Villain a Novel (2010) (27 page)

“Hi, it’s me,” she heard Yuichi say. Looking around to make sure she was alone, Mitsuyo answered happily, “Hi! What’s up?”

“You still at work?” he asked.

“Yeah. Why?”

“Do you have plans today?”

“By today, do you mean right now?” Her happy voice echoed in the empty floor. “Aren’t you in Nagasaki? Did you finish work already?” she asked.

“I finished at six. I drove my own car to the construction site today, and was thinking about going to see you right after work.”

The signal was cutting in and out, as if he were driving already.

“Where are you?” Mitsuyo asked. Before she realized it she was standing, and her thumb had slipped out of the sheaf of receipts.

“I’m almost on the highway.”

“Highway? You mean the Saga Yamato?”

Mitsuyo glanced toward the window. From the Saga Yamato interchange it took only ten minutes to get here. She sat back down. “I wish you’d told me sooner you were coming,” she pouted happily.

They agreed to meet in the parking lot of the fast-food place next door, and Mitsuyo hung up. An almost painful thrill of joy shot
through her as she thought of Yuichi coming to see her so unexpectedly on a weekday night.

As she quickly checked the receipts, she could picture Yuichi’s car whizzing down the streets. With each receipt she stamped, she felt his car get that much closer.

She rushed through her receipts in five minutes. She turned off the rest of the lights on the floor, and as she ran into the locker room on the first floor she found Kazuko there, already in street clothes, pouring a cup of strong-smelling
dokudami
herbal tea from the thermos she always carried with her.

“That was fast.”

“Uh … yeah.” For a moment Mitsuyo was at a loss for words. She hadn’t forgotten about their plan to go have a drink, but things had changed so quickly she hadn’t had time to formulate an excuse.

“What’s the matter?” Seeing Mitsuyo so flustered, Kazuko was worried.

“Well, it’s just …”

“What’s wrong? Did something happen?”

“No, nothing. I just, ah, had a phone call.…”

“Phone call? From who?”

Mitsuyo still faltered. She wanted to tell Kazuko of her change of plans, of meeting Yuichi, but somehow the words wouldn’t come.

Kazuko watched Mitsuyo carefully. “How about we go next time? Any time’s fine with me.” A meaningful smile crossed her lips.

“Sorry,” Mitsuyo said.

“Your boyfriend decided to come see you all of a sudden, is that it?” Kazuko smiled, unfazed by the abrupt change of plans. “I was pretty sure you had a boyfriend. I mean you took a day off on the weekend, and you’ve been floating around with this happy look on your face the last few days.”

“I’m really sorry,” Mitsuyo apologized again.

“Don’t worry about it.… So, is he from Saga?”

“No, from Nagasaki.”

“He suddenly decided to come all the way from Nagasaki? I guess this isn’t the time to go out for a drink with me! Come on, you’d better
change.” Mitsuyo was standing there like a statue and Kazuko gave her a friendly pat on the rump to get her moving.

After Kazuko had left and Mitsuyo was alone in the locker room, she hurriedly changed out of her uniform. As she was changing, her cell phone rang with a message from Yuichi.
I’m here
, it said.

Glad I wore the leather jacket today
, Mitsuyo thought. The down jacket she usually wore had a dirty collar. That morning she’d pondered whether to wear it one more day before sending it to the cleaners, and had decided against it.

This was the same leather jacket she’d worn when she met Yuichi that past weekend. She’d bought the jacket a year ago, when she and Tamayo had gone shopping in Hakata. She’d hesitated over the price—¥110,000—but in the end had decided to go ahead and splurge.

She locked the locker room, handed the key to the night watchman, and left by the back door. The cold wind whipped at her feet and she pulled her muffler tight. The huge parking lot was a sea of white lines, and beyond the fence was the fallow field and a steel pylon.

She turned and saw the familiar white car parked next to the fast-food place. The place wasn’t crowded and Yuichi’s car, polished to perfection, was the only thing sparkling under the streetlights. Mitsuyo walked along the highway, hurrying to the parking lot next door.

