Yukiko Motoya - The Lonesome Bodybuilder - Stories

“Soon I couldn’t even leave the house, thanks to my outlandish appearance. In the early days, we kept moving from one place to the next, but every time we did, I got pregnant with another one, so we decided we’d go somewhere new, buy a house, and stay put. Once we got here, my perpetual pregnancies finally let up. We breathed a sigh of relief, thinking we might be forgiven at last.

“But there was another change yet to come. You know what I’m talking about?”

I said the first thing that came to mind. “The tears?”

“That’s right.” She nodded, still clutching my arm. “I started to cry tears of blood.”

Was this some kind of sick joke? I was too confused to work out where her lies started, or how exactly she was different from other women. I mean, they were all completely foreign to me to begin with. I tried to pry her hand off my arm. She wouldn’t let go, and kept on talking, as though she were trying to unburden herself by confessing everything. It was infuriating. I kicked her in the gut as hard as I could, and in a mad scramble half leapt, half tumbled down into the garden, clambering toward the shadowy darkness.

“Seduce your father!” I heard her cry. “Then you’ll know what I’m talking about!”

I’d meant to aim for home, but I found myself in the woods behind her house, through which the evil gang always made its exit. I ran and ran, but the trees went on forever. There was no way it could be so vast. “Father! Father!” I shouted, but maybe he didn’t hear—there was no sign of anyone coming to help. I saw that I was surrounded by countless mounds of soil, where the girl and her father had buried the gang members they’d killed daily. There were capes and masks scattered everywhere. Farther on, I came across five secluded graves.

After a while, I finally spotted the lights on in my house. I went to my room and slipped quietly into bed. The next day, my old man brought me some lunch. The moment I clapped eyes on him I remembered the night before, and promptly lost the will to eat his food. I couldn’t bring myself to even speak to him.

There was nothing to be done. No matter how many times I asked why, all she would tell me was that she was challenging me to a duel. I begged her to reconsider, but it was no good. She was the kind of girl who would call me every night when we first started going out just to check that we were really dating, a lover who was so slender she looked like she might break if you embraced her. I couldn’t believe it.

She stood up, as if to say there was nothing more to discuss, and asked if I’d like to do it by the river.

“How did we get here?” I cried. “Could we choose a more romantic location, at least?”

She paused to think, and then started listing places that were special to us: The amusement park. The movie theater. The park with the unusual swings. The petting zoo. Our parents’ homes. The courtyard at the college where we’d met…

“The river’s fine by me,” I said.

She nodded. “Anywhere much farther and we’ll have to drive, which will be fine for getting there, but could be tricky on the way back,” she said. Of the two of us, I was the only one who drove.

My suggestion that we wait until it got dark was rejected. Her excitement seemed to mount as we searched for the perfect spot along the river. I stole a glance at her profile and saw that her upper lip was curled back, exposing her teeth. I’d had no idea she felt so passionately about fighting me.

“I just want to know why,” I said again, in tears.

She was breathing heavily. Huh huh huh huh.

Another man came over the bank, led by his girlfriend. He also had tears rolling down his face. For a second, I thought an enormous mirror had appeared in front of us. The girl reminded me of my girlfriend: she was short and energetic-looking, with an attractive face. The man was like me. Nervous and pale, with a wan air.

As we passed each other, I noticed something that took me by surprise. The girl was holding what looked like a dog’s leash, the other end of which stretched up to the top button of the man’s shirt. I tried to pretend I hadn’t noticed it, but I couldn’t help myself from looking at the collar around his neck.

“No good spots back there?” the girl said. She may or may not have noticed me staring.

“We’ve only just come out ourselves. We weren’t sure which way to go,” my girlfriend said. She was still panting. Huh huh huh.

“Same here,” the girl said. “We just decided to follow the river.” The two of them moved toward each other and started exchanging information, making it seem like the man and I should probably be talking to each other too.

“Hello,” I said, and nodded exploratively.

For a second I was worried he couldn’t understand me, but the man in the dog collar looked at my drying tears and, in a surprisingly normal voice, said, “So it’s happening to you too.” He wore glasses, and would have looked like a trustworthy office worker if not for the wrinkles in his suit. I didn’t know how to react. Because the girl was a few steps away, the leash was now pulled taut, making it even less possible to ignore the collar around his neck.

“What has?” I said.

“You’re the same as me,” he said.

“What are you talking about?”

“Am I right in thinking you’ve been challenged to a duel?”

I looked over at our girlfriends in alarm. So that girl was also about to…

“Shh. Play dumb!” He admonished me without taking his eyes off my face. He sounded sharper than I expected. Maybe he had a position of authority at his company, in spite of the dog collar. “It’s our fault,” he said quickly, moving only his mouth as though the rest of his face had turned to stone.

Your fault? I almost asked, except I sensed he meant to implicate me when he said the fault was ours.

When I didn’t say anything, he continued, “Didn’t you wish for a more exciting lover? This is all because of the desires of men like us. The women—” There was a sharp pull on the leash, and I saw the light disappear from his eyes as he turned to plod after his girlfriend.

After that, we met many similar couples. All the men walked three steps behind the women, with sad expressions and heads bowed as if they were accepting heavy punishments. As we passed each other they signaled mutely to me with their eyes.

The women were starting to salivate. My girlfriend was walking in front of me, and I couldn’t see her face, but I could hear the occasional watery dribbling sound, so I presumed that it was happening to her too. I had the impression her body was expanding. Her dress—one of her favorites, which she’d worn on some of our dates—looked uncomfortably tight. Her breath was getting faster and more rhythmic. Huh huh huh huh huh. Her spine was slowly arching as though it were being pulled by an internal spring. And to think she’d once had perfect posture, and had always looked after her appearance, from her shoes to her meticulously trimmed bangs!

“You’re doing this… because of me? For me?” I asked, but she had her nose in the air and was busy sniffing something upwind. She seemed in no condition to talk. Decisively, I stepped in front of my lover and looked into her face. I couldn’t have been more shocked if she’d punched me. Her eyes, which tended to droop demurely, were angled sharply upward, and her eyelashes had grown preternaturally thick and voluminous. A dark line rimmed her eyes and made her seem to be glaring at everything. It made me shiver. What a provocative look! And her mouth too: at first I thought she’d bitten through her lip by accident, but no. The pink was gradually flushing to a striking red. I reached out and brushed my finger across her lip. The color came off on my finger. It was lipstick. Her lips were producing their own lipstick.