16
After collecting our bags at Haneda, Yuki told me where she lived. Hakone.

"That's a pretty long haul," I said. It was already past eight in the evening, and even if I got a taxi to take her, she'd be wiped out by the time she reached there. "Do you know anybody in Tokyo? A relative or a friend?"

"No one like that, but we have a place in Akasaka. It's small, but Mama uses it when she comes to town. I can stay there. Nobody's there now."

"You don't have any family? Besides your mother?"

"No," answered Yuki. "Just Mama and me."

"Hmm," I said. Unusual family situation, but what business was it of mine? "Why don't we go to my place first? Then we can eat dinner somewhere. Then afterward, I'll drive you to your Akasaka apartment. That okay with you?"

"Anything you say."

We caught a cab to my apartment in Shibuya, where I got out of my Hokkaido clothes. Leather jacket, sweater, and sneakers. Then we got in my Subaru and drove fifteen minutes to an Italian restaurant I sometimes go to. Call it an occupational skill; I do know how to locate good eating establishments. "It's like those pigs in France," I told her, "trained to grunt when they find a truffle."

"Don't you like your work?"

"Nah. What's to enjoy? It's all pretty meaningless. I find a good restaurant. I write it up for a magazine. Go here, try this. Why bother? Why shouldn't people just go where they feel like and order what they want? Why do they need someone to tell them? What's a menu for? And then, after I write the place up, the place gets famous and the cooking and service go to hell. It always happens. Supply and demand gets all screwed up. And it was me who screwed it up. I do it one by one, nice and neat. I find what's pure and clean and see that it gets all mucked up. But that's what people call information. And when you dredge up every bit of dirt from every corner of the living environment, that's what you call enhanced information. It kind of gets to you, but that's what I do."

She eyed me from across the table, as if she were looking at some rare species in the zoo.

"But still you do it," she said.

"It's my job," I replied, then suddenly I remembered that I was with a thirteen-year-old. Great. What did I think I was doing, shooting my mouth off like that to a girl not half my age? "Let's go," I said. "It's getting late. I'll take you to your apartment."

We got in the Subaru. Yuki picked up one of my cassettes and put it on to play. Driving music. The streets were empty, so we made it to Akasaka in no time.

"Okay, point the way," I said.

"I'm not telling," Yuki answered.

"What? "I said.

"I said I'm not telling you. I don't want to go home yet."

"Hey, it's past ten," I tried reasoning with her. "It's been a long, hard day. And I'm dog-tired."

This made little impression on her. She was unbudgeable. She just sat there and stared at me, while I tried to keep my eyes on the road. There was no emotion whatsoever in her stare, but it still made me jumpy. After a while, she turned to look out the window.

"I'm not sleepy," she began. "Anyway, once you drop me off, I'll be all alone, so I want to keep driving and listening to music."

I thought it over. "All right. We drive for one hour. Then you're going home to bed. Fair?"

"Fair," said Yuki.

So we drove around Tokyo, music playing on the stereo. It's because we let ourselves do these things that the air gets polluted, the ozone layer breaks up, the noise level increases, people become irritable, and our natural resources are steadily depleted. Yuki lay her head back in her seat and gazed silently at the city night.

"Your mother's in Kathmandu now?" I asked.

"Yeah," she answered listlessly.

"So you'll be on your own until she returns?"

"We have a maid in Hakone."

"Hmm, this sort of scene happens all the time?"

"You mean Mama up and leaving me?"

"Yeah."

"All the time. Work is the only thing Mama thinks of. She doesn't mean to be mean or anything, that's just how she is. She only thinks about herself. Sometimes she forgets I'm around. Like an umbrella, you know, I just slip her mind. And then she's outa there. If she gets it into her head to go to Kathmandu, that's it, she's off. She apologizes later. But then the same thing happens the next time. She dragged me up to Hokkaido on a whim — and that was kind of fun — but she left me alone in the room all the time. She hardly ever came back to the hotel and I usually ate by myself?But I'm used to it now, and I guess I don't expect anything more. She says she'll be back in a week, but maybe from Kathmandu she'll fly off to somewhere else."

"What's your mother's name?" I asked.

I'd never heard of her.

"Her professional name," she tried again, "is Ame. Rain. That's why I'm Yuki. Snow. Dumb, huh? But that's her idea of a sense of humor."

Of course I'd heard of Ame. Who hadn't? Probably the most famous woman photographer in the country. She was famous, but she herself never appeared in media. She kept a low profile. She only accepted work that she liked. Well-known for her eccentricity. Her photos were known for the way they startled you and stuck in your mind.

"So that means your father's the novelist, Hiraku Makimura?" I said.

Yuki shrugged. "He's not such a bad person. No talent though."

Years back I'd read a couple of his early novels and a collection of short stories. Pretty good stuff. Fresh prose, fresh viewpoint. Which is what made them best-sellers. He was the darling of the literary community. He appeared on TV, was in all the magazines, expressed an opinion on the full spectrum of social phenomena. And he married an up-and-coming photographer who went by the name of Ame. That was his peak. After that, it was downhill all the way. He never wrote anything decent. His next two or three books were a joke. The critics panned them, they didn't sell.

So Makimura underwent a transformation. From naif novelist he was suddenly avant-garde. Not that there was any change in the lack of substance. Makimura modeled his style on the French nouvelle vague, rhetoric for rhetoric's sake. A real horror. He managed to win over a few brain-dead critics with a weakness for such pretensions. But after two years of the same old stuff, even they got tired of him. His talent was gone, but he persisted, like a once-virile hound sniffing the tail of every bitch in the neighborhood. By that time, he and Ame had divorced. Or more to the point, Ame had written him off. At least that was how it played in the media.

Yet that wasn't the end of Hiraku Makimura. Early in the seventies, he broke into the new field of travel writing as a self-styled adventurer. Good-bye avant-garde, time for action and adventure. He visited exotic and forbidden destinations in far corners of the globe. He ate raw seal meat with the Eskimos, lived with the pygmies, infiltrated guerrilla camps high in the Andes. He cast aspersions on armchair literarians and library shut-ins. Which wasn't so bad at first, but after ten years, the pose wore thin. After all, we're no longer living in the age of Livingstone and Amundsen. The adventures didn't have the stuff they used to, but Makimura's prose was pompous as ever.

And the thing of it was, they'd ceased to be real adventures. By now he was dragging around whole entourages, coordinators and editors and cameramen. Sometimes TV would get into the act and there'd be a dozen crew members and sponsors tagging along. Things got to be staged, more and more. Before long, everyone had his number.

Not such a bad person perhaps. But like his daughter said, no talent.

Nothing more was said about Yuki's father. She obviously didn't want to talk about the guy. I was sorry I brought him up.

We kept quiet and listened to the music. Me at the wheel, eyes on the lights of the blue BMW in front of us. Yuki tapped her boot along with Solomon Burke and watched the passing scenery.

"I like this car," Yuki spoke up after a while. "What is it?"

"A Subaru," I said. "I got it used from a friend. Not many people look twice at it."

"I don't know much about cars, but I like the way it feels."

"It's probably because I shower it with warmth and affection."

"So that makes it nice and friendly?"

"Harmonics," I explained.

"What?"

"The car and I are pals. We help each other out. I enter its space, and I give off good vibes. Which creates a nice atmo- sphere. The car picks up on that. Which makes me feel good, and it makes the car feel good too."

"A machine can feel good?"

"You didn't know that? Don't ask me how, though. Machines can get happy, but they can get angry too. I have no logical explanation for it. I just know from experience."

"You mean, machines are like humans?"

I shook my head. "No, not like humans. With machines, the feeling is, well, more finite. It doesn't go any further. With humans, it's different. The feeling is always changing. Like if you love somebody, the love is always shifting or wavering. It's always questioning or inflating or disappearing or denying or hurting. And the thing is, you can't do anything about it, you can't control it. With my Subaru, it's not so complicated."

Yuki gave that some thought. "But that didn't get through to your wife? Didn't she know how you felt?" she asked.

"I guess not," I said. "Or maybe she had a different perspective on the matter. So in the end, she split. Probably going to live with another man was easier than adjusting her perspective."

"So you didn't get along like with your Subaru?"

"You said it." Of all the things to be talking about to a thirteen-year-old.

"And what about me?" Yuki suddenly asked.

"What about you? I hardly know you."

I could feel her staring at me again. Much more of this and pretty soon she'd bore a hole in my left cheek. I gave in. "Okay, of all the women I've gone out with, you're probably the cutest," I said, eyes glued on the road. "No, not probably. Without question, absolutely, the cutest. If I were fifteen, I'd fall in love with you just like that. But I'm thirty-four, and I don't fall in love so easily. I don't want to get hurt anymore. So it's safer with the Subaru. All right?"

Yuki gave me a blank look. "Pretty weird," was all she could say. Which made me feel like the dregs of humanity. The girl probably didn't mean anything by it, but she packed a punch.

