Read Online Three Scenarios in Which Hana Sasaki Grows a Tail by Kelly Luce - Free Book Online

crowded eventually; the crowd grew to such a size that even their sad patch of sand was not spared, and they drove home. On the ride back, Yumiko found herself hoping that the plumber would still be there, pounding and humming.
    WHEN THEY RETURNED, tools littered the kitchen floor so thoroughly there was no way to reach the refrigerator without kicking something. A puddle sat defiantly in the bathroom doorway, and as they stood in silence, a bead of water fell into it with a plop !
    “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Lou said. He kicked a cigarette butt from the entranceway and began picking his way to the bathroom door.
    The only thing more annoying to Lou than smokers were the bosozoku, “noise gangs” of teens who removed the mufflers from their motorbikes and raced up and down side streets, shattering the silence at odd hours of the night. Once, last month, when a group had gathered in the parking lot next door, Lou had jumped out of bed andclimbed onto the roof with a carton of eggs. After some confusion and yelling, the roar of engines faded. Smiling in the dark, she thought to herself, a Japanese man would never have done that.
    “He took out the toilet!” he called.
    “Yeah,” Yumiko said slowly, “he mentioned putting a new one in.”
    “You knew about this?”
    She shrugged. “Only since the morning. It will take a little longer, but won’t it be nice to have a normal, you know... king’s chair?”
    “Throne. It would be nicer to not have my house torn apart.”
    “Miura-san thinks he was doing something nice for you.”
    “I don’t need a special potty because I’m a gaijin.”
    “It will be nice for me too, recently most places don’t use—”
    “And he’ll expect me to be so grateful,” Lou went on, and bowed deeply, throwing his arms out to his sides. “Yes, I’m so indebted to you, I can’t use my kitchen, my apartment’s flooded, and everything reeks.”
    “We could go to my parents’ home. They really— what?” He was staring at the metal ladder that led to the roof, looking suddenly enlightened.
    Slowly, he said, “No. We’re definitely staying here.”
    “You have an idea.”
    “We’ll move onto the roof.” He rubbed his hands together. “That’s it. It’s perfect! We’ll bring the futons up,some books, your art stuff, whatever we want. It never rains in August, and it’s warm enough to sleep outside. The perfect vacation.”
    “You are kidding,” she said, but he was already inside, throwing open the sliding doors that hid the futon. She looked doubtfully at the ladder, then back into the apartment. On the bulletin board she could see the calendar, its gilded edges poking out beneath the pile of menus. Lou, so obviously pleased, lumbered toward her with an armload of pillows. She reflected on the portability of their lives and the things in it, how even the marital bed was easily hidden away behind doors that slid soundlessly, like ghosts.
    SHE WOKE UP STARING INTO the pink-dappled sky. Lou slept facing away from her, his body curled around a pillow. For once, he did not snore.
    The air was calm, heavy on her face yet soothingly cool, like a washcloth. She did not move, and breathed only shallowly. She imagined she was floating in a bubble that might pop at any moment.
    And then a voice: “Kirei, da ne?”
    Beautiful, isn’t it?
    So he was awake after all. It had taken her a moment to identify Lou’s voice—as if it could have been anyone else, up there. But he spoke Japanese with her so rarely these days that other possibilities had entered her mind first. Her ex-husband, for one.
    “ Un ,” she acknowledged.
    A moment later, he rolled over. “What shall we do today? The beach? An art museum?”
    She watched the clouds. The way he put the past behind him amazed her, this capacity for acting like nothing had been, or could ever be, wrong.
    “Or maybe... hey, how do you say ‘rooftop nudist colony’ in Japanese?”
    She sat up and ran her fingers