1Q84 (99 page)

She stood at the full-length mirror by the front door and checked to see that her outfit was flawless. She raised one shoulder slightly and considered the possibility that she might look something like Faye Dunaway in
The Thomas Crown Affair
. Faye Dunaway played a coolheaded insurance investigator in that movie—a woman like a cold knife: sexy, great-looking in a business suit. Of course Aomame didn’t look like Faye Dunaway, but the atmosphere she projected was somewhat close—or at least not entirely different. It was that special atmosphere that only a first-class professional could exude. In addition, her shoulder bag contained a cold, hard automatic pistol.

Putting on her slim Ray-Ban sunglasses, she left the apartment. She crossed the street to the playground, walked up to the slide where Tengo had been sitting, and replayed last night’s scene in her head. It had happened twelve hours earlier. The actual Tengo had been right there
—just
across the street from me. He sat there for a long time, alone, looking up at the moons
—the same two moons that she had been looking at.

It felt almost like a miracle to Aomame—a kind of revelation—that she had come so close to Tengo.
Something
had brought her into his presence. And the event, it seemed, had largely restructured her physical being. From the moment she woke up in the morning, she had continued to feel a sort of friction throughout her entire body.
He appeared before me and departed. We were not able to speak to or touch each other. But in that short interval, he transformed many things inside me. He literally stirred my mind and body the way a spoon stirs a cup of cocoa, down to the depths of my internal organs and my womb
.

She stood there for a full five minutes, one hand on a step of the slide, frowning slightly, jabbing at the ground with the sharp heel of her shoe. She was checking the degree to which she had been stirred both physically and mentally, and savoring the sensation. Finally, she made up her mind, walked out of the playground to the nearest big street, and caught a cab.

“I want you to go out to Yohga first, then take the Metropolitan Expressway Number 3 inbound until just before the Ikejiri exit,” she announced to the driver, who was understandably confused by these instructions.

“So, miss, can you tell me exactly what your final destination is?” he asked, his tone rather on the easygoing side.

“The Ikejiri exit. For now.”

“Well, then, it would be
much
closer to go straight to Ikejiri from here. Going all the way out to Yohga would be a huge detour. And at this time of the morning, the inbound lanes of Number 3 are going to be completely jammed. They’ll hardly be moving. I’m as sure of that as I am that today is Wednesday.”

“I don’t care if the expressway is jammed. I don’t care if today is Thursday or Friday or the Emperor’s Birthday. I want you to get on the Metropolitan Expressway from Yohga. I’ve got all the time in the world.”

The driver was a man in his early thirties. He was slim, with a long, pale face, and looked like a timid grazing animal. His chin stuck out like those of the stone faces on Easter Island. He was looking at Aomame in his rearview mirror, trying to decide from her expression whether his current passenger was totally bonkers or just an ordinary human being in a complicated situation. It was not easy for him to tell, though, especially from the image in the small mirror.

Aomame took her wallet out of her shoulder bag and thrust a brand-new ten-thousand-yen bill toward his face. The money looked as if it had just been printed.

“No change needed, and no receipt,” Aomame said curtly. “So keep your opinions to yourself and do what you’re told. Go first to Yohga, get on the expressway, and go to Ikejiri. This should cover the fare even if we get caught in traffic.”

“It’s more than enough, of course,” the driver said, though he still seemed dubious. “Do you have some special business on the expressway?”

Aomame shook the bill at him like a pennant in the wind. “If you don’t want to take me, I’ll get out and find another cab. So make up your mind, please.
Now.
”

The driver stared at the ten-thousand-yen bill for a good ten seconds with his brows knit. Then he made up his mind and took the money. After holding the bill up to the light to check its authenticity, he shoved it into his business bag.

“All right, then, let’s go, Metropolitan Expressway Number 3. It’s going to be badly backed up, though, I’m telling you, miss. And there’s no exit between Yohga and Ikejiri. No toilet, either. So if there’s any chance you might need to go, better take care of it now.”

“Don’t worry, just take me straight there.”

