The Long Highway Pt. 17E

It goes back and forth, doesn't it, this writing, like a ball bouncing and you don't know where it will stop, a ball with eyes that get interested, pause here or there to look around. You chase the ball and sometimes just have to wait till it comes to rest.

Night, for instance, at a jazz club we went to, Akemi looked the type who'd be wearing a black skirt and black velvet top- she sometimes did but wasn't- like a true jazz aficionado, that is, which she was, if only by virtue of birthplace; "American classical music" is appreciated in Japan as it isn't here. We sat near the front, off to the side, not blocking anyone's view, and all I could think about was getting off the skirt she did have on and getting to the honey (hers, I mean; it's a metaphor) and that the musicians, whose work I wasn't attending but which enveloped us pleasurably, might have the same idea. Especially the stand-up bass player, off to the right of his crew, same side we were, that is, looked inspired by the view. He eyed the burnished gleam of her legs.

Or so it seemed to me. And who could blame him? Light through which smoke rose glimmered there, hypnotically, seemed to tickle her flesh, your eyes too, picking up the glow in the dark. Anyway, the bassist's fingers kept up their work on the long neck of the bass, probably wishing it was her leg. He didn't miss a beat that I detected.

What with the music, the drinks, the coming and going, I didn't know quite who was at our table at any given moment. Conversation ranged widely. I came out of my haze to hear a guy talking about a new treatment - or preventive message- he'd heard about for Covid: acupuncture.

"They put a needle in your neck and leave it there for like a week. Takes only a minute. Quick visit to the doctor. You're in and out."

I saw Akemi was laughing, hiding her open mouth behind her hand.

"What?" came the question.

"It sounded like you're talking about the needle."

"Which part? he asked.

"In and out." Akemi's laughter quickened, while remaining light. She was making an effort to avoid him feeling mocked by her, but mostly enjoying the moment as she trusted he was. Her eyebrows rose and fell, twinkling motion.

"In and out, huh?" he asked.

Did Akemi get it? Would she find the double entendre funny enough to bring up in her blog about life in New York?

"But how can you wear a shirt?" somebody else asked about the acupuncture.

"The needle stays above the shirt, of course."

"Yeah, but I mean how would you get the shirt on over it?"

"Ask Akemi. She designed clothes, didn't you, in Japan?"

She did just a short while after finishing design school but wanted fine art and came here to pursue it.

I drank whiskey that night too, the color of amber. Akemi had a gin cocktail, which she stirred with a swizzle stick she then put in her mouth which had stopped laughing, ever so suggestively, tidily removing the last drop of moisture with the tip of her tongue, a dart of light in the dimly lit club. It flashed for barely an instant. Serious about the jazz.

She's a sophisticate, as my father said "doesn't have too many hangups" and looks good in black, in white too.

Especially her top impressed me that night, how it showed off her breasts without showing them off at all, with shadows. She has a large bust for her proportions ("bust" her word she learned in design school, where I guess English is used for such terms). She's not tall but dynamic and her skin incredibly warm. As I've mentioned here, I tell her she must have a higher temperature than most people.

Sometimes the table was crowded. I found out one person there had broken up with his girlfriend (wife?) I turned to him, as I think I wouldn't if stone sober, getting overly familiar perhaps, asked him about the heartbreak.

"Are you okay? How do you feel?" I all but put my arm around the stranger.

"Feel? Bad," he answered.

"Well, it's good you feel something," I said. "The worst would be to feel nothing at all."

I saw this wasn't helping him. He was being amazingly patient with my foolishness.

"Of course it would be better if you didn't feel bad," I said, chastened by the silence.

"He was in a zone with her," someone said of the guy and his woman. I guess he meant he could do something with her in his life that he might not otherwise, kind of like me with Akemi, the writing and photography I'm into.

Somehow the word "yanagi" came up. Japanese word.

"What's it mean?" I asked Akemi, who of course was at the center of this conversation, as the only one who spoke that language.

No sooner had I asked her than I remembered the meaning.

"It's 'willow,'" I said. A word expressive of emotion in Japan, or did it represent some sort of spirt, ghost? My knowledge doesn't extend far.

But Akemi was already sketching the tree in the notebook she had with her, making an illustration for my benefit, as if I still was in the dark. Maybe she wasn't sure of the English word, turned therefore to the visual language in which she is at home anywhere.

"Patterns endlessly repeating," she said of the leaf and branch structure she rendered quickly and deftly,. She drew billow after billow. I followed suit, began a sketch beside hers. Soon we were competing to see who could make the wildest willow.

Again, if I hadn't been drinking, none of this would have happened the way it did.

Then I saw Akemi had already done a drawing on the same page of her open notebook of the skirt she was wearing- a skill she must have learned in design school.

And she got it perfect. The pinched waist. The pattern. Her figure looked foxy. I actually thought of sending that to Nelson, knew he'd like it (the student in me still wanting to please the teacher).

"The big shoes are great," I said to Akemi. And they were. The big platform shoes popular among young Japanese women, big block soles walked on almost like stilts. I guess they liked those because they made them look taller. Japanese women have a "complex' (to borrow Akemi's word) about their short stature relative to Westerners. They needn't. They're sexier, like Akemi, so elastic.

I wondered how I would get that picture to Nelson if I decided to act on the whim. Would I send the actual sketch, the piece of paper, or take a photo or scan it? Maybe Akemi would want to keep the thing.

The skirt pattern was white and black and brown. Against the white were ovals, I mean, but irregular ones, varied, resembling an animal print. Those shapes were large, some almost the size of a hand. You wanted to seize hold of the slim waist, to feel her hip bones.

Meanwhile, conversation had moved on. Someone was asking about the running I did. I must have mentioned it.

"I get a sense you're pretty proficient," said a woman at the table, one of two in addition to Akemi, a pair of friends sitting together. I think she was flattering me, it's unlikely she had any sense at all of my abilities or lack thereof, just decided to bolster my spirits. Did I look down, gloomy? I don't remember feeling it. The alcohol had me in a pleasant blur where everything, all impressions felt good.

"I started when I was thirty-five," I said. "Doc told me to work on keeping my blood pressure down. At the beginning, I could barely run three blocks, I'd be huffing and puffing. Now I can keep going, go on pretty much forever."

Did the kind woman and her friend look impressed? I felt proud as I spoke, revealing to myself as well a sense of accomplishment I hadn't quite recognized. Of course I also thought of Akemi, our sex life, in which the stamina figured. Make of the train of thought what you will.

People at work are already telling me I should enroll in the pension plan. It's optional "but you'd better start early," my coworker Patti in particular said. There's a lot of paperwork involved. I don't feel like bothering but should some day soon. Is it the tedium of the errand that puts me off or reluctance to face middle age square on? Both, I have no doubt.

And I saw workers this morning carrying gear up to our floor where renovation of another apartment has begun. Tough job. It struck me that I'd be hard put to match that feat. I no longer live on the first floor. It's a long climb. The worker on the landing when I came out, leaving for the college, was carrying something that looked nearly impossible to heft, much less move with. The guts of a heating unit maybe, it was unwieldy with sharp extrusions. The guy could barely get his arms far enough around the thing to lift it. He kept his jaw on the top to provide some balance. Most impressive was the sheer weight of the alien-looking object, the kind that fills our domestic lives, makes them run as they should, but we seldom if ever see.

"Be careful," I said. "That's heavy." Stating the obvious- my comment no help, of course.