“I can go to work in the afternoon tomorrow.”
The lines of cars shimmered, one car after another, curving off into the distance. Suddenly it felt as if the night had become infinitely long, suddenly I felt happy. I found myself able to forget Shiori entirely.
“So we'll stay someplace tonight?”
I took his hand as I said this, unable to contain my joy.
His profile was graced, as always, by a small smile.
“Looks like it,” he replied.
I was happy. I loved the night, I loved it so much it almost hurt. In the night everything seemed possible. I wasn't sleepy at all.
* * *
Sometimes when I was in bed with my boyfriend I would see the edge of night. The scenery there was unlike anything I'd ever encountered.
It didn't happen while we were doing it. Then it was just the two of us together, nothing separating us, no room for our minds to wander. He didn't speak during sex, he never said anything, and so I'd often fool around trying to get him to say this or that. But to tell the truth, I liked it that he kept quiet. It felt somehow like I was sleeping with an enormous night, just doing it through him. As long as he didn't use words it felt like I was embracing his true self, encircling it—a self that existed at a level much more profound than the actual man. Until we pulled our bodies apart, ready to fall asleep, I could get by without thinking of anything at all. I could just close my eyes and feel him, nothing but the true him.
I'd see it very late at night.
It made no difference whether it was a large hotel or a cheap motel like the ones you find behind train stations. Either way I'd wake up suddenly in the middle of the night, thinking I could hear the sounds of rain and wind.
I'd want so badly to see what it was like outside that I'd sit up and open the window. A bracingly cold wind would flow into the room, breaking through the hot air that filled it, and I'd see the stars blinking. Or perhaps a soft rain would be just starting to fall.
I'd go on looking out at all that for a while, and then I'd turn to look at him and see that he wasn't sleeping, that his eyes were wide open. For some reason I'd find myself unable to speak, and so I'd remain silent, simply gaze deep into his eyes. He shouldn't have been able to see outside, since he was lying down, but the look in his eyes was always so bright and clear it was like he'd taken it all in, all the sounds outside the window, all that scenery.
“How's the weather?” he'd ask me, very quietly.
And I'd answer that it was raining, or windy, or that it was so clear you could see the stars. Then I'd start feeling lonely, like I might be going sort of crazy. Why do I feel so lonely when I'm with this guy? I'd think. Maybe it's because things between us are so complex? Or maybe it's because I have no feelings at all about our relationship except that I like it, because I have no clear sense of what I want us to be doing?
The only thing I'd understood right from the very beginning was that our love was supported by loneliness. That neither one of us could haul ourselves up out of the deadly numbness we felt when we lay together, so silent, in darkness so isolating it seemed to shine.
This was the edge of night.
The small company I'd been working for was so terribly busy that it was impossible for me to find time to see him, so I quit pretty soon. For almost half a year now I'd had nothing to do. My days were empty, and so for the most part I passed them relaxing, shopping for myself, doing laundry.
I did have some savings, though not much, and my boyfriend put an incredibly large sum of money into the bank for me each month—after all, he said, I'd quit my job for him—so living was easy. At first I was hesitant to accept this, thinking that it would seem too much like being his mistress, but then it's always been my policy to take what people offer me. In the end I decided to take the money and be glad. All of which is to say, maybe I slept so much simply because I had so much free time. I've no idea how many young women like this there are in the world, but I kind of wonder if those oddly vague people you see in department stores during the day, women who don't quite seem to be students or people who work on their own, might not be the same. I know very well that I used to be like that myself, that I used to walk around with the same utterly unfocused look in my eyes.
I was walking down the street like that one cloudless afternoon when I happened to run into a friend of mine.
“Hey, how've you been?” I said, running up to him.
He was one of my friends from college, a nice guy, extremely bright. Shiori had dated him for a while, though not for very long. They'd even lived together for a few months.
“Oh, pretty good,” he said, smiling.
“What are you up to? Are you out on business?”
He was wearing a black shirt and cotton pants, the sort of clothes that looked like they were definitely meant for off the job. The only thing that suggested he was working was the single envelope he carried in his otherwise empty hand.
“Yeah, I'm just delivering this now. What about you? Looks like you're still as unoccupied as ever. . . .”
My friend often let the ends of his words trail off into nothing, in a way that sounded really gentle. He was grinning, there under the blue sky.
“That's right. I'm not doing a thing,” I said.
“Living the life of luxury.”
“Exactly. Hey, you're going to the subway, right? I'll come with you as far as the corner.”
We started walking.
The blue sky was carved up to fit the shapes of the buildings lining the street, and it shone with a peculiar clarity. For some time now I'd been feeling like I was in some other country. Every once in a while the city streets at noon and the sunlight that washes over them make my memories and all sorts of things get muddled, especially in the very middle of summer. I could almost feel the skin on my arms burning, little by little.
“God it's hot.”
“It is hot, isn't it?”
“I hear . . . I hear Shiori died,” said my friend. “I heard just recently.”
“That's right. Her parents came up from the country and everything. It was all really crazy,” I said, realizing as I said it that it was a strange response.
“I can imagine. She had some kind of job, right? Something bizarre?”
