Chapter 10

 

Fingal’s Cave/16
AN ODD ENCOUNTER

Yuudai guided Sumiko from the Marina del Rey restaurant, where they had dined and danced, to the nearby cove.

“Mother’s Beach,” said Yuudai, gesturing at the pale, narrow crescent of sand bordering the dark glassy bay. “Water’s shallow. No waves. No riptides. Safe as a bathtub. Also cruelly known as Stretch Mark Beach.”

“I don’t understand,” said Sumiko.

Sumiko’s English was more advanced than Yuudai’s Japanese, but she was challenged by idioms and wordplay. Yuudai took her hand and puffed out his belly. He held her hand to his skin and separated her fingers. “Marks left when the woman’s skin stretches during pregnancy. Stretch marks.”

“Ah, sutoretchimaˉku.”

They wrapped their arms around each other, shrugged off their shoes and stepped into the still-warm sand. It was July and in Los Angeles it had been in the nineties during the day for the last two weeks. It was mild compared to a Tokyo summer, and perfect beach weather, but Sumiko, wary of the sun, would only go to the beach in late afternoon, and even then hide beneath an umbrella. How relaxed she seemed now, sunbathing at midnight. Not once had she mentioned her guilt.

When Katashi asked if she would be alone in Los Angeles for the art exhibition that featured one of her photos, she had lied to her father. Too many times had she voiced her regret to Yuudai, dulling the brightest moments of their stay.

At those moments, too, Sumiko would survey their surroundings and hint at something more. Her father may have been ailing, but “he took care of business . . .”

At the water’s edge they stopped, swaying to the music that slipped from an open door of the restaurant like a bird escaping from a cage. On the bay, the night-lights of a hundred boats danced like fluorescent sea creatures. Yuudai dug his toes into the moist sand, took Sumiko’s arm and guided her out into the shallow water. Holding hands, they walked in the warm bay toward a shadowy bulkhead that ran down the beach and into the water. Beyond the bulkhead was a lit dock, on which a dozen shiny sea kayaks stretched out in all directions like seals on a jetty. The bulkhead throwing a convenient shadow on the sand, Yuudai and Sumiko lay down beneath the dark pilings. Yuudai offered his chest as a pillow.

“I would like to capture this,” said Sumiko, gesturing at the shimmering lights on the gentle water. She framed the scene with her arms.

“Night or day?” asked Yuudai.

“Night. Yes, night.”

“We’ll come back.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Pessimist,” he whispered, kissing Sumiko’s nose and then her lips, shaping them to his. But realist was more accurate. Sumiko knew there wouldn’t be time. She’d need tomorrow night for packing. She had no instinct for pretending.

He took off his shirt, laid it on the sand and unpeeled Sumiko’s jeans. She trusted him wholly, had from that night in Tokyo when they danced, and he fell in love with her grace, soft laughter, slender beauty—and self-possession. There was no other word for it.

Yuudai held his hand against Sumiko and stared back across the beach at the restaurant’s picture windows where the dancers were so densely packed and their movements so similar that they appeared as one organism. At one of the docks, a boat was tying up, its hull tapping rhythmically against the wood.

Yuudai rapped his hand on the sand in time with the tapping boat.

He knew that if not for her father, Sumiko would leave Japan to be with Yuudai in America, but how to break her father’s spell?

“Let’s go for a swim,” said Yuudai to Sumiko.

“All right.”

Yuudai took off his jeans. Sumiko slipped off her T-shirt. They crept across the sand, staying in the bulkhead’s shadow. They slipped into the water like amphibious creatures tired of the obstinacy of land. At first, the water was too shallow for them to swim, so they crawled, digging their fingers into the mud and sand, their bodies floating on the water’s surface. Every few yards, the bottom pulsed as the stingrays and flatfish darted from cover. Eventually the water became waist deep, and they let loose the seabed. Sumiko had swum on her high school team. Yuudai had to labor to keep up with her, but it was not long before they reached the rope and buoys that signaled the limits of the bathing area. They clung to the rope. Yuudai held his hands up and dropped to the bottom. His feet touched in an instant. The water reached his forehead, just deep enough to drown. Bending his knees, and then straightening, he resurfaced. With arms resting on the rope, they clung to each other, kissing hungrily, faces sinking into the sea until they remembered their breaths. The water had the faint smell of oil, and he tasted it on Sumiko’s lips. A pelican swooped down out of nowhere, skimming the surface, its huge whiteness unexpected. Sumiko stared into Yuudai’s eyes as he slipped off her panties. She wrapped her legs around him. His hand barely clasped the rope.

Yuudai’s toes brushed the sea bottom as he stretched to hold Sumiko’s weight and still breathe. He thrust into her, lost himself in the firm silky body until unable to hold back his ejaculation, he stepped forward to keep his balance and felt a prick to the arch of his foot. “Fuck,” he said, slowly releasing her.

“What is it?”

“I stepped on something.”

“Are you cut?”

“Damn, I think so.”

“Glass?”

“Not glass. A ray, I think.”

Sumiko’s eyes went big. “A ray bit you?”

“No, no. A stingray They don’t bite, but their tails have stingers.” Yuudai held to the rope, lifted and bent his leg. He drew his fingers across the spot that burned. “My foot will swell up. I might get sick. We better go in.”

Sumiko nodded. She turned over and swam on her back, watching Yuudai as he thrashed angrily at the sea that had ruined the moment.

As they dressed, Sumiko said, “I want to kill it and eat it.”

“What do you mean?”

“The stingray that bit you.”

“It didn’t—I don’t—”

Sumiko tossed down her clothes and walked back toward the bay.

“Don’t be crazy.”

But she was already in the water, diving, disappearing.

He dropped down on the sand, inspecting his foot.

Fifty yards from the beach, near the rope where their lovemaking had been thwarted, Sumiko disappeared.

“Come on. It’s funny, okay. But enough’s enough.”

She appeared on the surface, swimming toward the shore. Nearing the shore, she stood up, the boat’s lights sparking off her wet black hair.

To her chest, she held something gray and the length of a man’s shoe. It was only when she was upon him that he realized it was alive and vibrating. She gazed at Yuudai, lifted the stingray to her mouth and bit. Blood flicked across her cheeks.

“Sumiko!”

She dropped the wriggling wounded stingray to the sand, where it was quickly coated like a fillet in batter.

In Sumiko’s womb, the little fish swam toward its intended.

Kazuki leaned back, cradled his head in his interlocking fingers. Setsuko gave birth to Sumiko but Sumiko in turn gave birth to Setsuko’s truest self.