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  'You can't park here!' he shouted.

  Shut up, asshole, she thought to herself, yet even the unspoken swearword sounded lame this morning. Shuffling back to her damp, forlorn Golf, she started the engine and pulled back into the stream of traffic. She had no idea where she was headed and no clue where to find a pay phone. Still, it hardly mattered since the traffic was nearly at a standstill.

  What to do? She sighed, peering out through the fogged-up windshield. The broken defroster bothered her, but not nearly as much as her lack of a plan.

  -

  When she'd come home this morning from the factory, there had been no sign of Tetsuya who should have been asleep in the bedroom. Obviously, he was still mad after the fight they'd had last night and had decided to stay somewhere else. Well, what did she care? She'd be better off if a bum like that never came home. She had gone straight to bed and was just dozing off when the phone rang. It was still barely 7.00 a.m. and she sounded a bit grumpy when she answered.

  'I'm very sorry to disturb you so early,' the voice on the other end said with exaggerated politeness, 'but is that Kuniko Jonouchi?'

  'What do you want?' Kuniko muttered.

  'I'm calling from the Million Consumers Centre,' the man said. Kuniko was suddenly wide awake. How could she have forgotten something so important? The man continued his well-rehearsed patter. 'I thought it might have slipped your mind, so I'm calling to remind you that your payment was due yesterday. I believe we still haven't received your deposit. I'm sure you're aware of the payment schedule: your fourth payment of ¥55,200 was due on the twentieth. If we do not receive payment today, you will incur a penalty fee and we will be sending around a collection agent. We would appreciate your immediate attention to this matter.'

  The call was from a local loan shark. Kuniko had been hounded by creditors for several years, having run up large car loans and credit-card bills. Sometime last year she had realised that she wasn't even thinking of paying back the principal any longer but was just trying to keep up with the interest. Then even that began to prove difficult, and she started going to loan sharks to borrow against her pay-cheque. And now the loan sharks were after her and she had nowhere else to turn. Her debts had doubled in almost no time, and both the regular creditors and the loan sharks were threatening to blacklist her.

  Things had got worse when she'd been stupid enough to believe the advertisements from a local 'credit agency'. 'Monthly payments got you down? Need cash in a hurry?' they had asked, and she had answered with an emphatic 'Yes' - the first step toward the current mess. A pleasant enough older woman had come to see her and, with nothing more than her driver's licence and the name of her husband's company, had handed over ¥300,000, a sum that had allowed her make the interest payments on her credit cards and pay-cheque loans. Kuniko had been too focused on just getting by for the moment to realise that this new debt carried a forty-per-cent interest rate. So when she'd scrounged the money from Tetsuya to repay it, the woman told her that the amount had already swollen to ¥500,000.

  This meant she had to dig up some cash today. The can where they kept the money for household expenses had nothing in it but small change - when had that been spent? Beginning to feel a bit shaky, she took her fake Gucci wallet from her bag, but with pay day still a few days off, she only had a few thousand yen left. Her only hope was to try to find Tetsuya and get the money from him again. 'Where could he have gone?' she said aloud, flipping through her address book for his office number. She dialled the number, but no one answered - still too early. Even if she did get through, though, he probably wouldn't take the call. She was getting rattled now. If she didn't make the payment today, someone, a yakuza-type most likely, would pay her a visit. Despite her brassy looks, Kuniko was really quite timid, and the thing that scared her most at the moment was the thought of this man.

  She shuffled into the bedroom and opened the bottom drawer of the dresser, looking for an old nest egg that just might still be hiding among the underwear and socks; but though she pawed through the bras and nylons, she came up empty-handed. Then, seized by a nasty suspicion, she began opening other drawers, only to discover that all of Tetsuya's clothing was gone. After last night's fight, he must have pocketed every last yen in the house and left home.

  With sleep now out of the question, Kuniko jumped in her car and drove to the cash machine by the station. When she checked the balance on their joint account, it came up zero. More of his handiwork. At this rate, she wouldn't even be able to make the rent. She was almost pulling her hair out in fury as she headed back to the car.

  Finally escaping the traffic, she turned left at a light and came to a row of older, one-storey municipal housing units. A brand-new telephone booth stood out against the dingy background. Pulling over, she jumped out of the car without bothering to take her umbrella and ran to the booth.

  'Hello, is that Max Pharmaceuticals? I'd like to speak to Jonouchi in the sales department.'

  The reply came as a shock. 'Jonouchi quit last month,' said the voice on the other end of the line. Kuniko had always thought of Tetsuya as a fool, an incompetent, but he had put one over on her. In a rage, she threw down the tattered telephone book and began stamping on it with her damp shoes, sending shreds of paper swirling around. Still not appeased, she slammed down the receiver with all her might. Shit! Shit! What should I do? They're coming today, and I've got nowhere to hide. She would have to ask Masako, she decided. Hadn't Yoshie just this morning been saying she was going to borrow money from her? So why couldn't she ask, too? If Masako refused, it would just prove what a cold fish she was. Since she was completely self-centred, Kuniko thought it natural that Masako would be willing to lend to her if she were willing to lend to anyone.

  She slid her phone card back into the slot and tried dialling Masako's number, but the phone seemed to be broken now. No matter how many times she inserted the card, it came sliding back out. Clucking with annoyance, she gave up on it and decided to pay Masako a visit. Her house wasn't far away. Kuniko had been there once and thought she could manage to find it again. Climbing back into her car, she unfolded a large map and held it up with one hand as she pulled back on to the main road.

  -

  Masako's house was small, but it was in a neighbourhood of newer, made-to-order homes, which in itself made Kuniko jealous. Still, she thought, remembering how careless Masako was about her clothes, it couldn't be all that fancy. She took some comfort in this analysis, despite the fact that she was here to borrow money. Across the street, land that had recently been a field was being readied for construction. Kuniko parked in front of a mound of clay and walked toward Masako's house. A familiar bike was parked out front - the Skipper's. Immediately assuming that Yoshie had beaten her there for the loan, Kuniko was worried. Maybe Yoshie didn't have a payment due today, though, so she wouldn't mind letting her go first. That's how she'd put it.

  She rang the bell on the intercom, but there was no answer. She rang again, but the house was quiet. Perhaps they've gone out somewhere, she thought, but Masako's Corolla was parked in front, and so was Yoshie's bike. Strange. Maybe they're both sleeping - the thought occurred naturally to Kuniko, who was herself short of sleep. But then she remembered that Yoshie was taking care of her invalid mother-in-law, and she would never allow herself to fall asleep at someone else's house.

  Suddenly suspicious, she walked around to the back of the house, umbrella still in hand. Once she'd reached the garden, she could peek through the lace curtains into what appeared to be the living room, but it was dark and silent. There was a light on, however, at the far end of the corridor. Perhaps they couldn't hear the intercom that far back in the house.

  Heading back toward the front, she circled the house again, this time in the opposite direction, and came to a window that seemed to be the bathroom. The light was on, and she could hear Masako and Yoshie talking quietly. What could they be doing back here? She reached through the metal bars and tapped on the window.

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