John Rain 08: Graveyard of Memories (22 page)

Maybe she didn’t mean it literally, but I took a long look. I liked what I saw. Her breasts were small and beautifully shaped, her neck was long and slender, and her shoulders and arms, her whole upper body looked strong and fit and graceful. Her skin was pale and smooth. And her lips…God, it had been nice to kiss her, even though it had been so soft it barely qualified.

“I’d answer that, but I think you’d slap me.”

She laughed softly. “I just don’t get it.”

“You mean, because of the wheelchair?”

“Yeah.”

I took her hand again. “I don’t know. I just like being with you. I liked kissing you just now. I wouldn’t mind doing it again.”

She laughed again. “I really don’t get you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t think it’s your fault, exactly. You know, I don’t even…I don’t even know if I can…you know. I don’t know if I would feel anything.”

“You mean, you never…”

She shook her head. “No, never. Not even before the accident.”

“Oh. Well, maybe we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves, right? I mean, I haven’t even thought about that. Well not
not
thought about it. But I haven’t thought a lot about it. Not constantly, anyway. Sometimes I find myself thinking about something else for a few minutes before it comes back, that’s what I mean.”

She laughed. I realized I really liked making her laugh. I’d never been the funniest guy in the world, and I was envious of people who had a talent for that kind of thing, but there was something about her that brought it out in me.

“It’s not just that,” she said. “I haven’t even kissed someone since I was a teenager.”

“Why? Did you not want to?”

“I don’t know. Most guys who want to date a girl in a wheelchair…either they pity me, or they think they’re doing something noble, or they think they can get whatever they want because I must be desperate, or some combination of those things. It’s just never made me feel good about myself. So after a while, I stopped trying.”

“I don’t know why anyone would think any of that about you. Desperate is about the last thing you seem to me.”

She nodded. “Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me. I’m just trying to think of something that’ll make you want to kiss me again.”

She smiled, and then her eyes welled up. It caught me by surprise, and apparently it did her, too, because she gave a startled little laugh and turned away to hide it.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was just trying to make a joke.”

She shook her head and wiped her eyes, her face still averted.

I felt bad. I realized I’d been treating her more or less the way I would have treated any girl I liked, and while on the one hand she clearly responded to that, on the other hand she had wounds inside her I knew nothing about, no more than she knew about mine.

“You know,” I said, “if it makes you feel any better, I’ve only been with one girl myself.”

She laughed and wiped her eyes. “Liar. With those little ears, they must be throwing themselves at you.”

I laughed too. “No, it’s true, there’s only been one.” This wasn’t technically true, as I couldn’t claim to have eschewed all professional companionship during the war, but other than that, Deirdre Calhoun had been my first, and to that point my only. “She was my high school girlfriend,” I went on, “and I told her I was going to marry her when I got back from the war. But the marriage part never happened.”

“Why?”

I blew out a long breath. “I was gone for longer than I’d first been thinking. And war changes you. We were both different people when I got back. Everything was different.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. It just didn’t work out. But I’m here now.”

She looked down. “It’s just hard for me.”

“I think I understand. At least some of it.”

“I mean, if I wanted to go home right now—and I don’t, but if I wanted to—I couldn’t just leave. I have to rely on you. I hate being helpless like that. I hate it.”

“I get it. I’d hate it, too. What do you think we should do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, while you try to figure it out, I’m going to kiss you again, okay?”

She looked in my eyes. Then she whispered, “Okay.”

So we kissed again. And this time, I didn’t pull back. I reached out and brushed her cheek with the backs of my fingers, and she opened her mouth and I touched her teeth with my tongue a little, just to let her know I wanted more, was ready for more if she was, and then I felt her tongue and we were really kissing, and I cupped her face in my hands and she leaned forward and did the same to me and she opened her mouth wider and put her tongue inside mine, and she made the most beautiful sound, I can’t even describe it but it was a sound of pure pleasure, the sound someone would make if she tasted something unexpectedly delicious and was nearly shocked by it. We kissed and kissed and touched each other’s faces and hair and she ran her fingers along my ears and we were laughing and holding each other and it went on and on and on. And it was the best kiss I’d ever had.

