A Woman's Nails Read online

  “Yeah, well, that’s very nice of Shizuko-san to say, but, really, she hasn’t got the slightest idea what my study habits are like . . .” Not that it really matters. Compliments in Japan are like verbal abuse in the US. Everyone says them; few really mean it when they do.

  “You had better not forget to apply for the test,” Tatami says seriously.

  “Oh, do I have to so soon?”

  “By the end of September.”

  “The end of September?”

  “Yes, September.”

  “Why are you telling me this now? In July? There’s oodles of time.”

  “Noodles?”

  “Not ‘noodles’, Tatami, ‘oodles’. It means ‘plenty’.”

  “Yes, but you had better not forget.”

  “You know, I have a funny feeling that you’ll be reminding me again,” I say. “So, when’s the test?”

  “I'm not sure, but I can call Kinokuniya and ask. They will know.”

  “No, no, no. That’s quite unnecessary. I just wanted to know if had you got a rough idea when it was held?”

  “I think, but . . . now, I cannot be too sure . . . um, I think, maybe, it will be held at the beginning of December.”

  “And that’s a Saturday? Or a Sunday?”

  “Sunday,” she answered. “The exam is always held on a Sunday.”

  “Sunday. Early December. Perfect.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, nothing, really.” I say. “I'm just thinking of going to Thailand in December.”

  “You're going to Thailand?”

  “No, Tatami, I said I was thinking of going. I haven’t made any plans yet”

  “When did you decide this?”

  Ugh! I tell her I haven’t decided.

  “But you said you were going to . . .”

  “No, Tatami. I said, ‘I was thinking of going.’”

  “So, when did you start thinking of going?” she says, suppressing a giggle with her right hand.

  “You like irritating me, don't you?”

  Nodding, she says, “You deserve it for teasing me all the time.”

  “So, I do. So, I do. Last year,” I admit. “Last year, some friends of mine . . .”

  “Oh? What friends?”

  “It's not important. They went but I was too busy looking for a job, so I couldn’t join them. If I’d had the money, I would have gone during Golden Week.”

  “I didn't know you went during Golden Week.”

  “Huh?”

  “I didn’t know you went during Golden Week.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “But you just said you did.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “Did not.”

  “Did to.”

  “Tatami! I said ‘If I'd had . . .’”

  “I see. I see.”

  “Do you really?” I eye her doubtfully. “Anyways, I've wanted to go for a long time, so I’m thinking of going this December.”

  “When?”

  “During the winter break.”

  “After the test?”

  “I suppose so, yes. During winter vacation.”

  “How long?”

  “Two weeks.”

  “Two weeks?”

  “Yes, only two weeks.”

  “Only? I think two weeks is quite long.” This is coming, mind you, from a girl who hasn't worked more than two days her entire life.

  “No, Tatami, two weeks is not long, but it's long enough.”

  “Who are you going with?”

  “I don't know. Maybe a . . .”

  Before the word “friend” has time to settle, I know what her next question will be. Every time I introduce a new character into our silly little conversations, Tatami subjects me to a string of intrusive questions. For all her gentle sweetness, she would make a hell of an interrogator, breaking the will of even the most determinedly reticent suspect by virtue of her annoying persistence. A girl?

  “A girl?” she asks.

  “No,” I correct. “A man.”

  “What's his name?”

  “Does it really matter?”

  “Um, no I suppose it doesn't, but I want to know.”

  “Alex. His name’s Alex.”

  “Alex?”

  “Yes, Alex.”

  “And is he an English teacher?”

  “No, he isn't.”

  “Oh? What does Alex-san do?”

  “He's a student.”

  “Where?”

  “Hell if I know.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I don’t know.” I don't know! I want my lawyer!

  “And Alex-san lives in Hakata? So, you met him here?”

  “No. Tokyo.”

  “You met him in Tokyo?”

  “No, he lives in Tokyo,” I say.

  “And you met him in Tokyo, right?”

