Birthday (8 page)

"About the woman's voice on the tape. He said he'd heard it before, moaning, like she was in pain. He said if he had to describe it, he'd say it sounded like she was suffering the pains of childbirth. That's what he said.

And it looks like that woman had her baby."

Toyama didn't know how to respond to this. What Okubo had said was strange enough, but the way Sadako just coolly accepted it was way beyond eerie.

Just then the director's voice came over the intercom.

"Everybody, we're about to start dress rehearsal.

Cast, staff, to your places, please."

The order was salvation to Toyama: he normally didn't look forward to hearing Shigemori's voice, but now it sounded like a god's. It had power enough to drag him immediately back to reality, certainly.

Sadako had to report to her position onstage. She couldn't stay here talking nonsense.

"Hey, you're on. Break a leg," he managed to say, though his throat was dry and his voice scratchy. He placed a hand on her back and urged her toward the stage. Sadako squirmed as if reluctant and made a show of refusing to budge.

But then she said, "Okay, well, later, then."

There was something thrillingly suggestive about the way she said it, and the way she looked when she said it. Toyama thought he could see her maturing as an actress right before his eyes. Five years younger than him, in Toyama's eyes she was the very incarnation of cute. Instead of the sensuality of a grown woman, she still had the innocence of a girl: that was what attracted him, what he was madly in love with. But now she seemed so sensuous...

Toyama forgot himself as he watched Sadako descend the spiral staircase.

Since the dress rehearsal would proceed exactly like a real performance, he'd be playing the tapes from start to finish. If there was a foreign noise on there, this would be a good chance to locate it.

Toyama put on his headphones and tried to concentrate on his cues. But he was distracted by the proximity of the cabinet with the altar in it. The director hadn't yet given the sign to start. The house was dark; the sound booth was illuminated only by the work light on the table.

He stole a glance sideways. The cabinet doors were half open. Evidently he hadn't shut them tightly enough.

The voice of a woman in childbirth? Of all the stupid things.

Without taking off his headphones, Toyama moved over and pushed the cabinet door with his foot. He did it with his foot in order to show that he wasn't scared.

He heard a distinct click as the doors shut. But at that very moment, in his headphones, he heard a faint voice. It was weak, a baby's voice. He couldn't tell if it was crying or laughing...or maybe it had just been born...

Toyama stared at the tape. It wasn't moving.

The director gave the sign, and the curtain rose. He was supposed to provide the opening theme now, but his trembling hand slipped on the play button more than once, and he was late with it. He'd get a chewing-out later, not that he cared about that now.

Play button, on.

The baby's voice was gone, drowned out by the bouncy opening theme.

As Toyama sat there bathed in cold sweat, trying to figure out where the sound had come from, his nostrils detected a mild scent that reminded him of lemons.

The first act ended, and everybody was given a twenty-minute break except the actors the director wanted to scold. Toyama was afraid he'd be taken to task for being late with the opening theme, but no mention was made of it, and he was able to leave the sound booth for a time.

He descended to the lobby. Passing the concession kiosk he jogged down the hallway toward the actors'

green room. He didn't have long. He wasn't sure there was enough time to grab Okubo and find out what he wanted to...

He burst into the big space used as a green room.

When he saw that Okubo wasn't there he turned to a senior member of the troupe who was practicing lines in front of a mirror and said, "Sorry to disturb you, but do you know where I can find Okubo?"

The actor paused and stuck out his chin. "He's Arima's prompter, so I imagine he's with him, stage right."

"Thank you."

But in fact he nearly ran into Okubo as he went to leave the room. Okubo leaned over and jumped aside with exaggerated movements. "A thousand pardons," he said, putting on airs, speaking as if performing the role of an English gentleman. Okubo was like this: his every movement, his every pose, his every word was theatrical. He and Toyama were the same age, and so they ended up spending a lot of time together, and they got along fairly well. But sometimes Okubo's flair for the dramatic got on Toyama's nerves.

With a joyless smile, Toyama grabbed Okubo's sleeve and pulled him aside. "I need to talk to you."

