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I was in my mid-thirties, and adrift.
I had my work — my day job — which I did without enthusiasm, though at least it gave me something to do with my time. At least I could fill up the hours of daylight, if need be.
What I really wanted — or what I thought I really wanted — was a decisive idea as to what I should next do with my life, as a whole. I was waiting for some kind of all-encompassing inspiration.
I suppose I was waiting for a cosmic revelation.
And as it turned out — as it inevitably does — I was waiting in vain, because the sidereal clap of thunder never came.
Yet I think I thought of my drifting, and my idle passivity, not as indolence or irresponsibility, but as type of active readiness.
And then, as always happens when you allow yourself to float rudderless and anchorless in deepest space, I crashed smack bang into a vicious hungry ghost.
She was called Yuko.
She was from Nagasaki.
And, unlike me, she appeared to have a plan.
I think it involved getting rid of my wife, so that I could lavish her — Yuko — with my undivided attention. ‘When you…
