After dark

11

Mari and Takahashi are sitting next to each other on a park bench. The park is a small one on a narrow strip of land in the middle of the city. Set near an old public housing project, it has a playground in one corner with swings, seesaws, and a water fountain. Mercury lamps illuminate the area. Trees stretch their dark branches overhead, and below there are dense shrubberies. The trees have dropped a thick layer of dead leaves that hide much of the ground and crackle when stepped on. The park is deserted at this hour except for Mari and Takahashi. A late-autumn white moon hangs in the sky like a sharp blade. Mari has a white kitten on her knees. She is feeding it a sandwich she brought wrapped in tissue paper. The kitten is eating with gusto. Mari gently strokes its back. Several other cats watch from a short distance away.

“Back when I worked in Alphaville, I used to come here on my breaks to feed and pet the cats,” says Takahashi. “There’s no way I can keep a cat now, living alone in an apartment. I miss the feel of them sometimes.”

“You had a cat when you were living at home?” Mari asks.

“Yeah, to make up for not having any brothers or sisters.”

“You don’t like dogs?”

“I like dogs. I had a bunch of them. But finally, cats are better. As a matter of personal preference.”

“I’ve never had a cat,” says Mari. “Or a dog. My sister was allergic to the fur. She couldn’t stop sneezing.”

“I see.”

“From the time she was a kid, she had a ton of allergies—cedar pollen, ragweed, mackerel, shrimp, fresh paint, all kinds of things.”

“Fresh paint?” Takahashi says with a scowl. “Never heard of that one.”

“Well, she had it. She had strong reactions, too.”

“Like…?”

“Like, she’d get a rash, and she had trouble breathing. She’d get these bumps in her windpipe, and my parents would have to take her to the hospital.”

“Every time she walked past fresh paint?”

“Well, not every time, but it happened a lot.”

“Even a lot would be tough.”

Mari goes on petting the cat in silence.

“And how about you?” Takahashi asks.

“You mean allergies?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t have any to speak of,” Mari says. “I’ve never been sick. In our house, we had the delicate Snow White and the hardy shepherd girl.”

“One Snow White per family is plenty.”

Mari nods.

“And there’s nothing wrong with being a hardy shepherd girl. You don’t have to worry how dry the paint is every time.”

Mari looks him in the face. “It’s not that simple, you know.”

“I know,” Takahashi says. “It’s not that simple…Say, aren’t you cold out here?”

“No, I’m fine.”

Mari tears off another piece of tuna sandwich and feeds it to the kitten. The kitten hungrily gobbles it down.

Takahashi hesitates for a few moments, unsure if he should mention something, then he decides to go ahead. “You know, your sister and I once had a long, serious conversation, just the two of us.”

Mari looks at him. “When was that?”

“I don’t know, maybe April. I was going to Tower Records one evening to look for something when I bumped into her out front. I was alone, and so was she. We stood on the sidewalk making small talk, but after a while we realized we had too much to say, so we went to a café down the street. At first it was nothing much, just the usual stuff you talk about when you bump into an old classmate you haven’t seen for a while—like, whatever happened to so-and-so and stuff. But then she suggested we go some place we could have a drink, and the conversation turned pretty deep and personal. She had a lot she wanted to talk about.”

“Deep and personal?”

“Yeah.”

Mari looks at him questioningly. “Why would Eri talk to you about stuff like that? I never got the sense that you and she were particularly close.”

“No, obviously, we’re not. That time we all went to the hotel pool together was the first time I ever really talked to her. I’m not even sure she knew my full name.”

Mari goes on stroking the kitten in silence.

Takahashi continues, “But that day, she wanted somebody to talk with. Normally it would have been another girl, a good friend. But I don’t know, maybe your sister doesn’t have any girlfriends she can open up to like that. So she picked me instead. It just happened to be me. It could have been anybody.”

“Still, why you? As far as I know, she’s never had any trouble finding boyfriends.”

“No, I’m sure you’re right.”

“But she happens to bump into you on the street, somebody she doesn’t know all that well, and she gets involved in this deep, personal conversation. I wonder why?”

“I don’t know,” Takahashi says, giving it some thought. “Maybe I seemed harmless to her.”

“Harmless?”

