A Woman's Nails Read online

  Mie tries to maintain a distance from me the rest of the evening. She chain-smokes her Mild Sevens, letting them burned half way, rubbing them out in the ashtray and lighting up again. She smokes as if to save herself the effort of having to talk with me on any level but the most onion-skin thin one. If a cigarette isn't pressed against her red lips, then it's a glass of whiskey, unloading the burden of conversation onto Yuki's and my shoulders. Only when it behooves Mie to do so, will she gesture with a cigarette between those cold, rigid fingers of hers, or add an occasional point to guide the conversation away from her comfort zone, before retreating back into a grating silence that only makes me wonder why she asked me out in the first place.

  Was it to prove to herself that she no longer felt anything for me, that even if her former lover were to stand before her she wouldn’t be moved? Or was she a sadist at heart, inviting me out only to marvel at the damage she had caused, to watch me unravel, like an arsonist watching a house burn to the ground?

  When Mie stands to go to the restroom, I too rise to my feet and silently follow a few paces behind her. I've been far too patient with her this evening and have drunk far, far too much to stop myself from dredging the bottom of my heart and letting the pain that has been festering there finally come to the surface. I know it's a bad idea and I know I really ought to wait, but then I've waited six months already and who knows when, let alone if, I will ever see her again. I stand outside the restroom and when she emerges, she is surprised to see me.

  “I want to talk with you,” I say. “Alone.”

  Good God, I sound desperate. I am desperate.

  There are times when I wish I could dislocate myself from the past, to look back at the things I did and say, “No, no, no. That? That wasn't me. You must be mistaking me for someone else.” If I'd had a knife, big and sharp enough, I would have cut those bits of the past off, amputated entire limbs from my personal history. But then, what would I have had left? A past that looked like a daruma—an atrophied torso with grotesque knobs where the arms and legs had once been. I might still have my dignity in tact, though, which is more than I can say about how I feel about myself now.

  She tries to slip past, to return to the carefree distraction her co-worker provided, but I grab her hand and stop her.

  “I have to talk to you, Mie-chan. Anywhere but here.”

  She makes another attempt to get away, so I pull her roughly to the fire escape in the back.

  “I don't want to marry you,” she says in perfect English, the first English she has spoken the whole evening.

  “This isn't about marriage. God damn it, Mie, I love you . . . And, and all I've wanted these past months is to understand why.”

  “I still love you. But I can't marry you. Tetsu and I will be engaged next month. Our families are going to meet next week.”

  “Why?” It's as if someone has just kicked me in the gut. Everything goes white. My knees buckle. “Why?”

  Why did you leave me? Why didn't we talk more so you could tell me how you were feeling? Why did it have to end? Why? Why? Why?

  “Why, Mie-chan?”

  My heart is overwhelmed by an all-too familiar weariness. I want to just disappear, to exhale one last time and expire and be forgotten. I can't take it anymore. My grip on her arm weakens, releasing her. Did I ever really hold her? Was she ever mine to begin with? I step aside to let her go.

  She starts to walk away, then stops and says, “We had a baby, Peador.”

  Tears fill my eyes. “A baby?”

  “We killed our baby,” she said.

  My jaw drops, the tears fall hard and fast. “I . . . I didn't know. You never told me.”

  “I tried to, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “But you wouldn't listen to me.”

  “I listened to you.”

  “You only listened to the words, Peador. Not my feelings.”

  “I'm sorry. God, I'm sorry. Mie . . .”

  “Apologizing won't change anything, Peador . . . And neither will crying.”

  Mie walks back to the table leaving me alone to dry my eyes and regain what little composure I have.

  Back at the table, I gather up my blazer and bag, and say good night as calmly and as pleasantly as I can. I search Mie's eyes for a trace of the woman I fell in love with a year ago, but she isn't there. When she broke up with me, she had protected herself behind a chained door, now she has chained her heart shut. As I turn away to head out the door, the two jump to their feet and scramble after me. God only knows why, but they insist that I stay, but I am beyond persuasion. Not even Yuki's suggestion that we all take a taxi back to her apartment can dissuade me. It's an offer I know I'll regret not taking, but as desperate I was to see Mie again, all I want now is to get the hell out of here before I lose it completely.

