I’M IN THE kitchen cooking spaghetti when the woman calls. Another moment until the spaghetti is done; there I am, whistling the prelude to Rossini’s La Gazza Ladra along with the FM radio. Perfect spaghetti-cooking music.

I hear the telephone ring but tell myself, Ignore it. Let the spaghetti finish cooking. It’s almost done, and besides, Claudio Abbado and the London Symphony Orchestra are coming to a crescendo. Still, on second thought, I figure I might as well turn down the flame and head into the living room, cooking chopsticks in hand, to pick up the receiver. It might be a friend, it occurs to me, possibly with word of a new job.

“I want ten minutes of your time,” comes a woman’s voice out of the blue.

“Excuse me?” I blurt back in surprise. “How’s that again?”

“I said, just ten minutes of your time, that’s all I want,” the woman repeats.

I have absolutely no recollection of ever hearing this woman’s voice before. And I pride myself on a near-perfect ear for voices, so I’m sure there’s no mistake. This is the voice of a woman I don’t know. A soft, low, nondescript voice.

“Pardon me, but what number might you have been calling?” I put on my most polite language.

“What difference does that make? All I want is ten minutes of your time. Ten minutes to come to an understanding.” She cinches the matter quick and neat.

“Come to an understanding?”

“Of our feelings,” says the woman succinctly.

I crane my neck back through the door I’ve left open to peer into the kitchen. A plume of white steam rising cheerfully from the spaghetti pot, and Abbado is still conducting his Gazza.

“If you don’t mind, I’ve got spaghetti on right now. It’s almost done, and it’ll be ruined if I talk with you for ten minutes. So I’m going to hang up, all right?”

“Spaghetti?” the woman sputters in disbelief. “It’s only ten-thirty in the morning. What are you doing cooking spaghetti at ten-thirty in the morning? Kind of strange, don’t you think?”

“Strange or not, what’s it to you?” I say. “I hardly had any breakfast, so I was getting hungry right about now. And as long as I do the cooking, when and what I eat is my own business, is it not?”

“Well, whatever you say. Hang up, then,” says the woman in a slow, sappy trickle of a voice. A peculiar voice. The slightest emotional shift and her tone switches to another frequency. “I’ll call back later.”

“Now, wait just one minute,” I stammer. “If you’re selling something, you can forget right now about calling back. I’m unemployed at present and can’t afford to buy anything.”

“I know that, so don’t give it another thought,” says the woman.

“You know that? You know what?”

“That you’re unemployed, of course. That much I knew. So cook your spaghetti and let’s get on with it, okay?”

“Hey, who the—” I launch forth, when suddenly the phone goes dead. Cut me off. Too abruptly to have set down the receiver; she must have pressed the button with her finger.

I’m left hanging. I stare blankly at the receiver in my hand and only then remember the spaghetti. I put down the receiver and return to the kitchen. Turn off the gas, empty the spaghetti into a colander, top it with tomato sauce I’ve heated in a saucepan, then eat. It’s overcooked, thanks to that pointless telephone call. No matter of life-and-death, nor am I in any mood to fuss over the subtleties of cooking spaghetti—I’m too hungry. I simply listen to the radio playing send-off music for two hundred fifty grams of spaghetti as I eagerly dispatch every last strand to my stomach.

I wash up plate and pans while boiling a kettle of water, then pour a cup for a tea bag. As I drink my tea, I think about that phone call.

So we could come to an understanding?

What on earth did that woman mean, calling me up like that? And who on earth was she?

The whole thing is a mystery. I can’t recall any woman ever telephoning me before without identifying herself, nor do I have the slightest clue what she could have wanted to talk about.

What the hell, I tell myself, what do I care about understanding some strange woman’s feelings, anyway? What possible good could come of it? What matters now is that I find a job. Then I can settle into a new life cycle.

Yet even as I return to the sofa to resume the Len Deighton novel I took out of the library, the mere glimpse out of the corner of my eye of the telephone sets my mind going. Just what were those feelings that would take ten minutes to come to an understanding about? I mean, really, ten minutes to come to an understanding of our feelings?

Come to think of it, the woman specified precisely ten minutes right from the start. Seems she was quite certain about that exact amount of time. As if nine minutes would have been too short, eleven minutes maybe too long. Just like for spaghetti al dente.

What with these thoughts running through my head, I lose track of the plot of the novel. So I decide to do a few quick exercises, perhaps iron a shirt or two. Whenever things get in a muddle, I always iron shirts. A habit of long standing with me.

I divide the shirt-ironing process into twelve steps total: from (1) Collar <Front>, to (12) Cuff <Left Sleeve>. Absolutely no deviation from that order. One by one, I count off the steps. The ironing doesn’t go right if I don’t.

So there I am, ironing my third shirt, enjoying the hiss of the steam iron and the distinctive smell of hot cotton, checking for wrinkles before hanging up each shirt in the wardrobe. I switch off the iron and put it away in the closet with the ironing board.