“Yeah, it was a little bizarre. I hadn't even known such a job existed.”
“Was that why she died? Because of her job?”
“Well . . . I don't know. But I don't think so.”
“Yeah, I guess that's something only she would know. I mean, she was always smiling, you know? And she was such a wonderful person. I just can't see how she could have been in such pain that she felt she had to die.”
“Me neither.”
We settled into silence for a time as we descended the wide street that led down the hill, walking slowly side by side. Several cars drove past us, and dazzling streams of sunlight hit us straight on. This man walking beside me has access to the same images of Shiori that I do, scenes only those of us who lived with her can know . . . Shiori with damp hair, Shiori cutting her nails, Shiori seen from behind as she washes the dishes, Shiori's sleeping face bathed in the morning sun. Somehow this seemed very strange to me.
“So are you still as amoral as ever?” he said suddenly, grinning.
“Well that's a nice thing to say!” I replied, grinning back at him. “But I still am. We haven't broken up yet and he's still married.”
“You really ought to try having a serious relationship, you know.” My friend's voice was bright, without any sort of undertone at all, but this only made its impact stronger. “But then you were always mature for your age, weren't you? I guess you just like people older than you.”
“Right. That's it.” I smiled.
Though I was actually so serious about the relationship it frightened me, so serious my hands and legs started trembling whenever I considered what things would be like if it ended. And my emotions still continued to smolder, even though my boyfriend and I c
ould have broken up at any time without it seeming at all strange.
“Well, see you later. Call me if there's a party or anything.”
We'd reached the entrance to the subway. My friend raised his hand as he spoke, then descended the dimly lit stairs underground. I stood there in the burning sunlight watching his back until it vanished, feeling a little sad, unwilling to part. It felt like all the brightness inside me had slipped down the stairs with that back. I was alone in a sprawling emptiness.
Shiori came tumbling into my apartment almost immediately after she broke up with this friend of ours. She had an allowance, and she was the kind of person who preferred to live a very well-ordered life, but for some reason she didn't like the idea of living in any one place. And every time she moved she'd throw away everything she had, even her books, even presents she had received. She said it irritated her to have too much baggage. All she brought with her from our friend's apartment was her pillow, a terry-cloth blanket, and a single overnight bag. She wasn't one of those people who can't handle being alone, not at all, but she was constantly drifting from one friend's house to the next. It seemed to be something of a hobby.
“So why did you break up?” I asked her.
“Well, you know. I mean, I was the one sponging off him, right? So if I didn't go, there wouldn't be much he could do, would there?”
It was a vague reply.
“What did you like about him?” I asked.
“The way he speaks makes him sound so gentle, you know?” she said, and smiled a little nostalgically. “But once I was actually living with him, let me tell you, I found out he doesn't always talk like that. It's a lot more fun living with you. After all, you're always gentle, right?”
Shiori grinned again. White cheeks, hazy eyes—when she smiled, her face looked almost exactly like a marshmallow. We were still in college then, commuting between the apartment and school, yet no matter how much time we spent together—and our daily schedules were almost the same—we never fought. Before either one of us knew it, Shiori had come to feel completely at home in my apartment. Her presence had come to seem so natural it was as if she were diffused into the air.
There were times when I was with Shiori when it would occur to me that I really liked women a whole lot more than I liked men. I don't mean this in a lesbian sense, but it's something I felt very strongly. That's how good a person she was, and how much fun it was living with her. She was fair and slightly plump, her eyes were very narrow, her chest was large. You certainly couldn't have called her a beauty, and her manner was so mild that you couldn't help thinking of someone's mother when you saw her—she was the type of person who completely lacked what's generally known as sex appeal. She spoke very little; she was precisely what a woman is supposed to be. When I thought of her it was always the soft shadow of her presence that came to me, not her appearance: the sense of how I felt when she was there. Sometimes, back when she was still living with me, I'd look at her smile—which somehow seemed to cast only the very palest of shadows, to be always on the verge of vanishing forever—or at the deep wrinkles that gathered around the corners of her eyes, and I'd feel an inexplicable yearning to bury my head in her giant breasts and sob and sob and tell her absolutely everything. The bad things, the lies I'd told, things about the future, how tired I felt, all the things I'd put up with, the darkness of night, my uneasiness—everything. And then I'd want to turn my thoughts back, to linger over memories of my mother and father, of the moon above the town where I grew up, of the color of the winds that moved over the fields.
That's the sort of person Shiori was.
Though it was a very brief encounter, that meeting with my old friend left my head in a state of chaos. Somehow I made my way alone through sunlight that made me feel faint, and arrived at my apartment. My apartment gets a lot of sun in the afternoon. I stood in the dazzling light, my mind blank, taking the laundry off the line. A pleasant, just-washed scent drifted up from the white sheets as they brushed my cheek.
I started feeling sleepy. Light came streaming down over my back like water in a shower while I folded the clothes, and at the same time the cold air from the air conditioner blew over me. I started to doze off. Naps that begin this way feel terrific. You feel as if you're about to have a dream all in gold. I slipped out of my skirt and slid into bed. Lately I hadn't been dreaming at all. Soon everything would go black.
