“Cool.”
That was pretty much our whole conversation.
My girlfriend was there, too, quietly thumbing through those geography books, as if taking a trip down memory lane. She went through a set of flash cards of “Japan’s 47 Prefectures”. Chock-full of handy statistics: co-ordinates, population, resources, climate, etc. She lingered on the last of the forty-seven, Okinawa, just sort of hovering there. Then she said something.
Not words, really. If I had to write it down, I’d go with something like: N-mwah!
Me: Whatwhat?
Her: This.
She had her finger on it. This funny triangle, sort of in the middle of the ocean… Holy shit! It looked exactly like the one on her right breast. Miyakojima.
One of the islands of Okinawa (formerly the Kingdom of Ryukyu).
Unbelievable.
She’d found the other shape. On the left, Hokkaido. On the right, Miyakojima.
Her areolar oracle had been revealed in full.
It was in Japan all along. Talk about a serious short circuit. We’d been blind—hyperopic, at least. What made us so sure that her Shangri-La wasn’t in Japan? Another misreading in my life of misreadings.
In that moment, we understood. Setting foot on Miyakojima was the goal—the way out. But this story is a little longer than that, so bear with me.
Her: I need money for the flight.
Me: Right, of course.
Her: But that’s it, right?
Me: Guess so.
Her: Like, I need money for food and a room. But that won’t be a problem—as long as I get a job.
Me: And, like, stay there a while?
Her (looking into the distance): What’s stopping me? I mean, it’s Japan. I don’t need a passport. I don’t need a work visa.
Me: But what about school?
Her: First things first. My Promised Land awaits!
Fair enough.
If this was a kabuki play, this would be the place where the wooden clappers get faster and faster. Things were really moving now. All we needed was 20,000 yen each. We didn’t really think about questions like when or how long (i.e., winter break or spring break?). For the time being, all we needed was capital.
We started job-hunting. Easy enough. Campus was full of flyers for “short-term high-income employment opportunities”. They all looked like menus from subpar family restaurants. I weighed a few options before signing up with a security company that had me waving a blinking orange stick—directing traffic around construction sites.
She was looking at the same flyers, but ended up, through a friend, scoring a plum job at a beach snack bar. Somewhere on the Boso Peninsula, on the side that looks at Tokyo Bay.
The summer before that—summer 1993—was unseasonably cold. Like, record lows. Crops were lost, meaning rice shortages, and the Heisei Rice Riots. Nobody was rushing to the beach. Boso Peninsula was empty, like a ski resort in a snowless winter. But that was 1993. This summer—1994—was ultra-hot. Forty-year highs. Tokyo hit 39.1 degrees in August. HOTTEST DAY SINCE WWII. Air conditioners were selling like hot cakes… And keeping cool was serious business.
“The beach is waaaaay packed,” she said after her third or fourth day. “It’s insane.”
Why are my summers always cursed? I guess I should be grateful that my fifth-grade summer died suddenly and didn’t drag on forever. This time around, summer was endless. And ruthless. University classes were slated to start in mid-September, and her beach gig was supposed to wrap up by the end of August. That gave us a couple of weeks in between, for ourselves. That’s why I put up with it.
With the reality that we couldn’t just be together whenever we wanted, not now.
We’d discovered the undeniable truth that making money means selling time. Selling time means time apart. Her bed was no longer Aladdin’s magic carpet—always good for a shag. We tried to make things work. After my job, I’d go right to her place in Komagome. Let myself in, wait for her.
But Boso isn’t exactly close. It’s in the next prefecture. I’m pretty sure she had to change trains at Tokyo Station to get there. She had to be there really early to open up. Sometimes she stayed late to spend time with co-workers, too. At first, it was hard to pin down when she was coming home. After a little while, though, she stopped coming back at all. She started staying with a girl she knew in Chiba.
“If I head back now, there’s no way I’ll make it to work tomorrow morning…”
Says the voice on the other end of the line.
But why am I playing the obedient husband? Alone in her apartment, waiting for the phone to ring.
Then the thing that had to happen happened.
But wait. Not yet. I have a confession to make. I need to be honest. I was hardly innocent myself. I made my own mistakes. With a twenty-something female security guard from work. I mean, she was friendly. And we… got friendly. Not just once. Four times—no more. “Four”, by the way, doesn’t reflect the number of times in a single night. Saying “she seduced me” wouldn’t be completely honest either. Sex was in the air. In the workplace. And good luck curbing the sexual urges of a nineteen-year-old male.
At first, I just acted cool—like she’d never find out. And she wouldn’t. The two of them lived in different worlds.
There was zero chance of them crossing paths.
But that doesn’t mean I got off scot-free.
Something I’ve noticed: whatever happens to me happens to those around me. She was hard at work at the beach—and, just like that, two weeks had gone by without us sharing a sack. There was one time we got close, except: “I’m on my period.” Fact is, she was barely ever at Casa Komagome at this point. Really, I should have been paying the rent. Then it hit me: What if she’s sleeping with someone else? Where did that suspicion come from? From my own indiscretions, obviously. That’s what got me thinking.
Thinking? More like I was consumed by jealousy.
But I tried to hide it. I mean, I had no proof—and, more to the point, I had no right.
I wanted to be optimistic. Like, if something’s going on, maybe it’s just meaningless sex… right?
Crap, this sucks.
I had a pretty good guess who the mystery lover might be. “Yakisoba Man”. A local surfer she worked with. He was older than her (older than us, I guess…), and apparently he could fry noodles like nobody else. The second I heard about this dude, something didn’t sit right. I mean, he’s too healthy—a healthy mind in a healthy body. Nothing like me. I’d never touched a surfboard, and instant ramen was the fullest extent of my noodle abilities. Don’t get me wrong, I have some pretty strong feelings about Peyoung sauce, but I couldn’t compete with this motherfucker.
I break the news to myself: “Listen, man, chances are good she’s sleeping with Yakisoba Man.”
“I see. Is it fatal?”
“No,” I tell myself. “Because I love her.”
I won’t push it, I can’t. It’s just temporary. It’ll end when Boso closes. Things can go back to the way they were—our love is strong. As long as I don’t blow it now. September will make everything right. We’ll be back in our honeymoon suite in Komagome. I mean, Yakisoba Man’s geographically out of range—he lives in Chiba. So I keep my mouth shut and wait for the tide to turn.
But that didn’t happen. September rolled around, and she was still hanging out in Boso, not coming home at night.
I think it was a few days into the month—maybe a week?
This memory has no when. I know. On some subconscious level, I want to forget, right? Some complex? Some deep desire? But I definitely remember where I was. In the apartment in Komagome. Her apartment—but she’s not there. I’m waiting for her. Waiting for that ominous sound.