Chapter Text
On the night it finally happened, the rains had come and gone and the air had just begun to bite. A night like any other. The city ensnared within its own blind circuit. The skies were clouded over and the same tarry black as the roads, the roads he navigated six or seven nights a week now, not even bothering with the illusion of rest. The little stereo in his apartment was now discolored with a fine frosting of dust; he hadn’t tuned into the rakugo station for weeks. Instead he drifted through his car stereo’s own senseless babble, the metronomic click of his blinkers, the patter of raindrops and the squeak of his windshield wipers, the engine’s relentless thrum. He seldom saw the same passenger twice, and the ones he did recognize didn’t recognize him in turn, or at least didn’t call attention to it. He took them to whatever destinations they provided and took their money and went off his own way, continuing through his routine, this unrelenting loop.
Once or twice a week he’d go back to the hill over the vacant lot, waiting for something to happen there. But the long-awaited construction never appeared; he cast his cigarette ends down into that same black sea. It got to the point where he didn’t want to see the place in daylight, in case there really was nothing there, just a yawning dark hole over the guardrails.
He was on his way back from one such trip, trawling the roads not too far from where he’d picked up that fox with her melancholy woodcut face. It was just past midnight. The side roads were mostly empty and he took it slow, eyeing the sidewalks for potential fares. This wasn’t a partygoing district; passengers here would likely be night-shift workers or worn-out barflies too tired or broke to keep drinking into the dawn hours. Quiet, the way he liked. And then he saw her.
She walked through the intermittent darkness between streetlamps, handbag over her shoulder, head slightly bowed. Her jacket and skirt were an unexciting tan color and her neck arose from her blouse like a streak of chalk, loose curls of wool spilling free. For a moment Odokawa couldn’t even hear the engine run. But he drew closer and saw that she was still the wrong shape, two stubby horns near-swallowed by the wool atop her head. Nevertheless, she saw him and raised her arm, and he watched that gesture like someone staring into the barrel of a gun, waiting for the muzzle flash.
He pulled over and let her in. The girl angled her neck so that her head could pass through his doorway, and then settled into the backseat, purse in her lap. She moved with an easy grace despite the car’s awkward confinement.
“Where to?” he asked.
“Riosen Avenue on District 7, please.”
Odokawa entered the address and set off, pulling back onto the main roads. The city’s glitter forced its way into the car. She winced a bit at the sudden explosion of color.
“Getting colder,” he remarked. The steering wheel creaked as he turned.
“It is. At least the rainy season’s finally done.”
“I’m not a fan of it, either.”
She blinked. “Really? I mean, it’s just surprising, since you’re, erm…”
“I know. I’m strange that way.” He paused at a Yield sign. At the end of the road, a stoplight hung. “Could I get your name, miss?”
“Els.” She didn’t seem bothered by the question. “How about you, mister…?”
“Odokawa.” That familiar shift in expression. “Yeah, it’s not common.”
She smiled a little, grateful that he’d thrown her a line. “I didn’t want to assume. It’s been a little while since I’ve met any sea animals.”
“Don’t worry about it. I thought you were an alpaca at first.”
The smile widened. “I’ve been getting that a lot. Especially since I grew out my wool. My horns are so stubby they get lost in the stuff.” She idly twisted one curl around her finger. “I really need to get it cut soon. Can’t seem to find the time.”
They came to the stoplight and it flashed red. Odokawa coasted to a stop. “Usually I see kids your age out in groups this time of night. Working late?”
“Studying late, actually. My plan's to go to med school. Training to be a nurse.” Els sighed. “It keeps me busy, all right.”
Odokawa stared into the stoplight’s gleam and imagined that single point of red drilled into his eye. There was a spreading numbness in him; he could no longer feel the steering wheel’s contours beneath his hands, or the engine’s rumble beneath his feet. A resignation. The hammer had dropped, the gunbarrel flashed. This bullet was bound to find him someday.
He said, “There was a lot of traffic on the main roads tonight. If you want, I can take a detour. It’s out of the way but should save us fifteen or twenty minutes.”
“Traffic?” Els asked, ears drooping. “It’s a weird time of night for it…”
“It happens sometimes. But it’s up to you.”
The light would change any second now. She cast a glance out the window at that pulsing kaleidoscope of storefronts. The handbag distended beneath her fingertips. Just as the wheel did beneath Odokawa’s.
“If you think it’s a good idea,” she said at last, and the light turned green.
