other two were bolder now. All smiling, they threw their arms around each other’s shoulders and flashed us V-signs. The camera snapped. All of a sudden one of the girls—the plump one—broke from the others and ran a ways up the path.
“Taeko-chan matte!” yelled the tall girl, then, as she passed us, flashed a last smile.
“Sayonara, Pikketto-san!” said the third girl and gasp-laughed and bowed.
“Sarabai!” the tall girl called back.
“Hai, sa-ra-bai!” came the voice of the one apparently called Taeko-chan.
“Sarabai!” said Pickett, waving vaguely, thrown by this suddenness. But he should have known that’s how young girls are, darting from place to place like cats, like birds; like nothing so much as young human girls. Beautiful things flit through our lives like that. Other things, like Taroko Gorge, are just there.
“Cute,” he finally said.
“Cute,” I agreed.
“Man,” he said, “real Japanese schoolgirls. Fuckin’ A.”
I arched an eyebrow. “I thought you said you didn’t have any interest in fifteen-year-old girls.”
“Well, no,” he said quickly, “but I have friends who might.”
I laughed.
“Hey—Crazy Pete. You got kids, man?”
“One. Boy.” I pulled out the wallet and showed him the pictures. Steve. They were old pictures; Steve when he was ten, twelve years old, in the backyard.
Pickett laughed. “Motherfucker looks just like you. What’s he up to now?”
“Dunno. I haven’t seen him in years.”
“Oh. Man, I’m sorry.”
He stood up and hefted his belt.
“I gotta take a leak.”
“Knock yourself out.”
I took a pull on my lager.
“I’m sorry, man,” he said. “That shit’s heavy.”
“Tell you what …” I shifted my back up against a tree, and my eyes wandered up to the speckled leaves overhead. “Take your time, why don’t’cha. I might just doze off here.”
“Shit. Well, don’t get robbed.”
I hadn’t been serious—but while Pickett was gone, I must have fallen asleep. Here I’m not so clear on things. My head started aching a little when he asked about Steve. But that was no surprise; I had gotten next to no sleep the night before, and I was hungover and freshly—if only slightly—drunk. And I suppose it’s normal not to be able to tell exactly when you fall asleep, let alone how long you sleep for. It could have been a minute or ten minutes.
All I know is that at some point Pickett came crashing back through the trees, wiping what I assumed was vomit off his chin. I was surprised he’d venture so far with that spider still hanging across from us.
“Sorry, man,” he said, grinning. “Guess last night caught up with me.”
Immediately I realized what had happened and looked at my watch, but I hadn’t checked it before I’d dozed off. It was seven past three in the afternoon.
“God, we pissed the whole day away. Come on if you want to see the gorge.…”
So we climbed the hill, and we saw it. We stood on the rock looking down into that roaring pit. There was a wooden railing as high as your waist. The slope was gradual, but at that height it was still frightening. A sheer drop on the other side, just a wash of white stone as tall as most New York skyscrapers.
An elderly Taiwanese man came up beside us. Pickett and I turned away. We hadn’t seen the Japanese girls but the path had branched a few times.
“Should we just go back?” he said.
Maybe it was the light behind him now, but his face looked hard.
“Hey, man. You okay?”
“I dunno.” He shook his head. “Still feel kinda sick, honest.”
I imagined what, then, it must have been like for him to look down into the gorge, and I felt a chill myself. “Sorry.”
“It’s cool, it’s cool.” Then he laughed and said, “Big rocks. Whoo.”
“Big rocks.”
As we went back down into the shade of the trees, away from the sound of the water, he recovered a little. He began to talk easily, if unhappily. “I dunno, man. I don’t think it’s the booze, man; I think I got that out of me. It’s just being here, y’know, out of the States. I guess it’s caught up with me. I been away before and it’s always the same. And those fuckin’ statues …”
“Just homesick, huh?”
“Something like that, I guess.” Then he added with sudden warmth, “Hey, thanks, man. You’re a good guy, y’know?”
We heard a cry far off. Sharp but still indistinct.
I don’t know why, it wasn’t that unusual, but maybe just because of the awkwardness that follows when one man expresses affection for another, I tilted my head to listen, and so did Pickett.
The cries were coming closer. They didn’t sound quite like a distressed person. There were several voices.
I tapped Pickett’s arm and we started down, him with two bottles of Yuenling still in the sack.
I made out “Kari-chan, doko?”—a girl’s voice.
Kari, where are you?
Then a boy: “Oi, Mori! Joudan janee yo!”
Mori, this no joke.
The girl again: “Onegai, onegaishimasu!”
Please, oh, please.
Then, although I should have known already, came what stopped my heart: “Taeko-chan, onegai!”
There was pain in that voice.
I jumped—but it was only Pickett’s hand on my arm.
A moment later the boy appeared in front of us, wearing a school coat, scratching his head. He looked big for his age. He took us in unsurprised and said in fair enough English, “Excuse me. Have you seen three girls?”
Pickett and I exchanged a look. We had to admit we had. And then the whole business started.
MICHIKO
