South of the Border, West of the Sun Page 0,64

by little, this is how she would become mine.

“I want to know everything there is to know about you,” I said to her. “What kind of life you’ve had till now, where you live. Whether you’re married or not Everything. No more secrets, ‘cause I can’t take any more.”

“Tomorrow,” she said. “Tomorrow I’ll tell you everything. So don’t ask any more till then. Stay the way you are today. If I did tell you now, you’d never be able to go back to the way you were.”

“I’m not going back anyway. And who knows, tomorrow might never come. If it doesn’t I’ll end up never knowing.”

“I wish tomorrow would never come,” she said. “Then you’ll never know.”

I was about to speak, but she hushed me up with a kiss.

“I wish a bald vulture would gobble up tomorrow,” she said. “Would it make sense for a bald vulture to do that?”

“That makes sense. Bald vultures eat up art, and tomorrows as well.”

“And regular vultures eat–”

“–the bodies of nameless people,” I said. “Very different from bald vultures.”

“Bald vultures eat up art and tomorrows, then?”

“Right”

“A nice combination.”

“And for dessert they take a bite out of Books in Print.”

Shimamoto laughed. “Anyhow, until tomorrow,” she said.

And tomorrow came. When I woke up, I was alone. The rain had stopped, and bright, transparent morning light shone in through the bedroom window. The clock showed it was past nine. Shimamoto wasn’t in bed, though a slight depression in the pillow beside me hinted at where she had lain. She was nowhere to be seen. I got out of bed and went to the living room to look for her. I looked in the kitchen, the children’s room, and the bathroom. Nothing. Her clothes were gone, her shoes as well. I took a deep breath, trying to pull myself back to reality. But that reality was like nothing I’d ever seen before: a reality that didn’t seem to fit.

I dressed and went outside. The BMW was parked where I left it the night before. Maybe she’d wakened early and gone out for a walk. I searched for her all around the house, then got in the car and drove as far as the nearest town. But no Shimamoto. I went back to the cottage, but she was not there. Thinking maybe she’d left a note, I scoured the house. But there was nothing. Not a trace that she had ever been there.

Without her, the house was empty and stifling. The air was filled with a gritty layer of dust, which stuck in my throat with each breath. I remembered the record, the old Nat King Cole record she gave me. But search as I might it was nowhere to be found. She must have taken it with her.

Once again Shimamoto had disappeared from my life. This time, though, leaving nothing to pin my hopes on. No more probablys. No more for a whiles.

15

I got back to Tokyo a little before four. Hoping against hope that Shimamoto would return, I had stayed at the cottage in Hakone until past noon. Waiting was torture, so I killed time by cleaning the kitchen and rearranging all the clothes in the house. The silence was oppressive; the occasional sounds of birds and cars struck me as unnatural, out of sync. Every sound was twisted and crushed beneath the weight of some unstoppable force. And in the midst of this, I waited for something to happen. Something’s got to happen, I felt sure. It can’t end like this.

But nothing happened. Once she made up her mind, Shimamoto wasn’t the type of woman to change it I had to get back to Tokyo. It seemed farfetched, but if she did try to get in touch with me, she’d do it through the club. At any rate, staying in the cottage any longer made no sense.

Driving back, I had to force myself to concentrate. I missed curves, nearly ran red lights, and swerved into the wrong lane. When I arrived at the club parking lot, I called home from a phone booth. I told Yukiko I was back and that I was going straight to work.

“You had me worried. At least you could have called.” Her voice sounded hard and dry.

“I’m fine. Not to worry,” I said. I had no idea how my voice sounded to her. “I don’t have much time, so I’m going to the office to check over accounts, then directly on to the club.”

At the office, I sat at my desk