And then we were just holding each other and laughing and my back hurt because it was awkward leaning into her from the bench but I didn’t care, in a weird way it felt good. And then, all of a sudden, she stiffened and pulled back and said, “Oh, no, oh shit oh no.”

I’d been in such a reverie, I felt like I’d been slapped. “What? What is it?”

She glanced down at her lap and tried to cover it with her hands, but couldn’t. She’d peed. Not just peed, she was still peeing, and couldn’t stop it. She shook her head in helpless humiliation.

I jumped up. “Oh, let me get you someplace!”

“Just get me home.”

“Shouldn’t we—”

“Just get me home.”

“But I told you, it doesn’t—”

“Just get me home!”

I wanted to say something, to tell her it didn’t matter, I didn’t care, but I couldn’t think what to say. I felt awful. I realized I needed to piss, too—we’d been sitting out there for a long time.

And then I got a crazy idea. I started to rethink it, then thought,
Fuck it, what do you have to lose
?

I took a deep breath and just let my bladder go.

“Take me home, okay?” she said. “Now.”

“Okay, just one second, I’m having a little problem myself.”

She looked at my crotch, at the darkening pool of liquid running down my leg.

She shook her head incredulously. “What are you fucking doing?”

“You think I’ve never pissed my pants before? The first time I got dropped in Indian country I did. Hell, I know guys who shit themselves. Tough guys, guys it would be death to mess with. It’s just nobody likes to talk about it.”

Her mouth was agape. “I don’t believe you’re doing this.”

“What, you think you’re the only one who can? Why shouldn’t I get some relief, too?”

She put her head in her hands and started shaking. I thought she was crying, but then I realized she was laughing. She looked up at me and shook her head. “You’re crazy. You are really crazy.”

I looked at the dark spot on my pants and we both started cracking up. It was medium intensity at first, but then it just built and built. At one point, she took two quick breaths and got it under control just long enough to say, “That was…the most romantic thing anyone’s ever done for me,” and we were both hit with another paroxysm.

When the laughter finally started to ebb, I said, “Maybe I should get us back to the van. We’ll roll down the windows.”

We laughed again and I pushed her back along the path. I can’t say it felt good to walk with urine sloshing in my shoes, but on the other hand at least I didn’t still need to take a leak.

Back in the van and heading east, she said, “Thank you, Jun. Really, thank you.”

“I told you, it’s nothing. It doesn’t bother me.”

“I’m lucky, actually. The injury to my spinal cord isn’t complete. A lot of people need a catheter, but I don’t. But I have to be careful not to wait too long. I haven’t had a problem in a long time, but it’s still something I’m always afraid of. And tonight, I think getting excited…I’m sorry.”

I glanced in the rearview mirror, but it was dark in back and I couldn’t see her. “You don’t have one thing to apologize for,” I said. “Not one.” Then I added, “Wait, did you say you were excited?” And we both cracked up again.

Once we were in Uguisudani, she gave me directions to her apartment. I parked and opened the back of the van, and she rolled down to the pavement.

“So this is the place?” I asked. It was a soulless five-story ferroconcrete building, pretty new looking. Drab, but no more so than the one I lived in. Or used to live in. I wasn’t exactly sure of my status.

“Yeah. No stairs, see? Straight shot between here and the elevator.”

“You want me to come up?”

She paused. “I don’t know, we both need to clean up…”

“Oh, listen, if I come in, cleaning up is a requirement. Is there a bath?”

“Yeah, that’s half the reason I chose it, it’s new and the units all have their own baths. Back and forth to the
sentō
everyday would be a nightmare.”

“Well, what do you think?”

“What are you going to change into?”

I patted my bag. “I have a change of clothes right here.”

“I wondered why you’re always carrying it.”

“I just don’t have anywhere to leave it. No fixed address at the moment and all that. So…can I come up?”

I could tell she was nervous. But she said, “Okay.”

She lived on the second floor, a neat, functional 1K apartment—what in America would be known as a studio. A single bed on a platform, unlike the usual Japanese futon on the floor. Obviously easier to get in and out of. A kitchen table with no chairs. A tiny television. A nice stereo. That was about it.

