We talked about memories of Dad, and Mom’s quirks, and Yamazaki-san’s divorce, and though we were making an effort to keep the conversation light and casual, the calm and hopeful atmosphere remained steady around us.
The only time I felt like crying was when the radio station we were tuned to started playing a song that Shintani-kun had put on his stereo for me the first time I’d gone to his apartment.
Being with Shintani-kun had been a lot of fun, and part of me wished I could have stayed in that illusion forever.
But I knew now that I shouldn’t see him again. Now that I knew who I was happiest with—even if it was only in a limited way based on things that had happened in the past, or maybe just a temporary, one-sided crush on my part—I couldn’t see him anymore.
We might be able to be friends one day, I thought. If he wanted to. But that would be a long time in the future. We wouldn’t be going drinking together after work again—when I thought of that, I felt genuine sadness. Things that didn’t work out had their own abortive, fleeting charm.
The song on the radio affected me differently than when I’d heard it the first time. In a weak, transparent voice, the singer crooned: Just one more time.
I’d spent my days with no regrets. I wasn’t sorry I’d slept with Shintani-kun, either. But I had no choice but to move forward into my new life. Good-bye, my Les Liens/Shintani-kun period! You were gone before I knew it, like sand falling through my fingers.
The verdant views to either side of the highway slipped away behind us about just as quickly as my feelings did.
THE SOBA PLACE THAT Yamazaki-san liked was closer to a traditional kappo restaurant than a simple noodle bar. It was the kind of place where a procession of numerous small dishes of sophisticated cooking was rounded off by a final plate of splendid handmade buckwheat noodles. I recalled Michiyo-san telling me that there were so many of this type of restaurant cropping up recently, she couldn’t keep up trying to visit them all. Traditional buckwheat noodles might seem unlikely to feature at a French-inspired bistro, but Michiyo-san was always on the lookout for good food, and ate at all kinds of places for research. I’ll have to tell her about this place, I thought, and then felt dumbfounded that Les Liens would still be gone tomorrow.
At times like this I realized just how much I had come to rely on having the bistro as a cornerstone of my life, and how much it had meant for me to have found a place for myself there.
While Yamazaki-san went to drop his car back at home, I killed some time in a bookstore opposite the station. I was waiting for him near the new releases when he arrived smiling, having changed his outfit just slightly. Spending the day with him like this, I felt as though he was someone I’d been seeing for a long time—even though I knew that this was only an illusion, and that I’d go back to not seeing him for weeks or months at a time come tomorrow.
In the soba restaurant, we were shown to a low table in a private tatami-matted room. We drank a little sake, and ate some good food.
“This really ought to be my treat,” I said, frankly, “since you so kindly agreed to accompany me today. But this restaurant is very expensive, and the best I can do is to split the check.”
“I’m the one who suggested this place,” Yamazaki-san said. “I was trying to impress you, so let me get it. I thought we should go for something fancier than ramen or yakiniku, since you’re a professional, after all. And having gone all that way earlier to an area famed for seafood and then having turned back without tasting any, I got it into my head that we should come here to make up for it. Take me out next time we go somewhere—maybe the aquarium. I wish we could have gone today. I do enjoy a good aquarium.
“My favorite part of the one at Oarai is the big shark tank. Oh, and the strange jungle gym near the end, it’s quite a brilliant design. When I see the kids playing on it I get so emotional, I feel like I might cry,” he said.
“Let’s make it happen, before summer comes. I wanted to see it, too. Aquariums are only open during the day, right? We can set off early next time. Thank you for the fantastic meal. It’ll be my treat when we go to the aquarium. Maybe a monkfish hotpot,” I said.
At times like these, I felt grateful that the last conversation I’d had with Dad had been a happy one. Making plans to eat good food together was always a happy thing.
The soba noodles arrived to round off the meal, and we both became too busy tucking in to say anything more. I found it charming how Yamazaki-san slurped his noodles almost silently. We talked a little about how he used to feel really self-conscious about his noodle-slurping prowess. Then he said, “Does your mom know you’ve been talking to me about your dad?”
