When June showed up for my next installment, I begged a fever and turned her down politely. She was very gracious. She got a mechanical pencil from her bag and jotted down her number on a notepad. I could call when I felt up to it. Then she said good-bye and left, swinging her hips off into the sunset.
I took Yuki to her mother’s a few more times. I took walks with Dick North on the beach, I swam in their pool. Dick could swim amazingly well. Having just one arm hardly seemed to make a difference. Yuki and her mother talked by themselves, about what I had no idea. Yuki never told me and I never asked.
On one occasion Dick recited some Robert Frost to me. My understanding of English wasn’t good enough, but Dick’s delivery alone conveyed the poetry, which flowed with rhythm and feeling. I also got to see some of Amé’s photos, still wet from the developing. Pictures of Hawaiian faces. Ordinary portraits, but in her hands the subjects came alive with honest island vitality and grace. There was an earthiness, a chilling brutality, a sexiness. Powerful, yet unassuming. Yes, Amé had talent. Not like me and not like you, as Dick had said.
Dick looked after Amé in much the same way I looked after Yuki. Though he, of course, was far more thorough. He cleaned house, washed clothes, cooked meals, did the shopping. He recited poetry, told jokes, put out her cigarettes, kept her supplied with Tampax (I once accompanied him shopping), made sure she brushed her teeth, filed her photos, prepared a typewritten catalogue of all her works. All single-handedly. I didn’t know where the poor guy found the time to do his own creative work. Though who was I to talk? I was having my trip paid by Yuki’s father, with a call girl thrown in on top.
On days when we didn’t visit Yuki’s mother, we surfed, swam, lolled about on the beach, went shopping, drove around the island. Evenings, we went for strolls, saw movies, had piña coladas and fruit drinks. I had plenty of time to cook meals if I felt like it. We relaxed and got beautifully tanned, down to our fingertips. Yuki bought a new Hawaiian-print bikini at a boutique in the Hilton, and in it she looked like a real local girl. She got quite good at surfing and could catch waves that were beyond me. She listened to the Rolling Stones. Whenever I left her side on the beach, guys moved in, trying to strike up a conversation with her. But Yuki didn’t speak a word of English, so she had no trouble ignoring them. They’d be shuffling off, disgruntled, when I got back.
“Do guys really desire girls so much?” Yuki asked.
“Yeah. Depends on the individual of course, but generally I guess you could say that men desire women. You know about sex, don’t you?”
“I know enough,” said Yuki dryly.
“Well, men have this physical desire to sleep with women,” I explained. “It’s a natural thing. The preservation of the species—”
“I don’t care about the preservation of the species. I don’t want to know about science and hygiene. I want to know about sex drive. How does that work?”
“Okay, suppose you were a bird,” I said, “and flying was something you really enjoyed and made you feel good. But there were certain circumstances that, except on rare occasions, kept you from flying. I don’t know, let’s say, lousy weather conditions, the direction of the wind, the season, things like that. But the more you couldn’t fly, the more you wanted to fly and your energy built up inside you and made you irritable. You felt bottled up or something like that. You got annoyed, maybe even angry. You get me?”
“I get you,” she said. “I always feel that way.”
“Well, that’s your sex drive.”
“So when was the last time you flew? That is, before Papa bought that prostitute for you?”
“The end of last month.”
“Was it good?”
I nodded.
“Is it always good?”
“No, not always,” I said. “Bring two imperfect beings together and things don’t always go right. You’re flying along nice and easy, and suddenly there’s this enormous tree in front of you that you didn’t see before, and cr-rash.”
Yuki mulled this over. Imagining, perhaps, a bird flying high, its peripheral vision completely missing the danger straight ahead. Was this a bad explanation or what? Was she going to take things the wrong way? Aww, what the hell, she’d find out for herself soon enough.
“The chance of things going right gradually improves with age,” I continued my explanation. “You get the knack of things, and you learn to read the weather and wind. On the other side of the coin, sex drive decreases with age. That’s just how it goes.”
