Chapter 2: Squirm

Chapter 2
SQUIRM

 

I

 

Kirigoe Mima turned off the shower and listened. Her phone was ringing.

She shrugged, as if to say, What can you do? Then she took a towel off the rack and wrapped it around her body. She opened the glass door to the shower; the phone’s ringing became louder.

Who’s calling at this hour?

Mima glanced at the clock. It was after two in the morning. The caller was likely her manager, perhaps to tell her about a change in the next day’s schedule. I wish he wouldn’t call me so late, Mima thought, irritation etching a tiny crease between her eyebrows.

She stepped into the combined bedroom/living room of her studio apartment and put her hand on the phone beside her bed. She lifted the receiver and spoke in a tone that hid none of her annoyance. “Yes, who is it?”

She expected to hear her manager’s familiar rough voice—but instead, all she heard was soft breathing. Huff. Huff.

Mima let out an exasperated sigh. Not this again.

“Hello?” She spoke firmly. “Who is this?”

Huff. Huff. Huff. The breathing grew heavier.

For over the past week or so, she’d been getting harassed incessantly by calls like these. Mima wondered how this person had found her personal number. As far as she knew, it hadn’t been published anywhere. She clicked her tongue in exasperation.

Then, a faint voice came over the line. “Mi-Mima-san… Mima-san…”

The man’s muffled voice reverberated in her ears. Something in it sounded desperate.

“Mima-san…” Huff. Huff. Now the man seemed to be crying, too.

Fear urged Mima to hang up the phone, but the next thing she knew, she was pressing the receiver tightly to her ear. “Mima-san,” the man began. Agitation strengthened his voice; it took on a strange, raspy edge. “Do you understand how I feel? Do you? I want to save you, Mima-san. Mima-san, Mima-san!”

Fear put a tremor in her, but she felt compelled to speak—as if something still more frightful would happen to her if she didn’t. “Just who are you?” she asked her unknown caller. “What do you mean, you’ll save me?”

The man, caught off guard by her reaction, choked out a weak “Urp!” but then continued. “I’m… I’m your fan. I’m a huge fan of yours, Kirigoe Mima.” Huff. Huff.

From the sound of his voice, even talking to her was a great ordeal. Mima threw force behind her words. “If you’re my fan, then why do you keep harassing me with these calls?”

Perhaps intimidated into silence, the man said nothing. The receiver went quiet, save for the faint sound of his breathing.

Her voice rose to an angry shout. “If you don’t have anything else to say, I’m hanging up!”

“I-I… I want to save you,” the man mumbled. “I want to save you before you go down the wrong path. I’m not trying to bother you. Honestly, I’m not.”

She’d had enough of this. His cowering tone rubbed her the wrong way, and besides, with only a bath towel wrapped around her, she was starting to get cold. “Listen, whoever you are.” Mima spoke with finality. “I don’t need you to save me. I’ll decide my ‘path’ on my own. So please, just stop calling me.”

She was about to hang up the phone when the man shouted, “Wait! Don’t hang up!”

Then, words spilling out quickly, he went on. His voice was shrilly pitched now, and he rambled like a sick man, a man taken by malarial fever dreams. “I’m coming to meet you. I promise I’ll come to you soon. I’ll come to you, and I’ll save you. I promise I will.”

Mima hung up the phone frantically. Her body trembled down to the core.

 

II

 

“This is just awful,” Mima said, batting her wide, round eyes. She raised a hand to her slender nose and took in a deep, stuffed-up snuffle. “Of all the times to catch a cold, why now?”

Mima’s assistant, Yasuda Rumi, had been keeping an eye on the singer. Now Rumi hurried to her in the corner of the studio. “Mima-san,” Rumi said, “would you like me to bring you some hot coffee?”

Mima gave her a pleasant smile. “That would be great, Rumi-chan. With plenty of milk, please.”

“Will do!” Rumi replied. She jogged over to the vending machine in the back of the room and soon returned with the drink.

As Mima drank her coffee, her manager, Tadokoro Bon, entered the studio, bleary-eyed.

Mima put her hand in the shape of a glass and mimed drinking. “Out late again, Bon-chan?”

Tadokoro tossed her an embarrassed grin and ran a hand through his hair, already thinning at the ripe old age of thirty-six. “I can’t help it,” he said. “It’s part of the job.”

