There was no sign of Midori at the next day's lecture, either. What had happened to her? Ten days had gone by since we last talked on the phone. I thought about calling her, but decided against it. She had said that she would call me. That Thursday I saw Nagasawa in the dining hall. He sat down next to me with a tray full of food and apologized for having made our "party" so unpleasant. "Never mind," I said. "I should be thanking you for a great dinner. I have to admit, though, it was a funny way to celebrate your first job." "You can say that again." A few minutes went by as we ate in silence. "I made up with Hatsumi," he said. "I'm not surprised." "I was kind of tough on you, too, as I recall it." "What's with all the apologizing?" I asked. "Are you ill?" "I may be," he said with a few little nods. "Hatsumi tells me you told her to leave me." "It only makes sense," I said. "Yeah, I s'pose so," said Nagasawa. "She's a great girl," I said, slurping my miso soup. "I know," he said with a sigh. "A little too great for me." I was sleeping the sleep of death when the buzzer rang to let me know I had a call. It brought me back from the absolute core of sleep in total confusion. I felt as if I had been sleeping with my head soaked in water until my brain swelled up. The clock said 6.15 but I had no idea if that meant a.m. or p.m., and I couldn't remember what day it was. I looked out of the window and realized there was no flag on the pole. It was probably p.m. So, raising that flag served some purpose after all. "Hey, Watanabe, are you free now?" Midori asked. "I don't know, what day is it?" "Friday." "Morning or evening?" "Evening, of course! You're so weird! Let's see, it's, uh, 6.18 p.m." So it was p.m. after all! That's right, I had been stretched out on my bed reading a book when I dozed off. Friday. My head started working. I didn't have to go to the record shop on Friday nights. "Yeah, I'm free. Where are you?" "Ueno Station. Why don't you meet me in Shinjuku? I'll leave now." We set a time and place and hung up. When I got to DUG, Midori was sitting at the far end of the counter with a drink. She wore a man's wrinkled, white balmacaan coat, a thin yellow jumper, blue jeans, and two bracelets on one wrist. "What're you drinking?" I asked. "Tom Collins." I ordered a whisky and soda, then realized there was a big suitcase by Midori's feet. I went away," she said. "Just got back." "Where'd you go?" "South to Nara and north to Aomori." "On the same trip?!" "Don't be stupid. I may be strange, but I can't go north and south at the same time. I went to Nara with my boyfriend, and then took off to Aomori alone." I sipped my whisky and soda, then struck a match to light the Marlboro that Midori held between her lips. "You must have had a terrible time, what with the funeral and everything." "Nah, a funeral's a piece of cake. We've had plenty of practice. You put on a black kimono and sit there like a lady and everybody else takes care of business - an uncle, a neighbour, like that. They bring the sake, order the sushi, saycomforting things, cry, carry on, divide up the keepsakes. It's a breeze. A picnic. Compared to nursing someone day after day, it's an absolute picnic. We were drained, my sister and me. We couldn't even cry. We didn't have any tears left. Really. Except, when you do that, they start whispering about you: "Those girls are as cold as ice.' So then, we're never going to cry, that's just how the two of us are. I know we could have faked it, but we would never do anything like that. The bastards! The more theywanted to see us cry, the more determined we were not to give them the satisfaction. My sister and I are totally different types, but when it comes to something like that, we're in absolute sync." Midori's bracelets jangled on her arm as she waved to the waiter and ordered another Tom Collins and a small bowl of pistachios. "So then, after the funeral ended and everybody went home, the two of us drank sake till the sun went down. Polished off one of those huge half-gallon bottles, and half of another one, and the whole time we were dumping on everybody - this one's an idiot, that one's a shithead, one guy looks like a mangy dog, another one's a pig, so-and-so's a hypocrite, that one's a crook. You have no idea how great it felt!" "I can imagine." "We got pissed and went to bed - both of us out cold. We slept for hours, and if the phone rang or something, we just let it go. Dead to the world. Finally, after we woke up, we ordered sushi and talked about what to do. We decided to close the shop for a while and enjoy ourselves. We'd been killing ourselves for months and we deserved a break. My sister just wanted to hang around with her boyfriend for a while, and I decided I'd take mine on a trip for a couple of days and fuck like crazy." Midori clamped her mouth shut and rubbed her ears. "Oops, sorry." "That's OK," I said. "So you went to Nara." "Yeah, I've always liked that place. The temples, the deer park." "And did you fuck like crazy?" "No, not at all, not even once," she said with a sigh. "The second we walked into the hotel room and dumped our bags, my period started. A real gusher." I couldn't help laughing. "Hey, it's not funny. I was a week early! I couldn't stop crying when that happened. I think all the stress threw me off. My boyfriend got sooo angry! He's like that: he gets angry straight away. It wasn't my fault, though. It's not like I wanted to get my period. And, well, mine are kind of on the heavy side