The Briefcase (11 page)

“You know, lots of people do this—swirl their wine around—but I always feel kind of embarrassed when I see them do it.” I had been staring fixedly at his fingers as they swirled, and Kojima had followed my gaze from his hands to my face.

“Uh, no, that’s not what I was thinking,” I stammered, but in fact, I sort of was.

“Just humor me and try it yourself,” Kojima urged, looking me deep in the eyes.

“Really?” I said, swirling around the wine in my own glass. The aroma rose to my nostrils. I took a sip, and the wine tasted just the slightest bit different from before. As if there were no resistance. The flavor nestled right up, was perhaps a better way of putting it.

“What a difference,” I said, my eyes widening.

Kojima nodded vigorously. “See what I mean?”

“It’s amazing.”

I felt like I had entered into a strange time, sitting there next to Kojima, in a bar I’d never been to before, swirling wine around in my glass and savoring smoked oysters. Every so often, the thought of Sensei would flit across my mind, but each time, just as suddenly, it would then disappear. It wasn’t as though I had returned to my high school days, but neither did it feel like I was actually in the present—all I could say was that I had caught a fleeting moment at the counter of Bar Maeda. It seemed like we had ended up within a time that didn’t exist anywhere. The cheese omelet was warm and fluffy. The green salad was peppery. After we worked our way through the bottle of wine, Kojima ordered a vodka cocktail while I ordered a gin cocktail, and we were then surprised by how late it had become. I would have thought it had only just gotten dark out, but it was already past ten o’clock.

“Shall we go?” Kojima, who had grown somewhat taciturn, asked.

“Yes, let’s,” I answered without thinking. Kojima had only barely mentioned the details of his breakup with Ayuko, and I couldn’t really remember what he had said. The ambience in the bar was no longer the crackling mood when they’ve just opened—by now the air was charged with a dense festivity. At some point, another bartender—a young man—had also appeared behind the counter, and the bar was humming with just the right level of activity. Kojima had apparently taken care of our bill without my noticing. I’ll pay my half, I said softly, but Kojima just shook his head gently, replying affably, “Don’t worry about it.”

I slipped my arm lightly through Kojima’s as we slowly climbed the stairs from the underground to the street level.

THE MOON WAS suspended in the sky.

Looking up, Kojima said, “That’s your moon,” referring to the first character in my name,
tsuki
, the Japanese word for moon. Sensei would never have said such a thing. Abruptly remembering Sensei, I was startled. While we had been inside the bar, I had felt distant and detached from Sensei. Suddenly, I became aware of the weight of Kojima’s arm, lightly resting on the small of my back.

“The moon is so round,” I said, casually moving my body away from Kojima.

“Yes, it is,” he replied, without trying to bridge the distance between us that I had just created. He just stood there, staring up abstractedly at the moon. He looked older than he had when we were in the bar.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

Kojima looked over at me. “Why do you ask?”

“Are you a little tired?”

“Just getting old,” Kojima said.

“No, you’re not.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Are not!” I was being unusually obstinate.

Kojima chuckled and bowed his head toward me. “That was rude of me, seeing as how we’re the same age.”

“Not at all.”

I was thinking about Sensei. He had never once referred to himself as “old.” Aside from the fact that he was old enough not to make light of his age, it just wasn’t in his nature to talk about it. Standing there on the street right then, I felt very far away from Sensei. I was keenly aware of the distance between us. Not only the difference between our age in years, nor even the expanse between where each of us stood at that moment, but rather the sheer distance that existed between us.

Kojima put his arm around my waist once again. To be sure, he didn’t exactly encircle my waist so much as hold his arm against the air around my waist. The gesture was quite subtly adept. Since he wasn’t
actually touching me, there was nothing for me to shake off. I wondered when he had acquired such a skill.

Held this way, I felt as though Kojima were manipulating me like a doll. Kojima hurried across the street and walked into the darkness, taking me along with him. I could see the school ahead of us. The doors of the gate were shut tightly. The school looked huge at night, lit up by the streetlights. Kojima headed up the path to the embankment anyway, and I went along with him.

