Chapter 2

Mitchell had something he wanted to tell Akemi, not important but interesting; he thought she’d like it. A sentence that struck him at work in the morning, amusing turn of phrase from a movie, scene he’d shown the class, fiction but pertinent to news of the day, which Akemi also followed, found astonishing. Orwell’s “1984”, just a few minutes of it, which few if any students had seemed to get, but no matter; that one good bit alone made it worth his revisiting the film). But in the course of events he’d forgotten the sentence. Too much happening in the day, filling his mind with a slew of other stuff. He’d even gone for a run.

The forgotten thing left an impression, a form, emptiness where it had been, blank shape that couldn’t be filled—negative space, as Akemi might have said—though she really didn’t talk about her work that way, not like an art student. She was an accomplished painter. Mitchell respected her work immensely, saw it was well beyond him. As to the piece of film he’d shown in the classroom—lights off, some students using the occasion to nap, most of the rest on their phones, light sources distracting—reality no longer seemed remote from the horror-show future it depicted. You had authoritarian rule, blurring of the line between fact and fiction.

Mitchell wasn’t even sure Akemi would appreciate the sentence if he did remember it. The nuanced word use might be lost on her. It was English, after all. But he wanted to try anyway. He and she communicated despite the language barrier, because they had a will to get beyond it, understood each other. He looked forward to Akemi coming home—his having taken a shower from his run—to their kissing, embracing soon as she got in. Sucking her tits. The way her flesh molded in his mouth, sprang back, her character, resilience.

Where was she? Late.

Before marrying, they’d spent time apart, deciding whether or not to take the next step, agreed to stop seeing each other for a while. But one day on impulse Mitchell went to visit Akemi, just showed up. She was surprised but welcomed him. They went to bed and enjoyed kissing, embracing. Before going further, Akemi had said to him, “I should tell you. I slept with someone else last night, and it was interesting because...”

Mitchell needed a moment to take this in. Had she really said what he thought she had? He understood she had every right to see other men—she was on her own, she was attractive— and it wasn’t surprising she might. Still, the thought that the mouth he had kissed had been on someone else’s just the day before mattered, didn’t it? He needed to know whether that had been a one-off or more, as she had seemed about to explain before stopping when she saw his reaction.

Maybe she herself didn’t know the upshot. She now looked most concerned about him. What had she expected? And she hadn’t spoken clearly. He wasn’t even sure he’d heard her say she’d slept with another man; her English had slipped, almost as if she didn’t want him to catch the words. She often spoke indirectly- reflection of her culture, mostly her character (could he divide the two?)

Another man? A woman? He knew about her past but only dimly. What she’d done before coming here from Japan and later, before they met, was her business, she’d made clear, and he’d respected that. The whole business about her roommate. He’d asked and got a smiling stone wall and didn’t push. It hadn’t bothered him. What did was the present and their future, if there was to be one. And now this.