Graveyard of Memories

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

We drove the short distance southwest, parked, and got out. Setagaya was an upscale suburban part of Tokyo, outside the Yamanote, where people with money might move if they wanted a little less urban density and a little more green. It was quiet most of the time, and at night could be remarkably serene. And Kitazawa-gawa, a kind of nature walk to the extent such a thing could be said to exist in Tokyo, was particularly charming in the evening, with a little creek burbling along beside it, lots of grass and trees, and evocative shadows cast by tall iron streetlights. I pushed Sayaka along, enjoying her company, liking that she trusted me enough to take her somewhere new. I was beginning to appreciate how difficult it must have been for her to get around. The world was nowhere near as handicapped-accessible then as it’s since become, and every grassy or other soft surface, every narrow space, every curb represented an obstacle. And that’s with someone there to help. Alone, just a few short stairs would have been for her what a twenty-foot wall would be to me.

“It’s another universe out here,” she said, looking around us and up at the trees.

“I know. Tokyo’s like the blind men and the elephant. Every part you touch fools you into thinking you know the whole thing. But I don’t think anyone can really know Tokyo. It’s too big, and too…I don’t know. Mysterious.”

She glanced back at me. “You really like it, don’t you?”

I didn’t answer right away. The wheels of her chair crunched softly along the pavement. Somewhere, a dog barked. Other than that, the city was silent and still.

“It’s kind of a love-hate relationship, I guess.”

“Why? Because you’re half?”

Haafu is a neutral Japanese word for people of mixed parentage, words borrowed from abroad carrying less emotional content.

“Yeah, you know. I never really felt accepted here. I loved it, but it didn’t love me. I guess it’s kind of pathetic that I’m back. Like showing up on the doorstep of a girl who kicked me out. But…shit, it’s a long story.”

“You have someplace to go?”

Apparently, I did not. I told her a little about my childhood in Tokyo. The taunts, the bullies, my father’s conflicted shame. “It’s not a great place to grow up if you’re not really Japanese,” I said. “I mean, if you’re a hundred percent something else, they don’t care. They might even admire you. But if you’re half…if you look Japanese but you’re really not…they hate that.”

She laughed. “You think I don’t know?”

“You mean the wheelchair? Do you get discriminated against? I’m sorry, I admit I’ve never really thought about it.”

“Not the wheelchair. Being Korean.”

I stopped pushing and looked at her from the side. “You’re Korean?”

“Second-generation zainichi. And it’s just like you said. Japanese hate us because they can’t tell us apart. I mean, all prejudice is crazy, but it’s even crazier when you have to hire a private detective to track down a person’s lineage so you can know whether to discriminate against him!”

We both laughed. I said, “So you’re Korean. I didn’t realize.”

“Yeah. Sayaka Kimura. My parents chose Sayaka because they didn’t want people to know, but Kimura’s kind of a giveaway.”

Kimura was a typical zainichi surname, though not exclusively so, an easy variant on the native Kim.

“Well, I wouldn’t have known.”

“Does it bother you?”

“No. I like it. It’s nice to know another outsider. Is that part of why you want to go to America?”

“I just want to get out of here. I told you, it’s not really love-hate for me. It’s just hate. I want to go someplace that’s not so big, that’s not growing so fast, that’s not so overwhelming and impersonal. Someplace where they don’t care where you’re from, or where your parents are from.”

I didn’t know that America was really that. It hadn’t been for me. But maybe it would be for her. I started pushing again. “What will you do there?”

“I haven’t figured that out yet. College, to start with, if I can save enough money.”

So she hadn’t been to college. I wondered if that embarrassed her, if it was why she hadn’t answered at the hotel when I first asked.

“And after that?”

She shrugged. “Whatever I want. I want to get a good job. And be free, really free. I feel like I’ve been living such a stultified life here. I need to take more risks. And I don’t know why, but I’m afraid to take them here.”

“You think America will make you braver?”

She looked back at me, maybe trying to see if I was teasing her. I wasn’t.

“You think that’s silly?”

