14. Nekko-chan

1

I find myself at Umié again, same barstool up my arse, marinating my liver with the same cheap drinks in the hope that the proper combination of variables, like an alignment of heavenly bodies, will have Nekko-chan rubbing her body against mine and purring once more into my ear, the way she did two weeks ago.

With nowhere to go, no one to meet, and nothing to do after work last Saturday, I headed straight home.

A few days earlier while I stared out a window at all the lovely young OL’s who were returning home from their offices, I grumbled to myself how nice it would be to not have to work until eight-thirty every evening, to have a life of sorts that involved dinner at six and dates and loafing in front of the television. Yumi, who overheard me, reported my grievances to our boss, as she often does, causing me to be summoned to the small classroom for my weekly reprimand.

“I hear you’re dissatisfied with the schedule?” Abazuré began.

“W-what?”

“If you’re unhappy here, Peadar, we can always find someone to replace you . . .”

After assuring my boss that I was indeed quite satisfied with my job, and with the schedule, in particular, she got up and left.

“What a feckin’ Nazi.”

“What was that, Peadar?” Abazuré asked, sticking her head back into the classroom.

“W-what frightfully n-nasty weather we’ve been having lately.”

“Yes, well, it’s supposed to clear up this weekend.”

And so it did. On Saturday morning, I could hear the song of the cicada, long and steady, signaling that the long rainy season was finally coming an end.

Grumble as I did about not having weeknights free, the truth is when the weekends do come round, I am, more often than not, at a loss for what to do with myself. It isn’t the work that’s killing my social life: it’s me. It is as if I am attempting to commit suicide one bleak, unfulfilled day at a time.

2

Crawling out from mossy darkness beneath the small shrine in front of my apartment building was the bob-tailed stray cat I saw Reina petting that night so many months ago when I staggered home, drunk and dejected.

“Here, kitty-kitty,” I called. 

The cat stopped in its tracks. I kneeled down and called out again. To my delight, the cat seemed to understand the blessed Mother Tongue and hesitantly approached me, pausing a few feet away, before coming closer and rubbing his arched back against my leg. I scratched it between his ears, eliciting a happy purr.

“Why don’t you come up to my apartment, huh?” I said.

The cat stiffened, the purring stalled.

“What, you wouldn’t like that?”

The cat looked at me and ever so slightly, yet unmistakably, shook his head, “No.”

“Well, I can’t blame you. I’m not all that keen on hanging out at my place, either. Besides, you’re a stray. Move in with me, you’d lose your identity.”

The cat closed his eyes and nodded.

“You’d lose your freedom, too, I guess. That’s pretty much what it comes down to, doesn’t it: freedom? Out here, you can come and go as you like, drink with the boys, get a pussy so hot she screams all night. Granted, you aren’t really the wild, wandering type now, are you? Always lolling about this shrine here.”

The cat hissed and moved stiffly away from me towards the small shrine.

“I know. I know. It’s the principle.”

He turned slightly to look at me, bowed his head gracefully, and ducked back into the mossy shadows below.

“It’s the principle,” I said to myself. “Or, a deep attachment to those marvelous balls of yours. Move into someone’s home and, the next thing you know, it’s snip-snip and a gay collar around the neck.”

As I stood up, a rapid succession of distant explosions coming from the west echoed heavily off the walls of the apartment towers, silencing the cicada in my neighbor’s garden.

“What the hell was that?”

Turning, I found a bevy of pretty, young girls dressed in colorful yukata. As they walked by, their wooden geta[1]scraped against the asphalt, making the following sound: karan koron, karan, koron.

I called out to the girls and asked if there was some kind of matsuri going on, a festival I didn’t know about. Being in the doghouse ever since Reina and my break up, I had been left completely out of the loop. Murahachibu’ed—ostracized from the village, as it were—I didn’t know what’s going on half of the time anymore.

One of the girls replied that there would be hanabi at Seaside Momochi. Fireworks at the beach. I would have loved to ask the girls if I could join them, but I just stood silently in their wake, watching them mince away.

As I have said, I had no plans for the night, no one to meet. It was a pathetic state of affairs when on a Saturday night all I had to look forward to was the writing of letters, the study of arcane kanji, and the reading of pulp fiction. Sadly, ever since Reina had said sayōnara to me, that was pretty much all my weekends had amounted to.

Well, now I had something to do.

Like tributaries flowing towards the sea, thousands of matsuri-goers walked, drove or pedaled down any road or path available. I made my own way in the slowly gathering dusk towards Seaside Momochi via the normally quiet neighborhood of Tōjin Machi, which had come alive with a festive entrepreneurial spirit. Food stalls selling beer and other refreshments had been set up and were manned with gravel voiced barkers trying to drum up business. The rows of red lanterns hanging from the eaves of izakaya had been turned on, noren curtains placed above their entrances, and the appetizing smell of yakitori was now wafting from the pubs. Most people, however, just kept on moving towards the beach.

Interestingly, this neighborhood was once an enclave of Chinese and foreign residents during the Heian Period (794-1192) over a millennium ago. Besides the name, literally Chinese Town, the only hints that remain of the area’s historical past are the impossibly narrow, barely navigable streets which meander like a warren among modest, tightly packed houses and old wooden temples.

As I squeezed myself down one of these constricted arteries, I noticed that the tarpaulin and scaffolding around one of the larger temples had been taken down, unveiling a garish, vermilion-colored five-storied pagoda. In this post-bubble economy, it seems the only industry that is thriving anymore is the business of death: funeral parlors, Buddhist altar retailers, cemeteries and charnel houses like the one this red eye-sore was supposedly advertising.

I passed through a narrow alley overgrown with ivy and purple morning glories that opened onto the main boulevard running parallel the coast. Traffic in both directions of the thoroughfare had been brought to a standstill, with pedestrians overflowing the banks of the sidewalks and moving between the cars like water over and between pebbles. It served the drivers right for being silly enough to take their cars.

A convenience store had recruited a small army of high school girls, dressed in coloful yukata and jimbei[2], to sell drinks and snacks to passersby. The girls, however, were whipped up into such a frenzy, screaming like banshees at the pedestrians, that they were doing more harm than good. Most of the pedestrians high-tailed it past the convenience store to escape the noise. My boss before I came to Japan often told me that the worst kind of employee you could have was a hard-working idiot and I could see that he was right.

Risking permanent hearing loss, I approached the Sirens and scooped out three cans of Kirin Lager from a kiddy pool filled with ice and water. Then, after paying an inflated matsuri price, I drifted back into the unstoppable river of sweating bodies flowing towards Momochi. 

It was amazing how many other people were doing exactly what I was trying to do. The following day I would learn that several hundred thousand people had descended upon the beach and its environs that evening. Many of them, stuck in gridlock, would end up watching the fireworks from their cars.

After walking for thirty minutes through the bustling crowd, I found a clearing on the promenade encircling the Dome, and with beer in hand, watched the ninety-minute-long fireworks and laser light show run its impressive course. 

As good as it was, and it was admittedly far better than anything fireworks display I had ever seen before, the thing that I found most intriguing was the hundreds upon hundreds of beautiful young women who were dressed up like dolls in their colorful yukata. With their dark hair pinned up and lovely necks exposed I wanted to kiss them all. And yet, I couldn’t help feel like Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner who lamented:

 Water, water, every where,

And all the boards did shrink;

Water, water, every where,

Nor any drop to drink.

Women, women, every where, 

Ah, to take one of them home;

Women, women, every where, 

Not a one to call me own.

Oh, what I would have given to have one of them on my arm, fanning me with her uchiwa and helping me laugh away the insufferable loneliness that had accompanied me to this, my first Japanese fireworks display. All I had to do was reach out and try to speak to one, but the shyness that I had been wearing like sackcloth and ashes silenced me.

3

After the show, I returned to my apartment where I paced the small space like a caged tiger. With nothing to do, I tried to reconcile myself to another night alone with a bottle of Glenfiddich and some individually wrapped, bite-sized chocolate baumkuchen a student had given me as an omiagé, or souvenir, from a trip she had taken to the city of Kōbé.

I drank the scotch straight, one warm glass after another, until the alcohol seeped like ether into every cell of my body. And yet, the itch remained. Saturday nights were not supposed to be spent like this.

I took another baumkuchen out of the bag and looked at the wrapping. Like most sweets, it carried a cheery message written in English:

“You get the feeling that the Bluebird of Happiness is going to bring a little your way, too.”

