The earbud cord hanging from my husband’s right ear meets up with the cord hanging from his left ear, and the joined cords rest on the counter, brushing up against the sharp pointiness of his bare right elbow resting on the tray. His arm is set at a nearly perfect right angle. The tip of the elbow is covered in marks from old cuts and burns, dark red and purple, that look like stains. After bumping against his right elbow, the cord snakes along the counter to the right, where it reaches the edge of the counter and drops down into the pocket of his jeans. That was where her attention settled, her interest in my husband suddenly fixed on one question: What is he listening to? The music is pumped steadily up the cord into his ears.
The counter is at a window where she can see her reflection and also a view of the café behind her, though the image is not as clear as it would be at night. The tray-return station is reflected in the window too. A staff member comes by every now and again to tidy it up. One is there right now.
The clouds break and let the sun through. Light pours into the café, making anything white-coloured seem to shine and blur at the edges.
The young woman in the grey suit isn’t looking at the reflection in the glass now, instead she directs her focus towards what’s actually in front of her, beyond the window. That’s what she meant to do all along. But it isn’t going as she had hoped.
She raises her hips off the stool slightly and touches her face to the glass for a bit, gazing down at the people coming and going in and out of the station. Between the sidewalk and the avenue is a taxi stand with several cars lined up. Just about at the left edge of the window the avenue meets up with a few other roadways, more complicated than a standard four-way intersection. The waiting taxi drivers are leaning back in their seats, reading newspapers or magazines.
There’s a pedestrian bridge over the intersection, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Expressway passes over that. From where she sits it looks like the bottom of the highway grazes the walkway below.
My husband’s slumped-over upper body expands and recedes with the rhythm of his breathing. The wall immediately to his left is also a window from waist-level up, showing the outside world. Over the ridges of his shoulders and spine she has a direct view of the stairs to the pedestrian bridge. She stares at the people going up and down, at their outfits, at the parasols some are carrying.
A Democratic Party of Japan campaign van is coming up the avenue, blaring its message.
I scrunch up my shoulders and slowly roll my head back, lifting my torso, supporting the weight of my body on the top of my skull. My mouth hangs open.
The guard rails on the pedestrian bridge have a white rust-resistant coating. A kid is pressing his face into the vertical space between two of the bars, peering down at the traffic. The DPJ van passes.
A couple other kids are chasing each other around, chanting I got you, I go-o-o-ot you to the tune of “Momotaro’s Song”, screeching every so often. They’re not on the pedestrian bridge, though, they’re inside the café. She’s looking at my husband again. He’s fidgeting a bit, more movement than he’s made up until now, which she guesses means he’s waking up.
I can see the refrigerator upside down. It seems to be on the verge of taking on human characteristics. It’s about to happen, I can see it. But it never quite does. In the end the refrigerator stays a plain old refrigerator.
For some reason I have a recollection of flipping the mattress to find the vinyl flooring wet and covered in mould like green fur.
The high-school boys who had been making noise in the café are now silent, leaning over their mobile phones. One has gone, leaving four.
My husband’s neck and shoulders suddenly go slack. It’s not clear how this action might be connected to his arm physiologically, but his elbow jerks up into the air and comes crashing back down on the counter. The sound of the impact reverberates through the café. When his elbow strikes the counter she doesn’t look towards it, she looks away, back to her own phone for a split second, before returning her gaze to my husband. This is when he wakes up.
My husband, like me, has never managed to make it down to the deepest levels of sleep. To us those levels don’t exist. Or they’re too far out of our league, something we’ll never be able to have, like a hotel suite or first-class seats on a plane. Coming up with the comparison makes me realize how true it is. In his shallow sleep my husband was dreaming that he boarded the train at one of those aerial tracks that a lot of the stations on the Odakyu Line have, but he noticed right away that he was headed in the wrong direction, so he got out at the next stop and went back the way he was supposed to be going, although he wasn’t actually sure it was the Odakyu Line he got on, trying to get to his job by 7:30, and although his phone told him it was already 7:23, he was pretty sure he would make it in time.
He reaches for his phone on the tray to find out what time it actually is. That’s when he sees the text I sent him: Morning! Long night, huh? You okay? Don’t push yourself too hard.
Tears start to flow down his cheeks, more reflex than emotion. There’s a warm feeling inside him, but it isn’t his own, it’s being forced into him from outside. His tears last only a few moments. His head is hazy, to the point that he’s mystified