At eleven-fifteen we were back in Akasaka.

Yuki kept her part of the bargain and told me how to get to the apartment. It was a smallish redbrick condo on a quiet back street near Nogi Shrine. I pulled up to the building and killed the engine.

"About the money and all," she said before opening the door, "the plane and the dinner and everything — "

"The plane fare can wait until your mother gets back. The rest is on me. Don't worry about it. I don't go dutch on dates."

Yuki shrugged and said nothing, then got out and dropped her wad of gum into a convenient potted plant.

Thank you very much. You're quite welcome. I bandied with myself. Then I took a business card out of my wallet. "Give this to your mother when she returns. And in the meanwhile, if you need anything, you can call me at this number. Let me know if I can help out."

She snapped up the card, glared at it a second, then buried it in her coat pocket.

I pulled her overweight suitcases out of the car, and we took the elevator to the fourth floor. Yuki unlocked the door, |nd I brought the suitcases in. It was a dinette-kitchen-bedroom-bath studio. Practically brand-new, spick-and-span as a showroom, complete with neatly arrayed furniture and appliances, all tasteful and expensive and without sign of use. The apartment had the unlived-in charm of a glossy magazine spread. Very chic, very unreal.

"Mama hardly ever uses this place," Yuki declared, as she watched me scan the place. "She has a studio nearby, and she usually stays there when she's in Tokyo. She sleeps there, and she eats there. She only comes here between jobs."

"I see," I said. Busy woman. Yuki hung up her fur coat and turned on the heater. Then she brought out a pack of Virginia Slims and lit up with a cool flick of the wrist. I couldn't say I thought much of a thirteen-year-old smoking. Yet there was something positively attractive about that pencil-thin filter poised on her sharp knife-cut lips, her long lashes luxuriating on the updraft. Picture perfect. I held my peace. If I were fifteen years old, I really would have fallen for her. As fatefully as the snow on the roof comes tumbling down in spring. I would have lost my head and been terribly unhappy. It took me back years. Made me feel helpless, a teenage boy pining away again for a girl who could almost have been Yuki.

"Want some coffee?"

I shook my head. "Thanks, but it's late. I'm heading home."

Yuki deposited her cigarette in an ashtray and showed me to the door.

"Mind the cigarette and heater before you turn in."

"Yes, Dad," she replied.

Back in my own apartment at last, I collapsed on the sofa with a beer. I glanced through my mail. Nothing but business and bills. File under: later. I was dead, didn't want to do anything. Still, I was on edge, too pumped up with adrenaline to sleep. What a day!

How long had I stayed in Sapporo? The images jumbled together in my head, crowding into my sleep time. The sky had been a seamless gray. Implicating events and dates. Date with receptionist with glasses. Call to ex-partner for background on Dolphin Hotel. Talk with Sheep Man. Movie showing Gotanda and Kiki. Beach Boys, thirteen-year-old girl, and me. Tokyo. So how many days altogether?

You tell me.

Tomorrow, I told myself. It can wait.

I went into the kitchen and poured myself a whiskey. Straight, neat, and otherwise unadulterated. Plus some crackers. A bit damp, like my head, but they'd have to do. I put on an old favorite of the Modernaires singing Tommy Dorsey numbers. Nice and low. A bit out-of-date, like my head. A bit scratchy, but not enough to bother anyone. A perfection of sorts. That didn't go anywhere. Like my head.

What was that all about? Kiki repeated in my brain.

The camera pans around. Gotanda's able fingers sail gently down her back. Seeking for that long-lost sea passage.

What was going on here? I was thoroughly confused. Gone was my self-confidence. Love and used Subarus were two different things. Weren't they? I was jealous of Gotanda's fingers. Had Yuki put out her cigarette? Had she turned off the heater? Yes, Dad. You said it. No confidence at all. Was I doomed to rot, muttering away to myself like this in this elephants' graveyard of advanced capitalist society?

Leave it to tomorrow. Everything.

I brushed my teeth, changed into my pajamas, then polished off the last of the whiskey in my glass. The moment I got into bed, the phone rang. At first I just stared at the thing ringing there in the middle of the room, and finally I picked it up.

"I turned off the heater," Yuki began. "Put out my cigarette. Everything's okay. Sleep easier now?"

"Yes, thank you," I replied.

"Nighty-night then," she said.

"Good night," I said.

"Hey," Yuki started, then paused, "you saw that guy in the sheepskin up at the Sapporo hotel, didn't you?"

I sat down on the bed, holding the telephone to my chest as if keeping a cracked ostrich egg warm.

"You can't fool me. I know you saw him. I knew that right away."

"You saw the Sheep Man?" I blurted out.

"Mmm," Yuki skirted the question, then clicked her tongue. "But we can talk about that later. Next time, huh? We'll have a long talk. I'm beat right now."

And she hung up, just like that. Click. I had a pain in my temples. I went to the kitchen and poured myself another whiskey. I was trembling all over. A roller coaster was rumbling under me. It's all connected, the Sheep Man had said.

Connected.

All sorts of strange connections were starting to come together.

17
I leaned up against the sink in the kitchen and downed the whiskey. What should I do? How could Yuki have known about the Sheep Man? Should I ring her back? But I really was exhausted. It'd been one long day. Maybe I should wait for her to call. Did I know her phone number?

I climbed into bed and stared at the phone. I had a feeling that Yuki might call. If not Yuki, somebody else. At times like this, the telephone becomes a time bomb. Nobody knows when it's going to go off. But it's ticking away with possibility. And if you consider the telephone as an object, it has this truly weird form. Ordinarily, you never notice it, but if you stare at it long enough, the sheer oddity of its form hits home. The phone either looks like it's dying to say something, or else it's resenting that it's trapped inside its form. Pure idea vested within a clunky body. That's the telephone.

Now the phone company. All those lines coming together. Lines stretching all the way from this very room. Connecting me, in principle, to anyone and everyone. I could even call Anchorage if I wanted. Or the Dolphin Hotel, for that matter, or my ex-wife. Countless possibilities. And all tied together through the phone company switchboard. Computer-processed these days of course. Converted into strings of digits, then transmitted via telephone wires to under- ground cable or undersea tunnel or communications satellite, ultimately finding its way to us. A gigantic computer-controlled network.

But no matter how advanced the system, no matter how precise, unless we have the will to communicate, there's no connection. And even supposing the will is there, there are times like now when we don't know the other party's number. Or even if we know the number, we misdial. We are an imperfect and unrepentant species. But suppose we clear those hurdles, suppose I manage to get through to Yuki, she could always say, "I don't want to talk now. Bye." Click! End of conversation, before it ever began. Talk about oneway communication.

Actually, the telephone looked rather irritated.

It — or let's call it a "she" — seemed pissed off at being less than pure idea. Angered at the uncertain and imperfect grounds upon which volitional communication must necessarily base itself. So very imperfect, so utterly arbitrary, so wholly passive.

I propped myself up on my pillow and watched the telephone fume. A perfectly pointless exercise. It's not my fault, the phone seemed to be telling me. Well, that's communication. Imperfect, arbitrary, passive. The lament of the not-quite-pure idea. But I'm not to blame either. The phone probably tells this to all the boys. It's just that being part of these quarters of mine makes her — it — all the more irritable. Which makes me feel responsible. As if I'm aiding and abetting all the imperfection.

Take my ex-wife, for example. She'd just sit there and, without a word, put me in my place. I'd loved her. We'd had some really good times. Traveled together. Made love hundreds of times. Laughed a lot. But sometimes, she'd give me the silent treatment. Usually at night, subtle, but unrelenting. As punishment for my imperfection, my arbitrariness and passiveness.

I knew what was eating her. We got along well, but what she was after, the image in her mind, was somewhere else, not where I was. She wanted a kind of autonomy of communication. A scene where the hero — whose name was "Communication" — led the masses to a bright, bloodless revolution, spotless white flags waving. So that perfection could swallow imperfection and make it whole. To me, love is a pure idea forged in flesh, awkwardly maybe, but it had to connect to somewhere, despite twists and turns of underground cable. An all-too-imperfect thing. Sometimes the lines get crossed. Or you get a wrong number. But that's nobody's fault. It'll always be like that, so long as we exist in this physical form. As a matter of principle.

I explained it to her. Over and over again.

Then one day she left.

Or else I'd magnified that imperfection, and helped her out the door.

I looked at the telephone and replayed scenes of me getting it on with my wife. For the three months before she left, she hadn't wanted to sleep with me once. Because she was sleeping with the other guy. At the time, I didn't have the least idea.

"Sorry dear, but why don't you go sleep with someone else? I won't be mad," she'd said. And I thought she was joking. But she was serious. I told her I didn't want to sleep with another woman, which was true. But she wanted me to, she said. Then we could think things over from there.

