31
Back at the Shibuya apartment, I went through my mail and messages. Nothing, of course, but petty work-related matters. How's that piece for the next issue coming along? Where the hell did you disappear to? Can you take on this new project? I returned nobody's call. Faster, simpler to get on with the work at hand.

But first, a phone call to Makimura. Friday picked up and promptly turned me over to the big man. I gave him a brief rundown of the trip, saying that Hawaii seemed to be a good breather for Yuki.

"Good," he said. "Many thanks for everything. I'll give Ame a call tomorrow. Did the money hold out, by the way?"

"With lots to spare."

"Well, go ahead and use it up. It's yours."

"I can't do that," I said. "Oh yes, I've been meaning to ask you about your little present."

"Oh, that," he said, making light of it.

"How did you arrange that?"

"Through channels. I trust you didn't stay up all night playing cards, eh?"

"No, I don't mean that. I want to know how you could buy me a woman in Honolulu all the way from Tokyo. I'm just curious how something like that is done."

Makimura was quiet, sizing up the extent of my curiosity. "Well," he began, "it's like international flower delivery. I call the organization in Tokyo and tell them I want a girl sent to you, at such-and-such a place, at such-and-such a time. Then Tokyo contacts its affiliated Honolulu organization and they send the girl. I pay Tokyo. Tokyo takes a commission and wires the rest to Honolulu. Honolulu takes its commission and what's left goes to the girl. Convenient, eh? All kinds of systems in the modern world."

"Sure seems that way," I said. International flower delivery.

"Very convenient. It costs you, but you save on time and energy. I think they call it worldwide sex-o-grams. They're safe, too. No run-ins with violent pimps. Plus you can write it off as expenses."

"That so?" I said, nodding to myself. "I guess you couldn't give me the number to this organization?"

"Sorry, no go. It's absolutely confidential. Members only, very exclusive. You need glamour and money and social standing. You'd never pass. I mean, forget it. Listen, I'm already talking too much. I told you this much out of the kindness of my heart."

I thanked him for it.

"Well, was she good?" he asked.

"Yes, quite good," I admitted.

"Glad to hear it. I asked them to send you the best. What was her name?"

"June."

"June, eh? Was she white?"

"No, Southeast Asian."

"I'll have to check her out next time," he said.

There wasn't much more to say, so I thanked him again and hung up.

Next, I rang Gotanda and got his answering machine. I left a message saying I was back and would appreciate a call. By then it was already getting late in the day, so I hopped in the Subaru and drove to Aoyama to do some shopping before the stores closed. More pedigreed vegetables, the lat- est shipment fresh from Kinokuniya's own pedigreed vegetable farms. Somewhere in the remote mountains of Nagano, pristine acres surrounded by barbed wire. Watch-tower, guards with machine guns. A prison camp like in The Great Escape. Rows of lettuce and celery whipped into shape through unimaginably grueling supravegetable training. What a way to get your fiber.

No message from Gotanda when I got back.

The following morning, after a quick breakfast at Dunkin' Donuts, I headed to the library and combed through the last month's newspapers. Checking if there'd been a breakthrough in the investigation of Mei's death. I read the Asahi and Mainichi and Yomiuri with extreme care, but found only election results and a statement by Revchenko and a big piece on delinquency in the schools and how for reasons of "musical impropriety" the White House had canceled a command performance by the Beach Boys. Anyway, not one line about the case.

I then read through back issues of various weekly magazines. And there it was: "Naked Beauty Found Strangled in Akasaka Hotel." A sensationalized, one-page article on Mei. Instead of a photograph, there was a sketch of the corpse by a specialist in criminal art. Next best thing if you didn't have the bloody photo itself. True, the sketch did look like Mei, but then I knew who it was supposed to be. Could anyone else have recognized her? No, Mei had been warm and animated. Full of hopes, full of illusions. She'd been gentle and smooth, fantastic, shoveling her sensual snow. It was the reason we could connect so well, could share those illusions. Cuck-koo. She was all innocence.

This lousy sketch made it cheap and dirty. I shook my head. I shut my eyes and sighed slowly. Yet that line drawing, better than any morgue photograph, hammered home the fact that Mei was dead. Extremely, irrevocably dead. She was gone. Her life had been sucked away into black nothingness.

The article fit the drawing. A young woman believed to be in her early twenties was discovered strangled to death with a stocking in a luxury Akasaka hotel. Completely naked, without identification, an assumed name, et cetera, et cetera. Nothing new to me, except for a one detail: Police were running down probable links to a prostitution ring, an organization that dispatched call girls to first-class hotels.

I returned the magazines to the racks and sat thinking. How had the police been able to narrow their leads to the prostitution ring? Had some hard evidence turned up? Not that I was about to call those two cops to find out.

I left the library and ate a quick lunch nearby, then went for a walk, waiting for a brilliant notion to pop into my head. No such luck. I walked to Meiji Shrine, stretched out on the grass and looked up at the sky.

I thought about the call girl organization. Worldwide sex-o-grams. Place your order in Tokyo and your girl is waiting in Honolulu. Systematic, efficient, sophisticated. No muss, no fuss. Very businesslike. Just went to prove, once you've got an illusion going, it can function on the market like any other product. Advanced capitalism churning out goods for every conceivable niche. Illusion, that was the key word here. Whether prostitution or discrimination or personal attacks or displaced sex drive, give it a pretty name, a pretty package, and you could sell it. Before too long they'll have a call girl catalog order service at the Seibu department store. You can rely on us.

I looked up at the sky and thought about sex.

I wanted to sleep with Yumiyoshi. It wasn't out of the question. Just get one foot in her door, so to speak, and tell her, "You have to sleep with me. You should sleep with me." Then I undress her, gently, like untying the ribbon on a present. First her coat, then her glasses, then her sweater. Her clothes off, she'd turn into Mei. Cuck-koo, she says. "Like my body?"

But before I can answer, the night is gone. Kiki is beside me, Gotanda's graceful fingers playing over her back. The door opens. Enter Yuki. She sees me making love with Kiki. It's me this time, not Gotanda. Only the fingers are his.

"I can't believe this," says Yuki. "I really can't believe this."

"It's not like that," I say.

"What was that all about?" says Kiki for the umpteenth time.

It's not like that, I insist. The one I want to sleep with is Yumiyoshi. I just got my signals crossed.

First thing, I have to untangle the connections. Otherwise, I come away empty-handed. Or with someone else's hands. Or even a missing hand.

Leaving the grounds of Meiji Shrine, I went into a back-street cafe in Harajuku and had a good strong cup of coffee. Then I walked leisurely home.

In the evening Gotanda rang.

"Sorry, I don't have much time now," he spoke on the fly. "Can I see you tonight around eight or nine?"

"Don't see why not."

"Good, let's have dinner. I'll come pick you up."

While I waited, I put away my suitcase, then went over the receipts from the trip, methodically separating Makimura's charges from my own. Half the meals and the car rental go to him, along with Yuki's personal purchases — surfboard, blaster, swimsuit, ?I itemized our expenses and slipped the calculations into an envelope together with the leftover travelers cheques, ready to be cashed at the bank and returned to Makimura. I always keep on top of these business details. But not because I like them. I just hate sloppiness in money matters.

After finishing with the accounting, I mixed up some baby whitefish with boiled spinach to go with a bottle of Kirin black label. Then I reread a Haruo Sato short story from years ago. It was a lovely uneventful spring evening. The sky grew darker, painted blue on blue, one stroke at a time, into deeper and deeper shades of night. When I tired of reading, I put on the Stern-Rose-Istomin Trio playing Schubert's Opus 100, a piece I always reserve for spring. It breathed with the lush sadness of the night. Where off in the depths of gloom drifted six white skeletons. Life was sinking into an abyss, bones hard as memories positioned before me.

32
Gotanda swung by at eight-forty. He was wearing a perfectly ordinary gray V-neck sweater over a perfectly ordinary blue button-down shirt with — you got it — perfectly ordinary cotton slacks. And still he looked striking. Extraordinarily so.

He was curious about my digs, so I invited him in.

"Nice," he said with a shy smile. Such a sweet smile, it made you feel like offering to let him stay for a week.

"Takes me back," he said, as if to himself. "Reminds me of the place I used to have — before I hit it big." From anyone else, the comment would have been an unbearable snub, but from him it was a compliment, straightforward and pure.

I offered Gotanda a big cushion and got out my fold-away low table from the closet. Then I brought us black beer with my spinach-and-whitefish concoction and put on the Schubert again.

"Fantastic!"

"Really? How about something else?"

"I'd love it, but I don't want you to have to go to the trouble."

"No trouble at all. I can whip something up quick and easy. Nothing too fancy, though."

"Can I watch?" "Sure," I said.

Scallions tossed with salt-plum. Wakame seaweed and shrimp vinaigrette. Wasabi preserves and grated daikon with sliced fish mousse. Slivered potatoes in olive oil and garlic with minced salami. Homemade cucumber pickles. Yesterday's hijiki seaweed plus tofu garnished with heaps of ginger.

"Amazing," sighed Gotanda. "You're a genius."

