Hataraki Man
[collapse into me tired with joy]
[march 26, 2009]
"The Journey's End"
Written June 25, 2009
She did it. Twelve pages of notes and quotes and dates, incriminating black lightning bolts scratched in straight, virtuous lines - lightning, because now that she has milked her last interviewee for all he was worth, she can illuminate the recent, clandestine escapades of one piggish Prime Minister. Twelve pages of material. Twelve hours of running as a chicken without her head, twelve hours since her last meal. Twelve hours since the time she'd promised Shinji she'd be home.
It was six o'clock in the morning when she finally boarded the train, as boneless as a drunkard. She plopped into a seat and purposefully set her things on the space beside her, with her legs stretched before her to occupy at least some sizable room. Let someone sit on that. She rolled her head about her neck, once and then twice, until she heard the satisfying cracks. Her stomach grumbled; she plunged a hand into the side-pockets of her laptop case, where she tucked her emergency rations of natto-maki.
Back to work. She stuck a roll of natto-maki in her mouth and reached into her bag for her laptop; its power indicator was lit and breathing, brightening and fading like a heartbeat, and a window had appeared to announce her low battery. Really low. About twenty minutes' worth of low.
Twenty minutes. Time to do it turbo, then. Then a bath. A meal. A smoke. A chance to pounce on Shinji and press him to the bed, her hands up his shirt and her lips not taking no for an answer.
She worked determinedly, hungrily, and earned a flattering number of sleepy glares from all corners of the train. All the blood rushed from her thighs and legs and rewired their routes into her fingers, as she pounded on the keyboard to the rhythm of the pounding behind her eyeballs and in her temple. She held her breath and refused to look up, until a line of sunlight angled its way across her knees, and her typing paused for a few moments. Her gaze followed the line to the train windows just above the top of her computer, to the fiery blush cast by the sun like the lid of a box opening. She looked into it appreciatively, sighed, and then turned back to work.
She finished her first draft in twelve minutes. Then she slept.
The way home was a blur. The fact that she looked like a ghostly, suicidal madwoman encased her in safety on the streets. She closed her eyes in the elevator and listened for the right number of dings until she reached her floor. Her apartment was dark when she finally opened the door.
Shinji sat on the couch, staring at the kitchen table, which he'd set with breakfast for two and a fresh sunflower. He stood, stricken, when she appeared.
"Hiro! I kept calling you! The office said you'd gone out to the airport, to corner Tokizawa-san for an interview before he left Japan, but you stopped answering your cell phone, and I started to think something happened -"
She collapsed into his arms as if she'd be untied and released, a faint smile on her face.
"I finished it."
Shinji fell quiet. Then he swept her up behind the knees and cradled her; he deposited her on the couch and retrieved her breakfast.
There came the gentle tinkling of silverware. "You didn't anything eat but natto-maki, right? Here, I made omelettes..."
*
Hiro jerked awake. Her apartment was dark, as if all the lights of the sunset had simply been switched off. She glanced at her alarm clock, glowing a branded, angry red: 2:12 AM. Right; in a few hours would be her appointment with Tokizawa-san, and then just a few more interviews. She had a long way to go; no wonder she dreamed herself at the end of it all.
Her right arm reached out to the empty spot on the bed beside her. She hadn't seen Shinji in four days, since she'd undertaken the scoop about the Prime Minister granting certain private companies monopolies and letting money circulate its way into his pocket. She hadn't heard his voice.
What an embarassing dream. She rolled over, her back to the place beside her.
But in her mouth lingered the taste of omelettes, and sunflowers in the morning.