Hokkaido Highway Blues

walked toward the vanishing point.
     
    early spring —
    a single road,
    vanishing
     
    A truck rumbled by, chased by a few cars, but other than that, the traffic on the Toyama perimeter was slight. Ahead of me, the lines of perspective came together. A car pulled over. It was a hatchback with a company logo on the side.
    “Going north?” I asked.
    Inside the car was a woman who had surprised herself by stopping. She was in her middle years, but had a bobbed girl’s haircut that defied the arithmetic of age. She was all afluster. “What have I done?” she said aloud.
    I opened the door and was halfway in when she said, “Wait! Stop!”
    “Yes?“ I was in limbo, my head in the door, my buttocks thrust out into traffic.
    “Are you dangerous?”
    “What?”
    “I said, Are you dangerous?”
    I wasn’t sure I heard her correctly “Who? Me? No, I’m not dangerous at all.”
    “You promise?”
    “Sure.”
    “All right, then,” she said. “You can get in.”
    And that was how I met the unsinkable, irrepressible, wholly undeniable Kikumi Otsugi, a woman who believed in bad men, but not bad dishonest men. I had given her my word of honor that I would not harm her, and she was satisfied.
     
    * * *
     
    The car was cluttered with catalogs, magazines, stacks of brochures bound in rubber bands, road maps, file folders—as though a small tornado had recently passed through. She leaned over and shuffled some of the papers to make room for me, but all she succeeded in doing was stirring everything around. I nestled in and waited for the car to move. It didn’t.
    She looked over at me, then laughing at herself, said, “What am I doing, asking a stranger into my car?”
    “Would you like me to get out?”
    “Oh, no, of course not,“ and she shook her head, less in disagreement and more as though she were trying to shake some sense into herself. “Why are you out here?” she asked. “So far from town? Is that too personal? Maybe it is. Anyway, I suppose you have your reasons. I mean, I’m curious, but it doesn’t matter. Before we begin, my name is Kikumi, it means beautiful flower.“ Then, laughing at her own immodesty, she said. “It was true once, many years ago.”
    “My name’s William. It means very safe person.“
    “There,” she said. We shook hands and her hand felt small and fluttery in my palm, like a bird’s wing. “Now then,“ she said. “We know each other’s name, so we are no longer strangers, right? I can give you a ride.”
    She put the car into drive and pulled out, checking afterward to see if any vehicles had been coming. It seemed to sum up her approach to things: act first and then check later to see if it was all right.
    “I know what I’ll do!“ she exclaimed. “I’ll take you in to Kurobe City. We can have an early lunch. Well, a late breakfast. Anyway, we’ll have coffee— if you like coffee. I think most Americans do. Or is that just a stereotype? Who knows? No matter, I like coffee. I have a friend that speaks English. At least, she says she does. Who knows. I can’t tell one way or the other. Now then... what was I saying?”
    “Kurobe City?”
    “Oh, yes. You’ll like Kurobe. Very famous, you know—” she said, and suddenly pointed toward my groin. “Zippers.”
    “Zippers?”
    She nodded gravely. “Kurobe zippers. Very famous.”
    We skimmed the edges of Toyama, a low, wide city of the plains framed by distant mountains. The entire area, as well as the city, was part of the regional Toyama culture. The Toyama region, according to Kikumi, was one of commerce. Prosperous, upbeat, hardworking. “Toyama women are famous,” she declared. “They work. They don’t just live off their husbands. Everyone says it, they say, ‘Toyama women are strong willed.’ ”
    She used the word erai, which is difficult to translate. The word has a slightly nasty edge to it, but it was clear that Kikumi took it as a compliment.
    “Toyama women are rich—very rich. Not me, but most others are. I have one friend who played the stock market, and—you know what you should do? You should marry a Toyama girl, then you wouldn’t have to hitchhike. You could take the Bullet Train, first-class—except she probably wouldn’t let you. She would say, ‘Save the money and take economy class.’ Oh, yes,” said Kikumi. “Toyama women are very strong.”
    “Are you a Toyama woman?”
    “Yes. No. I mean, I think I am, but my husband is not so sure. Often he asks me, Are