Single Sickness and Other Stories by Masuda Mizuko

Water

27 Water When Ikuri got home from the plant on Friday evening, there was a folded note marked "Urgent!" pinned to the door of her apartment. It sent her into a momentary state of confusion. Just before leaving the factory, she'd sent a love letter to one of her co-workers. Was this a reply from him? Already? For a second Ikuri felt a violent throbbing in her breast. But it wasn't possible. The love letter had left her hands only forty-five minutes ago. Still, who else could it be from? She'd enlisted the help of a girlfriend at work who slipped the letter into a thin business envelope to make it look like an office memo. At a little before five o'clock, the woman had called Ikuri at her work station confirming safe delivery of the missive. The object of all this attention was Aotsuka Akira, one of the mechanics in charge of maintaining the plant's heavy machinery and the type of guy who did his job with a "see-how-much-Ilove -my-work" kind of enthusiasm. Ikuri was confident she wasn't going to be rejected, but there were still lots of unknowns. How would the relationship get started? How would it progress? What would happen in the end? This much she did know—sometime between now and Monday evening, she could expect Akira at her apartment ringing her doorbell. She decided that Saturday and Sunday weren't very likely, so unless he came tonight, then Monday would be it. Yes, sometime during the day on Monday he would casually drop by 28 ~ Water her work area to check if she were really serious. But for the whole weekend, he wouldn't be able to get Ikuri off his mind. You couldn't get a lover by being passive and mute. You had to do something, make a real effort, and Ikuri believed in working hard to achieve what she wanted. But she also knew that not everything was going to fall into her lap. She had no intention of being caught off guard by a rejection letter, not even one sent express mail. Plucking the piece of paper from the door, Ikuri held it up to the overhead fluorescent light in the hallway. The note was not in an envelope but simply folded twice. She could make out some faint scribbling, but she had no idea what Akira's handwriting looked like. The word "Urgent!" had been scrawled in ink on the outside of the note in a crude, sloppy hand. Ikuri's own letter to Akira had been composed on a word processor and printed with a fresh ink cartridge. Thank goodness she hadn't sent something handwritten. It was so confusing! While she hoped this was a reply from Akira, at the same time she hoped it wasn't. No matter how unlikely it was to be from him, it wasn't entirely outside the realm of possibility. In her letter Ikuri had included a detailed map with directions from the plant to her apartment building, even specifying travel time. If Akira had bolted out of the factory the instant work ended and raced over by car, he could easily have beaten her home. Possible, yes, but Ikuri's instinct told her otherwise. No, at this very moment Akira was probably reading and re-reading her letter. For the umpteenth time. Indeed, the note was not from Akira. It was from the building superintendent. In a cramped, hard to read scrawl, the note said that the occupant of the apartment directly below Ikuri, a certain Mr. Takayama, had complained about water leaking from his ceil- WATER ~ 29 ing and could Ikuri please contact the superintendent as soon as she got home. At the bottom was the date and time of writing. The note must have been pinned to her door around ten o'clock this morning. Ikuri checked her watch: 5:45 p.m. The superintendent, who only worked between 8:30 and 3:30, was already gone for the day. Passing his office on her way in, Ikuri had noticed the closed sign and the white curtain drawn across the reception window—she couldn't get in touch with him even if she wanted to. For people with regular jobs, contacting the superintendent was virtually impossible. Of all days for this to happen, Ikuri thought...