Habit and coincidence are funny things. My chances of running into Kaz Nakamura were essentially zero—but now I was starting to see the same woman every week. It was the schedule, of course—she had hers and I had mine, and they happened to coincide. So it wasn’t random at all. But it still unnerved me, because the first time I saw the Woman on the Train I half hoped I’d never see her again. I might not be able to control myself.
But then I did see her again. And again. After a couple of weeks, I was as well trained as a show dog. As soon as I saw the pink sign that said Keio Railway Line, my heart began to pound. Now it was Wednesday again, and the Woman on the Train was right across from me.
I tried to concentrate on my Japan Times. We were into July, and Tokyo was hot and bothered. Even in hyper-polite Japan, tempers were fraying, and these days you could sum it up in one acronym: TEPCO. The Tokyo Electric Power Company was responsible for the radioactive mess in Fukushima. According to the Times, TEPCO’s top brass were apologizing 24/7. But the truth was, they couldn’t control what was going on at their nuclear site.
Planes bombed the reactors with seawater to cool them. Evacuations were botched and secret meetings held. Radioactivity seeped into the ocean. Here in sweltering Tokyo, housewives might be freaking out over radioactive radishes, but the big story was the Fukushima Fifty. It was a group of heroes who had pledged to fix the reactors or die trying.
Or so the newspapers said.
It was almost enough to distract me from the Woman on the Train. As usual, she didn’t quite fit. The other women were dolled up in high-heeled boots and Gucci bags. But this one wore jeans and carried a simple leather shoulder bag. Her hair wasn’t teased or tinted. It simply framed a long straight nose, a mole at one corner of the mouth. Her eyes were slightly puffy, as though she never got quite enough sleep. What endeared her to me most was her hands. They were large and capable-looking, hands that could do more than twiddle the buttons of a smartphone. This woman will stay beautiful, I thought. She’ll keep smiling, and she’ll let her hair go gray, and we’ll live happily ever after.
Infatuation—you’ve got to love it.
But there was something even more distracting in that railway car—someone was coughing. Japanese people keep their germs to themselves, behind white surgical masks. All you see is a pair of watery eyes. But a guy near the exit was coughing, weakly and annoyingly, like a screen door banging in the wind. He wasn’t wearing a mask.
He was a gaijin like me. Pale, probably in his twenties, in a dirty overcoat clutched around his stubbled chin. His other arm clung to the metal handgrip as though he was afraid of being washed away. Each time he coughed, he ducked his mouth inside his coat. There were drops in his scraggly beard. The guy wasn’t coughing. He was vomiting.
The train was full, even at this hour. Every seat was taken except for a little buffer zone around the sick man. Most of the passengers had their heads down over a smartphone or a comic book. Some were bolt upright but asleep. One young businessman in tight pinstriped trousers stared into some invisible distance. The dribbling gaijin might as well have been invisible too. He was a human Fukushima having his own meltdown. He crept out at Kugayama Station. I watched him sink to his knees on the platform.
Two stops later, the Woman on the Train rose to leave. I concentrated on a headline that said, TEPCO Reassures Public About Radiation Leaks. Suddenly the newspaper shook in my face.
“This is not correct,” the woman said. She smacked the newspaper again. The train dove underground and slowed, and she staggered a little. “They are not truthful.”
It was an astonishing outburst from a stranger. The train stopped opposite a huge billboard advertising the giant Mitsukoshi department store. A perky young woman perched on a shiny mound of merchandise. You are what you buy, it read. I watched the Woman on the Train disappear in the throng and I thought, There goes one who isn’t. And she speaks English!
The week passed quickly. The next time I saw her, she handed me a leaflet across the aisle of the train. There was a public protest that weekend. “You maybe should come,” she said. When she got off the train I jumped off and followed, hurrying past the billboard and catching up with her at street level. A woman in a pink raincoat bowed and handed me a packet of tissues. The Woman on the Train turned, as though she’d known all along I was huffing along behind her.
“Do you like jazz?” I said. I handed her my Tom and Mary business card, Japanese-style, with both hands and an awkward bow. She looked at it gravely.
“Sometimes,” she said.