“Yeah, like she could let herself open up to me this one time and not feel threatened.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Well, maybe it’s…” Takahashi seems to be having trouble getting the words out. “This is gonna sound kinda weird, but people often think I’m gay. Like, on the street, sometimes some guy—a total stranger—will hit on me.”

“But you’re not gay, right?”

“No, I don’t think so…It’s just that people always seem to pick me to tell their secrets to. Guys, girls, people I hardly know, people I’ve never even met before: they open up to me about their wildest innermost secrets. I wonder why that is? It’s not as if I want to hear this stuff.”

Mari mentally chews over what he has just said to her. Then she says, “So, anyway, Eri confessed all these secrets to you.”

“Right. Or maybe I should say she told me personal stuff.”

“Like, for example…?” Mari asks.

“Like, say, family stuff.”

“Family stuff?”

“Just for example,” Takahashi says.

“Including stuff about me?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What kind of stuff?”

Takahashi takes a moment to think how best to say this. “For example, she said she wishes she could be closer to you.”

“Closer to me?”

“She felt that you had deliberately put a kind of distance between the two of you. Ever since you reached a certain age.”

Mari softly embraces the kitten between her palms. Her hands feel its tiny warmth.

“Yeah,” Mari says. “But it’s possible for people to draw closer to each other even while they keep a reasonable distance between them.”

“Of course it’s possible,” Takahashi says. “But what seems like a reasonable distance to one person might feel too far to somebody else.”

A big brown cat appears out of nowhere and rubs its head against Takahashi’s leg. Takahashi bends over and strokes the cat. He takes the fish cake from his pocket, tears the package open, and gives half to the cat, who gobbles it down.

“So that’s the personal problem that was bothering Eri?” Mari asks. “That she can’t get close enough to her little sister?”

“That was one of her personal problems. There were others.”

Mari stays silent.

Takahashi goes on, “While she was talking to me, Eri was popping every kind of pill you can imagine. Her Prada bag was stuffed with drugs, and while she was drinking her Bloody Mary she was munching ’em like nuts. I’m pretty sure they were legal drugs, but the amount was not normal.”

“She’s a total pill freak. Always has been. But she’s been getting worse.”

“Somebody should stop her.”

Mari shakes her head. “Pills and fortune-telling and dieting: nobody can stop her when it comes to any of those things.”

“I kind of hinted to her she maybe ought to see a specialist—a therapist or psychiatrist or something. But she had absolutely no intention of doing that as far as I could tell. I mean, she didn’t even seem to realize she had anything going on inside of her. I really started getting worried about her. I’m sitting there thinking, What could have happened to Eri Asai?”

Mari frowns. “All you had to do was give her a call afterwards and ask Eri directly—if you were really that worried about her.”

Takahashi gives a little sigh. “To get back to our first conversation tonight, supposing I was to call your house and Eri Asai answered, I wouldn’t have any idea what to say to her.”

“But the two of you had that long, tight conversation over drinks—that deep, personal talk.”

“True, but it wasn’t exactly a conversation. I hardly said a thing. She just kept talking and I chimed in now and then. And besides, realistically speaking, I don’t think there’s a lot that I can do for her—as long as I’m not involved with her on a deeper, more personal level, at least.”

“And you don’t want to get that involved…”

“I don’t think I can get that involved,” Takahashi says. He reaches out and scratches the cat behind the ears. “Maybe I’m not qualified.”

“Or to put it more simply, you can’t be all that interested in Eri?”

“Well, if you put it that way, Eri Asai is not all that interested in me. Like I said, she just needed somebody to talk to. From her point of view, I was nothing much more than a wall with human features that could respond to her now and then as necessary.”

“Okay, all that aside, are you deeply interested in Eri or not? Assuming you had to answer just yes or no.”

Takahashi rubs his hands together lightly, as if confused. It’s a delicate question. He finds it difficult to answer.

“Yes, I think I am interested in Eri Asai. Your sister has a completely natural radiance. It’s really special and it’s something she was born with. For example, when the two of us were drinking and having this intimate conversation, everybody in the bar was staring at us like, ‘What the hell is that gorgeous girl doing with such a nothing guy?’”

“Yeah, but—”

“Yeah, but?”