"This is sudden. What about?" But Okubo's grin betrayed his lack of surprise.

"Why don't you have a seat?"

They grabbed chairs from in front of the mirror and sat down.

Okubo looked even smaller when sitting down. He kept his back and neck straight—his posture was perfect.

In fact, Toyama never saw him slouch, or even really relax. No doubt this was a method of making up for his lack of height. Okubo took pride in the fact that before joining Soaring he'd belonged to a troupe with a considerably more celebrated heritage. Just being accepted there was a considerable feat, and he'd done it—but no more. Unable to make his way in that troupe, he'd bailed out and joined Soaring, which represented coming down a notch. Okubo had persuaded himself that it was only because of his height.

In short, Toyama knew full well that Okubo's comically exaggerated way of talking and moving came from a combination of pride and insecurity.

He only had twenty minutes, though: he decided to come right out with it.

"What nonsense have you been filling Sadako's head with?"

"Are you trying to ruin my reputation? I don't recall talking nonsense to anyone," came Okubo's composed, good-natured reply.

"Listen, I'm not accusing you of anything, but something's got me worried."

"What, pray tell?"

"Hey, sound effects and music are my job. I've got a right to be concerned. I want you to be honest with me: was what you told Sadako the truth? Did you really hear a woman's voice on the tape? A woman in the throes of labor?"

Okubo clapped his hands and laughed. 'A woman in the throes of labor'? Where did you come up with that? What I said was, it sounded like the act that results in labor pains—a woman's moans when, you know...

That's what I meant, at least. I don't know what Sada thought I was talking about."

"So you were joking?"

"I was not joking," said Okubo, laughing again. He was so caught up in his own performance that it was hard to get a straight answer from him. What was he so keyed up about anyway?

"Stop fooling around, will you? I heard something."

"What?"

"A baby crying."

Okubo took a deep breath and then leaned forward, a look of concern on his face. "Where?"

"In the sound booth, over my headphones."

Okubo leaned back again. "Whoa." He looked taken aback.

"See, it connects. If you heard a woman struggling to deliver a child, see, it's too much of a coincidence." As he said this, Toyama was remembering the umbilical cord that had been placed as an offering in front of that altar.

"Why, that's a bolt from the blue! A horse of a different color!" said Okubo, in his best vaudevillian voice.

"Knock it off already. Can you just tell me what it was you told Sadako?"

"Sada's the one great hope for us interns. Between her beauty and the attention the director pays her, she's got a great future as an actress. But after all, it's her first performance—to a bystander like me, she looks incredibly nervous. I feel sorry for her. It was an act of fellow-ship, if you will. I thought I'd tell her a scary story or two, just to, you know, loosen her up a bit."

Annoyed, Toyama pressed the point. "So you didn't really hear a woman's voice on the tape?"

"Au contraire!"
Okubo shook his head and pursed his lips.

"One more thing. How did you know there was an altar in the sound booth?"

"An altar? In the sound booth?" Okubo pulled a long face and clapped his hands as one does when wor-shipping at a shrine. He closed his eyes, bowed his head, and began mumbling as if reciting a sutra.

Toyama was finding Okubo even more grating than usual today. He sighed and continued. "Yes, an altar. A little one, about this big," he said, tracing its size in the air.

"I have never set foot inside yon sound booth."

"So you heard about it from someone else?"

"Well, I pray to the altar at stage left every day,"

Okubo replied, clapping his hands again.

"Okay, okay. So, you didn't tell Sadako about the altar."

"Not only didn't I tell her about it, I had no idea it was there myself."

So how did Sadako know it was there!
She had claimed Okubo told her, but Okubo was saying he didn't know about it. S—one of them was lying? Okubo, at least, sounded like he was telling the truth.

Toyama pondered for a while.

When Okubo said there was a woman's voice on the sound effects tape, he was just trying to frighten Sadako. Well, that's the kind of scary story you hear in any playhouse—nothing to get seriously angry about. Okubo told Sadako that he'd heard a woman moaning in pleasure—a woman engaged in sex. But for some reason she told me that it was the sound of a woman suffering in childbirth. Was it just a misunderstanding! But what about the umbilical cord! It fits too well.