Whatever.

Checking the contents of my wallet, I was disheartened to discover that I only had a few thousand yen left, hardly enough for a wild time on a Saturday night. More alarmingly, it wouldn’t be nearly enough to keep my belly full through to payday. But, in the end, future hunger pangs yielded to the itch to go out, and so with a quick change of clothes, I was out the door, heading once again for Oyafukō.

I went to the only place that promised the slim chance of running, if not into my Bluebird of Happiness, then at least into an acquaintance, someone I could talk to: Umié. However closely my life may have resembled death, that thin sense of familiarity between myself and the other patrons of Umié provided me with the modest reassurance that I could still, though tenuously, be counted among the living.

I entered the bar, no bigger than a shipping container, squeezed past a group of young women on the tiny dance floor, climbed the short flight of steps to the L-shaped counter and planted my arse on a vacant stool. After ordering a Heineken, I glanced back towards the people dancing or chatting below and recognized a number of fellow barflies. Among them was Kazuko, the butch-dike who had introduced me to Umié back in April.

Seeing me, Kazuko hurried up the steps to greet me. “Mistah Oh Really-san. I’m seeing you, berry, berry surplised!!!”

Kazuko’s two years abroad had done wonders for her English: no one could butcher the Mother Tongue as fluently as this struggling linguist could. Lord only knows how her English had been before the trip.

“I’m surprised to see you, too, Kazuko.”

“What doing?”

“What am I doing here?” I waved my bottle of Heineken.

Not sure why, but Kazuko found this terribly funny and burst out laughing. She could be as charming as a mule’s back hoof.

“You funny man, Mistah Oh Really-san,” she said with a thwack to my back just as I was taking a swig of beer. Beer dribbled from the corner of my mouth past my chin and down my neck.

I thanked her for that.

“Oh! Solly, solly!”

“No problem.” Then, pointing to the army surplus pants she was wearing, I said, “Nice fatigues.”

“Oh, sankyu, sankyu,” she replied happily. She then went on to utter the following barely comprehensible series of words: “Souss irandoh, Okinawa . . . recycle shoppu. . . I botto,” suggesting to me and the Glenfiddich running wildly through my system that Kazuko had bought the fatigues at a second-hand store on the southern island of Okinawa. Really, if only Kazuko would speak Japanese, things would be so much better. I might find that I enjoyed speaking to this person rather than search for the nearest exit.

Kazuko introduced me to her friend, who, like Kazuko, had all the delicate femininity of a gym sock.

The friend, whose name I can’t for the life of me remember, saddled up next to me and proceeded to riddle my patience with the usual bullets: could I eat sushi and nattō, could I use chopsticks, could I read Chinese characters, and so on. Once she had exhausted her ammo—Questions-to-Ask-Gaijin—a welcomed silence fell between us. I considered being an arse, to throw the questions back at her, asking whether she liked hamburgers and hotdogs, or could use a knife and fork, but then I had already wasted enough time entertaining her as is. I might have been lonely, but, good God, I wasn’t that lonely.

I went to the beer cooler, took out another Heineken, paid the bartender, and returned to my bar stool where Kazuko’s friend was looking through some pamphlets on diving and windsurfing.

“Are you my Bluebird of Happiness?” I asked.

“Happy? Me? No,” she answered gloomily. “If I had more time, I’d like to take lessons.” She added that she was currently working ten hours a day, often six days a week.

Ten hours a day, six days a week. Christ! I hated working the six days a week that I did, but I was still only putting in a grueling four hours or so a day. I confronted the unique and enviable dilemma each day of having far too much time on my hands. Much more than was good for me, because all I did with that time was stew, and stew, and stew, on my discontent. Being as busy as I had been last year in Kitakyūshū was a mixed blessing of sorts. I thought I was going to die like a proper Japanese salaryman of karōshi, death from overwork, but I now realize it was the only thing that kept me from dislocating myself from this world.

4

Before I could comment on Kazuko’s friend’s lamentable situation, an explosion of laughter like a tangle of firecrackers going off distracted me. Turning to my left, I discovered an attractive young woman, no a girl of eighteen or nineteen, sitting a few places down at the counter, between two men in suits. She had a lovely, narrow face with a broad smile, and large friendly eyes, eyelashes like brooms. Adorable and aware of it, she flirted shamelessly with the men at her sides and the narcissistic bartender who had stopped preening himself to lean in toward her.

So much life and energy radiated from the girl, causing those lucky enough to be near her to cast long shadows. God, how I wanted to be with her rather than sitting with Kazuko’s friend who was giving my already cramped style the Mother of all Charlie horses.

Kazuko’s friend tried her best, but inevitably failed, to draw me into a conversation. She mentioned music, the bands she liked, and, making the common mistake of assuming that having come from America would have favorably biased my tastes in such a way to provide the common ground upon which to walk together. She asked if I liked this band or that one. I replied, “No”, or “Not really”, or “You’ve gotta be joking, them? Hell no!”

Even the most aggressive of women would have packed up her bags and moved on, but this woman was unrelenting. Now that I think about it, Kazuko’s friend must have been even lonelier than me.

As I was grunting my way through another series of questions, I watched the girl as she dismounted her barstool. To my surprise she was rather short, her shoulders just level with the counter. From the way she had carried herself, drawing the attention of the men around her, I had expected her to be much taller, as physically striking as her presence was. The unexpected contrast only aroused my interest further.

She was wearing a tight-fitting cream-colored crepe dress that revealed the modest, yet soft curves of her slender body. As she made her way towards the restroom at the rear of the bar I’m sure I watched her like a starving animal eyed its the prey.

The two men who had been sitting beside her, stood up, descended the half flight of steps, passed through the crowd of people below and left. When the girl emerged from the restroom I assumed she would leave, as well, but she didn’t. She returned to her place at the counter, and, turning towards me, asked over the loud music where I was from.

“America,” I shouted back, leaning over the bar towards her. “Amerika. Amerika no Oregon Shū.”

“Oregon Shū des’ka?” she asked, then turned to the bartender and asked where Oregon was.

The bartender shrugged, so I explained with elaborate gestures where the mossy state lies in conjunction to sunny California.

We chatted for a while, and boy, what a charming lad Peadar can be when properly motivated! The very same questions which Kazuko’s friend had me bored to tears with were now as welcome as a break in the rain. Could I use chopsticks? Why, of course, I could! I picked up the pair of waribashi chopsticks on the counter before me and fumbled clumsily with them, producing another explosion of firecrackers. And could she use a knife and fork, I asked, eliciting more of that cloud bursting laughter.

And, just as I was starting to worry that I might exhaust the limited resources of my poor Japanese, the DJ, God bless him, put The Doors’ “Light My Fire” on the turntable and made the chance encounter one I may never forget. So happy I was to hear the song and so full of Glenfiddich and Heineken that I began crooning along with my old pal Jim.

The girl climbed off her stool and walked over to the cramped DJ booth, and, standing on the very tips of her toes, said something to the DJ.

Looking at her figure from behind, her slim, naked legs below the hem of her dress, her narrow waist and the bare shoulders, I slid off of the barstool and stepped over towards her. “I take it, you like the Doors?”

“I like Doahzu!” she replied with evangelical zeal.

She asked if I, too, liked The Doors, and when I replied that I did, she squeezed my hand and kissed me on the cheek. This was followed by several more questions which when affirmed were rewarded with playful kisses on the forehead, the nose, and, before I knew it, on the lips. Needless to say, I quickly grew into the habit of providing Yeses to her questions, like a dog salivating at Pavlov’s bell. She could have given me the same list of horseshit bands Kazuko’s friend had just asked me about and I would have leapt up clapping singing the praises of Mr. Big if only to get one more kiss from her.

When the DJ put on The Doors’ “Touch me”, she meowed like a cat, and scratched playfully at my face. “You like Doahzu?” she asked again.

“Of course. I love them!”

“You like me?”

“I do.”

She kissed me softly, slowly on the lips, then asked: “You love me?”

Pulling her into my arms, I whispered into her ear that I did, and returned the kiss. It was no lie. I loved the way she looked, the smell of her long dark brown hair, the softness of her lips. She was exactly what the baumkuchen wrapper had promised, with the only exception that instead of a bluebird I’d been visited by a cat.

“Call me Nekko-chan,” she said, arching her back and meowing.

“Nekko-chan.”

“Nyao.”

“Meow.”

