I stumbled through the garden in darkness, scarcely aware of how I found my way back to the house and into my room. Satomi had left me with scarcely a word. "I must go," is all she said, leaving me alone as she disappeared like a shadow merging back into the dark. As I crouched outside Megumi's window I held myself rigid in mind and body: I dared not move, and I dared not even think about what I was seeing. Finding myself alone, as I lay on my futon unable to sleep, my thoughts at last began to slowly sort themselves out. Seeing Megumi make love aroused me; I could not take in enough of her beauty in those few minutes, but to see her with another man aroused my jealousy also. Only a day ago I had still hoped in the back of my mind that I might become her lover somehow, but now all my hope vanished. That her lover was Caucasian made me wonder about the things she had said to me, about my being a foreigner, an American, un-Japanese and all of her words suddenly seemed turned on their heads, her meanings double entendres. I went over and over our conversations together. If her lover had been Japanese I would not have become as upset, but a Japanese woman with a Caucasian lover brought back too many bitter memories. Despite my own background I had never made love to a woman of Japanese descent. All my girlfriends through college and my adult years were Caucasian. I loved a beautiful Japanese girl once but I lost her and never recovered from the pain of it. Her name was Jill Tomita, and from the moment I saw her I fell in love. She studied cello with my father and came to our house every week for lessons. All through high school I remember sneaking into the balcony that overlooked my father's study to watch her, creeping up to the balustrade on my belly and peering down at her sitting below me. I thought she was the most beautiful girl in the world, and a shiver went through me every time she took her cello out of its case and held it between her thighs. I wanted so much to be that cello and I imagined myself alone with her in her room as she held me that way. In time we would reverse our positions, I would turn around to face her, already between those softly gripping legs. Our families were close. The Tomitas invited us over to dinner occasionally or to various Japanese-American social functions. At their house, while the adults talked, I went down to the basement to hang out with Jill and her two older brothers, talking or watching TV. A few times Jill and I ended up doing things together. I suppose one could call them dates: we were both so shy our parents had set everything up for us. Although I had become completely infatuated with her our friendship remained more like brother and sister. We both ended up going to UC Berkeley together as freshmen. We stayed close, but still more like siblings to each other than I would have liked. I started tutoring her, helping her with some of her mathematics courses, and she would come over to my dorm room every now and then to study. I had no idea that she developed a crush on my roommate Dave during that time and came over mainly in order to catch a glimpse of him until she confided it to me one day. The news crushed me but I tried to act bravely, and with the lover's sense of unreason convinced myself that if I stayed loyal to her she would eventually find it in her heart to want me instead of him. My hopes were completely dashed when coming home late one evening I stumbled into the room to find them both under the covers in Dave's bed. >From then on, throughout college and afterward, I became infatuated with a string of Japanese girls, one after another, but the memory of Jill Tomita and the pain I felt because of what had happened never faded and I loved them all from afar, suffering in silence as I watched them go off with other men. It was as if they were delicate prizes, too fine for me to ever deserve or even hope for. I found other girls to go out with, but my relationships were always unsatisfying; somewhere deep in the back of my mind I felt a restless, unfulfilled desire that ate away at me, never allowing me to enjoy what I had. Roommates and later coworkers often asked me if I could help fix them up with Japanese girls--as if I had a secret formula for success--and I obliged whenever I could, causing me to suffer many more broken hearts. And so discovering Megumi with a Caucasian lover fell into an all too familiar pattern, almost inevitable, and the pangs of jealousy I felt were nothing new at all. *** Megumi leaned over my shoulder. "Mr Sato," she said, "is there a problem? You seem tired today." Her sweet perfume descended on me as she reached over to hit the tab key. I couldn't bring myself to look her in the eye that morning, and every time she spoke I heard echoes of the words she had said to her lover in the heat of passion. "I'm sorry," I mumbled. "Yes I am tired. Yesterday was a long day. I hoped I might see you sooner than I did...sooner than today...to get some feedback. It is hard doing all this work knowing that Mr Ogawa will probably undo most of