asako stood in the bathroom doorway, listening to the sound of the rain through the window. Nobuki, who had apparently been the last one to use the bath, had drained the water and replaced the plastic cover. Though the walls and tiles were dry now, the room was still filled with the clean smell of bath water, the smell of a quiet, peaceful home. Masako felt the urge to throw open the window and let in the damp air from outside.

The little house seemed to be demanding all sorts of things of her: to be swept from top to bottom, to have its overgrown yard weeded, the smell of cigarettes purged, to have the sizeable loans owed on it repaid. Still, despite all its urgent demands, Masako could never bring herself to feel that this was really her home. Why was it that she always felt unsettled here, like a temporary lodger?

When she had pulled out of the parking lot with Kenji's body in the trunk, she had already come to a decision. Once she got home, she went straight to the bathroom to begin thinking about how to lay out the corpse and get the job done. Though she knew the feeling was possibly the sign of a sick mind, there was a part of her that was exhilarated by the challenge. She stepped barefoot into the tiled washing area and lay down on her back. She and Kenji were roughly the same height, so he should easily fit if they laid him out at an angle like this. It was ironic but fortunate that Yoshiki had insisted on the architect making this part of the house larger than usual.

Masako could feel the cool of the tiles on her back as she lay looking out the window. The sky was grey and without depth. Remembering the sight of Kazuo Miyamori standing in the rain, she rolled up the sleeve of her shirt. The bruise on her arm had clearly been left by his large thumb, and it occurred to her, that it had been a long time since she'd felt such strength from a man's hands.

'What are you doing?' said a voice from the dark doorway. Sitting up, Masako could see Yoshiki, still in his pyjamas, staring in at her from the dressing area. 'What are you doing in there?' he asked again. Masako jumped up and stared back at him as she rolled down her sleeve. He was barely awake and hadn't yet combed his wispy hair or put on his glasses, but there he was, watching her with a sour look on his face. The way he scowled when he was trying to focus on something reminded her of Nobuki.

'Nothing,' she said. 'I was just thinking of taking a shower.' Yoshiki listened to her awkward lie and then looked past her, out the window.

'It's raining,' he said. 'Won't be hot today.'

'I know, but I got all sweaty at the factory.'

'Suit yourself. But for a second there I thought you'd gone crazy.'

'Why would you think that?'

'What would you think if you saw somebody staring off into space and then suddenly flopping down on the bathroom floor?' It made Masako uncomfortable to realise that he'd been watching her through the open door for some time. But then it seemed that recently Yoshiki had been watching both Nobuki and her from a distance, as if maintaining the space between them were part of his defence.

'You might have told me you were standing there,' she said. He merely shrugged without answering, and Masako squeezed past him out of the room. 'Do you want some breakfast?' she called back, heading for the kitchen without hearing his reply. Dumping some beans into the noisy coffee grinder, she set about making their usual meal of toast and scrambled eggs. It had been some time now since the house had been filled in the morning with the smell of rice cooking in the automatic steamer. When their son had suddenly stopped needing a lunch for school, there was no more call for a large pot of rice.

'Pretty gloomy,' Yoshiki muttered, looking out the window as he sat down at the table after washing his face. It struck Masako that the comment could apply to their household as easily as to the weather. It seemed suffocating, somehow, to face her husband across the breakfast table on such a rainy morning, without even the cheerful patter of the television or the radio. She rubbed her temples, which were throbbing from exhaustion. Yoshiki took a sip of coffee. As he opened the newspaper, a heavy bundle of advertisements slipped out on to the table. Masako gathered them up and began skimming the supermarket inserts.

'What happened to your arm?' he asked abruptly. Masako looked up with a puzzled expression. 'Your arm,' he repeated, pointing at the spot. 'You've got a bruise.'