Odokawa flicked his turn signal and moved off the boulevard, back into the gloomier spaces. The asphalt grew rougher as he guided them onto the side roads, then the back roads, where the streetlamps were few and the lit buildings fewer still. This was how it was – the city’s lights brightest in its chaotic, cacophonic heart, growing dimmer as you moved to the disused spaces, and then to the full darkness at its edge, beyond where even the highway lights could shine.
He’d taken this route many times since coming here, tracing the echoes of places he used to know. The taxi drove over a small bridge beneath which inky water flowed sluggish as blood. It crept through a suburb where not even the cicadas could be heard. In the rearview mirror, Els grew restless, her own gaze pinned wide and helpless to this alien scenery where no one else was there to look back. He could see her struggling not to look at him, the wicked tusks jutting from his lip. Her fingers pawed at her handbag, no doubt resisting the urge to take out her phone and check the traffic. She didn’t want to discover that he’d lied.
“I’m not sure if I can cover the fare,” she said. Her voice was faint, piano-wire tight.
“It’s fine. Tonight was busy. I’ll give you a discount.”
“You can do that?”
“Sometimes.”
They snaked along a cliffside road from which the city’s eastern edge could be seen. The mountains were jagged fractures in space, the sky an open pit. Both the speedometer and Odokawa’s heartbeat remained steady.
“Are you from the countryside?” he asked.
She flinched at his voice. “No. I was born here. Why?”
“Just a guess. A bad one, it turns out.” He gently eased off the gas. Taking every second that he could. “You said you were headed for med school. Are you going to pay for it yourself?”
“No, my parents are.” Her wide, wet herbivore’s eyes jittered back and forth. At once reassured by the triviality of these questions, and anxious as to where they might lead.
“That’s good. Loans are trouble.”
“That’s what they said. I think they were relieved that I decided to go this route, honestly. I was actually a choreographer in high school. But there’s not much of a career in dance.”
The road opened back up; the city center could be seen again in the distance. As those lights approached, the tension drained from Els’ pose like an unwound spring. Odokawa pulled his gaze away from the pearlescent gleam of her, adrift inside his car.
“The hours must really be tough, if they’re keeping you this late,” he said. “Not much time for a social life, I assume.”
She smiled weakly. “Pretty much.”
“You seeing anyone?” He delivered the question casually, like a needle in the arm, but she still stammered a bit before answering.
“Oh! No, not really. There was someone, and there was…I mean, there was going to be someone, and there was this one boy in my drama club who seemed nice, but not the same…” She sighed. “I lost you, didn’t I?”
“It’s alright.”
“I haven’t dated since high school,” she said. “I don’t even remember his name. But this was this other boy – an alpaca, actually – who had a crush on me. But then he…well, he died.”
Her words were almost drowned by the engine. Their destination wasn’t far.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“You probably read about it in the papers at some point. Devouring. After that I sort of hung it up. There was this tiger in my drama club who seemed interested, but I never let it go anywhere. And after him, no one.” She shut her eyes, laid her head against the window’s cool glass. “I never knew about that boy’s crush, is the thing. Not until after he was gone. Sometimes it feels like I’m punishing myself for it.”
“Doesn’t sound like it was your fault.”
“I know that. But, there it is.” She shrugged, opened her eyes again. “It’s funny. I’ve never told anyone this before.”
“I hear that a lot. It’s a taxi thing.”
“You must be used to it by now.” She watched the sidewalk pass by. “Just like I’m getting used to this.”
“You can get used to just about anything,” said Odokawa. “But that doesn’t mean it’s right.”
Els turned back to him, puzzled. Odokawa’s phone stated that they were less than five minutes from their destination. He kept driving as he talked, his body moving through these familiar gestures, actions scored into him by years of lonesome nights.
“Don’t worry. You’re still young. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you.” He spoke in withering deadpan. “I bet that’s what you’d usually hear if you told this to someone, right? It’s a load of crap. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that this will become any easier. You want to be alone, that’s fine. But if you don’t, then there isn’t going to come a time when you get to tell yourself, ‘this was worth it.’ You won’t be able to take it back.”
“I’m not sure what you-”
“The things you regret never go away,” Odokawa went on. “They just keep growing, until they eventually become all that you are. Your life isn’t ahead of you. It’s here, now. So you better decide if it’s one that you want to live, before you get so used to it that you’re not able to change.”
She sat rigid, that fine neck straight as a marble pillar, mouth slightly open like she’d been poleaxed. The car slowed, pulled over.
“We’re here,” said Odokawa.
Els tried several times to speak before she finally got the words out. “How much do I owe you?”
“Let’s call it an even twenty-five hundred.”