As she entered the parking lot, the headlights of Yuichi’s car came on. He must have been watching her all the way over. Mitsuyo gave a small wave to the dark interior of the car. As she got closer Yuichi snapped open the passenger-side door from inside. As soon as it opened, the interior light flicked on and she could see him, still dressed in his work clothes.

“I’m freezing,” Mitsuyo said, shivering as she hurried inside and sat down. She hadn’t met his eyes as she did, and the car again was dark inside. “Did you really come straight from work?” she asked, turning toward him.

“If I’d gone home first I’d have been even later,” Yuichi said, turning up the heater.

“You should have called me sooner.”

“I was thinking of it, but figured you were still at work.”

“If I couldn’t see you today what were you gonna do?” she teased.

“If I couldn’t see you, I guess I’d just go home,” he answered solemnly.

Mitsuyo placed her hand on top of his, which was resting on the gearshift. It may have been his work clothes, but this time, the car smelled old and dirty.

The car stayed for a time in the fast-food-restaurant parking lot, and didn’t move. Meanwhile, three other groups of customers had exited the restaurant and driven off. No other cars replaced them, and as the number of cars decreased it felt as if only theirs was left, like a small boat in a vast sea.

Minutes passed and Mitsuyo’s fingers remained entwined with his. Wordlessly their fingers spoke to each other.

“You have to go to work early tomorrow?” Mitsuyo asked as she gripped his middle finger. On the highway beyond the fence a car sped up.

“I get up at five-thirty,” Yuichi said, stroking her wrist with his thumb.

“Doesn’t it take about two hours from here to Nagasaki? We don’t have much time.”

“I just wanted to see you.…”

The digital clock on the dashboard showed 9:18.

“You have to go back, right?” Mitsuyo asked.

The thumb stopped stroking her. Yuichi paused. “Yeah. If I don’t go back tonight, I’ll have to get up at three,” he said, forcing a smile.

I wanted to see you so much. I just had to see you, so I drove here right from work
. Yuichi didn’t put it into words, but his fingers conveyed this message clearly as he stroked her wrist.

They could go to a love hotel now and spend a couple of hours together. But then he’d have to drive back to Nagasaki. That meant
he’d get home around one a.m. Even if he went to sleep right away, Yuichi would have to go to his exhausting job with only four hours of sleep.

Two hours is fine
, Mitsuyo thought,
as long as I can be with him. But I want him to get as much sleep as he can, too—even an extra hour
.

“If only my sister weren’t at home.…” Mitsuyo surprised herself. She’d never thought of her sister as a bother before. She’d always worried instead about when Tamayo would be back.

“You want to go to a … hotel?” Yuichi asked. He seemed hesitant, as if worried about tomorrow morning.

“But if we go to a hotel it’ll be really late when you go home.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” Yuichi’s fingers on top of the gearshift tensed.

“Nagasaki and Saga are so far away,” Mitsuyo murmured. “No … that isn’t what I mean,” she quickly added, shaking her head. “It’s not that.… It’s just that you came all this way and I wish we could spend more time together.”

“It’s a weekday. Nothing we can do about it,” he muttered resignedly. He sounded cool about it, and Mitsuyo couldn’t help but say, “You’re so serious, you know that?”

“I can’t take a day off. It’s my uncle’s company.”

“But it’s hard for me to get Saturday off. It’s almost impossible for me to get two days off in a row like last time.” She sounded a bit miffed and the instant she said that Yuichi’s fingers went limp.

He came to see me
, Mitsuyo thought.
He didn’t come all this way just to be told that we don’t have time to see each other. He drove two hours to see me, after doing his backbreaking job
.

“You want to park next door?” Mitsuyo tugged at his fingers. “The store’s closed and there won’t be any other cars. We can talk for a while. If you park behind the building, nobody can see you from the road.”

Yuichi glanced over the fence toward the darkened menswear store, and quickly released the parking brake.