I thought about Cambodia. “No. Most people think bravery comes entirely from within, but it doesn’t. It depends on a lot of things. Maybe one of them is just…where you live. Your culture, your surroundings.”

She nodded. “I swear, this city is killing me. I just feel so inhibited here. I imagine America, and I see myself doing anything, doing everything. Maybe I can drive there, if someone invents a car with hand controls. And I want to scuba dive. Why not? You don’t need legs for that. And skydive…why shouldn’t you be able to skydive in a wheelchair? You think falling is any harder for me? It’s easier.” She paused and looked around. “I just have to get out of here first.”

I didn’t know about scuba diving and skydiving, let alone all the rest. But why disabuse someone of her dreams?

I saw a park bench next to an old, gnarled tree, bathed in the shadows cast by one of the lights set out along the path. “Do you want to sit? I mean…shit, I’m sorry, I keep doing that.”

She shook her head. “Don’t be sorry. I like it. That you see I can go for a walk in the chair. And that sitting next to a park bench isn’t the same as being in the chair.”

“Thanks for that. I’ve been feeling a little stupid at times.”

She looked at me in a way I couldn’t interpret. “You’re not stupid.”

I positioned the wheelchair next to the bench and sat close to her.

“All right,” she said. “So now you have to answer your own question. What is it about jazz? I saw you tapping your feet and nodding your head. Did you like it?”

“A lot, yeah.”

“Why?”

I told her about how it had made me feel…that feeling of longing for something I didn’t even know I lacked. And how I was struck by the way the music had created this sense of kinship and commonality in a room full of strangers, all of us feeling the same thing.

“Yes,” she said, when I was done. “That’s it, exactly.”

“Was this your first concert?”

“Yes. And it’s exactly what I imagined it would be like. No, better. It was really special. Thanks for taking me. Thanks for…encouraging me.”

I felt myself blushing and looked down for a moment. I didn’t want to look like an awkward kid with her.

But she spotted it anyway and laughed. “Are you blushing?”

Shit. “I didn’t think you could see it, in the shadows.”

“I couldn’t. But then you looked down.”

“Oh, great,” I said. We both laughed, then were quiet for a moment.

I looked at her. “Can I ask you something personal?”

She brushed a hair back from her face. “Sure. If I don’t want to answer, I won’t.”

“How…were you born that way? Or did something happen? You said ‘injury’ before, so…”

There was a long pause. Then she said, “I was sixteen. On my way home from school. A car hit me from behind.”

A strange, clear sympathy opened up inside me. But I didn’t know how to express it. I only said, “I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “I don’t even remember it. I woke up in the hospital.”

“Did they catch the guy who did it?”

“Oh, yeah. He totaled his car trying to get away afterward. Drove it into a wall. I got this, and he didn’t have a scratch on him.”

I didn’t say anything.

“He was drunk. But it turned out he was also a big-shot politician. A lot of connections. His people offered my parents some money as an apology. But really to keep their mouths shut and not make trouble.”

“Damn.”

“My parents wouldn’t take it. They wanted to see the guy in jail. But then some other people came to the house and recommended my parents take the money.”

“Yakuza?”

She nodded. “So what could my parents do? They took the money and signed some papers. It wasn’t even enough to cover the operations I needed.”

I thought about the four yakuza I’d killed earlier that day. I suddenly wished I could do it again. Well, I’d be going after Mad Dog soon enough. And Mori, another big-shot politician. The thought was both grim and glad.

“Where are your parents now?”

“They’re gone. They were old. They had me late — they thought they couldn’t have children, and then after all those years they wound up with me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t keep saying that, or I won’t tell you any more sad stories.”

I smiled a little, for her benefit. “Do you remember the name of the guy who hit you?”

She nodded. “Nobuo Kamioka. I’ll never forget it.”

“Do you…I would want to kill him.” I didn’t mean to say it. It just bled through somehow.

She was quiet for a moment. “My father felt like that, I know. And I guess I did for a while, too.”

“Not anymore?”

“I don’t know. At some point, I learned not to think of it that way. I believe in karma.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah. I believe in the end we get paid back what we deal out.”