'I bumped it at the factory,' she said, frowning slightly. Whether he believed her or not, he dropped the subject, but Masako remembered that she'd been thinking about Kazuo Miyamori's thumb while she was staring at the bruise. Yoshiki was sensitive about this kind of thing and was no doubt suspicious. Still, he wasn't asking any more questions - probably because he didn't really want to know anything about her. Resigning herself to his lack of interest, she lit a cigarette. Yoshiki, who didn't smoke, turned irritably toward the window.

Suddenly, they heard the sound of someone charging down the stairs. Yoshiki tensed visibly as Nobuki appeared in the doorway dressed in an oversized T-shirt and sloppy, knee-length pants. As he entered the room, Masako could see him switch off the noisy, youthful energy he'd had a moment before and shroud his face behind a blank stare. Still, the mask couldn't hide the eyes which seemed dissatisfied with everything they saw, or the large mouth clenched in hostility. In some ways, he was the image of Yoshiki as a young man. Nobuki went straight to the refrigerator and began drinking from the bottle of mineral water.

'Use a glass,' Masako said, but he ignored her and went on drinking. As she watched his recently developed Adam's apple bob up and down, she felt herself losing control. 'You may not want to say anything,' she said, getting up from the table, 'but I know you can hear me.' She tried to wrench the bottle out of his hand, but he elbowed her aside. The blow was painful - the boy had suddenly grown so tall and solid - and Masako slumped heavily against the sink. Nobuki, looking as though nothin g had happened, slowly replaced the cap on the bottle and put it back in the refrigerator.

'I don't care if you don't talk,' she said, 'but you can't act like that.' Nobuki mugged astonishment and looked down at her dully; and as he did so, she thought again how like a total stranger her own son seemed - a stranger she didn't like much at that. On an impulse, she reached out and slapped him. The skin on his cheek, which she had touched for only an instant, was taut and smooth, with no trace of the baby fat he'd had so recently. Her palm stung where she'd hit him. He stood for a moment, startled, and then pushed past her and disappeared into the bathroom without a word.

She didn't know what she was hoping for; it seemed as though everything she said or did was as useless as sprinkling water on a scorching desert. She stared at her bright red palm for a moment and then looked over at Yoshiki; but he sat motionless, eyes glued to the newspaper, as if he had no son, as if there had never been a boy named Nobuki in his life.

'I give up,' she said. 'It's hopeless.' To the extent he seemed to notice him at all, Yoshiki had apparently given up on the boy as well. All in pursuit of some sort of spiritual goal. Yoshiki seemed to find less evolved beings irritating. For his part, Nobuki still bore a grudge against his father for having failed to support him during his crisis at school. In the end the three of them were so completely estranged that it was hard to understand why they even lived together.

If I were to tell them that there was a dead body in the trunk of my car, how would they react, Masako wondered. Would Nobuki be so shocked that he'd finally say something? Would Yoshiki be so furious that he'd hit her? No, they probably wouldn't even believe her. Masako was beginning to suspect that she was the one who'd grown away from her little family, but that didn't make her feel especially lonely.

A short time later both her husband and her son had made their hurried departures for work and the house was quiet again. Masako finished her coffee and lay down on the sofa in the living room for a nap, but she found it hard to get to sleep.

***

The bell on the intercom rang.

'It's me.' Yoshie's voice sounded timid. Masako had half expected her not to come at all, but Yoshie was too loyal for that.

When she opened the door, she found her friend dressed in the same shabby clothes she'd had on that morning at the factory, a faded pink T-shirt and sweat pants that were worn at the knees. She peered into the house, apparently terrified.

'It's not here,' said Masako, pointing at the car parked next to the door. 'It's in the trunk.' Yoshie seemed to shrink away from it. 'I'm sorry,' she said, 'but I just can't do this. You've got to let me back out.' She had barely spoken when she pushed her way into the entrance hall and threw herself down prostrate on the floor. Masako stood watching her grovel like a frog, wondering idly when Yoshie had started perming her hair. She had expected something like this to happen and was hardly surprised. 'If I say "no", will you go running to the police?' she asked finally. When Yoshie looked up, her face was pale.

'No,' she said, shaking her head. 'Never.'

