After Venice they returned to Milan, then flew to Paris. They took a break there, shopping some more, then boarded a train to Burgundy. One of Miu’s good friends owned a huge house, a manor really, where they stayed. As in Italy, Miu made the rounds of several small vineyards on business. On free afternoons they took a picnic-basket lunch and went walking in the woods nearby. With a couple of bottles of wine to complement the meal, of course. “The wine here is simply out of this world,” Sumire wrote.
Somehow, though, it looks like our original plan
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of returning to Japan on the 15th of August is going to change. After our work is done in France
we may be taking a short holiday on a Greek island. This English gentleman we happened to
meet here—a real gentleman, mind you—owns a
villa on the island and invited us to use it for as long as we like. Great news! Miu likes the idea, too. We need a break from work, some time to just kick back and relax. The two of us lying on the pure white beaches of the Aegean, two
beautiful sets of breasts pointed towards the sun,
sipping wine with a scent of pine resin in it, just watching the clouds drift by. Doesn’t that sound wonderful?
It certainly does, I thought.
That afternoon I went to the public pool and paddled around, stopped in a nicely air-conditioned coffee shop on the way home, and read for an hour. When I got back to my place I listened to both sides of an old Ten Years After LP while ironing three shirts. Ironing done, I drank some cheap wine I’d got on sale, mixed with Perrier, and watched a football match I’d videotaped. Every time I saw a pass I thought I wouldn’t have made myself, I shook my head and sighed. Judging the mistakes of strangers is an easy thing to do—and it feels pretty good.
After the football match I sank back in my chair, stared at the ceiling, and imagined Sumire in her village in France. By now she was already on that Greek island. Lying on the beach, gazing at the passing clouds. Either way, she was a long way from me. Rome, Greece, Timbuktu, Aruanda—it didn’t matter.
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She was far, far away. And most likely that was the future in a nutshell, Sumire growing ever more distant. It made me sad. I felt like I was some meaningless bug clinging for no special reason to a high stone wall on a windy night, with no plans, no beliefs. Sumire said she missed me. But she had Miu beside her. I had no one. All I had was—me. Same as always.
*
Sumire didn’t come back on 15 August. Her phone still just had a curt
*
I called her again on the 18th but got the same recording. After the lifeless beep I left my name and a simple message for her to call me when she got back. Most likely she and Miu found their Greek island too much fun to want to leave.
*
In the interval between my two calls I coached one football practice at my school and slept once with my girlfriend. She was well tanned, having just returned from a holiday in Bali with her husband and two children. As I held her I thought of Sumire on her Greek island. Inside her, I couldn’t help but imagine Sumire’s body.
If I hadn’t known Sumire I could have easily fallen for this woman, seven years my senior (and whose son was one of my students). She was a beautiful, energetic, kind woman. She wore a bit too much make-up for my liking, but dressed nicely. She worried about being a little overweight, but shouldn’t have. I certainly wasn’t about to complain about her sexy figure. She knew all my desires, everything I wanted and didn’t
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want. She knew just how far to go and when to stop—in bed and out. Made me feel like I was flying first class.
“I haven’t slept with my husband for almost a year,” she revealed to me as she lay in my arms. “You’re the only one.”
*
But I couldn’t love her. For whatever reason, that unconditional, natural intimacy Sumire and I had just wasn’t there. A thin, transparent veil always came between us. Visible or not, a barrier remained. Awkward silences came on us all the time—particularly when we said goodbye. That never happened with me and Sumire. Being with this woman confirmed one undeniable fact: I needed Sumire more than ever.