5

I’ve always found it easy to forget where I am and how much time has passed whenever encapsulated in the cocoon of alcohol and lust. Nekko-chan and I carried on like cats in heat and, if Kazuko hadn’t tapped me on the shoulder to announce that she and her friend were leaving, I would have gleefully fucked the girl right there on the spot against the beer cooler, bottles of Heineken and Asahi Super Dry rattling away, the fluorescent light flickering madly. Reluctantly, I removed my tongue from Nekko-chan’s throat said my good-byes and nice-meeting-yous, but once Kazuko and her friend were out the door, Nekko and I were back it, as shameless as Adam and Eve before the apple.

After being under for only Lord knows how long, Nekko-chan and I finally broke to the surface and breathed in the stale, smoke-filled air of the now half-deserted bar. Most of the customers at the counter had left, the heat of their arses on the bar stools having cooled, and below on the small, dimly lit dance floor only a few girls remained, jerking mechanically like dashboard hula dolls to the music.

Nekko-chan bought two Coronas, and, taking me by the hand, led me out of Umié and onto the crowded street. I sat down on the hard corner of a large concrete planter, overgrown with weeds.

Nekko-chan hiked her dress up and, straddling me, revealed thighs so white the blue veins shown through the ivory veneer of her skin. I put my hand on her knee, traced the skin up and under the skirt the edge of her panties. Following the line downward with my thumb, I found a few hairs and toyed with them.

She tapped my arm, saying, “Dah-mé, dah-mé.”

Having been on second base, sucking each other’s face dry, for, I checked my watch, well over an hour, I was eager to round third and steal home.

“Ah, zannen,” I replied. What a pity.

“Mah-da, mah-da.”

Not yet? What was that supposed to mean? Not yet, tonight? Not yet, here on the pavement? Not yet, in this lifetime?

She asked again me if I loved her.

“I do.”

“Nandé?”

“Because, you are my Bluebird of Happiness.”

Corny as it was, it was the truth. Thanks to Nekko-chan, I was able to stop thinking about Mié for once. Kissing her was a far stronger anesthetic than the alcohol I had been drowning in all these months. Nekko-chan kissed me on the lips and hugged me so tight I nearly fell off the planter.

“I love you, too, . . . Namae wa nani deshtakke?” (What was your name again?)

“Peadar.”

“Pay-dah-roo?”

“Hai, Pay-dah-roo.”

“I love you, too, Pay-dah-roo, demo . . .”

“But what?”

She brushed the hair from my eyes, kissed me tenderly on the nose and said, “We can’t date.”

“Nande?”

“Gaijin daken.”

“Because I’m a foreigner? Nekko-chan, to me you’re the gaijin.”

I suppose it could have hurt to be told such a thing, but then I knew where she was coming from. Even Mié had worried that people would consider her a “yellow cab” for dating a gaijin. Besides, I wasn’t really pinning my hopes on Nekko-chan being The One. A Pentecostal moment with her naked and screaming in tongues above me, however, would not have been a bad consolation.

But, therein lay the rub. How was I going to whisk Nekko-chan off my lap and into my futon? It may not have been the Bataan Death March back to my apartment, but it was still quite a hike back, especially for a woman in heels. I didn’t have the money for a cab, let alone for a “rest” at one of the love hotels nearby. And, like most good Japanese girls, even those who drink themselves silly in bars and pick up the first warm gaijin they meet, Nekko-chan, I assumed lived with her parents.

I asked if she did and she nodded her head. So, there would be no going back to her rabbit hutch, either.

Still, what with me being mad out of it, and Nekko-chan sloppy with the drink, I was determined to get her back to my miserable little apartment, even if I had to piggy-back the girl the whole damn way.

“Uchi ni konai ka?” I asked. (Wanna come back to my place?)

“Iya.”

“No?” I asked again, but she was dead set against it.

Well, that didn’t work, and neither would trying to ply her with more alcohol; Nekko-chan was full as a boot already.

She dropped her Corona, the bottle crashing against the pavement and sending shards of glass and foam everywhere. As we were standing up to go back into Umié she knocked over a bicycle. When she stopped abruptly to hug me in front of the bar, she bumped into a scooter, sending it rolling slowly off the curb and toppling into the street. No, another drink was a not a good idea: it would only have her scurrying off to the jakes, genuflecting before the porcelain altar, rather than getting down on her knees before me.

So, we ventured back into Umié, back into the darkness, back into the noise. But, rather than ascend the steps and return to the counter, we parked ourselves on the lower level, just off the small dance floor, in a darkened corner which promised to conceal our affections better than the fluorescent brightness of the beer cooler had.

Nekko-chan dragged a stool over, and patted the seat. Once I sat down on it, I lifted her light body up, and set her down on my lap. Then, brushing the soft black hair away, I kissed her forehead. I kissed her small nose, her cheeks, her lips, and nibbled at her lovely slender neck.

Blame it, if you like, on the courage of the drink, or humor me by accepting that a man could be so enamored of the beauty of a woman in his arms as to blindly stretch the taunt ligaments of propriety until they snapped. Had it been any other night, with any other girl, anywhere else on this whirling merry-go-round of ours, I doubt I would have done what I did that night with Nekko-chan on my lap in a dark corner of Umié. Spreading her legs slightly, I moved my hand tenderly up her leg until I touched her panties.

Women have a way of letting you get within a diving chance of home before they come to their senses and tag you out, ending the game without a run. I expected the same from Nekko-chan. But, rather than push my hand away, she spread her legs further. Leaning back, and tilting her lovely face upward, she opened that wonderfully broad mouth of hers and sucked me in. And, so that I would not misinterpret the cabbalistic nuances of the female language, she grabbed onto my family jewels and began buffing away. 

Gauche from excitement and drink, I tugged clumsily at her panties, as you do, managing to yank them with the delicacy of a blitzkrieg over her small bottom, down to just above her knees.

Nekko-chan adjusted herself on my lap, and invited me to venture further into her garden, to pick the flowers, so to speak.

There beyond the gates, the soil was in good tilth, fertile and wet. Running my hands through it like a furrow, a tremor rocked through her body. I removed my hand and inhaled her fragrance on my fingers. Nekko-chan took my hand, and with a seductive purr, motioned for me to continue.

Hidden among the dewy folds of sepal and calyx was her flower, a lovely little daisy. I plucked one of the petals, producing a moan. She loves me. Plucking another, she answered with silence. She loves me not. I plucked again and Nekko-chan’s mouth parted as if to say something, but produced a heavy sighing, “Nya~o.” She loves me. She loves me. She loves me.

With her head leaning back all they way against the wall, I watched the expressions on her pretty little face. The eyes were half open and turned up, nothing but white staring back at me. Her broad mouth opened wider, and a whimper emanated past quivering lips. I continued to work at it, and as I did her body grew increasingly rigid until, exhaling one last time with a deep moan, she wilted in my arms.

When I stopped, her eyes cracked open, slowly and unsurely, as if she were emerging from a deep sleep. She looked forlornly into my eyes, and after a moment kissed me tenderly. Then, taking my hand, the hand that had given her so much pleasure, she kissed it, licking each finger one at a time, all the way down my palm and to my tired wrist, kissing my hand as it had never been kissed before. Then, taking my sweating face into her small hands, she kissed me good-bye.

6

It kills me that I forgot to get Nekko-chan’s number or give her mine. I returned to Umié the next night and the following, came again last night and am here for the fifth time in a week pissing my salary away one cheap drink at a time hoping she would reappear and bring a little happiness my way.

Where the Devil are ya, Nekko-chan?

I’ve never spoken much with Umié’s bartenders. Don’t care much for the guys, to be honest, what with the way they stand behind the counter preening themselves like exotic birds. They wouldn’t know service if it came up and spat in their pretty faces. Still, I crawl through the mutual indifference that lies between us like a craggy, barren no-man’s land and ask them whether they have seen Nekko-chan. They haven’t, but they’re happy I ask because it gives them the opportunity to poke a little fun at me rather than merely ignore me as they have all week.

Growing up like I did with six older brothers and sisters, you develop a high tolerance for pain, and a Teflon coating. Jokes played at your expense don’t usually stick. So, I don’t take the teasing seriously the way a pantywaist or an only-child might. I smile when they kid me, and laugh heartily at my own expense. I even inflate my chest with pride when they call me a playboy, but deep down I’m in pain.

“Play with girls,” Shinobu had advised. I did and, for a few heavenly hours, I managed to forget all about Mié, the loneliness and the longing. But, the nail that was soundly driven into her coffin popped right back up, and just like a strong anesthetic wearing off, I now ache more than before.

