never get a job again if he didn’t get that sombrero to the mayor.
Why did the mayor’s cousin want to pick up the sombrero?
He already had a job.
His hands weren’t covered with berry stains.
BROOM
The heart-broken American humorist of course had no idea what was going on among the torn pieces of paper in his waste-paper basket. He did not know that they now had a life of their own and had gone on without him. He grieved only for his lost Japanese love. He thought about calling her up on the telephone and telling her that he loved her and would do anything in this world to have her back again.
He looked at the telephone.
She was only seven numbers away from him.
All he had to do was dial them.
Then he would hear her voice.
It would be very sleepy because he would have awakened her. It would sound as if it were coming from a great distance. Perhaps Kyoto, though she was only a mile away in the Richmond District of San Francisco.
‘Hello,’ she said.
‘It’s me. Can you talk?’
‘No, somebody’s here with me. It’s over between us. Don’t call again. It irritates him when you call.’
‘What?’
‘The man I’m in love with. He doesn’t like it when you call. So don’t call any more. OK?’
click
Then she hung up.
While she was hanging up in his mind, she slept alone with her cat beside her in bed. She was sound asleep. She had gone to bed with no one since they had broken up a month ago. She hadn’t even gone out on a date with another man. All she did was work at her job, come home and do needlework or read. She was reading Proust. She didn’t know why. Sometimes she visited her brother and his wife and they would all watch television together.
It had been a very uneventful time for her since she had broken up with the American humorist. She had been thinking a lot about her life while she was doing these other things. She was twenty-six years old and she was trying to put it into perspective. Somewhere during the two years she had gone out with the humorist, she had lost the dimensions of her existence and what she wanted out of life. The humorist had taken an enormous amount of energy from her. She constantly had to feed his insecurity and neurosis with her security and mental stability. After two years of this, she didn’t know who she was any more. In the beginning all she had wanted out of life was to live with him, have children and enjoy a normal existence.
His basic insanity stopped any of this from becoming a reality.
After about a year together she realized that loving him was not good for her but it took another year for her to end it and now she was very glad that it was over.
Sometimes she wondered how she had allowed it to go on for such a long time.
I will be very careful the next time I fall in love, she told herself. Also, she had made a promise to herself that she intended on keeping. She was never going to go out with another writer: no matter how charming, sensitive, inventive or fun they could be. They weren’t worth it in the long run. They were emotionally too expensive and the upkeep was too complicated. They were like having a vacuum cleaner around that broke all the time and only Einstein could fix it.
She wanted her next lover to be a broom.
BAR
He looked at the clock. It was 10:30. He could not call her on the telephone because he knew that she was with another man: enjoying his body, moaning softly underneath him . . . and loving him.
A huge sigh hurricaned his body and then he sat down on the couch. He tried to sort it all out. She was a thousand pieces of a puzzle tumbling around in his mind as if they were in a dryer in a Laundromat.
For a few moments his mind was simultaneously the past, the present and the future, and there was no form to his thoughts about her. Then her hair began to emerge as a dominant theme in his grief. He had always loved her hair. It was somewhat of an obsession with him. Thoughts of her hair, how long and dark and hypnotic it was, began to put pieces of the puzzle together until he was remembering the first time he met her.
Two years ago, it was raining.
She didn’t go to bars very often.
After she finished work that evening she was tired but her two co-workers persuaded her to go with them to a local bar where young people hung out.
He was there and he was very bored. He was often very bored and he did not think twice about telling other people about his boredom. He bore it with the good humor of a cross.
When he turned around on his bar stool, very drunk, which was a condition not unknown to him, he saw her sitting at a table with two other women. They were all wearing white uniforms. They looked as if they had just gotten off work.
She was beautiful.
Her hair was combed into a bun on top of her head in the classic Japanese style. The drink in front of her had barely been touched. She was listening to the other women talk. One of them was talking a lot and enjoying the drink in front of her.
The Asian woman was very quiet.
He stared at her and she looked back for a few seconds and then returned to listening to the women talk.
He wondered if she had recognized him. Sometimes women did and it was to his advantage. His books were popular and easily obtained in bookstores.
He turned back to the bar and ordered another drink. He would have to think this one over. He was a very shy person when he was sober. He had to be drunk before he could make a pass at a woman. As he sipped his drink, he wondered if he was drunk enough to go over to the table where the Asian woman was sitting and try to get to know her. He turned around again to look at her but she was already looking at him. It rattled him and he turned back around again to the bar and his ears were burning with embarrassment.
No, he was not drunk enough to make a pass at her.
He motioned to the bartender who came over.
‘Another one?’ the bartender said, looking at the one that was only half-empty in front of him.
‘A double,’ he said.
The bartender’s face remained expressionless because he was a very good bartender. He went and got the whiskey. By the time he was back, the humorist had finished the glass that had been half-full. A minute later the double was half-gone. The humorist with two sips had changed it into a single.
He could feel the Asian woman looking at him.
She’s read my books, he thought.
Then he drained the glass in front of him.
It