In the end, I didn't sleep with anyone. I'm not a prude, but I don't go sleeping with women just to think things over. I sleep with someone because I want to.

Not long after that, she walked out on me. But say I had gone and slept with someone like she wanted me to, would that have kept her from leaving? Did she really believe that that would've put our communication on even slightly more autonomous grounds? Ridiculous.

Already past midnight, but the drone of the expressway showed no sign of letting up. Every now and then a motorcycle would blast by. The soundproof glass dampened the noise, but not much. It was right out there, up against my life, oppressing me. Circumscribing me to this one patch of ground.

I grew tired of looking at the phone and closed my eyes.

And as soon as I did, the surrender I must have been waiting for silently filled the void. Very deftly and ever so quick. Sleep came over me.

After breakfast, I thumbed through my address book for the number of a guy in talent management I'd met when I needed to interview young stars. It was ten in the morning when I rang him up, so naturally he was still asleep. That's showbiz. I apologized, then told him I had to find Gotanda. He moaned and groaned, but eventually came across with the goods. The number for Gotanda's agency, a midsize entertainment production firm.

I called up and got his manager on the line. I said I was a magazine writer and wanted to talk with Gotanda. Was I doing a piece on him? Not exactly, this was personal. How personal? Well, I happened to be a junior high school classmate of his, and this was urgent. Fine, he'd pass the message on. No, I had to talk to Gotanda directly. Me and how many others?

"But this is very important," I insisted. "So if you'd be so kind as to put us in touch, I'm sure I can return the favor on a professional level."

The manager considered my proposition. Of course it was a lie. I didn't have any strings to pull. My whole claim to editorial sway consisted of going out and doing the interview I was assigned to do. A glorified gofer. But the manager didn't know that.

"And you're sure this isn't coverage?" he said. "Because all media have to go through me. Out front and official."

No, this was one-hundred-percent personal.

The guy asked for my number. "Junior high school classmate, eh?" he said with a sigh. "He'll call tonight or tomorrow. If he feels like it." "Of course," I said.

The guy yawned and hung up. Couldn't blame him. It was only ten-thirty.

Before noon I drove to Aoyama to do my shopping at the fancy-schmancy Kinokuniya supermarket. Parking my Subaru among the Saabs and Mercedes in the lot, I almost felt as if I were exposing myself, the twin of this narrow-shouldered old chassis of mine. Still, I admit it: I enjoy shopping at Kinokuniya. You may not believe this, but the lettuce you buy there lasts longer than lettuce anywhere else. Don't ask me why. Maybe they round up the lettuce after they close for the day and give them special training. It wouldn't surprise me. This is advanced capitalism, after all.

At home, there were no messages on my answering machine. No one had called. I put away the vegetables to the "Theme from Shaft" on the radio. Who's that man? Shaft! Right on!

Then I went to see Unrequited Love yet again. That made four times. I couldn't not see it. I concentrated on the critical scene, trying to catch every detail.

Nothing had changed. It was Sunday morning. Everything bathed in peaceful Sunday light. Window blinds drawn. A woman's bare back. A man's caressing fingers. Le Corbusier print on wall. Bottle of Cutty Sark on table at side of bed. Two glasses, ashtray, pack of Seven Stars. Stereo equipment. Flower vase. Daisies. Peeled-off clothes on floor. Bookshelf. The camera pans. It's Kiki. I shut my eyes involuntarily. Then I open them. Gotanda is embracing her. Gently, softly. "No way," I say. Out loud. A young kid four seats away shoots me a look. The girl lead comes into frame. Hair in a ponytail. Yachting windbreaker and jeans. Red Adidases. She's holding a container of cookies. She walks right in, then dashes out. Gotanda is dumbfounded. He sits up in bed, squinting into the light, following the girl with his eyes. Kiki rests a hand on his shoulder, her words drenched with world-weariness. "What was that all about?"

After I left the theater, I walked around the streets of Shibuya.

I walked, through the swarming crowds of school kids, as Gotanda's slender, well-mannered fingers played over her back in my mind. I walked to Harajuku. Then to Sendagaya past the stadium, across Aoyama Boulevard toward the cemetery and over to the Nezu Museum. I passed Cafe Figaro and then Kinokuniya and then the Jintan Building back toward Shibuya Station. A bit of a hike. It was getting late. From the top of the hill, I could see the neon signs coming on as the dark-suited masses of salarymen crossed the intersection like instinct-blinded salmon. When I got back to my apartment, the red message lamp on my answering machine was blinking. I switched on the room lights, took off my coat, and pulled a beer out of the fridge. I sat down on my bed, took a sip, and pushed PLAY.

"Well, been a long time." It was Gotanda.

18
Well, been a long time." Gotanda's voice came through bright and clear. Not too fast, not too slow. Not too loud, not too soft. Not tense, not inordinately relaxed. A perfect voice. I knew it was Gotanda in a second. It's not the sort of voice you forget once you've heard it. Any more than his smiling face, his sparkling white teeth, his finely sculpted nose. Actually, I'd never paid any attention to Gotanda's voice before, couldn't really recall it either, but obviously it'd stuck subconsciously to the inside of my skull, and it came back to me immediately, as vivid as the tolling of a bell on a still night. Amazing.

"I'm going to be at home tonight, so call. I don't go to bed until morning anyway," he said, then enunciated his telephone number, twice. "Be talking to you."

From the exchange, his place couldn't have been so far from here. I wrote the number down, then carefully dialed. At the sixth ring, an answering machine kicked on. A woman's voice saying, "I'm out right now, but if you'd care to leave a message." I left my name and the time and said that I'd be in all evening. Complicated world we live in. I hung up and was in the kitchen when the phone rang.

It was Yuki. What was I up to? My response: Chewing on a stalk of celery and having a beer. Hers: Yuck. Mine: It's not so bad. She wasn't old enough to know things could be a lot worse.

"So where are you calling from?" I asked.

"Akasaka," she said. "How about going for a drive?"

"Sorry, I can't today," I said. "I'm waiting for an important business call. How about another time? But first I got a question. When we talked yesterday, you said you'd seen a man in a sheep suit? Can you tell me more about that? I need to know."

"How about another time?" she said, then slammed the phone down.

I munched on the celery and thought about what to have for dinner. Spaghetti.

First slice two cloves of garlic and brown in olive oil. Tilt the frying pan on its side just so, to pool the oil, and cook over a low flame. Toss in dried red peppers, fry together but remove before oil gets too spicy. Touch-and-go. Then cut thin slices of ham into strips and saute until crisp. Last, add to al dente spaghetti, toss, sprinkle with chopped parsley. Serve with salad of fresh mozzarella and tomatoes.

Okay, let's do it.

The water for the spaghetti was just about to boil when the telephone rang. I turned off the gas and went to pick up the phone.

It was Gotanda. "He-ey, long time. Takes me back. How're you doing?"

"All right, I guess."

"So what's up? My manager said you had something urgent. Hope we don't have to dissect a frog again," he laughed.

"No, nothing like that. I know this call is out of the blue, but I just needed to ask you something. Sorry, I know you're busy. Anyway, this may sound kind of strange, but — "

"Listen, are you busy right now?" Gotanda interrupted. "No, not at all. I had some time on my hands, so I was about to fix dinner."

"Perfect. How about a meal? I was just thinking about looking for a dinner partner. You know how it is. Nothing tastes good when you eat alone."

"Sure, but I didn't mean to ?I mean, I called so suddenly and — "

"No problem. We all get hungry whether we like it or not, and a man's got to eat. I'm not forcing myself to eat on your account. So let's go have a good meal somewhere and talk about old times. Haven't seen you in ages. I really want to see you. I hope I'm not imposing. Or am I?"

"C'mon, I'm the one who wanted to talk to you."

"Well, then, I'll swing by and pick you up. Where are you?"

I told him where my apartment building was.

"Not so far from here. Maybe twenty minutes. So get yourself ready to go. I don't know about you, but I'm starving."

I'd hop to it, I said, and hung up. Old times?

What old times could Gotanda possibly have to talk about? We weren't especially close back then. He was the bright boy of the class, I was a nobody. It was some kind of miracle that he even remembered who I was.

I shaved and put on the classiest items in my wardrobe: an orange striped shirt and Calvin Klein tweed jacket, an Armani knit tie (a birthday present from a former girlfriend), just-washed jeans, and brand-new Yamaha tennis shoes. Not that he'd ever think this was classy. I'd never eaten with a movie star before. What was one supposed to wear anyway?

Twenty minutes later on the dot, my doorbell rang. It was Gotanda's chauffeur, who politely informed me that Gotanda was downstairs. In a metallic silver Mercedes the size and shape of a motorboat. The glass was also silvered so you couldn't see in. The chauffeur opened the door with a smart, professional snap of the wrist and I got in. And there was Gotanda. "Who-oa, been a while, eh?" he flashed me his smile. He didn't shake my hand, and I guess I was glad.