I hoped that wasn’t true. “Has Kamioka been paid back?”

“I don’t know. I don’t really think about it. I’m not responsible for someone else’s karma. I just want to live my life, be grateful for what I have and not be bitter about what I don’t, you know? Focus on the future, not the past.”

I nodded. “I think that’s a good attitude.”

“But you don’t share it?”

“I’d like to.”

There was a pause, then she said, “You know, you were pretty intimidating with that drunk guy the first time I saw you. You were so calm. Like hurting him or not hurting him was just a kind of…equation. But then with me, you’re awkward and sweet. I can’t figure you out.”

I shifted on the bench. “There’s nothing to figure out.”

“Yes, there is. I can tell you’re hiding something.”

“I don’t think so.”

“What do you do for a living here, anyway? You’ve never mentioned it.”

“Well, that’s part of this jam I’m in.”

“The one you’ve nearly sorted out.”

“Is there another one I don’t know about?”

“I don’t know — is there?”

“I’m pretty sure it’s just the one.”

“You’re not going to tell me?”

I realized this was always going to be a problem if I tried to keep one foot in the dark and the other in the light. I’d been naïve in not facing it earlier, and I should have been prepared for it, because now Sayaka was asking me the most ordinary of questions and I had no answers.

“I…was in the military for three years.”

“What military?”

I was reluctant to say more. America’s war in Vietnam was hugely unpopular among young people in Japan. I didn’t want her not to like me. And I didn’t want to have to explain myself, either. But I didn’t see how to avoid the subject anymore.

“The American military. Army.”

“You mean Vietnam?”

There it was. I nodded.

“You were in Vietnam?”

I nodded again.

“What did you do there?”

How do you answer something like that? I said, “I did all the horrible things people do in wars and that they’re uncomfortable talking about afterward.”

“Did you kill anyone?”

It was weird. I was so used to feeling younger than she was. Now I felt older.

“It was a war, Sayaka. Killing people is what you do in a war. Unless you’re in the rear, which I definitely wasn’t.”

“I’m sorry. You said you didn’t want to talk about it.”

“It’s okay.”

“But you did bring it up.”

And suddenly I felt like the younger one again. “Just to point out that what I’ve been doing here is a kind of…holdover from contacts I made there.”

“You mean spy stuff?”

I looked at her. She was just curious, she wasn’t judging me. “I don’t want to lie to you,” I said, “and I don’t want to get you in any trouble by telling you things you shouldn’t know. I don’t know how I got mixed up in it all exactly. I mean, outside what I learned in the military, I don’t have a lot of skills. I don’t have anything to fall back on. And this opportunity came along, and I just took it. And one of the things I like about you is that you’re not connected to any of it. And I…and I don’t know what I’m trying to say, and I’m going to stop.”

“Are you sure? You’re cute when you babble.”

I laughed.

She added, “And now you’re blushing.”

“Okay, I’m not going to talk anymore.”

“Bet you will.”

“Bet you’re wrong.”

“See? I win.”

I laughed again. “All right. So…you live in Uguisudani?”

“About half a kilometer from the hotel. Why?”

“I was just wondering. I mean, do you really never go far from there?”

She sighed. “No, not really. Sometimes I tell myself I should. But it’s scary not to know what I’m going to find. I’ve gotten in trouble a few times and it’s just…it’s unpleasant. To be helpless and to have to rely on the kindness of strangers. It can be…humiliating. So over time, I’ve gotten in the habit of staying where I know the layout. Where I’m comfortable.”

“So you really must have trusted me to come out with me tonight.” It was just a neutral statement, but I think there was a little wonderment in my tone.

She looked at me. “You want to know what did it?”

I nodded. “Sure.”

“It’s when you told me you thought of me as the girl at the hotel.”

I tried to puzzle that out, and couldn’t. “I don’t get it.”

She laughed. “You see? You’re doing it now, stupid. The girl at the hotel. Not the girl in the wheelchair. It’s like you don’t even notice it.”

I leaned over as though to get a better view. “You’re in a wheelchair?”