'But you still can't pay back the money. In other words, you'll send your daughter on her school trip, but when it comes to a once-in-a-lifetime favour, you can't be bothered.'

'But Masako, this isn't any normal favour. You're talking about helping out with a murder.'

'I said it was "once-in-a-lifetime".'

'But it's murder,' Yoshie repeated.

'So you'd do it if it were something else? If it were robbery or burglary? Is it really all that different?' said Masako, as if turning the question over in her own mind. Her friend's eyes widened in shock and Masako laughed quietly.

'It is different,' Yoshie murmured.

'Who says so?'

'It's not a matter of anybody saying so. It just is - any civilised person knows that.' Masako watched quietly as Yoshie ran her hands over her tangled hair, still staring at the floor. It was a habit she had when she was upset about something.

'Fine,' Masako said at last. 'Then at least help me carry it in from the car. I can't get it all the way to the bathroom by myself.'

'I've got to get home. My mother-in-law will be waking up soon.'

'It won't take long,' said Masako, slipping into Yoshiki's sandals and going out the door. It was still raining, but that meant there was no one in the street. It was also fortunate that Masako's house was across the street from a vacant lot where the red clay was turned up in preparation for construction. The houses along the street were built close together, but since she was at the end, her entrance was shielded from view.

She felt for the keys in her pocket as she glanced around. No one in sight - now was her chance. But Yoshie still hadn't come out of the house.

'Are you going to help me or not?' she called out irritably. 'Just to carry it,' Yoshie muttered, appearing in the doorway.

Masako picked up the blue plastic tarp that she'd left by the entrance. Yoshie still seemed to be hesitating, but Masako went around to the back of the car and opened the trunk.

'Oh!' Yoshie blurted out as she peered over her shoulder. Kenji's face was staring up at them. His eyes were half open, and he looked utterly relaxed, with a thin line of dried saliva running across his cheek. His legs had gone rigid, with the knees slightly bent, and his arms were frozen over his head. His fingers seemed to be grasping for something. A raw red burn mark was visible around his neck, which was stretched to an unnatural length.

Masako remembered how Yayoi had removed the belt last night and wrapped it around her own waist. Then she realised that Yoshie had been saying something.

'What did you say?' she asked. Yoshie was standing behind her with her palms together, and as Masako turned, she raised her voice slightly so that the prayer she was chanting was now audible.

'Namu Amida Butsu,' she was repeating over and over. 'Don't you think that's a bit of a giveaway?' Masako said, gently tapping Yoshie's hands. 'Cut that out and help me get him inside.'

Ignoring the sour look this provoked, she wrapped the tarp around the body. Then, signalling Yoshie to take one end, she worked her hands under the armpits. Reluctantly, Yoshie grasped the ankles and they lifted Kenji out of the trunk. The fact that the body had stiffened helped a bit, but it was heavy and awkward to hold and they staggered under the weight. Still, the door was only a few steps away, and they soon had him in the house. 'Can we get him back to the bath, Skipper?' Masako panted.

'All right,' said Yoshie, slipping out of her canvas shoes and stepping up into the house. 'Where is it?'

'All the way at the back,' said Masako. Though they had to put him down to rest several times, they finally managed to carry him as far as the changing room. Once there, Masako removed the plastic tarp and spread it on the tiles next to the tub in the washing area. She'd realised it might cause problems if bits of flesh got stuck between the tiles. 'Help me get him in here,' she said.

Yoshie nodded, her resistance apparently weakening, and the two of them laid out the body diagonally in the rectangular room, just as Masako had planned earlier that morning.

'Miserable,' Yoshie murmured, '- to end up like this. I bet he never expected his own wife would do him in. I hope he goes straight to heaven.'

'I wouldn't bet on it,' said Masako.

'You're a cold fish,' Yoshie said. The tone was reproachful, but Masako could tell Yoshie was beginning to regain her composure, so she quickly moved on to her next request.

'I'll get some scissors,' she said. 'Would you at least help me cut the clothes off?'

