A Woman's Nails Page 4

  Why me?

  The man is not easily discouraged. He’s got a foot long tuft of hair growing from his temple that’s been combed over an otherwise hairless crown. The Japanese call this the “bar code.” Do men actually think they’re fooling anyone when they do that? Give in to the balding, I say, shave it all off.

  He asks again more forcefully, some strands of hair cascade down his broad forehead to the bridge of his nose.

  I want to move away, but with the wall of bodies around me, there’s no way out. I’m trapped, so I answer softly, “Y-yes, I’m American.”

  Oh, what luck! You can see the delight in his eyes. I imagine he’ll boast for days to his co-workers and family that he can not only spot an American among gaijin, but that he even had an honest to God conversation with one. What an international man he is! He slobbers and gushes about how much he loves the country of my birth. How lucky I am to be American. I wish I could share the sentiment, but my response to his or anyone’s enthusiasm over something so accidental as nationality is lukewarm.

  He spares me questions pertaining to Japanese cuisine and goes right to the meat of the conversation: “So, what do you think of Japan? You like it here?”

  Do I like Japan? There have been times when I thought I did. Some of the happiest times I’ve ever known have been in this country, but how long has it been since I’ve really been happy here? How long has it been since I felt glad to be here? It’s been six months, six goddamn months. I’ve been traveling solely on the inertia since then.

  I tell him I do.

  He gives a long-winded commentary on the sad state of his country. Japan’s tiny and weak, he says. The people are narrow-minded. They lack initiative, creativity. The young are stupid and lazy. He grumbles on and on like this for several train stops.

  Please, God! Kamisama! Buddha! Allah! Let the next stop be his!

  The speech he gives me is one I’ve heard other drunks make many times before. Even that idiot I used to work for in Kitakyûshû said similar things. If you bothered to inquire what kind of country these inebriated malcontents wanted Japan to be, they end up describing a country suspiciously reminiscent of the one that got them into so much trouble half a century earlier. The drunk then asks what I am doing.

  “I’m going home.”

  “You’re going home, ha! Nice one! American joke.” His breath reeks of puke. “What are you doing in Japan, not on this train, in Japan?”

  What the hell am I doing? All my friends--the one’s I leaned upon so heavily after Mie left me, the ones who made the time here tolerable, and occasionally fun, the ones who stumbled along with me and helped me laugh at my mistakes--will be gone by the end of next week. There was a reason why I came, but I was sidetracked by the initial disappointment and culture shock, the falling in love, the heartbreak, the loneliness that followed and then the move that I never really got to pursue it. To say I’m in Japan to learn something I haven’t yet bothered to start learning is disingenuous. Before I am able to come up with an answer that would satisfy myself, the train stops, doors whoosh open and the drunk staggers out, saying, “American, me and you, we’re the same!” The doors close, and he gives me two big, wobbly thumbs up as the train resumes its westerly creep toward the middle of nowhere.

  God help me if we really are the same.

  5

  Let me tell you, after last night’s letdown I’m not as fired up about going into town to meet new women as I was yesterday. It’s tempting to just stay in, stand the chicks up, and veg out in front of the good ol’ boob tube. Problem is, Chris and Machiko are here and it doesn’t look like they are in a hurry to go anywhere.

  When I ask what their plans are, they giggle and say they don’t have any; that they’ll probably hang out all day in the condo. They giggle some more.

  Wonderful. The last thing I want to do is listen to the two of them fucking each other’s brains out all day.

  I first met Machiko briefly shortly after I moved in to the condominium. She and one of my nominal roommates, an African-American from Texas named Chris, were leaving just as I returned home.

  “Hey, Peador,” Chris said, bending over to tie his shoelaces.

  “Going out?”

  “Yeah. We’re going into town to catch a movie.”

  “A movie, huh? I can’t remember the last time I saw a movie.”

  “At eighteen bucks a pop, who could blame ya?,” he said, standing up, then turning to his girlfriend behind him, added quickly, “Oh, man, I’m sorry. Peador, this is Machiko.”