“Think about it,” Mari says. “I asked you if you were deeply interested in Eri, but you answered, ‘I think I am interested’ in her. You dropped the ‘deeply.’ It seems to me you’re leaving something out.”

Takahashi is impressed with Mari. “You’re very observant.”

Mari awaits his answer in silence.

Takahashi is not quite sure how to respond. “But…let’s see…I’m sitting there having this long talk with your sister and, like, I begin to get this, uh, weird feeling. At first I don’t notice just how weird it is, but the more time that goes by, the stronger it gets, like, I’m not even here: I’m not included in what’s going on here. She’s sitting right there in front of me, but at the same time she’s a million miles away.”

Still, Mari says nothing. Lightly biting her lip, she waits for the rest of the story. Takahashi takes his time searching for the right words.

“Finally, no matter what I say, it doesn’t reach her. This layer, like some kind of transparent sponge kind of thing, stands there between Eri Asai and me, and the words that come out of my mouth have to pass through it, and when that happens, the sponge sucks almost all the nutrients right out of them. She’s not listening to anything I say—not really. The longer we talk, the more clearly I can see what’s happening. So then the words that come out of her mouth stop making it all the way to me. It was a very strange feeling.”

Realizing that the tuna sandwiches are gone, the kitten twists itself out of Mari’s hands and jumps down to the ground, running over to the thick shrubbery and all but leaping in. Mari crumples the tissue in which the sandwiches were wrapped and stuffs it into her bag. She rubs the bread crumbs from her hands.

Takahashi looks at Mari. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Do I understand?” Mari says and takes a breath. “What you just described is probably pretty close to something I’ve been feeling about Eri for a very long time—at least the past few years.”

“Like your words don’t reach her?”

“Yeah.”

Takahashi throws the rest of his fish cake to another cat that is edging toward him. The cat sniffs it cautiously and then devours it excitedly.

“I’ve got one more question,” says Mari. “But will you promise to give me an honest answer?”

“Sure,” Takahashi says.

“The girl you took to the Alphaville wasn’t by any chance my sister, was she?”

With a shocked expression, Takahashi raises his face and looks straight at Mari. He could be looking at ripples spreading on the surface of a small pond.

“What makes you think that?” Takahashi asks.

“I dunno, just a feeling. Am I wrong?”

“No, it wasn’t Eri. It was another girl.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Mari thinks about something for a moment.

“Can I ask you one more question?”

“Of course.”

“Say you took my sister to that hotel and had sex with her. Hypothetically speaking.”

“Hypothetically speaking.”

“And if, hypothetically speaking, I were to ask you, ‘Did you take my sister to that hotel and have sex with her?’”

“Hypothetically speaking.”

“If I did that, do you think you would honestly answer yes?”

Takahashi thinks about this for a moment.

“Probably not,” he says. “I’d probably answer no.”

“Why?”

“’Cause it would compromise your sister’s privacy.”

“Kinda like professional confidentiality?”

“Kinda, yeah.”

“Well, in that case, wouldn’t the right answer be ‘I can’t answer that’? If you really have to keep things confidential.”

Takahashi says, “Yeah, but if I were to say ‘I can’t answer that’ in this context, it’d be like a de facto yes. That’s willful negligence.”

“So in either case, the answer would have to be no, wouldn’t it?”

“Theoretically, yes.”

Mari looks straight into Takahashi’s eyes. “To tell you the truth, it doesn’t matter to me either way, even if you slept with Eri—as long as it was something she wanted.”

“Maybe not even Eri Asai has a clear grasp of what Eri Asai wants. Anyhow, let’s stop this. Both theoretically and in reality, the girl I took to Alphaville was somebody else, not Eri Asai.”

Mari releases a little sigh and allows a few seconds to elapse.

“I do wish I could have been closer to Eri,” she says. “I felt it especially in my early teens—that I wanted to be best friends with her. Of course, I idolized her to some extent: that was part of it. But she was already insanely busy even then—modeling for the covers of girls’ magazines, taking a million lessons, everybody waiting on her hand and foot. She just didn’t have any openings for me. In other words, when I needed her most, she had the least freedom to respond to my need.”

Takahashi listens to Mari in silence.

