Villain a Novel (2010) (26 page)

So what I was saying was, other than Mia-chan I must have met about ten other girls on online dating sites. Mia-chan would have been the second, or maybe the third one I met. Her face and body weren’t exactly my type, but when I think about it, now I can see she was a kind, gentle sort of girl. When she showed up for our date and immediately asked me to reimburse her for the taxi it did upset me a little, I’ll admit it, but still there was something, I don’t know, sort of kind about her.

I mean, take a look at me. I’m fat and hairy, and look like a bulldog. No way I’m going to be popular with the ladies, and I’m not. But even a guy like me, if a girl says one nice thing it makes me feel like I’m not completely hopeless. Mia-chan was good at making a guy feel like that. But I could be wrong.

We were in the hotel, just after we’d done it, and I was about to pay her. All of a sudden she goes, “I wonder if we hadn’t met in the dating site if we would have hooked up.”

“You never would have given me the time of day,” I said, laughing, but Mia-chan, with this sort of sad look on her face, said, “I wonder. There is the age-difference thing, but when I was in junior high, I really liked my biology teacher and he was kind of chubby, too.”

Yeah, I know it was just an empty compliment. I was handing over the money to her, and threw in an extra two thousand yen. But Miachan seemed like she really meant it. She had this look on her face like,
Yeah, maybe if we had just run across each other on the street, we might have gotten together
.

Men are idiots and we never forget words like that. Oh, well, guys who are popular would forget it right away, but for someone like me who has worried about how to talk to girls ever since college, even a transparent, empty compliment stays with you. It gives you more confidence. This was a long time ago, but back when I was in college one of the older girls in the tennis club I was in said, “Hayashi-kun, you understand people right away. When I’m with you, I feel like
you see right through me.” It’s weird, but after that I came to rely on what she said. Whenever I wondered what kind of man I was, I always remembered what that girl told me.… She told me later she had no memory of ever having said that, but to me these were truly important words. It might be a bit of an exaggeration, but over the past twenty years those words have helped keep me going as a man.

You must think this is pretty stupid, right? That I’m a real loser. But a guy like me needs a woman like that. It doesn’t matter if it’s just transparent flattery. Without that, I’d be left with nothing.

Mia-chan was the kind of girl who said those things. Maybe not consciously, but she’s the sort of girl who might say something that a guy like me would cling to for twenty years.

When I heard that she’d been murdered, it made me sad. She’s just a girl I met online and saw only once, but I’ll never forget her. “The guys I respect the most,” she told me when I took her to an Italian restaurant, “are the ones who know good food.”

After he’d finished breakfast on Saturday, Yuichi went out without telling anyone where he was going. Fusae thought he was going out for a drive as usual and would be back for dinner, so she made meatballs, one of his favorites. But Yuichi never came back, so she went ahead and ate the slightly too sweet meatballs herself.

On Sunday morning he still hadn’t come home. Yuichi often went out, aimlessly, on weekends and spent the night away, but for Fusae, being alone in the house only brought back unpleasant memories. Memories of Dr. Tsutsumishita—the man who held those health seminars at the community center—and being surrounded by rough young men who’d forced her to buy that expensive herbal medicine. It was such a frightening experience that she remained upset and shaky.

In the afternoon she called Yuichi’s cell phone. He picked up right away.

“What d’you want?” he said, like he couldn’t be bothered.

“Where are you?” Fusae asked.

“Saga.”

“What are you doing in Saga?”

Fusae had expected that he would be driving and would hang up right away, but when he didn’t she asked him this.

Yuichi didn’t respond. “What d’you want?” he repeated.

Fusae asked him when he would be back. Again Yuichi evaded her question, merely saying, “I won’t be needing dinner,” and hung up.

After this, Fusae went to the hospital in Nagasaki to see Katsuji. She listened to his usual complaints about the nurses for a good half hour, then she thanked the nurses and left.

In the bus on the way back the voices of those men forcing her to buy the herbal medicine came back to her in a rush.

“What d’you mean you’re not going to buy the medicine!”

“Just who the hell do you think you’re dealing with, old woman?”

“I don’t care if you don’t sign, we’re still gonna come to your place every single day!”

The men’s voices pulled her back to that place and time, and seated on the special Silver Seat reserved for the elderly in the bus, she began to shake uncontrollably.

Yuichi finally came back home after eleven that night. As she heard the front door open, Fusae, in bed, felt relieved and called out, “I’m glad you’re back! You want to take a bath?” she went on. She hesitated to get up out of bed, which was just getting warm.

“Nah, I already took one,” she heard Yuichi say from beyond the sliding paper door.

Fusae eventually left her bedroom and followed after Yuichi into the kitchen. Her bare feet on the hallway floor were ice cold. Yuichi had taken some sausages out of the refrigerator.

“You must be hungry,” Fusae said.

“Not really,” Yuichi said, but he ripped open the plastic package with his teeth and crammed a sausage into his mouth.

“You want me to make something?”

“No. I already had dinner.”

Fusae called out to Yuichi as he was exiting the kitchen.

“What?” Yuichi said, annoyed, as he continued to gnaw on the sausage.

Fusae felt oppressed by the look on his face and she sank limply to a chair. She hadn’t planned to tell him, but the words just spurted out.

“The other day on the way back from the hospital … You remember the man who held the seminar at the community center? … The one about herbal medicine?”

This was her own house, and this was Yuichi with her, so she was safe, but still she was on edge, as if she would start shaking again at any moment. Just putting that experience into words frightened her. She had to force herself to breathe.

But just as she was going to continue, the cell phone in Yuichi’s pocket rang. Without a word to her, Yuichi answered.

