Water Lily (8 page)

“We can’t do that. Besides, you’d have to have a car and go all the way to the mountains to be safely far enough.”

“Have you been drinking with any of the boys before?”

“No. You’re the only one.”

“Don’t you have boyfriends? You’re pretty.”

“I don’t have a boyfriend at the moment.”

“If you were my girlfriend, it would be even harder at school because we’d have to pretend there was nothing between us, but
in another way it would be good because we’d have a secret and it would make school life more bearable. Why aren’t you a model
or an actress? Don’t laugh.”

“Sorry. I never thought about being an actress. I just sort of ended up being a teacher.”

“I’ll never understand. What a choice!”

“It wasn’t exactly a choice. I needed a job. But I wouldn’t want to be an actress or a model. If I could do anything, I’d
have my own bar. I’d like to work in it all night, every night, and sleep during the day. People would be coming and going
all the time and I would talk to them all. I wouldn’t be alone for a second.”

“In the city?”

“It would be in the countryside with mountains all around, but not here, not anywhere near the school.”

“I’d like to go there. I’d be your best customer. And when you needed anything done, I’d help you out, if you’d let me.”

“Jun, you shouldn’t be in a bar. You should leave. It’s wrong for you to be here, and wrong for me to talk to you like this.”

“I know. I know, but it’s a strange place. There’s no such thing as right or wrong behavior when you’re out here in the hills.
Did you know that Mr. Onda was seeing one of the girls in my class last term?”

“I heard a rumor. To be honest—”

“Teacher, what’s your name?”

“My name? Wada. You should know—”

“I do know. Your first name.”

“Runa. My name is Runa.”

“That’s a pretty name. Like lunar.”

“That was why my father chose it. He was an avid astronomer. Actually, he wanted to call me
Moon
, in English.”

“That would be funny. Why didn’t he?”

“Too weird. And also, it sounded Korean. My mother said I’d get bullied at school. So they settled on Runa. That’s the story
my sister told me. I can’t ask him now.”

“Is he dead?”

“No. He went senile when my mother died.”

“Sorry.”

“Oh, it’s all right. Everyone in my family goes senile, sooner or later. That’s just how it is. He doesn’t know where he is
anymore but he’s just as nice as ever, so I suppose that he must be quite happy.”

“Your drink?”

“Almost finished.”

“Then let’s go.”

Runa looked at the boy and saw how he had already turned the school—her whole life, those days—into nothing, just by being
with her. The most ordinary facts of her life were exciting and dangerous because she was relating them to a schoolboy, and
in a bar. She was filled with something warm, as if she wanted to burst into tears, but it wasn’t quite that. She wanted to
run around, faster than she knew she could, jump into boiling or freezing water. She put her glass into Jun’s hand, let him
sip her whisky. She was pushing herself to go too far, so that it would be too late to stop.

He was not bowing, not stammering or using honorific language when he addressed her. He was showing none of the respect he
should, and she liked it. It was so natural; she saw no hint that he was acting. It was the other boy she knew, the one in
the navy uniform behind the rickety wooden desk, who was the pretender. Jun handed her the glass with a drop of whisky left.
She dipped her finger in, licked it.

She should never have said anything. She should have pre-tended not to see him and left quickly, but he was watching her,
his lips parted, waiting for her to say what would happen next.

Jun Ikeda went home by bus and Runa by taxi. They arrived near the school at the same time though. No one was there to see
them. Jun lifted Runa over the gate to the teachers’ apartments that was shut every night at midnight. The black metal was
slightly damp from rain that she hadn’t realized had fallen. As her feet touched the concrete on the other side, she felt
the thread of a spider’s web across her face.

They didn’t kiss. She didn’t want to kiss him. It was enough that they had been together. In fact, she found Kawasaki that
night and slept with him instead. She crept into his apartment when she knew he would be in a deep sleep and curled up next
to him in his bed. In the morning she woke early and disappeared.

