Lady Joker, Volume 1 by Kaoru Takamura (lightest ebook reader .txt) 📕

on Kanpachi-dori Avenue and headed in the direction of Haneda Airport. He had not walked more than a minute or so when the road lined with only businesses and old machiya houses began to feel deserted, and there were no more lights beckoning passersby. Commuters rushed home as if chased by the sea breeze, briskly disappearing down back streets, and at the corner before a small rail crossing, Handa too slipped into an alley in the neighborhood of Haginaka.

He lived in tower two of the Daini Haginaka Apartments on the west side of Haginaka Park, and though he arrived there soon enough, Handa stood in the alley and hesitated for a few seconds. The lights were on in the top-floor window of the five-story building. Inside, his wife, who usually came home around nine, would be doing laundry and tearing open the packages of prepared food she brought home as a late supper for herself and her husband from the Ito-Yokado supermarket where she worked. Sashimi and simmered greens. Braised burdock root with carrots. Since he made it a rule not to drink at home, there was not a single can of beer in the refrigerator. Standing there, all Handa could think about was a beer, so he decided to keep going past his building.

Intending to make a detour until ten or so—another thirty or forty minutes—Handa went along the alley that continued toward Haneda Airport. Within minutes he arrived at Sangyo Road, beyond which was the district called Haneda. During the day choked with exhaust from cars heading to the airport, and at night untouched by the lights from the neighboring airport, the neighborhood was pierced by the overpass of the Shuto Expressway running above the densely packed rooftops of machiya houses that modestly overlapped one another. There was a small shopping district along the other side of the road under the overpass. In the evening most of the stores were closed, but there were still a few lights on here and there—a soba eatery, a cheap Chinese restaurant, a liquor shop.

First Handa bought a can of beer from a vending machine at the liquor shop by the overpass. He pulled the tab open right there, and sipped a mouthful of freezing cold beer. The pharmacy kitty-corner to where he stood was still open. Without any neon, the signage of the store was obscured by the nighttime shadows, but there, on the glass door where the curtains were pulled shut and illuminated from inside, was the name Monoi Pharmacy.

As Handa gulped down another mouthful of beer by the side of the road, the glass door of the pharmacy opened and a man came out. Handa recognized his horseracing buddy, the ex-army man, who that night had a ten-centimeter-wide bandage wrapped around his head. He also noticed Handa, and he paused wearily to mutter, in place of a greeting, “Look at this mess.”

“Were you in an accident?” Handa asked.

“Yesterday. On the Tomei Expressway,” Jun’ichi Nunokawa answered. “The fucking ten-ton trailer in front of me suddenly swerved out of its lane. The minute I hit my brakes, a ten-car pileup. My truck is a fucking wreck.”

“You’re lucky it wasn’t any worse.”

Jun’ichi Nunokawa paused for two seconds after Handa said this, then spat toward the ground at his feet, “I missed out on dying.”

Missed out on dying? I see—the parent of a disabled child thinks about things like this. Handa tried to imagine, but he could neither empathize nor did he feel compelled to ask any further about it.

“Betting on the horses?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, then. Gotta be going.”

Neither of them asked if the other was going to Fuchu on Sunday, tomorrow. Handa was in no mood to talk, and Nunokawa didn’t seem like he was either. Nunokawa got into a minivan parked on the side of the road. Handa had not noticed until then, but within the vehicle’s dark interior two arms were swimming in the air without making a sound. Nunokawa’s daughter was flopped over on the flatbed, thrashing around. As soon as the engine started, the minivan in the hands of a professional driver glided away like a speed demon, and disappeared along Sangyo Road.

With his can of beer in one hand, Handa rang the bell in front of the pharmacy, opened the glass door, and stuck his head inside. The display shelf of discounted detergent and toilet paper that was placed outside during the day had been brought inside for the night, and it made the tiny store so cramped it was difficult even to step inside. The owner, Monoi, parted the curtain at the back of the store and popped his head through. As soon as he saw it was Handa, he came out, saying, “You’re early tonight,” and pushed the shelf out of the way for him. “There. Come in.”

Although Handa knew that Monoi had lost his grandson last month, the man was impassive and taciturn to begin with, and to the outward eye Handa could not detect anything to suggest he was terribly despondent. His aspect had always been quiet and plain, but since he did not wear his sunglasses at night, his milky, immobile left eye made him look a little peculiar.

An old lady pharmacist tended the store during the day, so as befitting a retired old man, Monoi puttered around the neighborhood, playing shogi at “Elder Haven” and shopping at the supermarket, then coming home in the evening to fix something for himself to eat and to mind the store as he watched TV, before closing up around eleven and going to bed. Sunday was for horseracing. Over the past six or so years of frequenting the pharmacy, Handa had pieced together the way that Monoi whiled away his day. Sometimes when he stopped by the store, Handa would smell something burning on the stove.

“Nunokawa was just here. He has a head wound from an accident,” Monoi started to say.

“I saw him outside,” Handa replied. “He seemed pretty stressed.”

“It’s quite a lot of trouble. He has