I went over to the coffee shop near the station a little after six. The woman was closing up when I got there. She turned off the lights, took off her apron, untied her hair, and put on a navy-blue coat. She removed the sneakers she wore while working and exchanged them for some low leather boots. She looked like a different person.
“Dinner or something,” she said as she wound a scarf round her neck.
“If you’re hungry, that is.”
“I’m very hungry, actually. I didn’t have time to eat lunch.”
The thing was, I couldn’t think of anyplace to eat. I’d hardly ever eaten out after I moved here. The food served in the few places I had eaten in wasn’t very impressive. The service, too, left a lot to be desired. It was a small town deep in the mountains, after all. Can’t expect the kind of smart restaurant you’d find in guidebooks.
I asked her if she knew of any good place to eat. “I still don’t know much about this town,” she said.
“Neither do I, but there might not be any.”
I thought about it, and an idea popped into my head. “How about coming to my place? If you don’t mind. I could whip together a simple meal there pretty quickly.”
She hesitated, but then said, “What could you make? For instance.”
I did a quick mental review of the food I’d put in the fridge earlier in the day.
“I could do a shrimp and herb salad and spaghetti with calamari and mushrooms, if that sounds alright. And I have a Chablis in the fridge that would go well with that. I bought it here in town, so we’re not talking top of the line, though.”
“Sounds so good, I’m sold,” she said.
She locked up the shop and slung a leather shoulder bag over her shoulder. And we began walking together down the dark streets. The heels of her boots made a hard click against the pavement.
“Do you always prepare such nice meals for yourself ?”
“It’s too much trouble to eat out, so generally I cook for myself. Nothing fancy. Simple, easy-to-prepare meals.”
“Have you lived alone for a long time?”
“I guess you could say that. I’ve lived on my own since I left home at eighteen.”
“So you’re a veteran of the single life, then.”
“I suppose so,” I said. “Not that it’s anything to brag about.”
“You know, I realized I haven’t heard what you do for a living.”
“I’m kind of the head librarian of the town library. It’s a small library, so the title sounds more impressive than it is. We only have two full-time employees, including me.”
“I see—a head librarian. That sounds like interesting work. I haven’t been to the library yet. I love to read, and I knew there was a library in town, but work keeps me too busy.”
“It’s a small place, but we have a nice collection. The building is a renovated private home, a former sake brewery, and is quite attractive. You should stop by if you have time.”
“What did you do before you became the head librarian?”
“After college, I’ve always worked in a book distribution company in Tokyo. Because I loved working with books. But for various reasons I quit that job and then just sort of lazed around for a while, but when I heard that the town’s library was looking for a head librarian, I went ahead and applied.”
“Did you get tired of life in the city?”
“No, that wasn’t it. I wanted to work in a library, and looked for available openings, and this town just happened to be advertising for a position. Anywhere would have been good—the city or the countryside, north or south.”
“I got divorced two years ago,” she said as she carefully watched her step, as if checking to see if the street was frozen. “Things got complicated for a while, and I became pretty depressed. I didn’t feel like doing a thing. The thought struck me that I should go far away from Sapporo—where, didn’t really matter. As long as it was somewhere where no one knew me, anyplace in Japan would have been okay.”
I gave a vague response. I didn’t know what to say. She was silent for a while and then said, “And as I explained, I did an internet search and found that a coffee shop near the station in here was for sale. I actually traveled here to check it out and thought it looked good. I calculated the expenses and projected revenue and figured if I owned the shop and worked there, I could manage enough for me to live on. I used to work in a bank so I’m good at calculating those kinds of things. And I thought that if I came here to this remote mountain town, no one would be able to find me. So I quit my job at the bank and used my severance pay and savings to buy the place, and moved out here. Without telling anyone my forwarding address. I was lucky that the money I had on hand was enough and I didn’t need to take out a loan.”
“That’s good.”
“You’re the first person I’ve told since I moved here.”
“You didn’t tell anyone?”
“No, not a soul.”
“You never dug a hole, faced the bottom, and confessed everything?”
“Never did. What about you?”
I gave it some thought. “I might have.”
Maybe we felt a bit closer, since our circumstances were similar. Two lonely people, outsiders, blown in by the wind to this tiny rural town deep in the recesses of Tohoku. With no friends here. And it wasn’t clear if either of us would end up settling down in this place.
As soon as we got to my home, I switched on the heater, took off my coat, opened a bottle of white wine, poured it, and we made a toast.
In the kitchen I sipped my wine while tossing together the salad and spaghetti. She watched curiously as I buzzed around the kitchen. As I waited for the water to boil for the spaghetti, I minced a clove of garlic and sautéed calamari and mushrooms, then minced some parsley. I shelled the shrimp, sliced a grapefruit into even pieces, tossed soft lettuce and herbs together, and added a dressing of olive oil, lemon, and mustard.
