The Gun

  2

  Three days had passed since I acquired the gun. There were no noticeable changes to my life—at least, superficially, there had been no shift. Everything around me was as tedious and boring as ever, but my spirits remained high. The change had occurred inside me.

  I woke up each morning, as always, and the first thing I did was open the bag to make sure the gun was there. Then I got dressed quickly, put on my shoes, and went out. In the past, I often forgot to lock the door, but these three days, not once did that happen. This was hardly surprising, considering that I was leaving the gun behind in my apartment.

  I looked up at the perfectly blue sky and thought about how the rain had finally stopped. For the past three days, the rain had continued to fall as if it some kind of spell had been cast. I was aware that I actually said to myself, The rain has finally ended, but that was because I was in a good mood, which was also why I peeked into my mailbox. I thought I might even allow myself to try the kinds of things normal people usually did.

  I got on the subway and headed toward the university. The school’s campus was crowded with students, and the riotous mix of colors from the clothes they were wearing hurt my eyes a little. A number of people I knew called out to me, and I smiled at each of them and said a few words in response. I entered a big dingy white building and went up the stairs. On my way, a guy bumped against my shoulder as he passed, and knocked me a little off balance. The guy muttered a simple apology and kept going. He was really rushing, like he must have been in some kind of hurry. At that moment, I had the idea to run after him, to chase him and try to knock him down. Doing so would surely take him by surprise, and shock whoever was watching. I was fascinated, imagining such a scene. Even just coming up with an idea like that must have been another sign that I was in a good mood.

  Someone tapped me on the shoulder from behind, and I turned around to see Keisuke. He was smiling as usual. “How come you’re just standing there?” he asked me. I was a little taken aback, and I laughed without answering his question. He looked at me and said, “Did something good happen to you?”

  Keisuke kept talking. “The other day,” he was saying, “I ended up just taking her home, like an idiot. I must have really been out of it. In the car, she was talking to me about all kinds of things, she was crying—think I felt like hitting on her? I just got outta there. I did the right thing, seriously, I did. I ended up cheering her up and all.”

  “Seriously? You really must have been out of it. You usually go in for the kill.”

  “Yeah, you know me, going for the kill. Like you should talk, Nishikawa,” Keisuke said, laughing. He had started to walk alongside me. That’s when I remembered that we had the next lecture together, that we always had. Keisuke rattled on about girls, about his paper, about the CDs he’d bought recently.

  After attendance had been taken and the lecture began, Keisuke gave a big yawn and promptly fell asleep next to me. Someone touched the back of my head, and I turned around to see a girl there. She said to me, “Haven’t seen you in a while,” but I didn’t know who she was.

  The bespectacled lecturer started talking in a low, subdued voice about globalization in the world, and about how American culture occupied a major position in it. As he passed out papers to the students, he spoke slowly about how America developed as a country while absorbing the cultures of various peoples. However, he went on to say, even a place as tolerant as America was still besieged by problems such as ethnocentrism and ghettoization.

  “What is so powerful about American culture”—he got this far and then sneezed once, loudly—“however, is America’s diversity itself. The Americanization of Japan is nothing new, but I would hate to think that it demonstrates a scarcity of Japanese culture. Yet the longing for American culture has existed since our defeat in the war up through the present day . . .”

  As I was half-listening, I had also been replying to questions, one by one, from the girl sitting behind me. She said she was bored so she asked if I wanted to go to the cafeteria with her, but I didn’t feel like it so I declined. At some point I realized that she was gone, although I had no idea when she had left.

  In the middle of taking notes, I stopped and let my thoughts drift to the gun I had left behind in my apartment. I wondered why the gun held such boundless fascination for me, why I still felt such excitement about it being there. I led a boring life. It stood to reason that the gun would act as a stimulant within such tedium. I must have appreciated its absolute simplicity. The minimalism of the gun’s shape epitomized the act of firing bullets even as it conveyed cruelty. I could think only of it causing injury, of destroying life; it had been created expressly so that a person could commit such deeds, its design utterly compact, nothing extraneous. It seemed to me a symbol, like Thanatos, the god of death himself. Yet it was difficult to determine why I was so mesmerized by such a lethal object. It wasn’t as if I harbored the desire to kill someone. Nor did I yearn to kill myself. The thing is, up to then, I never expected to have anything to do with a gun. The idea occurred to me that I might be just like a child, thrilled by the acquisition of an unusual plaything, and that was what I liked best about it. There was no need to dwell on it. Whatever the case was, the gun was mine, and the pleasure I took from that had enabled me to pass each day since with relative ease. That, to me, was an important fact. To use the gun, to do something with it—the circumstances I now found myself in, that allowed for such a possibility, was the best part. I could use the gun to threaten someone, or I could use it to protect someone. I could kill someone, or I could even easily commit suicide. Rather than the question of whether or not I would actually do those things, or whether or not I wanted to, what was important was being in possession of that potential—that incarnation of stimulus itself.

