chapter 4

The two tidied up their break room table and went back into the classroom so that Hitomi could finish her paperwork for the day. Half way through Soubi went outside for a cigarette, offering to meet Hitomi by the gates so he could walk her home.

By 5 o'clock she was finished, with her paperwork for the school, anyway. This meant filling out daily evaluations and tardy/absent reports for the computer system and elaborating on any problems. Hitomi's main concern was Ritsuka and all of his injuries. She had been documenting these carefully, to no avail. No one was doing anything about it, even though she had brought it up to the principal on several occasions. He had merely asked her to continue with her documentation.

She met Soubi out by the gate, "Thank you for waiting."

He finished his cigarette, "Are you hungry? We can stop for something …."

"No," she said, meaning it. She was much too nervous to eat right now. "What about you? Um, when we get home, I mean, to my house, my mother will have dinner ready … you can …?"

She couldn't say it. Plus, she felt like her face had gone beet red again. She'd basically just invited Soubi to have dinner with her family tonight. That was a very intimate thing to do. Of course he would say no.

"Dinner with your family?" He said, hands in pockets.

The day was a typical autumn day – gloomy with a cold wind, but no rain. Dead leaves scrabbled along the sidewalks around them and gathered in the gutters. Overhead the sky was gray. Even the cars moving past them on the boulevard were all gray, their passengers gray as well. Hitomi looked up at Soubi. She'd never noticed it before – his stadium jacket was dark gray. Only his blond hair, whipping in the wind, and his pink face had any color.

He looked down at her just as she was looking up, "Let's walk through the park."

She agreed. He turned left half a block into the boulevard and she followed. Here was a well-worn dirt path that Hitomi always avoided. Twenty steps ahead a stand of pine trees shielded the path and the river park from the boulevard. Once you were on the other side of the trees, anything could happen. But now that she was with Soubi …

It never occurred to her … that she would have a reason to be afraid of … Soubi.

On the other side of the trees was nothing but a wide open view of the river to the left, with another copse of trees in the distance, and a half dozen picnic tables against a chain link fence on the right. Hitomi balked for a moment when she realized the picnic tables were full of men. Soubi reached out to take her hand just as one of the men called out,

"Soubi!"

He nodded to them and said hello back. They all seemed to be in the middle of playing some kind of board game or card game.

Another man said, "Feel like a game? We got two that were just leaving. Hey – not everyone can live with the freewheeling life of a bachelor, right?"

Some of the men laughed and made comments under their breath as two sitting near the fence stood to leave.

Soubi put his arm around Hitomi's shoulders, "Ever play cribbage?"

"Cribbage?" She said, taking in everything. On each table was a small wooden board with pegs and piles of cards, weighted down against the wind. Also weighted down was a small pile of money.

"Feel like a game?" Soubi said to her.

"If you'll teach me," she said. This might be something she could play with the children. But then, if money was involved, maybe not ….

She had to wonder about these men – hanging out in the park all day, playing cards? She would ask Soubi about them later. It seemed wrong … somehow. She approached cautiously, the men turning to see her or watching her. Finally one of them, a fat older man in a gray jacket, said,

"Not that often we get a pretty girl for a game!"

His smile was casual, as if he could sense that she was afraid. Another man put out a cigarette in an ashtray and said,

"This your girlfriend, Soubi?"

Then they all started to pipe up, saying, It's about time! and Now we know what you've been up to lately. Talk about embarrassing …. Soubi had her sit down by a slim little man with a weathered face who was actually smoking a pipe. It kind of reminded her of her dad. He nodded at Hitomi as she sat down.

"Let's not be ruining things for me," Soubi said as he sat down next to Hitomi.

"Oh, yeah!" A man at the next table said, "I guess that means she doesn't know yet that you're jobless, hmm, Soubi?"

This made a few of them chuckle. Another said,

"He's just an art student, Miss! And we all know what that means!"

This didn't seem to bother Soubi at all. He took a few yen out of his pocket and put it on the pile. Hitomi made a note to self, very subtly ask him about his source of income. Seriously. He didn't have a job, yet he was a student at an expensive art school. She made another note to check out his living arrangements. For all she knew he could be in the same boat as her – living with parents, or even worse, living with grandparents.

The slim pipe smoker gathered up the cards and shuffled them. The man across from him handed out tiny pegs – silver to the dealer, white to Hitomi, red to Soubi and black for himself.

Soubi said to her, "Every time you score, you get to move two spaces."

"Score?" She said. She had been dealt five cards.

He leaned in close to her, "First, look at your cards. What your objective is here is to make it to 15 points, then 31, using the cards that are laid down on the table by the other players. Look at your cards, then put whichever you don't want into a pile here."

Next to the peg board.

Soubi whispered in her ear, "The dealer will put down the first card."

He did and it was a jack of clubs. He laughed and moved his silver peg two places ahead of the startling line. Soubi looked at her cards, a two of hearts, which she thought of as good luck, three of diamonds, an ace of clubs and a queen of diamonds. Soubi took the three from her and put it on top of the jack,

"Thirteen," he said. "We go around, us four, and whoever makes it to 15 first moves two ahead, then whoever makes it to 31 moves two ahead, and then we start over."

It sounded boring, but what the hell. She was with Soubi, who put down a two of spades and said,

"Fifteen."

He moved two pegs ahead. What a cheater. The men around her knew it and laughed.

The afternoon wore on only a little. They didn't stay for very long – only two hands, both of which Hitomi won, despite her slow start. She was immediately suspicious about this. As the two stood to leave, both of the men at the table shoved the pot money at her even though she kept repeating no, no and no.

Soubi grabbed the cash and stuffed it in her purse, "Yes, your winnings."

The man across the table, who looked like a phy ed teacher, said, "Come back for another game some time. Don't be a stranger."

The slim pipe smoker turned to her, "If we're not here we're at the coffee house."

He nodded to the north. That would be Kagoje Coffee.

Hitomi nodded at everyone, "Thank you."

If Soubi was with her again, she'd do it. She must've won about 5,000 yen. And yet she had a feeling that if she continued to play, there was a good chance she'd be losing and not winning. Once they were back on the path again, with evening coming on, she had to ask Soubi,

"What are they doing in the park?"

He looked down at her and smiled, "Getting away from their wives."

That made her blush. What a thing! To want to be away from home.

"Seriously?" She said.

He nodded, "Mm-hmm. Some are retired. Some don't need to work. Would you really want to stay home all day?"

He had a point there. She thought about it. No, being at home all day would drive her crazy. But if Soubi were her husband … then … would she mind being home all day? The answer that came back to her was no. Were she married to Soubi, there was nothing she'd rather do than stay home all day and ….

Hitomi had to stop herself there. She felt herself blush again, her cheeks hot pink. She cleared her throat and kept up with Soubi's long stride up the path and out of the park, on to the next boulevard, which was only five blocks from her house.