The cherry blossom party was over. There was not a soul to be found. Not even a stray cat. When the two of us had slipped away, there had been yakitori skewers and empty saké bottles and packets of smoked squid strewn about, and the partygoers had been serried together as they sat on their mats, but now there was no sign of anything on the embankment. All the trash and empty cans had been completely cleared away, and the ground looked as though it had been swept clean with a bamboo broom. Even the garbage cans on the embankment had been emptied of the refuse from the cherry blossom party. It was as if the party had been nothing more than an illusion or a mirage.

“Everything’s . . . gone,” I said.

“Not surprisingly,” Kojima replied.

“Why not?”

“People who are teachers are much more dutiful about upholding public morality.”

A few years ago, Kojima said, he had attended one of these annual cherry blossom parties the teachers held right before the start of the school year. He had stayed until the end that time, and as the party drew to a close, he had witnessed the teachers’ full-scale cleanup firsthand. There were those who picked up the paper trash and placed it in plastic bags that they had brought for this purpose. There were those who bundled the empty bottles together and piled them on the back of a truck from a liquor store that pulled up to the school entrance just as the party was ending (which, no doubt, Kojima added, had been
previously requested to arrive at the given hour). There was the one who distributed any leftover liquor equitably among the teachers who liked to drink. There were those who used brooms from the schoolyard to level out the ground. And there were those who went around picking up whatever had been left behind and collected it all in a box. The teachers worked briskly and efficiently, like a well-trained company of soldiers. Every last vestige of the cherry blossom party—in boisterous celebration until the very last moment—was completely eliminated in less than fifteen minutes.

“I was so astonished, all I could do was just stand there watching,” Kojima finished saying.

And so this year as well, that must be how the teachers cleaned up every last trace of the party.

Kojima and I walked around a bit along the area where, not an hour ago, the party’s attendees had swarmed. The moon shone brightly. The flowers bloomed pale white, lit up by the moonlight. Kojima led me over to a bench in a corner. He still had his arm circled around my waist, with the same delicate touch.

“I guess I’m a little drunk,” Kojima said. His cheeks were flushed, about the same shade of red they had been during the cherry blossom party. Aside from the color in his cheeks, though, his demeanor did not in any way suggest that he was drunk.

“It’s still cold out,” I said for whatever reason, trying to make conversation. How on earth did I find myself in this situation? Where could Sensei have gone off to? After briskly cleaning up the smoked squid wrappers and yakitori skewers and smoothing out the ground, he and Ms. Ishino were probably out together somewhere.

“Are you cold?” Kojima asked, taking off his jacket and putting it on my shoulders.

“That’s not what I meant,” I said reflexively.

“Then what did you mean?” Kojima asked, smiling. He had seen right through my knee-jerk reaction. I wasn’t at all annoyed to be read so
easily, though—rather, I felt like a child hiding something whose parent knows right away what is going on.

The two of us just sat there for a little while, leaning up against each other. Kojima’s jacket was warm. It carried a faint hint of cologne. Kojima was still smiling. Despite the fact that we were both facing the same direction, I could tell nonetheless that he was smiling.

“What are you smiling at?” I asked, still facing forward.

“You know, Omachi, you’re really just like . . .”

“Like what?”

“Like a high school student. Omachi, don’t be nervous.” Kojima spoke very softly. Then he put his arms firmly around my shoulders and drew me into an embrace.
Really?
I thought to myself.
Kojima’s just going to hug me like this? How strange
, my mind said. But my body quickly responded to him.

“It’s cold, why don’t we go someplace where it’s warm,” Kojima whispered.

“Really?” I said out loud.

“Huh?” Kojima responded with surprise.

“Are we really moving that fast?”

Without replying to my question, Kojima hurriedly got up from the bench. Then, turning to me as I still sat there, he touched my chin, raising my face upward, and promptly kissed me.