We took our shoes and socks off in the
genkan
, but my feet were still moist with piss. “I should wipe my feet before I come in,” I said. “Do you have any towels?”

“Yeah. Hold on.” She wheeled herself in, pulled a towel out from a cabinet, and set it down on the floor. I stepped onto it. Fortunately, my pants had stopped dripping, but a bath and a change of clothes would be a welcome development.

Without thinking, I said, “Take a bath with me.”

“What? Jun, no.”

“Hey, it’s just to get clean. I have nothing but good intentions.”

She laughed a little nervously. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Why?”

“I…I don’t know you.”

“Yes, you do. You know me better than a lot of people.”

She looked down. There was a long pause. She said, “I don’t want you seeing my body. My legs.”

“We can turn off the light.”

“You don’t understand. They’re like…little rubber sticks. They just hang off my body.”

“You think if I see your legs, I won’t be attracted to you?”

She nodded. Christ, she looked so honest, and so ashamed…it made my heart ache.

I knelt in front of her and took her hands in mine. “Sayaka. That’s not going to happen.”

She didn’t say anything.

“Come with me,” I said. “It’ll be dark. We’ll soap up and rinse off and then we’ll sit in a warm tub and I’ll kiss you and hold you like we were doing at Kitazawa-gawa. And we won’t do anything else if you don’t want to. Okay?”

“Oh, God, I don’t know.”

“Okay?”

There was a long pause. Finally, she said, “Let me get in first.”

She disappeared into the bathroom. I heard the water come on, and then the light went off. A few minutes later, she called out softly, “Okay.”

I walked over to the bathroom door. I could see her in profile. She was leaning forward, her arms across her breasts. Japanese baths are typically part of an integrated shower room—an enclosed space with a tub on one side and an equally large area for showering alongside it. This makes it easier to shower and get clean before getting in the tub, which is a requirement in Japan and, in my opinion, in all other civilized places, as well. I’ve never understood the idea of soaking in a tub full of the grime floating off your body. On the other hand, a half hour earlier, I had deliberately pissed my own pants, so maybe my opinion on these things shouldn’t be taken too seriously. Anyway, Sayaka had left the chair in the shower area alongside the tub, her clothes piled under it. I realized she would do her showering in the tub—it would be easier sitting in the tub itself, and also left the shower area for the wheelchair. And indeed, there were handles installed in the walls and a rope pulley dangling from the ceiling, all obviously designed to make her passage to and from the tub easier. To make it possible at all.

“Can you turn the light out in the living room?” she said. “It’s still too light here.”

“Do you have a candle?”

“Just an emergency candle, under the sink in the kitchen.”

“I’ll be right back.” I found the candle, lit it on the stove, and set it down in the sink outside the shower/bath room. Then I turned out the light in the living room and came back in. The light was nice like this. I pulled off my wet pants, then my shirt, then my underwear, and pushed it all under the wheelchair. I was as hard as any twenty-year-old about to get in a bath with a girl can be, which is to say, painfully hard. She glanced at me, then looked away. I felt as embarrassed as I thought she must be.

“What’s easier?” I said. “Should I get behind you?”

She nodded, her arms still crossed over her breasts.

I eased in behind her, doing my best not to stab her in the back. She handed me the shower wand. The water was running, but she hadn’t yet put in the drain plug. I wet my body, soaped up as best as I could under the circumstances, and rinsed off. I put the wand down and gently soaped her back. “Is it okay?” I said.

“Yes,” she whispered. I rinsed her back, then lathered up my hands again and did her shoulders. I pulled her against me and slowly leaned back. I kissed her neck, her ear, and she turned her head and we stayed like that for a few minutes, just kissing. She was still covering her breasts. I soaped her arms, and then, very gently, eased them away from her body. She resisted for just a second, then let me. I started soaping her breasts, and if I thought I’d been painfully hard earlier, this made it nearly unbearable. Every time my fingers glided over her nipples she would moan into my mouth and it was making me so crazy my balls started to ache. I soaped her throat and her belly and she started rubbing against me, using her arms on my legs to move herself back and forth in a way I was afraid would make me come if she didn’t stop. Yeah, what can I say, twenty years old. It’s a trade-off.