Marilyn Monroe Ch. 03
When everything was set, the bomb ready to go, timer in place, one of the pair pointed to the storage room, door closed now, and said to his friend, "But my fingerprints are there." The thought had just occurred to him. Not the brightest bulb, anyway far from an experienced criminal.
"Don't worry," the other said.
"What do you mean, don't worry? My fingerprints are all over that place." It was he who'd planted the bomb. In doing so, of course he'd touched a lot of surfaces.
"It'll be okay," said the other.
"It won't be. The prints will lead back to me."
"Then you'll have to get rid of them" came the somewhat impatient, not to say exasperated, response.
"It's too late. The bomb will go off and they'll still be there. I don't want to spend time in jail."
Moments later, a bomb detonated elsewhere at the college, as I'd almost predicted would happen- the film was a semi-comedy. From the double reverberation, the length and depth of the explosion, the two partners could tell it wasn't from their bomb, which was small.
The guy who'd worried about his fingerprints went out to look for people he cared about. He first saw his girlfriend, walking on the campus on the sidewalk across the curving road, heading the opposite direction from him, looking fine as ever, unrattled by the event in progress at the college.
"Well, she's all right. Now I have to go and find out about others," said the boyfriend.
That was how I felt about Akemi in those days. Securing her first was all important.
—
I was with my girlfriend Andrea then but noticed Akemi around. After work one day I walked from the college with a colleague, a woman I got along with well, compassionate sort, observant of others, thoughtful, someone I liked and respected. Those feelings were pretty mutual. She seemed to regard me with a sense of humor, distantly affectionate.
"I saw your interest," Kathy said. We'd been in a room with Akemi and others moments before.
"Well.." I said, unable to deny the truth- doing so would only have confirmed it.
"I saw a lot of guys looking," Kathy added, with a smile she couldn't suppress but kept in check to avoid embarrassing me.
"She has a nice face," I said.
"I can introduce you."
There was a camping trip, sleepover. Akemi and I stayed in different barracks. She'd gone shopping for breakfast we would have together in the morning. Late at night on my own I looked in the bag and saw that milk was missing. The cashier must have neglected to put the container in the bag. The store was open twenty-four hours. It was late but I went to get the bottle. I looked for the grocery receipt- I'd need that- and found the white strip of paper I could show at the store to confirm that milk was paid for but not among the groceries Akemi had taken out. The paper rolled around my fingers like a spring, seeking the form it had held in the dispensing mechanism.
Having managed that transaction successfully, I went to Akemi's barracks and told her what I'd done. "You don't have to worry. We have enough of everything." Of course there was no reason she would have thought otherwise. I guess I just wanted to see her. I explained I'd used the receipt.
"How did you?" Akemi asked. "I have the receipt."
"But I definitely had it. Unless-"
A possibility was that she had cut off just the end of the long paper strip, taken the part that included the most important information, the total cost, to keep for her records of the weekend. She was punctilious that way.
Akemi said she would go back to my barracks to get the breakfast started early in the morning. The idea had come to her and struck her as a good one. I could stay where I was, take the bed she had been in. She'd sleep instead in the one I had vacated.
This was after midnight already.
"But I don't want to put you to that trouble," I said. "It's a walk."
"It's fine," Akemi said. She was already up and ready to go.
"Also, walking at this hour is dangerous." I looked outside into the darkness, the shadows of trees just visible, some not. Dark blues and blacks, dark browns near black dominated.
Akemi laughed. "It's okay." She insisted she'd be fine, no one would accost her. My concern amused and maybe touched her.
"What I worry about is getting into the barracks." She didn't have a key. The door probably wouldn't be locked though.
"At least call me when you arrive so I know you got there safely."
"I will."
"Don't worry about waking others here."
"No."
People in bunks around us were sleeping already. A phone would disturb them.
"You can just ring once," I said. We didn't even have to talk, I meant. The sound of the phone be enough, confirm she was all right.
"Yes," she said.
I hoped she meant it, wasn't just placating me, promising a call she wouldn't make- it was even possible she'd forget about my request. I felt like hammering home how seriously I meant it but held my tongue. No one likes being pushed, even for good motives. By harping on my concerns about her safety, I'd seem to be suggesting she wasn't capable of looking after herself.
As she departed, leaving me feeling wary, she encountered someone else walking out of the lodge at the same moment, a guy, big, shadow like a refrigerator. He talked to her in a voice surprisingly gentle given his size (what did I expect, a monster?)
They'd walk together. Was that reassuring or just the opposite?
"Step and streetch," I heard Akemi say to the guy. They were on the screened-in porch, launching off it to the gravel and earth below, the world beyond, gone quiet for the night. The strange trio of words she'd spoken seemed to be one she'd read. I thought they might come from a sign on a column by the door warning of wooden steps tricky to negotiate at night.
She'd gotten the pronunciation wrong in any case. "Streech" of course isn't a word in English. The caution sign must have read instead, "Step and stretch." Before negotiating the short flight of stairs from the porch, reach for a supporting column- doing so required a stretch. Only when you've got a firm grip on the upright should you take the first long step down. I wanted to show Akemi the right way to read the sign, but the other guy got there first.
After thanking her for the kindly warning she'd attempted but screwed up (endearingly), the guy at her side now said, "Actually, it isn't 'step and streetch.' It's 'step and stretch.'"
I opened the inner door to the porch as they were exiting from the far side and put in my two cents, wanting to even though they weren't needed.