With a teasing smile, Mima said, “Working day and night for me, is that it?”

Tadokoro winked a long-lashed eye at her. “Rumi-chan, get me a coffee too, please.” The manager brought a metal folding chair beside Mima and plopped himself down. The cheap metal seat protested with a shrill and dubious creak. More serious now, Tadokoro said, “I hear you’re feeling under the weather.”

“I think it’s a cold,” Mima said with another loud sniff. “But that’s not all that’s bothering me—I got a strange call last night.”

Tadokoro frowned. “A strange call?”

“You remember how I told you about those troubling phone calls I’ve been getting?”

The manager nodded. “You mean the guy who doesn’t say anything?”

“Yeah, him. But this time, he spoke.”

“Well, now. That’s bold.” Tadokoro leaned forward, his eyes glimmering with interest. “What did he say?”

“He told me he wanted to save me,” Mima said.

“To save you?” Tadokoro echoed, bewildered.

“Apparently, he’s worried I’m headed in the ‘wrong direction.’ He said he’s going to prevent it.”

Tadokoro scowled. “Sounds like a nutcase to me.”

“Yeah, I guess so. I remember thinking something in his voice wasn’t right.” Just remembering sent a shiver through her.

“An overexcited fan,” Tadokoro said dismissively. One corner of his mouth turned up in a wry, long-suffering smile.

“He said he’s coming to meet me.”

Tadokoro’s eyes widened, and he exclaimed, “He said what?”

“He wants to meet me,” Mima said. “To talk to me.”

“Now that we can’t ignore. When did he say he was coming?”

“He didn’t. But he promised it would be soon.”

The manager put a hand to his chin, closed his eyes, and hummed in thought, but Mima couldn’t be sure just what he was thinking.

 

III

 

It happened when Yasuda Rumi was on her way back to Mima’s green room to retrieve something she’d left behind.

In the hallway just outside, the metal door to the emergency exit stood half open, allowing a bar of sunlight to pierce into the darkened hallway. Rumi had never seen that door open, and the anomaly caught the assistant’s attention.

Then she saw the figure lurking in the door’s shadow.

“Who’s there?” Rumi said in a low shout.

Within the pool of shadow, the figure made an even darker shape, save for two glimmering points—the eyes. Someone’s eyes, staring right at Rumi.

The figure watched but didn’t speak a word.

Rumi’s pulse begin to race. Reflexively, she took a step back. Then another. As if following her, the figure stepped out of the shadows, suddenly revealed by the slash of sunlight. It was a man. She could tell that he was wearing a T-shirt and jeans, but his face was harshly backlit and impossible to discern.

For a moment, Rumi wondered if he was the assistant director. But an AD would have given some kind of greeting—and besides, the green room was for talent; an AD had no particular business loitering there.

Again, Rumi asked, “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

The man muttered something deep in his throat.

“Tell me your name!” Rumi demanded, as bravely as she could muster. “If you don’t, I’ll call for help.” She knew that an approach that confrontational might jolt the man to attack. She tensed her muscles, ready for the worst.

Remaining silent, the man approached her on unsteady, drunk-like steps.

Rumi held a hand to her mouth, to keep her scream bottled up inside.

The man staggered closer. He waved a scrap of paper at her. On instinct, she took it.

He bobbed his head at her, then turned on his heels. The next moment, he was fleeing out the emergency exit. The metal door slammed shut behind him.

The hallway went dark.

 

IV

 

Mima watched Music Town on the in-house feed of the green room’s television monitor. The room was a small, dreary, tatami-matted affair, furnished with only the monitor and a vanity. Whenever work brought her to this station, she typically used the space as her personal lounge. Over time, she’d developed an unexpected fondness for the dingy place.

Music Town was doing a segment on this week’s hot songs. The program’s host was a snobbish, middle-aged man who had been a newscaster before jumping ship for the entertainment world. He was infamous for barraging his guests with bad jokes and fancied himself hilarious. That, however, couldn’t have been further from the truth; his guests only laughed out of courtesy.

In short, Mima hated him.

Appearing on the segment was Ochiai Eri, a new pop idol who debuted the year before; she had been an immediate hit. Her latest song, “Rock, Love, Dream!” claimed number three on the charts.

Apparently, according to an idol magazine interview, she viewed Kirigoe Mima as her rival.