The boys behind the bar continue to laugh and mimic the way Nekko-chan and I were groping each other. They have no idea what going through my mind as I try hard to get drunk, try to numb my emotions, so I can pretend to be the ladykiller they have worked me out to be. And now that I’ve drunk more than ten bottles of Heineken, one after the other, like a chain smoker sucking on fags, I finally give up on ever seeing Nekko-chan again. I get up and leave Umié.

The weekend will soon be over with little to show for it save a hangover, a heavier heart and a lighter wallet.

“Peadar, the playboy walks home,” I say to myself. “Sometimes, it’s best to give the poor girls a break and spend some time alone.”

Another night sleeping on an empty futon stained with sweat and thin from the humidity.

“The playboy walks home,” I mumble to myself.

The frustration and loneliness is unbearable. Tears gather at my eyes, my chest tightens, my footsteps drag. As much as I want to cry and cry and cry, I can’t. If only I could wail all the way back through that bleak tunnel-like walk home, to drop to my knees and sob, sob until I fell asleep . . .

Ahead of me, a drunk middle-aged man plies a hazardous course towards my direction. His gray suit is unbuttoned and hanging loosely on his thin frame, his white shirt is untucked in the front, the necktie askew.

He pauses before a concrete block wall encircling the dreary offices of the Ministry of Justice, and, bracing himself against it with one hand, lowers his head and vomits ramen onto his own loafers. He coughs a few times, vomits again, then foosters his pocket for a handkerchief to wipe his mouth. He drops the handkerchief to the ground and resumes a wildly weaving path towards me.

It isn’t until we near each other that I realize he’s been watching me as intently as I’ve been watching him. With surprising agility, he lurches and yells, “Kuso gaijin!”

I grab him by the shoulder and turn him around. “Nani?” I ask again. He slurs something in hard Japanese that I can’t catch. I pull him closer by the lapel. “What did you say?”

“Fuckin-gu gaijin!”

All the frustrations of the past few months come to a head, I begin raining blow after blow on his face. I hit him once for all the unanswered letters I have sent to Mié, hit again him for all the lonely nights I have spent since she left me. I drive my fist into his ugly face for the tears that will not fall, punch him once more for the disappointingly truncated relationships I’ve had. The salaryman’s head snaps back, knees buckle, and he drops heavily to the pavement. I kick him for all the times I’ve been made to feel like I’m a retard, step on him for all the petty, incompetent bosses and vindictive co-workers I’ve had to endure. I kick him one last time for all the times I’ve felt derailed since coming to Japan.

“Fuckin-gu Jap!”

---

[1] Yukata are unlined cotton kimono used for lounging and sleeping. In summertime, Japanese men and women sometimes wear more elaborate and colorful versions of the yukata to summer festivals and fireworks displays. Geta are the wooden sandals that are usually worn with yukata.

[2] Jinbei are a traditional, loosely woven cotton garment that is worn by men and children, and increasingly young women, in the summer. 

---

Click here for Chapter One

© Aonghas Crowe, 2010. All rights reserved. No unauthorized duplication of any kind.

注意：この作品はフィクションです。登場人物、団体等、実在のモノとは一切関係ありません。

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A Woman's Nails is now available on Amazon's Kindle.

6. Reina

 1

“You should have called me earlier,” Mié says brightly. “We could have met.”

I did, but you kept hanging up on me, remember?

“I wanted to . . .”

“Say, what are you doing Monday? If you’re free, how about getting together?”

The invitation is made so casually that I can hardly believe my ears. Six months earlier Mié was talking to me through the slit of a chained door and now she acts as if a reset button has been pressed. It’s the spring of 1992 all over again.

Can we go back to zero? Can we meet as if for the first time like we did one year ago? Can we get drunk in your bedroom and fall into each other’s arms again? Can we wake up the next morning, half undressed and a little embarrassed—but happy, too—about what had happened?

“Monday?” I said. “This Monday?”

“Yes, this Monday. Are you free?”

My nose is running and my eyes are filled with tears, and yet I’m smiling. It feels like ages since I last managed a genuine one.

“Yeah, Mié, I’ll be free after eight-thirty.”

“Alrighty then. Let’s meet in front of the Oyafukō Dōri Mister Donut. Okay? You know where that is, don’t you?”

Of course, I know where it is. We went there on Father’s Day last year, the day after you left Tetsu . . .

I let the receiver fall from my hand onto my lap as soon as she hangs up. I don’t know what to make of what has just happened or what Mié’s intentions are. She made no mention of Tetsu.

Have the two of them broken up? Has she been waiting all these months for me to contact her?

I go to my room and lie on my futon where I am overcome by a rare peace of mind, and, for the first time in months, I sleep like the dead.

2

All day Sunday, my co-worker Reina helps me move out of the condo into a new apartment closer to work, an effort taking most of the day because of the size of her car necessitates two trips.

Reina drives a Mitsubishi Pajero Mini. When I ask her if she knows what pajero means, she says she doesn’t, that she loves the car so much she wouldn’t care if it meant dust box. She means trashcan, but after schlepping the last of my belongings from the eighth-floor condominium I don’t really feel like correcting her English.

“I’m only going to tell you because you said it wouldn’t affect the way you feel about your wonderful little car here, but pajero means masturbate in Spanish.”

“No!”

“Yes!”

“How embarrassing.”

“I’m sorry to be the one to have told you,” I say, laughing. “Why, of all the things on this holy, bountiful earth of ours, why would they ever name a car that?”

“Maybe they liked the sound of it.”

3

My new apartment is on the fourth and top floor of a medium-sized concrete-and-tile building. It’s representative of the crap that was thrown up during the bubble economy. The real estate boom of the 1980’s had every knucklehead with a bit of cash burning a hole in his pocket build on any old plot of land he could get his hands on with the expectation that prices would keep going up and up and up.

The apartment building was apparently built on land that used to be the landlord’s mother’s garden. Her dilapidated wooden house remains, uninhabited and leaning, as if from fatigue, against the apartment building. Thanks to the condominiums towering fifteen-stories high to the southeast, south and west, most of the sunlight is blocked. The whole house languishes in a damp and perpetual shade with the exception of one northern wall that gets a flash of sun in the afternoon. The wall is covered with a thick coat of ivy that has invaded the slats of wood and worked its way to the clay beneath it. The tiled roof, black with slime, is slowly disintegrating, the shattered remains of tiles and mortar litter the ground below the eves in a narrow mossy ditch, like dandruff on an old man’s boney shoulders.

Near the house and sharing the same sliver of noonday sun is a small Shintō shrine. A stray black and white cat with bobbed tail passes through the miniature red torii gate and crawls into a space under the shrine, disappearing into the darkness.

My new apartment itself is rather unremarkable. Shaped like an L, with a kitchen nook and an adjacent utility room/bathroom just off the long and narrow living room area, but is redeemed by an exceptionally large balcony that overlooks an oasis of green: the vast garden belonging to one of the few houses remaining in the neighborhood.

Though not as comfortable as the condominium I’ve just given up, it comes with enough amenities—a washer and dryer, a small fridge, an air conditioner and even a toilet equipped with a heated seat and bidet—that I don’t feel as if I’m sliding back into the same kind of F.O.B. squalor I had to endure during my year in Kitakyūshū City.

Even Reina thinks I was lucky to get it. She would say so: she was the one who found the apartment for me.

4

Reina and I end up spending the whole day together; precisely what I hoped would happen when she offered to help me move. At a time when loneliness has been suffocating, the half hour I spend alone with her at the end of each workday has been like pure oxygen.

My desire to be with Mié aside, I might even have asked Reina out if it weren’t for the fact that I was standing at the very end of a discouragingly long queue, hands dug deep into my pockets and looking stupid just like all the other men who were infatuated with her.

Reina locks up her Mitsubishi Jerk-off as I carry the last of my things up the four flights of stairs. She checks my mailbox and then follows behind me. Once in the apartment, she hands me a pile of flyers.

I sit down on the hardwood floor, back against one of the sliding glass doors that open on to the balcony. She takes the place next to me, sitting close enough that our sweaty arms and legs touch.

There’s a menu from a pizza delivery company called, God only knows why, Pizza Pockets.

“I hope they don’t actually carry the pizza their pockets,” I say.

“Maybe they stay warmer that way.”

“The pizza? Or the delivery boy?”

