by Sarah Bird
“No, no, no.” Bobby waves away the trio of floral-printed numbers one salesgirl displays. “I didn’t say I wanted to upholster her, for Christ’s sake. Classy. I want something like Frank Sinatra’s doll would wear to Caesars. Class, capisce?” Bobby touches all five of the fingertips on one meaty hand together and holds them up in front of the salesgirl’s face. “Class, you got it? Class?”
Much breath is sharply inhaled. All three salesgirls nod like chickens on speed, pecking out their understanding, then scatter again to return with new selections. Bobby riffles through them and selects a plain black shift, which he holds up against me and pronounces perfect.
The dress turns out to be only a canvas against which Bobby paints in highlights, adding a jade panther pendant, a silver-and-amethyst butterfly brooch, a cloisonné bracelet, a topaz cocktail ring, pearl-drop earrings. I object when Bobby has the salesgirl fasten the pendant around my neck, saying I could never accept such a present.
“Kid, we’re going to Lou’s, not some be-in or love-in or happening or some other hippie hoedown. You go to Lou’s, you look classy or you don’t go. Put the earrings on her too,” he directs a salesgirl. And so, feeling as if I have less control than the winning horse at the Kentucky Derby over the color of the roses it gets draped in, I let Bobby turn me into whatever version of Frank Sinatra’s doll or Bob Hope’s Joey Heatherton he has in mind.
The depaato has a beauty salon where Bobby leafs through a thick book showing swan-necked Japanese women in styles that go all the way back to Jean Harlow’s marcel wave. While I sit in a swivel chair—the new black shift and Bobby Moses jewelry collection covered by a striped cape—Bobby confers with the stylist. She wears a white lab coat, a bow clipped above the pouf of her bangs, and a name tag that reads CHO-CHO. Bobby makes emphatic fingertips-touching reference to “class” a dozen or so times.
For several minutes, Cho-Cho turns the pages of the book and Bobby dismisses hairdo after hairdo. “If I’d wanted a poodle, I’da bought a poodle.” “No, she’s supposed to dance, not herd sheep!” When they both start smiling, nodding, and tapping rapidly on a page, I begin to worry.
“You can’t cut it,” I warn.
“Don’t worry.”
“And no bangs.”
“Bangs are for tourists.”
I relax. No permanent damage will be done.
“Get beautiful, kid,” Bobby says by way of farewell, before leaving.
Cho-Cho bows and extends her hand in the direction of my glasses. “Prease.”
I surrender my glasses and the world smudges away. It is further softened when Cho-Cho massages my neck and brushes my hair tenderly. With no warning, all the long wakeful nights of waiting for Kit to come home catch up with me, and I drop into a hard sleep.
I wake to the crack of Cho-Cho whipping the plastic cape off. She twirls the chair around, hands me my glasses and a mirror, and I behold a hairstyle piled atop my head in a color that the world has not seen since Mae West invited Cary Grant to come up and see her sometime.
“You bleached my hair!”
Apparently Cho-Cho takes my tone of stunned horror to be hushed admiration and beams until her eyes narrow into happy parabolas floating above her cheeks flushed from the exertion of making me look like a female impersonator. “Utsukushii, ne?” she asks me.
I am unable to say anything other than “Yes, it’s beautiful.”
Bobby loves the new look. “Okay, now you’re ready for Luigi’s.”
I am silent on the ride to Luigi’s.
“Hey, remember I told you about the Pagoda Club?”
All I can remember at that point is I am now a bleach blonde.
“Joe, swing by the Pagoda Club. I wanna show the president of the Bob Hope Fan Club here what real living looks like.”
Joe has no idea what Bobby is talking about, so, after several slow detours, Bobby guides Joe through a succession of smaller and smaller streets until we arrive at a structure shaped like a pagoda. A tall chain-link fence surrounds it. Much of the white stucco has fallen away from the pagoda. What is left is stained with streaks of rust.
“Fuck. When’d they close the Pagoda? That there used to be the world’s biggest cabaret. They had the girls dolled up in these feathered G-strings that they shuttled around up over your head in these dinky cable-car things. The Flying Beaver, that’s what we used to call it. A thousand hostesses all with a number and a buzzer in their bra. You’d be dancing with old number six hundred and sixty-nine and her buzzer’d go off, so she’d hotfoot it off to whoever ordered her up. No sweat, you’d turn around and the next babe’d be even better.”
