“I’m going to wear a baggy shirt, just in case.” Elle rummaged through her dresser, looking for a bra.
“Well, if Adahari knew what kind of underwear you wore, he’d be less inclined to flirt with you.”
Elle groaned. “Not that again. If you had any idea how uncomfortable it was to have a thong up your ass, you’d be more appreciative of my underwear.” Elle held up a pair of her large white cotton underwear. “Grannie panties are totally underrated.”
“I’m telling you, a girl should always be prepared.” Mitch shook his head as he made his way to the shower. “I don’t get saving your sexy underwear for special occasions. One should always assume something hot is about to happen.”
“Don’t even get me started on your underwear. Tighty-whities? What are you, eighty? Boxers are much sexier. Especially the plaid ones. Maybe I’ll get you a pair.”
“And maybe I’ll change my name to Chip, put some pennies in my loafers, and move to the Vineyard—NOT!” Mitch stepped out of his Fruit of the Looms, one leg at a time. Naked, he opened the door to the bathroom. Before stepping in, he turned back to Elle. “Make sure I’m out by noon, will ya? I definitely need a Coke to survive Mrs. Tadahari.”
As Mitch closed the door to the bathroom, Elle was overcome with an excruciating sadness and nostalgia for her brother. This is what her relationship with him would have been like.
Elle had almost told Mitch about Jimmy the previous evening. Things had taken a serious turn, the way they sometimes do when you are drunk, free of inhibition, and staid with emotion.
Mitch had admitted to having a difficult relationship with his dad, a belligerent drinker. He told Elle of the time his father had, in a drunken rage, called Mitch a pussy and smacked him hard across the face. His brother had laughed in the corner while his mom attempted to put a cold washcloth over his bleeding nose. All this because Mitch had refused to try out for the wrestling team.
Impressed by his brutal honesty, Elle had been compelled to share her demons. To talk about Jimmy, about the shame and the guilt, but she couldn’t. It was too painful.
Still, Elle had to let Mitch know that she understood—that she, too, knew degradation. She had followed his confession with the story of Mrs. Whannel.
Mrs. Whannel was the mother of a classmate who volunteered in the cafeteria at her elementary school. One day when Elle was in second grade, she had announced loudly and in front of all the other students in the lunch line, that Elle didn’t have any more punches left on her lunch card. The government-issued free-lunch card she qualified for because her mom couldn’t afford to pay for her meals.
Wearing a denim bell bottom pantsuit, maroon boots, and large gold hoop earrings, Mrs. Whannel had placed her hands on her hips, smacked her gum, and told Elle—and everyone around her—that she would need to go to the school office to get another lunch card. She couldn’t afford lunch on her own.
Elle had been horrified, but too proud to cop to her embarrassment. Instead of going to the office as directed, she had announced indignantly that she wasn’t hungry and would rather go to recess. Shoulders back, Elle had stormed outside to the swing set where, ignoring the rumblings of hunger in her stomach, she pushed her legs back and forth as hard as she could, determined to go higher than any other second-grader ever had.
“It was horrible,” Elle had told Mitch. “At the same time, maybe it was one of the best things that could have happened to me. I was so angry, so hurt, I vowed never to give some bitch like her power over me again. I would work hard. My life would be different.”
After twenty-two years of pretending, sharing the truth gave Elle a certain lightness and she had the courage to admit, “I guess, in the end, I’m afraid I won’t ever be good enough.”
Mitch was generally the first to break a serious moment with a wry comment, a droll anecdote, but not this time. Instead, he had reached over and hugged Elle, commiserating, “Look, I get it. I do. More than you could know.” He had then taken a long, slow sip of beer, and Elle had been certain he was going to confide something important to her. Something she had guessed within weeks of getting to know him.
But before Mitch could say anything, they were interrupted by a boisterous group of drunken young men gifting them with shots. A night out with Americans seemed to be a rite of passage into manhood for many Japanese young men, so there was no point in trying to reject them; they would be insistent. Mitch and Elle had gamely done the shots and had their pictures taken with the businessmen.