Reina laughs and her head comes to rest against my shoulder.

I ask her if you have to pay extra for the lint.

“The what?”

“Nothing, nothing,” I say. “You feeling hungry?”

She nods. I’d offer to cook for her if I’d had a scrap of food, let alone any pots or pans, in the apartment. She says I needn’t bother, that it would be easier to eat out at a restaurant in the neighborhood or have something delivered.

I continue sifting through the junk mail for other restaurants that deliver and come across a small sheet of paper with some kind of list printed on both sides. At the top of the page is a starburst with the boldfaced message: 5 videos for only 10,000 yen!!! With all the Chinese characters, I can hardly read it. Still, I don’t need to tax my imagination to figure out that it’s a list of porn titles.

“I think I’ll keep this one,” I say, tucking it into my breast pocket.

“Here’s one you might like,” Reina says, pointing at the flyer. “Lolicon Deluxe. Six Dō Sukebe High School Girls.”

“I know sukebe what means, but dō sukebe?”

“Very, very sukebe.”

“Six Very, Very Horny High School Girls. I see. And what about this one?” I ask pointing at a porn title written entirely in Chinese characters.

Reina tilts her head for a moment, then translates: “Sexually Frustrated, Explosion Breasts Step-Mother.”

“Explosion Breast Step-Mother? Hmm, intriguing, but I think I’ll pass. How about this?”

“Midara-na Te OL. Hmmm. Lascivious Hand Office Ladies?”

“What on earth is the lascivious hand?”

“Onanī,” she replies matter-of-factly.

I get the impression that I am supposed to understand what onanī means and feel stupid that I don’t. “Onanī?”

“Yes, onanī. That’s English, right?”

“Does onanī sound like English to you?”

“No, now that you say so, it doesn’t, but . . . I just assumed it was English because it’s always written in katakana.”

“What does it mean, anyways? Curious minds want to know!”

“Pajero.”

“Good Lord!” And then it comes to me like a flash of inspiration. “Oh, now I get it. Onanī is onanism!”

“I told you it was English.”

“Yeah, but nobody says onanism. Masturbating Office Ladies. Very classy. Does it star you and Yumi?”

Reina punches me playfully in the shoulder.

Among the flyers is a pamphlet for something called Blue Juice, a nauseating concoction of herbs and wild grasses that is supposed to be good for you, a menu from an udon restaurant, and several full-colored flyers from a “Delivery Health” service, advertising call girls.

Reina asks me if I know what the postcard-sized flyers are called.

I take a stab in the dark, “The Good News?”

“No, they’re called pinku chirashi.”[1]

“Why pink?”

Because, I’m told, the color pink has long been associated with pornography, prostitution, and such.

“Interesting,” I say. “In the US, the color blue is.”

“They’re called blue flyers in America?”

“No, no, no. Not the flyers, the industry. As far as I know, we don’t have these in the States. You put something like this in the wrong person’s mailbox and you are liable to get arrested or sued by some nutty Christian.”

“Sued? Whatever for?”

“Because he’ll claim he’d been emotionally traumatized just touching it.”

“Americans are stupid,” Reina concludes.

One of the pinku chirashi features a dozen girls posing in a variety of lingerie or costumes, such as a stewardess and policewoman. Most of them have hidden their identity by covering their faces with their hands.

The vitals of each are given, including their “name,” age, height, proportions and the size of their breasts, along with a short comment. Nineteen-year-old Momo here with the E-cups is “Very Good!!!” 172cm-tall Sumire is “Dynamite!” Aya is a “New Face!” Eighteen-year-old Nana might be a little needy in the chest department, but the flyer assures me that she is “Very, Very Popular!” And oh, yes, you can “AF” the twenty-three-year-old Natsu, if you like! AF? Why anal fuck, of course. The girls will come to your home, hotel room, anywhere you like. But wait there’s more! All of the girls are “Amateurs”.

Yeah, right!

I place the pinku chirashi on the “keep” pile, telling Reina that I never know when they might come in handy.

“Have you ever done it?” Reina asks.

“Done what?”

She points to the pinku chirashi.

“With a prostitute? No, never.”

“Really? Why not? A friend of mine went after winning seventy thousand yen at the boat races. He spent it all at a Soapland.”

“Seventy thousand yen! Just to get laid? What a waste!”

“Not to him. He said it was like he had died and gone to heaven.”

I don’t know about Reina, but with all this talk of Soaplands, “delivery health” and adult videos, I tempted to give into the Lascivious Hand myself.

“Your gas is switched on, isn’t it?” Reina asks, getting off the floor.

“Yeah, I think so. Why?”

“Well, I’m really sweaty and would like to take a shower. If you don’t mind, that is.”

“Mind? No, not at all. I was thinking of taking one myself.” 

My heart is racing like a hummingbird’s; my head is light with the titillating possibilities suddenly arrayed before me. “W-w-why don’t you go ahead and h-h-hop into the shower first. I’ll get you a towel.”

Reina disappears behind the half curtain in the entrance to the utility room where she starts to undress. As I open a box looking for my towels, I catch a glimpse of her jeans dropping to her ankles, then her panties. My heart is in my throat, pounding away mercilessly. My hands shake. After I hear her enter the bathroom and turn on the water, I enter the utility room, dizzy with excitement, and place the towels atop the washing machine. The shower door hasn’t been completely shut offering me a long slice of her slim body. I can’t help but look. I stare shamelessly at her right leg and soft right buttock, her narrow waist and back, the light brown curls that fall on her square shoulder. She suddenly turns around, sending me scrambling clumsily out of the utility room and knocking the curtain down.

“Peadar?”

I try to answer, but my mouth is bone dry from lust.

The water is turned off, the shower door opens abruptly, and Reina pokes her head out of the utility room.

“Peadar, there’s no hot water.”

She emerges from the utility room wrapped in a towel, and after hanging the curtain back up, walks into the kitchen, where a moment later exclaims, “Atta, atta! Here it is.”

I’m moved by curiosity to follow her wet footprints into the kitchen where I find her crouched down and turning a valve under the sink. Her pale bottom peeks out from beneath the towel. Turning her head, she notices me gawking down at her, and says, “What you looking at?”

“N-n-nothing.”

She closes the cabinet door, stands up, and then presses a button on the wall making a small green light come on. The light turns red when the water runs in the kitchen sink.

“Yosh,” she says, turning around. “You’ve got hot water now.”

“So that’s how you turn me . . . er, it on.”

Reina’s maddeningly gorgeous, and I can barely keep myself from ripping the towel off, and burying my face in her crotch.

The only thing stopping me, however, is tomorrow night’s date with Mié.

All the same, I’m like a volatile gas. One tiny spark—an inviting touch, or a half step, bringing our bodies closer—then, I wouldn’t have an excuse to keep from pulling her into my arms. I wouldn’t have to hold back the kisses. All it would take is one small caress to ignite me. One kiss, and I’d burn this apartment building to the ground.

Reina takes that precious half step forward, her body just brushes mine and my erection is peering out of the front left pocket of my Levis like a periscope. But nothing happens. I’m frozen, unable to move. Paralyzed with indecision, all I manage to do is let a pathetic little gasp of air out as she passes.

I’m a buffoon, an impotent buffoon!

I should grab Reina’s arm, tug at the towel so it falls to the floor, and do exactly what I’ve had a mind to do all day. My hand rises. It’s an involuntary reaction; my instincts, God love ‘em, are finally kicking in! But just as my finger grazes her arm, I catch a glimpse of Mié’s pajamas in the clear plastic container.

Reina pauses before the curtain. “Yes?” she asks.

“I, I’m just going to get some beer at the 7-Eleven. You want anything?”

She says she doesn’t need anything, and ducks under the curtain. 

Go after her! Follow her, you feckin’ idiot. Now or never!

I see the towel drop to the floor, hear the shower door close and the water start to run. I can’t stand it anymore. I back step it quickly into the kitchen, unbutton my jeans and start to pajero into the sink.

What little remained of my dignity has been completely forfeited.

---

[1] Where mailboxes were once chock-full of these “pink flyers” or “pink handbills”, they are fairly uncommon today. The Japanese used to be much more tolerant of—or, rather, Japanese women were expected to put up with considerably more—nudity and sexism in the past. There is very little nudity on TV anymore and postcards featuring pictures of naked women in sexually explicit poses no longer litter public phone booths and restrooms the way they once did.

---

Click here for Chapter One

© Aonghas Crowe, 2010. All rights reserved. No unauthorized duplication of any kind.

