Espresso Love (A Dystopian Japan Novel) #Wattys2014

Small Talk

-Small Talk-

I wasn't particularly looking for her - though I had full reason to, with her potentially voyeuristic tendencies - but there also wasn't a chance I could miss such a person, standing out in the open, looking straight in my direction. Cold, clear, piercing, calculating eyes, a bullet fired through the crowds, parting them like the Red Sea. Surely she had known precisely where I was. She's waiting for me.

I can hear the voices around me, the stares and glances. A swirling storm in which I am the eye. Both her and I. I had expected to keep out of sight, but her presence is gravity. No doubt, her short skirt that showed off as much leg as a Korean celebrity and knee high boots do not help my predicament. I can't decide if I am flattered such a girl is looking for me or if I ought to hide before things become irremediable.

Her eyes speak wonders as always, a hidden unspoken message, seeping soundlessly into my mind. They beckon to me, not at all seductively, but with a sense of urgency and panic. Like she is just about as distressed as I am - or perhaps I'm just getting the impression, though she might not appear so. What's unsaid and withheld is always more compelling and more potent.

I fill my lungs with wind-wrecked wintry air and make my way towards her. It isn't easy passage: I fight the coursing fjord of people and they fight back - and with more conviction - plowing back and forth like ghost images and dead soldiers before me. I am no Moses and I have no staff.

But I reach her, as composed as can be, as though I'm meeting an old client for coffee and she reciprocates, taciturn. No greeting or smile or strange revelations. She pulls her poncho coat tighter around herself and spins on her heel, expecting me to follow. She walks briskly and I walk after her but I leave just enough space between us to assert that we are not so close, but not too much as to stalk her. She's giving me a full view of her legs and high heeled posture, the tap tap tap tap of a professional. I watch her and I want to say something but I don't. Around us, the sea of heads starts to dissipate and the traffic lights change. In the distance, a car's horn, as if all on cue. We take the side street towards Kinokuniya and pass by a woman in a red down coat smoking Mevius Lights, a waiter whispering to his phone, a teenage girl and her bleached hair fresh from a tinted Lexus, a grubby looking middle-aged man holding a plastic bag from a convenient store, and likely more - all of them watch us. I can tell because they turn their heads to follow us when they think they're safely out of view.

When we reach Kinokuniya, we don't stop. I give it a good long study, trying to memorize its features for the last time. Its blue logo and red brick and industrial glass and tan metal ledges. I can almost make out the rows of manga and CDs by the windows and a high school kid. It's tall, the floors stretch up like a pagoda, a tower of manufactured creativity. Somewhere within sit the shelves I frequent but no one else does.

Past Kinokuniya we go, past the coffee shop in which I read, in which we met. Where she orders her tall caramel chai tea latte and I, seasonal specials. A sinking guilt hollows out my stomach. The feeling one gets as a child, called into the Principal's office. All reason disappears, and the child trembles from head to toe. He goes through every minute of his day thus far, trying to recall all the details, wondering what has gotten him in trouble and who told on him.

"Where are we going?" I speak up finally.

"Just follow me," she says to nobody in particular.

"I need my coffee." But she doesn't respond.

The streets grow thinner and more abandoned, more godforsaken - and colder. But there are less people, and with every step, my paranoia winds down, an overclocked engine powering off. Her tapping heels grow more pronounced. Her left heel seems to be louder. I watch them flash forward and back and wonder if she had been through cadet drills.