In several short story collections the running header tells you the title of the book, which isn't very useful. Here, in the margin, you are told the story you're in, and the vertical location of the text shows you how far through the book you are.
- "Drive my car" - An actor, a widower, chats to his quiet driver, Misaki, a plain 24 y.o. woman. Neither has many friends. He's the same age as her father, she's the same age as his daughter would have been had she not died when 3 days old. For a few months he had befriended another actor, Takatsuki, who he knew had been one of his wife's lovers. There's a neat duality - Misaki, who drives his car, can hide her emotion; Takatsuki, who screwed his wife, couldn't hide his. He pretended to like Takatsuki intended to take revenge, but he didn't. He never worked out why his wife slept with others. He concludes that much acting took place.
- "Yesterday" - Kitaru, a guy who failed his entrance exams and feels inadequate, asks his friend Tanimura (a student who's split with his girl friend of 3 years partly because she didn't want sex) to go out with his girlfriend Erika (who's now at university, and who he's been friends with for years) until Kitanu retakes the exams. Tanimura has a meal with her and is impressed. Kitaru disappears after Tanimura reports back. 16 years later Tanimura bumps into the still beautiful Erika. He's married. She's single, and a bit sad that Kitaru's in the States working in kitchens. Tanimura recalls how sad and lonely he was all those years ago.
- "An independent organ" - We're warned not to trust the details of the narrative that follows, about Tokai, a male, 50 y.o. cosmetic surgeon who doesn't want to marry, so he dates women (sometimes concurrently) who are in steady relationships. He enjoys the company of quick-witted women more than sex with merely pretty ones. His gay secretary arranges his work and women schedule. One day after a game of squash he tells the narrator (a writer) that he's fallen in love with a woman who has a husband and a young daughter. He's read about Nazi camps and wonders whether he's lived a worthwhile life. They don't meet again. About 2 months later, Tokai's secretary phones the narrator to say that Tokai's dead. They meet. Tokai had starved himself to death, perhaps because the woman he loved had gone of with another man. Tokai had left the narrator a squash racket. The secretary wants Tokai to be remembered, so this story was written. The narrator recalls that Tokai claimed women had an independent organ that lets them lie with impunity.
- "Scheherazade" - It begins with "Each time they had sex, she told Habara a strange and gripping story afterwards". Habara's 31, house-bound. His "support liaison" buys food for him and is his lover. She's 35 and running to flab, with a husband and 2 young kids. She tells him of her past life as a lamprey, or how she got into the empty house of a classmate she fancied, touched his possessions and stole a pencil, sneaking a tampon into a drawer. She returned twice more. On the 3rd visit she took an unwashed T-shirt and found his porn mags. When she returned for a 4th visit she found that the locks had been changed. She tells Habara that next time she'll tell him what happened when after years she met the boy and her mother.
- "Kino" - having found his 35 y.o. wife in bed with a work colleague of his, Kino (39) resigns from his job and buys his aunt's coffee bar, converting it to a bar for drinkers. He wasn't angry about the adultery - "it couldn't have been helped" because he couldn't make anyone else happy. Kamita, a young man with a shaven head, becomes a quiet regular. When a brawl threatens, he solves the problem. His wife apologises for her behaviour. Kino sleeps with a customer who has cigarette burns. Snakes begin to appear. Kimita tells him to go away for a while and keep on the move. He says he's a friend of his aunt, that he's been keeping an eye on him for her, and that he should send postcard to her, without messages, every so often. But he can't resist including a message. There's a knock at his hotel door.
- "Samsa in love" - It begins with "He woke to discover that he had undergone a metamorphosis and become Gregor Samsa". He learns how to walk, "he had no way of measuring the time, except by the pain", is visited by a humpbacked girl, a lockmaster. He struggles to understand the passion aroused by her.
- "Men without women" - What men who become alone are like. Three of the women the narrator had gone out with have killed themselves.
I like "Drive my car" and "Kino" most.
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