“Good evening, Eri-chan,” the snobbish, middle-aged host said. “Your new song is a smash. Dare I say that you don’t need to worry about Kirigoe Mima anymore?” Behind his glasses, the host’s eyes glimmered in a way Mima didn’t care for.

“Oh, I don’t know about that…” Eri demurred, but her smile said otherwise.

Mima stuck out her tongue at the monitor. “Go fall off a bridge,” she muttered. She hated them both, the middle-aged host and the full-of-herself newcomer.

Ochiai Eri had supposedly turned sixteen this year, but Mima placed her at eighteen or even older—though, admittedly, the singer’s facial features and figure did still retain a girlish quality. She appeared innocent enough, but her eyes gave her away.

To put it positively, those eyes shined with a strong-willed ambition. More negatively, they were eyes that saw others not as people, but as tools to be used.

The one and only time Mima had appeared on the same TV show as her, she fell under the withering glare of those eyes. Though three years a veteran, when Mima saw the white-hot flames inside the newcomer’s gaze, she felt such a powerful aura of intimidation it was almost tangible. In that moment, Mima knew this woman would do anything to worm her way to the top—even if it meant putting her boot to those who stood in
her way.

On the television screen, however, those eyes appeared gentle and kind. It was no wonder her debut single carried the slogan, “Blue-Eyed Angel.”

Mima heard once that Eri had badmouthed her off the record. Supposedly she’d called her “old,” and asked, “How long is she going to keep up that innocent girl act?”

Mima generally ignored the rookie, instead choosing to keep on being herself, to follow her own path, no matter what anyone else said. But she couldn’t help but feel a loathing for that woman. The emotion bubbled up from somewhere deep inside. She’d never felt this way toward another idol before. On the whole, Mima’s nature was kind, and she did her best to try to keep less benign emotions from surfacing—but it was a futile effort.

On the monitor, Eri began performing “Rock, Love, Dream!”

Sulking, Mima switched off the monitor and laid her head on the vanity. She couldn’t help but feel a little disgusted with herself.

 

V

 

The office of Moon Kids Talent Agency occupied a single unit in a small but sleek apartment building recently built in Roppongi. Aside from the nearby elevated Shuto Expressway, where traffic never ceased, the neighborhood was quiet.

Tadokoro Bon approached the building’s entryway with an armful of books. Not very trendy digs, he thought with a wry grin. A small, flowering arch over the entrance evoked an atmosphere more akin to a love hotel than an apartment.

Reaching the doorway, Tadokoro sandwiched his books between chin and chest as he punched in his entry code. The indicator light went on, and the door opened smoothly. The manager entered the building’s single elevator and pressed the third floor button.

As he waited for the elevator to make its trip, Tadokoro thumbed through his books. His thoughts, however, were drawn inexorably toward the deviant harassing Mima. The guy must be some kind of freak, the manager thought. He says he’s going to come see her…but how many people actually follow through on something like that?

Tadokoro pushed the delusional man from his mind and stepped out of the elevator.

Opening the door to the agency’s office at the corner of the hall, Tadokoro found cameraman Murano Yuji already inside, seated in the small reception area. Tadokoro offered him a cheerful, “Good morning, be right with you!” and stepped into the interior office.

His receptionist, a young woman named Tomo, continued reading her memo pad as she acknowledged the manager with a curt but formal, “Morning, sir.”

“Tomo-chan, has Mima called?”

Tomo shifted her eyes to the manager. “She said she’ll be here soon,” she said, then she went right back to the memo pad. Tadokoro suspected the receptionist was going over plans for a date with some guy friend. He returned to the reception area with a wry grin.

He sat on the sofa opposite the cameraman, a table in between them. He lit a cigarette. “Yu-chan,” he said, using his nickname for Yuji, “Have you thought about it? Will you do it?”

Yuji ran a hand through his shaggy hair and smiled pleasantly. The photographer’s facial features were on the larger side, and he typically came off as stern. When he smiled, though, those thick eyebrows lowered just a little, and it brought a gentleness to his face.

“If Mima-san is up for it, I’m ready any time,” Yuji declared crisply.

On the table, Tadokoro spread out his books—magazine-sized photo books of various idols. The market for photo collections was experiencing something of a boom at the moment. Many of the pictures were borderline pornographic. Yuji glanced to Tadokoro, who grinned and nodded.