Toyama thought of what he'd heard in the headphones, that faint cry of an infant—he couldn't get it out of his head. He had to get back to the booth in time for the second act, but he was reluctant to go. He didn't want to be alone in there. He'd rather be here, under bright lights in the big room.

His gaze was hollow as he asked, "By the way, where's Sadako now?"

Suddenly Okubo was all informality. "Whaddya mean? Weren't you paying attention to the play? The Great Director kept her behind to give her direction.

She's probably still onstage now, being put through the wringer."

Toyama had already forgotten. At the end of the first act he'd watched from the sound booth window as the director had instructed a few actors to line up on stage for feedback. He'd noticed Sadako among them. That's where she'd be now, listening to Shigemori tell her what was wrong with her performance and how she could have done it better.

From where he stood, it looked to Toyama like Shigemori paid Sadako an abnormal amount of attention. He'd been shocked sometimes during rehearsals to see the way Shigemori looked at her—on the verge of tears, with an expression made up of equal parts love and hatred and a gaze so intense that no one acquainted with Shigemori would have believed it. Shigemori held absolute power within the troupe, so if he had his eye on someone it was a foregone conclusion that he'd be making physical advances. And of course that was something Toyama, given his love for Sadako, would do anything to avert.

Just then Shigemori's voice came over the intercom.

"The second act will be starting soon. Places, everyone."

Toyama started to run, knowing how much distance separated the big room from his sound booth. So when Okubo spoke, it was to his back.

"Hey, Toyama, don't leave the intercom on in the sound booth anymore. We can hear everything you say in here."

Toyama turned around in time to catch Okubo winking at him.

He thought about Okubo's words as he made his way down the narrow hallway toward the sound booth.

...They can hear me in the ready room? I always keep the intercom in there switched off when I'm not using it—I doubt I could've left it on.

Still, Okubo's remark bothered him. Had someone in the green room overheard him saying something he shouldn't have?

The feel of the floor under his feet abruptly changed as he went from the green room to the lobby. The hallway to the green room was concrete covered with linoleum: hard and cold. The lobby floor, meanwhile, was covered with a lush carpet.

Tomorrow, opening night, this lobby would be full of audience members. Toyama crossed it and started to climb the spiral staircase to the sound booth. As he did so he heard hushed voices in conversation somewhere. A man's voice, and a woman's—both lowered, as if afraid of being overheard. Toyama halted halfway up the stairs and turned around.

Toyama saw two people standing in a corner by the recessed doors leading into the seating area. A tall man and a slender woman, facing each other. Toyama peered closely at them, with the unmistakable sense that he was watching something he shouldn't. He moved into a position from which they couldn't see him and held his breath.

The man was facing in Toyama's direction but he was half hidden by the wall, so Toyama could only see his face intermittently; the woman's back was turned to him. Toyama saw at once that the man was Shigemori, the director. And though he couldn't see her face, from her clothing and the outlines of her body Toyama knew who the woman was, as well.

"Sadako..." Without realizing it he let slip the name of the woman he loved.

Shigemori had his hands on her shoulders, shaking her gently, and now and then he'd lean close and whisper something into her ear. He certainly didn't appear to be speaking to her as just another actress—the way he drew close to her suggested he wasn't simply giving her point-ers on her performance.

Toyama tried—the effort was great, but necessary—

to make sure that what he was seeing meant what he thought it did; he was seething. Shigemori was using his position as head of the troupe to hit on a young actress.

Toyama found this unforgivable. He could understand it, and he knew that in the theater world it was even toler-ated; inexperienced he may have been, but he comprehended that much.

The real question was how Sadako would react.

Given her position he knew she couldn't reject Shigemori too forcefully, but he hoped she had enough skill to evade him gently, without injuring his feelings. He knew how hard it would be, but he yearned for her to show him how adroitly she could act here. If she didn't, Toyama would have a hard time trusting the words of love they'd exchanged.