“Hello? … Ah, yeah. Yeah, I just got back.… Tomorrow? … I have to get up at five, but it’s okay.… Yeah, me, too.”

As he turned the doorknob, Yuichi looked happy.

“Yeah, okay. I’ll call you tomorrow.… Huh? … Yeah, I know. Okay, then.… What? I told you it’s okay.…”

Fusae sat there eavesdropping. Just when the conversation seemed about over, it started up again. Yuichi took his hand off the doorknob, ran his fingers along the pillar, and turned over a page on the calendar that was pasted to the wall.

It had to be a girl on the other end, probably the person he spent the weekend with. Fusae had never seen Yuichi look so happy. Well, maybe he was happy at other times, but secretly, somewhere Fusae was unaware of. In the twenty years since she’d taken Yuichi in, she’d never seen him with such a look of utter bliss.

Toward evening several groups of customers came in all at once. Mitsuyo took care of two men in their midtwenties. As they pawed through the racks of suits, their banter was like a comedy routine; from what Mitsuyo heard, she gathered that the shorter of the two had just had a successful interview for a new job and had dragged his friend along with him.

“I’ve always worn work clothes, so I’m kind of lost when it comes to choosing a suit.”

“Yeah, but usually when guys buy suits they bring their wives along.”

“Don’t be an idiot. If I bring her with me, she’s going to choose the cheapest possible outfit, from the suit to the shirts and ties.”

“So what? You’re planning to buy the top-of-the-line brand?”

“No, not really. Just something in the middle, you know?”

They went on, grabbing one suit after another from the rack and holding it up to see how it looked.

“They’re so young looking,” Mitsuyo mused, “but already married.” She kept her distance, patiently waiting for them to ask her something.

The floor manager, Kazuko, stood over by the fitting room, tape measure around her neck. She’d just finished a break and Mitsuyo had asked her if she had a little free time tonight. “Maybe we could go out for a drink,” she said.

Kazuko tilted her head at the unexpected invitation, then replied, “That shouldn’t be a problem. My husband’s going to be a little late tonight. But where should we go? How about that new
kaiten sushi
place next to the new bar, the Bikkuri?” Kazuko seemed unusually up for the idea.

Once they decided on a place, Mitsuyo was about to go back to her station, but Kazuko grabbed her hand. “You took last Saturday off,” she said with a grin, “so I was kind of wondering what was up.… Any good news?”

“No, nothing really,” Mitsuyo said. “I just thought we hadn’t gone out for dinner in a long time.” She managed to get away, but couldn’t keep from smiling.

After leaving the love hotel on Saturday, she ended up spending the whole day with Yuichi. They’d eaten eel, and were planning to go to the lighthouse, but as they left the restaurant it started pouring so they gave up and went to another hotel.

On Sunday evening Yuichi drove her back to her apartment and they had one long last kiss in the car. That was two days ago, and Monday evening they’d talked for three hours on the phone. Tamayo had come back from work while they were still on the phone, so the last thirty minutes Mitsuyo sat on the staircase outside in the freezing wind.

Less than a day had passed since then, but she was dying to hear his voice again.

She looked up and noticed that the two-man comedy team was rummaging through the rack along the wall. The suits on this rack were three thousand yen more than the others and no extra trousers were included.

“Oh, I went to see that new movie
Fishing Nut—
the comedy,” one of the men said.

“By yourself?”

“No way. I took my son.”

“To that kind of movie?”

“Kids like them.”

“Are you kidding? The only kind my little one’s interested in are the anime specials.”

Though in their midtwenties, they acted more like college buddies. But here they were talking about their kids and picking out suits.

Mitsuyo watched them, amused. The men may have sensed her presence, for the shorter one turned to her and said, “Excuse me. Could I try this one on?”

His friend grabbed it away and teased him. “You gonna go with this one? Kind of looks like a host in a bar or something.”

The first guy, who seemed more easygoing, said, “You think?” and gave the suit another look.

“Why don’t you try it on?” Mitsuyo smiled. “It does have a certain shine to the fabric, but if you wear a white shirt with it it’ll look more subdued.”

Her advice seemed to give the man confidence again, and he strode over to the fitting room. His friend, like someone not really in the market for a suit, casually flipped through the price tags.

The suit was a perfect fit. Mitsuyo handed him a white shirt to see how it would look, and the combination went well, strangely enough, with his baby face.

“How do you like it?” she asked as the man turned from side to side, checking himself out in the mirror. His friend had sidled over and said, “You’re right. It really doesn’t look all that gaudy.” In the cramped changing room the man nodded in the mirror to Mitsuyo and his friend.

Mitsuyo took her well-worn tape measure from her pocket and measured the cuffs to see how much would need to be taken up.

When it rains it pours: there was one customer after another, not just browsing but actually buying, and she sold a number of suits.

The store finally closed for the day, and at the table next to the register Mitsuyo was going through the day’s sales receipts in the half-darkened floor. “This only happens on the one day we plan to go out for a drink,” she said.

Kazuko, herself with a fistful of receipts, said, “You got that right.”

Mitsuyo nodded a reply and checked the clock. Eight forty-five. By this time she’d normally have changed and be pedaling home on her bike.

“Is it going to take you much longer?” asked Kazuko, who had already finished sorting out her own paperwork.

“Give me another fifteen minutes,” Mitsuyo said as she flipped through the receipts.

“I’ll wait for you in the break room,” Kazuko said, and went downstairs. Mitsuyo was left alone on the half-lit, gloomy floor, her legs chilly now that the heat had been turned off.

Right then she heard the ring tone on her cell phone, which she’d left on the register stand. She reached for it, thinking it was Tamayo, but saw Yuichi’s name instead. Her thumb still stuck in the sheaf of receipts, she picked it up with her other hand.