Toru went to the restroom to look at himself for the third time. He wanted to make sure that everything was perfect. That’s the only way he could go to see Shifumi — to be absolutely flawless, just like her. Mentally he was prepared for the reunion, given how many times he had recited all the possible scenarios that he could run into. The look on his face however, was still apprehensive and didn’t want to cooperate. Toru turned the cold water tap, wet his fingers and ran it over a strand of hair on the right side of his head that curled up defiantly no matter how many times he tried to smooth it out. Like the teenage awkwardness of any 20-year-old boy, it just wouldn’t leave him alone.
He sighed. Then he looked at himself left and right again. May be she wouldn’t notice. May be she would be to taken aback by his impromptu visit that a strand of flying hair wouldn’t bother her. Indeed he looked his best in this smart black suit that was accentuated by the expensive texture of the white dress shirt he bought especially for this occasion. Toru had a very handsome face. He was six foot one and unusually slim for his height. With a slight effort he could easily be passed as a fashion model, or a prodigal pianist. He walked out of the men’s room that was one floor below the five stars rated private dinning Salon Chinois located on the top floor of the Park Hotel in the center of Tokyo with renewed confidence and slipped into an exclusive elevator hidden elegantly behind a frosted glass panel to go up to the private dinning room where Shifumi’s husband was hosting a New Year’s eve party for all his business clients and their families, which included his mother and himself.
Shifumi was at the moment chatting idly with a group of guests. It’s never about anything in particular. Compliments were the most common forms of exchange in this kind of social gathering, then it would be a highly ornate report of their daily lives, always mixed with complains about excessive of things that other people would not even be able to own or to experience. That was naturally her job. She constituted a major part in this exclusive formal party as the elegant and gracious hostess being the wife of one of the richest men in the publishing industry.
Toru’s heart stopped as soon as he stepped into the party and saw the luminous and luscious skin of her back exposing itself seductively from the low-cut neckline of her pink chiffon dress. It suited her very well, Toru thought to himself. A waiter passed in front of him to hand him some hors D’oeuvre. That jostled him out of his trance. He took something from his platter and made a quick scan around the room. There was his mother, sitting at the back of the room with her legs crossed in an aggressive, self-important kind of way, impounding her opinions about the latest fashion from certain designer in Paris and the qualities of wines from certain winery in Lyon upon a group of less career-minded, more introspective wives of some businessmen, enjoying herself. As usual, she didn’t notice the late arrival of her son nor did she care. He was merely an instrument to her ascend into the society. As a divorced woman in the Japanese society, her social status had been carefully preserved only by her success in business and the facade of a happy mother-and-son relationship. That’s why even at young age, he accompanied her mother almost everywhere she did businesses. But he rarely received any real attention from his mother. It was a great relief for the his grandparents and family friends that Toru turned out a great kid given the limited attention he had gotten from his mother growing up.
Outside its floor-to-ceiling window, there stood the Tokyo Tower again. It’s been a year and a month since Toru had seen Shifumi. It was in a private dinning room of this same hotel on the 25th floor. They had just arrived and ordered their first drinks. Then Shifumi’s husband gave her a call which she had to answer out of his earshot. When she came back she said she was sorry and had to leave, for her husband was coming here to pick her up, and had proposed that since she was already here at the Park Hotel, they should have dinner there together before they go home.
“I thought it’s our dinner. Our night. ” Toru said naively.
“Toru, look at you. Getting upset.” She said smiling. “There’s nothing I can do about it. I’m a married woman.”
“Please don’t go.” He begged.
“The one advantage of being married is that you’ll never have to eat dinner alone.” She said. “I can’t ignore my husband when he needs me.”
“Why don’t you leave him? You’re not happy with him!” Toru said angrily.
“Toru! Sit down.” She commanded. Then the sweetness in her voice recovered. “I’m done being alone. I don’t want to be alone anymore.”
“But you won’t be alone. You’ll have me.”