"Very kind of you to say so, but I assure you, it's real simple. Just throwing together stuff I have around."

"Sheer genius. I could never do it."

"Well, thank you, but I could never imitate a dentist."

"Aaa — ," he said, dismissing my return of compliment. "You know, would you mind if we didn't go out tonight? This stuff is great."

"Fine by me."

So we drank and ate. When the beer ran out, we switched to Cutty Sark. We listened to Sly and the Family Stone, the Doors and Stones, Pink Floyd. We listened to the Beach Boys' Surf's Up. It was a sixties kind of night. The Loving Spoonful, Three Dog Night. Any self-respecting alien transponding in from Sirius would have thought himself caught in a time warp.

No alien showed, but from ten o'clock it did start to rain. Softly, quietly, barely audible on the eaves. Almost silent as the dead.

As the night wore on, we stopped putting on music. My apartment didn't have the thick walls of Gotanda's condominium, and loud noise after eleven asked for complaints. With the music off, the whisper of the rain underscored the tone of our conversation. The police hadn't made much headway on Mei's case, I lamented. No, they haven't, Gotanda sighed. He'd been checking the newspapers and magazines too.

I opened a second bottle of Cutty Sark, and for the first round we toasted Mei.

"The cops have narrowed their investigations down to prostitution rings," I went on, "so they must have gotten a hold somewhere. I'm worried that'll lead them to you."

"There's a chance," said Gotanda, knitting his eyebrows slightly. "But it's probably okay. I was a little nervous, so I asked the folks at my agency about it. Whether that club's as tight-lipped as they claim. And you know what? Seems the club has a lot of political connections, some pretty big names apparently. So even if the club did spill to the police, they wouldn't be able to go sniffing too far. They couldn't lay a hand on anybody. And for that matter, my agency has a bit of clout too. Some of the bigger stars have very close friends in high places. Sometimes in not-so-nice places. So either way, the cops don't have a lot of room to maneuver. And because I'm a money tree for the agency, they don't want anything to happen to me. I'm a major investment. They don't want to see my value plummet. True, if you'd mentioned my name to the cops, my ass would've been hauled in for sure. All the political connections in Ginza couldn't have kept that from happening. But no fear of that now. The rest is a power play, one system against another."

"It's a dirty world," I said.

"Isn't it, though," said Gotanda. "Dirty to the core."

"Two votes, dirty."

"Say what?"

"Two votes for dirty, motion adopted."

He nodded, then smiled sadly. "Two votes for dirty. No one can be bothered to think about a murder victim. Everyone's busy looking out for Number One," he said. "Myself included."

I went into the kitchen to replenish the ice, bringing out crackers and cheese.

"I want to ask you a favor," I said, sitting down. "Could you call up the organization and ask them something for me?"

He pinched his earlobe. "What do you want to know? Anything to do with this case is out of the question. They'd never crack."

"Completely unrelated. I want to know about a call girl I met in Honolulu. I've heard a girl overseas could be arranged through the club."

"Who told you that?"

"Someone with no name. I'm willing to bet that the organization this guy was talking about is the same club we're talking about. Because you got to be rich and famous to join. Neither of which I begin to approach, or so I was told."

Gotanda smiled. "Yeah, I think I may have heard about a service like that. One phone call does the trick. I haven't had the pleasure, but it's probably the same setup. So, what about that hooker in Honolulu?"

"I just want to know if the club has a Southeast Asian woman named June working for them."

Gotanda thought about this, but didn't ask anything more. He jotted down the name in his datebook.

"June what?"

"Gimme a break. She's a call girl," I said. "It's just June."

"Got it. I'll ring the place up tomorrow."

"Thanks. I owe you," I said.

"Forget it. After what you've done for me, this is a pittance." He winked and gave me a thumbs-up. "You go to Hawaii alone, by the way?"

"Who goes to Hawaii alone? I went with a girl. She's only thirteen, though."

"You slept with a thirteen-year-old girl?"

"What do you think I am? The kid doesn't even wear a bra yet."

"Then why'd you go with her?"

"To teach her table manners, interpret the mysteries of the sex drive, bad-mouth Boy George, go see E.T. You know, the usual."

Gotanda gave me a long look. Then he skewed his lips into a smile. "You really are a little odd, you know?"

Now everyone seemed to think so. Motion passed by unanimous vote.

Gotanda drank some whiskey and nibbled on a cracker. "I saw my ex-wife a couple of times while you were away," he said. "We're getting along pretty well. Strange to say, but sleeping with your ex-wife can be fun." "I guess."

"Why don't you try seeing your ex-wife?" "No way. She's about to get married. Didn't I tell you?" He shook his head. "Didn't know. Well, too bad." "No, it's better this way," I said and I meant it. "But what about your ex?"

He shook his head again. "It's hopeless. No other way to put it. Hopeless. A dead end. You know, we make better love than we ever have. We don't have to say a word. We understand each other. It's better than when we were married. We love each other, if you want to know. But it can't go on forever like this, meeting in love hotels. I wish we didn't have to hide, but if her family finds out, they'll make my life miserable. As if they haven't already. If it's between me or them, she'll pick them every time. I lose whichever way I turn?God, the things I would give for a normal life with her." Gotanda swirled the ice in his glass, around and around. "Funny isn't it? I can get almost anything I want. Except the one thing I want the most."

"That's how it is," I said. "But I never could get everything I wanted, so I can't really talk."

"No, you've got it wrong," said Gotanda. "You never wanted things to begin with. For instance, would you ever want a Maserati or a condo in Azabu?"

"Well, if somebody forced them on me, ?But I guess I can live without them. My little apartment and my trusty Subaru satisfy me all right. Well, maybe satisfy is an overstatement. But they suit me all right, they're easy to manage, they're not dissatisfying anyway. But who knows? Maybe there'll come a time when I need those things."

"No, you're wrong again. That's not what need is. This stuff isn't natural. It's manufactured. Take that place where I live. A roof over your head is the point, not what fancy part of town it's in. But the idiots at the agency say — Itabashi or Kameido or Nakano Toritsukasei? No status. You big star, you live Azabu. The next thing I know, they've stuck me in that ridiculous condo. What bullshit! What the hell is so great about Azabu? A bunch of rip-off restaurants run by fashion designers and that eyesore called Tokyo Tower and all those crazed women wandering around all night. The same thing with the goddamn Maserati. Who the hell drives a Maserati in Tokyo? It's such bullshit! Subaru or Bluebird or Corona? Nope. Big star no get caught dead in anything but Maserati. The only saving grace of that car is that it's not new; they got it off some enka singer."

He poured some whiskey over melted ice, took a sip, frowned.

"That's my world. Azabu, European sports car, first-class. Stupid, meaningless, idiotic bullshit. How did all this ?this ?this total nonsense get started? Well, it's very, very simple. You just repeat the message and repeat the message and repeat the message. You pound that baby in. Until everybody believes it. Like a mantra. Azabu, BMW, Rolex, Azabu, BMW, Rolex, Azabu, BMW, Rolex, Azabu, ?/p>

"That's how you get those poor suckers who actually believe the bullshit. But if they believe that, they're exactly like everybody else. They're blind; they got zero imagination. I'm fed up with it. I'm fed up with this life they have me living. I'm their life-size dress-up doll. Sewed together with loans and mortgages. But who wants to hear this grief? After all, I live in a jet-stream condo in Azabu, I drive a Maserati, I have this Patek Philippe watch — a step up from Rolex, don't you know? And I can sleep with a high-class call girl anytime I feel like it. I'm the envy of the whole goddamn town. I want you to know I didn't ask for any of it. But the worst thing is — boy, this must be getting boring — as long as I keep living like this, I can't get what I really want."

"Like, for instance, love?" I said.

"Yeah, like, for instance, love. And tranquillity. And a healthy family. And a simple life," he ran down the list. Then he placed both hands together before his face. "Look at me, I had a world of possibilities, I had opportunities. But now I'm a puppet. I can get almost any woman I want. Yet the one woman I really want?

Gotanda was getting good and drunk. It didn't show on him, but he sure was letting it all hang out. Which I could appreciate, absolutely, this urge to drink himself silly. We'd been going for almost four hours like this. Gotanda asked if he should get out of here, but I told him I wasn't doing anything special, same as always.

"Sorry to force myself on you," he said. "I don't have anyone else to talk to, to tell you the truth. If I told someone that deep down I'm a Subaru man, they'd think I was stark raving mad, they'd cart me off to a shrink. Of course, it's in fashion, you know, going to a shrink. Amazing bullshit. A show-business shrink is like a vomit clean-up specialist." He closed his eyes. "Seems like I came here just to bitch." "You've said 'bullshit' at least twenty times." "Have I?"

"Go ahead, blow it off, if that's what you want." "No, enough of this. I'm sorry to make you listen to this garbage. It's just that I'm surrounded by all this steaming shit. Makes me want to puke." "Then go ahead and puke."

"Idiots all around me," Gotanda practically spat out the words. "Bloodsuckers, fat, ugly bloodsuckers, slopping their fat asses around, feeding off the hopes and dreams of decent people. I tell myself it'd be a waste of good energy strangling them."

