Hitoka was still on the phone—unusual for her. True, she wasn't the one doing the talking, and she'd probably have hung up a while ago if she could have. Hitoka hated the phone.
"You should call her," Oikawa used to tell me, and in the beginning I called Hitoka pretty often. When I say in the beginning, I mean when I first met Hitoka and we started seeing each other. Before we got married, obviously. According to Oikawa, all women were secret agents in the employ of the telcos. But whenever I spoke to Hitoka on the phone, she always sounded irritated.
"Maybe we should talk about this phone thing," she said one day.
"What phone thing?" I said, looking down at the ten-yen coin I was holding in my hand. It was a rainy night, and I was calling her from a phone in some bar with a Wild West theme.
"I mean, don't feel like you have to keep calling me all the time," she said. "Anyway, you don't really like talking on the phone either, do you, Hajime-san?"
I had to admit she was right.
"No. How did you know?"
I looked over at Oikawa, who was sitting at the bar drinking with his back to me. I vowed then never to heed his theories about women again.
"Wanna drink?" A glass was thrust in front of my face. Hitoka's long phone conversation had come to an end and I hadn't noticed.
"What's this?"
"It's called a Silver Streak—gin and kummel."
It was clear like sake. I took a sip just to be polite, and gave it back to Hitoka. Receiving the glass, she savored a mouthful, swallowed it slowly, and smiled with contentment.
"Seems Runa is having mother-in-law problems."
"Oh?"
Runa was Hitoka's best friend from high school. Her one and only friend, according to Hitoka. Cheerful and lively, Runa was so wildly different from Hitoka that the few times I had seen them together the strangeness of their attempts at communication had been pretty engrossing.
"I guess most mothers-in-law are impossible," Hitoka said. Then she added, "In our case, she's really nice," with such sincerity that I felt a little bad.
At long last the gay son, who had happily vowed to die a bachelor, had come across a woman to his liking. It was only proper that his mother should be really nice to the woman for agreeing to a sexless union and becoming his wife. Hitoka leaving me was my mother's idea of disaster.
"The business of medicine involves trust," my mother used to remind me. "Being single forever isn't good for your reputation.
Suddenly, a cushion came flying across the room and hit me in the face. I looked up to find Hitoka sitting on the sofa, her lips drawn tightly together into a straight line.
"You're not listening."
Hitoka's always quick to start throwing things around.
"Sorry. We were talking about Runa, right?"
"Yeah, and tomorrow I'm supposed to go over to her place. I might be a little late. Is that fine?"
I said it was fine. "Want me to pick you up around nine?" Hitoka shook her head and looked me straight in the eye.
"Why don't you go see Oikawa for a change?" Her tone was serious, as if we were discussing something important. "I bet he really misses you."
It was a strange feeling, a wife worrying about her husband's lover.
"Uh-uh, Oikawa isn't the sort to feel lonely. But thanks for being so thoughtful."
"All right." Persuaded, Hitoka smiled and finished off what was left of her cocktail.
.
My mother came to see me at the hospital the next day. I had just finished my morning rounds and was having a cup of coffee in the office.
"How is everything going?" she said.
A split second before I heard her voice behind me, I knew she was there. I recognized her perfume. "Hi, mom," I said. "You didn't need to come all this way. You should have stopped by the apartment." But I knew why she had come. She had something she wanted to discuss. Not with the two of us, but just with me.
"How's dad?"
"Oh, he's fine." She took off her coat. She was wearing a white angora sweater, her full red lips blooming. She could have passed for ten years younger than her real age.
"How's Hitoka-chan?"
"Fine," I said, offering my mother a chair and a cup of coffee. I waited for her to get around to whatever it was she had come to say.
"The house is so empty without you," she said sadly. Her shoulders seemed to sag. "It's so cold this winter..."
"It is cold," I agreed. "There's something going around too, so be careful," I said.
"Is that so? Because my throat does feel a little sore. Do you have anything that might help?"
I could only laugh dryly at this. "I'm sure dad can give you something" My father was a doctor too, with his own practice. "What was it you really wanted to talk to me about?" I spoke first to help her along, since she seemed to be having so much trouble getting to the point. She lowered her voice, whispering her reply.
"It's about having children."
"Children?"
My mother started to cross-examine me. "What do you think? Have you discussed it with Hitoka-chan?"
"We only got married last month."
"Hajime. Hanamaki-sensei is a gynecologist, isn't he?" my mother asked. Hanamaki was a friend of mine who worked at the same hospital. "Why don't you go in for a consultation—about artificial insemination?" My mother spoke the words as easily as if she were pronouncing the name of some dessert. Artificial insemination. Well, it had to be about something.
"Sorry to disappoint you, mom, but I haven't discussed anything of that sort with Hitoka."
My mother's disappointment showed plainly on her face. "Well that's just not normal. No healthy woman would not care about such things," she said.
"I'll talk to her about it soon," I said, pressing the elevator button. "I'll let you know as soon as we come to any decision. If and when."
The metallic doors slid open, and I ushered my mother inside.
"Take care. Give dad my best. We'll come and visit soon. Hitoka wants to see you again too."