  When the lecture was almost over, Keisuke opened his eyes and said something to me. I wasn’t really listening to him, so I just gave a vague answer. After class, Keisuke walked beside me as I left the classroom. He asked if I wanted to go to the cafeteria, and I realized that I was hungry. I decided to go along with him to get something to eat.

  “You’re coming to the speed dating thing tonight, right? I don’t know how many people will be there, but I think the girls will be hot. It won’t be any fun if you don’t come along—you know I need my wingman, right?” Keisuke said, laughing jovially. I thought of the gun, and declined. But Keisuke wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  “Come on, I’m serious—I haven’t had sex for a while now. It’s been like a month. Really. I’m going to lose it if I don’t get some. I need you on my team—you can have the hot one. It’ll be worth your while.”

  “It makes no difference if I’m there or not.”

  “No, man, it matters to me. You always know how to come through for me. Like before, you got those two chicks to come out with us, didn’t you? You could do it again.”

  Keisuke was so persistent, I had no choice but to give in. I regretted it as the image of the gun flickered in my mind. I had been thinking that today I would go out and buy some white cloth to lay under the gun. Then again, it might not be so bad to delay my gratification.

  Keisuke and I killed some time, then headed to the bar. For some reason, the air conditioning was on inside, and I felt a little cold in the artificial chill. “We’ve been waiting for you,” I heard someone say, and I saw Nakanishi. Keisuke and I had made a conscious decision to show up later than we were supposed to. It drew more attention, and somehow it was better to seem like you weren’t really all that enthusiastic. Nakanishi was sitting at a large table with four girls and a guy whose face I recognized. I had only met him recently, and even though he had told me his name at the time, I couldn’t quite remember it. Keisuke and I made up an excuse for being late, and Keisuke must have said something funny, because they all laughed at the same time. Two of the girls were awful, and the other two were average. Predictably, Keisuke and I chatted up the
average-looking pair. We all left the bar and headed to a karaoke place. For whatever reason—maybe because they were drunk—both of the ugly girls were really hyped up, and they kept touching me. Every so often Nakanishi and I caught each other’s eye and couldn’t keep from smirking. One of the ugly girls was a good singer, and she seemed to know it, because she sang a lot of songs. She sputtered a lot, though, and since I was next to her, her saliva landed on me repeatedly.

  I went to the toilet, and Keisuke showed up a little later. “I’m definitely gonna get some tonight,” he said. “She’s not all that cute, but that doesn’t matter to me tonight.” All I could do was laugh at him. I saw one of the average-looking girls heading toward the toilet, and I called out to her. “You look a little down,” I said, and she told me she was stressed about her boyfriend, and she really hadn’t planned on coming here tonight. I said that I wasn’t really in a partying mood either, I felt more like having a quiet drink, and I mentioned the idea of going somewhere else. Keisuke said, “There’s no reason to force it if you’re not in the mood,” glancing at me for some reason. Then we got her to send a text to the other average-looking girl to come over and join us, and the four of us left the bar together. Keisuke texted Nakanishi, hiding his smirk. I asked him what he’d written and Keisuke said that he’d asked Nakanishi to take care of the others. He smirked again. As I laughed with him, I noticed that the first girl looked really upset. I knew that most girls liked to talk about whatever was stressing them out. I stared at the pair of them, not really feeling up to it. Still, I focused on the one with bigger breasts as I thought about what to do next. Normally in this kind of situation, I would play the nice guy and go home, but because of the gun, I had been in such a good mood these last few days. I made up my mind to do it tonight, just like Keisuke.

  He and I chose a quiet bar, and we listened to the girls talk. We ordered strong drinks for them, and sympathized with whatever they said, caring expressions on our faces. At one point, the girls started to feel guilty about sneaking out of the karaoke bar, but Keisuke and I told them not to worry about it. “Just tell them we forced you to leave, or we were begging and crying, so you were freaked out and followed us. Make us the bad guys, so they won’t blame you or the other girls. I mean, we were the ones who asked you to go anyway, weren’t we,” Keisuke said, laughing a bit, though I wasn’t sure why.

  After a little time had passed, I thought I’d give it a shot, so I touched the hand of the girl who I had been talking to the most, then caressed her hair, and she made no move to resist. Seems like the time is right, I thought to myself, and I decided to stop drinking. Then I left the bar with the girl.

  We took a taxi to the building where the girl lived, and I went into her apartment. She seemed pretty drunk, but I suspected that she wasn’t really as tipsy as she was pretending to be. I threw her down on the bed and undressed her. I decided to pay special attention to her body. Normally, at this point, I basically did whatever I felt like. Plenty of times, I just came whenever I was ready to. But, this time, I proceeded cautiously and deliberately, watching for her response to whatever I did. I chalked it up to my recently improved mood. She moaned a lot, and I focused on that while I took as much time as I was capable of.