“Hold on a second,” Mitsuyo hastily added. “You probably haven’t had any dinner. Let me buy you something.”

“No, I had some
udon
at a rest area. I couldn’t wait,” Yuichi laughed.

He drove out of the fast-food-restaurant parking lot and over to the lot behind Wakaba. Behind the store it was dark, the only light an illuminated billboard for makeup in the field beyond the fence.

“Next Friday’s a holiday, so I was thinking of going to Nagasaki. Just a day trip,” Mitsuyo said. The car had come to a halt and Yuichi’s hands were resting on the steering wheel. He suddenly reached out and placed his hot hand on her, stroking her earlobe and neck. Without a word, he kissed her. For a second, Mitsuyo was taken aback, but before she knew it he was all over her. She closed her eyes and let him have his way.

It was after ten p.m. when they left the parking lot. Mitsuyo wanted to stay in his arms forever, but she knew that that would make it all the harder for him the next morning. After they left the parking lot, Yuichi headed to her apartment without needing directions. He deftly changed lanes, zooming past one car after another.

“Three days from now, I’ll take the bus to Nagasaki,” Mitsuyo said, letting herself sway back and forth with the motion of the car, a lulling feeling she was already used to.

“I finish work at six,” Yuichi said, pulling up close to the car in front.

“I have the day off, so I was thinking of going in the morning and doing a little sightseeing by myself. It’s been years since I’ve been in Nagasaki.… Last year my sister and I went to the Huis Ten Bosch theme park, though.”

“I wish I could show you around.…”

“Don’t worry. I’ll just eat some
champon
, go see the cathedrals.…”

It usually took fifteen minutes by bike to go home but at the speed Yuichi drove, it took only three. As he did the last time, Yuichi steered his car down the unpaved path right up to the apartment building.

“Darn it—my sister’s home.” Mitsuyo looked up to the second-floor window, where the light was on. “I wish we had more time,” she
added in a low voice, and as she did Yuichi’s dry lips covered hers again.

“Drive carefully,” she said. Yuichi nodded, lips still glued to hers. For a second it seemed as if he wanted to say something more, so she pulled away a bit. But he just looked down and was silent.

Mitsuyo watched as the car pulled away down the dirt path. When he came out on the paved road he beeped his horn once and shot away.

I’m so lonely
, she thought.
I can’t wait to see him again
. Mitsuyo stood there watching until his rear lights disappeared.

She remembered how when Tamayo was going out with a guy who was a hairdresser, she’d said the very same thing. That she was so lonely. That she couldn’t wait to see him again. At the time, Mitsuyo couldn’t understand her feelings, but now she did. She understood, and wondered how anyone could stand it. She wanted to run after his car—or fall to the ground and cry her eyes out. If she could only be with Yuichi, anything was possible.

Yuichi wasn’t sure how much time had passed since Mitsuyo’s figure in the rearview mirror, waving goodbye, had disappeared. At an intersection near the on-ramp to the highway, he had to stop for a red light. He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and saw he had less than five thousand yen. If Mitsuyo had agreed to go to a hotel, he would have had to take the surface streets home, no matter how late that made him. Fortunately she’d been worried about his job, so he still had enough money to take the highway.

He’d been dying to see her. Although they’d only met a few days ago, he was scared to death the relationship would end. At night, no matter how long he talked with her on the phone, he couldn’t rid himself of this fear. As soon as he hung up he couldn’t stand it, convinced he’d never see her again. When he slept, he dreamed she was gone. As soon as he woke up in the morning he wanted to call her,
but hesitated since it was five a.m.; he thought about her all day long at work. By the end of the day today, he couldn’t stand it, and before he knew what he was doing, he was heading toward Saga. Maybe he’d already made an unconscious decision to do just that, which is why he took his car to work instead of riding in his uncle’s van.

The red light seemed to take forever, and Yuichi pounded the steering wheel. If another car hadn’t been right beside him, he would have slammed his forehead against it in frustration.