“Pathetic,” said Yuki.
“Yes, pathetic.”
Hawaii.
Just how many days had I been in the Islands? The concept of time had vanished from my head. Today comes after yesterday, tomorrow comes after today. The sun comes up, the sun goes down; the moon rises, the moon sets; tide comes in, tide goes out.
I pulled out my appointment book and checked the calendar. We’d been in Hawaii for ten days! It was approaching the end of April. Wasn’t I going to stay for one week? Or was it one month? Days of surfing and piña coladas. Not bad as far as that went.
But how did I get to this spot? It started with me looking for Kiki, except that I didn’t know that was her name at the time. I’d retraced my steps to Sapporo, and ever since, there’d been one weird character after another. And now, look at me, lying in the shade of a coconut palm, tropical drink in hand, listening to Kalapana.
What happened along the way? Mei was murdered. The police hauled me in. Whatever happened with Mei’s case? Did the cops find out who she was? What about Gotanda? How was he doing? The last time I saw him he looked awful, tired and run-down. And then we left everything half-assed up in the air.
Pretty soon I had to be getting back to Japan. But it was so hard to take the first step in that direction, Hawaii had been the first real release from tension in ages—for both Yuki and me—and boy, had we needed it. Day after day I was thinking about almost nothing. Just swimming and lying in the sun getting tan, driving around the island listening to the Stones and Bruce Springsteen, walking moonlit beaches, drinking in hotel bars.
I knew this couldn’t go on forever. But I couldn’t get myself moving. And I couldn’t bear to see Yuki get all uptight again. It was a perfect excuse.
Two weeks passed.
One day toward dusk, Yuki and I motored our way through downtown Honolulu. Traffic was bad, but we were in no hurry, content to drive around and take in all the roadside attractions. Porno theaters, thrift shops, Chinese grocers, Vietnamese clothing stores, used book and record shops, old men playing go, guys with blurry eyes standing on street corners. Funny town, Honolulu. Full of cheap, good, interesting places to eat. But not a place for a girl to walk alone.
Right outside the downtown area, toward the harbor, the city blocks became sparser, less inviting. There were office buildings and warehouses and coffee shops missing letters from their signs, and the buses were full of people going home from work.
That’s when Yuki said she wanted to see E.T. again.
Okay, after dinner, I said.
Then she said what a great movie it was and how she wished I was more like E.T. and then she touched my forehead with her index finger.
“Don’t do that,” I said. “It’ll never heal.”
That drew a chuckle from her.
And that’s when it happened.
When something connected up inside my head with a loud clink. Something happened, though I didn’t know then what it was.
It was enough to make me slam on the brakes, though. The Camaro behind us honked bitterly and showered me with abuses as it pulled around us. I had seen something, and something connected. Just there now, something very important.
“What’s the matter?” Yuki said, or so I thought she said.
I may not have heard a thing. Because I was deep in thought at that moment. I was deep in thought thinking that I’d just seen her. Kiki. I’d just seen Kiki—in downtown Honolulu! She was here! Why? It was definitely her. I?
??d driven past, close enough to have reached out and touched her. She was walking in the opposite direction, right beside the car.
“Listen, close all the windows and lock all the doors. Don’t set a foot outside. And don’t open up for anyone. I’ll be right back,” I said, leaping out of the car.
“Hey, wait! Don’t leave me here!”
But I was already running down the sidewalk, bumping into people, pushing them out of my way. I didn’t have time to be polite. I had to catch up with her. I had to stop her, I had to talk to her, I had found her! I ran for two blocks, I ran for three blocks. And then, way up ahead, I spotted her, in a blue dress with a white bag swinging at her side in the early evening light. She was heading back toward the hustle and bustle of town. I followed, reaching the main drag, where the sidewalk traffic got thicker. A woman three times the size of Yuki couldn’t seem to get out of my way. But I kept going, trying to catch up. As Kiki kept walking. Not fast, not slow, at normal speed. But not turning around to look behind her, not glancing to the side, not stopping to board a bus, just walking straight ahead. You’d think I’d be right up with her any second now, but the distance between us never seemed to close.
