Free Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami Page A

for her; despite its convenient location, the rent was reasonable, and it boasted a nice view. It was also twice as big as the old place. Definitely worth the move. Yoyogi Park was nearby, and she could walk to work if the spirit moved her.
    “Starting next month I’ll be working five days a week,” Sumire said. “Three days a week seems neither here nor there, and it’s easier to stand commuting if you do it every day. I have to pay more rent now, and Miu told me it’d be better all around if I became a full-time employee. I mean, if I stay home, I still won’t be able to write.”
    “Sounds like a good idea,” I commented.
    “My life will get more organized if I work every day, and I probably won’t be calling you up at three-thirty in the morning. One good point about it.”
    “One
very
good point,” I said. “But it’s sad to think you’ll be living so far away from me.”
    “You really feel that way?”
    “Of course. Want me to rip out my pure heart and show you?”
    I was sitting on the bare floor of the new apartment, leaning against the wall. Sumire was so bereft of household goods the new place looked deserted. There weren’t any curtains in the windows, and the books that didn’t fit into the bookshelf lay piled on the floor like a bunch of intellectual refugees. The full-length mirror on the wall, a moving present from Miu, was the only thing that stood out. The caws of crows filtered in from the park on the twilight breeze. Sumire sat down next to me. “You know what?” she said.
    “What?”
    “If I were some good-for-nothing lesbian, would you still be my friend?”
    “Whether you’re a good-for-nothing lesbian or not doesn’t matter. Imagine
The Greatest Hits of Bobby Darin
minus ‘Mack the Knife.’ That’s what my life would be like without you.”
    Sumire narrowed her eyes and looked at me. “I’m not sure I follow your metaphor, but what you mean is you’d feel really lonely?”
    “That’s about the size of it,” I said.
    Sumire rested her head on my shoulder. Her hair was held back by a hair clip, and I could see her small, nicely formed ears. Ears so pretty you’d think they had just been created. Soft, easily injured ears. I could feel her breath on my skin. She had on a pair of short pink pants and a faded, plain navy-blue T-shirt. The outline of her small nipples showed through the shirt. There was a faint odor of sweat. Her sweat and mine, the two odors subtly mixed.
    I wanted to hold her so badly. I was seized by a violent desire to push her down on the floor right then and there. But I knew it would be wasted effort. Suddenly I found it hard to breathe, and my field of vision narrowed. Time stood still, spinning its wheels. Desire swelled up in my trousers, hard as a rock. I was confused, bewildered. I tried to get a grip. I breathed in a lungful of fresh air, closed my eyes, and in that incomprehensible darkness I slowly began counting. My urges were so overpowering that tears came to my eyes.
    “I like you, too,” Sumire said. “In this whole big world, more than anyone else.”
    “After Miu, you mean,” I said.
    “Miu’s a little different.”
    “How so?”
    “The feelings I have for her are different from how I feel about you. What I mean is . . . hmm. How should I put it?”
    “We good-for-nothing heterosexuals have a term for it,” I said. “We say you get a hard-on.”
    Sumire laughed. “Other than wanting to be a novelist, I’ve never wanted anything so much. I’ve always been satisfied with exactly what I have. But now, right at this moment, I want Miu. Very, very much. I want to have her. Make her mine. I just
have
to. There’re no other choices. Not a one. I have no idea why things worked out like this. Does that . . . make sense?”
    I nodded. My penis still maintained its overpowering rigidity, and I prayed that Sumire wouldn’t notice.
    “There’s a great line by Groucho Marx,” I said. “ ‘She’s so in love with me she