3.02 Shut up!

For the past few years I had been going through the motions of my daily life like a wind-up doll. In the morning after six or seven hours' sleep, I'd leave for the colleges where I was doing a half-arsed job teaching. I'd return home in the afternoon where I’d teach a few more lukewarm lessons or dabble half-heartedly in the occasional translation job or some freelance writing. In the evening, I'd open a bottle of rum or shôchû and drink myself numb, letting the spring wind down.

I had become so passive, practically inert. There was an ineffable banality to everything I was doing: my writing had become uninspired; the subjects of my photography were hackneyed; even, my Japanese, which I had worked so hard on mastering, was showing tinges of rust. I was using it, and, yet, I was losing it all the same.

But that Friday morning sitting on my balcony I felt alive, like my old self again, as if I had been defibrillated out of a coma.

After taking a shower and getting dressed, I noticed that the message light on the phone was flashing. I pressed the play button.

Beep. "Rémy? Are you okay? I miss you . . . "

Beep. "Answer the phone, Rémy. I want to hear your voice."

Beep. "Are you with another woman again?”

Beep. "Pick up the FUCKING phone now or it's over between the two of us!"

Beep. "Why don't you answer the phone? I'm going crazy worrying about you."

I knew I had to fill her in on what was happening before she had a complete meltdown, but I couldn’t risk doing so from home. There was no predicting what she’d say.

I left home earlier than usual, elaborately rigging the apartment with markers: business cards in the door jams, cellophane tape at the base of the fusuma sliding doors. If the cops were to snoop around my apartment while I was away, I would know.

At the train station, I rang Azami up.

“Where are you?” she demanded right away.

“I’m at Hakata sta . . . “

“Why didn’t you answer your phone?”

“I couldn’t . . . “

“Where were you?”

“At home.”

“Why didn’t you pick up then? You were with someone, weren’t you?”

“No!”

“Then why didn’t you . . .  “

“Azami, shut up for once and listen!” I sighed heavily and continued. “My apartment was raided by the police yesterday.”

"Oh Rémy, I knew something like this would eventually happen," she fretted. “I knew the police would eventually catch up with you and Jean.”

Good grief.

"We can talk about later, but first I need you to do one thing for me this afternoon."

“What?”

“Meet me at Small at seven-thirty.” Small Spaces was one of my regular haunts.

"Why can't I meet you at your apartment?"

"For the love of God, Azami!" I yelled into the receiver. "Just be at Small at seven-thirty!”

"Okay," she said reluctantly.

© Aonghas Crowe, 2010. All rights reserved. No unauthorized duplication of any kind.

注意：この作品はフィクションです。登場人物、団体等、実在のモノとは一切関係ありません。

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

No. 6 is now available on Kindle.