'What are you going to do with them?' Yoshie asked. 'Cut them up and throw them away.'

Yoshie sighed loudly, but she had clearly given in. 'Have you emptied his pockets?' she asked.

'No, he must still have his wallet and his train pass. Will you check?' said Masako, going to get the scissors from the bedroom.

When she got back, Yoshie had lined up the contents of Kenji's pockets in the doorway: a worn black leather wallet, a key holder, a train pass, and some change. Masako looked through the wallet and found a few credit cards and almost ¥30,000 in cash. The key in the holder was apparently to Yayoi's house. 'We've got to get rid of all this,' she said at last.

'What will you do with the money?' Yoshie asked.

'You can have it.'

'But it's Yayoi's. Still,' she added as if arguing with herself, 'it does seem strange to give his money back to the wife who killed him.'

'Exactly. Why don't you keep it for your trouble,' said Masako. She noticed a relieved look pass across Yoshie's face. There were plenty of vacant lots and fields in the area, she thought, stuffing the empty wallet into a small plastic bag along with the key holder, credit cards, and train pass. If she could manage to bury the bag somewhere, it would probably never be found.

Yoshie tucked the money into her pants pocket with an apologetic look. 'There's something funny about a necktie on a man who's been strangled to death,' she said, beginning to work at the knot on the tie. The knot, however, was pulled tight and Masako grew frustrated as she watched her struggle with it.

'We don't have time for that,' she told her. 'Someone might come home soon. Just cut it off and be done with it.'

'Wait a minute,' Yoshie said angrily. 'Don't you have any respect for the dead? You ought to be ashamed of yourself!'

'Respect for the dead,' Masako repeated as she pulled off Kenji's shoes and stuffed them into another bag. 'I'm trying to think of this as an inanimate object.'

'An object? What are you talking about? It's a human being.'

'It was a human being, but now it's an object. That's how I've decided to see it.'

'Then you've decided wrong,' said Yoshie, her voice shaking with uncharacteristic indignation. 'If this is an object, then what is that old woman I'm looking after?'

'A living human being, of course,' said Masako.

'I don't agree. If this fellow here's an object, then so is my mother-in-law. And then we're all objects - the living and the dead. There's no difference.' She's probably right, thought Masako, struck by the force of her remarks. She remembered opening the trunk in the parking lot that morning. The dawn had come, the rain was falling, and she'd felt alive, animated. But the dead were inanimate, immobile, and she'd decided to think of Kenji as a thing rather than a person. At the time, it had seemed like a good way to cope with her fear. 'But that's not right,' Yoshie went on. 'Living people are people, but dead bodies aren't just things. It's plain arrogance to think so.'

'I suppose you're right,' said Masako. 'But it would be easier if they were objects.'

'Why?'

'Because it would be less frightening. I won't be able to do it if I don't think of him that way.'

'Do what?'

'Cut him up,' said Masako.

'But why do we have to do that, anyway? That's what I don't understand.' Yoshie was almost shouting. 'It'll come back to haunt us. Heaven will punish us both for this.'

'I don't care,' said Masako.

'Why? Why don't you care?' She didn't care, Masako realised, because she was almost anxious for whatever punishment that might come, but she knew that would be hard to explain to her. Instead of answering, she began peeling off Kenji's black socks.

As her hands touched the bare skin for the first time, a shock ran through her. The body felt cold and foreign, and she wondered whether she would actually be able to cut it up as she'd planned. There would probably be lots of blood, and the organs would flop out. The sense of facing a challenge that she'd felt earlier in the morning faded. Her heart began racing and she felt faint. Suddenly, she felt sure that it was against all human instincts to touch, or even look at, a dead body.

'I can't stand touching him,' Yoshie blurted out, as if reading her mind. 'D'you have any gloves?' Remembering that she'd taken some from the factory, Masako went to get them, along with the two aprons. Meanwhile, Yoshie had neatly folded the tie she had finally managed to remove, and had began unbuttoning the shirt. Handing her the gloves, Masako slipped on another pair, found the scissors, and started cutting off the pants, beginning from the cuff. A few minutes later, Kenji lay naked on the floor. The blood had apparently collected on the side of the body that had faced down in the trunk, and purplish marks were visible under the skin.

