South of the Border, West of the Sun Page 0,58

wasn’t smiling anymore. I could make out a faint glimmer deep within her eyes.

“Shimamoto-san, I don’t know anything about you,” I said. “Every time I look in your eyes, I feel that. The most I can say about you is how you were at age twelve. The Shimamoto-san who lived in the neighborhood and was in my class. But that was twenty-five years ago. The Twist was in, and people still rode in streetcars. No cassette tapes, no tampons, no bullet train, no diet food. I’m talking long ago. Other than what I know about you then, I’m in the dark.”

“Is that what you see in my eyes? That you know nothing about me?”

“Nothing’s written in your eyes,” I replied. “It’s written in my eyes. I just see the reflection in yours.”

“Hajime,” she said, “I know I should be telling you more. I do. There’s nothing I can do about it. So please don’t say anything further.”

“Like I said, I’m just mouthing off to myself. Don’t give it a second thought.”

She raised a hand to her collar and fingered the fish brooch. And quietly listened to the piano trio. When their performance ended, she clapped and took a sip of her cocktail. Finally she let out a long sigh and turned to me. “Six months is a long time,” she said. “But most likely, probably, I’ll be able to come here for a while.”

“The old magic words,” I said.

“Magic words?”

“Probably and for a while.”

She smiled and looked at me. She took a cigarette out of her small bag and lit it with a lighter.

“Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I’m gazing at a distant star,” I said. “It’s dazzling, but the light is from tens of thousands of years ago. Maybe the star doesn’t even exist anymore. Yet sometimes that light seems more real to me than anything.”

Shimamoto said nothing.

“You’re here,” I continued. “At least you look as if you’re here. But maybe you aren’t. Maybe it’s just your shadow. The real you may be someplace else. Or maybe you already disappeared, a long, long time ago. I reach out my hand to see, but you’ve hidden yourself behind a cloud of probablys. Do you think we can go on like this forever?”

“Possibly. For the time being,” she answered.

“I see I’m not the only one with a strange sense of humor,” I said. And smiled.

She smiled too. The rain has stopped, without a sound there’s a break in the clouds, and the very first rays of sunlight shine through—that kind of smile. Small, warm lines at the corners of her eyes, holding out the promise of something wonderful.

“Hajime,” she said, “I brought you a present.”

She passed me a beautifully wrapped package with a red bow.

“Looks like a record,” I said, gauging its size and shape.

“It’s a Nat King Cole record. The one we used to listen to together. Remember? I’m giving it to you.”

“Thanks. But don’t you want it? As a keepsake from your father?”

“I have more. This one’s for you.”

I gazed at the record, wrapped and beribboned. Before long, all the sounds around me—the clamor of the people at the bar, the piano trio’s music—all faded in the distance, as if the tide had gone out. Only she and I remained. Everything else was an illusion, papier-mâché props on a stage. What existed, what was real, was the two of us.

“Shimamoto-san,” I said, “what do you say we go somewhere and listen to this together?”

“That would be wonderful,” she said.

“I have a small cottage in Hakone. It’s empty now, and there’s a stereo there. This time of night, we could drive there in an hour and a half.”

She looked at her watch. And then at me. “You want to go there now?”

“Yes,” I said.

She narrowed her eyes. “But it’s already past ten. If we went to Hakone now, it would be very late when we came back. Don’t you mind?”

“No. Do you?”

Once more she looked at her watch. And closed her eyes for a good ten seconds. When she reopened them, her face was filled with an entirely new expression, as if she’d gone far away, left something there, and returned. “All right,” she said. “Let’s go.”

I called to the acting manager and asked him to take care of things in my absence—lock up the register, organize the receipts, and deposit the profits in the bank’s night deposit box. I walked over to my condo and drove the BMW out of the underground garage. And called my