Elly sighed like a properly exasperated schoolmarm. Her head hurt. She’d spent the last two hours trying to keep two thoughts in her head at the same time. Actually, she’d only been trying to keep one thought in her head—the lesson plan—but the other one kept barging in.
It wasn’t possible.
If she let her mind wander for a moment, she’d start replaying the scene over and over like a close call in a football game. The next thing she knew, she’d be gazing blankly out the window until one of her students piped up and said, “Um, Packard Sensei?”
It was just a dream.
Darlene said, “I’ll turn the assignment in tomorrow.”
Elly had only four years on the girl but suddenly felt middle-aged. The I’m-disappointed-with-you attitude that took the average parent a decade to master, she’d gotten down in a matter of days. “Okay, she said. They’d been-there-done-that and nothing was going to change as far as she could see. Right now it simply wasn’t worth the grief. “Tomorrow.”
Just her imagination. Just a random coincidence.
Darlene looked sorrowful enough. As long as she kept up the act until she was out of the classroom, Elly wouldn’t hold it against her.
Think about something else, she told herself.
Darlene belonged to the group of students drawn to the idea of studying Japanese, but not so much to the hard reality of learning it. Or had boyfriends on missions in Japan, hence the initial motivation. And the lack of it, now that the shine was off. Elly wished they would drop the class. Less work and worry for her.
At the opposite end of the spectrum were the students who were only too happy to be there. They weren’t necessarily the smartest and didn’t always get the best grades. She’d seen the same thing on her mission. Every zone had a couple of slacker missionaries who got the most baptisms. And a couple of diligent true believers who never got off the ground. There was something profound in that fact, though she wasn’t sure what.
She should exploit her authority as sensei to challenge the slackers like Darlene, for their own good. Next time, she’d run things like a Japanese high school classroom, establish that aura of absolute authority around herself. Maybe the proper cultural context would bring out some of the Oh-ness that the males in the family (on both sides) had in spades.
Among her star students was one Bradley Preston, an anime devotee who had become a groupie of all things Japanese, including herself.
Bradley followed her down to her office, his palmtop PC at the ready. “Sate, komatta koto ni natta,” he said.
He recited the line fluently enough that Elly almost replied, “What has?” And then realized he was reading off the screen. Bradley had found a bilingual script of Princess Mononoke on the Internet and was working through the grammar. She’d agreed to help him as long as he understood that other students’ needs had precedence.
He asked, “But isn’t komatta the past tense?”
“Yes, but it’s being used as an adjective.”
There was a stack of papers on her desk. At first she thought, shimatta, yet another late assignment. Did they think leaving overdue homework on her desk would make her any more forgiving? Unfortunately, it probably did. “Your students will figure you out quicker than you’ll figure them out,” Uncle had promised her.
“So it modifies koto,” Bradley said.
She nodded. No, not homework, but the quizzes she’d dropped in the stairwell earlier. She looked again. One of them was filled out, and not by a student in her class. The hand was practiced but gaijin. She glanced at the name. “Connor McKenzie.” He wasn’t in the class.
She realized Bradley had asked a question and was waiting for an answer. “Sorry,” she said. “What was that again?”
“It’s translated here as a worrisome situation.”
“Yes, that works.”
Deep in her brain, who Connor McKenzie was and how he’d gotten hold of the quiz flashed through her mind. The blood drained from her face. Her breath caught in her throat. The scene rushed back to her—the few, fleeting moments when it was funny, struggling for balance on the landing, wrapped around each other like a game of Twister. And then his face, his eyes staring into hers, the familiarity of his touch—
“Bradley,” she said faintly, “I need to get started on these quizzes.”
“Oh, okay,” he said. “Ja, ashita, Packard Sensei.”
“Yeah, see you tomorrow.”
She collapsed into the chair and hyperventilated until her head swam. Her pounding heart gradually washed the panic from her veins. She rested her forehead on the white Formica and examined her shoes. There wasn’t any doubt in her mind. He was the man standing on the Nakamozu Nankai station platform on that bright summer morning. The man in her dreams. But he was supposed to be a fantasy, a symptom of some deeper sickness.
She raised her head and rested her chin on her hands and stared at the quiz. Under his name he’d written, “1010 JKHB,” the room number of the Writing Center at the end of the hall. So their meeting had been less coincidental than inevitable. A small bubble of anger grew in her gut. So this was all her responsibility? She was supposed to go see him? She returned to the examination of her shoes. To be honest, if he walked into the room right now, she’d freaking die.
How like him, she thought. A man she’d slept with should know better. She groaned aloud. No! He’s just a dream! She slammed her fist on the desk, and then stopped and listened, praying that no one else was in the room. Don’t do this to me, she said to herself, conscious of her sudden familiarity with him and all the more embarrassed because of it.
Elly stuffed the quizzes into the folder and the folder into her backpack. She left the TA office, heading away from the Writing Center. She did not look back and was prepared to run if she heard her name called.
She walked home, her shock and disbelief evaporating in the hot summer sun. She sat at the kitchen table and graded the quizzes. At the bottom of the pile was Connor’s. No mistakes. She wrote “100” next to his name in red ink and added a very good in Japanese before she could stop herself.
When Melanie got home, she found her roommate at the kitchen table, head in her hands, examining the tabletop.
“That kind of day, huh?”
“You have no idea.”
Later that night, Elly lay in her bed, afraid of what sleep would bring, and equally afraid that it would bring nothing. This affair had begun with a chance meeting—should it not end with one?
It did not.
After he left her in the deep of the night, she awoke and cast bitter imprecations into the silent darkness. She’d never known a solitude emptier than the loneliness she felt in the arms of a lover who laid total claim to her body, but withheld his soul.