  “No, I've never been to Tokyo. I met him here. He used to live . . . "

  “And you became a good friend when he lived here.”

  I place my finger on her lips to shut her up. “Tatami, let me finish. Alex used to live here in Hakata . . . a while ago. Don't ask, I don't know. And now, he sometimes comes to Fukuoka to visit friends. I only met him for the first time at a party about two months ago.”

  “What party?”

  I raise my fist at her and threaten to pop her in the nose. She apologizes demurely, bowing her head slightly, the palms of her hands resting on her lap.

  “I met him at a wedding.”

  “Who's wedding?”

  “Oh, for the love of God, Tatami! Is it important?”

  “Well . . .”

  “No! It's not important.”

  “Yes, but I want to know his name.”

  “Dave! His name is Dave! Happy now?”

  “Debu?”

  “Not Debu. Dave.” Debu means fatso.

  “Ha ha ha. And Debu-san is a good friend.”

  “Well, er, not really.” I hardly knew the guy and was surprised to be invited to his wedding. It was only after I accepted the invitation that I began to suspect the only reason I’d been invited was so that Mr. Fatso could have one more sucker to collect a gift of cash from.

  “So you and Debu-san will go to Thailand together.”

  “Alex.”

  “Alex, too? Will his wife come?”

  “Huh?”

  “Alex-san is married. Is his wife . . .”

  “No, Alex’s single. Happily so.”

  “You just said Alex got married recently.”

  “I did not.”

  “You did, too.”

  “Did not.”

  “You said . . .”

  “Tatami, I’m sorry to say this, but you’re not a very good listener.”

  “And I think your Japanese is not very good.”

  Tatami finds this immensely amusing and sits next to me tittering for a full two minutes during which time I untie my right shoe, remove the lace, and begin to strangle her.

  “Let’s try this again,” I say and retell the whole non-story without pausing to listen to or answer any of her silly questions, which bubble up like carbon dioxide in a glass of soda with each sentence I complete.

  “I see,” she says when I have finished.

  As we are cleaning up, collecting the garbage and stuffing it in a plastic bag and wrapping the empty bentô box back up in the furoshiki, it starts to rain. Heavy raindrops fall with a thud onto the damp soil and splatter against the lily pads. Before long, it’s pouring and Tatami and I have to scramble up onto the causeway and duck under the long drooping branches of a willow tree to keep from getting drenched. I open her parasol and we huddle under it, her hand on my arm, her cheek resting lightly against my shoulder.

  Were it anyone but her, I’d be thanking my lucky stars, but with Tatami, I just feel uncomfortable. I suggest making a dash for the Ôtemon Gate at the end of the causeway and waiting out the rain there, but Tatami embraces me and says, “I like it her
. I wish we could stay here all day.”

  Good God, what have I done?

  14

  SHINOBU

  1

  “You look thin,” Shinobu says when I walk into the hotel lobby. “Have you lost weight?”

  “A bit yes. It’s this heat.”

  I sit down in the beige leather Egg Chair next to hers, and settle into a comfortable slouch.

  “Nice chairs, aren’t they?” I say. “They’re an Arne Jacobsen originals,”

  “What?”

  “Arne Jacobsen.”

  “Aru . . .?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Peador, you really have lost weight,” she says taking a better look at me. “Is everything all right? Are you eating?”

  I shrug. Who could eat with this humidity? I haven't had an appetite in weeks and when I do manage to eat, it just goes right through me as if I'd been slipped an Ex-lax Mickey Finn.

  “You really should eat,” she insists. “Ah, so, so, so! Doyô no Ushi is coming up next week.”

  “Doyô no what?”

  “Doyô no Ushi. It's a special day for eating unagi.”

  “Eeuw, eels? Thanks for the warning, Shinobu. I'll be sure not to accept any invitations to dinner that day.”

  “Peador, it’s wonderful. You really must try it.”

  “I have.”

  “And?”

  “And, it was good . . .”

  “See?”

  “But!”

