And in fact Sari, all of twenty-one, had yet to spend the night with a man. She’d made up a story about dating the same boy from the basketball team in high school for three years. But the truth was that it was another girl who’d gone out with the boy, not Sari, who spent those years pining away for him on her own. Nobody knew her in Fukuoka, so she used the opportunity to reinvent her past. She liked to show Yoshino and Mako a photo of her with the boy taken at Sports Day in high school.
“Wow, he’s really cute,” Mako said when she saw the photo, and this was all it took for Sari to blur the boundary between fact and fiction.
Every time Mako exclaimed over how cute the boy was, how tall he was, how he had such nice eyes and white teeth, Sari was under the illusion that she was the one being praised. It was exactly these qualities that she herself had liked, and she had started to convince herself that she and the boy really had been a couple. In Fukuoka Sari had discovered the joy of inventing an ideal self.
Naïve Mako might be fooled by this, but Sari had to consider Yoshino, too, as she sat there looking suspicious. When Sari had first showed them the Sports Day photo, Mako had been blithely ecstatic about it, but Yoshino had asked, “Hey, why don’t you call him now?”
Sari of course demurred. “But I’m sure he still likes you, right?” Yoshino badgered her. “He must have cried his eyes out when you moved to Fukuoka. Don’t you think he’d be happy to hear from you?” Seeing how flustered this made Sari, Yoshino gloated to herself.
For Sari, then, being alone with Yoshino felt claustrophobic. When she was just with Mako, she could be the center of attention, but Yoshino made her feel guilty, as though she were wearing a cheap knockoff brand. Still, if she was with shy Mako in town and some guys tried to pick them up, it was never any fun; but with Yoshino guys would treat them to dinner or to sing karaoke. She’d enjoy it and then feel bold enough to use curfew as an excuse to say a quick goodbye.
The last single order of gyoza came and the three of them made short work of it. They’d already had four orders, which meant they’d gobbled down some thirteen gyoza each.
Yoshino, stretching her legs out under the low table, rubbed her stomach exaggeratedly and said, “I shouldn’t have eaten so much. And after I’d just lost a couple of pounds.” Sari and Mako, their legs also splayed out, both sighed deeply, completely stuffed.
As Yoshino looked at the bill and calculated her third of it, Mako said, “You sure you’re okay? It’s already ten-thirty.”
For a second Yoshino didn’t know what she was getting at. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“You know… with Keigo and all…” Mako said, inclining her head.
Yoshino had momentarily forgotten she’d told her friends that she had a date with him.
“That’s right… I better get going,” Yoshino said, pretending to be flustered.
When it was ten p.m. Yoshino had actually considered e-mailing Yuichi that she’d be a little late, but then she’d gotten so involved in bad-mouthing Suzuka Nakamachi that she hadn’t sent a message.
Yuichi had been so insistent on meeting her that she’d reluctantly agreed. “I still have to pay you for the photo,” he said. If that was all it was, five minutes should be enough.
Yoshino divided the bill into thirds. The gyoza cost ¥470 per order, the potato salad ¥520, and adding on the chicken wings, sardines stuffed with snap eggs, and draft beers, the total came to ¥2,366 each. Sari and Mako took the money from their purses and laid out the exact amount they owed on the table. Meanwhile, Yoshino pulled out her cell phone and checked to see if she had any messages. She had a few, but nothing from Yuichi, let alone from Keigo.
At five after ten, Yuichi was wondering whether he should send Yoshino a message.
He was already in the parking lot in front of Higashi Park with his engine turned off, looking like all the other cars parked in the tree-lined two-hundred-yen-per-hour lot-as if he’d been here for days.
The JR Yoshizuka station was nearby, but at this time of night there weren’t many cars driving on the road along the park. Occasionally a taxi rounding the curve would light up the parked cars. None of the others had drivers in them. Only Yuichi, his face sunburned from construction work, was lit up by the headlights.
Yoshino had definitely said to meet her at the entrance to the park. She said she was having dinner with friends but would be able to make it.
Yuichi considered driving once around the park, but with the narrow paths, that would take at least three minutes. He worried that Yoshino might arrive from the station and figure that he hadn’t shown up.
Yuichi took his hand off the ignition key. He’d turned the engine off over five minutes ago, but the car was still warm from the drive. He could feel the road as he drove over the pass, lit up only by the pale light from his halogen headlights; he felt himself stepping on the gas as if to plunge into that light, the back end of his car sliding as he rounded the curves. No matter how much he pursued this ball of light ahead of him, he never could reach it.
Still, every time he drove over the pass, he had the fantasy that his car would be able to catch that ball of light. In this dream, a moment after his car caught up with it he’d pass through the light to the other side, to a world he’d never seen before. But Yuichi couldn’t imagine what he’d see there. He tried conjuring scenes from movies he’d seen-the green Mediterranean, the Milky Way-but nothing seemed right. Sometimes he tried to imagine his own scene, not one based on TV or movies, but when he did everything went blank before him and he knew he’d never find it.
Yuichi closed his eyes and pictured in his mind the mountain pass he’d just crossed, and the bright lights of Tenjin.
It was now fifteen minutes past the time they were supposed to meet. Even if Yoshino did show up, they wouldn’t have much time to talk; and try as he might, Yuichi couldn’t think of anything he wanted to talk to her about.
The footpath was deserted, just like the road along the park. If they had a half hour alone, he thought, maybe he could get Yoshino to suck him off. She’d resist at first, but if he grabbed her and kissed her, and stroked her breasts, then who knows what she might be willing to do.
After coming down off the pass he’d stopped at the first vending machine he spotted and bought a bottle of oolong tea, which he’d gulped down. Now he suddenly had to pee.
The roads were still deserted. The public restroom in the park was nearby, but once before when he’d parked there and used the restroom, a young man had appeared out of nowhere and stood behind him, unmoving, until he finished peeing, even though the urinal next to the man was unoccupied. Yuichi was afraid the guy would say something to him, so he hurriedly finished, zipped his pants, and leaped out of the restroom as if he were being chased. All the way back to his car he’d glanced around nervously, but there was no sign of the man. It felt creepy.
He flipped open his cell phone and saw that another five minutes had passed. He didn’t think Yoshino would stand him up, but he was getting worried, so he climbed out of his car.
Outside, he realized that the cold air from the pass had swept down to the city. He stretched and took a deep breath, and the chilled air caught in his throat. In the distance the sky over Tenjin was dyed purple. Suddenly the thought hit him that Yoshino was planning to spend the night with him. Since he came all the way from Nagasaki to see her, maybe she was going to go with him to that love hotel they went to before? If that was the case, he didn’t mind her being twenty minutes late. But he couldn’t stay at a love hotel in Hakata tonight. He had to be back at work at seven a.m.