“I thought you were—you know—gay.”
“Me? Yeah, that’s right, I’m as cheerful as they come.”
“No, you know, you told Moe you’re queer.”
“Did I? I don’t recall that. Joe, turn here! Turn here!”
We pull up to the corner on a street densely packed with high-rises. Bobby points to a flight of stairs descending beneath the level of the frenetic activity. “Right after the war, the Latin Quarter was down there. The Russian embassy was up there. And the army barracks were right over there. Nothing in between but soba stalls, tearooms, and hookers. Always at least a hundred and fifty working girls outside the barracks gate. The tallest building was three stories high. Hey, the Silk Hat used to be right there. Under that Coke sign. And the Green Spot was there where that golf store is. The Bohemian. Club Enjoy. They’re all gone. All except the granddaddy of them all. All except Luigi’s.”
Bobby’s glum mood lifts at the mention of the club’s name, and he leans forward to give Joe directions.
A few blocks later, we pull into that rarest of all Tokyo attractions, a parking lot directly in front of an establishment, in this case, a two-story concrete building with a striped awning and a sign: LUIGI’S PIZZA.
I start to get out, but Bobby stops me with a hand on my arm. “Cool your jets, kid.” Bobby straightens his jacket, pulls a comb through his mossy hair, runs a finger around his collar, pulling it away from his neck, and carefully realigns his tie, clipping it again with his diamond horseshoe tie tack. Only then does Bobby signal that we can leave.
Outside the front door, he stops and gives the top of each of his shoes a quick polish on his pants leg before striding to the entrance.
Inside, Luigi’s is dark, the walls painted black, candles guttering in red glass holders.
“I’ve been here before.” The smell of pizza, smoke, and old beer overlaid with Tokyo’s signature scent of car exhaust and damp concrete plugs directly into my eight-year-old brain. I remember sitting at a dark table watching my father and the other guys in his crew, who for some reason called themselves the Bong Bunnies. They could have been frat boys, the Rat Pack, RAF pilots, any impossibly glamorous group of men where style was everything and all dying together perhaps the most stylish, most glamorous move of all. And my father was as young and handsome as all the others.
I remember Major Wingo calling my father Wild Root for his dark hair, oiled and piled atop his head in a glossy pompadour, and my father smoking skinny cigars that he held clamped between his front teeth like FDR. The navigator, Dub Coulter, with big ears and the wet-combed look of a Boy Scout, sat at the table with them. Patsy Dugan, the Mick, pulled quarters out of Kit’s ear and told me he wouldn’t bite when I refused to approach for the same trick. I can’t recall the others who crowded in close and laughed and swore and held empty pitchers high above their heads when they needed a refill. Guys who, off duty, wore loafers with no socks. Who sat leaning way back in the chair with one sockless ankle resting on a knee. Who smoked cigars simply because they looked so cool.
“Of course you were here,” Bobby says disdainfully. “If you were anywhere near Tokyo in the ’fifties, of course you came to Luigi’s. It was the only place on the whole island you could get a pie. Pizza? The Japs didn’t know from pizza. Businessmen used to wrap slices up and stick ’em in their briefcases to take b
ack to the office just to show what this strange food looked like. Luigi, what a genius. He’s like the Toots Shor of Tokyo. Liz Taylor was here! The Duke! I was here the night John Wayne put away twenty-four straight whiskeys. The Crown Prince brought his wife here when they were dating.”
Bobby stops and studies me for a second. “Could you, you know …?” He pantomimes a ritual I’ve seen Moe perform.
“Powder my nose?” I guess.
“You know. The whole megillah with the lipstick and the mascara and the this and the that.”
“I don’t have any of those things. I have this.” I pull a menthol-flavored Chap Stick from my purse.
“Never mind. Forget I asked. Just lose the glasses, will you?”
I pull my glasses off, but Bobby rants on anyway.
“Does Joey Heatherton wear glasses? Does Ann-Margret? Does your idol, Bob Hope, have to put up with this tsuris?” He notices a photo on the wall. “Hey! Stick your glasses on, here’s something worth seeing.”
It’s a photo of two American men dressed in samurai kimonos, each one flanked by a pair of beautiful Japanese women in Western clothing. I touch one of the men. “That’s not—”
“The hell it’s not!”
