He sat there a while silently nodding his head. He felt that time stood still, but the second hand on his wristwatch moved steadily forward. She looked bitterly at him, he gazed vacantly at her.
“As long as we breathe we can still change our minds,” she said in a whisper. “Once upon a time there was a man named Aoyama.”
“It’s a circus here,” he said. “How did you know my name?”
“I don’t like you. But right now you’re the man for me.”
Aoyama smiled at something far away and that something smiled back at him.
“A virtuous man has been turned into a horse,” he said.
“If anyone’s interested, they can come and get you when I’m through with you and lock you up some place where you’ll get plenty of oats morning and night.” She raised her eyebrows comically. “If that’ll make you happy.”
“That’s not exactly what I meant. You don’t know the half of it.”
“Half of what?”
He wanted to take her by the throat, by the hair, and smash her head into the refrigerator. And he still wanted to fuck her. He laughed voluntarily, too loud. He shifted a bit in his chair.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve.” She giggled maliciously.
“Yeah.”
“I’ll tell you the half of it I know,” she said. “You’re going to forget whatever else it is you’ve got on your mind. You’re going to concentrate on me because that’s what I’m telling you to do. If you think you can do anything about it you’re way off in some faraway place where there’s no reality like the reality we’ve got here. It won’t kill you. It’ll probably do you some good. You don’t have a clue about responsibility.”
Her breath came and went like a ventilating system shuffling gusts of stale air.
“Just put it where it belongs,” she went on. “Right here.”
She slumped languidly in the chair, maintaining her balance, moved her knees farther apart, showing the taut muscles that were pulling on the inside of her thighs. They looked like something he could sink his teeth into. He wanted to do it right now. He wanted to swallow her. Just a bite. But she wasn’t going to let go easily once she got hold of him. He showed his teeth in a grin, appreciating every inch of her. His eyes watered. His chin went up and down. She held him there. He didn’t know how she was doing it. He almost wished Newton, whoever he was, was here.
“It doesn’t make any difference what you think,” he said at last. He looked down at his erection. Then his voice climbed an octave as he was saying: “No. None at all. No nerve. Zero.”
“A man of genius gets drowned in his own talent,” she stated flatly.
Aoyama looked away from her. He touched his face in various places. His nose hung down almost to his upper lip, his cheeks and neck were flushed. He straightened the nose and he straightened himself in the chair and he returned the woman’s intense gaze. Say what you’re thinking, he told himself. Say it. He opened and closed his mouth. But he wordlessly shrugged his shoulders. There was nothing he could say that would change anything.
She didn’t laugh at him because he had nothing to say. A vein distended on her forehead with the seeming intention to burst. He narrowed his eyes and fidgeted in the chair, waiting for the spray of a ruptured vein. He snapped his mouth shut.
He felt like he weighed nothing at all. He shielded his eyes with his hands, then peered cautiously between his fingers. The features of her face were abnormally enlarged. The wet spot on her panties went on winking indecently at him. She opened her mouth, a bubble of saliva formed at the opening, and a strand of saliva dribbled out of it, streaming downward. When it touched one of her breasts it sizzled and evaporated from an intense heat.
At last, Aoyama stared at her in a wide-eyed daze. He saw her pale skin and hard bones under nearly transparent skin, a head of reddish-blue flames and a gaping red mouth that twitched violently, and the mouth offering him its sweetness was drawing him forward like a poisonous magnet. Not wanting to open his mouth, not wanting to kiss her, he opened his mouth. Not wanting to move, afraid of what she might do, he moved toward her.
She curled her painted toes around the edge of the table, her green eyes spun in their sockets. There was a strange light in them as if, in a trance, she were pursuing a dream. Aoyama snapped his mouth shut with all the force of a steam-shovel, then with a strength that surprised him he leaned back in his chair. Her gaping, watery mouth might have swallowed him. His lips curved up in a faint smile that contained both hope and anxiety. He swallowed hard, trying to get rid of the heavy thing in his throat.
It was now that he’d have to do something to put some distance between himself and the bitch with flaming hair and green eyes. He figured the moment was right because there wouldn’t be another moment like it, and if he waited any longer he’d never get out of the house. Aoyama grabbed the edge of the table with one hand and shoved it just hard enough to knock the rear legs of her chair out from under her. She fell backward with the chair and landed with a thud on the linoleum floor, banging her elbows and the back of her head and letting out a shriek, cursing loudly.
He looked over the tabletop at her. He blinked, opened his mouth, held it open and closed it hard. The woman’s hair was spread out around her head like a black sea and her head lolled on her bent neck. Strands of black hair were stuck together across her forehead.
“Maybe I don’t know exactly why you’re doing it,” he said, “but I know what you want and you’re not going to get it.”
Her eyes focused, stared uncomprehendingly at him.
“That bothers me,” she said.
“Bothers you?” He raised an eyebrow slightly. “I know what you are — an oracle of some things and not others.”
“I can’t stand arguments,” she said. Her body gave a shudder, her mouth twisted and her eyes goggled.
He had nothing to say because he knew that he was right about her. He frowned, the frown became a grin, and he shrugged and said to himself: Maybe I’m right, but what does it matter?
“If only you’d been somebody else,” she lamented while sprawled on the floor. Her chemise was twisted around her waist. “There’s something heroic here between my legs!”
A voice came from him that wasn’t his voice: “Where do you want it?”
He pressed his fingers against the bones of his face. He felt like laughing.
She let out a long sigh. She put out her tongue and licked her shoulder, then turned her gaze to him.
“I don’t want anything from you,” he said.
She propped herself on her bruised elbows.
“I want something from you.”
“I want you to leave me alone.”
“Quit worrying.” The woman smiled.
“For the rest of my life I want you to leave me alone.”
“The rest of your life is a matter of minutes if you don’t fuck me,” she said.
Bright red flowers blossomed and burned on her chest. He stared at the attractive patterns they made on her skin, then his eyes narrowed with disappointment.
“I hate to see a woman like you in a vulnerable position,” he said, moistening his lips.
“Bring your face over here so I can smack it.” She aimed a dim but dangerous smile at him.
Aoyama shook his head.
“Newton’s not going to like it,” she warned him.
“Fuck Newton.”
“I already have.”
He looked at the lustful expression on her face.
“What can I say after I say I’m sorry?” he said.
“You can tell me you want it, anyway.”
“Who do you think you’re kidding?”