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fiction by jonathan gabriel

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I saw the lock on the crude wooden door had not been fastened. I threw open the door and saw nothing disturbing. The straw mat floor glistened in its polished brightness. I threw open the shoji that divided my one room cottage and saw that several suit cases were missing. Hangers were bare of clothing. My houseboy was not there to meet me to help me change into slippers. I lowered myself onto the pillow on the floor near the shuttered window and thoughts danced through my consciousness.

My trusted servant was gone. . . . Was that where my hope was to go also? Living would not be easy on Japan's northernmost island that had the peculiar cast of the American West of the eighties in its countenance. I would need help; I was new in the land. I had a whole history of hard luck behind me and wasn't looking for things to break easily for me. There was that group of young men that looked at me so strangely as I kicked through the pools on the village's mud road on my way home in the dusk! They came close to me, but I didn't think much about it at the moment. Just curiosity about the newcoming foreigner, a pedestrian, oblivious of the rainy season. They could never believe that the American could not drive nor afford a vehicle. He looked much too responsible and even well clothed to be living on money he borrowed from strangers until the military base paid him his first salary.

I thought of Poe when in the midst of my thoughts I heard a knock on my door. No one knew me but the farmer from whom I rented the cottage. The houseboy had probably taken refuge in the big city. The surrounding neighbors were aloof and shy. I opened the door and saw Shuji-his handsome features shining in the bright moonlight-dressed in Western clothing and smiling almost in panic. I stared at his ivory teeth as his brown eyes searched my face for a sign of warmth. His fair complexion betrayed a blushing face, as he inquired about the houseboy. I understood the language instinctively. For a lonely man this kind of company must not be lost. I asked him in. Without hesitation he stepped up into the tiny entrance before stepping on the tatami floor and began the struggle with his cumbrous boots. We sat on the floor and looked at one another with a strange seriousness. We both seemed to have a mental stranglehold on one another. I relaxed completely because I knew that it would be useless to counter the inexorable will of a divine plan that plotted this appearance and this episode in my twisted, discouraging life.

I was in my early thirties; I was in Japan just to be abroad. . . just to be

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