Deep Red

by Hisashi Nozawa

  “Do you want seconds?”

  Kanako’s glass was empty. “Then a whiskey sour.”

  “Same as last time, I see.”

  Why did she remember that? Kanako was on alert. She couldn’t get rid of the feeling that she was being played.

  “I remembered because we don’t get many female college students dressed so cutely around here.” Miho placed two bottles in front of her. “Which do you want?”

  One was a bourbon, the other a scotch. Apparently the sweetness and depth of the drink would vary depending on the base whiskey.

  “Then, this one.”

  Kanako chose the Old Parr. Miho Tsuzuki got to work.

  If one thing was certain, it was that she now saw Kanako as a customer she got along with. The whiskey sour tasted different from the one three days ago. Tonight’s drink with the scotch base tasted better.

  A voice from the edge of the counter called, “Miho,” and she went to take the regulars’ orders. It was a duo with thick makeup who looked like they might be working the nightlife. One of them wore something black that was see-through above her breasts, and the other wore leather pants that looked like they might burst. Escorts? No, maybe nowadays office ladies dressed like that after work.

  Raucous vulgar laughter spilled from them. Perhaps the two of them were gossiping about men with Miho Tsuzuki.

  Kanako kept her right ear tuned to them as she lifted her whiskey sour to her lips. The name “Akira” came now and then from the female customers’ lips. Judging from Miho Tsuzuki’s brand of an embarrassed smile, Kanako surmised that “Akira” was very possibly her boyfriend.

  “You alone?”

  A voice that seemed to breathe out onto her assaulted her undefended left ear. When she flinched and turned around, there was a young man in a cowboy hat. He was wearing a Western-style shirt with silver decorations on the collar. Kanako had recently seen a charismatic young celebrity dressed like that in a commercial. Other than the narrowness of his eyes and the shortness of his legs, this man had copied that look perfectly.

  “Can I take the seat beside you?”

  “I’m sorry, I was drinking by myself.” Dealing with these types required making herself clear from the start.

  “You a high schooler?”

  “As if.”

  Too many people had that impression of her. Kanako was sick of it.

  “Do you like drinking by yourself? I bet people try to talk to you all the time. I bet you don’t feel bad when that happens.”

  He was being suspiciously inarticulate. The young man’s entire body reeked of alcohol as though he had taken a shower in bourbon. She felt his presence would taint her elegantly made whiskey sour.

  Kanako ignored him. The man still said, “Hey, let me get you a round,” and slid closer. She felt him place a hand on her shoulder. She glared at him. Miho Tsuzuki cut off her conversation with the duo and came over.

  “Shun, go drink over there.”

  “Why? Nothing wrong, she’s drinking alone too.”

  “Go away.”

  She was ordering him even though he was a customer.

  “Are you sure you should talk to me like that?”

  “It’s not just talk.”

  Miho Tsuzuki reached under the counter, stuck her hand in the icebox, grabbed four or five cubes, and started throwing them at the young man’s face. He immediately raised his hands in defense but was too slow. They hit his forehead dead center. He shouted “Ow!” and stumbled back in an exaggerated manner.

  The blond waiter tried to step in between them, saying, “Hey, hey, hey,” but Miho Tsuzuki wouldn’t let up. Her wrists flicked rapidly, and bullets made of ice flew. They all hit their target: the staggering young man.

  Miho Tsuzuki mercilessly targeted her opponent where it hurt. Kanako was dumbfounded by her violence as Miho obsessively threw ice, her eyes gleaming. The drunken young man had only tried to flirt with Kanako. It wasn’t something that staff should get that angry over. Miho’s fury seemed abnormal.

  The two women that Miho Tsuzuki had just been speaking with jeered, “Yes!” and “Had enough yet, sexual harassment guy?” The audience didn’t have the best taste.

  “Cut it out, Miho.”

  The blond waiter who had stepped between them got ice thrown at his head, too.

  Kanako thought that maybe Miho would return to her senses after accidentally hurting one of her co-workers, but she didn’t. She made her next move with lightning speed. Bending at the waist and ducking under the counter, she came out onto the floor. She grabbed the nape of the crouched man who was moaning, “Oww.” Her simmering anger showed no signs of cooling.

  “Shun, your seat’s over here.”

  She hauled him to his feet and dragged him over to a counter seat well out of the way. The young man sat down hesitantly.

  “If you don’t listen, I’ll have to ban you.”

  “I understand. I’m sorry.”