"Yeah, it has, hasn't it?" I said.

He wore a dark blue windbreaker over a V-neck sweater and faded cream corduroy slacks. Old Asics jogging shoes. Impeccable. Perfectly ordinary clothes, but the way he wore them was perfect. He gave my outfit a once-over and offered, "Tres chic."

"Thanks," I said.

"Just like a movie star." No irony, just kidding. We both laughed. Which let us relax.

I sized up the interior of the car.

"Not bad, eh?" he said. "The agency lets me use it whenever I want. Complete with driver. This way there're no accidents, no drunken driving. Safety first. They're happy, I'm happy."

"Makes sense," I said.

"But if it were up to me, I would never drive this baby. I don't like cars this big."

"Porsche?"

"Maserati."

"I like cars even smaller," I said.

"Civic?"

"Subaru."

"Subaru," he repeated, nodding. "You know, the first car I ever bought was a Subaru. With the money I made on my first picture, I bought a used Subaru. Boy, I loved that car. I used to drive it to the studio when I had my second supporting role. And someone got on my case right away. Kid, if you want to be a star, you can't drive a Subaru. What a business. So I traded it in. But it was a great car. Dependable. Cheap. Really terrific."

"Yeah, I like mine too."

"So why do you think I drive a Maserati?"

"I haven't the foggiest."

"I have this expense account I got to use up," he said with a tilt of his eyebrow. "My manager keeps telling me, spend more, more. I'm never using it up fast enough. So I went and bought an expensive car. One high-priced automobile can write off a big chunk of earnings. It makes everybody happy."

Good grief. Didn't anyone have anything else on their mind but expense account deductions?

"I'm really hungry," he said, running his hand through his hair. "I feel like a nice, thick steak. Are you up for something like that?"

"Whatever you say."

He gave directions to the driver, and we were off. Gotanda looked at me and smiled. "Don't mean to get too personal," he said, "but since you were fixing a meal for yourself, I take it you're single."

"Correct," I said. "Married and divorced." "Just like me," he said. "Married and divorced. Paying alimony?" "Nope." "Nothing?"

"Nothing. She didn't want a thing." "You lucky bastard," he said, grinning. "I don't pay alimony either, but the marriage broke me. I suppose you heard about my divorce?" "Vaguely."

It'd been in all the magazines. His marriage four or five years ago to a well-known actress, then the divorce a couple years later. But as usual, who knew the real story? The rumor was that her family didn't like him — not so unusual a thing — and that she had this cordon of relatives who muscled in on every move she made, public and private. Gotanda himself was more the spoiled, rich-kid type, used to the luxury of living life at his own pace. So there was bound to be trouble.

"Funny, isn't it? One minute we're doing a science experiment together, the next thing you know we're both divorced. Funny,", he forced a smile, then lightly rubbed his eyes. "Tell me, how come you split up?" "Simple. One day the wife up and walked out on me."

"Just like that?"

"Yup. No warning, not a word. I didn't have a clue. I thought she'd gone out to do the shopping or something, but she never came back. I made dinner and I waited. Morning came and still no sign of her. A week passed, a month passed. Then the divorce papers came."

He took it all in, then he sighed. "I hope you don't mind my saying this, but I think you got a better deal than I did."

"How's that?"

"With me, the wife didn't leave. I got thrown out. Literally. One day, I was thrown out on my ear." He gazed out through the silvered glass. "And the worst part about it was, she planned the whole thing. Every last detail. When I wasn't around, she changed the registration on everything we owned. I never noticed a thing. I trusted her. I handed everything over to her accountant — my official seal, my IDs, stock certificates, bankbooks, everything. They said they needed it for taxes. Great, I'm terrible at that stuff, so I was happy for them to do it. But the guy was working for her relatives. And before I knew it, there wasn't a thing to my name left. They stripped me to the bone. And then they kicked me out. A real education, let me tell you," he forced another smile. "Made me grow up real fast."

"Everybody has to grow up."

"You're right there. I used to think the years would go by in order, that you get older one year at a time," said Gotanda, peering into my face. "But it's not like that. It happens overnight."

The place we went to was a steak house in a remote corner of Roppongi. Expensive, by the looks of it. When the Mercedes pulled up to the door, the doorman and maitre d' and staff came out to greet us. We were conducted to a secluded booth in the back. Everyone in the place was very fashionable, but Gotanda in his corduroys and jogging shoes was the sharpest dresser in the place. His nonchalance oozed style. As soon as we entered, everyone's eyes were on him. They stared for two seconds, no longer, as if it were some unwritten law of etiquette.

We sat down and ordered two scotch-and-waters. Gotanda proposed the toast: "To our ex-wives."

"I know it sounds stupid," he said, "but I still love her. She treated me like dirt and I still love her. I can't get her out of my mind, I can't get interested in other women."

I stared at the extremely elegant ice cubes in the crystal tumblers.

"What about you?" he asked.

"You mean how do I feel about my ex-wife? I don't know. I didn't want her to go. But she left all right. Who was in the wrong? I don't know. It sure doesn't matter now. I'm used to it, though I suppose 'used to it' is about the best I can do."

"I hope I'm not touching a sore spot?"

"No, not really," I said. "Fact is fact, you can't run away from it. You can't really call it painful, you don't really know what to call it."

He snapped his fingers. "That's true. You really can't pin it down. It's like the gravity's changed on you. You can't even call what you're feeling pain."

The waiter came and took our orders. Steak, both medium rare, and salad and another round of scotch.

"Oh yeah, wasn't there something you wanted to talk to me about? Let's get that out of the way first. Before we get too plastered."

"It's kind of a strange story," I began.

He floated me one of his pleasant smiles. Well-practiced, but still, without malice.

"I like strange stories," he said.

"Well, here goes. The other day I went to see the movie you have out."

"Unrequited?" he said with a grimace, his voice dropping to a whisper. "Terrible picture. Terrible director, terrible script, it's always like that. Everybody involved with the thing wishes they could forget it."

"I saw it four times," I said.

His eyes widened, as if he were peering into the cosmic void. "I'd be willing to bet there's not a human alive in this galaxy who's sat through that movie four times."

"Someone I knew was in the film," I said. "Besides you, I mean."

Gotanda pressed an index finger into his temple and squinted. "Who?"

"The girl you were sleeping with on the Sunday morning."

He took a sip of whiskey. "Oh yeah," he said, nodding. "Kiki."

"Kiki," I repeated.

Kiki. Kiki. Kiki.

"That was the name I know her by anyway. In the film world, she went by Kiki. No last name, that was it."

Which is how, finally, I learned her name.

"And can you get in touch with her?" I asked.

"Afraid not."

"Why not?"

"Let's take it from the top. First of all, Kiki wasn't a professional actress. Actors, famous or not, all belong to some production company. So you get in contact with them through their agents. Most of them live next to their phones, waiting for the call, you know. But not Kiki. She didn't belong to any production group I knew of. She just happened through that one time."

"Then how did she land that part?"

"I recommended her," he said dryly. "I asked her if she wanted to be in a picture, and I introduced her to the director."

"What for?"

He took a sip of whiskey. "The girl had — maybe not talent exactly — she had the makings of ?presence. She had something. She wasn't really beautiful. She wasn't a born actress. But you got the feeling that if she ever got on film, she could pull the whole frame into focus. And that's talent, you know. So I asked the director to put her in the picture. And she made that scene. Everyone thought she was great. I don't mean to brag, but that scene was the best thing in the movie. It was real. Didn't you think so?"

"Yeah, I did," I had to agree. "Very real."

"So I thought the girl would go into movies. She could've cut the ice. But then she disappeared. Vanished. Like smoke, like morning dew."

"Vanished?"

"Like literally. Maybe a month ago. I'd been telling everyone she was exactly what we needed for this new part, and she was set. All the girl had to do was to show up, and it was hers. I even called her up the day before to remind her. But she never showed. That was the last time we ever talked."

He raised a finger to call over the waiter and ordered two more scotches.

"One question, though it's none of my business," Gotanda said. "Did you ever sleep with her?"

"Uh-huh."

"So then, well, if I were to say, supposing I slept with her too, would that bother you?"

"Not especially," I said.

"Good," said Gotanda, relieved. "I'm a terrible liar. So I'll come right out with it. We slept together a few times. She was a good kid. A little mixed-up maybe, but really a good person. She should've become an actress. Could've done some good things. Too bad."

"And you really don't know where to contact her? Or what her real name is?"

"Afraid not. I don't know of any way to find her. Nobody knows. 'Kiki' is all there is to go on."

"Weren't there any pay slips in the film company accounting department?" I asked. "They've got to put your real name and address on those things. For the tax office and all."

"Don't you think I checked? Not a clue. She didn't bother to pick up her pay. No money accepted, so no record, nothing."