  Sadness grips my throat. I speak in short, difficult bursts to keep from crying again in front of her. “I'm sorry, but . . . I . . . gotta go . . . Bye.”

  Mie kisses me affectionately on the cheek, a soft kiss dampened by a warm tear.

  What is that tear for, I wonder. Is it a tear of sadness and frustration, or a tear of anger and exasperation? Did it fall for me or for herself, or for the baby we didn't have? I know what I'm going to cry for. My tears will stream from these burning eyes for all the things I should have understood about her and all the things I should have done for her, but didn't. I know that as soon as I have left Mie’s sight, I will mourn the devastating loss of a woman's love and the demise of the hope that had kept me going all this time. I will drop to my knees under the weight of regrets of horrible mistakes I've made because they can never ever be undone.

  I start running, turning off at the first corner, run as fast as my legs can carry me. Finding a telephone booth, I take the Lady Luck phone card from my wallet, and dial the only number I know.

  “Moshi-mosh,” Reina says.

  “It's me . . . I need a friend,” I blubber into the receiver.

  8

  REINA

  1

  “If you're just having sex with me, I want you to stop it,” she says, shoving me away once her hands are free.

  Her brown hair is matted against her face and neck. When I try to brush it away, she slaps at my hand.

  Her wrists are red, with deep braided indentations in them, and on her tummy are drops of semen, scattered like a broken strand of pearls.

  She turns away from me, and faces the wall. The sweat of our bodies has soaked through the sheets to the futon, forming an unnavigable body of perspiration between us.

  It's not that I'm “just having sex” with her, but then it's not quite love that I am making, either.

  So Peador, what are you doing still screwing her? I don't know. I really don't know. And I don't know what to say to calm her anger or reassure her. All I can do is try to make a gesture of affection, to kiss her tenderly on her back and pull her closer to me.

  “But,” she says, softening, “if you want something more . . .”

  I kiss her on the lips, then maneuver above her, gently spreading her legs and easing inside her for the third time this morning.

  Reina and I went to the neighborhood yakitori-ya after work the evening following the disaster with Mie.

  Feeling as if I'd been pulled emotionally and physically, through a wringer, I didn’t feel much like eating. I pushed the menu aside, and told the master to just bring me a beer.

  “Bottle or draught?”

  “Draught. Biggest you've got.”

  “Futsukayoi?” he said, asking if I had a hangover.

  “Hai,” I answered, massaging my temples.

  The master laughed heartily and hollered back to the kitchen, “Nama icchô!”

  As if on cue, a middle-aged woman in a white kerchief and smock emerged from behind a dingy noren curtain with my personal savior in a tall mug, frosted with ice. I mumbled “kampai” to myself, and started glug-glug-glugging away.

  The cold beer soothed my
parched throat, tamed the nausea in my gut, and loosened the screws on my temples.

  Close, but not quite there yet. Waving the woman in the kerchief over, I gave her the empty mug and asked for another: “Moh ippai.”

  Judging by the way Reina eyed me I could tell she wasn't impressed.

  “Trust me,” I assured her. “I know what I'm doing.”

  “And that's supposed to help?”

  “Reina, it is the only thing that does help.”

  I had tried their vile little bottles of elixir concocted from turtle blood, deer horn, horse testicles, and what have you, but they didn't do a damned thing except leave a foul taste in my mouth. Beer, glorious beer, on the other hand, worked like a charm. Nothing beat it for the hangover. Of course, I was well aware that pounding beer after beer wouldn’t cancel the previous night's debt. No, all I could hope for was breaking the hangover down into manageable installments.

  “You know what we call that in Japanese?” Reina asked.