I’m getting thirsty by now and am heading to the kitchen for some water when once more the telephone rings. Here we go again, I think. And for a moment I wonder whether I shouldn’t just ignore it and keep on going into the kitchen. But you never know, so I retrace my steps back to the living room and pick up the receiver. If it’s that woman again, I’ll say I’m in the middle of ironing and hang up.

The call, however, is from my wife. By the clock atop the TV, it’s eleven-thirty.

“How’re things?” she asks.

“Fine,” I answer, relieved.

“What’ve you been up to?”

“Ironing.”

“Is anything wrong?” my wife asks. A slight tension invades her voice. She knows all about my ironing when I’m unsettled.

“Nothing at all. I just felt like ironing some shirts. No particular reason,” I say, switching the receiver from right hand to left as I sit down on a chair. “So, is there something you wanted to tell me about?”

“Yes, it’s about work. There’s the possibility of a job.”

“Uh-huh,” I say.

“Can you write poetry?”

“Poetry?” I shoot back in surprise. What’s this about poetry?

“A magazine company where someone I know works puts out this popular fiction monthly for young girls and they’re looking for someone to select and brush up poetry submissions. Then they want one leadoff poem each month for the section. The work’s easy and the pay’s not bad. Of course it’s only part-time, but if things go well they might string you on for editorial work and—”

“Easy?” I say. “Now hold on just one minute. I’ve been looking for a position with a law firm. Just where do you come up with this brushing up of poetry?”

“Well, didn’t you say you used to do some writing in high school?”

“In a newspaper. The high-school newspaper. Such-and-such team won the soccer meet; the physics teacher fell down the stairs and had to go to the hospital. Dumb little articles like that I wrote. Not poetry. I can’t write poetry.”

“Not real poetry, just the kind of poems high-school girls might read. They don’t even have to be that good. It’s not like they’re expecting you to write like Allen Ginsberg. Just whatever you can make do.”

“I absolutely cannot write make-do poetry,” I snap. The very idea.

“Hmph,” pouts my wife. “This talk of legal work, though. Nothing seems to be materializing, does it?”

“Several prospects have come my way already. The final word’ll be in sometime this week. If those fall through, maybe then I’ll consider it.”

“Oh? Have it your way, then. But say, what day is it today?”

“Tuesday,” I tell her after a moment’s thought.

“Okay, then, could you stop by the bank and pay the gas and phone bills?”

“Sure thing. I was going out to shop for dinner soon, anyway. I can take care of it at the same time.”

“And what are we having for dinner?”

“Hmm, let’s see,” I say. “Haven’t made up my mind yet. I thought I’d decide when I go shopping.”

“You know,” my wife starts in with a new tone of voice, “I’ve been thinking. Maybe you don’t really need to be looking for work.”

“And why not?” I spit out. Yet more surprises? Is every woman in the world out to shake me up over the phone? “Why don’t I have to be looking for work? Another three months and my unemployment compensation is due to run out. No time for idle hands.”

“My salary’s gone up, and my side job is going well, not to mention we have plenty in savings. So if we don’t go overboard on luxuries, we should be able to keep food on the table.”

“And I’d do the housework?”

“Is that so bad?”

“I don’t know,” I say in all honesty. I really don’t know. “I’ll have to think it over.”

“Do think it over,” reiterates my wife. “Oh, and by the way, has the cat come back?”

“The cat?” I’m caught off guard, then I realize I’d completely forgotten about the cat all morning. “No, doesn’t seem so.”

“Could you scout around the neighborhood a bit? He’s been gone four days now.”

I give some spur-of-the-moment reply, switching the receiver back to my right hand.

“My guess is that the cat’s probably in the yard of that vacant house at the end of the passage. The yard with the stone bird figurine. I’ve seen him there often enough. You know where I’m talking about?”

“No, I’m afraid I don’t,” I say. “And since when have you been snooping around in the passage on your own? Never once have you mentioned—”

“You’ll have to forgive me, but I’ve got to hang up. Have to be getting back to work. Don’t forget about the cat, now.”

And the telephone cuts off.

I sit there looking dumbly at the receiver a second before setting it down.

Now why would my wife know so much about the passage? I can’t figure it out. She’d have to climb over a high cinder-block wall to get there from our yard, and what possible reason was there to go to all that trouble to begin with?

I go to the kitchen for that drink of water, turn on the FM radio, and trim my nails. They’re doing a feature on Robert Plant’s new album. I listen to two songs before my ears start to hurt and I switch the thing off. I go out to the porch to check the cat’s food dish; the dried fish I put in the previous night hasn’t been touched. Guess the cat really hasn’t come back.

Standing there on the porch, I look at the bright spring sun slicing down into our tiny yard. Hardly the sort of yard that lingers fondly in the mind. The sun hits here only the briefest part of the day, so the soil is always dark and damp. Not much growing: just a couple of unremarkable hydrangeas. And I’m not terribly crazy about hydrangeas in the first place.