“You really look like you know what you’re doing. Very efficient.” She seemed impressed.
“Well, I am a veteran of the single life.”
“I’m still a beginner, and honestly I’m not that good a cook. Though I do like cleaning up the house. A natural trait, I suppose.”
“How long were you married?”
“Not quite ten years.”
“You were in Sapporo the whole time?”
“That’s right,” she said. “I was born and raised there. A very peaceful upbringing, in a very peaceful family. My husband was a classmate back in high school. After college I went to work at the bank and got married at twenty-four. I think our marriage was good at first, but then I realized things weren’t going so well.”
“I’m going to put the spaghetti in to boil. Could you time it for me?” I asked. “Tell me when eight minutes, thirty seconds have passed. And not a second more.”
“Got it,” she said. She looked up at the wall clock, all business. “Eight minutes, thirty seconds, and not a second more.”
I put the spaghetti into the boiling pot, stirred it with a wooden spatula to separate the strands, divided up the salad, and set the table.
We sat across from each other at the small table, enjoying the chilled Chablis, eating salad and spaghetti, and afterward had some coffee. We skipped dessert.
It had been a long while since I had eaten a meal with someone. (It was hard to remember the last time.) To prepare a meal for someone, set the table with decent tableware, and enjoy a dinner and casual conversation together—it was all pretty nice. As we savored the food and sipped the wine we shared more about ourselves. That said, there wasn’t much about me to share, so it was mainly about her life.
She had graduated from a cozy upscale women’s college in Sapporo and began work at a local bank. She met her husband again at a high school reunion, fell in love rather quickly, and married at twenty-four. It was a lively wedding and reception, with their friends attending. Everyone wished them well on their new start in life. (This was some ten years ago, which would make her thirty-six now, about the same age as Mrs. Soeda.)
Her husband worked for a large food manufacturer, which mainly specialized in the import and processing of flour. They went to Bali on their honeymoon, but right after getting there he came down with a terrible case of food poisoning (probably brought on by eating crabs), had awful diarrhea and vomiting, and spent almost the whole trip in bed. He couldn’t eat much, either. While he was prostrate in bed she swam in the hotel pool and read a book she’d brought from Japan. There was nothing else to do. When they arrived back in Japan she had a lovely tan, while her husband was pale and gaunt. Despite the inauspicious beginnings, their married life after that was peaceful and happy. The miserable honeymoon became a memory they laughed about.
“I don’t know where things began to fall apart,” she said, shaking her head a fraction. She took a sip of wine. “But at a certain point something critical broke down and things went south in all sorts of small ways. We were at odds, no matter what we did. We argued, and it gradually dawned on us that we didn’t have all that much in common, and then sex was…You get what I mean, right?”
Another vague response from me. I picked up the bottle and poured her more wine. The wine brought a slight blush to her pale cheeks.
“So he ended up having an affair with a female colleague at work, I found out about it, and that was the immediate cause of our divorce. He never was good at hiding things.”
“I see,” I said.
“But his relationship with that woman wasn’t all that serious, apparently. Just a spur of the moment, impulsive thing. He apologized for what he did, promised to never let it happen again. I guess this happens a lot. But I found I couldn’t go back to the way I felt before.”
I didn’t have any particular response and merely nodded.
“But what I found more trying than getting divorced was that I was no longer sure of my emotions,” she said, eyes fixed on the wineglass in her hand.
“I felt like no matter what man I might meet later on, and maybe even marry, and no matter how much I felt I loved him, the same thing might happen all over again. I had never felt that way before.”
“You said you knew him since high school?”
“Yes, we were in the same class. But we didn’t go out then. We chatted a few times, that’s it. Secretly I thought he was very attractive. He was tall, handsome, did well in school. But I was busy with the volleyball club, and he was the captain of the soccer team, and of course we were both studying for college entrance exams, so we really didn’t have time to get to know each other one-on-one.”
“Handsome and athletic.”
“Right, the type that high school girls drooled over. He was, of course, super popular in our class. Anyway, I finished college, and we ran across each other at a high school reunion for the first time in a long while, where we had some drinks and talked, and hit it off right away. Like…The sort of I liked you from a long time ago type of thing. It happens a lot.”
“Oh, does it?”
“Yeah, it does happen a lot, that kind of thing. I mean…have you never been to a class reunion?”
I shook my head. “Can’t say I have, no. From elementary school all the way to college.”
“You don’t want to remember the past?”
“It’s not that. Honestly, I never felt like I fit in at school or with my class. And there’s no one in my classes I felt like meeting again.”
“Wasn’t there any attractive girl you liked in your class?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”
“So you liked solitude from way back then?”
“I don’t think anyone likes solitude. Anywhere, I think,” I said. “Everyone’s looking for something, for someone. The way they do, though, is a little different.”
“Yes. You may be right.”