"Yeah, using a baseball bat would be better. Strangling takes too long."

"You're right," said Gotanda. "But strangling makes the point clearer. Instant death is too good. Why waste kindness on them?"

"Ah, the voice of reason."

"Honestly — ," he went on, ignoring my irony, then broke off with a sigh and brought his hands together in front of his face again. "I feel so much better." "Well, now that we've settled that, how about some o-chazuke?"

"O-chazuke? You're kidding. I'd love some o-chazuke."

I boiled water for tea, tossed together some crumbled nori and salt-plum and wasabi horseradish, topped two bowls of rice with the mixture, and poured tea over each. O-chazuke. Yum.

"From where I sit, seems to me you don't have a bad life," Gotanda said.

I lay back against the wall and listened to the rain. "Some parts, sure. I'm not unhappy. But I'm like you. I feel like something's missing. I'm living a normal life, I suppose. I'm dancing. I know the steps, and I'm dancing. It's all right. But socially speaking, I've got nothing. I'm thirty-four, I'm not married, I don't have a regular job, I live from day to day. I can't get a public housing loan. I'm not sleeping with anybody. What am I going to be like in thirty years?"

"You'll get by."

"Or else I won't," I said. "Who knows? Same as everyone."

"But with my life, I don't even have parts I enjoy."

"Maybe not, but you look like you're doing pretty well for yourself."

Gotanda shook his head. "Do people who're doing pretty well for themselves pour out such endless streams of grief? Do they come bother you and slosh all over you?"

"Sometimes they do," I said. "We're talking about people, not common denominators."

At one-thirty, Gotanda announced he was leaving.

"You can stay if you like. I've got an extra futon. I'll even make you breakfast," I said.

"No, really, but thanks for the offer. I'm sober now, so I might as well go home," he said. "But I've got a favor to ask first. I'm afraid you're going to think it's a little strange."

"Fire away." "Would you be willing to let me borrow the Subaru for a bit? I'll trade you the Maserati for it. The Maserati is so flashy, I can't go anywhere in peace, especially when I'm trying to see my ex-wife."

"Borrow the Subaru for as long as you like," I said. "But to be honest, I don't know about taking on the Maserati. I keep my heap in a parking lot, so it could easily get banged up at night. And if I dent it or something, I'll never be able to pay for it."

"Don't worry about it. I don't. If anything happens, the agency will take care of it. That baby's insured up the tail pipe. Drive the thing into the sea if you feel like. Honest. They'll only buy me a Ferrari next. There's a porno writer who's got one he wants to sell." "A Ferrari?" I said limply.

"I know what you're thinking," he laughed. "But you can just shelve it. It's hard for you to understand, but in this debauched world of mine, you can't survive with good taste. Because a person with good taste is a twisted, poor person, a sap without money. You get sympathy, but no one thinks better of you."

So Gotanda drove off in my Subaru, and I pulled his Maserati into the lot. A superaggressive machine. All response and power. The slightest pressure on the accelerator and it practically left the ground.

"Easy baby, you don't have to try so hard," I said with an affectionate pat on the dashboard. But the Maserati wasn't listening to the likes of me. Cars know their class too.

33
The following morning, I went to check on the Maserati. It was still there, untouched. A curious picture, seeing it parked where the Subaru usually was. I climbed inside and sank into the seat, but just couldn't get comfortable. Like waking up and finding a beautiful woman you don't know sleeping next to you. She might be great to look at, but having her there doesn't feel right. Makes you a little tense. You need time to get used to things.

In the end, I left the car alone that day. Instead, I walked, saw a movie, bought some books.

Toward evening Gotanda rang. Thanks for yesterday. Don't mention it.

"About the Honolulu connection," he said. "I made a call to the club. And, well, yes, it is possible to reserve a woman in Hawaii from here. Modern conveniences, you know."

"Uh-huh."

"I also asked about this June of yours. I mentioned someone recommending this Southeast Asian girl to me. They went and checked their files. They made a big deal about their information being confidential, but seeing as how I was such a favored customer, blah blah blah. Not something to be so proud of, let me tell you. Anyway, they did have a list- ing for a June in Honolulu. A Filipino girl. But she quit three months ago."

"Three months ago?"

"That's what they said."

I thanked him and hung up. This was going to take some hard figuring.

I went out walking again.

June quit three months ago, but I slept with her not two weeks before. She gave me her telephone number, but when I called it, nobody answered. This made my third call girl — first Kiki, then Mei, now June — who'd disappeared. All of them somehow connected to Gotanda and Makimura and me.

I stepped into a coffee shop and drew a diagram in my notebook of these personal relations of mine. It looked like a chart of the European powers before the start of World War I.

I pored over the diagram, half in admiration, half in despair. Three call girls, one too-charming-for-his-own-good actor, three artists, one budding teenage girl, and a very uptight hotel receptionist. If this was anything more than a network of casual relationships, I sure didn't see it. But it might make a good Agatha Christie novel. By George, that's it! The Secretary did it! Only who was laughing?

And who was I kidding? I didn't have a clue. The ball of yarn tangled wherever you tried to unravel it. First there were the Kiki and Mei and Gotanda threads. Add Makimura and June. Then Kiki and June were somehow connected by the same phone number. And around and around you go.

"Hard nut to crack, eh, Watson?" I addressed the ashtray before me. The ashtray, of course, did not respond. Smart ashtray. Same went for the coffee cup and sugar bowl and the bill. They all pretended not to hear. Stupid me. I was the one running amok in these weird goings-on. I was the worn-out one. Such a wonderful spring night, and no prospect for a date.

I went home and tried calling Yumiyoshi. No luck. The early shift? Or her swim club night? I wanted to see her badly. I missed her nervous patter, her brisk movements. The way she pushed her glasses up on her nose, her serious expression when she stole into the room. I liked how she took off her blazer before sitting down beside me. I felt warm just thinking about her. I felt drawn to her. But would we ever get things straight between us?

Working behind the front desk of a hotel, going to her swim club — that gave her satisfaction. While I found pleasure in my Subaru and my old records and eating well as I went on shoveling. That's the two of us. It might work and then again it might not. INSUFFICIENT DATA, PROGNOSIS IMPOSSIBLE. Or would I wind up hurting her too, as I did every woman I ever got involved with? Like my ex-wife said.

The more I thought about Yumiyoshi, the more I felt like flying up to Sapporo to fill in the missing data. At least I could tell her how I felt. But, no, first I had to untie some critical knots. Things were half-done. I didn't want to keep dragging them around with me. A half-gray shadow would cloud my path for the rest of my days. Not entirely ideal.

The problem was Kiki. I couldn't get over the feeling that she was at the heart of it. She was trying to reach me. In my dreams, in a movie in Sapporo, in downtown Honolulu. She kept crossing my path, trying to lead me somewhere, leave me a message. That much was clear. But nothing else. Kiki, what did you want from me?

What was I supposed to do?

I could only wait, until something showed. Same as ever. There was no point in rushing. Something was bound to happen. Something was bound to show. You had merely to wait for it to stir, up from the haze. Call it a lesson from experience.

Very well, then, I would wait.

I got together with Gotanda every few days after that. After a while, it became a habit. And each time we met, he'd apologize for keeping the Subaru so long.

"Haven't plowed the Maserati into the sea yet, have you?" he joked.

"Sorry to say, but I haven't had time to go to the sea," I parried.

Gotanda and I sat at a bar drinking vodka tonics. His pace a little faster than mine.

"I bet it would feel great, though. Plowing it into the sea," he said, raising his glass to his lips.

"Like a cool breeze," I said. "But then you'd only get yourself a Ferrari."

"I'd ditch that too."

"And after the Ferrari?"

"Hmm, who knows? But sooner or later, the insurance company's going to want a word with me."

"Insurance company? Who gives a damn about your insurance company? You got to think big. Go for the grand sweep. This is fantasy, not one of your low-budget movies. Fantasies don't have budgets, so why be middle class about it? Go wild! Lamborghini, Porsche, Jaguar! The sky's the limit! And the ocean's big enough to swallow cars by the thousands. Let your imagination do its stuff, man." He laughed. "Well, it certainly lightens me up."

"Me too, especially since it's not my car and not my imagination," I said, then asked how things were going with his ex-wife.

He took a sip of his drink and looked out at the rain. The bar had emptied out except for us. The bartender had nothing to do but dust the bottles.

"Things're going okay," he said meekly, under a whisper of a smile. "We're in love. A love affirmed and consummated by divorce. Romantic, isn't it?"

"Isn't it, though. I might faint."

He chuckled.

"But it's true," he said.

"I know," I said.

That was the general drift of conversation each time I saw Gotanda. What we talked about was too serious to treat anything but lightly. Most of the jokes weren't terribly good, but it didn't matter. It was enough that we could joke, that there were jokes between us. We ourselves didn't know how serious we were.

Thirty-four is a difficult age. A different kind of difficult than age thirteen, but plenty difficult. Gotanda and I were both thirty-four, both beginning to acknowledge middle age. It was time we did. Readying things to keep us warm during the colder days ahead.