The next thing I knew she turned a corner to the left. Naturally I followed suit. It was a narrow street, lined on both sides with nondescript, old office buildings. There was no sign of her anywhere. Out of breath, I came to a standstill. What is this? How could she disappear on me again? But Kiki hadn’t disappeared. She’d just been hidden from view by a large delivery truck, because there she was again, walking at the same clip on the far sidewalk.
“Kiki!” I yelled.
She heard me, apparently. She shot a glance back in my direction. There was still some distance between us, it was dusk, and the streetlights weren’t on yet, but it was Kiki all right. I was sure of it. I knew it was her. And she knew who was calling her. She even smiled.
But she didn’t stop. She’d simply glanced over her shoulder at me. She didn’t slacken her pace. She kept on walking and then entered a building. By the time I got there, it was too late. No one was in the foyer, and the elevator door was just shutting. It was an old elevator, the kind with a clock-like dial that told you what floor it was on. I took the time to breathe, eyes glued to the dial. Eight. She’d gotten off on eight. I pressed the button, then impulsively decided to take the stairs instead.
The whole building seemed to be empty, dead quiet. The gummy slap of my rubber soles on the linoleum steps resounded hollow through the dusty stairwell.
The eighth floor wasn’t any different. Not a soul in sight. I looked left and right and saw nothing to suggest life. I walked down the hall and read the signs on each of the seven or eight doors. A trading company, a law office, a dentist, … None in business, the signs old and smudged. Nondescript offices on a nondescript floor of a nondescript building on a nondescript street. I went back and reexamined the signs on the doors. Nothing seemed to connect to Kiki; nothing made sense. I strained my ears, but the building was as quiet as a ruins.
Then came the sound. A clicking of heels, high heels. Echoing eerily off the ceilings, bearing a weight … the dry weight of old memories. All of a sudden, I was wandering through the labyrinthine viscera of a large organism. Long-dead, cracked, eroded. By something beyond reality, beyond human rationality, I had slipped through a fault in time and entered this … thing.
The clicking heels continued to echo, so loudly, so deeply, that it was difficult to determine which direction they were coming from. But listening carefully, I traced the steps to the distant end of a corridor that turned to the right. I moved quickly, quietly, to the door farthest. Those steps, the clicking of the heels, grew murky, remote, but they were there, beyond the door. An unmarked door. Which was unnerving. When I’d checked a minute before, each door had a sign.
Was this a dream? No, not with such continuity. All the details followed in perfect order. I’m in downtown Honolulu, I chased Kiki here. Something’s gone whacky, but it’s real.
I knocked.
The footsteps stopped, the last echo sucked up midair. Silence filled the vacuum.
For thirty seconds I waited. Nothing. I tried the doorknob. And with a low, grating grumble, the door opened inward. Into a room that was dark, tinged with the somber blue of the waning of the day. There was a faint smell of floor wax. The room was empty, with the exception of old newspapers scattered on the floor.
Footsteps again. Exactly four footsteps, then silence.
The sound seemed to emerge from somewhere even farther. I walked toward the window and discovered another door set off to the side. It opened onto a stairwell that went up. I gripped the cold metal handrail, tested my footing, then slowly climbed into what became total black darkness. The stairs rose at a steep pitch. I imagined I could hear sounds above. The stairs ended. I groped for a light switch; there wasn’t any. Instead, my hand found another door.
It opened into what I sensed to be a sizable space, perhaps an attic. There was not the total darkness of the stairwell, but it was still not light enough to see. Faint refractions from the glow of the streetlights below stole in through a skylight. I held on to the doorknob.
“Kiki!” I shouted.
There was no response.
I stood still, waiting, not knowing what to do. Time evaporated. I peered into the darkness, ears alert. Slowly, uncertainly, the light filtering into the room seemed to increase. The moon? The lights of the city? I proceeded cautiously into the center of the space.
