The Long Highway Pt. 19C

Hiroko translated

Just I wanted to say hi to you one more time before the holiday, which we're spending with Mitchell's family. I always like telling you whatever is on my mind. Maybe you get tired of listening to unnecessary things.

I booked a flight home for next month but the e-ticket confirmation didn't come. When I called the airline, the staff person asked for the flight number. I found that strange. It seemed to be all she cared about.

"Flight Four Six Seven," I said. It wasn't now, though, but later. Was the number the same no matter the date, I wondered.

The calm manner of the staff person didn't completely reassure me. I was reminded of the time my luggage didn't arrive with a flight I took and I phoned to retrieve it. You feel you're lost in a sea of information.

By the way, Mitchell told me a funny anecdote. His class at the college was ending and students hurried to leave for the holiday weekend. He also wanted to go out quickly, had something to do. He realized he had an erection as he brushed past a student. She might have felt it. He thought, "That's no one's fault. It's just what happens when everybody rushes to leave at once, jams the aisles." Why did he have an erection then? There are some pretty attractive students in the class, he said. He can be so funny, so honest!

— —

Akemi was talking about some news she saw from Japan, about a question of extradition. A man had committed fraud involving both Japan and this country, and it was unclear which had jurisdiction, which he belonged to. A shady character. And I thought of when I two-timed, still kept company with my old girlfriend Pam while seeing Akemi, starting a new love affair, and about later, when Akemi found out and we separated temporarily, on her insistence I was again with Pam alone until I figured out what I wanted to do- that's how Akemi put it. She wasn't angry but- understandably- wouldn't countenance my indecision. What was she supposed to do, just wait for me, she asked. She said she felt in that case she'd "lose" herself.

There was a time when Pam and I thought of living together, looked at an apartment- rather a building where, according to a rumor, one might be available soon. We talked to a tenant in front.

"I heard there's someone, on the second floor, a French man, thinking of moving out."

I explained I'd like to take advantage of that opportunity if it arose. "Just checking, so we'd get in first, before anyone else did."

I mentioned possibly being able to pay more rent than the current resident, the French man, probably was, his having been kept low by the terms of his lease, which of course would no longer apply when he was gone.

It occurred to me I might be giving a bad impression to the guy we'd stopped and questioned on the stoop. My direct approach, in particular my bringing up money, might make me seem to him the predatory type you find in the city, the kind who think they can buy anything, by the brute power of dollars even get someone to leave their home. To make clear I wasn't like that, I said to Pam, so the stranger could hear, "We're poor." I tried to make it a humorous aside showing she- I in particular- I were regular people not sharks- which did happen to be the case.

"We're not poor," Pam corrected.

"When you consider the housing market, we are!" I said, keeping my smile in place, glancing at the guy listening, hoping for his sympathy. I don't know why the stranger's opinion mattered to me.

I was at the lower end of the income scale but certainly not hurting. Food, shelter, an occasional vacation all were within reach. My salary had risen recently, Pam pointed out with annoyance. "What was I on about?" her eyes asked (that British expression, an excellent one, comes to mind).

"He's lived in the apartment twenty years," the confused neighbor said about the French man I'd been hoping to supplant with Pam.

"Oh." So the apartment wouldn't be available after all.

A good thing in retrospect. Excellent.

There was friction between Pam and me during our search as in other projects. We didn't collaborate well.

"It would have been so simple," I thought that day. If I had stayed with Akemi, I mean.

We just enjoyed being together. Things didn't get complicated. Practical problems had never risen to the level of- well, problems. On the other hand, we were still at the level of pure romance, hadn't faced reality of daily life. But now that you mention it, neither had Pam and I. We'd never lived together (yes, an excellent thing).

The kiss. When I'd spoken to my friend Peter about my choice between Pam and Akemi, he reminded me of the truism that you could tell a lot from a kiss. With Akemi they were wonderful, went on and on. How long since Pam and I had kissed each other on the mouth? We had moved to a stage that could no longer be called a romance, which shift toward the platonic had begun early in our involvement and surprised neither of us- I assumed not Pam either; we didn't talk about the topic, avoided it as one does the intractable, death and taxes kind of thing.

Pam often seemed intent on bringing me down to the hard realities of life. I know they're there. We have no choice but to attend them. Why why be reminded of them more than necessary? It was almost as if Pam was afraid of joy and needed to stifle it as a force outside her control.

I thought of all this before leaving in the morning, kissed Akemi's bare breasts standing up in the living room. There wasn't time for more. I had to go to work. Morning sun, Akemi's skin light, her shoulders up, long arms at her sides, as if I was "doing it to her," she just accepting, passive, a game and all too short.

Akemi had seen her news about the swindler and it occurred to me- not for the first time- that the description (minus the international part) fit him to an extent. What else is a guru- I mean the bogus type who uses mumbo-jumbo to elevate his position, especially in the eyes of women? I too had just seen an article of interest, pertinence, one about hippies, Nelson's generation. He was the type, the guru thing placed him there. But the text and images showed that- as I knew- those free spirits liked to dance, were given to spontaneous group celebration and that didn't quite jibe with my friend and former teacher. I couldn't imagine Nelson carrying on like the sun dappled idealistic youth in the photos accompanying the article. No, he was not quite a hippy but his own type, a maverick, as he'd be the first to tell you. The artist Nelson was a leader, celebrated- yes, come to think of it, internationally. I hoped he wouldn't lead Akemi off into the woods somewhere.

The job at the college wasn't bad after all, by the way. I complained but found a lot to like. As I told Akemi the other day, there really were a lot of attractive women there. Hell, I could try to think like Nelson, I told myself more than once. Free love, no exclusive relationships (I wondered about his with Leticia. Nelson and she were a couple for sure but had they tied the knot mostly to ease her way to a Green Card, permanent residency here?)

Fat chance of quelling my possessiveness, not with Akemi at home. Other women, even those I was attracted to, paled in comparison to her. Akemi was one in a thousand- no, a complete one-off- - to borrow another Britishism. She blazed like a meteor, in my eyes at least- in Nelson's too, it seemed, and that could be a problem.