anyway. The first day or two, I don't want to do anything. Make sure you keep away from me then." "I'd like to, but how can I tell?" I asked. "OK, I'll wear a hat for a couple of days after my period starts. A red one. That should work," she said with a laugh "If you see me on the street and I'm wearing a red hat, don't talk to me, just run away." "Great. I wish all girls would do that," I said. "So anyway what did you do in Nara?" "What else could we do? We fed the deer and walked all over the place. It was just awful! We had a big fight and I haven't seen him since we got back. I hung around for a couple of days and decided to take a nice trip all by myself. So I went to Aomori. I stayed with a friend in Hirosaki for the first two nights, and then I started travelling around - Shimokita, Tappi, places like that. They're nice. I once wrote a map brochure for the area. Ever been there?" "Never." "So anyway," said Midori, sipping her Tom Collins, then wrenching open a pistachio, "the whole time I was travelling by myself, I was thinking of you. I was thinking how nice it would be if I could have you with me." "How come?" "How come?!" Midori looked at me with eyes focused on nothingness. "What do you mean "How come?'?!" "Just that. How come you were thinking of me?" "Maybe because I like you, that's how come! Why else would I be thinking of you? Who would ever think they wanted to be with somebody they didn't like?" "But you've got a boyfriend," I said. "You don't have to think about me." I took a slow sip of my whisky and soda. "Meaning I'm not allowed to think about you if I've got a boyfriend?" "No, that's not it, I just - " "Now get this straight, Watanabe," said Midori, pointing at me. "I'm warning you, I've got a whole month's worth of misery crammed inside me and getting ready to blow. So watch what you say to me. Any more of that kind of stuff and I'll flood this place with tears. Once I get started, I'm good for the whole night. Are you ready for that? I'm an absolute animal when I start crying, it doesn't matter where I am! I'm not joking." I nodded and kept quiet. I ordered a second whisky and soda and ate a few pistachios. Somewhere behind the sound of a sloshing shaker and clinking glasses and the scrape of an ice maker, Sarah Vaughan sang an old-fashioned love song. "Things haven't been right between me and my boyfriend ever since the tampon incident." "Tampon incident?" "Yeah, I was out drinking with him and a few of his friends about a month ago and I told them the story of a woman in my neighbourhood who blew out a tampon when she sneezed. Funny, right?" "That is funny," I said with a laugh. "Yeah, all the other guys thought so, too. But he got mad and said I shouldn't be talking about such dirty things. Such a wet blanket!" "Wow." "He's a wonderful guy, but he can be really narrow-minded when it comes to stuff like that," said Midori. "Like, he gets mad if I wear anything but white underwear. Don't you think that's narrow-minded?" "Maybe so," I said, "but it's just a matter of taste." It seemed incredible to me that a guy like that would want a girlfriend like Midori, but I kept this thought to myself. "So, what have you been doing?" she asked. "Nothing. Same as ever," I said, but then I recalled my attempt to masturbate while thinking of Midori as I had promised to do. I told her about it in a low voice that wouldn't carry to the others around us. Midori's eyes lit up and she snapped her fingers. "How'd it go? Was it good?" "Nah, I got embarrassed halfway through and stopped." "You mean you lost your erection?" "Pretty much." "Damn," she said, shooting a look of annoyance at me. "You can't let yourself get embarrassed. Think about something really sexy. It's OK, I'm giving you permission. Hey, I know what! Next time I'll get on the phone with you: "Oh, oh, that's great ... Oh, I feel it ... Stop, I'm gonna come ... Oh, don't do that!' I'll say stuff like that to you while you're doing it." "The dormitory phone is in the lobby by the front door, with people coming in and out all the time," I explained. "The dorm Head would kill me with his bare hands if he saw me wanking in a place like that." "Oh, too bad." "Never mind," I said. "I'll try again by myself one of these days." "Give it your best shot," said Midori. "I will," I said. "I wonder if it's me," she said. "Maybe I'm just not Innately." "That's not it," I assured her. "It's more a question of attitude." "You know," she said, "I have this tremendously sensitive back. The soft touch of fingers all over ... mmmmm." "I'll keep that in mind." "Hey, why don't we go now and see a dirty film?" Midori suggested. "A really filthy S&M one." We went from the bar to an eel shop, and from there to one of Shinjuku's most run-down adult cinemas to see a triple bill. It was the only place we could find in the paper that was showing S&M stuff. Inside, the cinema had some kind of indefinable smell. Our timing was good: the S&M film was just starting as we took our seats. It was the story of a secretary and her schoolgirl sister being kidnapped by a bunch of men and subjected to sadistic tortures. The men made the older one to do all kinds of awful things by threatening to rape the sister, but soon the older sister is transformed into a raging masochist, and the younger one gets really turned on from having to watch all the contortions they put her through. It was such a gloomy, repetitive film, I got bored after a while. "If I were the younger sister, I wouldn't get worked up