"She didn't pick up her pay?"

"Don't ask me why," said Gotanda, well into his third drink. "The girl's a mystery. Maybe she wanted to keep her name and address a secret. Who knows? But whatever, now we have three things in common. Science lab in junior high. Divorce. And Kiki."

Presently our steaks and salads arrived. Beautiful steaks. Magazine-perfect medium rare. Gotanda dug in with gusto. His table manners were less than finishing-school polished, but he did have a casual ease that made him an ideal dining companion. Everything he ate looked appetizing. He was charming. He had a grace you don't encounter every day. A woman would be snowed.

"So tell me, where did you meet Kiki?" I asked, cutting into my steak.

"Let's see, where was it?" he thought out loud. "Oh yeah, I called for a girl and she showed up. You know what I mean, there are these numbers you call. Right?"

"Uh-huh."

"After my divorce, for a while there I would call up and these girls would come and spend the night. No fuss, no muss. I wasn't up for an amateur and if I was sleeping with someone in the industry it'd be splashed all over the magazines. So that's the companionship I had. They weren't cheap, but they kept quiet about it. Absolutely confidential. A guy at the agency gave me an introduction to this club, and all the girls were nice and easy. Professional, but without the attitude. They enjoy themselves too."

He brought a forkful of steak to his mouth and slowly savored the juiciness.

"Mmm, not bad," he said.

"Not bad at all," I seconded. "This is a great place."

"Great, but you get tired of it six times a month."

"You come here six times a month?"

"Well, I'm used to the place. I can walk right in and no one bats an eye. The employees don't whisper. They're used to famous people, so they don't stare. No one coming to ask for your autograph when you've got your mouth full. It's hard to relax and eat in other places. Really."

"Rough life," I kidded. "Plus you can't slack off on that expense account."

"You said it! So where were we?"

"Up to the part about call girls."

"Oh right," said Gotanda, wiping his mouth with his napkin. "So, one time I call for the usual girl. But she's not available. Instead, they send these two other girls. I get to choose, because I'm such a special customer. Well, one of the girls was Kiki. It was tough to decide, so I slept with both of them."

"Hmm," I said.

"That bother you?"

"If I were still in high school, maybe. But not now, no."

"I never did anything like that in high school, that's for sure," chuckled Gotanda. "But anyway, I slept with both of them. It was a funny combination. I mean, one girl was absolutely gorgeous. I'm talking stunning. Some expensive work on that body, let me tell you. Every square millimeter of her dripping with money. In my business you run into plenty of beautiful women, and this girl was no slouch. She had a nice personality, intelligent too. And then there was Kiki. Not a real beauty. Pretty enough, but no pizzazz, not like the typical club girl. She was more, well,?

"Ordinary?" I offered.

"Yeah, ordinary. Regular clothes, hardly any makeup, not a super conversationalist either. She didn't seem to care a lot about what people thought of her. No one you'd give a second look. And the strange thing about her was, somehow she was more attractive, she interested me more. After the three of us got it on, we were sitting on the floor, drinking and listening to music and talking. I hadn't enjoyed myself like that in ages. Not since college. I felt so relaxed with them that the three of us got together a few more times after that." "When was this?"

"This was about six months after I got divorced, so that makes maybe a year and a half ago," he said. "We had this threesome five or six times. I never slept with Kiki alone. I wonder why. I really should have."

"Yeah, why not?"

He set his knife and fork down on his plate, then pressed at his temple again. Seemed to be a mannerism of his. And a charming one too.

"Maybe I was scared," Gotanda said.

"What do you mean?"

"Scared to be alone with her," he said, picking up his cutlery. "There was something challenging about her, almost threatening. At least that was the feeling I got. No, not exactly threatening."

"Sort of suggestive? Or leading?"

"Yeah, maybe. I can't really say. But whatever it was, I got only a hint of it. I never got the full frontal effect. So anyway, I never felt like sleeping with just her. Despite the fact that she attracted me more. Does this make any sense to you?"

"I guess."

"Somehow, if I'd slept with Kiki, just the two of us, I wouldn't have been able to relax. I'd have wanted to go a lot deeper with her. Don't ask me why. But that wasn't what I was after. I only wanted to sleep with girls as a kind of release. Even though I really did like Kiki."

We ate in silence for a moment or two.

"When Kiki didn't show for the audition, I rang up her club," Gotanda went on, as if he'd just remembered. "I specifically asked for her, but she wasn't there. They told me they didn't know where she was. True, she could've told them to say that if I called. Who knows? But in any case, she evaporated, just like that."

The waiter cleared the table and asked if we wanted coffee. "No, but I'd like another drink," said Gotanda. "How about you?"

"I'm in your hands."

And so we were brought our fourth round.

"What do you think I did today?" Gotanda asked out of nowhere.

I told him I had no idea.

"I assisted a dentist, all afternoon. Background study for a role. Right now I'm doing this series where I play a dentist. Ryoko Nakano's an optometrist, and we have clinics in the same neighborhood. We've known each other since childhood, but something's always conspiring to keep us apart. Pretty harmless stuff. But, well, TV dramas are all the same. You ever seen it?"

"No, can't say I have," I said. "I don't watch TV. Except the news. And I only watch it twice a week."

"Smart," said Gotanda. "It's a stupid program anyway. If I wasn't in it, I wouldn't watch it myself. But it's a popular show. The ratings are pretty high. You know how the public loves this kind of stuff. And you wouldn't believe the mail I get every week. Dentists writing in, complaining about how such-and-such a procedure wasn't rendered right or the treatment for such-and-such a toothache should have been something else. And then there are these jokers who say they never saw such a poor excuse for a show. Well, if you don't like it, don't watch."

"Nobody's forcing them to."

"The funny thing is, I always get stuck playing a doctor or a teacher or somebody wholesome and respectable like that. I've played more doctor roles than I can count. The only thing I haven't been is a proctologist! Imagine how much fun that would be! But I've been a vet and a gynecologist and of course I've been a teacher of every curriculum in the book. I've even taught home economics. What do you make of all this?"

"Well, obviously, you radiate trust," I laughed.

"Yes, a fatal flaw," Gotanda laughed back. "Once, I played this crooked used-car salesman. A bullshit artist with one glass eye. Boy, I had fun with that. The role had some bite to it, and I wasn't bad either. But no way. The letters came pouring in. It was too mean a role for the noble likes of me. Somebody even threatened to boycott the sponsor! Toothpaste, if I remember correctly. So my character got scratched in the middle of the season. Written right out. A pretty important part, killed by natural selection. And ever since then, it's been doctors and teachers, doctors and teachers."

"Complicated life."

"Or a truly simple one," he laughed again. "Anyway, today I was doing time as a dental assistant, studying technique. I've been doing this for a while now, and I swear, I can probably do a simple procedure myself. The dentist — the real live dentist — even praised the way I handle the tools. I have this gauze mask on, and none of the patients knows it's me. But still, they all relax when I talk to them."

"Can't stop radiating that trust, can you?"

"Yup, that's what I'm beginning to think. Matter of fact, I get to feeling so relaxed I wonder if I wasn't cut out to be a real dentist or a doctor or a teacher or something. I could've done that, you know. Maybe I'd be happier doing something like that."

"You're not happy now?"

"Don't know," said Gotanda, finger in the middle of his forehead this time. "It's this trust business I'm such a pro at. I don't know whether I trust myself. Everybody else trusts me, sure, but, really, I'm nothing but this image. A push of the button and — brrp! — I'm gone. Right?"

"Hmm."

"If I really was a doctor or a teacher, no one could switch me off. I'm always there."

"True, but even with acting, you always have to be there."

"Sometimes I just get tired," said Gotanda. "I get headaches, and I just lose track. I mean, it's like which is me and which the role? Where's the line between me and my shadow?" "Everybody feels that way, not just you."

"I know that. Everybody loses track of themselves. Only in me, the slant is too strong. It's, well, fatal. I've always been this way, since I don't know when. To be honest, I was always envious of you."

"Of me?" I was incredulous. "Why the hell would you be envious of me?"

"I don't know, you always seemed to get along just fine doing your own thing. Didn't matter what others thought, you didn't really care. You did what you wanted, how you wanted. You were solid." He raised his glass and looked through it. "I, on the other hand, was the eternal golden boy. I never did anything wrong, I got the best grades, I won elections, I was a star athlete. Girls liked me. And teachers and parents believed in me. How do things like this happen? I never really understood what was going on, but you sort of get into a groove, you know. You probably can't even imagine what I'm talking about."

No, not really, I told him.

"After junior high, I went to this school that was big in soccer. We almost made it to the nationals. So it was like an extension of junior high. I kept on being good. I had a girlfriend. She was gorgeous. Used to come cheer for me at the soccer matches. That's how we met. But we didn't go all the way, as we used to say. We only fooled around. We'd go to her place when her folks weren't home and we'd fool around. We'd have dates at the library. High school days right out of NHK Teen Playhouse."