  “What? Drinking when you've got a hangover? Mukaezake, of course.”

  “Eh? How do you know?”

  “I'm Irish, Reina. Words like 'hair of the dog' constitute a basic survival phrase for my people. And, I'll also have you know, the very first Chinese character I ever learned was 'saké’.”

  “Aruchû des'ne,” she said, calling me an alcoholic.

  “Hai, aruchû des’!” And, there you have it. I admitted to being a drunk. I was now theoretically one step closer to becoming a reformed alcoholic. But good God, where would the fun in that be?

  The woman in the kerchief came to my rescue me with another chilled mug of beer. One step forward, two steps back; the folks at AA would have to start their meeting without me.

  Let me tell you, it was with great relief when I first learned of the Japanese tolerance for drunks. Staggering home after three or four too many seemed to be a national pastime of sorts, second only to beisuboru. And, best of all, you didn't have to suffer through the guilt trip “concerned friends” would lay into you the way you had to in the States if you enjoyed the pint too much. No, tell someone here you liked to drink, and they'd buy you a bottle of expensive Scotch or shôchû. Mention that you’re hung over, and they'd kindly offer you mukaezake.

  “Kampai,” I said with a little more life in me this time and clinked my mug against Reina’s glass of oolong tea.

  “Can I have a sip?” she asked.

  “Sure.”

  She took a healthy swig of beer, let out a long sigh, then started at it again, and ended up drinking half of my beer.

  “You want to order one for yourself?”

  “I do, but, um . . .” she replied.

  “But, what?”

  “But, one will just lead to two and . . .”

  “And who's the aruchû now, Reina?”

  “You are! You should have seen yourself last night.”

  I was hoping we wouldn't have to go down that road, that Reina would have the decency to let me forget about the whole evening.

  The details of the previous night were like disconcerting pieces to an incomplete jigsaw puzzle. Every now and then, an image would flicker through the haze just long enough for me to grab it, turn the image around, and try to guess where it fit into the big, incommodious picture.

  Though I clearly remembered collapsing to the floor of the phone booth and wailing like a kicked dog after calling Reina, how I had got home was still obscured in a pea soup fog of amnesia. For all I know, I may very well have been beamed up to the Mother Ship, anal-probed, and dropped like a spent cartridge just outside my apartment building. In any event, Reina had been waiting for me at the gate of my apartment, crouched down and playing with a stray bob-tailed cat when I arrived.

  “Been here long?” I asked.

  “No,” she said, standing up, and straightening her skirt.

  The spectacle I had made of myself in front of Mie, however, was burned into my memory. And as I revisited the awful night in my mind, sketchy details I would have preferred to forget started trickling in.

  The soup thinned and I remembered collapsing to the floor of the phone booth, banging my head against the glass door, and, staggering--yes, that was how I had got home--staggering, and attacking piles of garbage outside of condominiums, yelling “Why, Mie? Why?” all the way home.

  Each time Reina ordered something, the master would echo her order in a booming voice, then remove two skewers of each from a refrigerated display case before us that ran the length of the counter.

  I reminded Reina that I wasn't hungry, but rather than listen, she added okra, asparagus and enoki mushrooms wrapped in bacon, and shishamo (smelt) to the order. And, after a moment's thought, she also asked for grilled rice balls and miso soup, making me wonder how the slim woman was planning to eat it all by herself.

  “You told me a lot of things,” She said with a queer smile.

  “Oh, did I?” I asked with a nonchalance that belied my unease. Things? What things? I scavenged my brain for any scraps of conversation we might have had, but found none that might explain the smile on my co-worker's face.

  “Mie said she still loved me,” I had told Reina. I had been lying on the floor with my head in Reina’s lap, a can of beer resting on my chest. “She says, ‘I love you, Peador, but I can't marry you.’ What the fuck's that supposed to mean?”