Gotanda put it succinctly. "Love. That's what I need."

"I'm so touched," I said. But the fact was, that's what I needed too.

Gotanda paused to consider what he'd said. I thought about it as well. I also thought about Yumiyoshi. How she drank all those Bloody Marys that snowy night.

"I've slept with so many women, I can't count them. You sleep with one, you've slept with them all. Hell, you go through the same motions," said Gotanda after a while. "Love's what I want. Here I am, baring my sentimental soul to you again. But I swear, the only woman I want to sleep with is my ex-wife."

I snapped my fingers. "Incredible. The Word from Above. O Light Resplendent. You've got to hold a press conference. Make your I-only-want-to-sleep-with-my-wife proclamation. Everyone will be moved beyond tears. You might even receive a citation from the Prime Minister."

"No, this is Nobel Prize material. Not something the common man can do."

"You'll need a frock coat for the ceremony."

"I'll buy it. Put it on my expense account."

"Sanctus tax deductum."

"I'll be on stage with the King of Sweden," Gotanda went on. "I'll declare it for all the world to hear. Ladies and gentlemen, the only woman I want to sleep with is my wife! Waves of emotion. Storm clouds part; sun breaks through."

"The ice cap melts, the Vikings are vanquished, the mermaids sing."

Ah, love. We both lapsed silent, meditating on its grandeur. I had a lot to think about. I had to make sure I picked up some vodka and tomato juice and Lea & Perrins and lemons.

"Or then again, maybe you won't receive an award," I piped up. "Maybe they'll just take you for a pervert."

Gotanda considered that. "Maybe. We're talking neo-sexual revolution here. The masses might rise up and trample me to death," he said. "I'd be a sexual martyr."

"The first actor martyred to the neo-sexual revolution.'

"Martyred and never to sleep with his ex-wife again."

Time for another drink.

If he had a spare moment, Gotanda would call and we'd go out or he'd come over to my place or I'd go over to his. The days passed. I'd resolved not to work at all. I couldn't be bothered. The world was doing very well without me. Meanwhile I was waiting. I mailed Hiraku Makimura the balance of his money and receipts from the trip.

The next day I got a call from Boy Friday, begging me to take it all.

It was too much trouble to go through the whole back-and-forth bow-and-scrape routine, so I gave in. If it made the Master happy, who was I to argue? And before you could say "money in the bank," Makimura had sent me a check for three hundred thousand yen. Also in the envelope was a receipt marked FOR SERVICES RENDERED — FIELD RESEARCH. I signed it, stamped it with my seal, and posted it. Back to the wonderful world of expense accounts.

I placed the check for three hundred thousand yen on my desk to appreciate 83/4% dust.

The Golden Week holidays came and went.

I called Yumiyoshi a number of times. She was always the one who determined the length of the conversation. Sometimes we talked for a long time, other times she'd simply say, "Busy, got to go now," and hang up. Or if a silence hung on the line too long, she'd cut me off without warning. But at least we talked. Exchanged data, a little at a time. And one day, she gave me her home phone number. Progress.

She went to her swim club twice a week. Which I found, to my dismay, still brought on moments of jealousy. Handsome instructors and all. I was as bad as a high school boy and I knew it. And what was worse, I was afraid she knew it. Jealous of a swim club? That's ridiculous. You're so immature. I was afraid she'd never want to see me again.

So whenever the subject came up, I held my tongue. Though not talking about it only inflated my paranoia. Visions of the instructor — Gotanda, of course — keeping Yumiyoshi after class for intensive one-on-one sessions. His hands supporting her chest and abdomen as she practiced the crawl. His hands caressing her breasts, easing between her thighs. But it's all right, he says. It's all right. Don't you know? The only woman I want to sleep with is my wife.

Then he takes Yumiyoshi's hand and puts it on his crotch. She begins to massage it. An underwater erection, like coral. Yumiyoshi is in rapture.

It's all right. Don't you know? The only woman I want to sleep with is my wife.

Idiotic, yet that's what came to mind whenever I called Yumiyoshi. As time went on, the vision got more and more complex, with a whole cast of characters. Kiki and Mei and Yuki put in guest appearances. As Gotanda's fingers stroked her body, Yumiyoshi became Kiki.

"Listen, I'm just a plain, run-of-the-mill person," Yumiyoshi said one night. She seemed particularly drained after a long day's drudgery. "The only difference between me and anyone else is my name. Otherwise I'm the same. I'm just working behind the counter of a hotel day after day, pointlessly wearing down my life. Don't call me any more. I'm not worth the phone charges."

"But I thought you liked hotel work." "I do." "But?"

"The work is fine. But sometimes, I think the hotel's going to eat me up. Just sometimes. I ask myself, if I'm here or not, what's the difference? The hotel would still be there. But not me. I'm out of the picture. That's the difference."

"Aren't you taking this hotel business a little too seriously?" I asked. "The hotel's the hotel, you're you. I think about you a lot, and sometimes I think about the hotel. But never together. You're you, the hotel's the hotel."

"You think I don't know that? I know that, but people get confused. My private life and my identity get dragged into this hotel world, and then they get swallowed up."

"It happens to everyone. You get dragged into something and you lose track of where one thing ends and the other begins. You're not the only one. It happens to me too," said.

"It's not the same thing, not at all," she declared.

"No, maybe not. But I can still sympathize, can't I? Because, I mean, there's something about you that's very attractive."

Yumiyoshi went silent, out there in the telephone void.

"I ?I'm frightened," said Yumiyoshi, verging into sobs. "I'm frightened of that darkness. I'm frightened that it's going to come again, soon."

"Hey, what's going on with you? Are you all right?"

"Of course I'm all right. What did you think?" She was clearly sobbing now. "So I'm crying. Anything wrong with that?"

"No, nothing at all. I was merely concerned."

"Can't you just be quiet?"

I did as told and Yumiyoshi cried until she couldn't cry anymore, then she hung up on me.

On May seventh, Yuki called.

"I'm back," she announced. "Why don't we go out for a ride?"

I tooled the Maserati to the Akasaka condo. But when Yuki saw the car, she wrinkled up her face unpleasantly.

"What's with this?"

"I didn't steal it, don't worry. My car fell into an enchanted spring and what do you know? The fairy of the spring appeared looking like Isabelle Adjani and asked, 'Was that a gold Maserati or a silver BMW just now?' And I said, 'Neither, that was a copper Subaru,' and — "

"C'mon, bag the stupid jokes," said Yuki. "I'm asking a serious question. Where the heck did you get this thing?"

"I traded temporarily with a friend. He needed to borrow the Subaru, for personal reasons."

"A friend?"

"You may not believe it, but yes, I do have at least one friend." She climbed into the passenger seat, took a look around inside, then made a funny face. "Weird car," she said.

Dopey."

"Now that you mention it, the owner said the same thing. Although his words were slightly different."

That shut her up.

I pointed the Maserati south, toward Shonan. Yuki wouldn't speak. I played a Steely Dan tape on low and drove with care. The weather was clear and warm, so I was wearing an aloha shirt and sunglasses, and Yuki had on a pink Polo shirt. It was like being in Hawaii again. In front was a livestock truck full of pigs, their red eyes peering through the slats at us. Could pigs distinguish between a Maserati and a

Subaru?

"How was it in Hawaii after I left?" I finally asked.

Yuki shrugged.

"Things go all right with your mother?"

Another shrug.

"Get your surfing down?"

Still another shrug.

"You look real healthy. Perfectly tanned. Like cafe au lait, all smooth and delicious."

Shrug.

You couldn't say I wasn't trying. I was trying everything.

"Is it your period or something?"

The same.

So I shrugged back.

"I want to go home," Yuki said. "Hang a U."

"This is an expressway. Even Niki Lauda couldn't manage a U-turn here."

"Then exit someplace."

I turned to her. She looked exhausted suddenly, her eyes lifeless and unfocused. Perhaps a bit pale too; it was hard to tell through the tan.

"Want to stop and take a rest?"

"I don't want a rest stop. I want to go back to Tokyo.

Now!" We got off at the expressway at Yokohama, then headed back on going in the opposite direction. When we reached Akasaka, Yuki asked if we could go sit somewhere. So I parked the Maserati in the lot, and we walked to the grounds of Nogi Shrine and found a bench.

"I'm sorry," said Yuki, trying to be reasonable. "I felt sick. I didn't want to say anything, so I held it in."

"You don't have to hold it in. I know how girls get. I'm used to it."

"It's not like that!" she shouted. "That has nothing to do with it! What got to me was riding in that car. That stupid car!"

"What's wrong with the Maserati? It's not such a bad car. It handles real well, rides pretty nice too. True, a bit too flashy for my simple tastes. Even if I could afford it, I guess I'd never buy a car like that."

"I don't care what brand that car is. The problem's that car. Couldn't you feel it? It was icky. I was suffocating. I could feel a pressure in my chest, and in my stomach too. You didn't feel it?"

"No," I said. "Although I got to admit, I don't feel one hundred percent comfortable in it. I thought it was because I was used to the Subaru. You know, you like what you're used to, but that's not this pressure you're talking about."

