Chapter 5

Message from Akemi to Mitchell while they were separated:

Hiroko translated

I dreamed we ran into each other at a hotel. We had both gone there to enjoy travel on our own but were glad to meet and connect anyway. While we talked in the lobby someone approached, a worker at the hotel who knew and remembered you from your last visit and liked you. She walked in a hurry to greet you, was almost breathless, wore a uniform, dark blue with a scarf, like a flight attendant, beautiful with her hair tied up, and showed you a photograph you had taken last time and she had printed for you. It was a view of a street scene with snow, not like the photos you print for me, but the snow made a beautiful blur, like a veil, like your cream. We didn’t mind the interruption- she had so much energy so much she wanted to say on meeting you again, she couldn’t find words. Even though you and I wanted to be alone with each other, we enjoyed the three-way conversation. I also liked her and appreciated her feeling for you- she looked a little like Hiroko- and you and I knew that soon we would be on our own, in your room or mine. The snow in the photo made the street scene look poetic, timeless.

I orgasmed!

Mitchell and Akemi did meet during the separation, and more than once, breaking the “rules” but holding to some of them. Talking in her bedroom, agreed to talk only, not have sex. But Mitchell finally couldn’t hold back. He went down the blue rumpled sheet and approached between her legs and kissed her pussy, through her clothing but reaching it. He thought Akemi might not want it, have him stop- so far in their early romance she hadn’t shown a love of cunnilingus, once when he tried it she’d urged him away, wanting them to get back to what they had been doing. Mitchell knew he didn’t know Akemi that well yet. But she did like him kissing her pussy that day, welcomed it, pulled him in, became orgasmic. Squash-colored or tan linen pants with a drawstring he’d mouthed.