"He's right. It's 'step and stretch.'"
Was it possible Akemi had instead been reciting instructions for stretching exercises she'd read in English- since she danced? I never bothered to check what was written on the piece of paper in that doorway.
I heard Akemi and her companion, guy who happened to be walking out just when she was, laughing. Their exchange continued. "Step and streech," he repeated to her, imitating, and she said to him, "I'm going to get you for that." Pretending to be offended by his making fun of her mispronunciation. They were playing, having a good time together. And I watched her go off into the dark with the stranger and set in to wait for the phone call which might or might not come.
—
When we hardly knew each other, I searched for things to talk about- almost any would do and none seemed good enough. I asked her how her teachers at the college were, and she said, "Two are very, very friendly. Two are very friendly, two are friendly, and two are strange."
She had a sense of humor.
She spoke to me about her life in the city, described a summer run in the park when she'd enjoyed the scenery, being physical, free so much, felt so felt energized by her surroundings and her own body that she ran longer than planned, took an unknown route, a branch road that cut through new zones of the big park, which was like countryside in the city. She ended up leaving by a different entrance than she'd come in and found herself in a part of the city unfamiliar to her, no longer amid soft green but surrounded by the hard clangor of the city at work, dark stone buildings, cars, delivery trucks roaring. She saw as she seldom did in the neighborhoods, streets she'd become accustomed to that she really was a stranger in a foreign country, far, far from the world where she'd grown up. She looked at me to see if I understood, which I really couldn't, not having lived abroad myself.
She didn't know how to get home from there. It was very hot, the sun beating down so you couldn't forget it; you felt if you stayed out in those conditions you might incur physical damage- remember, she'd been running. She had no money with her and for some moments felt near to panic- as she did so seldom the feeling was unfamiliar like the surroundings.
A guy on the street saw her condition and stopped her.
"Do you know your way around here?" she asked him.
"I live here," he said.
"I'm lost," she said.
"Do you want to come with me?" he asked.
She was frank, talked to me about the bus ride home. She'd sat alone but three guys who'd been in seats further back came and sat with her. She was disappointed, as she'd hoped for, looked forward to enjoying her own thoughts and the view from the window. Those guys wanted to talk with her, and she felt obliged to be sociable.
One asked, "Do you like porn?"
She answered, "Yes. Of course."
She told me she'd never thought of sex as entertainment before, or comedy, but apparently those guys did. They began to describe a film in detail, laughing and eager for her response. "Camera view was through pubic hair" and things like that. It seemed they were aficionados of adult movies, Akemi said.
I in turn talked to her about my life, early romance. I'd gone traveling with my first girlfriend after meeting the one who'd become my second, whom I found her more exciting- I felt I could give more of myself to her, become a bigger person; she opened me and I hoped I did the same for her. During the trip I couldn't get her off my mind. I sent letters- at the time I was still corresponding by hand, finding that better suited than email to personal communication- though of course eventually my view would change.
I don't know why I apprised Akemi of my past two-timing. Maybe it had occurred to me I'd be doing the same with her. Even as we got close, I'd continue seeing another woman, previous girlfriend Andrea. If you've been reading this story, you know something about that already.
At a point in the weeks out of town I became disappointed my new love interest hadn't written back. But of course she couldn't. She knew I was traveling and assumed I had no fixed address. I thought of calling home- I still lived with my parents in those days, my early twenties- and asking if any letters had come from her there.
"And then?" Akemi asked.
"That's about it," I said.
She'd expected more, but there really was nothing to add to the anecdote. I saw her life was more interesting than mine and I wanted more of it, but could I give her what she wanted, needed?
I hit on the end of the trip as a point to talk about, how I'd arrived at the airport late for the return flight and had to run to reach the plane before the door closed, and saw in front of me another passenger, a woman over fifty (that seemed very old to me then) having trouble retrieving her ticket and passport from a dispensing mechanism and I faced the choice of stopping and helping her at the risk of missing my flight or going on past her, assuring my safe boarding but at the cost of a guilty conscience. I chose to stay and lend a hand, and fortunately we both got on the plane and home without a hitch.
"You're a good person," Akemi said to me.
I didn't tell her I'd developed an interest in the woman who worked behind the desk at the boarding gate- she was Scandinavian and had dirty-blonde hair and a winning way, as far as I was concerned (North Europe would figure in Akemi's life later, of course, in the person of Sten the Dane- read on). The uniformed attendant was friendly to me but didn't work on the plane as a flight attendant as I'd hoped; she didn't seem broken up by the knowledge that we would part ways, never to see each other again.
Even then I had a wandering eye, especially for women from abroad, of whom Akemi would be the apotheosis.
Akemi must have thought I was a good person, as we went to bed together days after that conversation. We started with the missionary position, a good one in that it's straightforward, good with someone new, but for some reason things got clumsy. Akemi noticed too.
I said, "Usually this way works well." Akemi agreed. She had experience. We figured out the problem, that she had one of her legs sort of under me. She moved it to the right so that both were out to the side, up around my waist, and all went well then, smoothly. With the awkwardness gone, all our effort went to joy.
My hard cock felt just right in her soft elasticity. She told me my physical conditioning impressed her, and I felt all the hard exercise I did, which I hated, was worthwhile, had paid off big time, that though Akemi was so much younger than me and more interesting, to say the least (a painter, breathtaking to behold), I might yet win her.
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