He nodded toward Riku and said in a low voice, “I enjoyed his company tonight. Whatever you told him after our last lesson, he clearly listened to you.” He stopped himself from saying: he doesn’t resemble his father as much when he behaves well.
“He’s good around people he trusts,” she said happily. “It’s as much because of you as either of us.”
She called to Riku: “Do you want to say goodbye?”
But Riku only stared at them, his face dark again and unreadable.
“Goodnight,” Mariko called from the doorway as Sedge stepped into the street. Like last time, she tried to pass him a small money envelope.
He waved it away and started walking toward town.
“Thank you for your lesson,” she called to him.
Late that night, as Sedge was preparing for bed, someone rapped on his door. When he opened it he found Yuki there, staring at the ground.
“It’s nearly midnight,” he said. “Not that I mind, but this is late for you, isn’t it?” His immediate thought was that she had news about Nozomi.
She lifted her gaze tiredly. “An hour ago Takahashi’s mother called. His father had another stroke. He’s been moved to an intensive care ward, but Takahashi hasn’t been able to speak to any doctors there yet. Since he’s still your father-in-law, I thought you’d want to know.”
His stomach knotted and no words came to him right away. “Of course I do. Thank you for telling me.” He paused, aware of the double-absurdity of her sharing this news—the obligatoriness on her part and his thanking her for it on his. It was how strangers might behave. “Is there anything I can do?”
She shook her head again. “If there is, I’ll let you know. Takahashi drove to Kanazawa. When he comes back you should talk to him.”
“I’ll make a point to find him tomorrow.”
She hesitated before saying, “He asked me what we should do about Nozomi. I told him I had no idea.”
Sedge leaned against the doorframe and looked at her helplessly.
“It’s ridiculous that she cut us all off,” she said. “It’s not like we’ve done anything.”
Sedge let her barb pass as inadvertent. “I haven’t spoken to any of our mutual friends for a long time. I can check again to see if they’ve heard from her, and if so, ask that they tell her about her father.”
“You can if you think it might help. But Takahashi and I have been searching for her every day. Personally, I think she should suffer the consequences of leaving like she did. At her parents’ ages, surely she realized this could happen. It’s like she wanted to precede her father on his way to leaving this world.”
Sedge stiffened, and she quickly apologized. She added: “I told Takahashi the other day that you should hire a private firm to track her down.”
“But what for?”
“Most of the money she took was yours, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.” His attitude toward the money she took had turned less forgiving.
“That’s not the only reason I said that. You need to be sure she’s been as selfish as you believe before you turn away from her forever.”
Sedge was unsure what she was getting at. “I don’t think I can see the situation as clearly as someone on the outside. Perhaps you’re right, though.”
She made to depart but turned back. “Maybe this isn’t the right occasion to ask, but do you feel you’re capable of moving on from her? After all she did . . .”
The question had arisen in his own mind many times. “Things are getting better. Didn’t you tell Takahashi that a person needs fifty days to accept a loved one’s death? It’s been much more than that for me—maybe because I’m not mourning her actual death. But somewhere along the way I’ve learned to accept what happened.”
She brushed her hands on her kimono sleeves, dusting them off. “I’m sorry I bothered you so late. I only came at this hour because I thought you should know.”
He watched her walk down the hall and turn the corner.
On the following morning, while brushing his teeth over the small sink in his room, he heard a rustling at his front door followed by footsteps hurrying down the hallway. He opened the door and found another envelope. Like the one before, it contained an origami figure and a note that said only: “Your favorite bird!”
Sedge shook the paper figure from the bottom of the envelope. A gray heron fell into his palm, perfectly executed. Riku had not only folded the paper into the exact shape of a heron with its head hunched into its shoulders, its long neck shaped into an ‘S,’ but even its plumage overlapped and was reflected in the different colored paper he’d used.
For a young man tormented by angst, there was no denying the existence as well of an extraordinary artistic sensibility. And a sensitivity, too, buried somewhere the boy was extremely protective of.
10
Takahashi and Yuki spent more time in Kanazawa to be with his father, whose condition had destabilized. Sedge was unable to obtain any details about his health, and out of consideration didn’t push for them. Surely Takahashi or Yuki would tell him whatever he needed to know.
Their absence from the ryokan emboldened him to devote more mornings and afternoons to the lounge where Mariko was working again. He still sat where the front desk staff couldn’t see him, and he brought a laptop to search for jobs.
“I like working here when you visit,” she told him, “but I’m thinking of requesting a transfer back to my old job of cleaning guestrooms.”
Hearing this disappointed Sedge. His time at the ryokan would be harder to endure if he couldn’t see her here most days. “You don’t like it here?”
She glanced toward the front desk, where a tourist group was checking in. “All the long-timers know that when a woman is transferred here it’s usually so Takahashi can keep an eye on her. Eventually he tries to seduce her, but when she refuses or no longer satisfies him, or when he starts worrying that Yuki will find out, he gets rid of her.”
“Are you sure it’s not just a rumor?” But even as he asked this, he remembered Nozomi’s stories about his womanizing.