From a nearby stand of trees comes the periodic scree-ee-eech of a bird, sharp as a tightening spring. The “wind-up bird,” we call it. My wife’s name for it. I have no idea what it’s really called. Nor even what it looks like. Nonetheless, this wind-up bird is there every morning in the trees of the neighborhood to wind things up. Us, our quiet little world, everything.

As I listen to the wind-up bird, I’m thinking, Why on earth is it up to me to go searching after that cat? And more to the point, even if I do chance to find it, what am I supposed to do then? Drag the cat home and lecture it? Plead with it—Listen, you’ve had everyone worried sick, so why don’t you come home?

Great, I think. Just great. What’s wrong with letting a cat go where it wants to go and do what it wants to do? Here I am, thirty years old, and what am I doing? Washing clothes, planning dinner menus, chasing after cats.

Not so long ago, I’m thinking, I was your regular sort of guy. Fired up with ambition. In high school, I read Clarence Darrow’s autobiography and decided to become a lawyer. My grades weren’t bad. And in my senior year I was voted by my classmates runner-up “Most Likely to Succeed.” I even got accepted into the law department of a comparatively reputable university. So where had I screwed up?

I plant my elbows on the kitchen table, prop up my chin, and think: When the hell did the compass needle get out of whack and lead my life astray? It’s more than I can figure. There’s nothing I can really put my finger on. No setbacks from student politics, no disillusionment with university, never really had much girl trouble. As near as I can tell, I’ve had a perfectly normal existence. Yet one day, when it came time for me to be graduating, I suddenly realized I wasn’t the same guy I used to be.

Probably, the seed of a schism had been there all along, however microscopic. But in time the gap widened, eventually taking me out of sight of who I was supposed to be. In terms of the solar system, if you will, I should by now have reached somewhere between Saturn and Uranus. A little bit farther and I ought to be seeing Pluto. And beyond that—let’s see—was there anything after that?

At the beginning of February, I quit my longtime job at the law firm. And for no particular reason. It wasn’t that I was fed up with the work. Granted, it wasn’t what you could call an especially thrilling job, but the pay wasn’t bad and the atmosphere around the office was friendly enough.

My role at the firm was, in a word, that of full-time office boy.

Although I still believe I did a good job of it, by my standards. Strange as it may sound coming from my own mouth, I find I’m really very capable when it comes to carrying out immediate tasks around the office like that. I catch on quickly, operate methodically, think practically, don’t complain. That’s why, when I told the senior partner I wanted to quit, the old man—the father half of this “—— and Son, Attorneys at Law”—even offered to raise my salary if I’d just stay on.

But stay on I didn’t. I don’t exactly know why I up and quit. Didn’t even have any clear goals or prospects of what to do after quitting. The idea of holing up somewhere and cramming for one more shot at the bar exam was too intimidating. And besides, I didn’t even especially want to become a lawyer at that point.

When I came out and told my wife over dinner I was thinking of quitting my job, all she said was “Fair enough.” Just what that “Fair enough” was supposed to mean, I couldn’t tell. But that was the extent of it; she didn’t volunteer a word more.

When I then said nothing, she spoke up. “If you feel like quitting, why don’t you quit? It’s your life, you should do with it as you like.” She’d said her piece and was straightaway deboning the fish on her plate with her chopsticks.

My wife does office work at a design school and really doesn’t do badly, salarywise. Sometimes she gets illustration assignments from editor friends, and not for unreasonable pay, either. I, on my part, was eligible for six months’ unemployment compensation. So if I stayed home and did the housework regularly every day, we could even swing a few expenses like eating out and dry cleaning, and our life-style wouldn’t change all that much from when I was working and getting a salary.

So it was I quit my job.

AT TWELVE-THIRTY I go out shopping as usual, a large canvas carryall slung over my shoulder. First I stop by the bank to pay the gas and telephone bills, then I shop for dinner at the supermarket, then I have a cheeseburger and coffee at McDonald’s.

I return home and am putting the groceries away in the refrigerator when the telephone rings. It sounds positively irritated, the way it rings. I leave a half-opened plastic tub of tofu on the table, head into the living room, and pick up the receiver.

“Finished with your spaghetti?” It’s that woman again.

“Yeah, I’m done,” I say. “But now I have to go out looking for the cat.”

“Can’t that wait ten minutes? Looking for the cat!”

“Well, ten minutes, maybe.”

What the hell am I doing?, I think. Why am I obliged to spend ten minutes passing the time of day with some strange woman?

“Now, then, perhaps we can come to an understanding,” says the woman, nice and quiet. From the sound of it, this woman—whoever she is—is settling back into a chair there on the other end of the line, crossing her legs.

“Hmm, I don’t know about that,” I say. “Some people, ten years together and they still can’t understand each other.”

“Care to try?” the woman teases.

I undo my wristwatch and switch on the stopwatch mode, then press the timer’s start button.

“Why me?” I ask. “Why not ring up somebody else?”

“I have my reasons,” the woman enunciates slowly, as if measuredly masticating a morsel of food. “I’ve heard all about you.”

“When? Where?”