“A bit of a surprise—huh, Yuji-chan? This is how far the latest idols are going these days. Or rather, if they don’t, they won’t make it as idols for very long.”

Yuji frowned with his eyebrows. “I know I don’t photograph women particularly often, and I’m not especially familiar with these kinds of collections—but when I think of idols, this isn’t at all what I’d imagine.”

“Until just a few short years ago, you would have imagined right.” Tadokoro extinguished his dwindling cigarette in an ashtray on the table and gazed into the distance.

“Wait a minute,” the cameraman said, his eyes locked on the manager. “Surely you’re not suggesting that Mima-chan is going to do a photo book like these, are you?”

Tadokoro returned the stare with some surprise. “Of course I am. Why else would I have called you here?”

Yuji slapped his hands to his cheeks and let out a deep breath. “How times change. I still think of her as a kid.”

The manager smiled the bitter smile of someone who’d just gulped down a spoonful of stomach medicine. He looked to his wristwatch and said, “She should be here soon.”

Then his expression turned serious. He leaned in toward Yuji and added, “Mima and I have already talked it over. She’s ready. But it’s like you say—she’s still a kid in a lot of ways. She’s hardly even taken any swimsuit photos, and now suddenly she’s jumping to this racy stuff. I know it’s going to be tough on her. That’s why I asked for you specifically to be the cameraman.”

Yuji understood. Tadokoro’s compassion for Mima in this cutthroat business was painfully apparent.

Yuji was a freelance photojournalist, and his subjects had never been sexual in nature. He’d only recently returned to Japan after covering guerrilla fighters in a Middle Eastern civil war. He’d resolved to take it easy in Japan for a while before another foray among the guerrillas when he received a phone call from his old acquaintance, Tadokoro.

It seemed that no matter how much the manager considered the photo album a necessary part of the job, he refused to put Mima in the hands of a photographer who viewed women as mere merchandise. Yuji had little interest in working on an idol photo book, but once he understood his old acquaintance’s feelings, a heartfelt determination welled up within him.

He had made up his mind—for Tadokoro, he would capture both sides of Kirigoe Mima—the incredibly cute and the incredibly sexy.

 

VI

 

Mima exited the taxi into total darkness. Aging streetlights stood here and there along a stone retaining wall, but most of their lightbulbs had burned out, leaving them derelict of their duty.

She leaned into the open taxi door and spoke to Rumi, still seated within. “Would you like to come up? If you’ve got something else to do, that’s all right, but I have something I’d like to talk to you about.”

“That would be great,” Rumi said. “I’ve got something to talk to you about, too.” Blushing a little, she stepped out from the taxi. Her pleasantly rounded eyes seemed alight with happiness.

Oh, that’s right, Mima realized, I’ve never invited her to my place before. “You like black tea—don’t you, Rumi-chan?” she asked. “I’ll put on some Earl Grey for you.”

“That sounds wonderful!” Rumi said. She wrapped herself around Mima’s arm and grinned like a spoiled child. The redness in her cheeks had spread all the way to her ears.

Isn’t that cute, Mima thought, feeling a bit like an older sister.

 

Stepping into the one-room apartment, Rumi exclaimed, “Your place is so clean!”

The room was, in fact, clean and tidy—not stiflingly sterile, but relaxing and inviting. In that way, the space reflected its owner’s character: strict with herself, kind to others.

Rumi sat in front of the big-screen 32-inch TV and gazed at the glass tube with admiration. “Wow, this is nice,” she said. “Really nice. I wish I had a big TV like this. Watching it must be intense.”

“Not really,” Mima replied, as she filled the electric kettle with water. “You get used to it after awhile, and it stops feeling impressive.”

“Oh!” Rumi exclaimed. “Mima-san, Mima-san!”

Rumi seemed to have discovered something. Mima knew what her assistant had found even without looking.“You like anime too—don’t you, Rumi-chan?”

“Like it? I love it.”

Rumi had found Mima’s laserdisc collection. It was quite a large collection that consisted almost entirely of anime—from Toei animated classics like Magic Boy and The Wonderful World of Puss ’n Boots to more recent movies, such as Kiki’s Delivery Service and Grave of the Fireflies. If an anime had been pressed onto one of those record-sized video discs, she probably had it.