Gotanda took a sip of whiskey.

"Things changed a bit in college. There was all this campus unrest, the United Student Front. I got put in a leading role again. And I played the role all right. I did everything. Put up barricades, slept around, smoked dope, listened to Deep Purple. The riot squad broke in and we got dragged off to jail. After that, there wasn't much for us to do.

"That was when the girl I was living with talked me into doing underground theater. So I tried out, partly as a joke, but gradually it got interesting. I was this beginner, and I lucked into a couple decent roles. Pretty soon I realized I had a talent for that kind of thing. I'd have this role and I could actually make it work. After a couple years, people started to know who I was. Even if I was a real mess in those days. I drank a lot, slept around all the time. But that's how everyone was.

"One day a guy from the movies came around and asked if I'd ever considered acting on-screen. Of course I was interested, so I tried out and I landed a bit part. It wasn't a bad part — I was this sensitive young man — and that led to something else. There was even talk of TV. Things got busy, and I had to quit the theater group. I was sorry to leave but, you know how it is, you think, there's a big, wide world out there, gotta move on. And, well, you know the rest. I'm a doctor and a teacher and I hustle antacid lozenges and instant coffee in between. Real big, wide world, eh?"

Gotanda sighed. A charming sigh, but a sigh no less.

"Life straight out of a painting, don't you think?"

"Not such a bad painting, though," I said.

"You got a point. I haven't had it bad. But when I think back on my life, it's like I didn't make one choice. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and it scares me. Where's the first-person 'I'? Where's the beef? My whole life is playing one role after another. Who's been playing the lead in my life?"

I didn't say anything.

"I guess I'm running off at the mouth."

"Doesn't bother me," I told him. "If you want to talk, you ought to talk. I won't spread it around."

"I'm not worried about that," said Gotanda, looking me in the eye. "Not worried in the least. There's something about you — I don't know what it is — somehow I know I can trust you. I trust you from the word go. But it's hard to be open with people. I could talk — well, maybe I could — to my ex-wife. For a while there, until everyone around us screwed up the works, we really understood and loved each other. If it was just the two of us, things might have worked out. But she was too insecure. She needed her family too much, couldn't get out from under them. So that's when I ?No, I'm getting ahead of myself. That's a whole other story. What I want to know is, is all this talk a drag?"

Nope, I said, not a drag at all.

After that he talked about our science lab unit. How he was always uptight, having to see to it that the experiment came out right, having to explain things to the slow girl. How, again, he envied my puttering along at my own pace. I, however, could scarcely recall what we'd done in science class. So I was at a total loss what there'd been to envy. All I remember was that Gotanda was good with his hands. Setting up the microscope, things like that. Meanwhile, I could relax precisely because he tended to all the hard tasks.

I didn't say that to him. I just listened.

At some point, a well-appointed man in his forties came up to our table and tapped Gotanda on the shoulder. They exchanged greetings and talked show business. The fellow glanced at me, pegged me immediately as a nobody, and continued his conversation. I was invisible.

When the fellow left, after a promise of lunch and golf, Gotanda fretted one eyebrow a few millimeters, raised two fingers to gesture for a waiter, and asked for the check. Which he signed, with no ceremony whatsoever.

"It's all expenses," he said. "It's not money, it's expenses."

19
Then we rode in the Mercedes to a bar down a back street in Azabu. We took seats at one end of the counter and had a few more drinks. Gotanda could hold his liquor; he didn't show the least sign of inebriation, not in his color or his speech. He went on talking. About the inanity of the TV stations. About the lamebrained directors. About the no-talents who made you want to throw up. About the so-called critics on news shows. He was a good storyteller. He was funny, and he was incisive.

He wanted to hear about me. What sorts of turns my life had taken. So I proceeded to relate snippets of the saga. The office I set up with a friend and then quit, the personal life, the free-lance life, the money, the time, ?Taken in gloss, an altogether sedate, almost still life. It hardly seemed to be my own story.

The bar began to fill up, making conversation difficult. People were ogling Gotanda's famous face. "Let's get out of here. Come over to my place," he said, rising to his feet. "It's close by. And empty. And there's drink."

His condo proved to be a mere two or three turns of the Mercedes away. He gave the driver the rest of the night off, and we went in. Impressive, with two elevators, one requiring a special key.

"The agency bought me this place when I got thrown out of my house," he said. "They couldn't have their star actor broke and living in a dump. Bad for the image. Of course, I pay rent. On a formal level, I lease the place from the office. And the rent gets deducted from expenses. Perfect symmetry."

It was a penthouse condo, with a spacious living room and two bedrooms and a veranda with a view of Tokyo Tower. Several Persian rugs on the hardwood floor. Ample sofa, not too hard, not too soft. Large potted plants, postmodern Italian lighting. Very little in the way of decorator frills. Only a few Ming dynasty plates on the sideboard, GQ and architectural journals on the coffee table. And not a speck of dust. Obviously he had a maid too.

"Nice place," I said with understatement.

"You leave things to an interior designer and it ends up looking like this. Something you want to photograph, not live in. I have to knock on the walls to make sure they're not props. Antiseptic, no scent of life."

"Well, you've got to spread your scent around."

"The problem is, I haven't got one," he voiced expressionlessly.

He put a record on a Bang & Olufsen turntable and lowered the cartridge. The speakers were old-favorite JBL P88s, the music an old Bob Cooper LP. "What'll you have?" he asked.

"Whatever you're drinking," I said.

He disappeared into the kitchen and returned with vodka and soda and ice and sliced lemons. As the cool, clean West Coast jazz filtered through this glorified bachelor pad, I couldn't help thinking, antiseptic or not, the place was comfortable. I sprawled on the sofa, drink in hand, and felt utterly relaxed.

"So out of all the possibilities, here I am," Gotanda addressed the ceiling light, drink in hand also. "I could have been a doctor. In college I got my teaching credentials. But this is how I end up, with this lifestyle. Funny. The cards were laid out in front of me, I could have picked any one. I could've done all right whatever I chose. Not a doubt in my mind. All the more reason not to make a choice."

"I never even got to see the cards," I said in all honesty. Which elicited a laugh from Gotanda. He probably thought I was joking.

He refilled our glasses, squeezed a lemon, and tossed the rind into the trash. "Even my marriage was by default, almost. We were in the same film and went on location together. We got friendly and went on drives. Then after the filming was over, we dated a couple of times. Everyone thought what a nice couple we made, so we thought, yeah, what a nice couple we make, let's get married. Now I don't know if you realize it, but the film industry's a small world. It's like living in a tenement at one end of a back alley. Not only do you see everybody's dirty laundry, but once rumors start, you can't stop 'em. All the same, I did like her, truly. She was the best thing I ever laid hands on. That really came home to me after we got married. I tried to make it last, but it was no go. The second I make a conscious choice, I chase the thing away. But if I'm on the receiving end, if it's not me that's making the decision, it seems like I can't lose."

I didn't say anything.

"I'm not looking on the dark side," he said. "I still love her. Maybe that's the problem. I still think of her. How it might have been if we both had given up acting and settled down to a quiet life. Wouldn't need a condo that looked like this. Wouldn't need a Maserati. None of that. Only a decent job and our own little place. Kids. After work I'd stop somewhere for a beer and let off steam. Then home to the wife. A Civic or Subaru on installment. That's the life. That would be everything I needed — if she was there. But it's not going to happen. She wanted something different. And her family — don't get me started on them. Anyway, I guess some things just don't work out. But you know what? I slept with her last month."

"With your former wife?"

"Yup. Do you think that's normal?"

"I don't think it's abnormal," I said. "She came here, I couldn't figure out what for. She rings up, wants to drop by. Of course, I say. So we're drinking, the two of us, just like old times, and we end up in bed together. It was great. She told me she still liked me and I told her how I wished we could start all over again. But she didn't say anything to that. She just listened and smiled. I started going on about having a normal life, a regular home, like I was telling you now. And she listened and smiled, but she wasn't really listening. She didn't hear a word of it. It was like talking to a wall. Futile. She was feeling lonely and wanted to be with someone. I happened to be available. Not a nice thing to say about yourself, but it's true. She's a world apart from somebody like you or me. For her, loneliness is something you have others remove for you. And once it's gone, everything's okay. Doesn't go any further. I can't live that way."

The record finished. He raised the cartridge and stood thinking in silence for a moment.

"What do you think about calling in some girls?" he asked.

"Fine by me. Whatever you want," I said.

"You never bought a woman?" he asked.

Never, I told him.

"How come?"

"Never occurred to me," I said, honestly.

Gotanda shrugged his shoulders. "Well tonight, I think you should. Play along with me, okay?" he said. "I'll ask for the girl who came with Kiki. She might know something about her."

