David Cronenberg - Consumed

“Your wife?” said Naomi. She wanted it to sound lame, and it did, but she was positioning herself for the moment as the naïve and easily shockable North American—familiar journalistic role-playing.

“Before, and after. Mostly after. Those are the ones everybody’s interested in. I’m sure you’ve found them. On the arosteguyatrocity dot com website.”

Arosteguy rose and leaned over Naomi to pour her more tea. Her teacup was still almost full. Was it a threatening, a challenging move? Reflexively, she shrank back ever so slightly. “Maybe you’d like to take some pictures of me now? Our first meeting? Historic. You said you brought your flash units. I don’t like bright light in my house. I can’t think in bright light. But a flash of inspiration is always good.”

NAOMI HAD SET UP her three wireless Speedlight flash units with the chunky black wireless SU-800 Commander, which controlled and triggered the flashes using infrared pulses, locked in her D300s’s hot shoe, and was snapping away as Arosteguy sat and posed, drinking tea and smoking, effortlessly playing the role of rumpled sage. The lighting setup, for now, was simple and unadventurous: one flash lighting the background, splashing the walls and the narrow wooden staircase behind the couch; one above right, sitting on the radio’s speaker—there seemed to be only one—giving her the key light on Arosteguy’s face; and one directly off to the left, sitting on a pile of books, which provided the fill light. Naomi’s Nagra recorder—a model ML, one generation behind Nathan’s Nagra SD—was working on the side table next to Arosteguy’s couch. So smooth was the philosopher that he timed his sentences to her flashes, never once being caught with his mouth half open or his eyes half closed. In this, he reminded her of Hervé. Had one of them schooled the other?

“That’s a very big camera you have. Very professional. Of course, that’s to be expected. I myself also use a digital camera, but a small one, a ‘consumer camera,’ they call them. I would like very much for you to teach me professional photographic methods. That’s one of the reasons I insisted that you live here with me for the few days that you do your interview. At least I will gain something.”

Naomi constantly checked her shots as they popped up on the camera’s rear LCD screen, something the pros derided as “chimping” but all did obsessively anyway. So accurate had the screens become in terms of both resolution and color that you really knew exactly what you were getting. She knew nobody who was nostalgic enough for the days of film to actually shoot with it other than as a masochistic retro-gesture. “Monsieur Arosteguy, you know I haven’t agreed to stay here. But do you really think photo tutorials are all you have to gain? I thought you wanted to tell your story. I thought it had never been told.”

“Ari. You must call me Ari if you are to stay with me. But I am working on a book that will tell my story. I don’t expect you to be that objective, or rather that subjective.”

“In my experience, a good journalist can tell a subject things about himself that he never knew.”

“Really?” said Arosteguy. “That would be interesting. Very interesting.”

NOT TOO MANY HOURS LATER, Naomi took over Yukie’s spindly metal kitchen table to assemble all her electronics in preparation for taking them to Arosteguy’s house. Yukie leaned against the front door, watching Naomi while of course texting, Facebooking, Twittering, Instagramming, playing video games, and watching cartoons using a massive clamshell phone of a type unknown to Naomi which was covered with cute/sinister anime/ manga stickers.

“You know, I think you’re crazy,” said Yukie. “Maybe suicidal.”

Naomi liked all her cables, connectors, and adapters packed away in old padded mailing envelopes, and each time she packed, she was presented with a new puzzle: which things went where. She stood over the table, hands on hips, watching the spread-out tangle of devices and envelopes, waiting for clarity. At random moments, she would attack one or another set of devices, like a cormorant diving into the sea for eels, and stuff it into its mysteriously appropriate sleeve, then pull back and wait for the next illumination.

“It’s just an overnighter. I’m leaving most of my stuff here, if that’s okay. He says he wants me to teach him photography.”

“Honey, it’s either sex or murder he wants. Probably both. At the same time.”

“Nice,” said Naomi, diving in once more. “I’ll make sure to send you photos.”

“And speaking of sex, you haven’t told me how it went at the Ladies Clinic. Did you find the English-speaking gyno?”

“I ended up with a French-speaking gyno. At first he wanted to give me the Blue Lotus Course.”

“Sure. That’s for women who work. I mean, in offices and stuff. Was he okay? I should have gone with you.”

“He was okay. I found the career-women thing kinda odd. I had to convince him I was only interested in STDs. I think I shocked him a bit.”

“The Germanium Course. I know it well.”

“Do you? Really? Yukie?”

“I’ve had some bad boyfriends. Nothing at the level of your philosopher, though.”

“Please. Don’t gross me out. But why Germanium? Why is a Japanese examination for sexually transmitted diseases named after a weird metalloid discovered by a German? Blue Lotus is a lot sexier.”

“Japanese medical people are traditionally very strange and creepily poetic. You should have just asked the doctor.”

“I didn’t want to distract him. He correctly diagnosed Roiphe’s—with a bit of help—and gave me this script.” Naomi dug the prescription form out of her jacket pocket and handed it to Yukie, who barely glanced at it.

“Sasagaki. I didn’t know he spoke French. Garden-variety antibiotic. We can get this filled for you at the pharmacy down the street. You’ll have to come with me. It looks like about two months’ worth. Are you planning to have sex with Monsieur Arosteguy? You might have to wait a bit. Or do condoms work well enough with this STD?”

“Thanks for the lovely stream of consciousness, Yukie. It really clarifies things for me.”

“No problem.”

AROSTEGUY HAD TO MAKE two trips to carry Naomi’s camera roller and her duffel up the cramped stairs of his house. There wasn’t really much of a hall upstairs, just two bedrooms and a bathroom jammed together. Arosteguy opened the door to one of the rooms, so small he could drop the duffel on the narrow wooden bed from the doorway, and turned to Naomi as she followed him. “I decided to give you the room right next to mine. You’ll want to know my every move, of course. From here, you’ll know each time I get up to urinate in the night. I do that very often now. Man’s fate.”

Naomi squeezed past him—he actually inhaled his belly so that she could get past—and unslung her bag onto a small table near a window that looked out over a metal-strip balcony. There seemed to be no way to get onto that balcony except by crawling through the aluminum-framed sliding window. “Thank you. This is great.”

“There’s power there, see, just on the wall there, and also a telephone jack. I do not yet have a wireless network in this house. I assume you have a laptop and chargers for your camera batteries.”

“Yes, I do. Thank you.”

“I have learned the password of two of my neighbors’ wireless home networks, so you can use theirs if you like. Be a parasite on their network. Global digital parasitism is the new Trotskyism. Connect to anywhere in the world you like. I’m not worried.” Arosteguy ran his hand through his hair, which had flopped over his right eye when he was dealing with her luggage. He smiled a tight, wincing smile, as though something had just hurt him. “And also, please keep in mind that sex between us is very possible, if you like it.” Naomi let her face register exactly nothing. Had he been talking to Yukie? For a moment she thought it was plausible and was overwhelmed by dark, sticky paranoia. Let’s see: she had first contacted Arosteguy through Hervé Blomqvist, who was able to give her only the name of Professor Matsuda, but then Yukie had actually ferreted out Professor Matsuda, who had given her Arosteguy’s address… Naomi had wanted to avoid giving Arosteguy’s address or any other contact data to Yukie because Yukie was a public relations flack with a journalist’s instincts. Naomi hated to admit it, but on a certain level she didn’t trust Yukie. Yukie was trying too hard to hide her excitement at the Arosteguyscandal connection—she was playing it a little too cool—and though Arosteguy was a gaijin , it would be a stunning coup for her to bring him in to her demanding boss at Monogatari PR as a client looking for a public Tokyo makeover.