Hikikomori and the Rental Sister: A Novel (9 page)

It takes a while. She buys another drink. She deflects the attention she gets from men who don’t match. She keeps searching the crowd.

She tells herself that this will help her keep her cool next time. The problem is comfort. She feels comfortable with him. She tells him things she shouldn’t. Comfort leads to closeness. Closeness leads to desire. Desire grows uncontrollable. The heavy thing.

Just when she’s about to give up, she spots him. Any hesitation might dissolve her will. She approaches him. His hair is right, and his beard, too. Next to him at the bar she pretends to be frustrated at the bartender’s inattention. She leans forward to make sure he can see down her shirt, to see she isn’t wearing a bra. Men are as predictable as the sun.

He orders a vodka for her. “It’s on me,” he says. He tells her his name but she promptly and permanently forgets it. He’s nervous. Maybe his first Asian. He drones on about how the drink he’s drinking is the same drink he had on his recent trip to some island’s all-inclusive resort, where he got sunburn and drank so much that an entire day is still unaccounted for. So impressive! He carefully neglects to mention who accompanied him on this trip. The way he tells the story it appears he went all by himself, that he sat alone on the beach and drank himself into oblivion. So then, probably a girlfriend, perhaps a wife.

He continues. Her mind wanders to Thomas in his room. What is he doing now? Sitting down to a magazine on his bed? What she wouldn’t give to be talking to him right now instead. Such a waste, this empty vessel out here in the world while Thomas, who could have a full, interesting life, sits idle in his empty room.

His place is a high-rise apartment meant to impress. She plays along as he makes her another drink and takes her to the windows to point out the sweeping views of the magnificent twinkling city. But her heart is not moved. Her heart is far away.

They sit on his sleek modern sofa. He talks about the objects in the room, where he bought them and how much they were. He is in turn boasting about how much or how little each object cost, as though at that moment she might find his skill at spotting a good value irresistibly attractive. She listens patiently, long enough to leave no question about her politeness; then she cuts him off.

“Here’s how this is going to work,” she says as she sets down her drink. “I’m going to direct you. I’m going to tell you everything you need to do, everything I like, how to do it and when to do it. You’re not to do anything unless I say. Got it?”

“Like Simon Says.”

“Simon Says?”

“It’s a kid’s game. Simon says, take off your pants. Like that.”

“There’s a kid’s game that makes you take off your pants?”

“No, no, but that’s how—”

“No, it’s not like that. I won’t be saying Simon says. I’ll just be telling you what to do. Can you handle that? Can you handle me giving all the orders?”

“I think so.”

“You think so?”

“Yes. I can handle it.”

“That’s better. Good answer. If you follow my instructions exactly, I promise you’ll have a good time. If you don’t follow them exactly, I promise I’ll leave immediately. No second chances.”

“Got it.”

“Good. Now, the first thing—I’ll be calling you by a different name. The whole time I’ll be imagining that you are someone else. It’s important you get it right. Can you handle it? Still want to go on?”

“Yes.”

“Second thing—don’t talk. Ever. Not one word. Your voice will ruin it. Okay, let’s start. Take that magazine and go into your room and close the door. Then sit cross-legged on your bed and put the magazine in front of you and read it and wait for me to come in.”

She gives him some time, so that he’ll be missing her, waiting for her, wondering if she’ll actually come in or if he’s being played. She needs him to be anxious. She goes to the window and looks out at the city. She tries to find Thomas’s street, 109th Street, but she can’t separate it from the rest. When she thinks he’s anxious enough, she opens the door and finds him cross-legged on the bed, looking at a magazine by the light of a single bedside lamp. She turns it off.

When it is over, when she is satisfied, she leaves his stiff embrace and his bed and takes a shower. A soak, that’s what she really wants, a long, hot soak, but that will have to wait until she gets home to her claw-foot tub.

She walks naked back to his room. He is passed out under the sheet, snoring. Drunk, maybe, but mostly spent and exhausted: she made him work. She picks out her clothes from the scattered piles. She pokes him on his shoulder.

“Wake up. Time for me to go.”

