Read Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness for Free Online

obscene and unjust about this. For the two of them were equally passive in these matters, but the young man pleased me simply by being himself. As I lay in the dark enjoying my body’s pulsations, this injustice was not lost to me and I became accustomed to the small volume of tears that would run out of me as soon as my body was still again.
    Yet in the morning my sadness would be forgotten. I would wake with a fresh sense of purpose as I prepared myself for another day at the library, another day on which I might encounter him. Although I had failed to pose a single question from my ridiculous queue, I was pleased with, even a bit alarmed by, our progress. The sensation of being on a dangerous and terrifying track, racing toward a joyful collision, persisted. I felt alternately like a daredevil piece of the finest machinery and a child’s toy being controlled by an unseen operator. I had come a long way since my days of self-assigned obsolescence. Indeed I was speeding along with a new sense of satisfaction, feeling unusually primped, alert to beauty, and exhilarated by the pursuit. But the truth was, I wanted more.
    I could see that not far up ahead, a piece of the track was missing. I could not reach the infuriatingly lovely black loops and twisting figure eights I saw in the distance without first finding or building the missing pieces of track. There was a gap to be filled, a chasm to be crossed. How I went about it seemed of the utmost importance. If I hurled myself across the void too recklessly, I might shatter into bits when I landed. If I went too slowly, I might drop into the chasm without making it safely across. How could I reach my hand across the library counter and touch him? How does one do something inappropriate in as appropriate a manner as possible?
     
    * * *
     
    Inspired by Nella’s comment that she had seen the young man there one Saturday, I, rather inanely and with the fervor of a religious devotee on pilgrimage, began to visit Main Street as often as I could, with the hope that I too might be so blessed. As soon as Maria had finished her afternoon snack I would ask, with as much story time animation as I could muster, “Would you like to go to the city?” Having once visited New York, she knew there were no cities to be found on our island, that the city to which I referred was nothing but a quaint street with a few shops and cafés, a city only in comparison to the hush of our rural world. “Oh yes!” she would say, fluttering her eyelashes and swatting the air with one hand, in imitation of any number of animated heroines she had encountered. “I just love the city!”
    I would take on the aspect of a gallant prince, bow deeply and offer her my hand. We would walk thus, down the highway to the bus stop where we would wait for the #2 bus to take us down-island. Our favorite bakery, Colette’s, whose almond croissants rivaled New York’s (someday, I promised, I would take her to Paris, though I did not know how), was the only bakery on the island that stayed open year-round.
    During these “city” excursions I pampered her. We split the mountainous croissant down the middle and I allowed her a glass of steamed milk. As we sat facing each other at a table next to the window, I tried continually to take her in (her large brown eyes that were shaped much like the almonds on our pastry, her soft Gerber mouth, the well-spaced little row of teeth that had the look of a toy picket fence, the cheeks that retained the plump exuberance of a nursing infant’s). I looked at her directly and listened intently to her stories, barely looking down as I poured yet more milk into my tea, but all the while I was keeping an eye on the street. Yes, all the time she was talking about the lonely dinosaur family that had secretly survived extinction and the cat named Castle-Diamond whose daughter Shukana could talk, I was watching for the young man.
    Once the croissant had disappeared, we would turn our gazes