She shook her head. "No, it's not that at all. This is something real peculiar."

"Is this more of your ??" I cut myself short. I didn't want to say anything that sounded condescending.

"Yeah, it's more of that. I felt something."

"Well, what was it? What did you sense in that car?"

Yuki shrugged yet again, but this time she was talking. "It'd be easy if I could explain, but I can't. I can't picture it. There's just this feeling — a heavy, dark, awful lump of pressure in me. And it's totally ? Yuki searched for the word, hands on her lap. "It's wrong! I don't know what's wrong. But something's wrong. I couldn't breathe in there. I tried to ignore it, I thought maybe it was jet lag or something, but then it got worse and worse. I don't want to ride in that car ever again, you hear me? Get your Subaru back."

"The Curse of the Maserati," I intoned.

"This is no joke. You shouldn't be driving that car," she said, very seriously.

"Okay, okay," I gave in with a smile. "I know you're not kidding. I'll try not to drive the Maserati too much. Or maybe I should go sink the thing in the sea?"

"If possible," said a grave Yuki.

It took Yuki about an hour to recover from this shock to her system. We sat on the bench, and she rested her chin on her hands and kept her eyes shut. People passed through the grounds. Old folks, mothers with children, foreign tourists with cameras strung around their necks. Occasionally, a salesman-type or salaryman would stop and take a breather on a bench near us. Dark suit, plastic briefcase, glassy stare. Ten minutes later, he'd be off beating the pavement again. By most standards, a normal adult should be working at this hour, and a normal kid should be in school.

"What about your mother?" I asked. "Did she come back with you?"

"Mmm." That was Yuki saying yes. "She's up in Hakone with that one-armed guy. Sorting out her photos of Kathmandu and Hawaii."

"And you didn't want to stay in Hakone?"

"I didn't feel like it. There's nothing for me to do there."

"Just thought I'd ask," I said. "Tell me, what exactly is there for you to do on your own in Tokyo?"

One of her patented shrugs. Then, "I can hang out with you."

"Well, I couldn't ask for more myself. However, trying to be realistic, pretty soon I ought to be getting back to work. I can't afford to keep running around with you forever. And I don't want handouts from your father either."

Yuki sneered. "I can understand your not wanting to take handouts from my parents, but why do you have to make such a big deal about it? How do you think it makes me feel, dragging you all around the place like this?"

"So you want me to take the money?"

"If you did, I wouldn't feel so guilty."

"You don't get it, Yuki," I said. "I don't want money for being your friend. I don't want to be introduced at your wedding reception as 'the professional male companion of the bride since she was thirteen.' Everyone would be tittering, 'professional male companion, professional male companion.' I want to be introduced as 'the boyfriend of the bride when she was thirteen.'"

Yuki blushed. "You turkey. I'm not going to have a wedding reception."

"Great. I don't like weddings. All those absurd speeches and the bricks of wedding cake you're supposed to take home. Strains the boundaries of propriety. But all I want to say is, you don't buy friends. Especially not with expense account money."

"That makes a good moral for a fairy tale."

"Wow! You're finally getting the proper gift of gab. With practice we could be a couple of stand-up comics."

Shrug.

"But seriously, folks, ? I cleared my throat. "If you want to hang out with me every day, Yuki, I'm all for it. Who needs to work? It's just pointless shoveling anyway. But we have to have one thing clear: I'm not going to accept money for doing things with you. Hawaii was different. I took money for that. I even took the woman thrown in. Of course, I thought you weren't ever going to talk to me again. I hated myself for allowing the whole business about payment for services to happen at all. From now on, I'm doing things my way. I don't want to answer to anybody, and I don't want to be on somebody's dole. I'm not Dick North and I'm not your father's manservant, whatever his name is. You don't need to feel guilty."

"You mean you'll really go out with me?" Yuki chirped, then looked down at her polished toenails.

"You bet. You and me, we could be this pair of outcasts. We could be quite an item. So, let's just relax and have a good time."

"Why are you being so kind?"

"I'm not."

Yuki traced a design in the dirt with the tip of her sandal. A squared spiral.

"And I'm not a burden on you?"

"Maybe you are and maybe you aren't. Don't worry your pretty little head about it. I want to be with you because I like you. Sometimes when I'm with you, I remember things I lost when I was your age. Like I remember the sound of the rain and the smell of the wind. And it's really a gift, getting these things back. Even if you think I'm weird. Maybe you'll understand what I mean some day."

"I already know what you mean."

"You do?"

"I mean, I've lost plenty of things this far in my life too," said Yuki.

"Well, then, there you are," I said.

She said nothing. I returned to looking at the visitors to the shrine grounds.

"I don't have anybody I can really talk to but you," Yuki spoke up. "Honest."

"What about Dick North?"

Yuki stuck out her tongue. "He's a goon."

"Maybe he is and maybe he isn't. But I think you should know, he does good, and he's not pushy about it. That's pretty rare. He may not be up to your mother's level, and he may not be a brilliant poet. But he genuinely cares for your mother. He probably loves her. He's a good cook, he's dependable, he's considerate."

"He's still a goon."

Okay, okay. Yuki obviously had her feelings on the mat- ter. So I changed the subject. We talked about the good times we had in Hawaii. Sun and surf and tropical breezes and pina coladas. Yuki said this made her hungry, so we went to eat pancakes and fruit parfaits. Then we took in a movie.

The following week, Dick North died.

34
Dick North had been doing the shopping on a Monday evening in Hakone and had just stepped out from the supermarket with a bag of groceries under his arm when a truck came barreling down the road and slammed into him. The truck driver confessed that he didn't know what possessed him to gun full-speed ahead in such poor road visibility. And Dick himself had made a telling slip. He'd looked to his left, but was one or two breaths behind in checking his right. A common mistake among people who have lived overseas for any length of time and have just returned to Japan. You haven't gotten used to cars driving on the left-hand side yet. In most cases, you come away with chills, but sometimes it's worse. The truck sent Dick sailing into the opposite lane, where he was battered again by an oncoming van. He died instantly.

When I heard the news, the first thing that came to mind was going shopping with Dick at a probably similar supermarket in Makaha. How knowledgeably he selected his purchases, how he examined the fruit and vegetables and unembarrassedly tossed a box of Tampax into the shopping cart. Poor bastard. Unlucky to the last. Arm blown off in Vietnam when the guy next to him stepped on a mine. Running around morning to night putting out Ame's smoldering cigarettes. Now dead on the asphalt holding onto a load of groceries.

His funeral saw him returned to his rightful family, his wife and child. Neither Ame nor Yuki nor I attended.

I borrowed the Subaru back from Gotanda and drove Yuki to Hakone that Tuesday afternoon. It was at Yuki's urging. "Mama can't get by on her own. Sure, there's the maid, but she's too old to do anything and she goes home at night. We can't leave Mama alone up there."

"Yeah, it's probably good for you to spend some time with your mother," I said.

Yuki was flipping through the road atlas. "Hey, you remember I said bad things about him?"

"Who? Dick North?"

"Yeah."

"You called him a goon," I said.

Yuki stowed the book in the door pocket, rested her elbow on the window, and turned her gaze to the scenery ahead. "But you know," she said, "he wasn't so bad. He was nice to me. He spent time telling me how to surf and all. Even without that arm, he was a lot more alive than most people with two arms. Plus, he took good care of Mama."

"I know."

"But I said nasty things about him."

"You couldn't help yourself," I said. "It's not your fault."

She looked straight ahead the whole way. She didn't turn to look at me. The breeze blowing in through the window ruffled her bangs.

"It's sad, but I think he was that sort of person," I said. "A nice guy, maybe even worthy of respect. But he got treated like some kind of fancy trash basket. People were always dumping on him. Maybe he was born with that tendency. Mediocrity's like a spot on a shirt — it never comes off."

"It's unfair." "As a rule, life is unfair," I said.

"Yeah, but I think I did say some awful things."

"To Dick?"

"Yeah."

I pulled the car over to the shoulder of the road and turned off the ignition.

"That's just stupid, that kind of thinking," I said, nailing her with my eyes. "Instead of regretting what you did, you could have treated him decently from the beginning. You could've tried to be fair. But you didn't. You don't even have the right to be sorry."

Yuki looked at me, shocked and hurt. "Maybe I'm being too hard on you. But listen, I don't care what other people do. I don't want to hear that sort of talk from you. You shouldn't say things like that lightly, as if saying them is going to solve anything. They don't stick. You think you feel sorry about Dick, but I don't believe you really do. If I were Dick, I wouldn't want your easy regret. I wouldn't want people saying, 'Oh, I acted horribly.' It's not a question of manners; it's a question of fairness. That's something you have to learn."

Yuki couldn't respond. She pressed her fingers to her temples and quietly closed her eyes. She almost seemed to have dozed off, but for the slight flutter of her eyelashes, the trembling of her lips. Crying inside, without sobs or tears. Was I expecting too much of a thirteen-year-old girl? Who was I to be so self-righteous? Still, whether or not she was thirteen, whether or not I was an exemplary human being, you can't let everything slide. Stupidity is stupidity. I won't put up with it.