  The girl was little more than skin and bones, but she had the kindest eyes.

  “Hajime-mashite,” I said, stretching out my hand.

  She gave me a cold sardine of a handshake and smiled demurely.

  I met Machiko a second time only last Sunday morning. The girl had been so quiet that I was surprised to find her in the kitchen. Dressed in panties and a t-shirt, she was standing on her tippy toes, hand stretched above her, reaching for a box of Frosted Flakes on the top shelf of the cupboard. The t-shirt rose, revealing a narrow waist and what looked, I couldn’t be sure, like the edge of a large tattoo on her back.

  “Ohayô,” I said as I entered the kitchen, giving the girl a start. “Let me get that for you.”

  Standing next to her, I reached up and grabbed the cereal box. As I passed the box to her, I saw again what appeared to be a tattoo peaking above the collar of the t-shirt at the base of her neck. She thanked me with a smile and a nod, then sat down at the dining table where she poured herself a bowl. Chris emerged from the hallway, dressed identically in an oversized t-shirt and underwear, and sat down besides her.

  “Would either of you like some tea,” I asked as I put the kettle on.

  They shook their heads.

  With my cup of tea I sat down at the opposite end of the table and pretended to read The Economist.

  Though Chris had mentioned before that he had only recently met Machiko, they exhibited a familiarity with each other that suggested otherwise. They took turns taking large spoonfuls of cereal and whispered nonsense to each other that had them giggling like children.

  I could almost have envied them their affections and apparent happiness, had it not been for the stubborn curiosity piqued by the flashes of indigo at the edges of Machiko’s t-shirt. I couldn’t help wonder what would ever drive a girl as seemingly timid as she, to get her entire back covered with a massive yakuza-style tattoos?

  Chris asks what I’ll be doing. I tell him I’m meeting someone in town.

  “He’s a playboy,” Machiko says to Chris. “I saw him yesterday with a pretty girl.”

  Who’s she got me confused with, I wonder, but laugh it off and return to my bedroom where I get ready to leave.

  6

  I’ve got four dates lined up for today: Chie, Mayu, Risa, and Aya. Four names of women I know next to nothing about except that they will be waiting at specified times and locations expecting this gaijin to show up.

  Ooh, the intrigue!

  Chie finds me in front of the Iwataya department store standing before a wall of TVs. When she walks up to me asking if I am Peador, I am tempted to say that she must have me mistaken for someone else because where there ought to be teeth in the woman’s head, there are what look like the pickets of a weathered fence. This poor Chie could have a face that breaks hearts, a body that drives me wild with desire, the compassion of Mother Teresa, but I would never be able to overlook those dreadful teeth.

  Listen, I have become rather magnanimous in my attitude towards dentistry since coming to this country--call me British, if you will--but this woman’s mouth puts that generosity to the test. If I had those teeth, I’d suppose I might spend my days in reticence, mumbling through tightly closed lips only when necessary, but this Chie won’t shut up! She goes on and on and on: yackety-yak-yak.

  Mayu is waiting for me outside the International Center two hours later. The girl is not all that bad looking, but the get-up she’s got on tak
es the cake.

  Mayu is tricked out in a blouse, ridiculously frilly with broad sleeves that gather in yet more frills and ribbons at the wrist. Under the sky blue skirt she’s wearing is a multi-layered petticoat causing the skirt to flares out from her thin waist. Fluffy white lambs have been sewn on to the skirt here and there. She looks like Lil’ Bo Peep. All that is missing is a shepherd’s staff.

  She apologizes that she hasn’t got much time that she’s on her lunch break.

  Oh, thank God!

  “Is this some kind of uniform?” I ask cautiously. Tell me it’s just a costume.

  “Well, yes, in a way, I suppose it is,” she replies. “Isn’t it cute?”

  “Um . . . Where is it that you work?”