She laughed and punched my shoulder. I caught her fingers in mine. Without thinking, I brought her hand to my mouth and kissed it.

She looked down. “I don’t know, Jun.”

“You don’t want me to kiss you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, we could just try, and if it’s not good, we could stop.”

She laughed again, softly.

I kissed her hand again and leaned closer. She was still looking down. I let go of her hand and touched her chin. Very gently, I raised her face toward mine. She looked in my eyes.

“You really are beautiful,” I said.

She shook her head and said nothing. I liked being so near to her. I leaned closer and kissed her as softly as I could. She didn’t exactly kiss me back, but she didn’t pull away, either.

I pulled back a fraction, feeling happy and dopey. “Was it horrible?”

She shook her head again. “No, not too horrible.”

“Okay, then I’m going to do it again.” Her mouth was slightly open, and this time I kissed just her bottom lip, lingering there for a moment before I eased away.

“Still okay?” I said.

“I just…I don’t know what you want with me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, look at me. What do you want with me?”

Maybe she didn’t mean it literally, but I took a long look. I liked what I saw. Her breasts were small and beautifully shaped, her neck was long and slender, and her shoulders and arms, her whole upper body looked strong and fit and graceful. Her skin was pale and smooth. And her lips…God, it had been nice to kiss her, even though it had been so soft it barely qualified.

“I’d answer that, but I think you’d slap me.”

She laughed softly. “I just don’t get it.”

“You mean, because of the wheelchair?”

“Yeah.”

I took her hand again. “I don’t know. I just like being with you. I liked kissing you just now. I wouldn’t mind doing it again.”

She laughed again. “I really don’t get you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t think it’s your fault, exactly. You know, I don’t even…I don’t even know if I can…you know. I don’t know if I would feel anything.”

“You mean, you never…”

She shook her head. “No, never. Not even before the accident.”

“Oh. Well, maybe we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves, right? I mean, I haven’t even thought about that. Well not not thought about it. But I haven’t thought a lot about it. Not constantly, anyway. Sometimes I find myself thinking about something else for a few minutes before it comes back, that’s what I mean.”

She laughed. I realized I really liked making her laugh. I’d never been the funniest guy in the world, and I was envious of people who had a talent for that kind of thing, but there was something about her that brought it out in me.

“It’s not just that,” she said. “I haven’t even kissed someone since I was a teenager.”

“Why? Did you not want to?”

“I don’t know. Most guys who want to date a girl in a wheelchair…either they pity me, or they think they’re doing something noble, or they think they can get whatever they want because I must be desperate, or some combination of those things. It’s just never made me feel good about myself. So after a while, I stopped trying.”

“I don’t know why anyone would think any of that about you. Desperate is about the last thing you seem to me.”

She nodded. “Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me. I’m just trying to think of something that’ll make you want to kiss me again.”

She smiled, and then her eyes welled up. It caught me by surprise, and apparently it did her, too, because she gave a startled little laugh and turned away to hide it.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was just trying to make a joke.”

She shook her head and wiped her eyes, her face still averted.

I felt bad. I realized I’d been treating her more or less the way I would have treated any girl I liked, and while on the one hand she clearly responded to that, on the other hand she had wounds inside her I knew nothing about, no more than she knew about mine.

“You know,” I said, “if it makes you feel any better, I’ve only been with one girl myself.”

She laughed and wiped her eyes. “Liar. With those little ears, they must be throwing themselves at you.”

I laughed too. “No, it’s true, there’s only been one.” This wasn’t technically true, as I couldn’t claim to have eschewed all professional companionship during the war, but other than that, Deirdre Calhoun had been my first, and to that point my only. “She was my high school girlfriend,” I went on, “and I told her I was going to marry her when I got back from the war. But the marriage part never happened.”

“Why?”

I blew out a long breath. “I was gone for longer than I’d first been thinking. And war changes you. We were both different people when I got back. Everything was different.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. It just didn’t work out. But I’m here now.”

She looked down. “It’s just hard for me.”

“I think I understand. At least some of it.”

