Aoyama shut his eyes and breathed in the smell of coffee. A drop of sweat rolled down his nose and hung perilously at the tip. It tickled him. He wiped it away. The tickling sensation crept into his nose. He inhaled sharply, trying to stifle the sneeze he felt was coming. He pushed his tongue against the roof of his mouth. He shook his head, frowning. He looked up at the ceiling, concentrating on its pleasant whiteness. It’s not the time, he told himself. The hairs in his nose trembled. He sneezed. Three times, and loud enough for anyone in the house to hear.
The phone rang. He heard footfalls coming toward the kitchen, didn’t move an inch, and obeyed the steady-nerved signaling of his well-trained mind. He always kept a spare disguise in his pockets. He reached into one of them and pinched the molded plastic nose made by an expert and quickly fit it over his own nose. His other hand went to another pocket for a pair of black-framed glasses. He put them on the bridge of his plastic nose, shoved his sun hat into an empty pocket. His fingers found the flexible, rubberlike scalp with long, reddish hair and he fit it on his head, brushing strands of hair forward above his ears and backward on the top of his head. He wasn’t working for the agency today, it was a day off, but he had his mind on the job at hand, and was always ready to refine his technique. His eyes purposely became shifting and beady, his expression falsely sinister, but relaxed.
A woman came into the kitchen, without seeing him, and went straight to the ringing phone. She answered it. She wore a floral-patterned dressing gown that looked like a worn-out satin bedcover. Aoyama looked at her bare feet and painted toenails. His eyes climbed the length of her body. She held the receiver between her tilted head and raised shoulder. She was slender, taller than Aoyama, like a stalk of tall treelike semi-tropical grass slightly bent, straining in the wind, and she was younger than him. She stood with her feet together, her eyes staring moodily at the floor, her lips firmly set, listening, with an impatient air, sighing heavily and just as heavily lifting her eyes, gazing off into space.
Aoyama couldn’t breathe. It felt like cotton was packed tightly far down his throat, and that he was lying on his back under the rippling water of a river looking up at the woman’s face. He shook his head to loosen himself from the grip of a kind of warning. He shut his eyes, the feeling went away. When he opened them, the woman was reaching out to shut off the coffeemaker.
She saw him when she turned her head, and she didn’t look surprised. His face was hot. Her face was oval, pretty and pale. Her shoulder-length hair was neatly brushed and black, and she had a long neck. He thought: She must have a body that’s not hard to look at poured into whatever she’s wearing under that spread.
She waved the receiver at him, indicating a chair at the kitchen table. He took a few steps back, keeping his narrowed eyes on her, and sat down, crossing his legs like a dandy. He drew a pack of cigarettes out of a pocket. He lit up, exhaling a pleasant cloud of smoke and watched her through it. She gave him an exquisite smile. A drop of sweat as cold as mercury toiled down the nape of his neck, blotted itself into his collar.
She didn’t remind him of any woman in particular except all the women he desired. She looked at him affectionately, returned to concentrate on whoever it was on the other end of the line. But he didn’t trust her. It won’t be long until she goes against me, he told himself. I’m just a clown that can smoke a cigarette. I don’t belong here.
“No, Newton’s not here,” the woman said at last into the phone. “You really are observant, I’ve got to give you that.”
Aoyama reached out for a grass-green ashtray and pulled it toward him, rolled the burning end of the cigarette gently on the rim, and a bit of ash came off. The woman listened to the voice on the other end of the phone.
“No, he couldn’t. Because Newton’s client didn’t show up. He wasn’t there. And you’re right back where you started.” She replied to words he couldn’t hear. Her tone was aggressive. “Well, they were always afraid of everything, weren’t they?” she went on. “What use have they ever been to him?”
Aoyama cleared his throat, the woman looked at him. He smiled apologetically, made a gesture with his hand at the pot of coffee. She nodded. Aoyama got up, looked around for a cup, the woman shook her head, cradled the receiver again, then opened a cupboard behind which half a dozen cups stood neatly in a row. She took hold of one of them and gave it to him.
He smiled weakly from the smell of her skin, an earthy humidity had seeped into his nostrils. He adjusted the glasses on his counterfeit nose. The cigarette hung loosely from a corner of his mouth and the smoke drifted upward past his eyes. He poured himself a cup of coffee, swallowed a mouthful and scalded his throat. It tasted so good that he almost forgot why he’d come to this house in the first place. The coffee gave him a feeling of kinship for the woman.
“When he gets back, I’ll tell him. But don’t waste your time calling here every ten minutes,” she insisted. “Be patient. As far as it’s within human capacity to be patient.” She hung up.
Aoyama put his cigarette out, folded his hands on the tabletop. The chair was comfortable. He looked at the cigarette stub in the ashtray, then up at the woman, who steamily ran her tongue along her lips. She was playing a role, but he didn’t laugh at her. Temptation, thought Aoyama. The skin tautened across her jaw and her face looked like a piece of pure, white marble, radiating a force that froze him in the chair. A chill crawled straight up his back and into the roots of his hair. She opened her mouth, her long white teeth sparkled.
She poured herself a cup of coffee, stirred three spoonfuls of sugar in it, making a tinkling sound with the spoon. His head bent low over the tabletop. The tinkling sound became a screaming noise and he shut his eyes. His brain turned a volume lever and made the noise many times softer than it really was. She stopped stirring. He raised his head, opened his eyes, and saw the woman put her cup down near his folded hands. She shrugged her shoulders, encouraging the dressing gown to slide down her back. She caught it with her slender fingers and draped it over the back of the chair opposite him. She gave Aoyama a bright smile.
She wore a sliplike undergarment made of silk that hung to the middle of her thighs. She sat down. Her arms were muscular. She turned her head slowly, forcefully to the left as far as she could, visibly straining her neck, and with the motion, the thin straps of the chemise rolled appealingly on her collarbone. She brushed her hand across her chest, wiping away invisible particles of dust, and her nipples almost pierced the plum-colored silk that clung to her pale skin. Aoyama’s scalp started to itch beneath the latex stretched across his head.
“I don’t know you,” she stated flatly. She sipped from her cup, holding it steadily with both hands. “If you’re looking for Newton, which I doubt, you’re out of luck, and you already know he’s not here. Unless you’re deaf. In which case I’ve got to shout.” She paused. “There’s no one here but me. And that makes it convenient for you.”
Aoyama swallowed another mouthful of coffee. He listened to her. He listened to people doing the talking because that’s how he got the kind of information he needed for his job. He smiled sincerely at her. It’s a good pitch, and I let her make it, he thought. But what she doesn’t know would fill the Sea of Japan.
“I’m not here for Newton. I don’t even know him. And I don’t want to know him,” he said calmly.