The driver made his way out of the network of residential streets to Ring Road Number 8 and joined the thick traffic heading for Yohga. Neither he nor Aomame said a word. He listened to the news, and she was lost in thought. As they neared the entrance to the Metropolitan Expressway, the driver lowered the radio’s volume and asked Aomame a question.

“This may be none of my business, miss, but are you in some special line of work?”

“I’m an insurance investigator,” Aomame said without hesitation.

“An insurance investigator,” the driver repeated her words carefully, as if tasting a new food.

“I find evidence in cases of insurance fraud,” Aomame said.

“Wow,” the driver said, obviously impressed. “Does Metropolitan Expressway Number 3 have something to do with this insurance fraud stuff?”

“It does indeed.”

“Just like that movie, isn’t it?”

“What movie?”

“It’s a really old one, with Steve McQueen. I don’t remember what it’s called.”

“
The Thomas Crown Affair
,” Aomame said.

“Yeah, that’s it. Faye Dunaway plays an insurance investigator. She’s a specialist in theft insurance. McQueen is this rich guy who commits crimes for fun. That was a great movie. I saw it when I was in high school. I really liked the music. It was very cool.”

“Michel Legrand.”

The driver hummed the first few bars of the theme song. Then he looked in the mirror for another close look at Aomame.

“Come to think of it, miss, something about you reminds me of Faye Dunaway.”

“Thank you,” Aomame said, struggling somewhat to hide the smile that formed around her lips.

The inbound side of Metropolitan Expressway Number 3 was, as the driver had predicted, beautifully backed up. The slowdown started less than a hundred yards from the entrance, an almost perfect specimen of chaos, which was exactly what Aomame wanted. The same outfit, the same road, the same traffic jam. Unfortunately, Janacek’s
Sinfonietta
was not playing on the car radio, and the sound quality didn’t measure up to that of the stereo in the Toyota Crown Royal Saloon, but that would have been asking for too much.

The cab inched ahead, hemmed in by trucks. It would stay in one place for a long time and then unpredictably creep ahead. The young driver of the refrigerated truck in the next lane was absorbed in his
manga
magazine during the long stops. The middle-aged couple in a cream Toyota Corona Mark II sat looking straight ahead, frowning, but never saying a word to each other. They probably had nothing to talk about, or maybe they
had
talked and now they were silent as a result. Aomame settled deeply into her seat. The taxi driver listened to the broadcast on his radio.

The cab finally passed a sign for Komazawa as it continued to crawl along toward Sangenjaya at a snail’s pace. Aomame looked up now and then to stare out the window.
I won’t be seeing this neighborhood anymore. I’m going somewhere far away
. But she was not about to start feeling nostalgic for the streets of Tokyo. All the buildings along the expressway were ugly, stained with the soot of automobile exhaust, and they carried garish billboards. The sight weighed on her heart.
Why do people have to build such depressing places? I’m not saying that every nook and cranny of the world has to be beautiful, but does it have to be this ugly?

Finally, after some time, a familiar area entered Aomame’s field of vision—the place where she had stepped out of the cab. The middle-aged driver had told her, as if hinting at some deeper significance, that there was an emergency stairway at the side of the roadway. Just ahead was the large billboard advertising Esso gasoline. A smiling tiger held up a gas hose. It was the same billboard as before.

“Put a tiger in your tank.”

Aomame suddenly noticed that her throat was dry. She coughed once, thrust her hand into her shoulder bag, and took out a box of lemon-flavored cough drops. After putting a drop in her mouth, she returned the box to the bag. While her hand was in there, she gave the handle of the Heckler & Koch a strong squeeze, reassured by its weight and hardness.
Good
, she thought. The cab moved ahead somewhat.

“Get into the left lane, will you?” Aomame said to the driver.

“The right lane is moving better,” he objected softly. “And the Ikejiri exit is on the right. If I get into the left lane here, I’ll just have to move over again.”

Aomame was not ready to accept his objections. “Never mind, just get into the left lane.”

“If you say so, miss,” the driver said with resignation.

Leaning over and sticking his hand out the front passenger window, he signaled to the refrigerated truck behind him in the left lane. After making sure the driver had seen him, he raised the window again and squeezed the cab into the left lane. They moved ahead another fifty yards until the traffic came to a full stop again.