"I leave it up to you," I said. "But don't tell me you can write it off as expenses."

He laughed as he refilled his glass. "You won't believe it, but I can. There's a whole system. This place has this front as a party service, so they can make out these very legitimate receipts. Sex as 'business gifts and entertainment.' Amazing, huh?"

"Advanced capitalism," I said. While waiting for the girls to arrive, Kiki and her fabulous ears came to mind. I asked Gotanda if he'd ever seen them.

"Her ears?" he said, puzzled. "No, I don't think so. Or if I did, I don't remember. What about her ears?"

Oh, nothing, I told him.

It was past twelve when the girls arrived. One was Gotanda's stunningly beautiful companion to Kiki. And really, she was stunning. The sort of woman who'd linger in your memory even if she never spoke a word to you. Not glitter and glamour, but refinement. Under her coat she wore a green cashmere sweater and an ordinary wool skirt. Simple earrings, no other adornment. Very well-bred university girl.

The other woman wore glasses and a soft-colored dress. She wasn't beautiful like her companion. She was more what you would call appealing and fresh. With long legs and slender arms, and tan as if she'd spent the last week on the beach in Guam. Her hair was short and neatly pinned up. She wore silver bangles that played on her wrists with her brisk movements, her flesh trim and taut, like a sleek carnivore.

Memories of high school came to mind. These two distinct types were to be found in any class. The elegant beauty and the quick-witted mink. It was like being at a reunion. Especially with Gotanda there, so relaxed and effervescent. He seemed to have slept with both of them before, so it was all, "Hey there, how's it going?" Gotanda introduced me as a former schoolmate, now a writer. Both smiled warmly, fine-we're-all-friends-here smiles.

We sat on the floor with brandy-and-sodas, Joe Jackson and the Alan Parsons Project playing in the background. Gotanda put on his dentist act for the girl with the glasses. Then he whispered something to her and she giggled. Then the Beauty was leaning on my shoulder and holding my hand. Her scent was lovely. She was every man's, every boy's dream. The high school girl you'd always wanted, now come back years later. / always liked you though I didn't know how to tell you at the time. Why didn't you try to reach me? I put my arm around her, and she gently closed her eyes, seeking out my ear with the tip of her nose. She kissed me lightly on the neck, breathing softly. Then I noticed that Gotanda and his girl weren't around. Why didn't I turn the lights down a bit? my coed cooed. I got up and switched off the overhead lights, leaving only a low table lamp on. Bob Dylan was droning it's all over now, baby blue.

"Undress me nice and slow," she whispered into my ear. So I took off first her sweater, then her skirt, then her blouse and stockings. Out of reflex I almost started to fold her things, but then realized that in this scene there was no need to do that. She in turn undressed me. Armani tie, Levi's, T-shirt.

She stood before me in scanty bra and panties. "Well, what do you think?" she asked with a smile.

"Super," I said. She had a beautiful body. Full, brimming with life, clean and sexy.

"How super?" she wanted to know. "If you tell me better, I'll do you the best ever."

"It's like old times. Takes me back to high school." I was being honest.

She squinted curiously, then smiled. "Unique, I'll say that."

"Did I say something wrong?"

"Not at all," she said. Then she came over next to me and did things nobody in my thirty-four years had ever done for me. Delicate, yet daring, things you wouldn't think of so readily. But somebody obviously had. The tension slipped out of my body as I closed my eyes, giving myself over to the flow of sensations. This was utterly different from any sex I'd known before.

"Not bad, huh?" she said, whispering again. "Not bad," I agreed.

It put my mind at ease, like the best music, released the pockets of tension from my being, sent my temporal senses into limbo. Instead, there was a quiet intimacy, a blending of time and space, a perfect self-contained form of communication. And to think it was tax deductible! "Not bad," I said again. What was Dylan going on about now? "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall." She snuggled into the crook of my arm. What a world, where you can sleep with gorgeous women while listening to Bob Dylan and then write off the whole works! Unthinkable in the sixties.

It's all just images, I found myself thinking. Pull out the plug and it'll all go away. A 3-D sex scene. Complete with eau de cologne, soft touchie-feelies, hot breath.

I followed the expected course, I came, then we took a shower. We returned to the living room, wrapped in oversized towels, to listen to Dire Straits and sip some brandy.

She asked me about my work, what kind of things I wrote. I explained briefly and she said, how uninteresting. Well, it depends, I told her. What I did was shovel cultural snow. To which she responded that her work was to shovel sensual snow. I had to laugh. But wouldn't I like to shovel some more snow, right about now? And so we rolled over on the carpet and made love again, this time very simply, very slowly. And she knew just how to please me. Uncanny.

Later, both lying full-length in Gotanda's luxurious tub, I asked her about Kiki.

"Kiki?" she said. "Now there's a name I haven't heard in a while. You know Kiki?"

She pursed her lips like a child and tried to think. "She's not anywhere now. She just disappeared, all of a sudden. We were pretty close too. Sometimes we'd go out shopping or drinking together. Then, without warning, she was gone. A month, maybe two months ago. But that's not so unusual. You don't need to hand in a formal resignation in this line of work. If you want to quit, you quit. You don't have to tell anyone. I'm sorry she left. We were friends, but that's how it goes. We're not girl scouts, after all," she said, stroking my thighs and cock with her long graceful fingers. "Have you slept with Kiki?"

"There was a time we lived together. Four years ago." "Four years ago?" she said with a smile. "That's ancient history. Four years ago, I was still in high school."

"Hmm." I let it pass. "You know of any way I could get to see Kiki?"

"Pretty difficult, I'd say. I honestly don't have any idea where she went. It's like I told you, she just up and left. Practically vanished into a blank wall. Haven't a clue how you'd go about looking for her. So, you still got a thing for her?"

I stretched out in the tub and looked up at the ceiling. Was I still in love with Kiki?

"I don't know. But that's almost beside the point now. I just have to see her. Something's been telling me Kiki wants to see me. I keep dreaming about her."

"Strange," she said, looking me in the eye. "I sometimes dream about Kiki, too."

"What sort of dreams?"

She didn't reply. She only smiled and said she'd like another drink. She rested against my chest and I threw my arm around her naked shoulder. Gotanda and his girl showed no sign of emerging from the bedroom. Asleep, I supposed.

"I know you won't believe me," she then said, "but I like being with you like this. I enjoy it, no business, no acting.

It's the truth."

"I believe you," I said. "I'm enjoying myself, too. I feel really relaxed. It's like a class reunion."

"Unique, again," she giggled.

"About Kiki," I pressed on, "isn't there anyone who'd know? Her real name, her address, that sort of thing?"

She shook her head slowly. "We almost never talk about those things. Why else would we bother with these names? She was Kiki. I'm Mei, the other girl's Mami. Everyone's four letters or less. It's our cover. Private life is out-of-bounds. We don't know and we don't ask. Manners, you know. We're all real friendly and we go out together sometimes. But it's not really us. We don't actually know each other. Mei, Kiki. These names don't have real lives. We're all image. Signs tacked up in empty air. That's why we respect each other's illusions. Does that make sense?"

"Perfect sense," I said.

"Some of our customers take pity on us. But we don't do this just for the money. Me, for example, I do it 'cause it's fun. And because the club is strictly for members only, we don't have to worry about crazies, and everyone wants to have fun with us. After all, we're all in this made-up world together."

"Shoveling snow for the fun of it," I threw in.

"Right, shoveling snow for fun," she laughed. Then putting her lips to my chest, "Sometimes even snowball fights."

"Mei." I said her name over again. "I once knew a girl whose name really was Mei. She worked as a receptionist at the dentist's next to my office. From a farming family up in Hokkaido. Skinny, dark. Everyone called her Mei the Goat Girl."

"Mei the Goat Girl," she repeated. "And your name?"

"Winnie the Pooh," I said.

"Our own little fairy tale."

I drew her to me and kissed her. It was a heady kiss, a nostalgic kiss. Then we drank our umpteenth brandy-and-soda, and snuggled together while listening to the Police. Soon Mei had drifted off to sleep, no longer the beautiful dream woman, but only an ordinary, brittle young girl. A class reunion. The clock read four o'clock and everything was still. Mei the Goat Girl and Winnie the Pooh. Images. Deductible fairy tales. What a day! Connections that almost connected but didn't. Follow the string until it snaps. I'd met Gotanda after all these years, even come to like him, really. Through him I'd met Mei the Goat Girl. We made love. Which was wonderful. Shoveled sensual snow. But none of it led anywhere.

I made some coffee, and at half past six the others woke up. Mei had on a bathrobe. Mami came in wearing a paisley pajama top and Gotanda the bottom. I was in my jeans and T-shirt. We all took seats at the dining table and passed around the toast and marmalade. The FM station was playing "Baroque for You." A Henry Purcell pastoral.

"Morning at camp," I said.

Cuck-koo, sang Mei.