  “At Pink House,” she says, then suggests going there. I tell her she needn’t trouble, but she insists on taking me straightaway. “It’s just around the corner,” she tells me. So, I follow after her like one of her many sheep.

  Once at the boutique, Mayu introduces me to her co-workers, all of whom are dressed in similarly ludicrous outfits. They wear eerily pleasant smiles on their faces.

  “You don’t always dress this way, do you?” I ask warily.

  “Oh, if only I could,” Mayu gushes. “But these outfits are far too expensive for me.”

  I take a look at one of the price tags and I’ll be damned if my eyeballs don’t pop out. The petticoats alone cost a thousand dollars.

  The co-workers nudge each other and giggle. They think Mayu and I make a nice couple.

  These women are all insane.

  7

  “Call me Lisa,” Risa tells me.

  Whatever.

  Risa is disappointed when we meet because I am not black. I have so immersed myself in this culture that I find myself unconsciously apologizing for being white.

  “I’m sorry, Risa, er, Lisa, for giving you that impression.”

  I spoke to so many women in the past week, I don’t know to whom I told what, but I can safely assume that I did not tell her, or anyone else for that matter, that I was of African decent. I mean, why on earth would I?

  I go through the filthy hamper of a brain I have, sifting through the unwashed laundry trying to remember what I may have said that led her to believe that I am a brother. Did she misinterpret something I said? This is highly probable; even the most fluent English speakers I know misunderstand much of what I tell them. Perhaps, I told her I was the black sheep of the family--which is true, that I blacked out last weekend from the drink--also true, that black was my favorite color, that I preferred black tea to green, that . . .

  “You said you were black.”

  “I said I was Irish. Irish-Amer . . .”

  “Yes, and then I said, ‘Do you have orange hair and freckles . . .”

  I see, said the blind man as he pissed into the wind, it all comes back to me.

  And suddenly I remembered! “I said, ‘No, I’m black Irish.’”

  “So, so, so, so. You said you were black.”

  See what I mean?

  Risa-call-me-Lisa takes me to a monjayaki restaurant that she says is the best. Outside the restaurant we look at the display case, which features uncannily realistic wax representations of the dishes served.

  “Which one do you want?” she asks.

  There are a dozen plates of what looks like vomit. I can’t imagine anyone looking at this display and thinking, Mm that looks yummy! I’ll have the puke with bits of bacon, please. I’ve seen more appetizing piles of regurgitated ramen on the sidewalk.

  “I don’t know. They all look the same to me.”

  She laughs. “You’re a funny man, Mister Peador-san.”

  So I am. So I am.

  Risa-call-me-Lisa is going to have the seafood barf with squid, shrimp and bits of octopus, and I order the standard mixed monjayaki called, believe it or not, The Orthodox. We sit at the counter before a large teppan grill where the cooks prepare the vomit with the seriousness of funeral directors. I can’t help but chuckle.

  Risa unzips the silver down jacket she’s wearing to reveal the skimpiest of outfits. She hasn’t got the greatest body in the world, but she certainly knows how to present it, how to put it into a small enough package that it gives me a personal boner. Even the cooks can’t help but take their eyes off the teppan griddle to sneak a peek.

  She asks me if I like what she’s wearing.

  “I do.”

  She tells me she got it in Tokyo where all the girls are wearing this kind of thing.

  I should have moved to Tokyo.

  “Have you ever been to Tokyo?” she asks.

  “No, not yet.”

  “Let’s go with me!” she says.

  “Okay, let’s!”

  “I’m serious.”

  “So am I.”

  She asks if I want to drink.

  “Is the Pope Catholic?”

  “The Pope?”

  “Risa, er, Lisa. I’m dying for a drink.”

  “Beer? You want a nama?”

  “Draught? Yeah, I’ll have a nama.”