The moment had been lost.
Did Mitch remember their conversation? Was he in the shower thinking about it right now? Elle hoped he knew he could tell her his secret, that she could be trusted. She loved Mitch. He was her first true friend, the brother she had failed to protect. Elle wouldn’t let that happen again. She would help Mitch. But how?
Chapter Ten
Alphaville: “Big in Japan”
October 31, 1992
7:41 p.m.
In preparation for a big night out with her English First coworkers at a karaoke bar, Elle sang along to Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” as she teased up the bangs on her blonde wig and took a drink of champagne. It was Halloween, and she was dressed as Garth from Wayne’s World. In addition to the wig, she wore a pair of large, chunky black glasses and a plaid shirt open over a white Black Sabbath T-shirt and jeans.
Mitch had lobbied hard for the two to go as Madonna, but Elle had convinced him that it would be a cliché to sing songs by the Material Girl at a karaoke bar in Japan—it would be much more original to perform something from the Wayne’s World soundtrack.
After complaining about how he disliked pretending to be someone with a name he loathed, Mitch had begrudgingly acquiesced and was wearing a trucker hat and a black T-shirt in homage to Wayne. As a form of protest, he decided to add a little extra flare to his costume and had stuffed a sock into his jeans, giving the desired effect of a rather large package. Mitch pointed to his crotch and asked Elle, “Are you sure it’s not too much? I don’t want to scare any Japanese girls.”
Elle considered taking this opening and dropping a hint about what she suspected Mitch was going to reveal about himself but decided against it. It would be better for Mitch to tell her himself, when he was ready. “Cheeuh, are you kidding me? It’s Halloween. Go for it.”
“Okay, then . . . Schwing!” Mitch thrust his pelvis in the air. “I still say I would have made a fabulous Virgin bride.”
Mitch adored Madonna. She was the one subject the two disagreed upon. Elle found her music highly overrated. “Like A Virgin”—seriously? As much as Elle wanted to please Mitch, she had drawn the line at his suggestion that she don lace gloves and crucifixes. “Get over it already! Trust me, you’re going to see about a thousand Japanese school girls in wedding dresses tonight.”
“Fine, but we should at least toast my girl Madonna, she did pay for this most excellent Dom.”
Madonna’s Sex book had recently been released in the States. As it was banned in Japan, Mitch had seen a great opportunity to make some cash off it. He had friends from America mail him copies of the book, which he then sold to an eager Japanese audience at an exorbitant profit. He’d made the equivalent of $500 selling the contraband books.
Mitch had taken a portion of the proceeds and splurged on the bottle of Dom Pérignon they were now enjoying. He put the rest of the money into the “Mitch and Elle’s Adventure Jar” on top of the TV. This, too, had been his idea. He and Elle each put a portion of their salary and any extra change into the jar, hoping to collect enough to pay for an extravagant trip to Europe—a trip like all their wealthy college friends could go on. They would stay at fancy hotels, order room service, and go shopping.
“Yeah, sure.” Although not particularly a fan of her music, Elle had no problem drinking to Madonna—their Adventure Jar had an extra $450 in it, thanks to her. Elle reached for the bottle of Dom. It was empty. “Ooh, we’re out.”
“Already? Wow. That was
quick. Do want a Kirin? Or maybe a shot?” Mitch twisted his head to the side in contemplation. “It’s ‘liquor before beer, you’re in the clear,’ right?”
“Yeah, that’s right. ‘Beer before liquor, never sicker’ so we should be okay.” Elle considered the wisdom of another drink. They had a long night ahead of them. Maybe she should slow down. Or at least eat something. She wanted to maintain her buzz but didn’t want to get too drunk too early. “Actually, I’m good.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, but I’d take a smoke”
“Roger that.” Mitch took a pack of Camel Lights out of his pocket and put two cigarettes into his mouth. He lit them both saying, “Matches—totally underrated. Is there anything in the world more satisfying than the sound a match makes when it strikes? And the smell, I love that just-lighted match smell.” He handed a lit cigarette to Elle.
