It's late afternoon when the ferry docks on the little island. Akiko crosses the wobbling gangplank. Then she's standing on the volcanic soil of Kamijima. Gulls are skreeking. The cold breeze smells and tastes of salt. She doesn't look around for the taxi. She's already laced up her hiking boots while still on the ferry. She starts to walk. It feels good to be away from a city. There's no car traffic on the narrow dirt road between low houses and shops -- nothing but a few rattling bicycles. Soon she's walking through thick green bamboo forest. The road turns steeply uphill. Sweating, she climbs, carrying the luggage bag slung over one shoulder. The sunlight is hot and blinding. She stops in the shadow of a big pine to drink water from a plastic bottle. Carefully, she screws the cap back on and sticks it into her bag. It's a long walk up the mountain, colder and steeper with each step. Finally she's there -- at the base of the mossy winding steps to the temple. She can see the soaring wing-like eaves, the dull red lacquer of the walls and pillars dappled with sunlight, through black branching pine foliage. Home.
She climbs the steps slowly, her eyes shut.
At the top step, she opens her eyes.
There. The temple. The smooth black pillars. The green-tiled roof.
Takagi steps out onto the porch. He's bearded. In blue jeans and a torn t shirt. He's holding a wooden sword lightly. He stops and turns his head toward Akiko. His blind eyes look at her. His nostrils widen. He begins to tremble. He sits down on the smooth boards, like a marionette suddenly cut from its strings. Lays the sword flat.
Akiko strides forward in flowing steps. She lifts the bag from her shoulder. Sets it down on the thick pine needles.
Molly, he says.
Jiro.
Ah, Molly.
She goes to him. He takes her head in his hands. Kisses her brows, her cheeks, her lips. Smells her sunwarmed hair.
You're here. Alive.
Hai.
I wondered.
Akiko smiles. He's still kissing her. She shuts her eyes. His lips are dry and soft and the kisses cool and delicate.
Nothing kills me, she whispers.
I know that. I love you.
I love you, Jiro.
He's shaking again, as if seized by panic. She helps him to stand, lifting him up by the elbows.
The sun is low. Almost drowned in the Sea of Japan. Cicadas buzz-buzz. It's cold here in the shadows. Autumn. The great change of seasons that rebukes all vain human conceit and ambition. One finally feels it -- the light is weak, the cicadas near-silent. Pine needles are falling. The small red squirrels jump in the thick foliage, their tails twitching. The few maples are a blaze of crimson. The oak leaves are edged with yellow.
She helps Takagi inside. Goes back out for her bag. When she comes in again carrying the bag, he's lit a kerosene lantern. He replaces the soot-smudged glass chimney and turns down the flame. She sets down her luggage and kneels in seiza. It's musty inside the temple. Takagi hasn't bathed in a while -- she can smell the layers of dried sweat under his clothes. The odor is not unpleasant. His beard is thick and his blind eyes, when she glimpses them under the sagging lids, look wild. It's as if he'd aged a century. Then she realizes, no, he's still youthful. His arms and shoulders are powerful -- she doesn't recall him being this muscled. He's clearly been working out with the bokken every single day. She touches it with her fingertips. It's stained dark at the handle by the oil and sweat from Takagi's hands.
He hasn't rolled up the bedding. It's still disarranged from the morning. He tries to straighten it, feeling his way along the edges. Akiko, who has meanwhile unlaced and pulled off her hiking boots and wool socks, laughs, stands, and strips off her dark sweater and the t shirt under it in one movement. She drops these things on the floor, unsnaps her blue jeans and steps out of them. She goes to Takagi in her thin panties, kneels by him, and places his hands on her breasts. He begins, again, to shake as if with cold. She kisses his face, his hair. The kisses are like flames. Takagi groans. He sits on the bedding. Akiko bends forward, her hair covering his face. She unsnaps his blue jeans and wrenches down the zipper and takes him out hard and pulsating and she whimpers a little from her own desire as she kisses it and licks the swelling crown. Takagi moans. He lies back. Akiko's head goes up and down. He feels her tongue playing with him, her warm saliva dripping on his balls. Then she takes him out of her mouth and goes lower. One by one, she sucks on and softly bites his testicles while holding his cock like a sword. Takagi feels the sensations begin to surge. Wait, he says. Stop. She stops biting him. Silence. He can hear her breathing. Also his own. They're both breathing deeply as if in a sword match. Come up here, he murmurs. He hears the cotton rasp as Akiko tears off her panties. Throws them away. Then she climbs up his body, kissing hard and open-mouthed as she goes. She strips away his t shirt. He raises both arms over his head as she yanks it from him. His skin is silk-smooth, warm and sunbrowned. She straddles Takagi and inserts him in the searing heat and moisture underneath her bristling soft pubic hair. Takagi sobs. It's so good. Ah, he says, beautiful Molly. She strokes his face with her long fingers as he holds her elbows. They're a little rough, as always, from her constant practice with the wooden sword. She begins rocking. He's trying to form an image of exactly what she must look like now. Above, below and around him is only darkness. His mind blazes, but there are no colors. Akiko is gasping. She shudders in her orgasm and he feels a surge of heat and thick wetness on his cock and balls. He's cradled inside her, in the searing womb. He cries out -- his semen shoots up into the all engulfing darkness.
The sea. Glittering. Infinite.
Night. Akiko opens a barrel of sake. It gurgles pleasantly into the earthenware jar. She sets down the full sake jar and takes out the cups, which she cleans out with splashes of water followed by a few wipes with a faded blue-striped dish towel -- one of the ones she brought with her three years ago when she arrived on the island. She returns to bed with the jar and cups on a bamboo tray. The kerosene lamp throws her shadow -- the intimate nudity of her shadow -- hugely on the whitewashed wall. She picks up one cup and hands it to Takagi, who smiles and bows. He's seated crosslegged, naked, on the futon. He holds out the cup. She fills it with a snap of the wrist, not spilling a drop. She fills hers next and sets down the sake jar. They drink. The sake is cold and subtly sweet. It's refreshing, after the heat of the day and the almost painful joy of their lovemaking. Was it joy? Or pain?
Takagi took her three times. Akiko climaxed twice. Harshly and completely, both times. She almost came the third time but held back to fully appreciate the beauty of Takagi's climax. As he mounted toward it, he fucked her more and more slowly -- delicately, even. She shut her eyes to feel him shoot inside her -- a flare of heat. He gasped and choked and his body went rigid. She held him around the ribs, tightly, and also embraced his legs with hers, crushing him into her, her bare feet stroking his white buttocks. Life is empty. A dead flower in the surf. An owl's strange, insistent hoots in the dark pine forest of the mountain on Kamijima. She smiles as she drinks, her lips smiling on the rim of the cup -- she sees that he's erect again.
(For more like this, see 10th & Crime.)
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