“Sometime, somewhere,” the woman says. “But what does that matter? The important thing is now. Right? What’s more, talking about it only loses us time. It’s not as if I had all the time in the world, you know.”

“Give me some proof, then. Proof that you know me.”

“For instance.”

“How about my age?”

“Thirty,” the woman answers on the spot. “Thirty and two months. Good enough?”

That shuts me up. The woman really does know me. Yet no matter how I rack my brains, I can’t place her voice. I simply couldn’t have forgotten or confused someone’s voice. Faces, names—maybe—but voices, never.

“Well, now, it’s your turn to see what you can tell about me,” she says suggestively. “What do you imagine from my voice? What kind of woman am I? Can you picture me? This sort of thing’s your forte, isn’t it?”

“You got me,” I say.

“Go ahead, try,” the woman insists.

I glance at my watch. Not quite a minute and a half so far. I heave a sigh of resignation. Seems I’ve already taken her up, and once the challenge is on, there’s no turning back. I used to have a knack for guessing games.

“Late twenties, university graduate, native Tokyoite, upper-middle-class upbringing,” I fire away.

“Amazing,” says the woman, flicking a cigarette lighter by the receiver. A Cartier, by the sound of it. “Keep going.”

“Fairly good-looking. At least, you yourself think so. But you’ve got a complex. You’re too short or your breasts are too small or something like that.”

“Pretty close,” the woman giggles.

“You’re married. But all’s not as smooth as it could be. There are problems. No woman without her share of problems would call up a man and not give her name. Yet I don’t know you. At least I’ve never talked with you before. This much imagined, I still can’t picture you.”

“Oh, really?” says the woman in a hush calculated to drive a soft wedge into my skull. “How can you be so sure of yourself? Mightn’t you have a fatal blind spot somewhere? If not, don’t you think you’d have pulled yourself a little more together by now? Someone with your brains and talent.”

“You put great stock in me,” I say. “I don’t know who you are, but I should tell you I’m not the wonderful human being you make me out to be. I don’t seem to be able to get things done. All I do is head off down detour after detour.”

“Still, I used to have a thing for you. A long time ago, that is.”

“A long time ago, you say,” I prompt.

Two minutes fifty-three seconds.

“Not so very long ago. We’re not talking history.”

“Yes, we are talking history,” I say.

Blind spot, eh? Well, perhaps the woman does have a point. Somewhere, in my head, in my body, in my very existence, it’s as if there were some long-lost subterranean element that’s been skewing my life ever so slightly off.

No, not even that. Not slightly off—way off. Irretrievably.

“I’m in bed right now,” the woman says. “I just took a shower and have nothing on.”

That does it, I think. Nothing on? A regular porno tape this is getting to be.

“Or would you rather I put on panties? How about stockings? Do they turn you on?”

“Anything’s fine. Do what you like,” I say. “But if you don’t mind, I’m not that kind of a guy, not for this sort of stuff over the telephone.”

“Ten minutes, that’s all. A mere ten minutes. That’s not such a fatal loss, is it? I’m not asking for anything more. That much is plain goodwill. But whatever, just answer the question. Do you want me naked? Or should I put something on? I’ve got all kinds of things, you know. Garter belts and …”

Garter belts? I must be going crazy. What woman has garter belts in this day and age? Models for Penthouse, maybe.

“Naked is fine. And you don’t have to move,” I say.

Four minutes down.

“My pubic hair is still wet,” the woman says. “I didn’t towel it dry. So it’s still wet. Warm and oh so wet.”

“Listen, if you don’t mind—”

“And down below that, it’s a whole lot warmer. Just like hot buttercream. Oh so very hot. Honest. And what position do you think I’m in right now? I have my knee up and my left leg spread out to the side. It’d be around 10:05 if I were a clock.”

I could tell from the way she said it that she wasn’t making this up. She really did have her legs spread to 10:05, her vagina warm and moistened.

“Caress the lips. Gently, slowly. Then open them. Slowly, like that. Now caress them gently with the sides of your fingers. Oh, yes, slowly … slowly. Now let one hand fondle my left breast, from underneath, lifting gently, tweaking the nipple just so. Again and again. Until I’m about to come—”

I hang up without a word. Then I roll over on the sofa, smoke a cigarette, and gaze up at the ceiling, stopwatch clicked at five minutes twenty-three seconds.

I close my eyes and darkness descends, a darkness painted blind with colors.

What is it? Why can’t everyone just leave me in peace?

Not ten minutes later, the telephone rings again, but this time I don’t pick up. Fifteen rings and it stops. I let it die, and all gravity is displaced by a profound silence. The stone-chill silence of boulders frozen deep into a glacier fifty thousand years ago. Fifteen rings of the telephone have utterly transformed the quality of the air around me.

A LITTLE BEFORE two o’clock, I climb from my backyard over the cinder-block wall into the passage. Actually, it’s not the corridor you’d expect a passage to be; that’s only what we call it for lack of a better name. Strictly speaking, it isn’t a corridor at all. A corridor has an entrance and an exit, forming a route from one place to another.