“Now open the door for me. I’m getting out here,” Aomame said.

“Getting out?” the driver asked, astonished. He made no move to pull the lever that opened the passenger door. “Here?!”

“Yes, this is where I’m getting out. I have something to do here.”

“But we’re right in the middle of the Metropolitan Expressway. It would be too dangerous to get out here, and even if you did, there’s no place you could go.”

“Don’t worry, there’s an emergency stairway right there.”

“Emergency stairway.” He shook his head. “I don’t know if there’s an emergency stairway or not, but if anyone found out I let a passenger out in a place like this, I’d be in big trouble with the cab company
and
the expressway management company. So please, miss, give me a break …”

“Sorry, I
have to
get out here,” Aomame said. She took another ten-thousand-yen bill from her wallet, gave it a snap, and shoved it at the driver. “I know I’m asking you to do something you shouldn’t do. This will pay for your trouble. So please stop arguing and let me out.”

The driver did not take the money, but he gave up and pulled the lever. The left-side passenger door opened.

“No, thanks, you’ve already paid me more than enough. But please be careful. The expressway doesn’t have shoulders, and no matter how backed up the traffic might be, it’s very dangerous for anybody to walk up here.”

“Thank you,” Aomame said. After stepping out, she knocked on the passenger-side front window and had him lower the glass. Leaning inside, she thrust the ten-thousand-yen bill into the driver’s hand.

“Never mind, just take it. Don’t worry, I have more money than I know what to do with.”

The driver looked back and forth between the bill and Aomame’s face.

Aomame said, “If this gets you into trouble with the police or the company, just tell them I threatened you with a pistol. You had no choice but to let me out. That’ll shut them up.”

The driver seemed unable to grasp what she was saying. More money than she knew what to do with? Threatened him with a pistol? Still, he took the money, probably fearing that she might do something even more unreasonable if he refused.

Just as she had done before, Aomame made her way between the expressway’s sidewall and the cars in the left lane, heading toward Shibuya. She had some fifty yards to pass. People in the cars looked at her, incredulous, but Aomame did not let them bother her. She walked ahead with long, confident strides, her back straight, like a fashion model on the Paris runway. The wind stirred her hair. Trucks speeding along the wide-open lanes heading in the other direction shook the roadway. The Esso billboard grew larger as she approached, until finally she reached the familiar emergency turnout.

Everything looked as it had before—the metal barrier, the yellow box next to it containing an emergency telephone.

This is where the year 1Q84 started
, Aomame thought.

One world took the place of another from the time I climbed down this emergency stairway to Route
246
below. So I’m going to try climbing down again. The first time I did it, it was April, and I was wearing my beige coat. Now it’s early September, and the weather is too hot for a coat. Aside from the coat, though, I’m wearing exactly the same outfit I had on that day, when I killed that awful man who worked in oil—my Junko Shimada suit and Charles Jourdan high heels. White blouse. Stockings and white underwire bra. I pulled my miniskirt up to step over the barrier and climbed down the emergency stairway from here
.

I’ll try doing the same thing again—purely out of curiosity. I just want to know what will happen if I do the same thing in the same place wearing the same outfit. I’m not hoping this will save me. I’m not especially afraid to die. If it comes to that, I’ll do it without hesitation. I can die smiling
. But Aomame did not want to die ignorant, failing to grasp how things worked.
I want to push myself to my
limits, and if things don’t work out, then I can give up. But I will do everything I can until the bitter end. That is how I live
.

Aomame leaned over the metal barrier and looked for the emergency stairway. It was not there.

She looked again and again, with the same result. The emergency stairway had vanished.

Aomame bit her lip and twisted her face out of shape.

This is not the wrong place. It was definitely this turnout. Everything around here looks the same. The Esso billboard is right there. The emergency stairway existed in that place in the world of 1984
. Aomame had found it easily, exactly where the strange taxi driver had said it would be. She had been able to step over the barrier and climb down. But in the world of 1Q84, the emergency stairway no longer existed.