“Kiki!” I called out again.
No response.
I turned slowly around, straining to see what I could. Odd pieces of furniture were arranged in the corners of the room. Gray silhouettes that might be a sofa, chairs, a table, a chest. Peculiar, very peculiar. The stage had been set as if by centrifuge, surreal, but real. I mean, the furniture looked real.
On the sofa was a white object. A sheet? Or the white bag Kiki’d been carrying? I walked closer and discovered that it was something quite different.
The something was bones.
Two human skeletons were seated side by side on the sofa. Two complete skeletons, one larger, one smaller, sitting exactly as they might have when they were alive. The larger skeleton rested one arm on the back of the sofa. The smaller one had both hands placed neatly on its lap. It was as if they’d died instantly, before they knew what hit them, their flesh having fallen away, their position intact. They almost seemed to be smiling. Smiling, and incredibly white.
I felt no fear. Why, I don’t have the slightest idea, but I was quite calm. Everything in this room was so still, the bones clean and quiet. These two skeletons were extremely, irrevocably dead. There was nothing to fear.
I walked slowly around the room. There were six skeletons in all. Except for one, all were whole. All sat in natural positions. One man (at least from the size, I imagined it was a man) had his line of vision fixed on a television. Another was bent over a table still set with dishes, the food now dust. Yet another, the only skeleton in an imperfect state, lay in bed. Its left arm was missing from the shoulder.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
What on earth was this? Kiki, what are you trying to show me?
Again, I heard footsteps. Coming from another room, but in which direction? It seemed to have no location at all. As far as I could see, this room was a dead end. There was no other way out. The footsteps persisted, then vanished. The silence that lingered then was so dense it was suffocating. I wiped the sweat from my face with the palm of my hand. Kiki had disappeared again.
I exited through the door I’d entered from. One last glance: the six skeletons glowing faintly in the deep blue gloom. They almost seemed ready to get up and move about once I was gone. They’d switch on the TV, help themselves to hot food. I closed the door quietly, so as not to disturb them, then went back downstairs to the empty office. It was as before, not a soul around, old newspapers scattered on the floor.
I went over to the windo
w and looked down. The streetlights glowed brightly; the same trucks and vans were parked in the narrow thoroughfare. The sun had completely set. Nobody in sight.
But lying on the dust-covered windowsill, I noticed a scrap of paper, the size of a business card. I picked it up and studied it carefully. There was a phone number on it. The paper was fresh, the ink unfaded. Curious. I slipped it in my pocket and went out into the corridor.
I was trying to find the building superintendent to ask about the office, when I remembered Yuki, stranded in the car, in a seedy section of town. How long had I left her there? Twenty minutes? An hour? The sky was sliding into night.
Yuki was dazed, her face buried into the seat, the radio on, when I got back to the car. I tapped on the window, and she unlocked the door.
“Sorry,” I said solemnly.
“All kinds of weird people came. They yelled and they banged on the windshield and rocked the car,” she said, almost numb. “I was scared out of my mind.”
“I’m very sorry.”
She looked me in the face. Then her eyes turned to ice. The pupils lost their color, the slightest tremor raced over her features like the surface of a lake rippled by a fallen leaf. Her lips formed unspoken words. Where on earth did you go?
“I don’t know,” my voice issued from somewhere and blurred out into the distance like those echoing footsteps. I pulled a handkerchief from my pocket and slowly wiped the sweat from my brow. “I don’t know.”
Yuki squinted and reached out to touch my cheek. Her fingertips were soft and smooth. She sniffed the air around me, her tiny nostrils swelling slightly. She gave me another long look. “You saw something, didn’t you?”
I nodded.
“But you can’t say what. You can’t put it into words. Can’t explain, not to anyone. But I can see it.” She leaned over and grazed her cheek against mine. “Poor thing,” she said.
“How come?” I asked, laughing. There was no reason to laugh, but I couldn’t not laugh. “All things considered, I’m the most ordinary guy you could hope to find. So why do these weird things keep happening to me?”