Yukiko Motoya - The Lonesome Bodybuilder - Stories

Your town is overflowing in opportunities for you to meet your future partner. How many bicycle saddles are lined up outside the train station, just waiting for you to choose them? Nothing is stopping you from going up to the bike parking, and, like the king of some small country, boldly selecting from their ranks.

It may happen that you fall for a saddle at first sight, only for its owner to throw a wrench in the path of your love. “Hey, you there, what do you think you’re doing, trying to take my saddle?” Stand firm. Simply tell the owner that, while the saddle may as well be any of thousands for them, for you he is the only one in the world. If you suggest that the owner can take your saddle, the one you’ve never quite gotten along with, instead—be sure to carry it around with you for the purpose—then the majority of saddle-owners are sure to agree. Put your heart into it, and convey the depth of the love you feel.

Once you’re finally alone with your chosen saddle, the rest is up to you lovebirds! Why not hold him by the stem as though he were walking alongside you, and skip down the sidewalk together? He will never sniff dismissively as a human man would when you suggest going deer-watching for your next date. Even a movie in the most questionable taste will not elicit a yawn. Go to a museum. See the sights. Gaze over the city as it’s lit up at night, and lean in close, and get a romantic mood going to rival any other couple.

Of course, there’s likely to be the occasional jeer or heckle from an insensitive bystander, pointing out that your lover is a bicycle saddle, but let this minor obstacle only stoke the flames of your love. Your partner will no doubt be prepared to be swung as hard as it takes to protect your honor. More important, most human men are no match for his manliness in bed.

What do you say? Can’t you just picture the charms of stepping out with a bicycle saddle?

If you and an attractive saddle end up embarking on a serious relationship as a result of this, please make sure to send in a photograph. I will certainly be delighted to participate in your wedding.

Editors’ note: We have brought you a condensed version of our exclusive eight-hour-long hospital-room interview with the one woman you can’t afford to take your eyes off this season—radiant as she continues to mature as an icon and a role model, still juggling home and career, giving her all to every question, as instructive as ever, right up to the very end. Her advice has attained the realm of the oracular.

Ionce lived with a whole lot of dogs.

I don’t recall their breed, which is strange, because we were close, and spent so much time together. I loved those dogs, and they loved me. There were dozens of them, each one bright white like freshly fallen snow. I spent my days warm and comfortable in a room with a fireplace, not seeing anyone. The dogs did ask to be let out, but I never once saw them doing their business—which was also strange, but at the time I assumed that they were modest and had set up some kind of toilet area away from the cabin. I didn’t like beds, so I slept standing up, leaning against the windowsill. The dogs would gather around me at night like an overcoat, leaving only my mouth and eyes exposed. I enjoyed drowsily gazing at the fire, drifting to sleep, with the heady feeling of being engulfed by the mass of dogs.

At the time, I had some work that I could do holed up in the cabin. It involved sitting at the desk in the attic from morning to night, peering into a magnifying glass, tweezering tiny pieces of paper of innumerable colors: work too mind-numbing for most people even to contemplate. For many years, come winter, I’d take several weeks’ worth of food and water and hide myself away in that cabin, which belonged to someone I knew.

The cabin consisted of a high-ceilinged living room, a small bedroom, and an attic, but that was plenty of room for me. When I first reached the isolated cabin, having driven inexpertly over the narrow, winding mountain roads, I was still on my own. I remember dropping the keys and struggling to pick them up again while still holding all my luggage, because the bulky scarf that covered half my face prevented me from seeing my hands. Autumn had just ended. Toward the beginning of my stay I’d definitely gone to sleep alone, looking out the window each night and feeling as if I were at the bottom of a deep sea. I don’t recall when the dogs started living there.

I loved all the dogs equally. At first, I tried naming them one at a time, but I didn’t get very far. I’d never actually liked naming things. I was content just looking into the glossy black of their eyes, which shone as though they’d been fired in a magic kiln. It wasn’t as if the dogs called me by name, after all. But this got to be a little inconvenient, so I came up with names to try out on some of them. I lined up the dogs in front of the fireplace and told them to bark if they heard a name they liked. Then I held up the collars I’d fashioned and, looking into their eyes, called out the names one by one.

“First up, Early Morning.”

Heh heh heh heh.

“The Day the Appliances Arrived.”

Heh heh heh heh.

“Pastrami.”

Heh heh heh… Yap!

The dog stuck his tongue out deferentially. I placed the collar marked PASTRAMI around his neck.

“The World.”

Heh heh heh heh.

“Takeout.”

Yap! Yap yap!

The dogs took care of their own meals as well. I surreptitiously let them out in the mountain woods, so they probably hunted animals as a pack. Once when I went for a walk among the trees, I found what looked like a bird’s skull at the bottom of a tree. I slipped the skull into my coat pocket and, when I returned to the cabin, I threw it at the dogs where they lay lounging. “Boo!” I shouted. The dogs didn’t really react, but I thought that must be because they were ashamed that I knew they’d been eating birds. They never let me see them feed. What I did see them doing was drinking plenty of the very cold water that I got from the well behind the garage. I tried warming up milk and putting it out for them so they didn’t catch a chill, but they wouldn’t touch that. The ice-cold water seemed to energize them.

One day, I drove down the mountain to replenish some food supplies and came across a knot of people from the town, puffed up in woolly hats and down-filled jackets and gathered by the roadside.

I slowed down to see what was going on. Through the open car window I heard a voice saying something about a dog. My heart skipped a beat. The dog curled up in the passenger seat next to me began to raise his head as if he had sensed something, so I said, “Hush,” and held his round head down in my hand. He’d come nosing around my feet as I was getting in the car, so I’d brought him along.

The dogs’ heads just fit in the palm of my hand, and I was always moved by how their little skulls were wrapped in soft fur. This helped me stay calm on this occasion too, and I quietly rolled up the car window and slipped past the townspeople. Perhaps a dog had caused some kind of problem. In the supermarket, I kept my scarf wound twice around my neck as usual, hiding half my face, to discourage the staff from approaching me. But when the shop assistant from the fruit-and-vegetable section looked into my basket and casually remarked, “Stockpiling All-Bran again?” I plucked up my courage and asked, “Has something happened in town?”

The man looked a little taken aback—probably because I’d spoken at all. “A five-year-old boy’s gone missing,” he whispered.

“A child? Was it a kidnapping?”

“Kidnapping? No, nothing like that would happen around here.”