“We were sisters living under the same roof, but we grew up in two different worlds. We didn’t even eat the same food. With all those allergies of hers, she had to have a special diet that was different from what the rest of us ate.”

Pause.

Mari says, “I’m not blaming her for anything. It’s true at the time I thought my mother was spoiling her, but I don’t care about that now. All I’m trying to say is that we’ve got this…history between us. So when I hear now that she wishes we could have been closer, I honestly have absolutely no idea what to do about it. Do you understand my feeling?”

“I think I do.”

Mari says nothing.

“It suddenly popped into my mind when I was talking with Eri Asai,” Takahashi says, “but I think she’s always had some kind of complex where you’re concerned—from way back.”

“Complex?” says Mari. “Eri toward me?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And not the other way around?”

“No, not the other way around.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Well, look. You’re the kid sister, but you always had a good, clear image of what you wanted for yourself. You were able to say no when you had to, and you did things at your own pace. But Eri Asai couldn’t do that. From the time she was a little girl, her job was to play her assigned role and satisfy the people around her. She worked hard to be a perfect little Snow White—if I can borrow your name for her. It’s true that everybody made a big fuss over her, but I’ll bet that was really tough for her sometimes. At one of the most crucial points in her life, she didn’t have a chance to establish a firm self. If ‘complex’ is too strong a word, let’s just say she probably envied you.”

“Did Eri tell you that?”

“No, I just picked up on stuff around the margins of what she said, and put it together just now in my imagination. I think I’m not too far off.”

“Maybe not, but I think you’re exaggerating,” Mari says. “It may be true that I’ve lived a more autonomous lifestyle than Eri. I understand that. But look at the actual results: here I am, insignificant and practically powerless. I don’t have the knowledge I should have, and I’m not all that smart. I’m not pretty, and nobody’s much concerned about me. Talk about establishing a firm self: I don’t see where I’ve managed to do that, either. I’m just stumbling around all the time in my own narrow little world. What is there about me for Eri to envy?”

“This is still kind of a preparatory stage for you,” Takahashi says. “It’s too soon to reach any conclusions. You’re probably a late bloomer.”

“That girl was nineteen, too,” Mari says.

“What girl?”

“The Chinese girl in Alphaville—all beat up and stripped naked and bloody. She was pretty. But there aren’t any preparatory stages in the world she lives in. Nobody stops to think about whether she’s a late bloomer or not. See what I mean?”

Takahashi offers his wordless affirmation.

Mari says, “The minute I saw her, I felt—really strongly—that I wanted to be her friend. And if we had met in a different place at a different time, I’m sure we could have been good friends. I’ve hardly ever felt that way about anybody. Hardly ever? Never would be more like it.”

“Hmmm.”

“But it doesn’t matter how I feel: the worlds we live in are too different. And there’s nothing I can do about it. No matter how hard I try.”

“True.”

“I can tell you this, though: I didn’t spend much time with her, and we hardly talked at all, but I feel as if she’s living inside me now. Like she’s part of me. I don’t know how to put it.”

“You can feel her pain.”

“Maybe so.”

Takahashi broods over something for a while. Then he opens his mouth and says, “I just had an idea. Why don’t you look at it this way? Say your sister is in some other Alphaville kind of place—I don’t know where—and somebody is subjecting her to meaningless violence. She’s raising wordless screams and bleeding invisible blood.”

“In a metaphorical sense?”

“Probably,” Takahashi says.

“Talking with Eri gave you this impression?”

“She’s carrying around so many problems all by herself she can’t make any headway, and she’s searching for help. She expresses those feelings by hurting herself. This is not just an impression: it’s clearer than that.”

Mari stands up from the bench and looks at the sky. Then she goes over to the swings and sits in one. The night is momentarily filled with the crackling of the dry leaves under her yellow sneakers. She touches the swing’s thick ropes as if to gauge their strength. Takahashi also leaves the bench and walks across the dried leaves to sit in the swing next to Mari’s.

“Eri’s asleep now,” Mari says, as if sharing a confession. “She’s in a really deep sleep.”

“Everybody’s asleep now,” Takahashi says. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“No, that’s not what I mean,” Mari says. “She doesn’t want to wake up.”