it." She withdrew her hand from the keyboard and let it rest on my shoulder; the long tapered fingers I had seen grasping and stroking another man grazed the skin at the back of my neck, soft and warm against my skin. "I know," she said. "He generates a lot of stress. You have to find a way to let it dissipate or it can overwhelm you: it happens to me all of the time." She brought a chair next to mine and sat down, pulling the fold of her robe across her knees. How far apart they had been last night, hooked around her lover's elbows as he pushed them up and over her shoulders I remembered. I fixed my eyes on the screen in front of us and tried to clear my mind. Every move she made, every word she said made me think of some image from the night before. As she pointed out a number of things for me to incorporate in my work my fingers stumbled across the keys. My frequent mistakes frustrated her and she reached across me several times to enter certain things herself, each time she did so she brought her soft thigh against mine, her soft warm flesh giving against me. I grew fearful that my robe would no longer hide my state of arousal but everything I wildly tried to turn my mind to contained some point of reference to the night before. Megumi's soft words of instruction and encouragement only added to my torture as she gently, insistently urged me onward to the finish; the hushed excitement of her "yes, yes!" in response to something I entered, or her soft "Oh!" as I surprised her with some clever subtlety: how like the exhortations of a lover coaxing her partner onward, deeper into bliss. When I had finished I wiped the sweat from my forehead. "You should take more frequent breaks if you need to Mr Sato," she said, giving me a pat. "You are ahead of schedule anyway. I will take this to Mr Ogawa now. When he has reviewed it I will come for you. Just wait for me, and get some rest." She slid her hand off my shoulder and rose to go. The soft robe clung to her hips and swished gently about her legs as she walked to the door. I did not dare stand to see her out in my state, and again my mind went back to the night before: the rhythmic sound of her slippers slapping against the floor: how like the lovers' bodies slapping together, and as her robe rustled about her: how like their heavy breathing. I closed my eyes to try and rid my mind of her image before me but the memories only flooded back more strongly, filling the void. Her soft full hips, swaying; how she had held them rigidly the night before, her body a willing, open vessel which her lover had filled. *** Later that afternoon I found myself again in the garden waiting for her to return. After walking strenuously to and fro for a while I seated myself on a bench overlooking the large pond. Closing my eyes I rested, listening to the chirps of birds and the wind in the trees. I did not become aware of Satomi's approach until I felt her weight on the bench beside me. "Mr Sato," she said softly, her voice barely above the wind. "Satomi," I answered, sighing her name as I opened my eyes. Her approach had not entirely surprised me. After what we had seen together the night before I knew we had to meet and discuss it at some point. But as an outsider here I also knew better than to actively seek out either of the two women in the garden. Knowing the ways as they both did it would be their decision to show themselves to me or not as they chose. My place was simply to wait. "The garden is beautiful in the afternoon," Satomi said. The palms of her pale white hands rested on her lap and it was there her eyes lay fixed. "It is also beautiful at night, although what one sees is different then." She blushed, her head and eyes unwavering. She is waiting for me to talk about what we saw, I thought, waiting for me to take the initiative. Her bashfulness reminded me of some women I had known, who after making love seemed to withdraw back into themselves, almost embarrassed by the passion they had shown, letting the part of themselves they had displayed retract, as if to say: "follow me, draw me out again if you can, I want you to." What Satomi and I shared was in a sense a sexual experience I realized. In our own way; as twin voyeurs, we had each watched another couple make love, but there had also been a more important, dynamic connection between the two of us, an energy that flowed from her to me and back again carrying with it a potent undercurrent of sensuality. I remembered the uncomfortable realization which had come over me the night before: that the innocent young Satomi, who saw exactly what I saw, must feel at least some of the same arousal I did. Without touching me she had seduced me, finding a way to move me physically, and without my touching her she had allowed me access to her own emerging sexuality. We had both shared feelings, a kind of parallel experience, each focusing on the same images before us, feeling the same feelings. Our bodies had never touched yet here we were, like two new lovers: the young girl beside me blushing in her modesty, waiting for me to open