My mother gave me a hard stare. "Hajime." Then came her trump card. "Don't forget, you're our only son."
The elevator doors slid shut before I could object. I stood there and watched the floor lamp until it indicated the ground lobby. I heaved a sigh.
I called Oikawa from the public phone near the elevator. He was still a student and spent most of his mornings asleep in his dorm. As I called I thought, 'Funny Hitoka told me to call him; I want to see him tonight like I haven't in a while.'
.
I got home to find Hitoka singing to herself again. Well, actually, not quite to herself. She was singing to the watercolor on the wall. 'For Once In My Life' seemed to be the song of the day. She's kind of strange like that sometimes, my wife.
"Hi, I'm home."
I loved the look on Hitoka's face when she turned around to welcome me home. She was not someone who could ever fake cheerfulness. First a look of complete surprise spread over her features, as if to say, I never even dreamed you would come home, followed by a slow smile. Ah, now I remember, it seemed to say. Her reaction filled me with a sense of relief every time. This person was not counting the hours and minutes until I came home.
"How was Runa?" I asked, taking off my coat.
"Better than I thought she'd be."
"Well, that's good."
"I asked her to come over for the bean-throwing on Saturday. The husband and kid are coming too."
"Bean-throwing?"
"It's the first day of spring this Saturday," Hitoka said.
Traditional holidays that called for festive behavior were really big with Hitoka. In fact, the only time I ever tasted her cuisine was when she made rice gruel with 'the seven spring herbs' in accordance with the old calendar. Chopping and swiping clumsily at the herbs, she had told me that age-old customs were quite romantic in her opinion.
"That time of year already, huh?" I said.
"And you're playing the demon, okay?" This was spoken in a tone that left no room for discussion.
.
I was in the bath when Hitoka came through the door, a glass of whiskey in her hand. She was still in her clothes.
"Tell me a story about Oikawa."
"What kind of story?"
Nothing impeded my wife when she felt bored.
"Any kind."
I thought about it for a while, until I remembered a story that wouldn't take too long to tell. While I was in the tub, Hitoka stood in the washing area; when I got out to rinse myself off she sat on the edge of the tub, and listened quietly to my story.
"Few people love pranks more than Oikawa. And for him, friends aren't interesting targets. He has to choose a victim from the innocent general populace. He's got a whole variety of pranks, and they're all innocuous, but one that I really like is pulled off at the movies. He finds some place where they're showing a real tearjerker—say about parted lovers or a terminally ill little boy—and sits right next to someone he judges to be a big weeper at these things. It might be a college girl on a cute date with her cute boyfriend. It might be a young woman who's dressed like she might work at a day-care center. And then, just when she's about to start crying, when tears are beginning to fill her eyes, Oikawa sneezes. And it's a serious sneeze we're talking about. Aaagh-choof! Like that. And the poor girl has lost her chance 'to let it all come out.' But she's not in any shape to laugh either. So she ends up with a runny nose and this amazing, contorted look on her face."
Suddenly I could picture it, and I started laughing. Oikawa was a prankster with true flair.
"Why would he want to do something like that?" Hitoka's expression was stern.
"I don't know," I said. Oikawa hated pity and made fun of people who wept in public.
"That's the way he is," I said, rinsing myself off in the shower. Oikawa had zero tolerance for people who never asked themselves if some of their own acts might not be more embarrassing than being gay.
.
There's nothing like a drink of Evian just after you get out of the bath. You can feel the pureness of the water spreading through your whole body. It makes me feel cleansed, purified, all the way to my fingertips. I went out on the veranda and gulped the water down noisily.
"I hate the bottles your Evian comes in," Hitoka said. She was bundled up in a blanket, her hands wrapped around a hot glass of whiskey. "You want to share the blanket? You'll catch a chill if you're not careful."
"I'm fine," I said, "It feels good." I looked through the telescope. It was a gift from Hitoka.
"The thing I don't like about Evian bottles is that weird flimsiness. It doesn't feel like a bottle at all."
I looked up through the telescope at a small, neatly trimmed patch of sky. Within my round, cut-out section of the universe, more stars than I could fathom were twinkling and shining. I rubbed my eyes, dazzled by the light of Rigel, reaching me from nine hundred light-years away, Procyon from eleven, and Capella from forty.
"Wanna look?"
Hitoka shook her head. "Nah. As if I'm ever going to visit another galaxy. It doesn't interest me at all. I'll go heat up the bed for you," she said, and disappeared into the bedroom.
I liked watching Hitoka's back while she ironed the sheets. It was weird. She took it so seriously. All she needed to do was warm up the bed a bit, but she insisted on ironing out every last crease and wrinkle she could find, until the whole bed looked incredibly crisp.
"Hitoka."
"What," she said, smiling and tilting her head to one side. "You remember what we decided when we got married?"
"What," Hitoka said again. "We decided a lot of things. What are you talking about?"
"About lovers."
"You mean Oikawa?"
"No," I said. "I mean yours."
Her face clouded over. "If you're talking about Chikara, we broke things off completely. I've already told you that before."
"But we're supposed to be free to see other people. That's what we said when we got married."