“She does. Which means that us going to the aquarium together isn’t suspicious at all,” I said.
“You’re two steps ahead of me,” Yamazaki-san said, and laughed.
“That doesn’t mean I’m grown up,” I said. “I still want to throw a tantrum and say, I don’t want today to end. I don’t want to go home.”
“That again,” Yamazaki-san said.
“I’m sorry, I know,” I said. “You knew me as a child. Of course you can’t, I understand that. I’m just pushing my luck, in a childish way. I’ll go back to my immature world. But let’s meet again.”
I felt very at peace. I had the satisfied feeling of knowing I’d done all I could. I felt like I had nothing more to be scared of, and nothing more to lose.
“Earlier,” Yamazaki-san said. He’d pulled his legs out from under the table, and sat leaning forward with his legs crossed. We were still drinking sake, and he had a circle of red on his cheek, like a spot of rouge—not because he was embarrassed by the topic, but from the drink. I found this endearing, too. I saw again that he was a younger man than Dad, and not yet spent. The skin was different, the lines on his hands were different. Dad had been a lot more tired of life.
“Yes,” I said.
“You mentioned something about wanting to understand the power that took your dad away. What did you mean by that? Something like the inescapable bonds that tie a couple to each other?” he said.
“Yes. I guess I feel like I might be able to forgive him if it was something so strong it made you feel that everything else was unimportant. But I’ve never experienced it,” I said.
“Imo was timid . . . and a dreamer, I mean useless at practical things,” said Yamazaki-san. “He went to a doctor complaining about stomach pain, and they found a small tumor. It was cancer. He came to me about it.
“They said he could live for years if they operated. It wasn’t an aggressive form. If they’d operated promptly, they might have got rid of it altogether. I even found him a good specialist. But he never told his family, right? He was such a child when it came to things like that. He probably felt that that telling you would make it all real,” he said.
“Wow . . . I had no idea,” I said. “What a shock. I wonder if Mom knew. I should tell her.”
“Yes, I suppose it might be all right to tell her, now. Or perhaps she already knows,” Yamazaki-san said. “I think he stopped caring about a lot of things, because of that, and he ran away. He didn’t want to have anything to do with hospitals, or tests, or anything, just like a child. What an idiot. Really.”
“I wonder if he got sick because of that woman,” I said.
“Oh, did you think so, too? That was the first thing that came to my mind. It goes to show—I’m not sure how to say this, but we don’t really know anything about her, do we? We never met her, or talked to her. That’s probably why we think these things—us, and the lady who brought you the salt, as well, I think we’ve all projected some kind of big, dark, and menacing image onto that woman.
“Some kind of vast darkness, something like a myth. Certainly, there was something about her that evoked that. But I think as a person, she was just an unfortunate woman, only a fraction of the idea we have in our minds.
“We’ve all been forced to confront something big and dark and mysterious through t
he lens of Imo’s incomprehensible death. But isn’t that what most of life is like? And that’s so frightening that we all cast around for things that are simple, things we can easily understand.
“So I think maybe the reason we feel like they must have been having uninhibited, mind-blowing, better-than-life sex is because we want an explanation, we want to make things make sense. I’m middle-aged now, so I know a little more about it than you do, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t just that Imo fell for some woman and drowned,” he said.
I fell silent.
I thought again about Dad—the proud, insecure mama’s boy with a shadow side who’d hidden his weaknesses from Mom, and had tried to always appear the good father to me.
“What a stupid thing to do,” I said.
“I agree,” Yamazaki-san said.
“That revelation has chased away my sexy thoughts completely,” I said. “And I’ve lost my appetite, too. I’m glad I already ate that delicious soba.” Something deep inside my chest felt like it was being squeezed tightly.
“Not for me,” said Yamazaki-san. “I’m starting to feel I’ve had enough of being the kindly older man. Like I might be interested in being the rogue.