  3

  I woke up in the girl’s apartment. I had intended to leave before she woke up, but I must have been tired, because the girl was no longer beside me in bed. I heard a clink, followed immediately by the rushing sound of a flame. There was an earth-toned curtain that acted as a divider so I couldn’t see, but I figured she must have been cooking something. The scent of her on the fingertips of my right hand made me nauseous. I reached out and grabbed my cigarettes from on top of the table, lit one, and inhaled. My discarded clothes were folded neatly at the foot of the bed in a way that made them seem like they weren’t mine.

  “Oh, I must have woken you up. Sorry,” she said, peeking through the curtain. It being morning, she was made up simply, and she was wearing a white sweatshirt. I liked what she said to me, it made me feel satisfied. The words she had spoken were common and ordinary, yet there was something indescribably good about them. Searching for an appropriate response, I said, “No, that’s okay.” I thought that sounded inadequate, so I added, “What time is it?”

  “It’s already ten. Too late to make second period. I didn’t really feel like going anyway.”

  “Nine? I guess I thought it was earlier.”

  “What? It’s ten—not nine. I said ten,” she said with a little laugh, then announced that she was making coffee.

  I thanked her, and asked her to make it strong. I got up from the bed, and put on the folded clothes. Then I thought about what I should do now. I realized I could do anything in this situation. The old me had enjoyed these kinds of thrills, but it was hard for the new me to experience it the same way. They say that a person can get used to anything, and I agree that is often true. Call it self-centered, but I felt nothing more than weary annoyance about what to do next.

  I put out my cigarette, and walked into the kitchen where she was making coffee. She had her back to me, and I wrapped my arms around her body from behind. Aware that I was being vulgar, I touched her breasts and ran my mouth along the nape of her neck. I did it so that she would think I was the worst kind of guy, only interested in her body, and the idea that maybe I was that guy made me smirk. She laughed, too, and pressed against my chest as she said, “Wait a minute.” I put my right arm between her legs, roughly sliding my hand over her sex through the denim of her jeans. I said, “Lemme do it one more time. I only got a taste last night, I need some more.” I waited for her to get angry at me. I thought she might throw the boiling water on the burner at me, which I supposed would have been a reasonable thing to do. I resigned myself to whatever was going to happen next. I took great pleasure in the act of choosing to surrender myself. But she burst into laughter.

  “Okay, I get it, but you don’t need to be all over me—I mean, if you really want to do it, that’s fine. Just wait for the coffee. I have a boyfriend, but we can see each other when you like, if that’s all right with you,” she said, not taking me seriously.

  I didn’t know how to react, but what she was suggesting didn’t sound all that bad to me. I decided that I would go home after I had some coffee.

  I chain-smoked cigarettes while channel surfing on her television. I finally settled on NHK. Numerous people were climbing a snowy mountain in winter. A man whose face was snow-burned a deep brown said something to the men and women surrounding him, and everyone laughed out loud.

  The girl placed the coffee and plates of toast on the table. The aroma of the coffee wafted through the room, and as I took a sip, the pleasing bitterness slid down my throat. I complimented her on the coffee, and she told me that she worked in a coffee house. “I get ground beans from there. You should stop by some time, it tastes much better in the café,” she said, taking a sip.

  The program ended and the news came on the television screen. A man wearing a suit described the situation in Afghanistan, and the broadcast showed a hospital somewhere. A man missing a leg was lying on a dingy bed, and when he realized he was on camera, he scowled. The camera drew closer, focusing on his contorted face. He spoke in his cryptic language. I’m a mule trader. The Japanese subtitles flashed across the bottom of the screen. But all my mules were burned with my house, and I lost my leg. I know nothing about politics, and I don’t care. He appeared to still be talking, but the scene shifted to a desert landscape.

  The girl talked about various things, and I made responsive sounds at the appropriate moments. I nibbled on the toast and drank the coffee. The bread was still warm, and I realized how long it had been since I’d eaten toast. I looked around her apartment, which was decorated uniformly with furniture in mellow shades of brown, and the walls were such a fresh white it almost hurt my eyes. There was a large stuffed bear on top of the bookcase, and when I stared at it she smiled and
told me that her boyfriend had bought it for her.

  The screen changed again, and I saw the words, man’s body found at arakawa river. I grasped the coffee cup with my fingers, my attention absorbed by the report. I experienced a sharp jolt to my heart; it felt as though I had been injected with something and couldn’t move. “Yesterday, the twenty-fourth,” the man on the television said, “the body of a man was discovered near the Arakawa River in Tokyo’s Itabashi Ward. The man had been shot in the head, and it appears that approximately five days had passed since the time of death. The man appeared to be in his forties or fifties; his identity has not been made public. The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department is treating this as a homicide, and has begun a criminal investigation, including inquiries regarding the whereabouts of the possible murder weapon.”

  The news then switched over to sports—Ichiro had a hit and the Mariners had won. A Westerner whom I didn’t recognize was holding a press conference and speaking proudly about something. Some guy on a golf course was holding a silver cup; horses were running. I had fallen silent, and the girl turned to say something to me. I responded to her, trying to maintain my composure.

  “What’s the matter? You look white as a sheet.”

  “What?”

  “Your face—you’ve gone pale as a ghost.”