77 posts tagged “life as an afterthought”

Chapter 5, page 17. This completes Chapter 5.

            They parted at the entrance of the building. David gave her a little peck on her cheek as he said goodbye. Junko looked at him for a moment, surprised.

              “Have fun with your friend tonight,” David said, giving her a wink. Junko suddenly realized he knew the real purpose of Kaori’s phone call, and he had been playing along to accommodate her. Now he was letting her know he knew about this game.

              “Thanks.”

              “Merry Christmas.”

              “Merry Christmas to you too. And a happy new year.”

            “Bye.”

              “Bye.”

              She watched David walk away for a moment before heading out to meet up with Kaori. On the back of his jacket she felt like she was seeing a door slightly open, through which she might be liberated from the life she had been through so far, and which might lead her into what she had been wishing for, the world full of warmth and understanding, laughter and affection, where she would be understood and accepted as she was. She felt like she was walking slightly off the ground, like her head was somewhere higher than it usually was, as the cold December air slowly stole the warmth of his kiss from her cheek.

Chapter 5, page 16.

“Around the second week of January, I think.”

              Junko bit her lip, and secretly cursed Kaori. That would mean almost a month would have to pass before she could see him again. She made a mental note to accuse her for not having decided on some code phrase beforehand to indicate she didn’t need an interruption.

              Junko watched him head over to the counter to settle the bill as she buttoned up her coat. Studying him chatting up the bearded guy, she wondered how well he would be able to understand it, how it was like to be her, to grow up with her father’s rules and orders internalized like she had her own prison built up inside her head.

              David, perhaps feeling her stare on the back of his head, looked over his shoulder, and gave her a wink. Something in her heart smiled back to him as well as her mouth, and Junko thought she might be in trouble. She always thought she would be ready when the guy she had been looking for would walk into her life. Instead, life decided to teach her it always had its way of knocking at unexpected moments. So she was knocked off balance, and couldn’t tell how ready she was.

              “He’s half Russian,” David said in the elevator on their way down.

              “Sorry?”

              “The guy at the café? He looked a bit non-Japanese-like, you know? I asked. Turned out his mother’s a Russian.”

              “That’s interesting.”

              “Want one?” He offered her a gum.

              “Thanks.”

Chapter 5, page 15. For past chapters in pdf format, check here.

            “You want to spend more time with him. Good. All the more reason to leave for today. Don’t rush. Make him wait, and meanwhile you cool your head down a bit and think it over as well. I’m in front of Mitsukoshi right now.”

              “I really am not-”

              “Get up from your chair and meet me over here now, or I might actually walk into this super uncool department store. This place looks so dark. They should rebuild the whole interior, you know? Are you getting up from your chair or not?”

              Junko realized she wouldn’t be able to come up with clever remarks to make her friend understand she really wanted to change their plan.

              “I’ll do that.”

             “Good. Let’s go to Isetan and check out their bargain stuff. You know I’ve been looking for a muffler. They might have the right one for me. Maybe I can wear it when I see Paul tomorrow. Don’t make me wait too long all right? Bye!”

              “Bye,” Junko gave her phone a hard push and cut the connection.

              David was finishing his tea.

              “Are you seeing your friend?”

              Junko avoided his eyes, and gathered her things together.  “Yes, I have to go.”

              “Can I see you again after I come back?”

              “Come back?”

              David stood up and took up his jacket from the chair. “You know I’ll be visiting my family for Christmas.”

              “Oh. You told me that, I forgot. When will you be back?”

Chapter 5, page 14.

            “My parents got divorced too.”

              “Oh?”

“My mother left my father when I was in junior high school. She killed herself because my father refused to divorce her.”

              David’s hand stopped mid-air before it reached down and grabbed the teacup. Their eyes met, and for a split of a second a spark of recognition ran through their eyes.

              Junko’s cell-phone rang and broke off the moment.

              “Excuse me.”

              She fished out the phone from her purse.

              “Hello?”