“I mean, if I wanted to go home right now — and I don’t, but if I wanted to — I couldn’t just leave. I have to rely on you. I hate being helpless like that. I hate it.”

“I get it. I’d hate it, too. What do you think we should do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, while you try to figure it out, I’m going to kiss you again, okay?”

She looked in my eyes. Then she whispered, “Okay.”

So we kissed again. And this time, I didn’t pull back. I reached out and brushed her cheek with the backs of my fingers, and she opened her mouth and I touched her teeth with my tongue a little, just to let her know I wanted more, was ready for more if she was, and then I felt her tongue and we were really kissing, and I cupped her face in my hands and she leaned forward and did the same to me and she opened her mouth wider and put her tongue inside mine, and she made the most beautiful sound, I can’t even describe it but it was a sound of pure pleasure, the sound someone would make if she tasted something unexpectedly delicious and was nearly shocked by it. We kissed and kissed and touched each other’s faces and hair and she ran her fingers along my ears and we were laughing and holding each other and it went on and on and on. And it was the best kiss I’d ever had.

And then we were just holding each other and laughing and my back hurt because it was awkward leaning into her from the bench but I didn’t care, in a weird way it felt good. And then, all of a sudden, she stiffened and pulled back and said, “Oh, no, oh shit oh no.”

I’d been in such a reverie, I felt like I’d been slapped. “What? What is it?”

She glanced down at her lap and tried to cover it with her hands, but couldn’t. She’d peed. Not just peed, she was still peeing, and couldn’t stop it. She shook her head in helpless humiliation.

I jumped up. “Oh, let me get you someplace!”

“Just get me home.”

“Shouldn’t we—”

“Just get me home.”

“But I told you, it doesn’t—”

“Just get me home!”

I wanted to say something, to tell her it didn’t matter, I didn’t care, but I couldn’t think what to say. I felt awful. I realized I needed to piss, too — we’d been sitting out there for a long time.

And then I got a crazy idea. I started to rethink it, then thought, Fuck it, what do you have to lose?

I took a deep breath and just let my bladder go.

“Take me home, okay?” she said. “Now.”

“Okay, just one second, I’m having a little problem myself.”

She looked at my crotch, at the darkening pool of liquid running down my leg.

She shook her head incredulously. “What are you fucking doing?”

“You think I’ve never pissed my pants before? The first time I got dropped in Indian country I did. Hell, I know guys who shit themselves. Tough guys, guys it would be death to mess with. It’s just nobody likes to talk about it.”

Her mouth was agape. “I don’t believe you’re doing this.”

“What, you think you’re the only one who can? Why shouldn’t I get some relief, too?”

She put her head in her hands and started shaking. I thought she was crying, but then I realized she was laughing. She looked up at me and shook her head. “You’re crazy. You are really crazy.”

I looked at the dark spot on my pants and we both started cracking up. It was medium intensity at first, but then it just built and built. At one point, she took two quick breaths and got it under control just long enough to say, “That was…the most romantic thing anyone’s ever done for me,” and we were both hit with another paroxysm.

When the laughter finally started to ebb, I said, “Maybe I should get us back to the van. We’ll roll down the windows.”

We laughed again and I pushed her back along the path. I can’t say it felt good to walk with urine sloshing in my shoes, but on the other hand at least I didn’t still need to take a leak.

Back in the van and heading east, she said, “Thank you, Jun. Really, thank you.”

“I told you, it’s nothing. It doesn’t bother me.”

“I’m lucky, actually. The injury to my spinal cord isn’t complete. A lot of people need a catheter, but I don’t. But I have to be careful not to wait too long. I haven’t had a problem in a long time, but it’s still something I’m always afraid of. And tonight, I think getting excited…I’m sorry.”

I glanced in the rearview mirror, but it was dark in back and I couldn’t see her. “You don’t have one thing to apologize for,” I said. “Not one.” Then I added, “Wait, did you say you were excited?” And we both cracked up again.

Once we were in Uguisudani, she gave me directions to her apartment. I parked and opened the back of the van, and she rolled down to the pavement.