  Miho Tsuzuki reached into a small refrigerator to pull out a cool wet towel and pressed it to the young man’s reddened forehead.

  She went up to the blond waiter who had also been hit and asked, “Are you all right?” peering into his face to check for wounds. Both of the men who had been hurt seemed content to just take it.

  “He’s an actor who can’t get work.” Miho pointed at the young man with her chin, her fury until a few moments ago seemingly forgotten.

  “I see…” Kanako was still stunned.

  The failure of an actor was still pressing the towel to his forehead, staring gloomily at the counter.

  If you can’t get work, perhaps you should start by not copying young celebrities, Kanako wanted to kindly advise him.

  “This place is full of oddballs around this time,” the oddball girl bartender said, ignoring her own faults. “If you wait a bit longer, though, the last train’ll come and it’ll get quieter.”

  Kanako glanced at the clock. It was almost midnight.

  Miho had told her that the tattoo on her shoulder was a fake. Kanako had also learned that Miho’s rage could boil over in a second, perhaps a trait inherited from her father. Kanako decided to accept these as her winnings for the night and withdraw.

  “Then I’ll head back.”

  “Right. When you’re out as a girl by herself, it’s probably better to go back after one or two drinks. There are people like him around.”

  Her total was 1,900 yen. Kanako didn’t really know if that was expensive for two cocktails at a bar.

  “Come again.”

  Receiving the change, Kanako felt her hand brush against Miho Tsuzuki’s. For someone who had been so enraged, she felt cool to the touch. “Then, see you,” Kanako said, making a vague promise to come again before distancing herself from the counter.

  The clingy gaze of the failed actor followed her out the door. Despite his torment at the hands of Miho Tsuzuki, he showed no signs of leaving. She wondered if he was used to acting out and getting violently rebuked at this place.

  As she opened the door, she turned to look at the counter one last time and Miho Tsuzuki gave her a wave. Kanako clumsily opened her right hand and responded in kind.

  When she stepped out onto the staircase, intense exhaustion started to spread from the tips of her hands and feet. Hauling up her heavy body, she climbed the steps.

  As she came up onto the street, the outside air hit her and the exhaust fumes from a passing car and the smell of sesame oil from the ventilation fan of a nearby ramen stand mixed together and crept into Kanako’s nasal cavities.

  With each step she took down the dark road towards the station, the strength left her legs. She finally folded over near the bridge. When she faced the ground and opened her mouth, everything she had drunk at the bar came gushing out in reverse as though someone had twisted a faucet.

  It wasn’t that the alcohol had gotten to her. Kanako wasn’t so weak as to lose it with just two cocktails. The toxins she had accumulated in her without knowing had agitated the
contents of her stomach. It had been a while since she’d had autotoxemia. She had suffered frequent bouts of it as a child.

  It all came out with such force that she worried that her innards would come out too. After she was done vomiting, Kanako felt dizzy and gripped the guardrail to support herself. A deluge of tears clung to her eyelashes. She panted heavily.

  She wondered how long it had been since she had last vomited this much. She remembered a similar instance in the past.

  On her way back from school, she impulsively got on the Chuo line from Hachioji. She got off at Asagaya.

  This was her first time returning to her hometown since the incident. She left the station from the southern exit that smelled of grilled bird and passed through the shopping district, and hoping that she didn’t encounter anyone she recognized, quickly walked to the residential district now being dyed by the setting sun.

  Although the second semester had already started, summer still lingered. Over break she had visited Oshima Island with her uncle’s family, and the tan still remained on her skin. When she sweat from where her skin had started peeling, it itched terribly.

  She knew that her house already belonged to someone else. Few people were interested in living on land where a family had been murdered, and for a long time the real-estate management company had been unable to demolish the house and free up the plot.

  The house had been her father’s pride. It had been filled with the ringing voices of her mother and brothers. Kanako turned one alley, then another, and then she was running.

  The sight that leapt at her was not the one she remembered, but a giant blank space. Heavy machines like cranes and bulldozers were parked in the space.

  Her house had been demolished. Two years after the incident the land had finally been sold, and a new house was going to be built there.

  Surrendering herself to the frantic beating of her heart, Kanako stood stiff and stared at a scene that looked as if a giant monster had come along and chomped up her house.

  There was no trace of the pillars that Norio Tsuzuki had tried so hard to saw down. Apparently the scrap wood had been carried out only a short while ago, and there were remnants of the wreckage of the house still scattered around.