But this passage has neither entrance nor exit, and leads smack into a cinder-block wall at one end and a chain link fence at the other. It’s not even an alleyway. For starters, an alley has to at least have an entrance. The neighbors all call it “the passage” for convenience sake.

The passage meanders between everyone’s backyards for about six hundred feet. Three-foot-something in width for the most part, but what with all the junk lying around and the occasional hedge cropping in, there are places you can barely squeeze through sideways.

From what I’ve heard—this is from a kindly uncle of mine who rents us our house ridiculously cheap—the passage used to have an entrance and an exit, offering a shortcut across the block, street-to-street. But then, with the postwar boom years, new homes were built in any available space, hemming in the common ground to a narrow path. Which ushered in the none-too-inviting prospect of having strangers walking through backyards, practically under the eaves, so the residents surreptitiously covered the entrance. At first an innocent little bush barely disguised the opening, but eventually one resident expanded his yard and extended his cinder-block wall to completely seal it over. While the corresponding other aperture was screened off with a chain link fence to keep the dogs out. It hadn’t been the residents who made use of the passage to begin with, so no one complained about its being closed at both ends. And anyway, closing it wouldn’t hurt as a crime-prevention measure. Thus, the path went neglected and untrafficked, like some abandoned canal, merely serving as a kind of buffer zone between the houses, the ground overgrown with weeds, sticky spiderwebs strung everywhere a bug could possibly alight.

Now, why should my wife frequent such a place? It was beyond me. Me, I’d only set foot in the passage one time before. And she can’t even stand spiders.

Yet when I try to think, my head’s filled to bursting with some gaseous substance. I didn’t sleep well last night, plus the weather’s too hot for the beginning of May, plus there was that unnerving telephone call.

Oh, well, I think, might as well look for that cat. Leave later developments for later. Anyway, it’s a damn sight better to be out and about than to be cooped up indoors waiting for the telephone to ring.

The spring sun cuts clean and crisp through the ceiling of overhanging branches, scattering patches of shadow across the ground. With no wind, the shadows stay glued in place like fateful stains. Telltale stains sure to cling to the earth as it goes around and around the sun for millennia to come.

Shadows flit over my shirt as I pass under the branches, then return to the ground. All is still. You can almost hear each blade of grass respiring in the sunlight. A few small clouds float in the sky, vivid and well formed, straight out of a medieval engraving. Everything stands out with such clarity that I feel buoyant, as if somehow my body went on forever. That, and it’s terribly hot.

I’m in a T-shirt, thin cotton slacks, and tennis shoes, but already, just walking around, my armpits and the cleft of my chest are drenched with sweat. I’d only just this morning pulled the T-shirt and slacks out of storage, so every time I take a deep breath there’s this sharp mothball smell, as if some tiny bug had flown up my nose.

I keep an eye peeled to both sides and walk at a slow, even pace, stopping from time to time to call the cat’s name in a stage whisper.

The homes that sandwich the passage are of two distinct types and blend together as well as liquids of two different specific gravities. First there are the houses dating from way back, with big backyards; then there are the comparatively newer ones. None of the new houses has any yard to speak of; some don’t have a single speck of yard space. Scarcely enough room between the eaves and the passage to hang out two lines of laundry. In some places, clothes actually hang out over the passage, forcing me to inch past rows of still-dripping towels and shirts. I’m so close I can hear televisions playing and toilets flushing inside. I even smell curry cooking in one kitchen.

The old homes, by contrast, hardly betray a breath of life. Judiciously placed hedges of cypress and other shrubbery guard against inquisitive eyes, although here and there you catch a glimpse of a well-manicured spread. The houses themselves are of all different architectural styles: traditional Japanese houses with long hallways, tarnished copper-roofed early Western villas, recently remodeled “modern” homes. Common to all, however, is the absence of any visible occupants. Not a sound, not a hint of life. No noticeable laundry, either.

It’s the first time I’ve taken in the sights of the passage at leisure, so everything is new to my eyes. Propped up in a corner of one backyard is a lone, withered, brown Christmas tree. In another yard lies several childhoods’ worth of every plaything imaginable—a virtual scrap heap of tricycle parts, a ringtoss set, plastic samurai swords, rubber balls, a toy turtle, wooden trucks. One yard sports a basketball hoop, another a fine set of garden chairs and a rattan table. By the look of them, the chairs haven’t been sat on in months (maybe years), they’re so covered with dirt; the tabletop is rain-plastered with lavender magnolia petals.

One house presents a clear view into its living room through large glass sliding doors. There I see a kidney-shaped sofa with matching lounge furniture, a sizable television, a cellarette topped with a tank of tropical fish and two trophies of some sort, and a decorator floor lamp. It all looks as unreal as a set for a TV sitcom.

In another yard, there’s a massive doghouse penned in with wire screening. No dog inside that I can see, though. Just a wide-open hole. I also notice that the screening is stretched shapeless, bulging out as if someone or something had been leaning into it for months.