“So this is the place?” I asked. It was a soulless five-story ferroconcrete building, pretty new looking. Drab, but no more so than the one I lived in. Or used to live in. I wasn’t exactly sure of my status.

“Yeah. No stairs, see? Straight shot between here and the elevator.”

“You want me to come up?”

She paused. “I don’t know, we both need to clean up…”

“Oh, listen, if I come in, cleaning up is a requirement. Is there a bath?”

“Yeah, that’s half the reason I chose it, it’s new and the units all have their own baths. Back and forth to the sentō everyday would be a nightmare.”

“Well, what do you think?”

“What are you going to change into?”

I patted my bag. “I have a change of clothes right here.”

“I wondered why you’re always carrying it.”

“I just don’t have anywhere to leave it. No fixed address at the moment and all that. So…can I come up?”

I could tell she was nervous. But she said, “Okay.”

She lived on the second floor, a neat, functional 1K apartment — what in America would be known as a studio. A single bed on a platform, unlike the usual Japanese futon on the floor. Obviously easier to get in and out of. A kitchen table with no chairs. A tiny television. A nice stereo. That was about it.

We took our shoes and socks off in the genkan, but my feet were still moist with piss. “I should wipe my feet before I come in,” I said. “Do you have any towels?”

“Yeah. Hold on.” She wheeled herself in, pulled a towel out from a cabinet, and set it down on the floor. I stepped onto it. Fortunately, my pants had stopped dripping, but a bath and a change of clothes would be a welcome development.

Without thinking, I said, “Take a bath with me.”

“What? Jun, no.”

“Hey, it’s just to get clean. I have nothing but good intentions.”

She laughed a little nervously. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Why?”

“I…I don’t know you.”

“Yes, you do. You know me better than a lot of people.”

She looked down. There was a long pause. She said, “I don’t want you seeing my body. My legs.”

“We can turn off the light.”

“You don’t understand. They’re like…little rubber sticks. They just hang off my body.”

“You think if I see your legs, I won’t be attracted to you?”

She nodded. Christ, she looked so honest, and so ashamed…it made my heart ache.

I knelt in front of her and took her hands in mine. “Sayaka. That’s not going to happen.”

She didn’t say anything.

“Come with me,” I said. “It’ll be dark. We’ll soap up and rinse off and then we’ll sit in a warm tub and I’ll kiss you and hold you like we were doing at Kitazawa-gawa. And we won’t do anything else if you don’t want to. Okay?”

“Oh, God, I don’t know.”

“Okay?”

There was a long pause. Finally, she said, “Let me get in first.”

She disappeared into the bathroom. I heard the water come on, and then the light went off. A few minutes later, she called out softly, “Okay.”

I walked over to the bathroom door. I could see her in profile. She was leaning forward, her arms across her breasts. Japanese baths are typically part of an integrated shower room — an enclosed space with a tub on one side and an equally large area for showering alongside it. This makes it easier to shower and get clean before getting in the tub, which is a requirement in Japan and, in my opinion, in all other civilized places, as well. I’ve never understood the idea of soaking in a tub full of the grime floating off your body. On the other hand, a half hour earlier, I had deliberately pissed my own pants, so maybe my opinion on these things shouldn’t be taken too seriously. Anyway, Sayaka had left the chair in the shower area alongside the tub, her clothes piled under it. I realized she would do her showering in the tub — it would be easier sitting in the tub itself, and also left the shower area for the wheelchair. And indeed, there were handles installed in the walls and a rope pulley dangling from the ceiling, all obviously designed to make her passage to and from the tub easier. To make it possible at all.

“Can you turn the light out in the living room?” she said. “It’s still too light here.”

“Do you have a candle?”

“Just an emergency candle, under the sink in the kitchen.”

“I’ll be right back.” I found the candle, lit it on the stove, and set it down in the sink outside the shower/bath room. Then I turned out the light in the living room and came back in. The light was nice like this. I pulled off my wet pants, then my shirt, then my underwear, and pushed it all under the wheelchair. I was as hard as any twenty-year-old about to get in a bath with a girl can be, which is to say, painfully hard. She glanced at me, then looked away. I felt as embarrassed as I thought she must be.