After we had coffee, after we’d washed the dishes in the kitchen (I washed, and she used a towel to dry), the clock on the wall showed that it was almost nine. I’d better be going soon, she said. Work starts early again tomorrow. I brought over her coat and scarf and helped her into her coat. She tucked her straight black hair under the collar of the coat.
“Thank you for dinner,” she said. “It was delicious.”
“I’ll walk you home,” I said.
“That’s okay. I’m a grown-up and can get back safely on my own.”
“I feel like walking.”
“On a freezing night like this?”
“Cold is relative.”
“There were nights colder than this?” she asked.
“And a colder place, too.”
She looked in my face for a time, then nodded assent. “Okay, then. I’ll take you up on that.”
We walked side by side on the road along the river. Occasionally the heels of her boots would step on a frozen patch and make a hard crunchy sound. As I heard that I couldn’t help but think of when I used to walk the girl from the library home in the walled-in town. There I could hear the murmur of the river, the periodic cries of the night birds, the branches of the river willows fluttering in the wind. The old raincoat she wore made a dry rustling sound.
Time seemed all jumbled together inside me. The tips of two different worlds were overlapping, ever so slightly. Much like the mouth of a river at high tide when the seawater and river water flow up and down, back and forth, and mix together.
It was windless, but chillingly cold. The daytime had been fairly warm for the end of February, but once the sun set the temperature plummeted. We wrapped ourselves up tight in our coats and wrapped our scarves up above our chins. Our breath was white, breath so hard and pure you’d swear you could write on it. But I welcomed the cold, since it cooled down some of the confusion swirling around within me.
“I get the feeling I talked about myself and nothing else this evening,” she said as she walked along. “Now that I think of it, you said hardly anything about yourself.”
“There’s not much in my life up till now worth talking about.”
“But I’m interested. How you got to be the person you are now. I’d like to know.”
“It’s not all that interesting. I was born in an ordinary family, did ordinary work, and lived a quiet life by myself. A run-of-the-mill sort of life.”
“You don’t seem like a run-of-the-mill person, to me at least,” she said. “You never thought of getting married?”
“A few times,” I replied. “I’m an ordinary person, so yes, I did feel like that sometimes, like everyone else. But each time that possibility arose it never worked out. It got to be too much trouble to go through the same thing over and over.”
“You mean falling in love?”
I had no good reply to that. Silence reigned for a time. That silence hung there in the air, shaped like a blank sheet of breath.
“Anyhow, thank you. It’s been a long time since I’ve had dinner and had a nice talk with someone like this. It’s the first time since I’ve moved to this town.”
“I’m glad.”
“The wine made me talk too much, I’m afraid. But I think you’re a very good listener.”
“When I drink wine, I always wind up wanting to hear what other people say.”
She chuckled. “Though you don’t say much about yourself, do you.”
We found ourselves standing outside her coffee shop.
“This is where I live,” she said.
“Here?”
“Yes, there’s a living space upstairs. It’s small but has what I need, and I manage. I’m thinking of moving to somewhere better, but I just can’t find the time.”
“Well, it is convenient.”
“True enough. My commuting time is zero. It’s not the kind of place I’d like to show to anyone, though.”
She unlocked the door and went inside the shop. She switched on the light behind the counter.
“Can I invite you out again?” I asked, standing just inside the doorway. The words just slipped out without thinking. Just like some skillful ventriloquist was moving my mouth and talking.
“I mean, if it isn’t any trouble for you.” That much I managed to add on my own.
“If you make a delicious dinner for me again,” she said, her expression serious.
“Of course. I’ll be happy to.”
“I’m joking,” she said, and laughed. “I don’t mind if it’s not for dinner—please invite me again.”
“What day is your shop closed?”
“I take off every Wednesday,” she said. “The other days the shop’s open from ten in the morning until six in the evening. How about your library?”
“It’s closed every Monday. Other days it’s open from nine in the morning until six in the evening.”
“Seems we can only meet after the sun’s gone down.”
“Like a pair of owls.”
“Like a pair of owls deep in a dark forest,” she said.
“You should change your day off to Monday. You’re the owner, so you’re free to have your day off any day of the week you like.”
She inclined her head and thought about this. “You’re right. I should consider that.”
She walked briskly over to me, stretched up, and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. Very unaffectedly, as if it were utterly natural. Her full lips, perhaps because they’d been wrapped in her scarf, were surprisingly warm and soft.
“Thank you for walking me home. I haven’t done this for so long, and I enjoyed it. Feels like a high school date.”
“On a first date in high school you wouldn’t drink Chablis or talk about how a divorce came about.”
She laughed. “Ah, you got that right. But still—”
“Good night,” I said. I tugged a knit cap out of my coat pocket and put it on. She waved to me and locked the door from inside.
A faint feeling of her lips on my cheeks remained. To hold on to that feeling, I wrapped my scarf up to just below my eyes. I looked up at the sky but didn’t see any moon or stars.
Clouds must have emerged.