'We did this when my husband died,' Yoshie muttered, glancing at the shrunken penis. 'We got him undressed and washed the body. Don't you think Yayoi should see him? We shouldn't really be doing this.' She stood holding the apron and staring at the body.

'You worry too much,' said Masako, getting tired of the display of emotion. 'She's already agreed to everything. If she has regrets later, that's her problem.' Yoshie sighed, looking at Masako with a hint of fear in her eyes. Still irritated, Masako continued with the subject she knew would bother Yoshie the most. 'So let's start by cutting off the head,' she said. 'It gives me the creeps to have him staring at us like that.'

'So now you've got the creeps?' Yoshie said.

'But you're the one talking about hauntings,' Masako shot back.

'No, I'm over that,' Yoshie said.

'Then you do it.'

'No!' she said, sounding terrified. 'I told you I couldn't.' But Masako already knew that she wouldn't be able to dismember the body by herself, and she was determined now to get some help. She made a proposal.

'Yayoi said she wanted to pay us back. Would you do it if money were involved?' Yoshie looked up, as if jerked by a string. Her sunken eyes had a perplexed look. 'I told her she didn't need to pay me, but now that I think about it I'll probably take something. It's more businesslike that way.'

'How much?' Yoshie whispered, glancing queasily at Kenji's lifeless eyes.

'How much do you want? I'll negotiate for you.'

'A hundred thousand?' Yoshie suggested.

'Too little. How about five?'

'With that kind of money, I could find a new place to live,' she murmured. 'So you're planning to buy me in, knowing I can't resist.' Precisely, thought Masako, though she pretended not to hear.

'Please,' she said. 'I need your help, Skipper.'

'Okay, okay. You've got it,' said Yoshie, the prospect of money having finally broken down her resistance. Tying on the apron, she slipped out of her white socks and began rolling up the legs of her sweat pants. 'You'd better get out of those,' she said, pointing at Masako's jeans. 'They'll get covered with blood.' Masako obediently went into the changing room, stripped off her jeans, and fished a pair of shorts out of the laundry basket. As she was climbing into them, she caught sight of herself in the mirror. There, staring back at her, was her own face, but with an expression that was grimmer than any she'd ever seen before. Turning, she found Yoshie standing behind her, looking more bewildered than dangerous.

Stepping back into the bath area, Masako bent down and began feeling Kenji's neck for the best place to begin sawing. She glanced at the large Adam's apple, and remembered how Nobuki's throat had bobbed up and down that morning. It wasn't a helpful train of thought, so she forced herself to concentrate on the task at hand.

'Do you suppose we can just saw right through the neck?' she asked Yoshie.

'It might tear up the skin, so we should probably start with a knife. If that doesn't work, we can figure out something else.' Now that it had become a job, Yoshie was once again in charge, as if she were directing operations from her place at the head of the assembly line. Masako hurried off to the kitchen and brought back her sharpest sashimi knives and the toolbox where they kept the saw. It had also occurred to her that they would need plastic bags later to dispose of the pieces, so they might as well have them handy to fill as they went along. She counted all the bags she had: nearly a hundred. She'd bought them at the local supermarket the standard kind recommended by the city government and thus particularly hard to trace.

'I think we should double-bag everything, and if we do that I've got enough for about fifty packages. How does that sound?' Masako asked.

'Then we should probably start with the big joints and chop it small later,' said Yoshie, testing the blade of her knife. There was a slight tremor in her hand. Bending over, Masako poked her finger under Kenji's Adam's apple in search of the vertebrae and then quickly inserted her own knife. It struck bone almost immediately, so she twisted the blade to avoid the obstacle, and as she did this a stream of darkish blood oozed from the wound. Surprised by the sheer amount of it, she stopped for a moment.

'I must have hit an artery.'