“What’s easier?” I said. “Should I get behind you?”

She nodded, her arms still crossed over her breasts.

I eased in behind her, doing my best not to stab her in the back. She handed me the shower wand. The water was running, but she hadn’t yet put in the drain plug. I wet my body, soaped up as best as I could under the circumstances, and rinsed off. I put the wand down and gently soaped her back. “Is it okay?” I said.

“Yes,” she whispered. I rinsed her back, then lathered up my hands again and did her shoulders. I pulled her against me and slowly leaned back. I kissed her neck, her ear, and she turned her head and we stayed like that for a few minutes, just kissing. She was still covering her breasts. I soaped her arms, and then, very gently, eased them away from her body. She resisted for just a second, then let me. I started soaping her breasts, and if I thought I’d been painfully hard earlier, this made it nearly unbearable. Every time my fingers glided over her nipples she would moan into my mouth and it was making me so crazy my balls started to ache. I soaped her throat and her belly and she started rubbing against me, using her arms on my legs to move herself back and forth in a way I was afraid would make me come if she didn’t stop. Yeah, what can I say, twenty years old. It’s a trade-off.

My hand went lower and I started touching her, rubbing and stroking, my fingers sliding back and forth along her soapy hair. “Is it okay?” I said, breathing hard.

“I can’t…I can’t feel you down there. But everything feels good. Everything.”

“Are you sure? Because…you’re really wet.”

“I am?”

“Yeah. Here.” I rinsed our hands and the front of her body. She touched herself and looked at me. “I…but I can’t feel it.”

“Come here,” I said. I pulled her back into me. We kissed and I started touching her again. She was so wet my fingers slid easily inside. “Can you feel that?”

“I’m not…I don’t think so.”

“My finger’s inside you. I’m moving it. In and out.” Jesus, saying it out loud was such a turn-on I couldn’t believe it. With my free hand, I started rubbing her breasts again.

“Are you serious?” She reached down and felt alongside my hand, her fingers intertwining with mine. “Oh. Oh. I don’t know, I can’t feel it, but it’s making me feel good. I don’t understand. But…God, you’re making me feel good.”

She started rubbing against me the way she had been, panting, pressing into me, kissing me. I put my free hand on her throat and kissed her harder. Her soapy back sliding up and down my cock felt insanely good, like a mild, undulating electric shock. I was embarrassed I was going to come like that. I whispered, “Sayaka, if you keep moving like that, I’m…I’m going to…you’re going to make me come.”

“Really?” she said, turning a bit and looking at me and continuing to slide slowly up and down. “I can make you come like this?”

“Yes,” I whispered, looking into her eyes.

“Oh, I want you to. I want to feel you coming. Come for me. Come from me doing this.”

At that point, it didn’t matter what she said — I couldn’t have stopped myself if I’d tried. I felt my balls contract and my cock jump and there was an explosion of molten pleasure, and I cried out and gripped her throat and looked into her eyes, and my hips started moving involuntarily as though we were fucking and the look on her face was beyond beautiful, and she said, “Oh, you’re coming, oh, oh, oh,” and she reached across and cupped my face while my orgasm went on and on. I was embarrassed I was coming on her back like that but she kept sliding up and down and she was so excited she was panting, and I just thought Fuck it and stopped caring whether I should be embarrassed, it felt too good and if she wasn’t why should I be?

When it was finally done, I sagged against the back of the tub, spent and bewildered. I didn’t know what I’d been imagining when I proposed the bath — something, I guess — but not that. Sayaka turned to her side and snuggled into me. I stroked her hair and slowly caught my breath. She rubbed my chest and said, “Was that good?”

“Are you kidding? Could you not tell?”

She laughed. “I want to hear you say it.”

“It was incredible. The way you were moving…it was making me crazy. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? For what?”

“Well…I think I got it all over you.”

She laughed. “I want you to do it again.”

My head spun. “Oh, man. If you say so.”