so easily," said Midori. "I'd keep watching." "I'm sure you would," I said. "And anyway, don't you think her nipples are too dark for a schoolgirl - a virgin?" "Absolutely." Midori's eyes were glued to the screen. I was impressed: anyone watching a film with such fierce intensity was getting more than her money's worth. She kept reporting her thoughts to me: "Oh my God, will you look at that!" or "Three guys at once! They're going to tear her apart!" or "I'd like to try that on somebody, Watanabe." I was enjoying Midori a lot more than the film. When the lights went up during the intermission, I realized there were no other women in the place. One young man sitting near us - probably a student - took one look at Midori and changed his seat to the far side. "Tell me, Watanabe, do you get hard watching this kind of stuff?" "Well, yeah, sometimes," I said. "That's why they make these films." "So what you're saying is, every time one of those scenes starts, every man in the cinema has his thing standing to attention? Thirty or forty of them sticking up all at once? It's so weird if you stop and think about it, don't you think?" "Yeah, I guess so, now you mention it." The second feature was a fairly normal porn flick, which meant it was even more boring than the first. It had lots of oral sex scenes, and every time they started doing fellatio or cunnilingus or sixty-nine the soundtrack would fill the cinema with loud sucking or slurping sound effects. Listening to them, I felt strangely moved to think that I was living out my life on this bizarre planet of ours. "Who comes up with these sounds, I wonder," I said to Midori. "I think they're great!" she said. There was also a sound for a penis moving in and out of a vagina. I had never realized that such sounds even existed. The man was into a lot of heavy breathing, and the woman came up with the usual sort of expressions - "Yes!" or "More!" - as she writhed under him. You could also hear the bed creaking. These scenes just went on and on. Midori seemed to be enjoying them at first, but even she got bored after a while and suggested we leave. We went outside and took a few deep breaths. This was the first time in my life the outside air of Shinjuku felt healthy to me. "That was fun," said Midori. "Let's try it again sometime." "They just keep doing the same things," I said. "Well, what else can they do? We all just keep doing the same things." She had a point there. We found another bar and ordered drinks. Ihad more whisky, and Midori drank three or four cocktails of some indefinable kind. Outside again, Midori said she wanted to climb a tree. "There aren't any trees around here," I said. "And even if there were, you're too wobbly to do any climbing." "You're always so damn sensible, you ruin everything. I'm drunk 'cause I wanna be drunk. What's wrong with that? And even if Iam drunk, I can still climb a tree. Shit, I'm gonna climb all the way to the top of a great, big, tall tree and I'm gonna pee all over everybody!" "You wouldn't happen to need the toilet by any chance?" "Yup. I took Midori to a pay toilet in Shinjuku Station, put a coin in the slot and bundled her inside, then bought an evening paper at a nearby stand and read it while I waited for her to come out. But she didn't come out. I started getting worried after 15 minutes and was ready to go and check on her when she finally emerged looking pale. "Sorry," she said. "I fell asleep." "Are you OK?" I asked, putting my coat around her shoulders. "Not really," she said. "I'll take you home. You just have to get home, take a nice, long bath and go to bed. You're exhausted." "I am not going home. What's the point? Nobody's there. I don't want to sleep all by myself in a place like that." "Terrific," I said. "So what are you going to do?" "Go to some love hotel around here and sleep with your arms around me all night. Like a log. Tomorrow morning we'll have breakfast somewhere and go to lectures together." "You were planning this all along, weren't you? That's why you called me." "Of course. "You should have called your boyfriend, not me. That's the only thing that makes sense. That's what boyfriends are for." "But I want to be with you." "You can't be with me," I said. "First of all, I have to be back in the dorm by midnight. Otherwise, I'll break curfew. The one time I did that there was all hell to pay. And secondly, if I go to bed with a girl, I'm going to want to do it with her, and the last thing I want is to lie there struggling to restrain myself. I'm not kidding, I might end up forcing you." "You mean you'd hit me and tie me up and rape me from behind?" "Hey, look, I'm serious." "But I'm so lonely! I want to be with someone! I know I'm doing terrible things to you, making demands and not giving you anything in return, saying whatever pops into my head, dragging you out of your room and forcing you to take me everywhere, but you're the only one I can do stuff like that to! I've never been able to have my own way with anybody, not once in the 20 years I've been alive. My father, my mother, they never paid the slightest attention to me, and my boyfriend, well, he's just not that kind of guy. He gets angry if I try to have my own way. So we end up fighting. You're the only one I can say these things to. And now I'm really, really, really tired and I want to fall asleep listening to someone tell me how much they like me and how pretty I am and stuff. That's all I want. And when I wake up, I'll be full of energy an............