A Wild Sheep Chase Read Free

slowly swelled, filling the room with aroma.
    “Been here since last night?” I asked, kettle in hand.
    An ever so slight nod of her head.
    “You’ve been waiting all this time?”
    No answer.
    The room had steamed up from the boiling water and strong sun. I shut the window and switched on the air conditioner, then set the two mugs of coffee on the table.
    “Drink,” I said, reclaiming my own voice.
    Silence.
    “Be better if you drank something.”
    It was thirty seconds before she raised her head slowly, evenly, and gazed absently at the potted plant. A few fine strands of hair lay plastered against her dampened cheeks, an aura of wetness about her.
    “Don’t mind me,” she said. “I didn’t mean to cry.”
    I held out a box of tissues to her. She quietly blew her nose, then brushed the hair from her cheek.
    “Actually, I planned on being gone by the time you returned. I didn’t want to see you.”
    “But you changed your mind, I see.”
    “Not at all. I didn’t have anywhere else I wanted to go. But I’m going now, don’t worry.”
    “Well, have some coffee anyway.”
    I tuned in to the radio traffic report as I sipped my coffee and slit open the two pieces of mail. One was an announcement from a furniture store where everything was twenty percent off. The second was a letter from someone I didn’t want to think about, much less read a letter from. I crumpled them up and tossed them into the wastebasket, then nibbled on leftover cheese crackers. She cupped her hands around the coffee cup as if to warm herself and fixed her eyes on me, her lip lightly riding the rim of the mug.
    “There’s salad in the fridge,” she said.
    “Salad?”
    “Tomatoes and string beans. There wasn’t anything else. The cucumbers had gone bad, so I threw them out.”
    “Oh.”
    I went to the refrigerator and took out the blue Okinawa glass salad bowl and sprinkled on the last drops from the bottle of dressing. The tomatoes and string beans were but chilled shadows. Tasteless shadows. Nor was there any taste to the coffee or crackers. Maybe because of the morning sun? The light of morning decomposes everything. I gave up on the coffee midway, dug a bent cigarette out of my pocket, and lit up with matches that I’d never seen before. The tip of the cigarette crackled dryly as its lavender smoke formed a tracery in the morning light.
    “I went to a funeral. When it was over, I went to Shinjuku, by myself.”
    The cat appeared out of nowhere, yawned at length, then sprang into her lap. She scratched him behind the ears.
    “You don’t need to explain anything to me,” she said. “I’m out of the picture already.”
    “I’m not explaining. I’m just making conversation.”
    She shrugged and pushed her brassiere strap back inside her dress. Her face had no expression, like a photograph of a sunken city on the ocean floor.
    “An acquaintance of sorts from years back. No one you knew.”
    “Oh really?”
    The cat gave his legs a good stretch, topped it off with a puff of a breath.
    I glanced at the burning tip of the cigarette in my mouth.
    “How did this acquaintance die?”
    “Hit by a truck. Thirteen bones fractured.”
    “Female?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    The seven o’clock news and traffic report came to an end, and light rock returned to the airwaves. She set her coffee back down and looked me in the face.
    “Tell me, if I died, would you go out drinking like that?”
    “The funeral had nothing to do with my drinking. Only the first one or two rounds, if that.”
    A new day was beginning. Another hot one. A cluster of skyscrapers glared through the window.
    “How about something cool to drink?”
    She shook her head.
    I got a can of cola out of the refrigerator and downed it in one go.
    “She was the kind of girl who’d sleep with anyone.” What an obituary: the deceased was the kind of girl who would sleep with anyone.
    “Why are you telling me this?”
    Why indeed? I had no idea.
    “Very well,” she