She pokes him again and he stirs to life, grunting a little before he speaks. “I had the doorman call you a taxi. It should be waiting.” This is what passes for being a gentleman.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” she says.

“What.”

“How will I pay the driver?”

“Oh. Where’re my pants?”

She finds them on the floor. He fishes out his wallet and hands her a twenty-dollar bill. His gentlemanly limit.

“But,” she says, “I live farther away than that.”

Another twenty.

“And I’m hungry.”

Another twenty.

“You’re a strange girl.”

“You don’t even know the half of it.”

“Can I have your number?” He struggles to raise his head off the pillow. One eye is completely closed, the other only a slit. He could be talking to anyone.

“No,” she says, “but you can give me yours. I may need to use you again sometime.”

Thirteen

Megumi knocks on his bedroom door but he does not answer. “Not going to let me in today? Are you angry with me? Tell me so I can say I’m sorry.” She knocks again. She’s still a little winded from climbing the stairs too quickly. Her own apartment is on the third floor and she’s never winded there, but Thomas’s two extra floors seem to make a huge difference.

She puts her ear to the door. “Thomas?” She tries the knob. It turns. Very gently she pushes on the door, just a test, but the bolt is not extended and the door opens. After an inch or two, she calls his name again through the crack, and again there’s only silence. She opens the door the rest of the way.

Thomas is not there. Not in his bathroom either. She looks around quickly for clues, but apart from his absence, the room is exactly how it was before. Her heart jumps. She kneads her hands together. For half an hour she waits in his room, looking out the window to see if he’s coming back. She finds a notebook on his desk and pulls out a sheet of paper and folds another origami penguin, just like the one he pushed back under the door. She does a better job with this one, and she stands the penguin on the windowsill, facing out, keeping watch.

She bundles up and heads downstairs. The man is there again, standing on the sidewalk, this time without a shovel. She turns the other way but he catches up to her. “How do you know him?” he asks. “I’m curious, because we used to be such good friends. And his wife, too. We used to be close.”

Megumi looks straight ahead, her pace steady. “I’m just a friend,” she says.

“I see. So we have something in common. We’re both his friend.”

“I guess so.”

“But you’re prettier than me—he probably likes you better. Anyway, my name’s Morris.”

At the corner she waits for Morris to commit to a direction, and she says she’s going the other way. He tells her that he’s very concerned about Thomas, and if there’s anything he can do to help, she shouldn’t hesitate. He lives in the next-door building, in apartment 1F. He stops following her.

She searches for Thomas block by block, looking for the odd man out. The air is crisp and fragile, the sky cloudless blue. Long winter shadows slash the pavement. She checks out all the convenience stores and even all the bars, sad places at that time of the afternoon, dark and wet and stale.

Two hours she searches for him in the raw air, sometimes on the move, up and down the blocks, sometimes standing at an intersection as she scans each passing face. Finally she decides he probably just stepped out on an errand and that he’s probably already back inside his warm room, while she is outside turning into an ice cube. She goes back.

His room is still empty. The penguin still stares out the window.

Best now to wait and warm up. She goes to the entryway and retrieves her shoes. No need to spook him when he returns. She closes herself in his room, but she does not lock the door.

So this is his world. A strange excitement flows through her. She wonders if she would have the courage to sit in a room for years with only her thoughts, to ignore the possibilities and potential of a life out there and be simply content with what she found within these four walls.

His room is cleaner than her brother’s was—and there’s plenty of empty floor space. Her brother’s only open space was a tiny hole of wood floor in front of the computer, which was also on the floor, just enough space to sit and stare at the screen all day. He spent the last years of his life on that tiny circle of floor.

What does he do in here all day? He only reads magazines, that’s it? There is a computer, but it’s not on, and now that she thinks about it, she’s never seen it on. It’s shocking for her to think that his days might genuinely be empty, that he truly has no more use for the world.

She decides that it wouldn’t hurt anything to peek inside one of the boxes. There are five stacks. She picks the closest and pulls on the top box, surprisingly heavy, and it drops to the floor, her tiny muscles barely averting a complete crash.