'You must have,' Yoshie agreed. In no time at all, the plastic tarp was a sea of red, and Masako was fumbling to pull the plug for the drain in the floor. The thick blood swirled into a dense foam as it flowed down the drain, and it gave Masako a strange feeling to imagine it mixing in the sewer with the water from last night's bath. As she worked, her gloves became so sticky that it became difficult to move her fingers. Locating the shower hose, Yoshie attached it to the faucet and rinsed her hands, but the room was still choked with the stench of blood.

Once she could use the saw, she got through the neck with relative ease, and when his head fell away with a dull thud, Kenji's body was suddenly transformed into nothing more than a strangely shaped object. Masako pushed one of the bags inside another, wrapped up the head, and put it on the lid that covered the bath tub.

'I suppose we ought to drain the rest of the blood,' Yoshie said, raising the headless body by the legs. Raw flesh was visible around the gaping hole of the trachea, and blood flowed in a continuous stream from the severed arteries. As she watched, Masako's whole body broke out in gooseflesh. But though the sight was utterly ghoulish, somehow she felt calmer than she would have imagined. Most of all, she wanted the whole thing to be over as quickly as possible. She found that concentrating on the process helped to deaden her jangling nerves.

Next she used her knife to cut around the hip joints. Watching the blade slip through the layers of yellow fat, she heard Yoshie mutter that it looked 'exactly like a broiler'. When she reached bone, she braced her foot on top of Kenji's leg and began sawing the femur in just the same way as one would cut through a log. Though it took a bit of time, in the end the legs came away easily as well. The shoulders, however, were more difficult, and she had trouble deciding where to make the incisions. The fact that rigor mortis had set in didn't make things any easier in this case. Beads of sweat formed on her forehead, and Yoshie was beginning to grow impatient.

'My mother-in-law will be waking up soon. We've got to get finished.'

'I know,' said Masako. 'Why don't you help more with the cutting?'

'But we've only got one saw.'

'I should have asked you to bring one with you.'

'But if you had, I would never have come,' Yoshie said, sounding shocked.

'Good point,' said Masako, suddenly wanting to laugh. There was something so absurd about the whole situation, about the two of them having such an inane conversation while they cut up a total stranger by the name of Kenji. They stood for a moment over the body, eyeing each other as their bloody hands dangled limp at their sides. 'When do you put out the garbage at your house, Skipper?' she asked finally.

'Tomorrow, Thursday....'

'Same as here, so it all has to go tomorrow morning. We'll have to divide it up.'

'But I could never carry that many bags,' Yoshie pointed out.

'I'll drive you.'

'Don't you think a red car coming around to drop off garbage might be a little noticeable?' Yoshie said. 'You know how people watch the drop-off spots.'

'I suppose so.' Masako was just beginning to realise that getting rid of the body was going to be harder than she'd imagined. And Yoshie was still impatient.

'Just get it over with. We'll worry about the garbage later.'

'Okay,' said Masako, picking up the saw and beginning to work on the shoulder. When the arms were off, they decided to deal with the organs. Masako took a knife and made a deep cut from the base of the throat down to the groin. As she sliced through the intestines, the room was choked with the smell of the rotting contents of Kenji's stomach mixed with the alcohol he'd drunk the night before. The two women clutched their hands over their noses.

'Wash it down the drain,' Masako gasped, signalling to Yoshie. But then she changed her mind, realising it could cause trouble if it clogged the pipes. She decided to bag the contents of the intestines as well. Just as she was getting started, though, the bell on the intercom rang and they froze. It was already after 10.30.

'Your husband or your son?' Yoshie whispered nervously. Masako shook her head.

'They shouldn't be home yet,' she said.

'Okay, then let's not answer.' After ringing a few more times, the intercom fell silent.

'Who could it have been?' Yoshie hissed.

'Probably just a salesman,' said Masako. 'If someone asks later, I'll say I was sleeping.' She picked up the saw, which was now greasy with fat. There was still a bit more work to be done, but there was no turning back now.