Yuki didn't move. I reached out and touched her arm.

"It's okay," I said. "I'm very narrow-minded. No, to be fair, you've done the best that can be expected."

A single tear trailed down her cheek and fell on her lap. That was all. Beautiful and noble.

"So what can I do now?" she spoke up a minute later.

"Nothing," I said. "Just think about what comes before words. You owe that to the dead. As time goes on, you'll understand. What lasts, lasts; what doesn't, doesn't. Time solves most things. And what time can't solve, you have to solve yourself. Is that too much to ask?"

"A little," she said, trying to smile.

"Well, of course it is," I said, trying to smile too. "I doubt that this makes sense to most people. But I think I'm right. People die all the time. Life is a lot more fragile than we think. So you should treat others in a way that leaves no regrets. Fairly, and if possible, sincerely. It's too easy not to make the effort, then weep and wring your hands after the person dies. Personally, I don't buy it."

Yuki leaned against the car door.

"But that's real hard, isn't it?" she said.

"Real hard," I said. "But it's worth trying for. Look at Boy George: Even a fat gay kid who can't sing can become a star."

"Okay," she smiled, "but why are you always getting on Boy George's case? I bet you must really like him, deep down."

"Let me think about that one," I said.

Yuki's mother's house was in a large resort-housing tract. There was a big gate, with a pool and a coffee house adjacent. There was even a stop-and-shop minimart filled with junk food. No place someone like Dick North would have bought groceries at. Me either. As the road twisted and turned up the grade, my friendly Subaru began to gasp.

Halfway up the hill was Ame's house, too big for just a mother and daughter. I stopped the car and carried Yuki's bags up the steps to the side of the stone embankment. Down the slope, between the ranks of cedars, you could make out the ocean by Odawara. The air was hazy, the sea dull under the leaden glaze of spring.

Ame paced the large, sunny living room, lit cigarette in hand. A big crystal ashtray was overflowing with bent and crushed Salem butts, the entire tabletop dusted with ashes. She tossed her latest butt into the ashtray and came over to greet Yuki, mussing her hair. She wore a chemical-spotted oversized sweatshirt and faded jeans. Her hair was uncombed, eyes bleary.

"It's been terrible," said Ame. "Why do these horrible things always happen?"

I expressed my condolences and inquired about the details of yesterday's accident. It was all so sudden, she told me, she felt out of control, confused, uncertain. "And of course the maid came down with a fever today and won't be in. Now of all times, a fever! I'm going crazy. The police come, Dick's wife calls, I don't know what they expect of me." "What did Dick's wife have to say?" "I couldn't make it out," she said. "She just cried. And when she wasn't crying, she mumbled so I could barely understand what she was saying. And me, in this position, what was I supposed to say??What was I supposed to say?" I shook my head.

"I told her I'd send along Dick's things as soon as I could, but then the woman was crying even more. It was hopeless." She let out a big sigh and collapsed into the sofa. I asked her if she wanted anything to drink, and she asked for coffee. For good measure, I also cleared away the ashtray and cocoa-caked mugs, and wiped off the table. While I waited for the water to boil, I tidied up the kitchen. Dick North had kept a neat pantry, but already it was a mess. Dirty dishes were piled in the sink, cocoa had been dribbled across the stainless steel cooktop, knives lay here and there smeared with cheese and who-knows-what, the lid of the sugar container was nowhere in sight.

Poor bastard, I thought as I made a strong pot of coffee. He tried so hard to bring order to this place. Now in the space of one day, it was gone. Just like that. People leave traces of themselves where they feel most comfortable, most worthwhile. With Dick, that place was the kitchen. But even that tenuous presence was on its way out. Poor bastard.

I carried in the coffee and found Ame and Yuki sitting on the sofa. Ame's head rested on her daughter's shoulder. She looked drugged and drained. Yuki seemed ill at ease. How odd they appeared together — so different from when they were apart — how doubly unapproachable.

Ame accepted the coffee with both hands and drank it slowly, preciously. The slightest glow came to her eyes.

"You want anything to drink?" I asked Yuki.

She shook her head with no expression whatsoever.

"Has everything been taken care of?" I asked Ame. "The business about the accident, legal matters, and all that?"

"Done. The actual procedure wasn't so difficult. It was a perfectly common accident. A policeman came to the house to tell me the news, and that was it. I told them to contact Dick's wife, and she handled everything. I mean, I had no legal or even professional relationship with Dick. Then the wife called here. She hardly said a word, she just cried. She didn't even scream, nothing."

A perfectly common accident.

Another three weeks and Ame wouldn't remember there ever was someone in her life named Dick North. Ame was the forgetful type, and, unfortunately, Dick was forgettable.

"Is there anything I can do to help?" I asked.

"Well, yes. Dick's belongings," she muttered. "I told you I was going to return them to her, didn't I?"

"Yes."

"Well, last night I put his things in order. His manuscripts and typewriter and books and clothes — they all fit in one suitcase. There wasn't that much stuff. Just one suitcase full. I hate to ask, but could you deliver it to his wife?"

"Sure. Where does the family live?"

"I don't know exactly. Somewhere in Gotokuji, I know. Could you find out for me?"

Yuki showed me the study where Dick's things were. Upstairs, a long, narrow garret at the end of the hall, what had originally been the maid's room. It was pleasant enough, and naturally Dick had kept everything in immaculate order. On the desk were arranged five precision-sharpened pencils and an eraser, an unqualified still life. A calendar on the wall had been annotated with meticulous handwriting.

Yuki leaned in the doorway and scanned the interior in silence. All you could hear were the birds outside. I recalled the cottage in Makaha. It had been just as quiet, and there had been birds too.

The tag on the suitcase, also in Dick's hand, had his name and address. I lugged it downstairs. With his books and papers, it was much heavier than it looked. The weight yet another reminder of the fate of Dick North.

"There's not much here to eat," said Ame. "Dick went out to do the shopping and then all this happened."

"Don't worry. I'll go to the store," I said.

I checked the contents of the refrigerator to see what she did have. Then I drove down to town, to the supermarket where Dick had spent the last moments of his life, and purchased four or five days' worth of provisions.

I put away the groceries, and Ame thanked me. I felt like I was merely finishing up the task that Dick had left undone.

The two women saw me off from atop the stone embankment. The same as in Makaha, only this time nobody was waving. That had been Dick's role. The two stood there, not moving, gazing down on me. An almost mythological scene, like an icon. I heaved the gray suitcase into the backseat and slid behind the wheel. Mother and daughter were still standing there when I turned the curve and headed out of their sight. The sun was starting to sink into an orange sea. How would they spend the night? I wondered.

That one-armed skeleton in the eerie gloom of the room in Honolulu, it was now clear, was Dick North. So, who could the other five be? Let's say my old friend, the Rat, for one. Dead several years now, in Hokkaido.

Then Mei, for another.

That left three. Three more.

What was Kiki doing there? Why did she want to show me these six deaths?

I made it down to Odawara and got on the Tokyo-Nagoya Expressway. Exiting at Sangenjaya, I navigated my way into the suburbs of Setagaya by map and found Dick North's house. An ordinary two-story suburban home, very small. The door and windows and mailbox and entry light — everything seemed to be in miniature. A mongrel on a chain patrolled the front door. There were lights on inside the house, the sound of voices. Dick's wake was in progress. At least he had somewhere to come home to.

I took the suitcase out of the car and hauled it to the front door. I rang the doorbell and a middle-aged man appeared. I explained that I'd brought Dick's things; my expression said I didn't know any more than that. The man looked at the name tag and grasped the situation immediately.

"Very much obliged," said the man, stiff but cordial.

And so, with no more resolve than before, I returned to my Shibuya apartment.

Three more, I thought.

In the scheme of things, what possible meaning was there to Dick North's death?

Alone in my room, I mulled it over a whiskey. It happened so suddenly, how could there have been meaning? All these blank spots in the puzzle and this piece didn't fit anywhere. Flip it over, turn it sideways, still no good. Did the piece belong somewhere else entirely?

Even if Dick's death had no meaning in itself, a major change of circumstances seemed inevitable. And not for the better either, my intuition told me. Dick North was a man of good intentions. In his own way, he had held things together. But now that he was gone, things were going to change, things were going to get harder.

For instance?

For instance, I didn't care for Yuki's blank expression whenever she was with Ame. Nor did I like Ame's dull, spaced-out stare when she was with Yuki. There was something bad there. I liked Yuki. She was a good kid. Smart, maybe a little stubborn at times, but sensitive underneath it all. And I had nothing against Ame, really. She was attractive, full of vision, defenseless. But put the two of them together and the combination was devastating.

There was an energy that mounted with the two females together.

Dick North had been the buffer after Makimura. But now that he was gone, I was the only one left to deal with them.

For instance —

I rang up Yumiyoshi a few times. She was as cool as ever, although I may have detected a hint of pleasure in her voice. Apparently I wasn't too much of a nuisance. She was working every day, going to her swim club twice a week, dating occasionally. The previous Sunday, she told me, a guy had taken her for a drive to a lake.