Among their number were several foreign animated films unknown to Rumi. As an anime fan herself, the discovery made her as excited as a child.

Happy to see the enthusiasm, Mima said, “You’re welcome to come watch them whenever you’re free. You can stay up all night, if you want to.”

“R-really?” Rumi said. “I’d love to. Absolutely!”

Mima found Rumi’s bubbly enthusiasm charming. Rumi had joined Moon Kids as an aspiring idol singer. She’d pushed past her parents’ protestations and moved to Tokyo from her rural hometown, which must have required a level of determination rare among her peers. Tadokoro put together several trial projects for her, but ultimately, Rumi simply didn’t have what it took to become an idol. She was more than cute enough to make the cut, and she possessed the drive, too—but she was missing that certain spark.

When she realized she would never be an idol, Rumi kept on at Moon Kids as a member of the staff. She was a hard worker and quickly made the mental switch to her new role. Soon, the agency assigned her to be Mima’s assistant.

Rumi never said a sour or blue word about her shattered dreams, and she gave her assignment her all. Even so, Mima worried about saying or doing something that might tear open Rumi’s old wounds, and consequently, she’d kept a certain distance from her assistant. But now that Mima knew of their shared passion for anime, she suddenly felt the gap between them shrink. She thought Rumi might have felt it, too.

Mima poured some of her fine Earl Grey tea into a cup and added plenty of milk before offering the drink to Rumi. Her assistant took a sip, then happily scrunched her eyebrows into an adorable face. “Yum! It’s really good.”

As Mima watched her helper’s earnest expression, she felt keenly aware of how being an idol had changed her—into someone more focused on reading the room than conveying her true emotions—and that awareness saddened her.

Being an idol was a nerve wracking job. An idol always had to smile and pay strict attention to her behavior. The media was always hunting for a scandal, and the fans could get nasty. Spurred by those thoughts, her mind replayed the voice that tormented her over the telephone. The memory sullied an otherwise peaceful, if bittersweet moment.

Mima had only been an idol for three years, but mentally, she felt like an old woman, well over thirty. She doubted she could ever be as unguarded as Rumi again.

What would happen to me if I quit? Mima wondered.

She took a drink from her own cup of Earl Grey and kept her deep sigh bottled up inside.

 

Some time later, Mima held a wine glass. Her words came out just slightly slurred. “Rumi-chan, I’m going to do a photo book. You’ve heard, haven’t you?”

“Yes, Tadokoro-san told me.”

“And what did he tell you about it?”

“Well, he said you were putting out a photo book…”

Mima pressed, “That’s all he said?”

“That’s all he said,” Rumi said.

Mima hummed in thought. She swirled her wine slowly, a seemingly subconscious action. Then she said, “Here’s the thing—the photo album, it’s going to be really racy.”

“Racy?” Rumi said, blinking rapidly.

“You know, sexy. Dirty. We had the planning meeting today. Bon-chan said that if I’m going to do a photo book, I’ve got to really go for it.” Mima grinned. “Maybe even full frontal.”

Rumi looked uncertain as to how she ought to respond. Cautiously, she said, “And did you agree to it?”

“Of course I did. These days, an idol can’t survive on just being cute.”

Rumi bobbed her head in understanding, but her expression carried a hint of dejection.

Mima continued. “What I wanted to talk with you about was how far I should go. How much do you think I should expose?”

Rumi took in the question, then said with tact, “You know better than I do, but I think you should hold back as much as you can. You’re still selling singles and albums as you are now.”

“Fifty thousand copies, maybe.”

“Then I think you shouldn’t change your image too much. I’d rather Kirigoe Mima remain the pure girl. And…” Rumi stopped herself.

“And?” Mima prodded softly.

Rumi turned her face away and covered it behind her hands.

“Rumi-chan, what’s wrong? If there’s something you want to say, you can say it.”

Mima took Rumi’s hand. Rumi shook her head from side to side. After a moment, she seemed to have gathered herself, and she looked Mima in the eye and said, “Mima-san. Please don’t be mad at me when I tell you this.” Her eyes were serious. She pressed on. “I’m… I’m worried about your fans.”

“My fans? You mean that my current fans might leave me,” Mima said, failing to see why that had gotten Rumi so shaken up. “We’ll deal with that if it happens. If I worried about that sort of thing, I’d never be able to do anything.”