注意：この作品はフィクションです。登場人物、団体等、実在のモノとは一切関係ありません。

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A Woman's Nails is now available on Amazon's Kindle.

5. Machiko

1

On Monday morning, a man in a poorly fitting navy suit comes into the office and takes a seat near Yumi; the heavy dark clouds that usually hang over my co-worker’s head break, the sun filters in.

Yumi chats animatedly to the man, using that gratingly high and overly delighted voice she normally reserves for the phone.

The man goes about his business, opening what looks like a large physician’s bag and taking out a narrow, but rather thick envelope which he places on the table. Yumi gives the man a slip of paper, which he examines and then marks with a small stamp. He hands the slip of paper back to my co-worker who continues to chatter away cheerfully. The man proceeds to open the envelope, revealing a two-inch thick stack of cold hard cash. Holding the stack at the bottom with two hands, he flicks his wrists a number of time producing a fan of ten thousand yen note.

Good Lord! Whatever this man’s job is, I want it!

As much as I’d love to stay and watch the man perform his magic, I’ve got a class to teach. This morning it’s a group of beginners, made up of six housewives ranging in age from their late thirties to early fifties.

When the oldest of the group, Miéko, asks me how I spent the weekend, it is tempting to say that it was spent lying naked on a wooly throw rug tossing about with a high school girl. I tell her, instead, that I spent Sunday studying Japanese, which produces a cackle of praise from the students. Miéko says she respects me and wishes her husband were as diligent as I was.

The woman should be careful of what she wishes for.

Miéko then tells me that her own weekend was horrible.

“Really?” I say. “Why’s that?”

“Finished dinner, my husband . . .”

“After dinner,” I correct.

“What?”

“After dinner,” I repeat. “Not finished dinner, after dinner.”

“I see. I see. Thank you.” Miéko looks down at her notebook, studies what she has prepared for today’s lesson, then starts over: “Finished dinner, my husband . . .” I tap the surface of my desk to convey my irritation. The message seems to get across. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she says. “After . . . After dinner, my husband . . . How do you say . . . chidori ashi?”

It’s thanks to good old Mié that I know chidori ashi, literally chicken legs, means stagger. “My husband staggered,” I answer.

“What?”

“Staggered.”

Miéko says she doesn’t understand.

“Your husband, he was drunk, right? Yopparai, right?”

“Yes, very, very yopparai,” she says, laughing.

“Okay then, he staggered.”

“Sutahgah . . .?”

“Staggered.”

“Sutahgahdo?”

“Yes, staggered. He staggered.”

“What does that mean?”

I feel like a dog chasing its own tail.

“What does that mean?” she asks again.

“Staggered? Your husband was drunk. He staggered. Chidori ashi.” 

“Yes, yes. Chidori ashi. How do you say that in English?”

I am this close to losing it. “Chidori ashi means Stagger.”

“Huh?”

“Chidori ashi equals sutahgahdo.” This really is how they speak English here.

“Oh, I see, I see. Thank you. Finished dinner, my husband staggered . . .”

I am distracted by the distinctive whine of a 50cc motor. Going to the window, I look out and see the Man with the Cash, tooling noisily away on a cheap little scooter. When class is over and the students have left, I ask Yumi who the guy was.

“He’s from the bank,” she says.

“From the bank? On that dinky little scooter? And with all that cash?”

“Yes, today is payday.”

“He doesn’t ever get robbed?”

“Have you got your inkan?” Yumi asks.

“My inkan?”

“Yes, your inkan. Have you got it?”

I tell her I don’t. The stamp engraved with my name in kanji is back at the condominium.

“I can’t pay you unless you have your inkan. I have to stamp this book.”

“Here’s a wild idea, Yumi, that I’ll just throw out to you, see if you bite: How about I just sign the book.”

“No, no, no. You must use the inkan.”

Oh good fucking grief. “Okay, I’ll bring it tomorrow.”

“What about your pay?”

“I’ll just pick it up tomorrow.”

“But I can’t keep that much cash here.”

“Cash? We’re paid in cash?”

She says of course we are, making me feel like an idiot for asking. You can live for years in this country, study its language and culture, but you’ll still be scratching your head every time you bump up against their notion of common sense.

“Can you go home and get your inkan during your break?”

This is not a suggestion, so after a quick lunch at an udon shop near Ōhori Park, I take the train all the way to the condominium, get my ever so important inkan, and return to the office three hours later where I stamp a little box next to my name in the little pay book and get a brown envelope containing a stack of the newest, crispest bills I’ve ever laid my eyes on.

Unfortunately, my custodianship over the money is temporary. A few days later, I give the entire wad, and then some, to a woman sitting behind the counter of a shabby little used bookstore a block from my workplace. My first month’s rent, plus an amount equivalent to another four month’s rent, which I’ve been told, is the key money—fucking expensive keys—plus one more month’s rent for the reikin, a token of appreciation to the realtor, who in this case happens to also be my new landlord and downstairs neighbor. Thanks for nothing.

When I asked my co-workers if I will get any of this deposit back, they cocked their heads and sucked air through their teeth. I took that as a no.

So, it’s fine dining on stir-fried bean sprouts for the next four weeks: a small price to pay for not having to live an hour out of town in the middle of nowhere. What the hell was I thinking when I agreed to move there?

In the first few weeks alone at the condominium, I dozed off on the train and missed my station four times. Four times! The first time was in the morning on my way to work. By the time I woke up, I had traveled three stations beyond my stop. I had to scramble out of the train and run across the platform and catch the train going the opposite direction. Had I not been warned so unambiguously by Abazuré that were I ever late, that I’d be fired immediately, I might have taken it in stride. Instead, I was pushing people out of the way, dashing through the turnstiles and sprinting like an Olympian all the way from the station to the office where I arrived panting and sweating, a minute to spare on the time clock. The guillotine came to an abrupt halt an inch from my trembling neck.

One evening as I was riding the last train home, I succumbed to such a deep, dream-filled sleep that I did not wake until the train had arrived in the neighboring prefecture! As it was the last train of the evening, I was left with two options: crashing for the night outside the station with the drunks or forking over five thousand yen—half a day’s wages—for a taxi.

The third time, like the second, was on the ride home after a long tiring day of work. When I nodded off, the train was shoulder to shoulder with equally exhausted salarymen and office ladies who’d had the very life sucked out of them and were now staring vacantly before themselves as if at the smoldering remains of extinguished dreams. I was fully reclined and drooling on the seat, the contents of my grocery bags strewn on the floor, grapefruits and apples rolling about here and there like orphaned children when the conductor woke me. I was the only remaining passenger on the train, which had reached its final destination. The conductor helped me collect my scattered belongings and groceries. Had it been America, I probably would have woken to find myself stripped down to my skivvies. I didn’t have enough for a cab, so I had to hump it rest of the way to the condominium. An hour’s walk in the rain without an umbrella, and loaded down with a week’s worth of groceries.

The following morning, I overslept again, yet by the grace of God managed somehow to get to work in time to punch the clock But, by then, I’d had it.

2

The Friday evening class consists of three high school students and a rōnin, a boy who didn’t manage to get into the college of his choice and has decided to spend the year at a yobikō, a kind of cram school for students like him, and give it another shot next winter. I ask him where he wants to go, but he’s hesitant to tell me. He’s either too embarrassed, or just modest. I prod, I poke, I cajole, until he finally gives in. He wants to go to Waseda University. As it’s one of the best private schools in the country, I say he must be smart. He replies that he’s not smart, that he’s fat.

When asked what he hopes to study, he says he’s not sure. He just wants to get into Waseda like his father. He tells me his father’s fat, too. I wish him good luck and he laughs. Everyone laughs when I say good luck. Ten years will pass and people will still be laughing whenever the words “Good luck!” pass my lips and I still won’t understand why.

One of the girls, a short roly-poly sophomore at a private girls’ school, is excited about her up-coming school trip to Disneyland and the northern island of Hokkaidō. I ask when she’s going, she says Tōkyō. I ask her again, and she answers Tōkyō Disneyland. I say “When?” once more, and she tells me, “In Tōkyō.”

Is she doing this to me on purpose?

Deliberately and very slowly, enunciating as clearly as I humanly can and giving the “n” extra stress I ask, “When-NUH are you going?”

She nods! She gets it! There’s a big buck-toothed smile on her round chubby face! “I shee, I shee,” she says. “Hokkaidō.”