“Thanks.” Elle took a puff of the proffered cigarette, conveniently refusing to acknowledge how much she hated that her own mother smoked. What she was doing was different. It’s not like she woke up and had a cigarette; she only smoked when she drank. Anyway, who cared? This was Japan. Everyone smoked. “We need to pace ourselves; we should eat something. It could be a long night.”
“You’re right. Tonight could be a complete shitshow.”
Mitch and Elle were justified in their concern over spending the evening out with their English First coworkers. They were a bizarre assortment of characters.
Simon was a twenty-something arrogant pseudo-intellectual who started every conversation with “Well, in Canada . . .” As if being an authority on Canada mattered to anyone. He dressed in the nerdy and academic way of a college professor and smoked cigars. His ultimate goal was to impress everyone with his extensive vocabulary. Not hard to accomplish in a country where English was everyone’s second language.
Stewart was a half-Japanese, half-Caucasian New Zealander who desperately wanted to be cool, but he didn’t quite fit in with either his fellow teachers or the Japanese locals. It seemed his dual race left him stuck between a chasm he couldn’t figure out how to reconcile. Elle and Mitch were sympathetic and tried to include him, but he was just so awkward, inserting himself into conversations with non-sequiturs and anachronistic comments. “Do you prefer pens with black ink or blue ink? I can’t decide which is better.” It was too exhausting to try to engage with him.
Mary, the wife of a midlevel British diplomat, was older than the others—in her mid-thirties, they guessed. She had a glass eye, which made talking to her a challenge. Conversations were fine if you kept your focus on her one good eye. If you made the mistake of looking into the glass eye, things got dicey. Mary was sweet enough. She worked because she was bored, lonely, and desperate for company. She treated all the other, younger teachers as if they were her children, inviting them to British Embassy events, to church, to supper at her home. Mitch and Elle always bowed out of these opportunities. Too weird.
Shane was a young Australian who had come to Japan because he had a hard-on for Asian women. Within weeks of arriving in Tokyo, he had knocked up a Japanese girl and had done the honorable thing and married her. His expectations of the carefree bachelor life banging Japanese women dashed by his own carelessness, he was bitter and abrasive. Not at all a fun person to be around.
Rupert, another Australian—whom Elle was initially attracted to, until she saw his excessively hairy back—was teaching English only as a way to make money until he could land a lucrative job with a large Japanese company. He was smart and could be quite witty, but he was a bit too macho, too “matey” for Elle and Mitch. He slapped men on the shoulders and referred to women as “Sheilas.”
All told, none of the teachers at English First had anything in common. The only thing thinly binding them together was their work—and a shared desire to leave their home countries. In search of what, they could only guess of the others.
“A shitshow is right. What do you think the over/under is on Stewart awkwardly hitting on a waitress?” Elle adjusted her chunky Garth glasses. They were uncomfortable and made her think she should be more appreciative of her good vision—one bonus in an otherwise worthless gene pool.
“That’s too easy, you gotta give me something more to work with than that.” Mitch put out his cigarette. “You’re right about food. Why don’t we grab some roadies and get a curry bowl at the station?”
“Sounds like a plan.” Elle and Mitch headed toward the stairs where they kept their shoes. (In keeping with Japanese tradition, they removed their shoes before stepping onto the tatami mats in their apartment.) Converse high-tops on, they walked out past the grocery shop where they bought their milk, coffee, and beer. They spotted the elderly couple who lived in the apartment beneath them out for their evening walk.
Elle was sure their neighbors must be confused by their costumes. Even so, the older couple bowed politely to them and smiled the smile of two people benevolently befuddled. Elle felt a rush of warmth. She liked this couple. She liked their neighborhood of Nakameguro. She liked Tokyo. She liked Japan.