At seven-thirty Gotanda called a taxi for the girls. Mei kissed me good-bye. "If you find Kiki, give her my best," I said. I handed her my card and asked her to call if she learned anything.

"Hope we can meet again and shovel some more snow," she winked.

"Shovel snow?" Gotanda asked.

Gotanda and I sat down to another cup of coffee. It was like a commercial. A quiet morning, sun rising, Tokyo Tower gleaming in the distance. Tokyo begins its mornings with Nescafe.

Time for normal people to be starting their day. Not for us though. Like it or not, we two were excluded.

"Find out anything about Kiki?" asked Gotanda.

I shook my head. "Only that she'd disappeared. Just like you said. No leads, not a clue. Mei didn't even know her real name."

"I'll ask around the film company," he said. "Maybe somebody knows something."

He pouted slightly and pressed at his temple with the handle of his coffee spoon. He sure was good at it.

"But tell me, what do you plan to do if you find her?" he asked. "Try to win her back? Or is it just for old times?"

I told him I didn't know. I hadn't thought that far.

Gotanda saw me home in his spotless brown Maserati.

"Mind if I call you again soon?" he said. "It really was terrific seeing you. Don't know anyone else I can talk to like we did. That is, if it's okay by you."

"Of course," I said. And I thanked him again for the steak and drinks and girls and ?/p>

He gave a quiet shake of his head. Without a word, I understood everything he meant to say.

20
The next few days passed uneventfully. The phone rang, but the whole time I kept the answering machine on and didn't bother picking up. Nice to know that my services were still in demand, though. I cooked meals, went into Shibuya, and saw Unrequited Love every day. It was spring break, so the theater was always packed with high school students. It was like an animal house. I wanted to burn the place down.

Now that I knew what to look for, I was able to find Kiki's name, in fine type, in the opening credits.

Then after her scene, I'd leave the theater and walk my usual course. From Harajuku to the Jingu Stadium, Aoyama Cemetery, Omotesando, past the Jintan Building, back to Shibuya. Sometimes I'd stop for a coffee along the way. Spring had surely come, bringing its familiar smells. The earth persisted in its measured orbit of the sun. I always find it a cosmic mystery that spring knows when to follow winter. And how is it that spring always brings out the same smells? Year after year, however subtle, exactly identical.

The town was plastered with election posters. Ugly and repugnant. Trucks were making the rounds, blaring out speeches by politicians. So loud you couldn't tell what they were saying. Noise.

I walked and I thought about Kiki. And before long I noticed I'd regained my stride, a lift had come back to my step. My awareness of things around me had sharpened. I was moving forward intently, one step at a time. I had focus, a goal. Which somehow, quite naturally, lightened my step, almost gave me soft-shoe footwork. This was a good sign. Dance. Keep in step, light but steady. Freshen up, maintain the rhythm, keep things going. I had to pay careful attention where this was leading me to next. Had to make sure I stayed in this world.

The last four or five days of March passed in this way. On the surface, there was no progression at all. I'd do the shopping, make meals in the kitchen, see Unrequited, go for long walks. I'd play back the answering machine when I got home — inevitably calls about work. At night, I'd read and drink alone. Every day was a repeat of the day before.

Drinking alone at night, I fixated on sex with Mei the Goat Girl. Shoveling snow. An oddly isolated memory, unconnected to anything. Not to Gotanda, not to Kiki. But ever so real. Down to the smallest details, in some sense even more vivid than waking reality, though ultimately unconnected. I liked it that way. A self-bound meeting of souls. Two persons joined together respecting their illusions and images. That fine-we're-all-friends-here smile. Morning at camp. Cuck-koo.

I tried to picture Kiki and Gotanda sleeping together. Did she give him the same ultra-sexy service as Mei gave me? Were all the girls at the club drilled in such professional know-how? Or was Mei strictly her own technician? I had no idea, and I couldn't very well ask Gotanda. All the time Kiki was living with me, she was, if anything, rather passive about sex. Sure, she warmed up and responded, but she never made the first move, never had demands of her own. Not that I ever had any complaints. She was wonderful when she relaxed. Her soft inviting body, quiet easy breath, hot vagina. No, I had no complaints. I just couldn't picture her delivering professional favors to anyone — to Gotanda, for instance. Maybe I lacked the imagination. How do prostitutes keep their private sex separate from their professional sex? Before Mei, I'd never slept with a call girl. I'd slept with Kiki. And Kiki was a call girl. But I didn't sleep with Kiki the call girl, I slept with Kiki. And conversely I'd slept with Mei the call girl, but not Mei. There probably was nothing to gain from correlating these two circumstances. That would only make matters more complicated. And anyway, where does sex stop being a thing of the mind? Where does technique begin? How far does the real thing go, how much is acting? Was sufficient foreplay a spiritual concern? Did Kiki actually enjoy sex with me? Was she really acting in the movie? Were Gotanda's graceful fingers sliding down her back turning her on?

Caught in the cross hair of the real and the imaginary.

Take Gotanda. His doctor persona was all image. Yet he looked more like a real doctor than any doctor I knew. All the dependability and trust he projected.

What was my image? Did I even have one?

Dance, the Sheep Man said. Dance in tip-top form. Dance so it all keeps spinning.

Did that mean I would then have an image? And if I did, would people be impressed? Well, more than they'd be impressed by my real self, I bet.

When I awoke the following morning, it was April. As delicately rendered as a passage from Truman Capote, fleeting, fragile, beautiful. April, made famous by T.S. Eliot and Count Basie.

I went to Kinokuniya for some overpriced groceries and well-trained vegetables. Then I picked up two 6-packs of beer and three bottles of bargain wine.

When I got back home, there was a message from Yuki, her voice totally disinterested. She said she'd call again around twelve. Then she slammed down the receiver. A common phrasing in her body language.

I dripped some coffee, then sat down with a mug and the latest 87th Precinct adventure, something I've failed to quit for ten years now. Then a little past noon, the phone rang.

"How's it going?" It was Yuki.

"Okay."

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Thinking about lunch. Smoked salmon with pedigreed lettuce and razor-sharp slices of onion that have been soaked in ice water, brushed with horseradish and mustard, served on French butter rolls baked in the hot ovens of Kinokuniya. A sandwich made in heaven!"

"It sounds okay."

"It's not okay. It's nothing less than uplifting. And if you don't believe me, you can ask your local bee. You could also ask your friendly clover. They'll tell you — it really is great."

"What's this bee and clover stuff? What're you talking about?"

"Figure of speech."

"You know," said Yuki, "you ought to try growing up. I'm only thirteen, but even so I sometimes think you're kind of dumb."

"You mean I should become more conventional? Is that what you're telling me? Is that what growing up means?"

"I want to go for a drive," she ignored my question. "How about tonight?"

"I think I'm free," I said.

"Well, then, be here at five in Akasaka. You remember how to get here, don't you?"

"Yeah, but don't tell me you've been alone all this time?"

"Uh-huh. Nothing's happening in Hakone. I mean, the place is on top of a mountain. Who wants to go there to be alone? More fun in town."

"What about your mother? She hasn't returned?"

"Not that I know of. I can't keep track of her. I'm not her mother, you know. She hasn't called or anything, so maybe she's still in Kathmandu."

"What about money?"

"I'm okay for money. I've got a cash card that I pinched from her purse. One less card, she'll never notice. I mean, if I don't look out for myself, I'll die. Mama's such a space cadet, as you know."

My turn to ignore her. "You been eating healthy?" "I'm eating. What did you think? I'd die if I didn't." "That's not what I asked. I said, are you eating healthy?" Yuki coughed. "Let's see. First there was Kentucky Fried

Chicken, then McDonald's, then Dairy Queen, ?And what else?"

"I'll be there at five," I said. "We'll go somewhere decent to eat. You can't survive on the garbage you've been putting down. An adolescent girl needs nourishment. You're at a very delicate time of life, you know. Bad diet, bad periods." "You're an idiot," she muttered.

"Now, if it's not too much to ask, would you give me your phone number?" "Why?"

"Because one-way communication isn't fair. You know my number, I don't know yours. You call me when you feel like it, I can't call you. It's one-sided. Besides, suppose something came up suddenly, I wouldn't be able to reach you."

She paused, muttered some more, then gave me her number.

"But don't think you can change plans anytime you feel like it," said Yuki. "Mama's so good at it already, you wouldn't stand a chance."

"I promise. I won't change plans. Cross my heart and hope to die. You can ask the cabbage moth, you can ask the alfalfa. There's not a human alive who keeps promises better than me. But sometimes the unexpected happens. It's a big, complicated world, you know. And if it happens, don't you think it'd be nice if I could get through to you? Got it?" "Unforeseeable circumstances," she said. "Out of the clear blue sky." "Nice if they didn't happen," said Yuki. "Nice if they didn't," I echoed. But of course they did.