We rinsed off, then filled the tub and lay there talking and laughing until the water started to cool. She told me where to get a fresh pad for her wheelchair, and I threw the dirty one and all our clothes in the washing machine. When I was done, she was in bed, under a light quilt. She said, “You’re staying, right?”

“Unless you’re kicking me out. But you know I don’t have anywhere else to go, so that would be cruel.”

She laughed. “It’s a small bed, but…”

“I think we’ll manage.” I got in next to her. We lay on our sides kissing. I was hard in about zero-point-two seconds. Yeah, twenty years old.

She said, “Is it okay…I want to touch it.”

I kissed her and stroked her cheek. “You can do anything you want.”

She reached down and her fingers curled around me. “Oh. That’s what it feels like. It’s nice. I like it.”

“Oh, man, I do, too.”

She laughed. Her other arm disappeared beneath the quilt. A moment later, she held up a glistening finger and looked at it in wonder. “I’m wet,” she said.

I licked her finger and she gasped. She said, “Can you…can you be inside me? I want to see if I can feel it.”

I nodded. “Here. Let’s get you on your back.” I moved her legs and got between them. They were as limp and shrunken as she had said, but I didn’t care. I barely noticed. I put my weight on my elbows and looked in her eyes. “You do it,” I said. “Guide me.”

And she did. I held very still while she got the feel of things and moved at her own pace. After a minute with me maybe an inch inside, she said, “I can’t feel it, but it feels good. I can’t explain. Can you push a little?”

I laughed a little breathlessly. “I’ve been trying not to. Here, is that okay?”

The feeling of her fingers wrapped around me even as I slid deeper into her was glorious, intoxicating. “It’s good,” she said. “Push more.”

I did. She said, “I don’t understand. I can’t feel it there, but I can feel it everywhere. God, it’s lovely.”

“Oh, good. It’s lovely for me, too.” I moved a little faster, deeper. I was starting to breathe hard.

She pulled the quilt off us and turned her head to the side to watch. “Oh, that’s so good,” she said. “Seeing you do that. God, that’s so beautiful.”

Having her watch like that, experience me moving inside her with her hand and her eyes, was insanely erotic. Panting, I said, “I think…I think I have to stop.”

“Yes, stop. Don’t come inside me. Even if I can’t feel it, I can still get pregnant.”

With difficulty, I slowed down.

“But I want you to,” she went on. “Next time, with a condom, I want to feel that, okay?”

“Oh, God, yes. Ask me anything.”

She laughed and I managed to pull out just in time. She said, “Did you come?”

I shook my head. “No. Almost, but no.”

She reached down and started moving her hand up and down my shaft. “Oh, God,” I said. “God.”

She was looking right into my eyes. “I want to make you come again.”

“Oh, fuck…you are…” I groaned, and came on her belly to the firm rhythm of her hand.

When I was done, I collapsed onto my side next to her. She reached down to her belly, then brought her finger to her lips. For an instant, she seemed to remember herself, and looked suddenly self-conscious. “I wanted…to see what you taste like,” she said.

I shook my head slowly, watching her in wonder, absolutely speechless.

She slid her finger into her mouth and smiled. “It’s good.”

“Oh, I can’t tell you how glad that makes me.”

She laughed. “When you were inside me, I couldn’t feel it…but at the same time, I could. And now I feel…I can’t explain it. So relaxed. Like something really good happened to me. Like I had a wonderful dream I can’t quite remember. It’s so strange. So…God, it’s so lovely.”

I looked at her, saying nothing, just spent and happy and feeling I was halfway in love. She said, “Tell me what you’re thinking?”

“No, it’s stupid.”

“Tell me.”

“That…the way you trusted me tonight. With everything. And this was your first time. I’m just…blown away.”

She nodded. “Me, too.”

“I don’t want you to be embarrassed with me, okay? Your legs, or whatever. None of it bothers me.”

“I’ll try.”

“Well, you’ve been doing pretty well so far.”

“Have I? I guess you’ll have to get me into bed more often. I want to try everything with you, okay? Everything.”

And for the rest of the night, we did. To this day, it was the best night of my life.