  She orders two namas which we put away easily before our food is served, so she orders two more. During our meal of monjayaki, which is actually quite good, we drink a couple more draughts and by the end of lunch we’re like too old lovers. She touches me playfully to make a point, leans against my body when she tells me something she doesn’t want the staff to hear, rests her head on my shoulder, places her hand on my thigh and says she’s tired. I’m thinking I may actually get laid today. She orders another beer moves her hand to the bulge in my pants that has been impatiently demanding attention ever since she removed her jacket.

  “Wow!” she says. “It’s true.”

  “What’s true?”

  “You know.”

  “No, I don’t know.”

  “What they say.”

  “What do they say?”

  “You know.”

  “I don’t.”

  “That Americans, you know . . .”

  A waiter places two draughts on the counter before us. Risa keeps her right hand on my friend, drinks with her left. She blushed with the first beer, grew red with the third, but now that she is on her sixth beer, she has lost her color altogether. I ask her if she’s all right. She strokes my crotch, making my cock bob up against her hand, and replies me that I’m the one we should be worried about.

  “Does it hurt?” she asks.

  Hurt? Is this what Japanese men tell women here? That it hurts? Is that how the men get laid, by preying on women’s kindness? When in Rome . . . I tell her it does, that I can’t stand the pain.

  “Do you want me to help you with it?”

  “I do.”

  “Let’s go.”

  Risa nearly falls over as she tries to stand up. I have to put one arm around her waist, place her arm around my shoulder and sort of drag her out of the restaurant the way a soldier would pull a wounded man out of a combat zone. As we pass the restroom, her body stiffens and she says she’s going to be sick. She pushes me aside and staggers into the women’s restroom, leaving me outside with her handbag and the silver down jacket to stand vigil as the sound of retching resonates against tiled walls.

  When she emerges several minutes later, her face is ashen. I give her some gum and she thanks me with a heavy nod then walks quietly towards the elevator. I follow stupidly still carrying her belongings, which she takes from me once we get on the elevator. She struggles with the jacket. I help her get her arm through the sleeve. I put the purse under her arm, the strap over her shoulder. As soon as we leave the building, she places her hand on my chest to stop me from following her. She walks a few uneasy steps forward, turns slightly to wave good-bye and then collapses into the backseat of a cab.

  4

  AYA

  1

  Aya and I sit in the upper floor atrium in the IMS building, a giant golden phallus of a building in the center of Tenjin, and look out over the city which stretches with gray monotony f
rom the bay in the north to the point in the south where suburban obscurity butts into a low range of mountains.

  I used to stare out of Mie's eighth floor apartment in the eastern suburbs of the city and watch planes fly over that bleakly uniform cityscape wondering why there weren't any skyscrapers. I asked Mie, but she didn't know. I ask Aya now, and she says there are plenty of tall buildings in Tenjin, the golden phallus to name one. She doesn't call IMS that, of course. I tell her that fifteen stories do not a skyscraper make, adding that I haven’t found any buildings in town that are over fifteen stories tall. She says, really? I say, yes really. When she tells me she has never thought about it, I tell her, this is why I am here, Aya: to make you think about these kinds of things. She says, oh. I say, oh, indeed.

  Aya is in high school, by the way. An American girl might hide her young age when talking to a man older than herself, but in Japan the girls seem to wear their youth like a badge of honor. A few months ago, I asked a group of high school girls that I had been teaching if they were happy to be graduating. A few were, but most weren't. Personally, I couldn't wait for the day I was finally paroled from that all male correctional institution of a Catholic high school I attended. So, it struck me as odd that anyone could be ambivalent about graduation. Their answer: we don't want to grow up. Who does? But if growing up was the price to pay for being done with high school, many can afford it.

  Aya has just started her second year, making her fifteen, I guess.

  “I'm sixteen,” she corrects.

  She doesn't look or act it. Not only is she assertive for her age, but she's got a woman's body, too.

  She tells me men always think she's older.

  Men?

  When I hear that she goes to the exclusive Catholic girls' school in town, I say she must be an ojô-san, that is, a girl from a good family.