The vacant house my wife told me about is only a little farther along, past the one with the doghouse. Right away, I can see it’s vacant. One look tells you that this is not your scant two-or three-months’ absence. The place is a fairly new two-story affair, yet the tight shutters look positively weather-beaten and the rusted railings around the upstairs windows seem about ready to fall off. The smallish yard hosts a stone figurine of a bird with wings outstretched atop a chest-high pedestal surrounded by a thicket of weeds, the taller stalks of goldenrod reaching clear to the bird’s feet. The bird—beats me what kind—finds this encroachment most distressing and flaps its wings to take flight at any second.

Besides this stone figurine, the yard has little in the way of decoration. Two beat-up old vinyl chaises are parked neatly under the eaves, right next to an azalea blazing with ethereally crimson blossoms. Otherwise, weeds are about all that meets the eye.

I lean against the chest-high chain link fence and make a brief survey of the yard. Just the sort of yard a cat would love, but hope as I might, nothing catty puts in an appearance. On the rooftop TV aerial, a pigeon perches, its monotone carrying everywhere. The shadow of the stone bird falls across the tangle of weeds, their blades cutting it into fragments of different shapes.

I take a cigarette out of my pocket, light up, and smoke it, leaning against the fence the whole while. The pigeon doesn’t budge from the aerial as it goes on cooing nonstop.

Cigarette finished and stamped out on the ground, I still don’t move for the longest time. Just how long, I don’t know. Half asleep, I stare dumbly at the shadow of the bird, hardly even thinking.

Or maybe I am thinking, somewhere out of range of my conscious mind. Phenomenologically speaking, however, I’m simply staring at the shadow of the bird falling over stalks of grass.

Gradually I become aware of something—a voice?—filtering into the bird’s shadow. Whose voice? Someone seems to be calling me.

I turn around to look behind me, and there, in the yard opposite, stands a girl of maybe fifteen or sixteen. Petite, with short, straight hair, she’s wearing dark sunglasses with amber frames and a light-blue Adidas T-shirt with the sleeves snipped off at the shoulders. The slender arms protruding from the openings are exceedingly well tanned for only May. One hand in her shorts, the other on a low bamboo gate, she props herself up precariously.

“Hot, huh?” the girl greets me.

“Hot all right,” I echo.

Here we go again, I think—again. All day long it’s going to be females striking up conversations with me, is it?

“Say, you got a cigarette?” the girl asks.

I pull a pack of Hope regulars from my pocket and offer it to her. She withdraws her hand from her shorts, extracts a cigarette, and examines it a second before putting it to her mouth. Her mouth is small, with the slightest hint of a curl to her upper lip. I strike a match and give her a light. She leans forward, revealing an ear: a freshly formed, soap-smooth, pretty ear, its delicate outline glistening with a tracery of fine hairs.

She parts her lips in the center with an accomplished air and lets out a satisfied puff of smoke, then looks up at me as if she’s suddenly remembered something. I see my face split into two reflections in her sunglasses. The lenses are so hideously dark, and even mirror-coated, that there’s no way to make out her eyes.

“You from the neighborhood?” the girl asks.

“Yeah,” I reply, and am about to point toward the house, only I can’t tell if it’s really the right direction or not. What with all these odd turns getting here. So—what’s the difference, anyway?—I simply point any which way.

“What you been up to over there so long?”

“I’m looking for a cat. It’s been missing three or four days now,” I explain, wiping a sweaty palm on my slacks. “Someone said they saw the cat around here.”

“What kind of cat?”

“A big tom. Brown stripes, a slight kink at the end of its tail.”

“Name?”

“Name …?”

“The cat’s. It has a name, no?” she says, peering into my eyes from behind her sunglasses—at least, I guess she is.

“Noboru,” I reply. “Noboru Watanabe.”

“Fancy name for a cat.”

“It’s my brother-in-law’s name. My wife’s little joke. Says it somehow reminds her of him.”

“Like how?”

“The way it moves. Its walk, the sleepy look in its eyes. Little things.”

Only then does the girl smile. And as she lets down her façade, I can see she’s much more of a child than I thought on first impression. The quirky curl of her upper lip shoots out at a strange angle.

Caress, I can swear I hear someone say. The voice of that telephone woman. Not the girl’s voice. I wipe the sweat from my brow with the back of my hand.

“A brown-striped cat with a kink in the end of its tail, huh?” the girl reconfirms. “Wearing a collar?”

“A black flea collar.”

The girl gives it a cool ten-, fifteen-second think, hand still resting on the gate. Whereupon she flicks the stub of her cigarette to the ground by my feet.

“Stamp that out for me? I got bare feet.”

I conscientiously grind it out under the sole of my tennis shoe.

“That cat, I think I just may have seen it,” she phrases guardedly. “I didn’t get as far as noticing the tip of its tail, but yes, there was a brown tom. Big, probably wearing a collar.”

“When did you see it?”

