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Takatsuki had landed the job he'd always wanted—reporting for a top newspaper. Since he never studied, his grades at the university were nothing to brag about, but the impression he made at interviews was overwhelmingly positive, and he had basically been hired on the spot. Sayoko had entered graduate school, as planned. They married six months after graduation, the ceremony as cheerful and busy as Takatsuki himself. They honeymooned in France, and bought a two-room condo a short commute from downtown. Junpei would come over for dinner a couple of times a week, and the newlyweds always welcomed him warmly. It was almost as if they were more comfortable with Junpei around than when they were alone together.

Takatsuki enjoyed his work at the newspaper. He was assigned first to the city desk, which kept him running from one scene of tragedy to the next. "I can see a corpse now and not feel a thing," he said. Bodies dismembered by trains, charred in fires, discolored with age, the bloated cadavers of drowning victims, gunshot victims with their brains splattered. "Whatever distinguished one lump of flesh from another when they were alive, it's all the same once they're dead," he said. "Just used-up shells."

Takatsuki was sometimes too busy to make it home before morning. Then Sayoko would call Junpei. She knew that he was often up all night.

"Are you working? Can you talk?"

"Sure," he would say. "I'm not doing anything special."

They'd discuss the books they had read, or things that had come up in their daily lives. Then they'd talk about the old days, when they were still free and spontaneous. Conversations like that would inevitably bring back memories of the time that Junpei had held Sayoko in his arms: the smooth touch of her lips, the softness of her breasts against him, the transparent early-autumn sunlight streaming onto the tatami floor of his apartment—these were never far from his thoughts.

Just after she turned thirty, Sayoko became pregnant. She was a graduate assistant at the time, but she took a break from her job to give birth to a baby girl. The three of them came up with all kinds of names for the baby, but decided in the end on one of Junpei's suggestions—Sala. "I love the sound of it," Sayoko told him. There were no complications with the birth, and that night Junpei and Takatsuki found themselves together without Sayoko for the first time in a long while. Junpei had brought over a bottle of single malt to celebrate, and they emptied it together at the kitchen table.

"Why does time shoot by like this?" Takatsuki asked with a depth of feeling that was rare for him. "It seems like only yesterday I was a freshman, and then I met you, and then I met Sayoko, and the next thing I know I'm a father. It's weird, like I'm watching a movie in fast-forward. You probably wouldn't understand, Junpei. You're still living the way you did in college. It's like you never stopped being a student, you lucky bastard."

"Not so lucky," Junpei said, but he knew how Takatsuki felt. Sayoko was a mother now. This was as big a shock for Junpei as it was for Takatsuki. The gears of life had moved ahead a notch with a loud ker-chunk, and Junpei knew that they would never turn back again. The one thing that he was not yet sure of was how he was supposed to feel about it.

"I couldn't tell you this before," Takatsuki said, "but I'm pretty sure Sayoko was more attracted to you than she was to me." He was drunk, but there was a more serious gleam in his eye than usual.

"That's crazy," Junpei said with a smile.

"Like hell it is. I know what I'm talking about. You know how to put words on a page, but you don't know shit about a woman's feelings. A drowned corpse does better than you. You had no idea how she felt about you, and I figured, what the hell, I was in love with her, and I had to have her. I still think she's the greatest woman in the world. I still think it was my right to have her."

"Nobody's saying it wasn't," Junpei said.

Takatsuki nodded. "But you still don't get it. Not really. When it comes to anything halfway important, you're so damn stupid. It's amazing to me that you can put a piece of fiction together."

"Yeah, well, that's a different thing."

"Anyhow, now there are four of us," Takatsuki said with a sigh. "Four of us. Four. Is that O.K.?"

Junpei learned just before Sala's second birthday that Takatsuki and Sayoko were on the verge of breaking up. Sayoko seemed apologetic when she broke the news to him. Takatsuki had had a lover since the time of Sayoko's pregnancy, and he hardly ever came home anymore, she explained.

Junpei couldn't seem to grasp what he was hearing, no matter how many details Sayoko was able to give him. Why would Takatsuki have wanted another woman? He had declared Sayoko to be the greatest woman in the world the night that Sala was born, and he had meant it. Besides, he was crazy about Sala. "I mean, I'm over at your house all the time, eating dinner with you guys, right? But I never sensed a thing. You were happiness itself—the perfect family."

"It's true," Sayoko said. "We weren't lying to you or putting on an act. But quite separately from that he got himself a girlfriend, and we can never go back to what we had. So we decided to split up. Don't let it bother you too much. I'm sure things will work out better now, in a lot of different ways."

Sayoko and Takatsuki were divorced some months later. They reached an agreement without the slightest problem: no recriminations, no disputed claims. Takatsuki went to live with his girlfriend; he came to visit Sala once a week, and they all agreed that Junpei would try to be present at those times. "It would make things easier for both of us," Sayoko told Junpei. He felt as if he had suddenly grown much older, though he had only just turned thirty-three.

Whenever they got together, Takatsuki was his usual talkative self, and Sayoko's behavior was perfectly natural, as though nothing had happened. If anything, she seemed even more natural than before, in Junpei's eyes. Sala had no idea that her parents were divorced. And Junpei played his assigned role perfectly. The three joked around as always and talked about the old days.

"Hey, Junpei, tell me," Takatsuki said, one January night when the two of them were walking home, their breath white in the chill air. "Do you have somebody you're planning to marry?"

"Not at the moment," Junpei said.

"No girlfriend?"

"Nope."

"What do you say you and Sayoko get together?"

Junpei squinted at Takatsuki as if at some too bright object. "Why?" he asked.

"What do you mean, 'why'? It's so obvious! If nothing else, you're the only man I'd want to be a father to Sala."

"Is that the only reason you think I should marry Sayoko?"

Takatsuki sighed and draped his thick arm around Junpei's shoulders.

"What's the matter? Don't you like the idea of marrying Sayoko? Or is it the thought of stepping in after me?"

"That doesn't bother me. I just wonder if you can make this like some kind of deal. It's a question of decency."

"This is no deal," Takatsuki said. "And it's got nothing to do with decency. You love Sayoko, right? You love Sala, too, don't you? That's the most important xGet Laid Paternity Laws Getlaidwithoutbeingbroke Jersey City New Jersey Get Laid Without Being Broke 读书 - HONEY PIE by HARUKI MURAKAMI g j u u Get Laid Without Being Broke Laid Get Laid Without Being Broke Being zGet Laid Paternity Laws Getlaidwithoutbeingbroke Jersey City New Jersey Get Laid Without Being Broke 读书 - HONEY PIE by HARUKI MURAKAMI j w Get Laid Without Being Broke