Yukiko Motoya - The Lonesome Bodybuilder - Stories

The soccer jersey that her husband was wearing was more vibrant than anything else in the park. It was a beautiful yellow, representing the sun, which was the team’s emblem. Meanwhile, her husband was more akin to a brush painting of a dead branch, and Tomoko couldn’t help but laugh out loud at the contrast.

She saw her husband put the bottle down on the ground and leap up to catch hold of a pine bough. He did a pull-up, raising himself easily, and then resumed walking as though nothing had happened, picking up something from the ground and shoving it in his pocket as he did. An acorn , Tomoko thought. Or some insect .

Her husband noticed her watching him and waved. Tomoko waved back enthusiastically. Over here! No doubt he was smiling from ear to ear. Her husband didn’t have eyes, or a nose, or a mouth, but sunlight cast minute shadows that rippled across his face, putting the observer in mind of different expressions. After sending a round of applause to a youth who was practicing juggling nearby, with a lightness of bearing that made it seem that he was about to be airborne, he started running toward the patch of grass where Tomoko was waiting.

On the drive back from the park, her husband said he wanted a latte.

“You want a warm one? Right now?” Tomoko had been looking forward to getting home and showering, but she said, “Sure, let’s get one to go.”

Her husband’s beautiful fingers, rolled and tied as finely as any artisanal object, made contact with the car’s turn indicator lever. As they turned left at the intersection where they would normally make a right, Tomoko let the car seat take the weight of her sweat-damp back.

“Are you getting hungry?”

“Not yet,” Tomoko said. The strange voice her husband emitted from the gaps between his stalks of straw could be difficult to make out unless you listened closely. In the beginning, this had given Tomoko pause too, but now she understood him without too much difficulty. Her husband found a spot free in the metered parking lot, and cut the engine. At that exact moment, it dawned on Tomoko that a work problem on which she’d reached an impasse could be solved another way, and she reached for her phone to make a note of the solution before she forgot. She heard the driver-side door open, and unbuckled her seat belt to get out and follow her husband.

Just then, the car rang out with a sudden sharp clunk, as if a hard object had hit something. Still on her phone, Tomoko paid it no mind, but then her husband said, “What was that, that sound?” and she quickly brought her focus back to him.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Did something hit the car?”

“Nope. It was your seat-belt buckle.” Her husband had opened the door on his side, and was paused awkwardly halfway through the process of getting out of the car. He looked down at the phone in Tomoko’s hand. “Why do you have to be so rough with it?”

“I’m sorry,” Tomoko said quickly. She had no awareness of having unbuckled her seat belt roughly, but then again, only last week she had opened the passenger-side door and accidentally bumped it against a guard rail. Her husband’s car was a brand-new BMW that he’d bought less than a month ago.

Tomoko opened her car door. “That was the seat belt? That sound?”

“That’s right. It hit the door just there,” her husband said, leaning over into the passenger seat to inspect the spot. “See, look—here! Can you see the scratch?”

Tomoko couldn’t, but she apologized again anyway. There’s no way the seat belt could have reached all the way up there , she thought. Her husband was pointing out an area near the top of the window frame, insisting that it was damaged. That line’s probably just part of the car’s design . But she decided to wait until he noticed it himself. Once he had calmed down a little, she could casually say, Why don’t you check what it looks like on the driver’s side?

Her husband was still facing intently toward the window frame. “Come have a look,” he said eventually. “See? It’s dented.”

It was as he said. There was a distinct two-inch-long groove along the top edge of the window frame. Tomoko traced it with her finger. “You’re right,” she said. “It does look like there’s a little dent.”

Tomoko slipped her phone into a coat pocket. “I’m sorry,” she said, dropping her head slightly. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

Her husband was sitting very still, gripping the car’s steering wheel. Tomoko couldn’t read an expression in the dense layers of fine straw that made up his face, but she sensed he was grappling with silent rage.

Fearfully, Tomoko asked, “Did you want to go get your latte?”

“You let me down,” her husband said with a sigh, and dropped his head to his chest.

Tomoko wasn’t sure how to respond. Her husband raised his head again. After a while, he repeated himself. “You let me down.” He sighed and once more dropped his head, leaning his body toward the steering wheel. “You let me down.”

“I’m sorry. Really.” Tomoko thought he might keep doing this movement endlessly unless she did something. “I didn’t think a seat belt would reach that far.”

She wasn’t rewarded with a response. The uncomfortable silence, punctuated by the rustling sound of bundled straw repeatedly hitting the wheel, went on for several minutes.

Finally, as though snapping himself out of it, her husband announced that he was going to get his latte, and opened his door. Tomoko started to get up, but then thought that might make her seem uncontrite, and decided to stay in the car. Her husband, apparently, had had no intention of waiting for her. He crossed the road swiftly without even glancing back.

Once she was alone, Tomoko let out a deep breath. She gazed unseeingly at the number plate of the car parked in front of them, then got out her phone and quickly tapped in the rest of her note. She noticed a single stalk of straw that had fallen at the foot of the driver’s seat, and was picking it up when her husband came back with his drink and started the car without a word. They made a U-turn and went back the way they’d come.

“I’m truly sorry. I promise to try harder in the future,” she said, picking her words carefully. She wondered whether she ought to say more, but she thought it might be disrespectful to say things she didn’t mean.

As soon as she looked out the window, though, she changed her mind, and put her hand on top of her husband’s where it lay on his knee. Since getting married, she’d learned the hard way that it only made things worse when they didn’t talk to each other. Her husband didn’t react to her gesture, but Tomoko kept her hand there for a while.

Deep inside her husband’s hand, almost imperceptibly, she felt something squirm.

Tomoko stared at his hand. What was that? To hide her alarm, she pointed to the latte sitting in the cup holder. “Can I have some?”

“Help yourself,” her husband said, like an unfriendly receptionist. Sipping the warm latte, Tomoko thought about what had just happened. There’d definitely been something lurking within that straw. She felt something start to itch uncomfortably inside her brain. Maybe what she thought she’d noticed was just a vibration from the car.

In their living room, her husband said, “Let me down,” and sat heavily on the sofa. Wondering whether it meant anything that he had dropped the “you,” Tomoko sat as well, straight on the carpet.

Her husband was still slumped over, his upper body bent forward and his face in his hands as though he was struggling against despair. “Why do you have to be so careless?” he said. “I don’t get it. It’s not even a month old.”