“I’m feeling drawn to you, Yocchan. That’s about what men are like, I think. There’s no glory in pretending otherwise, trying to look good, and getting drunk on my own self-restraint. Plus, your head—it might just be youth, I don’t know—it’s far too full of words. I know there’s nothing I can really do about that, but I can’t help but want to empty it out for you. To tell the truth, I’ve been wavering since a little while ago,” he said.
“Are men really that different from women?!” I asked, astonished by this sudden development.
“I think they are,” Yamazaki-san said. His calm voice made a strong impression on me. The more I listened to him, the more grounded I felt, and the more sharply my feelings came into focus. What was happening? I wondered.
The total bill for the small dishes and the soba, when I overheard it, was tremendously expensive. I realized just how much Yamazaki-san had splurged on treating me, but if I insisted on paying half, I wouldn’t have enough money to make it home. I had a credit card, so I might have managed somehow, but I decided to accept the treat. I came this close to saying, You can have my body as payment, but I thought the joke would come dangerously close to trampling on his gentlemanly idealism, so I decided not to.
When we left the restaurant, the wind was cold. It was still winter, I thought, a little surprised.
So much had happened since last fall, I’d been feeling like it had been winter for a long time. After Dad died, I’d felt like I’d sat down on the ground and couldn’t get up. Time had passed so quickly, it seemed impossible that my heart would ever catch up to it. But recently, my felt sense had finally been making up ground, and time seemed to be moving more slowly now. Living with Mom, who lived slowly on purpose, probably had a lot to do with it.
I briefly closed my eyes in the wind, and thought: Mom won’t be in my life forever. Even I’m going to disappear into this wind someday. Then we’ll all just be skeletons fallen by the side of the road. No different from Dad.
A premonition of the end that would come to me someday enveloped me softly.
It was neither uncomfortable nor miserable. I felt myself expanding, and I knew that where Dad was now wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t like I’d seen in that dream, narrow and constricting, and guarded by that woman. He’d been exposed to the elements, been taken apart, had expanded and scattered, and yet his center could still be sensed—that was the comforting impression I got from the vision.
“What shall we do?” Yamazaki-san said. “What time do you need to get home?”
“I don’t want to be much later than midnight,” I said.
“Of course, your mom would worry,” he said.
I twined my arm around Yamazaki-san’s sturdy arm. “I don’t know why,” I said, “Maybe because we prayed together. But I feel really easy around you. Like it’s easy for me to be how I’m meant to be.”
“My ex-wife used to tell me that, too,” he said.
“I guess that’s just what you’re like, then,” I said, and laughed. What’s more, I was thinking, when I’m with him, I feel like a woman.
The concourse outside the station was crowded with buses and cars. Almost everyone was dressed in a suit. They filled the evening streets with the high spirits of people who’d had a drink or two.
“Why do you like me, and why do you want to do it with me?” Yamazaki-san said. “I know it’s ridiculous to ask, and not suave at all, but I’d like to know.”
He was the kind of person who liked things to have a reason, I thought, some kind of through line. There was a pleasant smell coming from his clothes, like fragrant roasted nuts. And if something made sense to him, it wouldn’t bother him one jot if it was generally frowned upon—like getting it on with your best friend’s daughter, and when you knew her mother, too. That was the impression I got from his question.
“This whole time since Dad died, the times when I’ve been with you have been the only times when my life had color. When I talked to you, those were the only times I wasn’t worrying about someone else,” I said.
I couldn’t tell him that having sex with my boyfriend had made me figure out that he was the one I really wanted to be doing it with, or that his voice had been the only thing that had given me hope to keep living. It would have been too disrespectful toward Shintani-kun, who’d taken the trouble to find me and get to know me.
“I’m sorry it sounds so childish,” I said. “But it’s true. And I’d been such a good girl these last couple of years—consoling Mom, going to the bistro every day, working hard, grieving properly, going to bed and getting up early, working some more . . . It was so far from what Dad had gone through, drifting and drifting until he met his death, it felt like I’d left something behind.