“You’re not getting it, aren’t you?” Shifumi said. She seemed to have something she wanted to explain to Toru. But her cell phone rang again at that inopportune moment. “I need to go. I’ll call you.” She said. And that was her last words to him. And for the past a year and a half, he had not hear back from her.
During that long lonely year, he had realized one thing. It was something his best friend Koji had told him. He also happened to be involved with an older married woman.
“Even when I’m with her, she still feels terribly alone inside.” Koji said sadly to Toru over a drink after they had broken up. The woman had slapped him in the face for seducing her in front of all his college friends a couple nights ago in the bar Koji was working part-time for until that point. She was still wearing the apron she had on at home while she was cooking her husband’s favorite dish, the sweet and sour pork, which she hated and had accidentally burnt and started a small fire at home. She blamed it all on him for not returning her calls and messages. Greatly embarrassed, Koji called her a crazy woman. In a moment of heat, she hit him on the head with a pool ball before storming away in tears.
“All the adult talks are boring you, isn’t it?” Shifumi’s husband tapped Toru lightly on the back when he noticed the kid standing at a lost at the threshold of the dinning room alone. Naturally, that scared Toru for a second. He swallowed nervously and nodded. This man really was a nice guy, Toru thought to himself. Nice people don’t deserve to have bad things happen to them. Who was he to butt into their marriage like this?
The man led him to where his wife was standing. “Look, Kojima’s son is here.” He said cheerfully to his wife, who nodded graciously at him. Toru muscles tensed. He was shocked to see absolutely nothing in her eyes despite all that had happened between them. He lingered around the couple while they were chatting with their guests and threw in a few funny remarks here and there when they were talking about topics he understood, pretending to be his usual cheerful self. He didn’t want to come off as the loser to this woman whom he had been yearning for day and night for the past year and who now stood so dangerously close but felt painfully distant to him. May be two hours had gone by and he had walked around the room showing his face to the people he knew until his mother had finally realized he was there. One of her friends had asked her to introduce her son to her. She was, just like Shifumi did a year ago, captivated by his promising youth and beauty.
“Toru! Come here!” His mother called. “I wanted to introduce you to my friend.”
He stared at the middle-aged woman sitting by his mother who had her head turned towards his direction for a short moment and walked away from the party into the empty staff coffee room, pretending that he didn’t hear her. The coffee room was facing directly the north side of the magnificent Tokyo Tower now decorated with ceremonious lightings outside. Toru leaned close to the glass and took a deep breath. The fog he made on the glass when he exhaled seemed to be the perfect portrait of his heart’s condition — all fogged up. It had hidden the Tokyo Tower from his sight.
“Toru.” Then he heard her voice calling his name in the same intimate way she like used to. Toru turned around and saw the only thing he had ever loved in his life.
“Is it…okay?” He whispered, peeking outside of the coffee room trying to locate her husband or his mother.
“Hold my hand.” She said.
He didn’t move. Not because he didn’t want to. There were simply too many things going through his mind at the moment.
“What did I say about men who wouldn’t hold my hand?”
Suddenly all the lights in the room went out. They heard the crowd outside in the party room shouting happily, “10 - 9 - 8 - 7 - 6 …”
Shifumi grabbed Toru’s hand.
Toru held on to hers as tightly as he could.
“5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1! Happy New Year!” The crowd billowed.
In the darkness of the coffee room, the two peered out together at the Tokyo Tower in front of them and kissed.
Then it hit Toru: while the Tokyo Tower would still be there year after year, their love, or love in any relationship between any couple per se, would not. Its existence was solely depended on the whimsical thoughts, the unreliable judgments and all the transient, and sometimes unnecessary emotions of the two people involved. For the first time, he pushed her away.
Shifumi stumbled backward. When she regained balance, she looked knowingly into his eyes in the dark. She seemed to know what he was about to say.
“Sorry.” He apologized.
“This will be better for both of us.”
