I scanned the early summer cityscape for a moment. «Who knows? Maybe he did and maybe he didn't.»
Yuki leaned on her window and looked out, listening to her Talking Heads. She seemed a little more grown-up than when we first met, only two and a half months before.
«What are you going to do now?» asked Yuki.
«Yes, what am I going to do,» I said. «I haven't decided. I think I've got to go back to Sapporo. Tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. Lots of loose ends up there.»
Yumiyoshi. The Sheep Man. The Dolphin Hotel. A place that I was a part of. Where someone was crying for me. I had to go back to close the circle.
I offered to drive Yuki wherever she had to go. «Heaven knows, I'm free today.»
She smiled. «Thanks, but it's okay. It's pretty far; the train'll be faster.»
«Did I hear you say thanks?» I said, removing my sunglasses.
«Got any problems with that?»
«Nope.»
We were at Yoyogi-Hachiman Station, where she was going to catch the Odakyu Line. Yuki looked at me for ten or fifteen seconds. No identifiable expression on her face, only a gradual change in the gleam of her eyes, the shape of her mouth. Ever so slightly, her lips grew taut, her stare sharp and sassy. Like a slice of summer sunlight refracting in water.
She slammed the door shut and trotted off, not looking back. I watched her receding figure disappear into the crowd. And when she was out of sight, I felt lonely, as if a love affair had just broken up.
I drove back up Omotesando to Aoyama to go shopping at Kinokuniya, but the parking lot was full. Hey, come to think of it, wasn't I going to Sapporo tomorrow or the day
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after? So I cruised around a bit more, then went home. To my empty apartment. Where I plopped down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling.
It echoed through the empty space of my home.
42
I had a dream about Kiki. I guess it was a dream. Either that or some act akin to dreaming. What, you may ask, is an «act akin to dreaming»? I don't know either. But it seems it does exist. Like so many other things we have no name for, existing in that limbo beyond the fringes of consciousness.
But let's just call it a dream, plain and simple. The expression is closest to something real for us.
It was near dawn when I had this dream about Kiki.
In the dream as well, it was near dawn.
I'm on the phone. An international call. I've dialed the number that Kiki apparently left me on the windowsill of that room in downtown Honolulu.
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down through the skylight. Flecks of dust dance in these upright shafts of light, bright as a southern sun and sharp as gashes from a knife. Yet the parts of the room without light are murky and cold. The contrast is remarkable. Like the ocean floor, I'm thinking.
I'm sitting on a sofa there in the room, receiver at my ear. The telephone cord trails away over the floor, across a dark area, through the light, to disappear again into the gloom. A long, long cord. Longer than any I've seen. I've got the phone on my lap and I'm looking around the room.
The furniture in the room is the same as it was. The same pieces in the same places. Bed, table, sofa, chairs, TV, floor lamp. Spaced unnaturally apart. And the room has the same smell as before. Stale and moldy, a shut-in air of disuse. But the six skeletons are gone. Not on the bed, not on the sofa, not in the chair in front of the TV, not at the dining table. They've all disappeared. As have the scraps of food and plates from the table. I set the telephone down on the sofa and stand up. I have a slight headache. The kind you get when there's a high-pitched hum in your ears. I sit back down.
I detect a movement from the farthest chair off in the gloom. I strain my eyes. Someone or something has gotten up and I hear footsteps coming my way. It's Kiki. She appears from out of the darkness, cuts across the light, takes a chair at the dining table. She's wearing the same outfit as before. Blue dress and white shoulder bag.
She sits there, sizing me up. She is quiet, her expression tranquil. She is positioned neither in light nor in darkness, but exactly in between. I'm about to get up and go over to her, but have second thoughts. There's still that slight pain in my temples.
«The skeletons go somewhere?» I ask.
«I suppose,» says Kiki with a smile.
«Did you dispose of them?»
«No, they just vanished. Maybe you disposed of them?»
Eyeing the telephone beside me, I press my fingers to my temples.
«What's it mean? Those six skeletons?»
«They're you,» says Kiki. «This is your room. Everything here is you. Yourself. Everything.»
«My room,» I repeat after her. «Well, then, what about the Dolphin Hotel? What's there?»
«That's your place too. Of course. The Sheep Man's there. And I'm here.»
The shafts of light do not waver. They are hard, uniform. Only the air vibrates minutely in them. I notice it without really looking.
«I seem to have rooms in a lot of places,» I say. «You know, I kept having these dreams. About the Dolphin Hotel. And somebody there, who's crying for me. I had that same dream almost every night. The Dolphin Hotel stretches out long and narrow, and there's someone there, crying for me. I thought it was you. So I knew I had to see you.»
«Everyone's crying for you,» says Kiki, ever so softly, in a voice to soothe worn nerves. «After all, that whole place is for you. Everyone there cries for you.»
«But you were calling me. That's why I went back, to see you. And then from there ... a lot of things started. Just like before. I met all sorts of folks. People died. But, you did call me, didn't you? It was you who guided me along, wasn't it?»
«It wasn't me. It was you who called yourself. I'm merely a projection. You guided yourself, through me. I'm your phantom dance partner. I'm your shadow. I'm not anything more.»
«But why would everyone cry for me?»
She doesn't answer. She rises, and with a tapping of footsteps, walks over to stand before me. Then she kneels and reaches out to touch my lips with her fingertips. Her fingers are sleek and smooth. Then she touches my temples.
«We're crying for all the things you can't cry for,» whispers Kiki. Slowly, as if to spell it out. «We shed tears for all the things you never let yourself shed tears, we weep for all the things you did not weep.»
«Are your ears still. . . like they were?» I'm curious.
«My ears—,» she breaks off into a smile. «They're in perfect shape. The same as they were.»
«Would you show me your ears again, just one more time?» I ask. «It was an experience like I've never