“It’s not that I want to work off my frustrations by sleeping with someone I like, or that I want to find out how Dad might have felt by letting an older, more experienced man have his way with me, or that I have a secret crush on you and wish that we could be together. I just want to do something about my feelings, which are a mixture of all of these, to get them out into the real world.”
“Okay, it’s a deal,” Yamazaki-san said. “Let’s fuck.”
“I can’t believe you said that!” I said, and laughed.
I felt surprisingly calm. I must been felt confident that we were definitely connecting as man and woman, as people, over and beyond our roles.
We walked in silence. The last thing we’d said had been—“You don’t mind coming back to mine?”—“I don’t.”
I kept hold of Yamazaki-san’s hand the whole way so that the dream wouldn’t end, the miracle wouldn’t disappear
I texted Mom: Feeling down after visiting the spot where Dad died, so I’m having a drink. Will be late back but don’t worry, I’m not dwelling on things!
I knew Mom wasn’t that interested in my life, so I wasn’t at all concerned about her finding out. I thought about how, for the next few hours, I was about to step out of the normal flow of my life, and that made me feel strangely elated. I wasn’t alone, and I wasn’t going into a lonesome shadow. My usual life, my responsibilities, my past, my relationships—I could just leave it all behind.
Dad’s feelings must have weighed several hundred times more heavily on him, but I felt like I’d caught a glimpse of the tip of tail of what he must have felt. The sense of release was so violent I thought I might soar too high, and breathe in too much freedom, and burn myself up in the flames of my own emotions.
Yamazaki-san’s place was on the fifth floor of a fancy, irregularly shaped apartment building. When he opened the door, the apartment was sparse and tidy, and a slinky gray cat appeared from inside.
“She left the cat,” Yamazaki-san said.
“Maybe so it could keep you company,” I said.
“No, she to
ok it at first, but she brought it back again when the baby arrived, saying she couldn’t keep it. We’ve both been abandoned,” he said, stroking the cat.
I knew I might end up hurting him one day, and so he might me. But just then, I felt infinitely tender toward both of them—the cat, and Yamazaki-san.
“Coincidentally, we both happen to have bathed earlier, so let’s say we can get straight to it,” Yamazaki-san said.
“Coincidentally?” I said, and laughed.
Then we took each other’s hand, and went to bed.
As we lay ourselves gently down, Yamazaki-san said, “There’s a real possibility this might end up being the first and last time. But I’m serious about you, I swear.”
I nodded, but when he said that I felt so sad, I had to cry.
This was different, I told myself. This wasn’t like Dad and that woman, or me and Shintani-kun. There was no murkiness, no dead end here, even though I’d been looking for it, expecting it. There was too much that was clear and sure, and too much that led forward. Somehow, it was in no way at all what I’d hoped for.
Nothing was predictable, I thought.
Just as I hadn’t been able to love Shintani-kun, even though he’d found me, and we were a good match in theory, and there was nothing about him I disliked—there wasn’t a single thing in the world that I could know or decide in advance.
SEX WITH YAMAZAKI-SAN WAS different from sex with Shintani-kun. Shintani-kun’s had been far more debauched, skillful, lascivious, and more pleasurable physically, which surprised me.
I must have sensed that, somehow, instinctively. I thought. That was why I wanted to date him.
But with Shintani-kun, there was nowhere to go. Where pleasure ended, so we’d have reached a dead end. There would be nothing more to see. Without realizing it, I’d already stood at the start of the path that had led Dad to his death, and seen down its length.
Yamazaki-san was clumsier, and somehow put me in mind of a middle schooler, but since he’d been married for a long time, he had the kind of gentleness which came from years of close intimacy with a woman, and I remembered his too-beautiful ex-wife and felt pained. My chest hurt so much, I didn’t feel much pleasure or any elation at having betrayed Dad, or let Mom down.
Moshi Moshi Page 17