I break out the chalk, write WHEN and WHERE on the board, stab at the WHEN causing the chalk to crumble in my hand and ask for one last time. She apologizes then answers that she’s going in July. Progress! But wait, it’s only April, why’s she all fired up to go now? She says she can’t wait to go to Tōkyō Disneyland to see “Mickey Mouse ando Donarudo Ducku ando Poo.” I tell her that poo means unchi, then ask whose unchi she wants to see, Goofy’s?

She waves her hand frantically before her face. She doesn’t want to see Goofy’s feces. She wants to see the bear.

“Oh, you mean Winnie the Pooh.”

She says, “Yesh, yesh, yesh,” and then asks why on earth Christopher Robin would be so mean to call his bear unchi.

I shrug and say, “Maybe it sounded nice.”

She tells me she’s sad to learn what Pooh’s name means. I try to comfort her, telling her that she now has something funny to share with her friends at school tomorrow. She says she’ll never tell them. Why not, I ask. 

“Because they’d be sad, too.”

I ask her why they’re also going all the way to Hokkaidō which is an hour-and-half-long flight from Tōkyō and I’m told that they will visit the city of Fukugawa to see Clark’s statue. When I ask who this Clark person is, the rōnin answers, “Boys be ambitious!”

All of the students nod their heads collectively, and say, “Ambishush.” The phrase rings a bell and I recall having read about the missionary and educator who founded a school in Hokkaidō over a century ago. The sophomore points upwards, imitating the statue. I ask her what Clark’s statue is pointing at. She replies, the sky.

“What the hell’s he pointing at the sky for?”

She giggles and says she isn’t sure.

I tell the girl she’s lucky she isn’t a boy.

“Why’s that?”

“Because if you were a boy, you’d have to be ambitious and work hard. You’re a girl. You can take it easy and have fun if you like.”

She shouts, “Yea! Yea!”

The poor rōnin, however, hangs his weary head.

3

After work I squeeze onto a crowded train and head back to the condominium. The worn-out passengers hang loosely onto the overhead handles, swaying gently and bumping into each other like racks of beef, frozen and suspended from steel meat hooks.

Earlier in the day, Abazuré told me the students were happy to have me as their teacher, that I was doing a wonderful job. Compliments are cheap in this country, like smiles at McDonald’s, they don’t cost a cent, but Abazuré was sincere, eerily so.

So many of the adult students have declared me “a great teacher” and introduced their friends to the school that most of my morning classes are now filled to capacity. Even my co-worker, dreary old Yumi, after sitting in on one of my evening lessons, has rediscovered something to be enthusiastic about. All this praise depresses me because there is nothing that makes me feel more like a loser than being told how well I perform tasks embarrassingly beneath my potential. The compliment jars my confidence as malignantly as insults; I feel my dreams begin to slip through my fingers.

As I ride the train, pressed between the carcasses of salarymen and office ladies, an appalling realization finally begins to seep in. The deposit I paid and the contract I signed with Abazuré as my guarantor have all but indentured me. I was so eager to escape, at any cost, from the inaka, from the condominium in the middle of nowhere, that I didn’t give fuck about anything else. Now I do. As much as I am loath to admit it, I am probably looking at another two years performing the old eikaiwa soft-shoe routine. God, how depressing!

I look at the meat around me. Do they have dreams as well, or have those been extinguished by damp circumstance and necessity? What possesses them to be packed like cattle into trains, to work until they can barely stand? Just to pay off the mortgage on a place where they can drop their weary bones every night? I look at the expressionless faces, the vacant look in the eyes. Each day, inertia alone seems to be carrying them through. Were they ever motivated by dreams, inspired by love? Were they once animals in the sack, passionately thrashing about, lusting for life itself? Or, have they always been pathetic shells of men feigning impotence if only to get an extra half hour of blessed sleep? God help them. And God help me.

There isn’t a single light on in the condominium when I enter the front door. Not a sound, save the sickly hum of the second-hand refrigerator. Friday evening, alone again and with nothing in particular to do. Again. I’ve come to hate the weekends, hate how they remind me how little there is to look forward to after working all week. I couldn’t have been born to live this way.

I plop down on the woolly carpet in the living room. In the absence of the static work provided, my thoughts tune into Mié. As surely as the tide returns, my thoughts return to her. Where she is? What she’s doing? Who’s she with? Is she thinking about me, wondering these very same things, or is her mind elsewhere? Is there still a pulse to be found in the relationship we once had? Or am I wasting my time waiting for her to discover it, waiting for her to come back? Can the love we had be resuscitated, or is it as hopeless as a naked cadaver lying on a cold stainless steel shelf? It tortures me to think that she may have moved on, that I may have been forgotten when the pain in my heart is still so fresh.

What the hell am I still in Japan for? If only I could take my deposit back, erase my name and inkan from the apartment contract, and go back to the States. Coming to this country derailed me, and every day that passes is another day further off course.

I consider calling Aya, having her sneak out of her home to spend the night with me, to have her distract me with those glorious breasts of hers. But the way I’m feeling tonight, I doubt I’d find much consolation in screwing a high school girl. As surely as she would oblige me, I know the morning would greet me more depressed than ever, bitter that it weren’t someone I loved lying next to me.

With my move only a day away, I’ve got to stop moping about and start getting my things together, to pack up my clothes and belongings. Having never quite settled into the condominium, I have lived for the most part out of a suitcase, unpacking things as necessity required and hanging them up in the closet or putting them away in a drawer when I was finished. It doesn’t take long to pack everything back up.

My “roommates” are in town and probably won’t return until Sunday evening, meaning I’ll have vacated the condo by the time they return. I’ve heard stories of Japanese families digging themselves so deep into debt that they’re left with only two options: packing up what they can and moving out of their homes surreptitiously in the middle of the night, so-called yonigé, or committing ikka shinjū, family suicide. Considering that I haven’t mentioned my move to the “roommates,” I kind of feel like I’m yonigé-ing myself.

You think they’ll miss me? Think they’ll even notice that I’m gone?

4

I take a small box containing Mié’s pajamas, her yellow toothbrush and overnight kit, what she called her o-tomarisetto, from one of the drawers and place it in the clear plastic container where I keep photo albums and souvenirs from my first year in Japan.

It’s been months since I last opened the albums. Fear of an emotional breakdown has prevented me from summoning Lazarus out of his tomb, from taking the albums out and reviving the past.

I take them out now, one for nearly every month shared with Mié, with the exception of October. I still can’t bring myself to have the film from that month developed. They remain tucked away in a tin can, interned like dry bones and ashes.

Some of the happiest memories of my life are recorded on the pages of the albums. I can’t help myself, can’t keep myself from taking the first album out, from cracking it open, and diving headfirst before checking the depth. 

My twenty-sixth birthday: there’s Mié sitting among a group of some two dozen of my students who’ve crammed into one of the six-tatami mat rooms at my old apartment. She’s beaming at me—so beautiful, so vibrant, so engaging. She didn’t know if she would be able to make it, if she would be able to get away from work. I told her thirty people would be coming to the party, but she was the only person I really wanted to celebrate with. “Wakatta. Gambarimasu,” she said. Okay, I’ll try to be there.

I was on tenterhooks throughout the party, my eyes turning expectantly towards the front door every time I heard footsteps coming up the stairwell. When she did come, I could barely contain myself. “Mié-chan!” I shouted as she walked in through the door. That night after everyone had left we made love for only our second time.

On the following page, Mié and I are at an izakaya near my old apartment. We went to it whenever she drove up to visit me. In the first snapshot, Mié is pouring saké for me from a small earthenware tokkuri bottle into the tiny choko cup I am holding. Before us on the counters is a small plate of grilled saba (mackerel) with daikon oroshi (grated radish). It was my first time to try it. There were also dishes with a beef and potatoes nimono, and tempura on white paper. In the next photo, I am pouring soy sauce into the choko of the man next to me. Mié is laughing, but the man doesn’t quite know what to make of my little American jokku.

On the next page, is an adorable letter Mié sent to me after returning from a trip she took with all of her co-workers to the northern island of Hokkaidō. She included several photos of herself which had been taken while she was there. The letter mentions how mild the summer in Hokkaidō is compared to Kyūshū, the places visited and sights seen, the wonderful seafood she ate, so much she’s afraid she has put on weight . . . again. It closes with a few lines that reassured me when I had already started to fall in love with her:

“I’ve been thinking a lot about you recently. I don’t quite understand how I’m feeling, but I miss you so much and want to see you. Call me.”

