The announcement for the Sōbu Main Line train to Tokyo can be heard through the hotel window. Iwata sits hunched over the edge of the mattress, holding his head in his hands. He can smell the redolence of Hoshiko’s body mixed in with his. He hates their joint smell. This week of October 2009 the hotel celebrates its sixtieth anniversary, and Iwata has booked the room at a greatly discounted rate. He hasn’t planned the rendezvous, he never does, but he’s glad for the discount – money is tight.
From the window, he can see Chōshi Station below. The Tone River in the distance. The convenience store where he bought the condoms. All three are now on the floor, shrivelled like dead animals.
‘Kosuke, you know what I’ve learned about you?’ Hoshiko runs a finger down his spine and he flinches.
‘What?’ His voice is low and thick.
‘That you’re very quiet. Whenever we would go out as couples, I always thought you were so fun and talkative. But the real you is actually very quiet.’
‘Hm.’
‘Does your wife mind that you’re quiet?’ Since they have started sleeping together, Hoshiko never refers to her by name.
‘I guess not.’
‘No.’
‘Me neither, but sometimes I have this funny feeling’ – her voice becomes a whisper – ‘that maybe things are playing out in the present, even though they’ve happened in my dreams beforehand. I know that sounds a little crazy.’ She laughs. ‘But then I wonder if the whole world is just my imagination’s handiwork.’
Iwata looks at the magazine on the bedside table. It’s full of information about local attractions. The aquarium. The lighthouse. The old blue train. An exhibition showcasing the work of local artists. Iwata thinks he and Hoshiko in this room could be painted in grey, something that would make the viewer pensive and sad.
‘Lately, I get that feeling more often. That my dreams are real.’ Aware that she is losing him with her honesty, Hoshiko changes tack. ‘Are you going to go to the party tonight?’
‘Party?’
‘The important new detective’s birthday. Taba told me to dress up for it.’
Iwata is not listening to her. He has two layers of thought these days. The outer layer is thick, as though trying to experience the world through bathwater. The inner layer is fixated on death – thoughts of escape. Or starting again, like his mother. He thinks back to when she left him in the bus station. He remembers it clearly. The smell of the gas. The rip-rip of his backpack zip. His mother walking away briskly.
‘What?’
‘The party?’
‘No. It’s hard to get babysitting.’ Iwata has noticed that she never mentions her own little girl. He wonders if Hoshiko is mentally unwell.
‘Well, maybe my sister could –’
‘I need to shower.’
He gets up and goes to the bathroom. He hears Hoshiko singing to herself in bed, ‘Farewell One Cedar’, a song he has always hated. His mother hates it too. Iwata suspects Hoshiko fancies herself a good singer. There are so many things she is wrong about, he finds himself unable to resist feeding his silent contempt – as though it were a hungry pet and her shortcomings little meaty morsels.
For him, Hoshiko is emptiness itself. She is all the futility in his life crafted into a skin mirror. She is the richest indulgence of self-loathing he has ever known.
Iwata moves around the bathroom fluently. He knows the shower well by now, how to get just the right temperature. Showering off her smell is his favourite part of meeting Hoshiko.
Iwata returns home that afternoon. Cleo is singing in a whisper to the baby, Nina Simone to Nina, ‘Do What You Gotta Do’. Iwata explains it’s crucial he attend the birthday party to make a good impression on the new senior inspector. Cleo says she understands. Iwata asks if she wants to come, knowing she will say no. She says no.
*
That night, at the police station – a beige two-storey building that could just as easily have been the headquarters of a fishing company– everyone is packed into the briefing room. The lights are off and the new senior inspector is blowing out his candles. The heating is on high and the air is thick with cigarette smoke. The cake is decorated with the Chiba Police mascot design – a blue dolphin wearing yellow boots, doing the V-sign with his fin.
As the senior inspector tells everyone how welcome he already feels Iwata’s body begins to shake. He does not know the new man but he knows enough to dislike him. After all, his face fits; his career obviously will not end here in Chōshi.
Iwata backs out of the room unnoticed. The office is empty, the lights off. On the calendar someone has doodled little stars by today’s date, the senior inspector’s birthday. Iwata cannot stand bootlickers. His colleagues tease him as a contrarian, tell him it’s his American side.
In the briefing room, they are all grinning: fellow inspectors, the badges, even the admin guys. Apple-polishers, Iwata thinks, every single one. He wonders what they would say if they knew about him and Hoshiko. It pleases him to imagine them so shocked, though the idea of them knowing he has touched her revolts him at the same time. Distantly, he realizes she has not showed up tonight. Nor has his partner, Taba, Hoshiko’s husband.