“Yeah, when was that? I’m sure I must’ve seen it lots of times. I’m out here in the yard nearly every day sunbathing, so one day just blends into the rest. But anyway, it’d have to be within the last three or four days. The yard’s a cat shortcut, all kinds of cats scooting through all the time. They come out of the Suzukis’ hedge there, cut across our yard, and head into the Miyawakis’ yard.”

So saying, she points over at the vacant house. Same as ever, there’s the stone bird with outspread wings, goldenrod basking in the spring rays, pigeon cooing away on the TV aerial.

“Thanks for the tip,” I tell her.

“Hey, I’ve got it, why not come into the yard here and wait? All the cats pass this way anyhow. And besides, if you keep snooping around over there, somebody’s going to mistake you for a burglar and call the cops. Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“But I can’t just hang around waiting for a cat in somebody else’s yard.”

“Sure you can, like, it’s no big deal. Nobody’s home and it’s dead boring without someone to talk to. Why don’t we just get some sun, the two of us, until the cat shows up? I’ve got sharp eyes, I’d be a real help.”

I look at my watch. Two thirty-six. All I’ve got left to do today is take in the laundry and fix dinner.

“Well, okay, I’ll stay until three o’clock,” I say, still not really grasping the situation.

I open the gate and step in, following the girl across the grass, and only then do I notice that she’s dragging her left leg slightly. Her tiny shoulders sway with the periodic rhythm of a crank grinding mechanically to the left. She stops a few steps ahead of me and signals for me to walk alongside her.

“Had an accident last month,” the girl says simply. “Was riding on the back of someone’s bike and got thrown off. No luck.”

Two canvas deck chairs are set out in the middle of the grass. A big blue towel is draped over the back of one chair, and the other is occupied by a red Marlboro box, an ashtray, and a lighter tossed together with a large radio-cassette player and some magazines. The volume is on low, but some unidentifiable hard-rock group is playing.

She removes the clutter to the grass and asks me to sit down, switching off the music. No sooner am I seated than I get a clear view of the passage and the vacant house beyond. I can even see the white stone bird figurine and the goldenrod and the chain link fence. I bet she’s been watching me from here the whole time.

The yard is large and unpretentious. The grass sweeps down a gentle slope, graced here and there with plants. To the left of the deck chairs is a sizable concrete pond, which obviously hasn’t seen much use of late. Drained of water, it presents a greenish, discolored bottom to the sun, like some overturned aquatic creature. The elegant beveled façade of an old Western-style house, neither particularly large nor all that luxurious, poses behind a stand of trees to the rear. Only the yard is of any scale or shows any real upkeep.

“Once, I used to part-time for a lawn-mowing service,” I say.

“Oh yeah?” says the girl without much interest.

“Must be hard work maintaining a yard this big,” I comment, looking around me.

“Don’t you have a yard?”

“Just a little yard. Two, three hydrangeas, that’s about the size of it,” I say. “You alone here all the time?”

“Yeah, you said it. Daytime, I’m always alone. Mornings and evenings, a maid comes around, though otherwise I’m alone. Say, how about a cold drink? There’s even beer.”

“No, I’m fine.”

“Really? Like, it’s no big deal.”

“I’m not thirsty,” I say. “Don’t you go to school?”

“Don’t you go to work?”

“No work to go to,” I admit.

“Unemployed?”

“Kind of. I quit.”

“What sort of work were you doing?”

“Lawyer’s gofer,” I equivocate, taking a slow, deep breath to cut the talk. “Collecting papers from city-hall and government offices, filing materials, checking case precedents, taking care of court procedures, busywork like that.”

“But you quit?”

“Correct.”

“Your wife work?”

“She does,” I say.

I take out a cigarette and put it to my mouth, strike a match, and light up. The wind-up bird screeches from a nearby tree. A good twelve or thirteen turns of the watch spring, then it flits off to another tree.

“Cats are always going past there,” the girl remarks apropos of nothing, pointing over at the edge of the grass in front. “See that incinerator behind the Suzukis’ hedge? Well, they come out from right next to it, run all the way across, duck under the gate, and make for the yard over there. Always the same route. Say, you know Mr. Suzuki? College professor, on TV half the time?”

“Mr. Suzuki?”

She goes on in some detail, but it turns out that I don’t know our Mr. Suzuki.

“I hardly ever watch TV,” I say.

“Horrible family,” the girl sneers. “Stuck-up, the whole lot of them. TV people are all a bunch of phonies.”

“Oh?”

The girl picks up her Marlboros, takes one out, and rolls it around unlit between her fingers.

“Well, I suppose there’s decent folk among them, but they’re not my type. Now, the Miyawakis, they were okay people. Mrs. Miyawaki was nice. And Mr. Miyawaki, he ran two or three family restaurants.”

“What happened to them?”

“Don’t know,” said the girl, flicking the end of her cigarette. “Probably owed money. There was a real commotion when they left. Been gone two years now, I guess. Dropped everything and just left. The cats just keep multiplying, no consideration. Mom’s always complaining.”

“Are there that many cats?”

She puts the cigarette to her lips and lights up with her lighter. Then nods.