No longer was it the strange, pulsating place she had first encountered at the airport. Elle had quickly adapted to Tokyo’s energy. She found the city intoxicating and the people kind, considerate, and accommodating. She and Mitch had become accepted and welcomed faces in Nakameguro. Elle relished this sense of belonging. It was like being Norm walking into the bar in Cheers.
Mitch and Elle smiled and waved to all the curious Japanese onlookers as they walked into Nakameguro station. They were used to this sort of attention by now and milked it for all it was worth. They rode the escalator down to the platform on the Hibiya line, where a train would take them into Roppongi. Roppongi was Tokyo’s entertainment district, famous for its vibrant nightlife. It was a popular area for foreigners to party in, so they weren’t surprised it was where their coworkers wanted to meet. Mitch and Elle preferred drinking in bars off the beaten track, but they often ended up in Roppongi, as that’s where most of the good dance clubs were located.
As they reached the platform, Elle saw a group of Japanese women all dressed in blonde wigs and wedding gowns. She pointed toward them. “Dressing up as Madonna for Halloween—overrated/underrated?”
“What a totally amazing, excellent discovery. Not!” Mitch smirked as he escorted Elle to the curry stand along the platform. It was one of their favorite spots for grabbing a quick bite. The service was fast and the rice bowls were filling and cheap.
Elle turned to Mitch while they waited in line. “So, what is our word gonna be?”
Elle and Mitch had a system. They picked a word they would casually drop in case one of them wanted to make an exit from a situation they found uncomfortable, or if they were simply bored and wanted to move on.
“You know how I feel about karaoke. If I volunteer to sing it will be time to leave.”
Elle nudged him affectionately in the side. “Oh, c’mon! I’m thinking you have a little Whitney Houston in you. Some ‘Greatest Love of All’, maybe?”
“Oh, dear God. This is going to be gruesome enough already. If anyone sings that, I will scream. Really. I’m not kidding.” Mitch led Elle by the arm to the front of the line. “Why?—that’s the perfect word for tonight.”
Chapter Eleven
Bill Withers: “Lean on Me”
November 1, 1992
1:19 a.m.
Mitch and Elle had been pleasantly surprised that, besides the other teachers, several of the young women who worked as office girls at English First were also at the karaoke bar. Yumiko, Ayumi, Mariko, and Koko were a bit daft, but they were good-natured and easy targets for the type of absurdity Mitch and Elle relished in. Adding them to the equation made the whole evening way more interesting, and—despite their initial misgivings—Mitch and Elle were having fun.
The group had their own private room, and they sat around a rectangular table which was too small to accommodate them all comfortably. With everyone shoved in tightly next to
each other, it felt a bit like being on the subway during rush hour. Elle was accustomed to this; Tokyo seemed perpetually overstuffed.
The alcohol had been flowing freely all night, and they were all massively drunk. Mary, emboldened by a belly full of sake, was making her way through a rousing, if not quite in key, version of “The Rose.” Mitch was at the far side of the table holding court over the office girls. They were a rapt audience, giggling encouragingly at everything he said.
Shane was openly flirting with Koko and had his hand on her leg. Her cheeks were flush from the attention. She had brought along a friend, and Shane had his free arm possessively around her back. Koko’s friend had an unusual name, one that was hard to pronounce, so Mitch had decided to call her Trixie. She looked like a Trixie.
Elle was sitting next to Rupert, who had dressed up as Gandhi—an unconventional choice, but that was Rupert. Along with Stewart, they were discussing American politics. Elle and Mitch had received their absentee ballots for the upcoming presidential election a few days prior, and Rupert, a conservative and politico, was captivated by the race.
“Do you really think Clinton can be trusted after all that nonsense with the Flowers woman?”
“Pshaw!” Elle waved her hand. “It’s 1992! His sex life is a non-issue.”
“Well, in Canada—” Simon began.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Simon, quit being such a twat!” Mitch chimed in, irritated. “No one gives a rat’s ass what Canadians think about the next U.S. president.”
Elle was surprised by Mitch’s tone. It was out of character for him to be so openly belligerent. He was generally a happy drunk.
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