When my eyes start to mist up, I put the photo album back into the storage container, clamp it shut, and then finish packing up my things. After a meal of tom yum gai soup, I sit down in front of the television and flip through the channels for something to get my mind off Mié. Without satellite or cable, flipping through the channels is like jogging around a short track. Around and around and around. A variety show featuring pop music, a variety show featuring a manzaicomedy duo, a dry documentary on NHK, the sober state-run broadcaster, an English language instruction program featuring sad excuses for foreigners hamming it up on NHK’s education channel, another variety show featuring manzaicomedians and pop music, and finally rounding up the lap, an old Schwarzenegger film dubbed in Japanese.

The phone rings.

5

“Moshi-moshi?”

“Hello. Is Chris there?” asks a soft, barely audible voice.

“No, he isn’t,” I reply, turning the TV’s volume down.

“Is this Peadar?”

“Yeah.”

“This is Machiko.” It’s Chris’s girlfriend.

“Oh, hi, Machiko.”

“Do you know where Chris is?” she asks timidly.

“No.”

My roommate, though affable enough, seldom has much to say to me whenever we happen to be at the condominium at the same time.

She asks if I am alone, what I’m doing, what my plans are for the weekend. Why the sudden interest in old Peadar, I can’t help but wonder. Is this Machiko a player? Is the quiet demeanor just a ruse?

“Yes,” I reply.

“I don’t believe you,” she says.

“I really am alone, regardless of whether you believe it or not.”

“You have a lot of girlfriends, don’t you?”

I’ve been getting this a lot. I tell her I’m not seeing anyone in particular. 

“Chris and I, we saw you Saturday evening with two girls. You were holding hands with both of them.”

Saturday night? Holding hands?

“Oh, them,” I say. “They’re just friends.”

Two former students of mine had come down from Kitakyūshū to see me. Sweet girls, both of them, terribly kind, but not what I’d call my cup of tea.

“We were drunk,” I offer as an explanation. I had completely forgotten about that.

“And I saw you with a high school girl near the park before that. You were holding her hand, too.”

Holding hands with Aya? Now that I definitely did not do, but there’s no use in protesting; Machiko has convinced herself.

“Chris tells me you are a playboy, a real lady-killer. Are you? Are you a lady-killer?”

This gives me a nice and long overdue laugh.

“Please be nice to them,” she says.

“Okay, I promise. Cross my heart.”

“I mean it,” she insists and then I can hear the gravity in her soft voice. “Peadar, please be nice to them.”

“I’ll try,” I say.

“Do you know when Chris will come home?”

“To tell you the truth, I have no idea,” I say, adding that he sometimes doesn’t come back at all. Oops!

The silence on the other end of the phone speaks volumes. It was a simple mistake; I was under the assumption that Chris had been spending the night with Machiko. Now that I realize that hasn’t been the case, I whip up a nice and fluffy white lie.

“Chris is busy, as I’m sure he’s told you, Machiko, lots of overtime. And he’s also helping a friend which . . .” I have to pull these fluffy white lies out of my arse because I don’t know Jack-shit about Chris’s private life. “He told me he sometimes stayed at a co-worker’s place in town, a Tony-something, whenever he misses the last train . . .”

The last bit has the merit of being based on more than the threadbare fabric of my imagination: it stems from hearsay.

Machiko remains silent. I can’t tell whether she has bought any of it, or whether she was able to understand what I told her.

After a long, pain-filled sigh, she speaks up. “I want you to give him a message.”

“Sure.”

“Tell him: I love him . . . I miss him . . .”

I can hear her sniffing on the other end.

“I want to see him . . .”

Her voice grows ever more quiet, and with all the sniffing, it’s hard to catch what she’s saying. Even so, I know the message she wants me to convey.

“Tell him . . . I love him.”

I write the simple words down on the only piece of paper available, a mauve napkin with a picnic basket and cartoon squirrels in one corner, write her words verbatim with ellipsis indicating the pauses each time she’s too overcome by emotion to continue. When I look at what she has had me write, I realize they are the very same words Mié spoke to me.

Mié and I spent a quiet weekend together at her apartment in Fukuoka, rarely leaving her bed. We made love, rested, made love again, and then after taking a shower together, fell into each other’s arms and did it one more time before falling asleep.

When I had returned to Kitakyūshū, I took a long walk by myself along the bank of the slow-moving Onga River, listening to a cassette Mié had made for me with some of her favorite songs. I couldn’t stop thinking about her, and felt vulnerable and weak because of it. I was lost in that painfully comfortable limbo, having fallen in love but distressed that the sentiment might not be mutual. That evening I walked up the hill to the cluster of mom-and-pop shops where the only public telephone in the neighborhood was to be found. The booth was alive with mosquitoes, moths, gnats and ticks, every kind of bug imaginable. Braving the insects, I dialed Mié’s number. That’s how badly I wanted to hear her voice, wanted to hear her say, “I love you . . . I miss you . . . I want to see you.”

“I miss you, too, Mié.” I told her, with my throat taunt. “I want to see you, too.”

“I’ll tell him,” I promise Machiko.

“Peadar?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I talk to you?”

“Of course.”

Machiko speaks for an hour, describing how she first met Chris. 

She had been walking along a street in town a month ago when she noticed him. Just like that, she went right up to him and asked if he was American. He said, yes, and the two of them started talking. They ended up spending the afternoon together chatting in a coffee shop.

“I was so sad and lonely before I met Chris,” she says sniffing. “But, he’s made me so happy.”

I start to cry. Mié had made me happy, too, at a time when I was desperately homesick and missing all of my friends back in Portland. I tell Machiko a little about Mié, only a little because to tell her the extent of what has been weighing on my heart all these months would be unbearable.

“Do you still love her?”

“Yes,” I answer, tears flowing down my face, my nose running.

“Then call her.”

“She’ll just hang up on me.”

“Try,” she encourages. “Give her one more chance.”

6

I stare at the phone for more than half an hour, before finally dialing Mié’s number.

How many times did I try to call Mié? How many times did I linger by the phone, wanting to make this very call, but was held back by fear, the fear that the relationship was dead, the fear that Mié was gone and would never come back no matter what I did or said? How many times? I should have moved on and found someone else, anyone, if only to fuck away the memories, if only to mend my heart by breaking others’.

Machiko is right, I have nothing to lose by calling, so I dial Mié’s number.

“Moshi-moshi?”

Mié’s familiar deep voice breaks the silence that has enveloped me since Machiko hung up.

“Hi.”

“Who is it?” she asks.

“It’s me . . .”

“Peadar?”

“Yes,” I say painfully, my throat dry and tight. “Yes, it’s me, Peadar.”

Mié sounds genuinely happy to hear from me, something which catches me off guard.

We exchange bland pleasantries like two old middle-aged women in a supermarket. She mentions the warm weather we’ve been having asks if I had a chance to drink under the sakura blossoms. I tell her I did, that I’m now working near West Park, one of the best places to see the cherry blossoms.

“I’m glad to hear that,” she says. “Do you like your new job?”

“It’s not bad,” I tell her. “A million times better than working for that idiot, Bakayama, in Kitakyūshū but then just about anything would be better than another year with him.”

She speaks of her own hatred for the tiring and boring routine at the pachinko parlor, then brightens up when she tells me that she got a new puppy.

“He likes to drink beer,” she adds.

Six months may have passed since we last spoke, but she is still the Mié I fell in love with and have been missing all these months.

Mié asks how I look, whether I’ve grown my hair out or have kept it short, and so on. Finally, she asks me if I have a girlfriend.

I tell her I don’t.

“No?”

“No.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“I don’t believe you.”

I have no idea why everyone is finding this so hard to accept. Am I missing something here?

“I don’t have a girlfriend,” I say. “Haven’t had one since you . . .”

“I’m sorry.”

The tears begin to fall, betraying me again. Women will tell you that they want their men to express their emotions, but nothing turns a woman off faster than a man blubbering pathetically into the receiver of the phone and that’s exactly what I begin to do and I’ve never hated myself more than I do now.

“I’m so lonely, Mié . . . I miss you . . . I want to see you.”

---

Click here for Chapter One

© Aonghas Crowe, 2010. All rights reserved. No unauthorized duplication of any kind.

注意：この作品はフィクションです。登場人物、団体等、実在のモノとは一切関係ありません。

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A Woman's Nails is now available on Amazon's Kindle.