“All kinds of cats. Some losing their fur, even a one-eyed cat … big lump of flesh where the eye was. Gross, huh?”

“Gross,” I concur.

“I’ve got a cousin with six fingers. A girl, little older than me, has this baby pinkie right beside her little finger. Always keeps it neatly folded under, so you can barely tell. A real pretty girl.”

“Hmm,” I say.

“You think stuff like that’s hereditary? Like, you know … runs in the blood?”

“I couldn’t tell you,” I say.

The girl says nothing for the moment. I smoke my cigarette and train my eyes on the cat path. Not a single cat has shown the whole time.

“Hey, you sure you won’t drink something? I’m going to have a cola,” says the girl.

“No thanks,” I tell her.

The girl gets up from her deck chair and disappears into the shade, dragging her leg; meanwhile, I pick up one of the magazines lying by my feet and flip through the pages. Contrary to what I’d expected, it’s a men’s monthly. The center spread has a woman sitting in an unnatural pose, legs wide apart, so that you can see her genitals and pubic hair through a sheer body stocking. Never a dull moment, I think, and put the magazine back where I found it, then redirect my gaze toward the cat path, arms folded across my chest.

After what seems like ages, the girl returns, glass of cola in hand. She’s shed her Adidas T-shirt for a bikini top with her shorts. It’s a small bra that shows off the full shape of her breasts, with tie-strings in back.

For sure, it’s one hot afternoon. Just lying there in the sun on the deck chair, my gray T-shirt is blotched dark with sweat.

“Tell me,” the girl picks up where she left off, “suppose you found out the girl you liked had a sixth finger, what would you do?”

“I’d sell her to the circus,” I say.

“Really?”

“Just kidding,” I come back, startled. “I probably wouldn’t mind.”

“Even if there’s the possibility of passing it on to your kids?”

I give it some thought.

“I don’t think I’d mind. One finger too many’s no great harm.”

“What about if she had four breasts?”

I think it over a while.

“I don’t know,” I say.

Four breasts? This conversation’s going nowhere fast, so I decide to change the subject.

“How old are you?”

“Sixteen,” the girl answers. “Just turned sixteen. Freshman in high school.”

“But you’re taking time off from school.”

“Can’t walk too much before my leg starts to hurt. Got a gash right by my eye, too. It’s a pretty straight school, no telling what kind of trouble I’d be in if they found out I hurt myself falling off a bike … which is why I’m out sick. I can take a whole year off if I want. I’m in no big hurry to graduate from high school.”

“Hmm” is all I can say.

“But anyway, back to what we were talking about, you said you thought it was okay to marry a girl with six fingers, but four breasts turned you off.”

“I didn’t say it turned me off, I just said I didn’t know.”

“Why don’t you know?”

“I can’t quite picture it.”

“But you can picture a sixth finger.”

“Sort of.”

“What’s the difference? Six fingers or four breasts?”

Once again, I give the matter some thought, but can’t begin to think of how to explain.

“Tell me, do I ask too many questions?” the girl asks, peering into my eyes from behind her sunglasses.

“You been told that?” I ask back.

“Sometimes.”

“Nothing wrong with asking questions. Makes the other person think.”

“Most people, though, don’t give me much thought,” she says, looking at the tips of her toes. “Everyone just gives the usual nothing-doing answers.”

I shake my head vaguely and to realign my gaze onto the cat path. What the hell am I doing here? There hasn’t been one lousy cat come past here yet.

I shut my eyes for twenty or thirty seconds, arms folded across my chest. Lying there, eyes closed, I can feel the sweat bead up over different parts of my body. On my forehead, under my nose, around my neck, the slightest sensations, as if tiny moistened feathers had been floated into place here and there. My T-shirt clings to my chest like a drooping flag on a doldrum day. The sunlight has a curious weight as it seeps into me. I can hear the tinkling of ice as the girl jiggles her glass.

“Go to sleep if you want. I’ll wake you if I see your cat,” the girl whispers.

I nod silently with eyes closed.

For the time being, there isn’t a sound. That pigeon and the wind-up bird must have gone off somewhere. Not a breeze, not even a car starting. The whole while I’m thinking about that voice on the telephone. What if I really did know the woman?

Yet I can’t recall any such woman. She’s just not there; she’s long departed from my consciousness. Only her long, long shadow trailing across my path, a vision from Chirico. An endless ringing in my ears.

“Hey, you asleep?” comes the girl’s voice, so faint it’s almost no voice at all.

“No, I’m awake,” I answer.

“Can I get closer? It’s easier for me to talk in a whisper.”

“Go right ahead,” I say, eyes still closed.

I listen as the girl slides her deck chair alongside mine, hear the dry clack of wooden frames touching.

Strange, I think, the girl’s voice with my eyes closed sounds completely different from her voice with my eyes open. What’s come over me? This has never happened to me before.

“Can I talk some?” the girl asks. “I’ll be real quiet. You don’t have to answer, you can even fall right asleep at any time.”

“Sure,” I say.

“Death. People dying. It’s all so fascinating,” the girl begins.