I study the young Bobby Moses. He is thin. He is handsome. He has a smile like the smiles of my father’s friends, heedless, glamorous.
“What? You don’t believe that’s me? You think me and the Statue of Liberty always wore the same size?”
“I believe you.”
“Come on and lose the …” Bobby waves at my glasses and I pull them off and follow him upstairs to the restaurant. It is in the traditional Italian mold with red-and-white-checked tablecloths and bunches of purple plastic grapes hanging from the walls. Only one of the two dozen or so tables is occupied. Too many waiters with nothing to do stand braced at attention against a wall and watch our every move. It’s hard to imagine Ava Gardner or John Wayne hanging out here.
“Luigi! Paisan!” Bobby throws his arms open to an American with the mustache of an Italian fruit vendor and the shoulders of a middle heavyweight gone to seed. Luigi wears a suit that shimmers between iridescent maroon and black when he holds up a finger to stop Bobby’s advance and turns to attend to the quartet of sallow-faced, middle-aged Japanese men seated at a shadowy table in the far corner.
Bobby’s arms wilt.
I put my glasses on long enough to see that two of the four men sport something I’ve never seen on any Japanese male before, permanents that have turned their straight black hair into frizzy coronas. All four look like used Bluebird salesmen on holiday in Waikiki, wearing gaudy short-sleeved shirts, white shoes, belts, and an assortment of gold pendants, bracelets, chains, and rings. Peeking up in the triangle of bare flesh exposed above the collar of each of the men’s shirts are garish swirls of tattoos. One man’s pinkie ring glints in the candlelight as he reaches up to take the menu Luigi hands him with a servile, unctuous grin, and I notice that the finger above the ring is a short stub missing two joints.
After Luigi distributes the menus, the men glare at him until Luigi backs away, bowing the whole time. By the time he reaches us, he is sweating. Bobby spreads his arms wide again. Luigi, however, looks past Bobby to snap his fingers at one of the line of waiters waiting at parade rest against a far wall. Luigi points at the four men, tips an imaginary bottle, and the waiter rushes downstairs. Only when the waiter has returned with a vintage bottle and is pouring complimentary glasses for the scowling men does Luigi submit to Bobby’s embrace.
“You dago prick.” Bobby pounds Lou’s shoulder. “You still shtupping your—uh …?” Bobby points to the Japanese woman at the cash register. She does not look happy to see Bobby.
“Katsumi. Yeah, we’re—uh, we’re married.”
“Married! What is this? Number four?” He looks at me. “Lou’s been divorced so many times he thinks his wife’s name is plaintiff. But they’re friendly, right, Lou? Always friendly divorces. Lou gets to keep everything that falls off the truck as they’re driving away. You can’t buy love, but you sure the hell can pay through the nose for it. Am I right, Lou?”
Lou glances at Katsumi. Behind Bobby’s back she nods toward the exit, then points her chin to the four men.
“You are right, Robert.”
“I was married once, but I just lease now. Your best table, Lou, for me and my—uh, traveling companion.” Bobby bounces his eyebrows up and down, trying to make it sound like there’s something going on between us that he’s too gentlemanly to reveal.
At the table, Lou stands nervously. Bobby drops into a chair and starts chewing through the breadsticks like a beaver through a stand of redwood. “Lou, take a load off. The staff can handle the overflow.”
Lou glances around at his nearly empty restaurant, checks to make sure the four Japanese men are happy, then sags wearily into a seat at our table.
Bobby points to the four in the corner, then asks through a shower of bread crumbs, “When did you start letting them in without ties?”
“Oh, would you like to inform those particular gentlemen about my dress code?”
Bobby ignores the sarcasm. “Luigi’s was always a class place. The people come for the class.”
“The people come for the class.” Lou shakes his head at what he clearly considers an expression of ignorance. “You know what the people come for now? They come for squid on their pizza. Squid and seaweed and raw fish. A place opened up just around the corner. They’re packing ’em in with tofu pizza. The only things American they like on their pizza are corn, mayonnaise, and Tater Tots. Tater Tots! On pizza! … They never really liked pepperoni.” Lou’s tone is heavy with betrayal. “They only pretended.”