              “How’s it going with the American guy?” Kaori’s voice said. “Are you ready to make your retreat for today?”

              “Ah-”

              Junko felt David looking at her.

              “So it’s going well huh?” her voice went one octave higher over the phone, “I told you, you should give this guy a shot! Now you make your way out of there. Tell him you need to run to see a friend.”

Chapter 5, page 13.

            “It’s so cool that your father’s a novelist,” David said, “Do you like his novels? What kind of books does he write?”

              “I never read his books.”

              “Oh?”

              Junko quickly thought of a topic, any topic, to divert his attention away from her father.  “Are your parents living in L.A. as well?”

              David quickly looked up, looked away, and clasped his hands together over his teacup.

              “Ah, my mother used to. She died a few years ago.”

              “I’m sorry.”

              “Yeah. Thanks. She had a problem with alcohol in the last years of her life. It just kind of went from bad to worse.”

              “I’m sorry.” David ran his fingers through his hair again.

              “And your father?”

              David rubbed his clean-shaven chin, and looked away again. “He split long time ago.”

              “Split?”

“He left our family. They got divorced when I was a little kid.”

              Junko took her breath in, soft and slow, and tried to convince herself that her heart didn’t just skip a beat. This was the first time she found herself talking to a man who’d actually been through something similar to her life. She tried to keep her voice steady and casual.

Chapter 5, page 12.

            "The woman in that book does what’s the right thing for her to do. And as a result she loses everything, even her own life. I think that might be the ultimate good deed, you do something you know you have to do, you just try to do what’s right, even if it will destroy you.”

              David shifted himself in the chair, nodded, made a “Hm” sound from somewhere between his mouth and nose, and took another sip of tea. His whole body language was saying he was uncomfortable with the direction their conversation was going. The abstract ideas didn’t seem to bother him, but it apparently wasn’t his favorite field. Junko understood he was basically a man of pragmatism, He belonged to a world where there were no internal struggles and agonies, just problems to solve and hurdles to overcome.

              “Do you have any brothers or sisters?” David asked.

              “No, I’m an only child. Do you?”

              “I have a sister. A younger sister. Name’s Jane.”

              “Is she in L.A.?”

              “Yeah, but I think she’ll move to San Francisco. She’s kind of a hippie.”

               “Wild child?”

              David laughed.

              “Something like that, yeah. She’s a student, but she’s not really going to her classes I think.”

              Junko laughed along, wondering why it was almost customary for everyone on campus to laugh when talking about a student who’s known for class-skipping habits. For Japanese college students, it was a sign of camaraderie, relief to know everyone else was doing it, not just you. She wondered what it was that made David laugh, what it meant in American universities. Were they secretly happy the competition would be not as tough? Or was it a sign of secret envy, for doing something they wished to but couldn’t really do for themselves?

Chapter 5, page 11. These posts won't suddenly end, unlike two consecutive Prime Ministers of some certain obscure Asian country.

            In her world, a person who didn’t know Camus would not be considered to be an intellectual. She was amused by his innocent question, but it also made her aware such education wasn’t necessarily considered to be useful or worthwhile for those who had their focus on their career.

              “Sort of.”

              “What did he write?”

              “‘The Stranger’. And ‘The Plague’. I prefer ‘The Plague’.”

              “What is it about?”

              This gave her another moment of tea tasting and pondering.

              “It’s about a group of people trying to do what’s right. Against all the odds and obstacles.”

              “Doing what’s right shouldn’t be so hard. It’s always the best path to take.”

              “Don’t you think sometimes it’s more difficult than to take an easy path?”

              David stuck out his lower lip, and gave it a thought for a moment. Then he shrugged. “Yeah, I guess, but you’d feel bad about it later if you settle on the easy path.”

              Junko felt they were talking about seemingly the same thing, but were on a different track.               “Have you read ‘The End of the Affair’? It’s not written by a French author though.”

              David frowned, but this time she could see he was faking; he was not remembering anything - he was trying to pretend he of course knew it, but somehow forgot. The kind of expression you’d quickly become familiar with in college.