“No,” Rumi said with a big shake of her head. “That’s not it. I’m not worried about those fans. I’m worried about the…obsessive fans.”

Obsessive fans. Mima’s expression stiffened. What is she trying to tell me? She couldn’t mean…

Thoughts of the man on the phone returned to her again.

Her voice rising, Mima demanded, “Just who are you talking about?”

“Some of your fans don’t like the idea of you changing your image,” Rumi said.

“Sure they don’t, but so what? Who cares about what those fans think?”

“But… but…” Rumi was shaking her head more fiercely now. “Mima-san, please listen to me. The truth is… the truth is…”

Crying, Rumi told Mima about her encounter with the shadowy figure outside the green room.

“I didn’t think I was ever going to have to tell you,” Rumi said, sniffling. “I thought he was just some freak. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and I read the letter he gave me. And—and…”

Mima could never have imagined someone like that could have gotten so close to her—right outside the room where she herself had been. “What did it say?” Mima demanded, half shouting. “Tell me, what did it say?”

Reluctantly, Rumi dug through her purse and withdrew a crumpled scrap of paper.

Mima took the page—snatched it, really. “This is his letter?”

It was a perfectly ordinary piece of stationery. She placed the paper on the table and carefully smoothed it out. The words had been written with a ballpoint pen. She poured over the message, intently focused.

The more she read, the more the color drained from her face.

 

Dear Mima-sama:

I expect that you might never read this letter.

That’s because I am unable to mail it to you. I don’t know your address. I’ve tried as best I can to learn it, but to no avail.

I found your phone number from your appearance on Oshare Fifties. (You may recall the segment where you called your own answering machine. I recorded it on video tape and played it back hundreds of times until I figured out your number. It was a lot of hard work.) I thought I might be able to look up your address from the phone number, but that ended up being wasted effort.

That’s when I got the idea to go meet you directly at the television station and hand deliver this letter.

But that might not be possible. There is a chance you will never read this letter, but I am writing it with the belief that you will read my message to you.

Here it is.

Please stay the way you are.

I hope you will never change and that you will always stay the same.

I heard a rumor—which I highly doubt is based on any merit—among a fraction of your devoted fans that you are going to put out a risqué photo book. Personally, I can’t believe such a nasty rumor.

But if someone is pressuring you, forcing you to do it against your will, I will stake my life to protect you.

You are Kirigoe Mima.

Please go on being Kirigoe Mima.

If you were to change, I don’t know what I would do. I might even lose myself completely… The next thing I know, we both could be dead. I don’t want that to happen, so please, stay as you are.

Sincerely,
Your Darling Rose

 

P.S. I’m worried that this letter might not reach you. I will call you soon to find out. I promise.

 

When she’d finished reading the letter, Mima glared at Rumi and shouted, hysterical, “Rumi-chan, why did you hide this letter from me? Why didn’t you tell anyone about that man?”

Rumi shook her head like a little child scolded by her mother. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I was wrong. I…”

Mima took in a deep breath and forced herself to calm down. She took several such breaths until she gradually felt more in control.

Seeing Rumi a sobbing wreck before her, Mima realized this was no time to let her own emotions run away from her. Rumi kept quiet because she didn’t want to upset me, Mima told herself. She was only trying to do right by me.

Mima gently grasped Rumi’s hand and said, “Rumi-chan, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled at you. It’s all right now. I won’t yell at you anymore. You can relax.”

Rumi squeezed Mima’s hand back tightly, then looked at the idol with teary eyes and said, “I-I was scared. That man scared me. There was something wrong about him—something really wrong.”

Mima put her arms around Rumi and hugged her tight. “It’s all right. It’s all right,” she said, as much to herself as to her assistant. “He can’t come here. We’re safe.”

Rumi was nodding, her head against Mima’s chest, when the phone’s ring split the night.

Mima’s body stiffened. Her heart threatened to jump from her throat.

I will call you soon to find out, the ominous letter had said.

Mima reached for the receiver.

Rumi jolted as if she had touched a high-voltage current. “Don’t answer,” she shouted. “You can’t answer! It might be him…”

Mima pulled back her hand. The two women, frozen like statues in their embrace, stared at the phone as its ringing droned ominously on.