"He's just a friend. An old classmate, now working in Sapporo. That's all."

I didn't mind, I said. Drive or hike or like, I didn't need to know. What really got to me was her swim club.

"But anyway, I just wanted to tell you," said Yumiyoshi. "I hate to hide things."

"I don't mind," I repeated. "All I care about is that I get up to Sapporo to see you again. You can go out with anybody you like. That's got nothing to do with us. You've been in my thoughts. Like I said before, I feel a bond between us."

Once again, she asked me what I meant. And again, my heart was in my words, but the explanation made no sense. Typical me. A moderate silence ensued. A neutral-to-slightly-positive silence. True, silence is still silence, except when you think about it too much.

Gotanda looked tired whenever I saw him. He'd been squeezing trysts with his ex-wife into an already tight work schedule.

"All I know is, I can't keep this up forever," he said, sighing deeply. "I'm not cut out for this living on the fringes. I'm a homebody. That's why I'm so run-down. I'm overextended, burned out."

"You ought to go to Hawaii for a break," I said. "Just the two of you."

"Wouldn't I love to," he said, smiling weakly. "Maybe for five days, lying on the beach, doing nothing. Even three days would be terrific."

That evening I'd gone to his condo in Azabu, sat on his chic sofa with a drink in my hand, and watched a compilation tape of the antacid commercials he'd appeared in. The first time I'd ever seen them.

Four office building elevators without walls or doors are rising and falling at high speeds like pistons. Gotanda is in a dark suit, briefcase in hand, every inch the elite businessman. He's hopping back and forth from elevator to elevator, conferring with his boss in one, making a date with a pretty young secretary in another, picking up papers here, rushing to dispatch them there. Two elevators away a telephone is ringing. All this jumping back and forth between speeding elevators is no easy trick, but Gotanda isn't losing his cool mask. He looks more and more serious.

VOICE OVER

Everyday stress builds up in your stomach. Give the business to your busy-ness with a gentle remedy?/p>

I laughed. "That was fun." "I think so too," he said. "Idiotic but fun. All commercials are nonsense, but this one is well shot. It's a damn sight better than most of my feature films, I'm sorry to say. Ad people have no qualms about spending on details, and the sets and those special effects cost a lot. It's not a bad concept either."

"And it's practically autobiographical." "You said it," he laughed. "Boy, does my stomach get stressed out. But let me tell you, that stuff doesn't do a damn thing. They gave me a dozen packs to try, and it's a wonder how little it works."

"You really do move, though," I said, rewinding the tape by remote control to watch the commercial again. "You're a regular Buster Keaton. You might have found your calling."

A smile floated across Gotanda's lips. "I'd be interested. I like comedy. There's something to be said when a straight man like me can bring out the humor of a routine like that. You try to live straight in this crazy, crooked, mixed-up world — that's what's funny. You know what I mean?" "I do, I do," I said.

"You don't even have to do anything especially funny. You just act normal. That alone looks strange and funny. Acting like that interests me. That type of actor simply doesn't exist in Japan today. People always overact when it comes to comedy. What I want to do is the reverse. Not act." He took a sip of his drink and looked up at the ceiling. "But no one brings me roles like that. The only roles they ever, ever bring into my agency are doctors or teachers or lawyers. You've heard me go on about this before, and let me tell you, I'm bored, bored, bored, bored. I'd like to turn them down, but I'm in no position to reject anything, and my stomach takes a beating."

Gotanda's first antacid commercial had been so well received, he'd made a number of sequels. The pattern was always the same. If he wasn't jumping back and forth between trains and buses and planes with split-second timing, he was scaling a skyscraper with papers under his arms or tightrope-walking between offices. Through it all, Gotanda kept a perfect deadpan.

"At first the director told me to look tired. Like I was about to keel over from exhaustion. But I told him, no, that it'd come off better if I just played it straight. Of course, they're all idiots, they didn't go for it at all. But I didn't give in. I don't do these commercials for fun, but I was sure about the right way to do it. I insisted. So they shot it two ways and everyone liked mine much more. And then, of course, the commercial was a success, so the director took all the credit. He even won some kind of prize for it. Not that I care. What eats me is how they all act so big, as if they thought the whole thing up. The ones with no imagination are always the quickest to justify themselves."

Gotanda switched off the video and put on a Bill Evans record.

"All these idiots think they're so sharp, they got me dancing on their pinheads. Go here, go there. Do this, do that. Drive this car, go out with that woman. It's a bad movie of a bad life. How long can it last?"

"Maybe you ought to just toss it and start again from scratch. If anyone could do it, you could. Leave your agency, and take your time paying back what you owe."

"Don't think I haven't thought about it. If I was on my own, that's what I'd do. Go back to square one, and join some theater group. I wouldn't mind, believe me. But if I did, my ex-wife would drop me, just like that. She grew up under pressure — star-system pressure — and she needs people around her who feel that pressure too. If the atmosphere drops, she can't breathe. So if I want to be with her, I haven't got a choice," said Gotanda, with a smile of resignation. "Let's talk about something else. I could go on until morning and still not get anywhere."

And so he brought up Kiki.

It was because of Kiki that Gotanda and I had become friends, yet he'd hardly heard a word out of my mouth about her. Did I find it hard to talk about her? If so, he wouldn't insist.

No, I told him, not at all.

I told him that Kiki and I got together entirely by chance and that we were living together soon after that. She burrowed into my life so unobtrusively, I could hardly believe she hadn't always been there. "I didn't notice how extraordinary it was at the time. But when I thought it over later, the whole scenario seemed completely unreal. And when I put it into words, it sounds silly. Which is why I haven't told anyone about it."

I took a drink, swirling the ice in my glass.

"In those days, Kiki was working as an ear model, and I'd seen these photos of her ears and, well, I got obsessed, to put it mildly. Her ear was going to appear in this ad — I forget what for — and my job was to write the copy. I was given these three photos, these three enormous close-ups of her ears, close enough to see the baby fuzz, and I tacked them up on my wall. I started gazing at these ears, day in and day out. At first I was fishing for some kind of inspiration, some kind of catchphrase, but then the ears became a part of my life. Even after I finished the job, I kept the photos up. They were incredible — they were perfectly formed, bewitching. The dream image of an ear. You'd have to see the real thing, though. They were ?

"Yeah, you did mention something about her ears."

"I had this total fixation. So I made these calls and found out who she was and I finally got ahold of her and she agreed to see me. The first day we met, we were at a restaurant and she personally showed me her ears. Personally, I mean, not professionally, and they were even more amazing than in the photograph. They were exquisite! Fantastic! When she exposed her ears professionally — that is, when she modeled them — she blocked them, she said. So they were gorgeous but they were different from her ears when she showed them. And when she did, it was like the entire world underwent a transformation. I know that sounds ludicrous, but I don't know how else to put it."

Gotanda considered seriously what I'd said. "What do you mean by her 'blocking' her ears?"

"Severing her ears from her consciousness."

"Oh."

"She pulled the plug on her ears."

"Uh-huh."

"Sounds crazy, but it's true."

"Oh, I believe you. I'm honestly trying to understand. Really, no kidding."

I eased back into the sofa and looked at a painting on the wall.

"Her ears had special power. They were like some great whirlpool of fate sucking me in. And they could lead people to the right place."

Gotanda pondered my words again. "And," he said, "did Kiki lead you anywhere? To some 'right place'?"

I nodded, but didn't say more about it. Too long and involved to explain.

"Now," I said, "she's trying to lead me somewhere again. I can sense it, very strongly. For the last few months, I've had this nagging feeling. And little by little I've been reeling in the line. It's a very fine line. It got snagged a couple of times, but it's gotten me this far. It's brought me in contact with a lot of different people. You, for instance. You're one of the central figures in this drama. Still, I can't get a grip on what's going on. Two people I knew have died recently. One was Mei. The other was a one-armed poet. I don't know what's going on, but I know something is."

The ice in the bucket had all but melted, so Gotanda fetched a new batch from the kitchen to freshen both our drinks.

"So you see, I'm stuck too," I picked up again. "Just like you."

"No, there you're wrong. You and I are not alike," Gotanda said. "I'm in love with one woman. And it's a dead-end kind of love. But not you. Maybe you're confused and wandering in a maze, but compared with this emotional morass I've gotten myself dragged into, you're much, much better off. You're being guided somewhere. You've got hope. There's possibility of a way out. But not for me, not at all. That's the big difference between us."

Well, maybe, maybe so. "Whatever. I've been clinging to this line from Kiki. That's all I can do for now. She's been sending these signals, these messages. So I spend my time trying to stay tuned in."

"Do you think," Gotanda started cautiously, "that there's a possibility Kiki's been killed?" "Like Mei?"

"Uh-huh. I mean, she disappeared so suddenly. When I heard Mei was murdered, right away I thought about Kiki. Like maybe the same thing happened to her. I didn't want to say it before."

And yet I'd seen her, in downtown Honolulu, in the dim dusk light. I'd actually seen her. And Yuki knew it.

"Just something that crossed my mind. I didn't mean anything by it," Gotanda said.