Suddenly the ringing of the phone came spiraling into my sleep, and I was jolted back into consciousness. That's him calling, I thought, then sat up in bed and glanced over at the clock. Not even ten minutes had passed since I'd fallen asleep. Somehow I never even noticed when calls came from other people, I just went on sleeping. If things as minor as this came under the heading of ESP, I guess I'd have fairly impressive super-natural powers.
“Terako?” he said when I lifted the receiver.
“Yes, it's me.”
“Perhaps you were sleeping?” he asked, sounding vaguely pleased. I smiled to myself unthinkingly.
“I was just about to get up.”
“I'll bet. So, you want to go for dinner tonight?”
“Yeah, sounds good.”
“Okay. How about seven-thirty, the usual place?”
“All right.”
The room was still filled with light, still steeped in silence when I hung up the phone. All the shadows cast on the floor were dark and clearly outlined; I was in a time cut off from the rest of the world. I kept staring at the shadows for a while, but I didn't feel like doing anything, so in the end I got back into bed. This time I thought about Shiori a little before I slept.
The guy I'd met earlier, Shiori's last boyfriend, had asked me whether she'd died “because of her job.” And though I'd told him I didn't know, it had occurred to me then that in a certain distant sense it was probably true.
Shiori had been completely absorbed in her work, it had possessed her. That's why she'd moved out of my apartment. And I really do believe that in some sense she had found her calling in that job, that it was work only she could do. She'd gotten a part-time job in a bar on an introduction from some friend. Apparently she was noticed by a customer who worked as a scout for an organization that ran this sort of secret club—or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it specialized in a peculiar form of prostitution. All she had to do was lie beside her customers in bed. I was surprised myself the first time I heard it.
The apartment she used for her work was just downstairs from the one her patron-employer rented for her, and the “work” apartment was where the huge, very sleepable double bed was located. I actually saw the place once. Being there was more like being in a foreign country than in a hotel or something. It had a real bedroom, a place meant for sleeping, the kind of room I'd only seen in movies. Several times a week Shiori lay there alongside her customers until morning.
“What? You mean you don't have sex?” I asked.
This was the night Shiori confessed that she'd gotten so deeply involved in her work that she wanted to move out, that she'd be getting an apartment with a place where she could work.
“Of course not! People who want that stuff go other places.” Shiori smiled gently.
“I had no idea such a job even existed. But then I guess that's supply and demand, isn't it?” There was no way for me to stop her if she'd decided to leave. And I could tell that in some way I didn't really understand, she had become a prisoner of her work, of that peculiar job.
“I'll miss you,” I said.
“You'll come visit me, right?” she replied. “After all, my apartment is just an ordinary apartment.”
She hadn't even started to pack, so it was still difficult for me to grasp the fact that she was leaving, that this woman, who seemed so much a part of my home, was leaving. We sat together on the floor like we always did until very late that night, half watching music videos, commenting on them from time to time, saying that a certain song was good, that a certain singer was ugly. Time always seemed to b
ecome strangely distorted when I was with Shiori. This was because of her eyes. She had an extremely gentle face, but her narrow eyes were always as cloudy and dark as a blue moon.
Sometimes she'd spread her futon out on the floor next to my bed and go to sleep, and I'd turn out the lights and be able to see her perfectly white arm lying there in the moonlight, its outline absolutely clear. But often we'd talk even more after I turned out the lights. It amazes me to think how much we talked. The night she told me she was leaving, Shiori told me a whole lot about her job. I listened to her tiny voice as it flowed on through the dark like a melody played on some musical instrument.
“All night long I'm not allowed to sleep. I mean just imagine, what if the person next to me woke up in the middle of the night and I was sleeping, you know, just snoring away? My work wouldn't be worth very much then, it wouldn't be professional, see what I mean? Whatever happens I can't let the person feel lonely. Everyone who comes—and I only take people with references from others—is very respectable, very rich. They've all been hurt in unbelievably subtle ways, they're all exhausted. So exhausted they don't even realize they're exhausted. These people always wake up in the middle of the night, absolutely always. I'm not exaggerating when I say that. And it's really important that I smile at them then, in that pallid light. I hand them a glass of ice water. Sometimes they want some coffee or something, so I go right into the kitchen and make it for them. Most of the time, when you do that, they calm down and just fall asleep again. I think all these people, all they want is to have someone there, lying next to them. Some of them are women, some of them are foreigners. But I'm not very reliable, you know, sometimes I fall asleep. . . . Because when you're sleeping next to all these exhausted people, it's like you start matching your breath to theirs, slowly, those deep breaths . . . maybe you're breathing in the darkness they have inside them. Sometimes I'm thinking to myself You mustn't go to sleep even as I'm dozing off, having some terrible dream. All these surreal things. Dreams where I'm on a boat that's going under, dreams where I've lost some coins I was collecting, dreams where the dark comes in through the window and blocks up my throat—my heart is pounding, I'm so scared, and then I wake up. It's really frightening. The person beside me is still asleep, and I look at them and think, Yes, of course, what I've just seen is how this person feels inside, so lonely it hurts, such desolation. Yeah, it really scares me.”