. Smiley struck her head on something. I do not know what, but when I climbed back up the slope to reach her, she was unconscious. She had a bad cut here.” I pointed to my forehead. “It was deep and bleeding. There was nothing I could do. I could not carry her. I could not leave her. So I dug another burrow in the snow. In the morning rescuers transferred us to a hospital. Apparently I was frozen stiff in a fetal position. It took the doctors and nurses over an hour to rewarm and straighten out my body.”
Okubo was staring at me in horror.
“Perhaps I should not be telling you this right now,” I said. “It is not a very pleasant way to begin the morning…”
“No, please…” she said. “I want to know.”
I took a sip of the coffee. It was lukewarm and bitter. “The hospital did not have a cardiopulmonary bypass machine. That is something that pumps cold blood out of your body, rewarms it, oxygenates it, then pumps it back in. Instead the doctors cut me open here.” I opened the gown to show her the scar on my abdomen. “They used a catheter to flush warm fluid over my organs, heating up the blood in them, which my heart then pumped around my body.” I smiled weakly. “Sort of like how a car radiator works but in reverse. All told, I should not have survived.”
“Your friend Smiley…?”
“When I woke up in the hospital, I had amnesia. A doctor told me I had been buried beneath an avalanche. He told me I was wearing a neck brace because I had suffered a C7 transverse process fracture in my back and several torn ligaments that caused two of my vertebrae to slide around. He told me he had never heard of anybody suffering hypothermia with a core temperature as low as mine had been.” I held up my right hand. “Almost lost all of these fingers. The frostbite blisters lasted for weeks. I kept waiting for my fingers to turn black and die, but the tissue miraculously revived. I still cannot move them very well…” I clenched my hand into a fist, opened it again. I took another sip of the lukewarm coffee.
“What about Smiley, Gaston?” Okubo asked softly.
“The doctor did not tell me anything about Smiley. Nobody did. They did not want to upset me in the frail condition I was in.” I swallowed what felt like a roll of stuck-together pennies. “I did not find out she was dead until the day before her funeral.”
∆∆∆
A sober silence followed. Outside a crow cawed.
Okubo said, “I don’t know what to say, Gaston. I’m so sorry. I feel like such a terrible person for being so nosy—”
“You did not know,” I said dismissively. “And it feels…good.”
“What does?”
“Talking about what happened. I have only talked about that day to a handful of people, ever.”
“Thank you for sharing it with me.”
“You are…I do not know. You are easy to talk to. I feel…close to you.”
“Maybe we are husband and wife in a different dimension?”
I chuckled. The release of tension was welcome.
I finished my coffee in one swallow and looked at the food remaining on the plate, though I had no appetite.
Okubo said, “So what happens now?”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“You don’t have a job in this dimension, right?”
“Not that I know of…”
“No wallet, no identification?”
“No…”
“No passport?”
I shook my head.
“No way to get to your wife and son in the Philippines?”
“Not that I can think of.”
Okubo grinned. “Looks like you’re stuck here with me then.”
“I appreciate your hospitality,” I said, taking my mug to the sink. “But I do not wish to overstay my welcome.”
“Nonsense!” Okubo said, joining me at the sink. “Stay. I’m off until Friday. I’d enjoy your company.”
“Thank you, ma choupette, but I cannot. I would not feel comfortable imposing in such a way.”
Okubo planted her fists on her hips. “Where do you plan to sleep, Gaston?”
I shrugged. “The internet café.”
“How much money do you have?”
“Enough for another night.”
“And then?”
“I guess I will have to pickpocket someone again—”
“Pickpocket someone!” Okubo exploded. “Listen to you! You are no common thief, Gaston, I know that much. And I am telling you that you can stay here with me. You don’t need to go around pickpocketing people and sleeping in internet cafés!”
The offer was tempting, all right, yet… “I would feel like such a bum,” I said despondently.
“Don’t be silly. If I slipped through the cracks of space-time and landed in another dimension, I wo
uld want someone there to look after me until I got back on my feet.”
A gleam in her eyes made me think she was trying to keep a straight face.
“You do not believe me, do you?” I said tightly. “Everything I have told you. You think I have made it all up—”
“No, Gaston, that’s not true.” She stepped close to me. “What you have told me seems fantastical. It seems impossible. But I believe you. I don’t know why I believe you. But I do.”
The admission meant the world to me right then. “Well, if you are happy to let me stay here for a bit…”
She ran her hands along my shoulders, then down my chest, to the sash holding the kimono gown closed.
“I’m happy,” she said, tugging the bow undone and glancing down. “Very happy.”
Chapter 32
After a second round of sexual acrobatics just as adventurous as the first, we showered and dressed, Okubo in a flowing black muumuu, me in my laundered clothes. At a little after eight Okubo went to the local supermarket to stock up on food, as she now had another mouth to feed. Being alone in her apartment felt strange, personal, and I felt gratitude at the trust she’d placed in me.
I sat down at the dining table with Okubo’s Macbook. I logged into the Facebook account I’d created yesterday and saw three new messages. The first was from my mother, telling me the connection had dropped out and for me to call again when I had free time. The second was from Paul. He’d tried calling me but couldn’t get through. I wondered again where the “me” was who owned the phone he’d tried calling. Back in my dimension? Or was he still in this one? In Manila? In Tokyo? If I got “my” number from Paul, and rang it, would I speak to me?
The concept was so daunting I didn’t dwell on it for long.
Blessica had sent the third message. I’d expected her to react to the news I’d lost my phone and wallet with chiding indifference. However, she seemed uncharacteristically concerned, ending the message with “I’m around all day tomorrow. Call me!!!”
I tried video calling Paul first. I hung up after a dozen unanswered rings. Arthur hadn’t accepted my friend request yet, which ruled out getting in touch with him. I wasn’t prepared to speak with my mother again so soon, not with the potential of my Lazarus-like father lurking around in the background. So I rang Blessica next. She answered almost immediately, her face filling the thirteen-inch screen. She looked just like the Bless I knew, a young Gloria Vanderbilt with expressive brown eyes in milky skin, aristocratic lips curled upward at the corners, a broad smile, and strong white teeth. Her shiny black hair was styled long and straight.