The kiss happened so fast that I failed to deflect it.
Dammit
, I cursed myself.
That was careless of me.
It was careless, but the kiss wasn’t unpleasant. Maybe not unpleasant, but I wasn’t happy about it. Rather than happy, it made me feel a little lonely.

“Really?” I asked again.

“Yes, really,” Kojima answered, now slightly more self-confident.

Yet I found this situation utterly regrettable. Kojima, still standing, moved in for another kiss.

“Please stop it,” I said, trying to be as clear as I could.

“No, I won’t,” Kojima replied, just as clearly.

“Come on, it’s not like you’re really serious about me.”

Kojima shook his head. “I’ve liked you all this time, Omachi. Didn’t I take you out on that date? Even if it didn’t go all that well.” His was earnest. expression was earnest.

“So you’ve liked me all along?” I asked.

He gave a faint laugh. “I guess life is pretty funny that way.”

Kojima looked up at the moon for a moment. It was now enveloped by a thin haze.

Sensei
, I thought to myself, and my next thought was
Kojima
.

“Thank you for tonight,” I said, staring at his jawline.

“Huh?”

“It was a lovely evening.”

The area below Kojima’s chin was much thicker than it had been when we were in high school. An accumulation of years. But this stoutness was not at all repugnant. In fact, I rather liked it. I tried to think of what Sensei’s jawline looked like. Surely, when Sensei had been the age that Kojima and I were now, his neck must have been appropriately thick. However, the ensuing years had conversely whittled away any heft under his chin.

Kojima was looking at me, a bit surprised. The moon shone brightly, luminous even through the haze.

“So it’s not going to happen?” Kojima said, with an exaggerated sigh.

“Seems unlikely.”

“Aw, man . . . I’m just terrible on dates,” he laughed. I laughed with him.

“No, you’re not! You taught me how to swirl my wine and all.”

“Yeah, I definitely shouldn’t do stuff like that.”

Kojima’s face was lit by the moonlight. I studied it now.

“Am I a good-looking guy?” he asked as he turned to face my gaze.

“Definitely, you’re very good-looking,” I answered gamely. Kojima pulled me by the hands up to standing.

“But not good-looking enough for it to happen?”

“You know, I’m a high school girl!”

“As if!” Kojima said, pouting. He too looked like a high school student when he made that face. He looked like a teenager who didn’t know the first thing about wine tasting.

We held hands and walked along the embankment. Kojima’s hand was warm in mine. The moonlight illuminated the cherry blossoms. I wondered where Sensei was at that moment.

“You know, I never really liked Ms. Ishino,” I told Kojima as we walked along.

“Really? Like I said before, I had a crush on her.”

“But you didn’t like Mr. Matsumoto.”

“Right, I thought he was stubborn and strict, you know?”

Little by little, we really were regressing to our high school days. The schoolyard looked white, bathed as it was in moonlight. Perhaps if we kept on walking along the embankment, the years would actually roll back in time.

When we got to the edge of the bank, we turned around and walked back until we reached the entrance to the embankment, and then we made another round trip. The whole time, we held each other’s hand tightly. We hardly spoke a word; we just kept walking back and forth along the embankment.

“Shall we go home?” Isaid, when we came back to the entrance for the umpteenth time. Kojima was silent for a moment until he suddenly let go of my hand.

“I guess so,” he replied quietly.

We descended from the embankment side by side. It was close to midnight. The moon had climbed high in the sky.

“I thought we might just keep walking until dawn,” Kojima murmured. He didn’t turn toward me when he spoke; he seemed to be murmuring these words to the sky.

“I know what you mean,” I replied. Kojima stared at me now.

We held each other’s gaze for a long moment. Then, without a word, we crossed the street. Kojima hailed a taxi as it sped toward us, and put me inside.

“If I see you home, I’ll just get more ideas in my head,” Kojima said, smiling.

“All right then,” I said, at the same time that the taxi driver slammed the automatic door closed and then sped off.

I turned and watched Kojima’s figure retreat from the rear window. It got smaller and smaller, and then disappeared.