She thought that it had ended and did not feel any urge to kiss Jun Ikeda until the following afternoon when she saw him at
school. He was there in the corridor, in his uniform, school bag over his arm, laughing happily with friends about some-thing
stupid a teacher had said. His white teeth flashed, unintentionally, in her direction. She walked right past and didn’t look
back. For the rest of the day she thought of nothing but Jun, and in her bed she missed him as if they’d been sleeping together
for months.

A day or two later Jun came to see Runa with a question about English grammar. He had written out some English sentences and
wanted to know if they were correct. Underneath he had written, in English,
Tonight in Octopus?
She took a red pen and wrote on it. “
The Octopus
,” she said, as she rested her pen on the desk. “Don’t forget the definite article. But apart from that, the answer is yes,
it’s fine.”

Runa stood in front of it now. The Octopus karaoke place was a strange, angular building. Runa had never understood why it
was called the Octopus. There was no picture of one above the door, no hint of anything octopus-like in the decor. The building’s
exterior was a mix of drab and gaudy. The walls were grey and the door was shabby and brown. A string of pink lights flashed
around the door frame. Some bulbs were missing so the effect was of a gap-toothed smile. The windows were small and dirty.
Runa looked and listened. It must be past closing time but the lights were on and a few people were moving around inside.
Sometimes it seemed to stay open all night, serving drinks, letting people sing themselves hoarse. Out here the police didn’t
bother to check what was going on. But she’d heard that business was dwindling and it was to be shut down, replaced by a brand
new
pachinko
parlor.

Runa was glad that it would soon cease to exist but wanted to find the owner. She had to talk to him. She pushed open the
door and looked around. There was no one behind the desk so she called,
excuse me
, and paced around noisily. She peered into the room where all of this began. It was the smallest of the rooms, big enough
only for three or four people. Tonight it was empty.

The intercoms were often broken, so when you ordered drinks you couldn’t be sure anyone had heard you. Sometimes the drinks
arrived and sometimes they didn’t. The carpets were old and smelled of cigarette smoke. Now that Runa thought about it, it
was amazing that it had done so much business out in the countryside and with the neon sparkly Hollywood Dream only a few
kilometers away. But the Octopus was special.

She and Jun had sung and danced in their tiny room for hours, then slept on the soft long seats. In the morning they found
they were covered by blankets. The owner must have come in before locking up. He was known for looking after his customers.
He never threw people out if there was no taxi for them, if they were too drunk to ride a bicycle. After that, though, Jun
and Runa were more careful. It wasn’t impossible that someone from the school would see them there. So they started to meet
at weekends and headed straight for the mountains or the beach. They also began to visit love hotels.

She looked at the battered video screen in the corner of the room. She tried to remember the songs they sang. Silly pop songs
mostly. It didn’t matter. It struck Runa as funny that Jun sang a couple of English songs and with good pronunciation, as
good as hers and she had studied English for years. In class he hadn’t shown much ability at all.

She returned to the desk and waited.

She couldn’t be sorry for what they had done. She would leave the school and would leave Jun Ikeda because she wouldn’t be
hunted and judged—and she hoped that nothing bad happened to Jun—but she couldn’t imagine ever being sorry, no matter how
hard she tried. They’d had fun. That was the point and she hoped that Jun, too, would never regret that he had met her.

She knocked on a door marked
private
. She must talk to the owner and ask if anyone had seen her with Jun. If so, who were they?

The door opened slowly. The owner, a grey-haired man in his sixties or seventies, peered through the gap.

“Hello. Did you want to book a room?” He looked over her shoulder for Jun.

“I wanted to ask a question.”

He looked at Runa with surprise. His eyes were narrow and puffy as if he had just woken up but he was fully dressed. “Yes,
of course. The small room is free at the moment. Are you sure you don’t want—”

“No, thank you. I have to get going soon. I’m sorry to bother you—”

“That’s all right. I’ve had so few customers this week. I thought I’d go to bed early. It’s a warm night, isn’t it? Can you
hear the frogs outside?”

“Yes.” She’d forgotten them but again noticed the din. “I just wanted to ask—”

“They’re so noisy. It sounds as if there are hundreds of them and they’re all big but in fact, if you go and look for them,
there are only a few and they’re tiny. You wouldn’t think they could make such a noise.”

