Free Salmonella Men on Planet Porno (Vintage Contemporaries) by Yasutaka Tsutsui Page B

here!”
    I gave up trying to persuade him. Actually, I wasn’t that keen on getting back in myself. But considering how things would be if I lost my job, I had to accept a certain amount of risk. “Please yourself. I’ll take the plane. I’ll be back in the office by tomorrow morning.”
    “Or maybe you won’t,” said Hatayama with a trace of a smile.
    I was on the verge of hitting him.
    “I will,” I said. “I’ll get back. You’ll see.”
    “We don’t need that,” Gorohachi’s wife announced to the pump attendant. He’d finished filling the tank and was clambering onto the nose of the plane to wipe the front window. “We’d better be off. I’d be in real trouble if the law found me parked here.”
    “I hear the typhoon’s approaching southwest of here,” said the attendant with a look of concern.
    Gorohachi’s wife laughed it off. “Don’t worry. We’ll be all right,” she said breezily.
    Rain started to pour in torrents. I climbed back into the plane with the farmers, leaving Hatayama standing alone outside.
    We started to taxi along the highway. As we did, several cars swerved into the vegetable field to avoid us. Soon we were airborne once more, and turned westwards.
    It wasn’t until the following morning, during the Chief ’s tirade on my return to the office, that I heard what had happened. Just after we’d taken off, the side of the mountain had collapsed, burying the petrol station and killing Hatayama along with the pump attendant.
    “Why the hell didn’t you get the film off him first?!” bellowed the Chief.

Bear’s Wood Main Line
    We were just a few minutes from Boar’s Wood Station.
    “Where are you headed?” asked a thickly bearded man sitting opposite me.
    “Four Bends,” I replied.
    I’d heard they made good buckwheat noodles in the little town of Four Bends. So I planned to go there and eat my fill, then buy as much as I could to take home with me. That’s why I was travelling on the Hairybeast Line. You see, I’m quite mad about buckwheat noodles. If I hear of a place that’s famous for them, I have to go there and try some for myself – no matter how remote it is.
    “What, you mean you’re going to stay on this train, all the way round Hairybeast, till you get to Four Bends?”
    The bearded man looked at me with eyes agog. With his close-cropped hair and a towel hanging from his belt, he looked like some kind of mountain lumberjack.
    “Why, yes,” I replied. “That’s the only way, isn’t it?”
    “Ah well, you could get off at Boar’s Wood and change onto a train going to Deer’s Wood from there. That’s only one stop from Four Bends,” said the bearded man. “At Boar’s Wood, you change onto the Bear’s Wood Main Line. It’s only a single track, mind. But it’ll get you to Four Bends four hours quicker than going all the way round Hairybeast.”
    “Oh, really? I didn’t know that!” I said, staring at him in surprise. “I really didn’t know that.”
    “I’m going to Bear’s Wood myself,” said the bearded man, looking out at the night sky.
    A clear, star-filled sky stretched out over the forest on either side of the tracks. It was already half-past eleven. There weren’t many passengers on this train as it journeyed deep into the mountains. In our carriage there were only twelve or thirteen, including the bearded man and myself.
    “I get it. It’s called the Bear’s Wood Main Line because it goes through Bear’s Wood, right? Yes, of course. But if it’s only a single track and it’s so short, why’s it called a main line?” I asked. I took out some cigarettes and offered one to the bearded man. He pulled a strip of matches from his shirt pocket and lit up, took a deep puff and slowly started to explain.
    “In olden times, the Bear’s Wood Main Line was the only railway in these parts. That was before Hairybeast got so big. In those days, this line we’re on now was also part of the Bear’s Wood Main Line. It went up