Iwata sits at his desk in the corner and looks out of the window. Tiled roofs shine in the moonlight. In the distance pylons break through the forest canopy like migrating giants.
Iwata’s desk holds very little beyond papers. He unlocks his desk drawer. Inside there is framed ticket stub for a Tokyo Verdy game from 1996, the year they won the Emperor’s Cup. On the other side there is a photograph of Cleo holding a newborn Nina – her tiny lips making a bow, her eyes closed. Cleo’s sweat makes the freckles on her cheeks shine. She looks to camera uncertainly.
Iwata shunts them to one side. He knows the Cipralex is finished but he thinks there must be some back-up Zoloft. At the very least, one or two vodka singles.
Someone has brought in a rudimentary karaoke machine and toneless singing is being clapped along to in the briefing room. Because there will be drinking for the birthday, nobody will question ruddy cheeks tonight. Nobody will question slurred speech. Tonight he is safe.
Iwata touches glass, the slim neck of a shōchō mini. He fumbles the cap off and swallows it in one.
‘Nice night for a celebration.’ A gruff voice at the other end of the room.
Iwata sees a large silhouette. As he approaches, moonlight ribbons across his face.
‘Taba.’
‘Did I miss the candles?’
Iwata frowns. Taba’s tone is off, his twitching lips a tight line across his large, boorish face.
‘What’s up?’
‘I think you know, partner.’
Instinctively, Iwata stands. They are a few feet apart.
The first people from the briefing room are spilling out, paper cups of beer in hand, smiles on their faces. They pass Iwata and Taba as if nothing were happening.
‘Taba, why don’t we go outside and –’
‘Outside? No, no, no. It’s too cold to go outside. I’m happy here in the warm amongst my friends and colleagues.’
‘I’m going for a smoke.’
As Iwata tries to pass, Taba grabs him by the arm. ‘You said you were going to quit.’
‘Bad habits die hard.’
Taba punches Iwata in the eye and a wet smack echoes out through the office. There are gasps, and already the men are restraining Taba. He’s a bear and it takes four of them, his face pink as a Christmas ham, spittle sparking from his mouth. ‘Tell them, Iwata! Fucking tell them!’
Iwata drags himself up off the floor, one hand clutching his eye socket. He is terrified, but for some reason he is smiling.
Chief Morimoto emerges from his office. ‘What the hell is this?’
Taba points a trembling finger at his partner. ‘Ask him! Ask him what he’s been doing with my wife!’
The entire police station is aghast at the unspoken obvious. The new senior inspector is still cradling a slice of cake. Morimoto is white with fury. ‘I don’t know what this is about, Iwata, but you’re taking the night off. Taba, in my office. Now.’
Iwata picks up his jacket, his eye already closing up. He floats past his colleagues to the elevator. Grudgingly satisfied, Taba blows on his knuckles. At Morimoto’s door he pauses. ‘Hey, Iwata? Sorry I was late, I had to make a stop.’
‘You told Cleo.’
Taba smiles a new moon until Morimoto barks at him to shut the door. The new senior inspector asks everyone to get back to work.
Iwata descends to the ground floor then steps out into the cold night. There is no traffic in either direction. Fuzzy drizzle is illuminated by the amber streetlight. Except for the low thrum of the power lines, there is only the sound of the wind. He crosses the parking lot and unlocks his car, a black 1979 Isuzu 117 Coupé. Crawling into the back seat, he concludes Hoshiko must have told Taba. Not that it matters now. Iwata wonders what he will say to Cleo. He decides that he will simply tell her the truth. He will say that she was right – she should leave – it will be best for her and for Nina.
And then I’ll be alone, as it was always meant to be.
Iwata reaches under the passenger seat and lifts up the floor mat. He clutches the little tube of Solanax and shakes it. It rattles solidly – the sound of keys in the front door. He tosses two pills into a plastic evidence bag, bundles it up, then hammers the pills into a powder using the butt of his gun. It’s not designed to be taken this way but he doesn’t have time for digestion.
Rolling up a thousand-yen note, he snorts the Solanax. Immediately he is short of breath, dizzy, nauseous. But already there is a tranquil warmth unfurling within him. The drug travels rapidly through the nasal cavity and past the mucus membrane, sailing across the blood–brain barrier like a hungry marlin. Iwata feels gently euphoric, the pain from Taba’s blow already a strange memory.
He curls up into the foetal position. With tears in his eyes, he begins to laugh. ‘What a day!’