Chapter 20: The Waiting Room of Possibility (Continued)

Setting: A cramped, dimly lit apartment in Brooklyn. Akemi’s unfinished paintings lean against the couch. Mitchell sits at the kitchen table, fingers drumming on his phone screen, which displays the same unanswered text for the third hour: “Where are you?”

A world thrown into chaos.

Mitchell (internal monologue, voice tight)

(Stares at the clock. 9:47 PM.)

She’s never late. She has made an art of arriving on time, does it with effortless grace. She’s someone who doesn’t get stressed. That was part of the attraction. I hoped it would rub off on me.

Her dance class was around three. Even with subway delays, she’d be home by now.

(Turns his phone facedown. Turns it back.)

Unless—

(Scrubs his face. Forces logic.)

Nelson’s back on the West Coast. With pine trees and no cell phone. He told me last month— “Mitchell, I’m editing. Can’t have distractions.”

One of their one-sided phone talks. He needed conversation enough- a listener- to accept that distraction.

“Leticia will keep me fed.”

(Beat.)

Right. His wife. The one who understands his needs, turns the other way when lady friends come to stay and he “has his fill,” as he once put it, this just after a conversation about Akemi. How did he think that made me feel? Well, he probably knew exactly and that was the point.

He has a magnetic personality. On his visit to New York to show his films Akemi felt the full force.

Steps back from the window, returns to it.

Akemi doesn’t let men push her around. I can believe that.

Can’t compare her to Nelson’s wife. She’s—Christ, she’s strong-willed. You have to know her a while to pick that up. It showed sometimes even early on. When I met her at that izakaya first date outside class, she took up a pickled plum with her chopstick and said, “Men who cheat are weak.” Just like that.