“Let’s see,” she was looking up at the ceiling and thinking. “I have come to my friend’s house and am finding out that she is ill. So, I will have to nurse her. That’s, it. It goes something like that.”
“You may say so.”
“Will he order me to have the friend on the phone?”
“You can insist that she’s ill.”
“Even though she’s supposedly ill, he might think she can be at least on the phone.”
“You may say you are out of her house now and are calling him from a restaurant.”
“Ah, that’s a good idea. But will he be able to tell that I am in this restaurant?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Okay.” She stood up. “I will make a phone call.”
“Relax.”
She suddenly frowned and held out her both hands toward me.
“Oh, how kind of you.” She hugged me.
She exhaled a short breath and left the table to make a phone call. After entering the phone booth and lifting the receiver, she waved to me through the glass.
I took one of her cigarettes again. Only a few cigarettes were left in the pack. I will apologize to her later, I thought.
Then, I started thinking that there was a problem with the current situation, in which I was relying solely on her. I picked up my ID card from a chest pocket and checked the telephone number written on the reverse side of it. Calling the number was the only other way I could choose.
After a while, she came back. She was looking nervous and was not smiling. She sat on the seat, immediately took a cigarette, and lit it. Uncharacteristically, she was keeping silent.
“Is anything wrong?” I asked.
“No, nothing wrong. He said nothing in particular.” She exhaled the smoke. “But, he asked me about you.”
“What did he ask you?”
“He asked me if I knew your whereabouts.” She pouted. Her eyes were ready to shed tears. “Of course, I said I didn’t know. He told me that he had received a call from a woman, apparently your supervisor.”
I immediately understood who the woman was.
“He got nervous because of the phone call.” She made the smoldering tip of the cigarette generate a fiery bright red glow, and exhaled the smoke with her sigh.
She was also getting nervous, too. Pilots of our company were keeping the business of her mansion going. So, those involved would definitely want to avoid any trouble. She could not possibly make any excuse about running away with the pilot, who just escaped from the hospital. Even she could understand that.
“What should we do? We must be careful not to be found by them under any circumstances.” She uttered.
The waiter came to our table to clear it. Although both of us left about half of the steaks on the table, the waiter did not ask us anything, and took them away without words. He did not even ask us if we wanted coffee after the meal.
“Can you lend me just a small amount of money? If you can, I will leave you alone. You should go back home. If we go separate ways now, we will be able to make this situation look as if nothing has happened.”
“Do not say such a thing.” She begged in a faint voice, and shed tears. “Never say that again, please.”
“Why?”
“I know myself. You don’t want to be with such an aged woman forever. I know that.”
“I do not say such a thing.”
“I know ...”
She was smoking while sobbing.
I kept silent. As she mentioned, I could not be with her forever. However, it had nothing to do with her age. No, that’s not true. There was a particular relationship with the age issue. I mean, if she were younger than the current I, then I still would not be able to be with her forever anyway.
It is easy for me to say, “I will be with you forever.” She might want even such a lie, I imagined. But unfortunately, I do not engage myself in useless, meaningless, and uncertain things. That’s my rule. I learned it from my experiences in the sky. It was a promise to myself. I do not do certain things when I fight against enemies at the risk of my life. Not doing anything useless is a courtesy for respectable opponents. If I break the promise, I cannot bless myself when I am shot down and fall.
A waiter was looking at us from the vicinity near the counter in the distance. I observed the cars coming and going on the road through the window. Then, I looked at her reflection on the windowpane intermittently. She was smoking again without words. I had yet to understand what type of woman she really was. I knew the pattern of the tattoo on her white breast, but knew nothing about her real existence. The words coming out from her mouth were almost lies. They were tales. They were not incoherent, though. Each of them made sense. That was the very reason why I could not believe them. I guessed she herself did not want me to believe them. Because she needed to make me believe just at the scene for the moment, just during the single night, she might have repeated the processes of living such days. If so, such a way of life was honest, simple, and not bad. Our jobs were completely the same as hers. We only needed to believe we would win during just one flight for the day. We repeated them. We could not continue to fly for many days forever.
As about five minutes had passed, she started telling another story. It was the sequel to the fake tale she had told me in the car. She talked about the episode, in which she just started going to school. Her aunt died of illness, and her biological mother came to see her. However, since the mother could not live together due to her circumstances, she was placed with her relative’s family. The man of the house was always drunk, so she hated drunken men. The story went on.
I was listening without saying anything. I directed my line of sight toward the window once. Then, when I looked at her face again, she had stopped talking and was staring fixedly at me.
“Don’t you want to hear such tales?”
“Yes, I am listening.”
“No, I asked whether you want to hear my story or not.”
“I’m not sure. Because I do not know what kind of story it is, I’m not sure whether I want to hear it or not.”
She chuckled moderately.
“Sorry. Am I becoming hysterical? Am I wrong?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You know, I might have gotten irritated. I should not have sobbed, I think. Sorry. This is strange, because I am not getting any alcohol.”
“If you want to drink alcohol, why don’t you do so? I can take over the wheel.” I offered her the help, which I had grudged until then. “That’s the least of what I can do.”
“That’s okay. I know it is better for me not to drink alcohol.”
“What will we do from now?” I asked.
“Umm, what shall we do? I think we have no choice but to stay in this city tonight.”
“Shall we look for a hotel?”
“We should not sleep in the car, right?”
“Right, I think it would be a bit cold.”
“So, I will ask the waiter if there is a hotel nearby.” She was about to stand up.
“No, we don’t need to hurry by that much.” I stopped her. “We should calm down and think about it carefully. We are staying in a hotel, and what’s next tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow? Umm, after the departure, let’s drive on a highway again.”
“Then, we arrive at another city, eat steak dishes at a restaurant like we are doing now, and look for a hotel again?”
“Maybe.”
“Then, what’s next?”
“Why do you ask me such a question?”
“I’m not sure. I myself do not understand the reason. It is strange for me to think about such a distant future.”
“It is strange, definitely.” She frowned and showed a sad face.
“What life do you want to lead?”
“My life?”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s see ... If possible, I want to live in a cabin in a grassland.”
“By yourself?”
“No. I would like to live with someone.” Just her lips formed the shape of a smile. “I wonder if I can find the one.”
“I can’t live like that.”
“I know.”
“I might be able to do so, if it is for only one year or two.”
“I told you I know. I don’t want to hear such an excuse.”
“Sorry.” I apologized.
Silence prevailed for a while.
I took my eyes off her several times.
And, we looked at each other several times.
“How nice.”
“What is?”
“You. Why are you pilots all in the same way?”
“Are we all in the same way?”
“Yeah, most of you, pretty much.”
“I wonder why.”
-5-