“Well, I’m here for a Luigi’s Special. Give me a sixteen-incher with the works. What are you having, doll?”
“Lasagna?”
When Lou doesn’t move, Bobby stops pulping the breadsticks. “So? What? You want me to go back into the kitchen and toss my pie myself?” Bobby stands and pretends he’s going to go into the kitchen. “Because I will. You know I will, you schmuck. I done it before. Who was out in that kitchen the night you opened and your new chef started putting bamboo shoots in the marinara sauce?”
Lou pulls him back into his seat. “I heard you were in town.”
Bobby elbows me to make sure I caught this accolade. “So, some of the guys gonna stop by? Should I order for them? That tall Australian jerk with the goiter for an Adam’s apple, looks like an ostrich swallowed a potato, he still like your crappy ravioli? Get that mooch a couple orders. And a selection of pies. You decide, Lou. Stick it to me however it feels good to you.”
Lou glances at his wife, then drags his gaze back to Bobby. “Bobby, you can’t do business here.”
“Business? Who’s doing business? I thought this was a restaurant. I’m trying to get something to eat here.” He yells back to the kitchen, “Could you send some food out here before I eat my other leg?”
The four men in the corner glare at Bobby. Lou holds an appeasing hand up to them. “Bobby, you can’t do business here.”
“Business? What business? I’ve arranged to have a little meeting just like a thousand other meetings I’ve had here; you’ve always gotten your taste, am I right, Lou? I’ve always taken care of you, right? You give a little, you get a little. Life goes on, right? What’s the problem?”
“It’s different now. You been gone for a while.”
“Lou, you can’t let them run your game, man. You can’t do this.”
“Shut up, Bobby. You’re over there in Okinawa, you don’t know how it is here now. Okinawa is America. You’re in Japan now.”
“It was Japan the night you opened. Remember? Fourth of July 1956? You had the red-white-and-blue cake with the sparklers on it, remember? They made the icing out of fish oil?” Lou doesn’t join in Bobby’s laugh. “Lou, you can’t let them muscle you around. You let them muscle you around, you’re dead.”
“Look, Bobby, you c
an’t.…” He cuts his eyes to the four men, leans in, and lowers his voice. “Those are Tosei-kai guys. If I let your guys come in—”
“My guys, your guys, they’re Japs, Lou. Nips. Fucking yakuza humps. They’re all our guys.”
“Not anymore, Robert. Them days are over. Look, I’ll send a pie over to your hotel. Where are you staying, the Imperial? Shit, I’ll send a dozen. And the lady’s lasagna. Bobby, you got to—”
Lou’s wife stops him with a furious burst of Japanese, pointing frantically to the stairway, where four more Japanese almost identical to the four in the corner are trying to push their way up past several waiters and busboys. Lou’s wife joins them, screeching at the four intruders.
Lou stands. The placating tone is gone. “Get out, Bobby.”
Bobby takes his time rising, then stands nose-to-nose with Lou. “Come on, kid, let’s get out of here. They make lousy pizza anyway. They always did.”
Lou won’t look at Bobby as he walks away.
In the unlighted parking lot the four Japanese men who weren’t allowed in the restaurant buzz around Bobby, throwing their arms in the air and cursing. One of them carries a silver Haliburton suitcase. Bobby tries to calm them down. He tells Joe and me to take a walk. When we come back around the block, Bobby is putting the silver suitcase in the trunk of the Bluebird. The four men are gone.
In the car, Bobby drops his weight onto the seat beside me like a bag of cement.
“Don’t give me that look.”
I’m not aware that I’m giving Bobby any look.
“What do you think your father was on when he was flying eighteen-hour missions into Siberia?”
Siberia?
“Tums? Tums and Actifed? Shit, they practically packed speed in every lunch. Now that the flight surgeons aren’t passing Dexedrine out anymore like Life Savers, what are they supposed to do?” He flips a bird at Luigi’s, then yells at Joe, “Get out of here! Go on. Go on! Can you move this bucket already?”
At least I know now how Bobby is making expenses.
“Those momzers. They were falling all over themselves when I played there.” He pounds his chest with an open hand. “I played there! I opened for Xavier Cugat. Coogie! They were real fucking happy to see Bobby Moses then!” He leans forward toward Joe. “You were real fucking happy to see the Amekos back then, weren’t you, chipatama?”