Thousands of photographs, haphazard and loose, as though they were just thrown into the box in a hurry. She fingers through them. They are strange. Photo after photo of the same thing: toothbrushes, or actually extreme close-ups of the same toothbrush, over and over, obsessive work, each bristle rendered in intimate detail. From a little deeper in the box she pulls out large contact sheets, each with a dozen images of the same toothbrush, the red plastic handle looking like candy. Then, an entire sheet of sunglasses, different styles and colors. Another sheet of ballpoint pens, and two sheets of refrigerator magnets shaped like sunflowers. She pulls down the next box on the stack, anticipating the weight this time but still barely keeping it from crashing. More prints and contact sheets, and also a binder of large negatives, and scattered, crumpled paperwork: memos, instructions, invoices. The pictures are all similar, close-ups of products in garish detail. Stuffed animals with fur that through lighting and photo technique seem alive, three-dimensional. A whole stack of sheets with pictures of modern lamps, skeletal designs with bold colors, arms swung this way and that and in different poses, row after row of photographs. Desk lamps, floor lamps, hanging lamps, an entire lamp family showing off before the camera.

So this was Thomas’s former life. Days spent photographing objects. She imagines him setting up the lights and positioning the camera and the products. Or maybe he had an assistant. Maybe his assistant was young and pretty.

The third box isn’t so high, so she opens it without pulling it down. She expects to find something different, but it’s more pictures of products, things to consume. She rummages all the way to the bottom but finds not even a single photograph of a human being. After a struggle the stack of boxes is back to how it was. Sweat beads on her forehead. There is a cooking magazine on the bed. She lies down and reads the open page, something about schnitzels, which apparently is a sort of breaded meat, and his bed is warm and all the searching and heavy boxes have worn her out and her mind races—where could he be?—and she falls asleep.

A slamming door. The room is black, the sun has set. She suddenly finds herself on the floor crouched behind the bedroom door. She hasn’t thought about this part, about what she would do when she finally hears his footsteps coming down the hall. Maybe she should’ve left her shoes in the entryway as a signal that she was here, in his room. Now he’s going to feel ambushed. She wants to flee, but there’s nowhere to go.

Footsteps cross the living room floor and start down the hall. They stop. Then, barely audible, some sort of muffled rustling. What’s he doing?

Again the footsteps but this time headed away from her. Then the sudden sound of splashing urine in the toilet. It’s Silke, not Thomas. Is there a keyhole, or something Thomas has rigged to allow him to peer into the apartment? She can’t find it. The door is solid and she’s left to only her ears.

The toilet flushes and she strains to hear footsteps behind the sound of the swirling, cavitating water. The toilet noises fade away. The thud of pots striking each other as one is pulled out of the cupboard. The dull splashing of water filling a pot.

She sits in the dark, cross-legged on the floor. Now that she is inside she can’t get out, trapped, again staring at the door but from the opposite side. Silke is chopping, knife against cutting board in regular rhythm. All this, just for herself. Maybe she enjoys cooking. Or maybe the longer it takes to make dinner, the less empty time she has to fill before going to bed.

There’s something wrong about listening to this lonely woman make dinner. Something wrong, and something exhilarating. Making love to her could hardly be more intimate than this.

She used to watch her first boyfriend. He worked in a sneaker store just off Takashita Dori, a tiny place you either somehow already knew about or happened to stumble upon. The store had no sign, no windows, and through the tinted glass door you couldn’t see the expensive, one-of-a-kind sneakers. All indications of the store’s purpose were hidden from view. But she discovered one day as she went to meet her boyfriend that through the glass door, from across the street, at a certain angle, she could see the counter and the register and him. She stopped her approach and watched him through the passing pedestrians. So, she thought, this is how he really is when I’m not around. For a long time she stood there soaked in adrenaline, camouflaged by pedestrians, watching him. She sent him a text message just to see his face as he read it. He was doing nothing more than the simplest tasks, helping customers, ringing up sales, checking his phone, chatting with the other clerk, and she was across the street among thousands of people, yet somehow she had never felt such an intimate connection with him. She was peering into the real him.