"Just being with you is good enough for me, Hajime-san." She said this teasingly, and pulled the plug out of the outlet. "Go ahead, it's ready," she said, turning around to face me. "You can get into bed now."
I closed my eyes but couldn't fall asleep. I tossed and turned for a while but eventually gave up. When I opened my eyes and looked over at Hitoka's bed, it was still untouched. I looked at the clock. It was past one already.
"You still up?" I hollered. I threw on a sweater and opened the bedroom door. Hitoka was in the living room. I could feel the tension in the air, and I knew right away that she was feeling depressed. The bright light dazzled my eyes, and I blinked my way over to where Hitoka was sitting on a cushion, hunched over a table, drawing something quietly and intently on a piece of paper.
"What are you doing?" I asked as casually as I could, and glanced over at the whiskey bottle. What had started off the night three-quarters full was now down to a third.
Hitoka was making a demon mask. The blue demon on the paper had purple horns and a bright red mouth. She was just doing its thick black eyebrows when I looked.
"Wow. That's pretty good."
Hitoka didn't respond. Her next move would be one. Suddenly the hand holding the crayon stopped moving, and without a sound Hitoka began to cry. Huge teardrops welled up in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. From time to time, she let out a pained sob.
"Hitoka."
Hitoka covered her face with her hands and moaned quietly, and then started bawling like a child. She was saying something in between her sobs, but I couldn't make out what it was.
"I can't understand what you're saying, Hitoka. Calm down and tell me slowly." There was nothing I could do but be patient and wait. I knew that trying to touch her or hug her would only make things worse. I crouched down beside her.
Hitoka kept on crying for a very long time. In between sniffles and sobs I could make out a few words. She seemed to be accusing me of something. "Hajime-san... lovers..." But I couldn't make out what she was getting at. I practically dragged her into the bedroom and pushed her into bed.
"Good night."
Hitoka was still looking at me accusingly with teary eyes. Her face was red and swollen.
I reached out a finger and touched her hot and puffy eyelid. "Okay. I won't talk about lovers, ever," I said sadly.
.
The bean-throwing party turned out to be a huge success. Runa was as lively and cheerful as ever, her husband was pleasant and sensible throughout the occasion, and their young son, Yuuya, looked rounder and chubbier every time I saw him. "How old are you now?" I asked him, and before I'd even finished my question, he held up three fat and stubby fingers in front of my face and waved them about clumsily in the air.
I put on the blue demon mask Hitoka had made, and confronted the bean-throwers head-on, screaming and yelling and generally making a racket as I ran up and down the hallway trying to dodge the hard, uncooked beans. Everyone laughed at the way I struggled to avoid the missiles, but when they did hit me on the bony parts of my hands and head, it really hurt. "Out with the demon! Out with the demon!" they all shouted; I couldn't help noticing that Hitoka was the one with the most determined look on her face.
After the bean-throwing, we sat down for some beer. Hitoka insisted that we all eat the number of beans corresponding to our ages, so we counted them out, one by one, and made sure that everyone ate the right amount, like it or not. No doubt when we were eighty Hitoka would insist on eating exactly eighty beans. As I chewed on my beans, I tried to picture Hitoka at eighty, wrinkled and frail.
It was a strange feeling. Suddenly our inanimate little apartment was alive with human energy, and Hitoka and I were both starting to feel a bit restless and uncomfortable. It was creepy to think that all the energy and vitality was coming from one, small family: Yuuya bouncing up and down on the sofa and rattling the blinds open and shut, his young parents following him carefully out of the corner of their eyes, ready to leap up and bring him under control the moment he got out of hand. We sat and watched the toons on TV with the kid, ate delivery sushi, and drank our beer.
.
"Children are such troublesome creatures," Hitoka said with great feeling as she poured cold tea into the potted plant Oikawa had given us. Hitoka was convinced that the plant relished the tea she kept feeding it. She claimed the tree shook its leaves with pleasure whenever she gave it tea.
"Ten o'clock already, huh?" she said.
Ten o'clock. It was around eight-thirty when our guests had finally gone clattering out of the apartment, so Hitoka must have been sitting there glaring at the plant for nearly an hour and a half now.
"How long are you going to keep sitting there like that?" I was about to ask her, but she beat me to it.
"Hajime-san, do you realize you've been cleaning the apartment for an hour and a half now?"
"But there're fingerprints and stains everywhere—on the tables, the windows, the TV, all over the floor... on the phone..." Hitoka was giving me a strange look.
"But you've been at it ever since they left. It's not normal."
But you've been at it ever since they left, it's not normal, I repeated after her silently.
"We make a pretty good couple, you know, you and me. Like two peas in a pod."
"What's that supposed to mean?" said Hitoka. "I don't think we're alike at all."
"You want a drink?" I asked.
"Hmm—a double," she said.
I got a bottle and some cucumbers and went out onto the veranda. I decided not to mention the conversation I'd had with my mother.
"You want some cheese?" Hitoka shouted from the kitchen.
"Sounds good," I called back, looking out across the vast fabric of the nighttime sky. I bit into a cucumber and felt its fresh taste fill my mouth as I looked up at the stars.