Kojo Suzuki - Spiral

“Do you happen to know how I might contact this Asakawa person?”

“I’m sorry…” Mai started to say she didn’t, but then she brought a hand to her mouth. “No, wait, I think I remember the professor introducing him as Kazuyuki Asakawa from the Daily News.”

“Kazuyuki Asakawa from the Daily News.” Ando made a note in his planner. If he called the newspaper, he shouldn’t have much trouble finding the man’s contact info. He might need to talk to the man yet.

Mai seemed to have caught a glimpse of what he’d written in his planner. She brought her hand to her chin and said, “Huh.”

“What?” Ando looked up at her.

“So that’s how you’d write Kazuyuki.”

Ando looked back down at the page.

It took him a minute to get what she meant. There were several different combinations of characters that could be used to spell the surname “Asakawa”. The same was true for the given name “Kazuyuki”. Normally, he would have had to ask which characters were used, or just written the name down phonetically. But instead, he’d written the ideograms without hesitation, as if the name were one he’d known all along.

Mai’s eyes opened wide as she asked, “How did you know it’s written that way?”

Ando couldn’t answer. Was this some sort of premonition? He felt he’d be coming into close contact with the man fairly soon.

For the first time in nearly a year and a half, Ando had allowed himself some sake with his dinner. This was the first time since the death of his son that he’d even wanted alcohol. He had liked to drink. It wasn’t that he’d given it up out of a sense of guilt for the boy’s death. Alcohol tended to amplify whatever mood he was in to begin with. If he was in a good mood, it made him jubilant; if he felt sad, it just made him sadder. For the last year and a half he’d been shrouded in grief, and so naturally he’d been unable to drink. He had the feeling that if he took one swallow he wouldn’t be able to stop until he was falling-down drunk. He was afraid he’d be unable to control an impulse to die should it arise. He didn’t have the courage to go there.

It was raining, rare for late October. It was a misty rain, wafting underneath his umbrella like smoke, wetting his neck. He didn’t feel cold. A faint glow from the sake warmed his body. As he walked back to his apartment, he kept sticking his hand out from beneath the umbrella to see if he could catch raindrops on his palm, but it didn’t work. The rain seemed to be coming not down from the sky, but up from below.

On his way down the road from the station, he wavered in front of a convenience store, thinking to buy a bottle of whiskey. Brightly lit skyscrapers towered over him. The cityscape was more beautiful than any natural landscape. The government edifices, all lit up, glowed cannily in the rain. He stared at the flashing red light at the very top of a building until it began to seem like a message in Morse code. It flashed on and off, slowly, like some thickheaded, barely articulate monster.

Ever since he’d separated from his wife he’d been living in a dilapidated four-story apartment building facing Yoyogi Park. It was definitely a step down from the South Aoyama condo he’d lived in before. There was no parking, so he’d had to give up his brand-new BMW. In his miserable little studio apartment he felt like he was a student again. There was nothing in the place to suggest that he cared about how he lived. The only furniture was a bookcase and an aluminum bed.

He went inside and walked over to the window to open it. The phone rang.

“Hello?”

“It’s me.”

He recognized the speaker immediately. There was only one person who’d start a conversation with him like that, without bothering to identify himself: Miyashita, another classmate from his med school days. Miyashita was currently an Assistant Researcher in Pathology.

“Sorry not to call earlier.” Ando knew why Miyashita had called, so he apologized before he could be reproached.

“I was at your lab today.”

“I was at the M.E.’s office.”

“Must be nice having two paying jobs.”

“What are you talking about? Your job’s tenure track.”

“Never mind that. You haven’t RSVP’d about Funakoshi’s farewell party.”

Funakoshi, over at Internal Medicine, was leaving to take over his father’s clinic back home, the old man was retiring. Miyashita had taken it upon himself to organize a send-off for him. He’d already told Ando the time and place, and Ando was supposed to get back to him right away to tell him whether or not he’d be attending. He had gotten wrapped up in other things and forgotten. If his son hadn’t died, Ando would probably have been the one getting the big send-off. His stint in forensics was only supposed to be temporary, a stepping-stone. He’d planned to get the basics down pat, then switch to clinical work in preparation for taking over his wife’s father’s clinic… One moment of carelessness, and the whole blueprint had been ruined.

“When is it again?” Ando wedged the receiver in between his ear and his shoulder as he flipped through the pages of his planner.

“Next Friday.”

“Friday, huh?” He didn’t need to check his schedule. Only three hours ago, as he and Mai had parted, they’d made a dinner date for that evening. Six o’clock next Friday. It was clear which commitment should take priority. For the first time in ten years, he’d asked a young woman out to dinner, and somehow, she hadn’t bolted. There was no way he was going to send things back to square one. Ando felt the date could be the moment of truth as to whether or not he was ever going to wake up from his long nightmare.

“So how about it?” Miyashita nagged.

“Sorry, but I can’t make it. Prior engagement.”

“Really? You sure this isn’t the same old thing?”

The same old thing? Ando didn’t know what that meant. He couldn’t remember if he used any excuse habitually to turn down his friend’s invitations.

“What same old thing?”

“Your not being able to drink. When I know for a fact you used to drink like a fish.”

“It’s not that.”

“Look, if you don’t want to drink, you don’t have to. Fake it with oolong tea or something. But you’ve got to be there.”

“I said it’s not that.”

“So you can drink?”

“Sort of.”

“Wait-is it some girl you’re after?”

Miyashita’s intuition was sharper than one would have guessed from his rotund physique. Ando always tried to play things as straight as he could with Miyashita, but he wasn’t sure he could say he was “after” a woman he’d only met twice. He didn’t know how to respond, so he said nothing.

“She must be something if she made you forget Funakoshi’s send-off.”

Ando still had nothing to say.

“Well, I’m happy for you. Don’t worry-hey, why don’t you bring her along? We’d welcome her, you know? With open arms.”

“We’re not at that stage yet.”

“You’re taking things slowly?”

“I guess you could say that.”

“Hey, I won’t twist your arm.”

“Sorry.”

“Do you know how many times you’ve apologized during this conversation? I get the picture. I’ll put you down for a no-show. To make up for it, I’m going to spread the word that you’ve got a girl, so brace yourself.”

Miyashita laughed, and Ando knew he wouldn’t be able to get mad at the guy. The only comfort Ando had been afforded during the gut-wrenching da’ s after his son died and his wife left him had come from a present Miyashita had given him. Miyashita hadn’t told him to “cheer up” or anything meaningless of that sort; instead he’d given Ando a novel, saying, “Read this.” It was the first Ando had heard of his friend’s interest in literature; he also discovered for the first time that books could genuinely give strength. The novel was sort of a Bildungsroman, the story of an emotionally and physically scarred youth who learns to overcome his past. The book still occupied an honored place on Ando’s bookshelf.