  “But what?”

  “That was before I actually saw what an eel looked like.”

  On that very first night out with Mie exactly a year, two months and two weeks ago today, which ended with us drunk and half naked rolling around in each others’ arms on the floor of her bedroom, I was taken to a hostess bar in Nakasu, Japan’s version of Sodom and Gomorrah. In addition to the usual yatai lined up along the Naka River where drunk salarymen stuffed their faces with ramen and yakitori, there were several stalls with games. They would become a familiar sight at the festivals I’d go to over the coming year.

  Mie took me by the hand to a shallow tub of water filled with aimlessly swimming goldfish and suggested I give it a shot. The old, weather-beaten woman running the stand took Mie’s money and handed me a small paper paddle.

  “Koh, koh,” the old woman said, flashing me a toothless smile.

  “Like this? Koh?” I said, dipping the paddle into the water. It immediately disintegrated like toilet paper. I turned to Mie and said, “Is this supposed to be fun?”

  She just laughed and passed the old woman some more money.

  The woman, making a gentle scooping motion just above the water’s surface with her hand, told me to keep the paddle at an acute angle and dip it in as a goldfish swam by. Trying this new approach, I managed to catch two fish, causing Mie, the old woman, and several others watching me to explode with applause and laughter.

  The woman put the two fish into a plastic bag with water and gave them to me. Although one died within a few days—no doubt from the trauma of being repeatedly paddled senseless by drunks like myself—the other, whom Mie named “Guppy-chan”, would still swimming blissfully around and around a small fishbowl when I was dumped five months later.

  As we were walking away, I noticed another stand with deeper tubs of water. Curiosity compelled me to take a closer look. I wish it hadn't, for slithering in the murky oily water was a tangle of black eels. A twig for a skinny old man who ran the stand held out a short fishing pole. A slimy hook hung at the end of a string. “Piece a cake,” he said as if it was the difficulty of the task that was holding me back rather than the disgust. And though I needed no convincing, he gave me a demonstration, dipping the hook into the dirty water and pulling an eel out by its gill. Any desire I may have still harbored to ever try the delicacy again was arrested by the sight of that long black cock dangling before me.

  “I really do think I'll pass, Shinobu.”

  “Well, you really should try to eat something, otherwise you'll get natsubate.”

  “Well, I’m afraid, it’s a little too late for that,” I reply. The summer has already taken its toll, my appetite being the first casualty. And now, just getting up and walking to the toilet in the morning taxes the little energy I have after nights of sweaty, fitful sleep.

  She insists that I eat, so we leave the air-conditioned comfort of the hotel lobby and go back outside where it’s so muggy you practically have to wade through the humidity. She takes me to a famiri resutoran, or a “family restaurant”, that is just across the street.

  Without looking at the menu, Shinobu tells a darling of a waitress that she’ll have the “lady’s setto”. And though I really can’t be bothered to eat, I go ahead and order the Caesar sarada and minestrone suppu.

  “Is that all you’re going to eat?” she asks.

  I shrug. Considering I would have been satisfied with a lovely pint of ice cold beer, I thought ordering soup and salad would be welcomed as a generous concession. Alone as I am in this country, Shinobu’s really all I’ve got at the moment: she’s my best friend, my confidante, my big sister . . .

  “No meat?”

  . . . and my surrogate Jewish mother.

  “There should be some bacon in the salad, Mama.”

  Our table is near the window offering us a view of the tree-lined boulevard outside, along which a seamless parade of beautiful young women tortures me. I ought to be encouraged by the prospect of so many pretty girls, but I know I would still be paralyzed, prevented from reaching out to them, even without a windowpane separating us.

  How in the world did I ever get to be so frustratingly timid towards the so-called weaker sex?