  “Do you want to marry her?” Reina had asked, brushing the bangs from my eyes. Every now and then, she would raise my head slightly, and put the can of beer to my lips so I could take a sip, easing the flow of difficult words.

  “Yes . . . No . . . I don't know . . . I did,” I had replied. “I still do, I guess . . . But God, she left me twice. Two times . . . And now this. I don't really know anymore . . .”

  “Be a dear,” I said to Reina, “and refresh my memory.”

  “I'm not going to tell you,” she sing-songed. “But don't you worry, Peador. All you're little secrets are safe with me.”

  “Secrets? What secrets?” Curiosity was eating me. “I have no secrets.”

  “No, you don't. Not after last night,” she replied, covering her mouth with her hand and giggling.

  In the end, it didn't really matter what I may or may not have told Reina that night in my apartment so long as it enabled me to step away from the disappointing reunion with Mie and begin thinking of the relationship, firmly and unfortunately, in the past tense, rather than continue to pine away in the subjunctive.

  Golden Week began at the end of April with Green Day, a national holiday commemorating the late emperor Hirohito's birthday. Why Green, you might ask: because his majesty the Shôwa Tennô was an avid environmentalist, of course. I suppose it one day be said that Japan's motives in the Pacific War were originally of an ecological nature. But, I digress . . .

  With woefully little yen in my postal savings account and air fares prohibitively expensive, I had no choice but to spend the slew of holidays—Green Day, Constitution Day, a generic “National Holiday” and Children's Day—in Japan. While the boss would be away in Hawaii, and Yumi off to a new Dutch-themed amusement park called Huis Ten Bosch, Reina didn't have plans, so I invited her out for dinner. Unfortunately, just as I was doing so, Yumi stepped into the office, putting me in the uncomfortable position of having to extend the invitation to her, as well.

  An odd thing happened when I did: the sourpuss sweetened. An uncharacteristically genuine smile, Chiclets teeth and all, cracked broadly across her face.

  Hey, Mikey! He likes it!

  Dinner with a punctured spare tire wasn't half as bad as I had expected. Exfiltrated out of the pernicious shadow of our boss, Yumi wasn't quite her dreary old self. Best of all, she couldn't stay out late. She was leaving early the next morning for, of all things, a Dutch-themed amusement park called Huis Ten Bosch.

  Such a pity.

  After dinner, Reina and I saw Yumi off at the station. With a bright smile and a double-handed wave, she turned, stepping into and quickly disappearing among
the throng of commuters that moved like a tidal surge towards the ticket gates.

  “Yumi's certainly in a good mood,” I said to Reina. “What's up with her?”

  Reina laughed through her nose.

  “What's that supposed to mean?” I asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Then why are you laughing?”

  “I promised not to tell.”

  “Promised who? Not to tell what?”

  “Nobody and nothing,” she answered as she skipped playfully away.

  “You and your little secrets,” I said, tagging after her.

  It was still early and I was a few drinks shy of where I needed to be to keep the regrets and memories seeping into my mood, so I asked Reina if she would like to join me for another drink.

  We made our way to Umie where several beers later Reina spilled the beans: Yumi was in love, madly in love, with dear old me.

  “Oh, you gotta be kidding,” I said. “Japanese joke, right? Ha, ha, ha.”

  “No, it's true!” she replied. “Yu-chan was so excited about going out with you tonight she wouldn't shut up about it all day.”

  “Funny, but I was under the impression that she didn't care much for me.”

  The girl recoiled whenever I came into the office, left annoying memos on my desk rather than simply turn around and talk to me directly, and, worst of all, was constantly tattling on me. If it was love Yumi had been dishing me, I dreaded tasting her scorn.

  “I'm serious, Peador. I know men can be obtuse, but you must have noticed how dressed up she was tonight.”

  Well, yes, I had noticed that. Yumi had been dolled up, in her own funereal way. The make-up had been more theatrical than usual and her long black hair had been let down rather than pulled back into the thick ponytail she normally wore at work.