her up to those feelings again. I heard the sound of her breath close to me and it seemed as if time had ceased to move. Our shared experience formed a cusp: two parallel lines which in our memory and in imagination conjoined, while running their separate, unreconcilable courses through the physical world. "Satomi, why did you take me to Megumi's window last night," I asked. She sat for a long time, so long that I wondered if I had shattered the moment, said exactly the wrong thing to her. "I don't know," she said at last. "I go there often. I find it...exciting. It never occurred to me to let anyone else know about it: it is such a secret thing. I just decided, in an instant." She brushed her hair back over her shoulder and turned towards me. "When I heard you walking down the path last night I hid. I knew you were searching for Megumi, and I knew that you would not find her. She had slipped away, down to the gate, to let him in. Then it occurred to me that we were both waiting, watching for her, only I knew where to find her and you didn't. That is when I decided to show you." "But why?" I asked. "Because you seem different." "Different from whom?" "You seem different from all the men who...want Megumi, who chase after her. I have seen so many men come to work for my father. Not so many here, but in Tokyo all the time. It is as if she has a magical power over them. They lose their self control, they act foolish, or aggressive, or sly, but never thoughtful. I never saw any of them act thoughtfully, until I saw you. I watched and listened to the two of you together before you ever saw me, for the last two nights. Then yesterday, talking over tea, when you mentioned your mother...you just seem so gentle...That is why I think you are different. You act differently around Megumi than the others. You want her, but something about you, the way you act is...appealing to me." "Who is he, the man we saw?" I asked, trying to change the subject ever so slightly. "I don't know his name. Megumi has many lovers. I discovered the window two years ago, by accident. Since then she has had a different man each time, all westerners." Her voice trailed off to a whisper. "But where do they come from?" "I don't know. I never see them except...there. They stay down in the village, I think, and she makes arrangements to meet them at the gate on certain days, when she sneaks them in. I keep a watch in the garden in the evenings, so I know when she slips away to meet them. She must get to know them during her travels for my father's business. But I don't care who they are, they are just men." She looked away, out over the pond. "Mr Sato, you think she is beautiful, you want her, don't you?" she asked softly. "Satomi!" I whispered. "I don't know what to say...I..." "Mr Sato, this is important to me. I know you want her. I can see that much, anyone could. You think that I am too young to talk about these things with you, or you are afraid of my father, what he might do." She drew a deep breath. "Let me tell you: I know the result of a man's desire for a woman. I have seen how it...ends up. Maybe I have seen too much, or more than I should for my age, but that cannot be undone, not now, not ever. I feel as if I have jumped from the start to after the end of the game. I know what is supposed to happen...and all of the ways in which it might happen...but none of the rules. I feel as if something is missing." Again she paused, letting the sounds of the garden softly wash away her words. "I have to know why you want her, what makes a woman desirable," she said. "Satomi, I don't think I can," I said. "Not because I don't want to, but because I don't know myself. To me desire is simply something that happens, a feeling I get, not something I can control. And the explanations of it that come afterward --and they always have to come after, never before--the explanations cannot do it justice. In fact they deaden it, make it sterile." I searched for a better explanation of something I felt I knew nothing about. I am the last person this young girl should turn to for advice, I thought. "Maybe that is a good definition of it," I continued. "It is something external to oneself, something which inspires one to action. Certain...types of actions. Something that has to be lived, not explained. You are still young Satomi, whatever things you may have seen; all I can say to you is what I have already said. Don't rob yourself of your life by worrying about it, why it happens, just live, let it happen when it is natural." We sat for several minutes without speaking. "You are right, Mr Sato," she said very softly. Without looking over at me she twisted her body, in one fluid motion slipping the robe down over her shoulders, exposing her tiny breasts, capped by pink nipples as fine and delicate as the tips of newly budded roses. "Touch me," she whispered, but no sooner than she had spoken we became aware of soft footsteps approaching from around the bend in the path. Satomi quickly pulled the robe back over her shoulders. "It's Megumi!" she whispered and was gone.