The actual fare was nearly twice that, but Odokawa didn’t care. Els dug the cash out of her purse and he took it and opened the passenger door. She left the car with an uncertain, wobbling step, as though expecting to fall through the world. Odokawa waited a moment, then a moment longer, and finally cranked the window down and called out:
“Excuse me, miss.”
Els turned in place and half-jogged back to the car, leaning in close enough for Odokawa to feel her breath. “What is it? Did I forget something in the car?”
In this light he could see her plain. Eyes the color of beaten brass, wool slightly yellowed like old ivory, the sharpened curvatures of her horns. Odokawa saw her features shift to confusion, then to concern.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
What did his own face show, he wondered. What did it betray.
“It’s nothing. Sorry.” He turned away, took the wheel. “Goodnight, Els.”
He drove off without bothering to roll the window up and the wind striking the side of his face made him shudder all over. This time he didn’t watch the mirrors at all, and so he didn’t see Els reach out to the taxi, didn’t see her take a few hesitant steps forward as if intending to run after and intercept it at the next corner or stoplight. But Els’s arm lowered, and she turned away just as the taxi turned off the avenue – two diverging paths that would not intersect again.
* * *
Odokawa returned to the east side, headed home. His apartment building was a rundown three-story box around which even smaller buildings crowded like invasive fungus; trashcans and scrap metal formed impenetrable walls in the adjacent alleys. He parked his cab and switched off the engine, then sat in the darkness for a little while, hands on his knees. Then he took his cigarettes from the glove compartment and stepped outside.
His room was on the third floor, accessible by an outdoor staircase half-eaten by rust. Odokawa took the steps carefully, in case any of them suddenly bent under his bulk. All the other rooms’ shades were drawn; through a few doorways he could hear the murmur of television sets or stereos, but despite the shabbiness of this area, there was seldom any late-night excitement. A weariness that sank into the very architecture.
What else could he have possibly said?
He could have told her that, while one could bear just about anything after a while, sometimes there came days which tested the limits of your endurance. Days when you were exhausted by the stupidity of people you knew and the lies of people you thought you’d known. When your property was invaded by some scowling rodent of a cop, and a stranger leveled a gun at the back of your head and told you to drive and threatened to leave you in a bathtub to drown. When one more idiot dragged you to some ritzy place you never asked for or wanted to be, where your growing migraine would be ripped wide open by a sudden gunshot, and you would flee through the back door with burning lungs and a too-clear understanding of your cowardice, to be rewarded with the sight of a hole blown in the side of your car, glass twinkling on the backseat’s upholstery like starry skies.
Maybe, as you return home, your phone buzzes again and again with messages that you’d refuse to answer. And maybe some dark tether inside of you would finally break, and you’d instead turn off the path and onto the highway, your mind gone placid and thoughtless as the engine’s hum as you drove out of the city and onto these wide black roads where the streetlights stand sentinel. And the wind through your broken window would lash at the back of your neck and the lights would strobe behind your eyes as you pressed the gas pedal down until it kissed the mat and the engine screamed in response, and you’d lose yourself in that chill, in these sounds, the whistle and the rumble and the roar, until even the streetlights went out and your headlights showed only a blackness as complete as the bottom of the sea, and you would emerge from that caul of dark in an unfamiliar place, with people familiar in all the wrong ways, and yourself changed but not changed at all, in this same life, behind this same wheel, with home now far outside any border and unknown to any map.
He could have told her to make her choices wisely, because there were no second chances or new beginnings, not really. You couldn’t escape from yourself.
Odokawa fumbled his key into the lock and opened the door. His apartment was a single ten-mat room, the kitchenette seldom used, the futon distended by his sleepless thrashing. It had one window that offered a view mostly obscured by the taller buildings nearby, but between their silhouettes, like prison bars, he could glimpse the mountains. He closed the door behind him without turning on the lights and went to a small end table in one corner, where his stereo rested. Carefully, he wiped away the dust, turned it on, and twisted the knobs until the static bled away. The soft sound of rock n’ roll filled the air.
He pulled open the window and got out his lighter. Its flame caught and leapt, a single bloody point in the surrounding murk. Odokawa placed a cigarette between his tusks, lit up, and inhaled.
Behind him, the stereo played on, its sound merging with that of the surrounding traffic. The wind picked up and snatched away the cloud of smoke that Odokawa exhaled, carried it over the city streets where cars continued in their unrelenting pace. The smoke held its shape a second longer, and then surrendered. It fractured to wisps, was rendered invisible, and continued onward, where it would finally disappear into the darkness on the edge of town.