  Selective recollection easily convinces us that we were once more charming, athletic, intelligent and capable than we truly were. But, I can’t remember a time when it was ever more difficult for me to meet women, to go up and ask someone I was interested in out on a date. It was never a problem for me to close the deal. Even back in the eighties when everyone was scared celibate because of AIDS, my batting average was still fairly high. Since Mie dumped me, however, I’ve been relegated to the bench in the equivalent of dating’s farm league. When another heartbreaker passes by the window, all I can do is sigh dejectedly.

  “Have you met anyone . . . special?” Shinobu asks.

  “Special? Not really . . . No. No, I haven’t.”

  “What about that co-worker of yours? Are you still seeing her?”

  “Already old history, I’m afraid. She doesn’t talk to me anymore.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” she says. “Anyone you’re interested in, then?”

  As if on cue, our waitress brings my minestrone soup. “Well, since you ask, I wouldn’t mind taking sweetheart here home in a doggy bag.”

  “You’re terrible.”

  “No. I’m honest.”

  “I know.”

  “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”

  “Yes?”

  “What’s the deal with the Seventh of July?”

  “It’s Tanabata,” she answers. “The Star Festival.”

  “Let’s pretend for a moment, shall we, that I’m not some stupid gaijin fresh off the boat. I know it’s Tanabata. What I want to know is, does the day have anything to do with dating? I mean, is it unlucky or something?”

  “No, no. Quite the opposite,” she says, then indulges my curiosity by telling me the legend of Orihime and Hikoboshi.

  2

  According to legend, the sky god Tenkô was concerned that his daughter Orihime was wasting her youth away. The poor girl did nothing but weave cloth day in, day out and it was high time the girl got out and had some fun. Tenkô knew of a humorless lad across the Amanogawa (lit. “Heaven’s River”, Milky Way), a workaholic cowherd by trade named Hikoboshi who was also in dire need of a life, and set the two of them up.

  Orihime and Hikoboshi were a match made in heaven, literally. The two fell so madly in love with one anothe
r that before long they were unbearable to be around: Orihime with her incessant “Hikoboshi this, and Hikoboshi that” and Hikoboshi strutting around as if he suddenly were god’s gift to women. It was enough to make the heavenly bodies want to barf. To make matters worse, the star-crossed lovers began neglecting their chores: Orihime couldn’t be bothered to weave anymore; Hikoboshi, let the cows roam free.

  With the cattle succumbing to disease, and the gods’ kimono getting shabbier and shabbier, Tenkô had had enough. In a fit of rage, he forbade his daughter from ever seeing Hikoboshi again and banished the good-for-nothing cowherd back across the Amanogawa.

  Tenkô thought that would put and end to things, but his daughter, Orihime, was inconsolable now that Hikoboshi was out of her life. The girl wouldn’t speak to her father, wouldn’t eat, and she definitely wouldn’t weave even though the gods’ clothes were worn to rags by now. Tenkô’s own kimono was in such sad shape, you could see his Almighty arse through a rip in the backside.

  Tenkô tried reasoning with his daughter, but to no avail. He pleaded and begged. When that didn’t work, either, he had little choice but to admit defeat. He gave into his daughter’s desire to see the cowherd. There was, however, one condition: he would only permit Orihime to meet Hikoboshi every year on the seventh of July if the star-crossed lovers were attentive to their duties.

  3

  “So what does that have to do with anything?” I ask.

  “Some people find it romantic.”

  “Romantic? What’s romantic about having only one day off from work a year?”

  “It’s romantic because the two lovers are able to meet.”

  I can’t quite appreciate the romanticism in the legend. If anything, I find the whole story dubious and wouldn’t be surprised if Hikoboshi took to schtupping the occasional heifer.

  “The reason I ask is that I thought Tanabata was just about writing your wish down on colored paper and hanging it on a bamboo branch.”

  “Well, yes, that is part of the tradition, but it’s also a popular evening for dates.”

  “I suspected as much.”

  “Oh? Did something happen?”

  “There's this girl. Girl? What am I saying, she's thirty . . .”

  “So there is someone.”

  “No, no, no, no, no. Shinobu, it’s not like that at all. Tatami, she’s just . . .”