Hideo Furukawa - Slow Boat

Me: But what about school?

Her: First things first. My Promised Land awaits!

Fair enough.

If this was a kabuki play, this would be the place where the wooden clappers get faster and faster. Things were really moving now. All we needed was 20,000 yen each. We didn’t really think about questions like when or how long (i.e., winter break or spring break?). For the time being, all we needed was capital.

We started job-hunting. Easy enough. Campus was full of flyers for “short-term high-income employment opportunities”. They all looked like menus from subpar family restaurants. I weighed a few options before signing up with a security company that had me waving a blinking orange stick—directing traffic around construction sites.

She was looking at the same flyers, but ended up, through a friend, scoring a plum job at a beach snack bar. Somewhere on the Boso Peninsula, on the side that looks at Tokyo Bay.

The summer before that—summer 1993—was unseasonably cold. Like, record lows. Crops were lost, meaning rice shortages, and the Heisei Rice Riots. Nobody was rushing to the beach. Boso Peninsula was empty, like a ski resort in a snowless winter. But that was 1993. This summer—1994—was ultra-hot. Forty-year highs. Tokyo hit 39.1 degrees in August. HOTTEST DAY SINCE WWII. Air conditioners were selling like hot cakes… And keeping cool was serious business.

“The beach is waaaaay packed,” she said after her third or fourth day. “It’s insane.”

Why are my summers always cursed? I guess I should be grateful that my fifth-grade summer died suddenly and didn’t drag on forever. This time around, summer was endless. And ruthless. University classes were slated to start in mid-September, and her beach gig was supposed to wrap up by the end of August. That gave us a couple of weeks in between, for ourselves. That’s why I put up with it.

With the reality that we couldn’t just be together whenever we wanted, not now.

We’d discovered the undeniable truth that making money means selling time. Selling time means time apart. Her bed was no longer Aladdin’s magic carpet—always good for a shag. We tried to make things work. After my job, I’d go right to her place in Komagome. Let myself in, wait for her.

But Boso isn’t exactly close. It’s in the next prefecture. I’m pretty sure she had to change trains at Tokyo Station to get there. She had to be there really early to open up. Sometimes she stayed late to spend time with co-workers, too. At first, it was hard to pin down when she was coming home. After a little while, though, she stopped coming back at all. She started staying with a girl she knew in Chiba.

“If I head back now, there’s no way I’ll make it to work tomorrow morning…”

Says the voice on the other end of the line.

But why am I playing the obedient husband? Alone in her apartment, waiting for the phone to ring.

Then the thing that had to happen happened.

But wait. Not yet. I have a confession to make. I need to be honest. I was hardly innocent myself. I made my own mistakes. With a twenty-something female security guard from work. I mean, she was friendly. And we… got friendly. Not just once. Four times—no more. “Four”, by the way, doesn’t reflect the number of times in a single night. Saying “she seduced me” wouldn’t be completely honest either. Sex was in the air. In the workplace. And good luck curbing the sexual urges of a nineteen-year-old male.

At first, I just acted cool—like she’d never find out. And she wouldn’t. The two of them lived in different worlds.

There was zero chance of them crossing paths.

But that doesn’t mean I got off scot-free.

Something I’ve noticed: whatever happens to me happens to those around me. She was hard at work at the beach—and, just like that, two weeks had gone by without us sharing a sack. There was one time we got close, except: “I’m on my period.” Fact is, she was barely ever at Casa Komagome at this point. Really, I should have been paying the rent. Then it hit me: What if she’s sleeping with someone else? Where did that suspicion come from? From my own indiscretions, obviously. That’s what got me thinking.

Thinking? More like I was consumed by jealousy.

But I tried to hide it. I mean, I had no proof—and, more to the point, I had no right.

I wanted to be optimistic. Like, if something’s going on, maybe it’s just meaningless sex… right?

Crap, this sucks.

I had a pretty good guess who the mystery lover might be. “Yakisoba Man”. A local surfer she worked with. He was older than her (older than us , I guess…), and apparently he could fry noodles like nobody else. The second I heard about this dude, something didn’t sit right. I mean, he’s too healthy—a healthy mind in a healthy body. Nothing like me. I’d never touched a surfboard, and instant ramen was the fullest extent of my noodle abilities. Don’t get me wrong, I have some pretty strong feelings about Peyoung sauce, but I couldn’t compete with this motherfucker.

I break the news to myself: “Listen, man, chances are good she’s sleeping with Yakisoba Man.”

“I see. Is it fatal?”

“No,” I tell myself. “Because I love her.”

I won’t push it, I can’t. It’s just temporary. It’ll end when Boso closes. Things can go back to the way they were—our love is strong. As long as I don’t blow it now. September will make everything right. We’ll be back in our honeymoon suite in Komagome. I mean, Yakisoba Man’s geographically out of range—he lives in Chiba . So I keep my mouth shut and wait for the tide to turn.

But that didn’t happen. September rolled around, and she was still hanging out in Boso, not coming home at night.

I think it was a few days into the month—maybe a week?

This memory has no when . I know. On some subconscious level, I want to forget, right? Some complex? Some deep desire? But I definitely remember where I was. In the apartment in Komagome. Her apartment—but she’s not there. I’m waiting for her. Waiting for that ominous sound.

The phone rings.

Twice. Then it stops. Then it starts again.

I pick up. “Hello?”

It’s her. “I’m at Haneda…”

I can hear the roar of Tokyo International Airport in the background. She’s on a payphone, calling her home phone—calling me.

“I got two tickets for Okinawa,” she says. She doesn’t wait for me to say anything back. “Two tickets to leave Haneda, touch down in Naha, then fly over to Miyakojima. You understand what I’m saying?”

“I–I think so.”

“No, you don’t—you don’t know if the extra ticket’s yours. I don’t even know… My job at the beach is over. I guess it’s been over for a while. I’ve got the money now, and I’m ready to leave. I can even cover a room for two. So… I’m going to Miyakojima. Myself plus one.”

“Plus me?”

“I don’t know…”

“What do you mean?”

“I need to make the same call to someone else.”

I say nothing.

She doesn’t ask me to come.

She tells me her flight number. Tells me her departure time. Says she’ll be waiting by the airline counter.

There isn’t much time.

“I can’t make this choice alone,” she says. The noise of the terminal nearly drowns her out. She sounds a little hoarse, but I can’t be sure. “So you have to choose for me. You have to choose me. If you drop everything and come with me, the ticket’s yours. If you can’t choose me, then I can’t choose you.”

Silence. That’s it?

No explicit mention of Yakisoba Man.

“I’m getting on this plane—I’m leaving Tokyo,” she says, “and I want someone to come with me…”