Chapter 37

Kazuki couldn’t drive slowly enough to neutralize the ruts. Even at ten miles per hour, the little rental car bounced unmercifully, setting his stomach on edge and loosening his bowels. On the passenger seat, the white box too was jittery, its cover popping up every two seconds to give the pages a peek at their destination.

With each completed novel, Kazuki experienced a day or two of inertia, but this time he felt different, as if every good system in him had gone bad and every bad had grown worse. Eyes, ears, kidneys, lungs, circulation—shot. “Small, old, empty man,” he whispered, hearing his bones creak, his blood trickle, his heart hiss.

Beyond the hills, the sea was a blue tongue, licking itself clean.

Were I the sea . . .

Kazuki was relieved to see Hugh’s cottage and car.

He parked behind the Volvo and waited a moment for his stomach to settle. It was only ten A.M., but the sun had already seeped into the hills and everything seemed to radiate warmth, from the blades of grass to the rocky outcroppings.

It was not an uncomfortable heat, like being in one’s mother’s kitchen on a winter day. How far away those days seemed!

Kazuki was confident that the charges against Hugh were false though he could not fathom how the circumstances unfolded. Not quite true. The world could throw nothing his way that Kazuki could not frame, but he didn’t have the energy to imagine it. He was truly, as the English said, fagged out. Kazuki gazed jealously at the stands of scrub oak and eucalyptus, without hope but uncompromised.

The young woman was no doubt in the house, watching daytime talk and medicating herself. Kazuki walked up the path to the front door, but hesitated. The house smelled of carbons, an uneasy scent, hinting at the end. He held the white box in one hand, knocked with the other.

No response. He knocked again. Soft movements and a curtain drew back a centimeter.

“We don’t want any,” said a woman’s voice.

“I’m a friend of Hugh’s,” said Kazuki.

“He’s not here.”

“I know.”

“Then why are you looking for him?”

Kazuki held up the box.

“What’s that?”

“Perhaps you could open the door?”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Hugh’s ex-father-in-law. Kazuki Ono.”

The eye stayed at the curtain a moment longer. Kazuki heard her footsteps. The latch clicked and the door opened.

He had seen her before, down at the P&L, in fact had let her play a small part in Fingal’s Cave. It wasn’t much more that a physical description. He did not bring the combative boyfriend into it.

“I’ve read your work,” Hanna said stiffly.

“Are you a fan?”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“How much have you read?”

“Um, ten pages maybe.”

“Not bad.”

“So what do you want me to do?” asked Hanna.

“I want to leave this for Hugh.”

“What is it?”

“A book.”

“Well, he’s not here . . .”

“I’m leaving the country,” explained Kazuki. He offered her the box, which she tentatively took. She stood on her toes and glanced over Ono’s shoulder, fell flatfoot, and then averted her eyes.

“Thank you,” said Kazuki.

“Sure, no problem.”

As Kazuki turned, he heard the door slam.

Kazuki walked down the worn path to his car, but then, remembering Hanna’s self-conscious glance, veered onto a descending path that led into thicker vegetation and rock outcroppings. Twenty yards down the path, he saw a stream, a rock pool and something else. At first, he failed to recognize the object as a body, thought it might have been a gnarled fallen tree trunk. But as he closed, he saw clearly what and who it was: the man whom Hanna had argued with at the café.

What had they done? Despite the heat, Kazuki dug his hands into his pockets and glanced back toward the house.

The body was a problem.

Kazuki noticed something scurrying in the rock pool. Reddish and a few inches long. It burrowed under a rock. Hunching, Kazuki untied his shoes, took off his socks and rolled up his pants. Wading into the water, he bent down, lifted the rock and grabbed the crayfish by its tail. As he did so, he saw several more of the little creatures scuttling about. Holding the crayfish, he walked out of the pool. There was a wound on the man’s skull where the flesh looked tender, but the body was too far from the water. He shoved the wriggling crayfish into his pocket, grabbed the man’s shirt and tugged the body until the head was floating in the pool. He set the crayfish on the open wound. The creature froze for a moment, but then realizing its luck began to probe with its claws. As it dug into the flesh, the scent produced an immediate interest from other nearby crayfish, and soon a half dozen crawled out from the mud and rocks, mounted the body and were gnawing merrily away. The notice of the banquet went rapidly upstream and downstream. Among the advancing army of crayfish were several of different color: silver metallic. One crawled up the man’s face and with its power claw rammed a hole in the man’s skull. Soon numerous crayfish, the robotic well-represented, were disappearing the argumentative young man.

Taking out his cell phone, Kazuki dialed Nakamura Reality. The arrangements made to move the body, Kazuki sighed. He tugged at a lock of his thinning yellow hair and thought of the café poet.

A rock pool can be calm, but deep.
A rock pool can be shallow and stormy.
A rock pool can be cold as dry ice.
A rock pool can be warm as shit.

Not only was the rock pool deeper than Kazuki calculated, but contained much more shit than Hamlet’s lecture to Horatio forewarned.

Which one of us was not in that pool? Struggling for a glimpse of the sky? Wiping the shit from our eyes. Sinking, sinking, sinking.

Alas, poor Yorick.

Alas, poor Yuudai.

The author turned back to the house.