“You remember when I used to come here, with a boyfriend?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Do you think anyone was ever watching us, I mean, secretly? Did you notice anything?”

“No, I don’t think so. I only ever saw the two of you, and I can tell you, I would have noticed if anyone were watching.”

“I thought perhaps someone might have been interested, might have been hanging around to see what we were doing.”

“I see. It’s not impossible, but it’s very quiet these days and I think you would have noticed, even if I hadn’t.”

“You’re right. Thank you.”

“That’s all right. Well, I’ve got some cleaning to do.” He headed back to the door.

“There’s another thing. I’m leaving tonight. If my boyfriend comes here again, will you tell him I said goodbye?”

“Of course. Goodnight, then.”

Outside, she climbed back onto the bike and bumped over uneven paving stones. She headed for the street lamps of the main
road. It was a clear run now to the next town. She pedaled along humming in the warm night, humming the school song because
it was the first that came to mind, though she had never learned all the words. In school assemblies she had al-ways made
sure she was behind all the other teachers so that she wouldn’t have to sing, could get the giggles if the principal said
something silly, and it wouldn’t matter. Trees lined up along the roadside and the moon shone a path on the tarmac. She was
running away, and it was not as bad as she’d thought it would be.

I
t was a peculiar day. The sky was colorless and the temperature hard to guess—it seemed that it might be cooler than re-cent
days, yet the air was close around Ralph—as if there was just no weather at all. He smoothed his hair and stepped into the
agency.

There was no sign of Mr. K. A younger chap
buzzed
around in the office, handsome and tanned. He was joking with the receptionist, a chubby girl who laughed loudly at everything
he said. Her face was familiar from the previous day, though she seemed to have taken on a new personality. He didn’t re-call
hearing laughter before. Ralph was disoriented, wondered if he had come out onto the right floor.

“Excuse me, I have an appointment with the man I spoke to yesterday?”

“Hi. You must be Mr. Turnpike. Nice to meet you.”

The young man spoke English with an American accent that was almost perfect. There was just something unclear about the ends
of his words that gave him away as a foreigner. He shook Ralph’s hand. Ralph felt the damp puffiness of his own fingers. His
skin was a funny mottled mauve against the man’s even brownness.

“My dad had to go to the dentist. His crown came out while he was eating a rice cracker. Would you believe it? They’re always
saying that the younger generation have weak teeth because they don’t eat enough hard food, but I’m not so sure now. Usually
he’d come to work even with a missing crown, but it was a front tooth so he was kind of self-conscious. Not good for the agency’s
image, I guess. So I’m looking after the place today. You’ll have to excuse me. I’ve never done this before so I’m still learning
the ropes myself.”

And he said something in Japanese to the girl who was typing lists of names into a computer. She laughed without looking up.
Her manicured fingers tapped away at the keyboard. Ralph wondered if she was typing the C list. He tried a smile. It almost
hurt. He did not think he liked Mr. K.’s son.

“I’m supposed to be meeting two ladies. I have an appointment.”

“Sure. Take a seat in the interview room. The first one’ll be here any second.”

Ralph entered the interview room and remembered with sadness and humiliation the A-list women he’d met there. At the time
he had believed that he just had to choose and one would become his wife, like a prince and princess in a silly fairy tale.

The interview room was small but some attempt had been made to give the illusion of space. There were large un-matching framed
mirrors on three of the white walls. Ralph’s reflection appeared in two of them. But the mirrors were dirty and had greasy
fingerprints around the edges. Last time the room had struck him as being light and clean but now he noticed the chipped paint
around the door, the scratches on the tiled floor. There were two flowery armchairs, a low glass table holding up a delicate
flower arrangement. And there were more potted plants, dusty and rubbery in each corner and flanking every piece of furniture.
If the point was to create an atmosphere of warmth, somehow it didn’t work. Each plant, each object in the room, seemed to
have parachuted separately into the space and stood isolated from the others.