"Sure, the possibility exists. But she's still sending me messages. Loud and clear."

Gotanda crossed his arms for a few minutes, pensive. He looked so exhausted, I thought he might nod off. Night was stealing into the room, enveloping his trim physique in fluid shadow.

I swirled the ice around in my glass again and took a sip. That was when I noticed a third presence in the room. Someone else was here besides Gotanda and myself. I sensed body heat, breathing, odor. Yet it wasn't human. I froze. I glanced quickly around the room, but I saw nothing. There was only the feeling of something. Something solid, but invisible. I breathed deeply. I strained to hear.

It waited, crouching, holding its breath. Then it was gone. I eased up and took another sip.

A minute or two later Gotanda opened his eyes and smiled at me. "Sorry. Seems we're making a depressing evening of it," he said.

"That's because, basically speaking, we're both depressing people," I said.

Gotanda laughed, but offered no further comment.

35
Toward the end of May, by chance — as far as I know — I ran into one of the cops who'd grilled me about Mei's murder. Bookish. I was coming out of Tokyu Hands, the department store with everything for the home you ever wanted, and found myself squeezed up against him at the exit. The day seemed like midsummer, yet here he was in a heavy tweed jacket, entirely unaffected by the heat. Maybe police stiffs are trained to be insensitive. He was holding a Tokyu Hands bag like me. I pretended not to see him and was moving past when the undaunted detective spoke directly to me.

"You don't have to be so standoffish, you know," he quipped. "As if we didn't know each other."

"I'm in a hurry," was all I said.

"Oh?" said he, not swallowing the line for a second.

"I have to be getting back to work," I stammered.

"I can imagine," said he. "But surely even a busy man like yourself can spare ten minutes. Let me buy you a cup of coffee. I've been wanting to talk to you, business aside. Honest, just ten minutes of your time."

I followed him into a crowded coffee shop. Don't ask me why. I could've politely said sorry and gone home. But I didn't. We went in and sat down alongside young couples and clusters of students. The coffee tasted horrible, the air was bad. Bookish pulled out a cigarette and lit up.

"Been trying to quit," he said. "But there's something about the job. When I'm working, I gotta smoke."

I wasn't going to say anything.

"The job's rough on the nerves. Everybody hates you. The longer you're in homicide, the more they hate you. Your eyes go, your complexion starts to look like shit. You wouldn't know your own age. Even the way you talk changes. Not a healthy way to live."

He added three spoonfuls of sugar and creamer to his coffee, stirred well, and drank it like a connoisseur.

I looked at my watch.

"Ah, yes, the time," said Bookish. "We still have five minutes, right? Fine. I'll keep this short. So about that murdered girl. Mei."

"Mei?" I asked. I'm not snared that easily.

He twisted his lips, insinuating. "Oh, right, sure. The deceased young woman's name was Mei. Not her real name, of course. Her nom d'amour. She turned out to be a hooker, just like I thought. She may not have looked professional, but I could tell. Used to be you could spot the hookers in a second. The clothes, the makeup, the look on their faces. But nowadays you get girls you'd never believe in the trade. It's the money, or they're curious. I don't like it. And it's dangerous. Or don't you think so? Meeting unknown men behind closed doors. There's all types out there. Perverts and nut cases."

I forced a nod.

"But young girls, they don't know that. They think everything's cool. Can't be helped. When you're young, you think you can handle anything. By the time you find out otherwise, it's already too late. You got a stocking wrapped around your neck. Poor thing."

"So did you find the killer?"

Bookish shook his head and frowned. "Not yet, unfortunately. We did discover some interesting facts. Only we didn't publish them in the newspaper. Seeing as how the investigation is still going on. For example, we found out her professional name was Mei, but her real name was ?Aww, what difference does it make what her real name was. The girl was born in Kumamoto. Father a public servant. Kumamoto's not such a big city, but he was next-to-top there. Family very well-off. Mother came to Tokyo once or twice a month to shop. No financial problems. The girl got a good allowance from them. She told them she was in the fashion business. She had one older sister, married to a doctor; one younger brother, studying law at Kyushu University. So what's a nice girl from a good home like that doing selling her tail? The family had a big shock coming. We spared them the call girl part, but their darling daughter strangled to death in a hotel room was pretty unsettling." I said nothing and let him continue.

"We looked into the prostitute ring she was involved in. It wasn't easy, but we managed to track it down. How do you think we did it? We staked out the lobbies of some luxury hotels around town and hauled in a few women on suspicion of illegal commerce. We showed them the same photos we showed you and asked a few questions. One of them cracked. Not everyone's got a tough hide like you, heh heh. Anyway, turns out the deceased worked for this exclusive operation. Superexpensive membership. Nothing the likes of you or me can swing. I mean, can you pay seventy thousand yen a pop? I know I can't. At that price, I'd just as soon screw the wife and buy the kid a new bike," he laughed nervously. "But suppose I could swing the seventy grand, I still wouldn't be good enough. They run a background check, you see. Safety first. They can't afford weird shit from customers. But also they prefer a certain class of customer. No way a detective can get membership. Not that law enforcement is necessarily a strike against you. If you're top brass, real top brass, that's another story. You might come in handy someday. But a cop like me, no way."

He finished his coffee and lit up another cigarette.

"So we went to the captain for a search warrant. It took three days to come through. By the time we set foot in the place, the whole operation had been cleaned out. Spotless. Not a speck of dust. There'd been a leak. And where do you think that leak came from?" I didn't know.

"C'mon, man, you're not dumb. The leak came from inside. I'm talking inside the police. Somebody on top. No proof, of course. But we grunts on the street know an inside job when we see one. The word goes out to get scarce. Sorry state of affairs. But predictable. And an operation like that one is used to this sort of thing. They can move in the time it takes us to use the toilet. They are gone. They find another place to rent, buy new phone lines, and just like that they're back in business. No sweat off their back. They still got their subscriber list, they still got their girls lined up, they barely been inconvenienced. And there's no way to trace them. The thread's cut. With this dead girl, if we had some idea what type of customer was her specialty, we could do something. But as it is, we gotta throw up our hands." "Don't look at me," I said. "You sure you don't know anything?" "Hey, if she was part of this exclusive call girl setup like you say, they'd know in an instant who killed her, right?"

"Exactly," said Bookish. "So chances are the killer was probably someone not on the list. The girl's own private lover, or else she was turning tricks on the side. We searched her apartment. Not a clue." "Listen, I didn't kill her."

"I know that," said Bookish. "I already told you that. You're not the killer type. I can tell by looking at you. Your type never kills anybody. But you do know something, I know that. You know more than you're letting on. So why don't you come out with it? That's all I want. No hard-lining. I give you my word of honor." "I don't know a thing," I said.

"Figures," Bookish mumbled, puffing his smoke. "This is going nowhere. Fact is, the boys upstairs aren't crazy about this investigation. After all, it's only a hooker killed in a hotel, no big deal. To them, that is. They probably think a hooker's better off dead anyway. The guys on top, they hardly ever set eyes on a stiff. They haven't got the vaguest idea what it's like to see a beautiful girl naked and strangled like that. They can't imagine how pitiful it is. And you can bet that it's not just police brass in on this prostitution racket. There's always a few upstanding public servants got their fingers in the pie too. You can see the gold lapel pins flashing in the dark. Cops develop an eye for this sort of business. We see the least little glint, and we pull in our necks, like turtles. Something you learn from your superiors. So that's how it goes. Somehow, the drift is, our Miss Mei's murder is just going to get buried. Poor thing."

The waitress cleared away Bookish's cup. I still had half of my coffee left.

"It's weird, but I feel close to this Mei girl," said Bookish. "Now why should that be? It doesn't figure, does it? But when I saw her strangled naked on that hotel bed, she did a number on me. And I decided, I made this pledge to her, I was going to get the fucker who did it. Now, I've seen more stiffs than I care to. So what's one more corpse, you say? This one was special. Strange and beautiful. The sunlight was pouring in through the window, the girl lying there, frozen. Eyes wide open, tongue hanging out of her mouth, stocking around her throat. Just like a necktie. Her legs were spread, and she'd pissed. When I saw that, I knew. The girl was asking me for help. Must seem remarkable to you, this soft touch I have. No?"

I couldn't say.

"You, you've been away a while. Got a tan I see," said the detective.

I mumbled something about Hawaii on business.

"Nice business. Wish I could switch saddles to your line of work, instead of looking at stiffs morning to night. Makes a fellow real fun company. You ever see a corpse?"

No, I hadn't. He shook his head and looked at the clock. "Very well, then, hope you excuse me for wasting your time. But like they say, small world running into you at a place like this. What do you got in your bag?"

A soldering iron.

"Oh yeah? I got some drainpipe cleaner. Sink in the house backed up."

He paid the bill. I offered to pay my portion, but he insisted.

As we were walking out, I asked casually if prostitute murders happened a lot.

"Well, I guess you could say so," he said, eyes sharpening slightly. "Not every day, but not only on holidays either. Any reason you're so interested in prostitute murders?"

Just curious is all.

We went our separate ways, but the queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach still hadn't gone away the following morning.