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

to submit a written explanation to the company, and the police called him in.”

“I see.”

“If it’ll mean a few days off, an accident isn’t the worst thing. That’s what I tried telling him.”

During this short exchange, Monoi had put on his reading glasses, taken out last Sunday the 11th’s two winning tickets from the drawer of the register, and with a “Here you are,” carefully placed them on the counter. Handa thanked him and took the tickets. The two races he had asked Monoi to bet on had both won. He did not bother asking what the dividends were, it just meant that enough cash for a drink was back in his pocket.

Handa took a swig from his can of beer.

“What about tomorrow’s race?” Monoi asked.

“I didn’t even have time to buy the paper.”

“I have it. You wanna see?”

“No. I’ll pass for tomorrow.”

Just when he took another swig of beer, a woman walked past on the other side of the curtain behind Monoi, causing Handa to pause for a moment with his can in midair. A black suit and the contour of calves in stockings. From the neck up she was hidden by the curtain. That suit, Handa thought, it was the Valentino he had seen earlier at that dentist’s home. Noticing Handa’s gaze, Monoi himself turned around and mumbled, “My daughter’s home for a bit.”

What are the odds? Handa almost said out loud. Of all the people . . . the grandson who had died was the son of that dentist and Monoi’s daughter. But he was struck speechless for only a moment. He could not refer to a case that was still under investigation, of course, and Handa found such a coincidence encountered at the end of the day as cheap as a TV drama, which made him feel alienated all over again. He gave a noncommittal response, “Oh, really?” and finished the rest of his beer. The wind seemed stronger outside, as the glass door facing the street rattled noisily.

“I’ll buy the paper for you before next week’s Japan Cup,” Monoi said.

“I wonder if Oguri Cap will run.”

“I hope so. If he does, I’ll bet on Oguri.”

“Are you going tomorrow, Monoi?”

“I’ve got nothing else to do.”

“Well, sorry to leave you with this but—”

Handa placed the empty can on the counter, said goodnight, and left the store. He heard Monoi pushing the shelf back on the other side of the glass door.

Handa purchased another can of beer at the liquor shop’s vending machine. In front of the intersection on Sangyo Road, he pulled the tab open and took a sip. Crossing the intersection and walking straight down the alley would bring him to his apartment in Haginaka, but his feet would not move and he remained drinking by the side of the road. Before him was the factory wall of Yamamoto Rolling Stock Manufacturing. All along the deserted industrial road were corrugated-metal and concrete fences, a succession of street lamps.

Back then, just what was I hoping for? Handa wondered. To sit at a desk where the sun shone brightly. To make a fairly stable living and lead a respectable life—wasn’t that all? He had become a policeman with a single, pathetically ordinary desire—and what now?

He threw his empty can into the road, where it was swiftly crushed beneath the tires of an oncoming truck with nary a sound. Ah, that’s me, right there. As soon as the thought crossed his mind, that other self grumbled, I’ll show them soon enough, just wait.

5

Seizo Monoi

Seizo Monoi stared at the trademark seal of Hinode Supreme on the empty beer can that Handa had left behind. Crushing it with his hand and tossing it into the wastebasket, he passed through the curtain and returned to the living room of his home.

His daughter Mitsuko had clearly been waiting to launch into him. “All you care about is horseracing!” she shouted. Her tone was sharp—as if each consonant was catching on a hook—and it made Monoi’s ears buzz. Just like her late mother, his daughter had always been strong-minded, but at least when she was a girl, she had not spoken to him like this, he thought to himself.

She was probably just irritated because their conversation had been interrupted by a string of customers. This whole time, at least half an hour, Mitsuko had remained standing, her back to a pillar, claiming that her skirt would crease if she sat on the tatami floor. Her mother Yoshie had also been a rather stylish woman who cut a fine figure for someone born in the early twentieth century, but standing before him now, Mitsuko could not have seemed like more of a stranger to him. When he thought about it, the only time he’d held her in his arms was when she was in preschool. By the time she started elementary school she had already matured into a precocious, miniature version of Yoshie; as a teenager she was practically Yoshie’s twin; and by the time she enrolled at the women’s college she’d attended, she existed in a completely separate world that Monoi could no longer reach. When she was a college student and he had cautioned her about wearing flashy clothes when out with her male friends, she rebuffed him by saying, “Don’t be jealous,” while his wife remarked, “Mitsuko has high ambitions. Unlike you.”

Monoi was indeed perplexed by the way his manner of thinking and living seemed unfit for the modern era and, shrinking away, his sidelined existence became that of a nonentity who did no more than watch the two striving women in his life. His daughter joined a large insurance company straight out of college, and not even a year had gone by when she announced that she was getting married. Since she had said her fiancé was a dentist, Monoi had intended to arrange a proper wedding, only to be informed that she planned to enter her name in her fiancé’s family register and move into his apartment as soon as