              “Who wrote that one?”

              “Graham Greene.”

              “Right.”

Chapter 5, page 10.

            They poured tea into their cups, David a beat after Junko, and put sugar and milk. She admired the very intricate patterns of blue flowers on the cup.

              “What about you?” David said, taking a large sip, like he was having his morning coffee at his kitchen table, “You’re studying French literature, right?”

              “Right.”

              “Why did you choose that?”

              Junko pondered her answer as she enjoyed the complex taste of the tea spreading through her mouth. Basically she had obeyed her father’s wish; for Genzou it was unthinkable his daughter would leave university without being educated about great authors, from Shakespeare to Hemingway, Mishima, and Dostoevsky. Her only rebellion was to choose French literature and read Rimbaud and Flaubert instead of Russian or American literature, the countries Genzou deemed as the places that gave birth to what he called ‘real’ authors - besides Japan, of course.

              “I failed the entrance exams for all the other faculties,” she finally said.

              “Which faculties were they?”

              “Ah, you know, law and business management? That kind of stuff.”

              “I see,” David tried smaller dose of tea, like it was new kind of medicine he was trying to figure out the best amount to take.

“And who’s your favorite author?”

              “Camus.”

              “Who?”

              “Albert Camus.”

              “Is he famous?”

Chapter 5, page 9.

            The bored-looking waitress came back, carrying a tray with their tea. Junko, laughing half-heartedly at the last part of his remark, watched his hands opening the pot full of hot water. He stared into it with puzzlement on his face, fondled the tea server, and then touched on the empty cup. She poured the hot water into her tea server, watched him follow her example, and knew he was not telling the truth when he said he liked tea. She wondered if it was just the sign of him spending too much time in Japan already, starting to pick up the annoying habit of ordering what everybody else was ordering.

              “Do you have everything you have ordered?”

              The waitress asked in a monotone voice every waitress would sooner or later employ when citing something from the manual. They both said yes. The waitress walked away.

              “Actually,” David said watching the tea server impatiently as the leaves quietly floated around in the tea server, “it’s not that difficult to get by in Tokyo.”

              “It’s not?”

              “No, at least not on a daily basis, like going to the convenience store and buying what you need? Or ordering things in shops and restaurants. They always say the exact same thing. You know the way that lady just said ‘do you have everything you have ordered?’”

              Junko smiled.    “They always say that in restaurants.”

              “And in the exact same way. That won’t happen in the States. Or any other Western country, I guess. People will deviate a bit from the manual. That’s normal for us. Here it’s important to stick to the rules. Down to the smallest details. But that’s good for me, at least. Less things to worry about when I’m trying to buy something.”

Chapter 5, page 8.

“It is; you get to learn how to appeal to the public. It’s difficult to try to control or manipulate a certain person’s opinion or behavior, but when you have a group of people, there are things you can do to influence what they think about a certain product, or how they behave when they are out for shopping.”

              “Sounds like human manipulation to me.”

              A slight trace of a frown appeared between his eyebrows. He looked over her shoulder and tried to construct his answer. Junko felt relieved ready to allow herself to let her guard down a little, seeing the way he looked at that moment. Apparently he’s got some brain; quite reassuring.

              “In a way, marketing is about manipulation. I’d call it influencing people, ‘cause I don’t believe you can make people do what they don’t want to. But studying how it works also has the benefit of knowing their tricks, you know? So you can protect yourself against being manipulated.”

              David raised his eyebrows as if asking her, how’s that?

              “But you’re not studying that in Japan?”

              David laughed, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender.

              “Oh no. I can’t even if I wanted to. Japanese language is taking up all my time. It’s quite a challenge to learn it from the scratch.”

              “Will you be using Japanese in your future job?”

              “I hope so.”

              “Do you know what you want to do in your future?”

“No, not really. But knowledge of a foreign language certainly won’t hurt in any field. At least, that’s what I’m thinking.”