  Kanako went over the yellow rope and stepped onto the spot where her house once stood. Other than where the water and gas pipes stuck out, there were no vestiges of household life.

  The scent of evening meals wafted out from the neighbors’ on both sides. She knew that there would be a huge commotion if someone saw her loitering here.

  Kako, it’s been a while. If the middle-aged lady who had been the one to report the sound of chainsawing witnessed Kanako in her middle school uniform, she might try to force a stiff smile.

  Starting tomorrow, the machines would start flattening the plot for real. With firm steps, Kanako went to where their dining table had stood, where their living room sofa had been, and strained her ears for the sounds of her family’s voices.

  All she heard were the cries of the crows as they ripped apart the city’s trash.

  Her brothers fought over a toy and her mother was having a hard time intervening. Kanako turned her back on the squabbling and played piano. Her father eventually returned home from work and landed one fist on each of her brothers, punishing both of them. Her sniffling brothers joined the rest of them at the dining table, and they dug into their dinner of curry rice.

  The vignette of her family as it once was passed through her mind, and Kanako ended up crumpling weakly to the ground. The weight of the reality that only she was still alive fell heavily on her shoulders.

  She saw something strange in the black earth. Something was buried. She dug, and when she pulled it out, it was a Mickey Mouse with a face-splitting smile. There was a cut in the back of his head where one could insert coins. A plastic doll that doubled as a piggy bank, its body was missing. Only the head had fallen off and gotten buried.

  It had belonged to Tomoki or Naoki. She remembered one of them jingling the coins that had filled the body. Tomo, I envy you, you’re rich, Kanako had said, playing along. Several years older than her brothers, she’d sometimes taken a motherly tone with them.

  Kanako returned the Mickey head to the ground. She buried it deep so it wouldn’t get removed when the leveling began.

  She stepped over the rope, returned to the street, and said “Goodbye” to her house that had now become an empty space.

  She doubted she would ever come back again.

  To avoid meeting the eyes of housewives returning home from shopping, Kanako stuck to the shadows as she headed back to the station. If possible, she wanted to walk with her eyes closed. This was the street where her little brothers had raced to see who could reach the convenience store first.

  She had gotten back on to the Chuo line when she noticed something wrong with her. Unable to stand it, she got off two stations later at Nishi-Ogikubo, leaned on a pillar on the platform, and folded her body.

  She vomited until her stomach was empty. A worried station staffer asked, “Are you okay?” and rubbed her back.

  “I’m so sorry, I got the platform dirty.”

  Kanako apologized repeatedly as her internal organs twitched.

  Why should lending her ear to the voices of family be toxic to her? The smile of a Mickey Mouse dirtied with soil twinkled at her through her teary eyes.

  Six years had passed since then, and Mickey Mouse was still a character she avoided. Whenever she saw him in the streets, she couldn’t help but remember the dirtied smile he had cast her from the earth.

  Her nausea finally settled. Kanako sat on the guardrail and took deep breaths.

  The cool early autumn air permeated the hollowness in her body, and she finally felt better. She was fine even smelling the raw stench of the Meguro River.

  If she hurried, she would make it on to the last train.

  Kanako wiped the corners of her mouth and the tears that blurred her eyes and passed through the dark road of the factory district.

  Unearthing something from a wasteland about to be leveled. The excavated thing only bringing new pain to her heart. Knowing that but getting her hands dirty and grasping it.

  She was trying to do the exact same thing now.

  2

  Recently the weather was fickle in the afternoons, bringing pouring summer rains that drenched the city center. A folding umbrella was a must.

  In time the asphalt dried, and by the new calendar day only the pattern of faint stains remained on the roads.

  Standing by the bridge, from where she could see the bar’s neon sign, Kanako just stared out into the night as it dried.

  The blue neon-pipe lights disappeared. The blond had probably seen out the last of their regulars and turned off the lights.

  A customer in an out-of-season white summer jacket walked out, weaving side to side. He was heading towards her. If Kanako had to guess a profession, he was a reporter for a sports paper or a weekly. She’d been well acquainted with their type.

  The man noticed Kanako leaning against the guardrail of the bridge and sent her a hungry stare with bloodshot eyes. He slowed his pace and looked like he wanted to say something.

  She could tell what the man’s first words would be. When they saw a young woman standing on the street at this time of night, drunk men were given to ask, “How much?”

  Kanako glared at him from the corner of her eye, and perhaps lacking the courage to ask her for a price, or down on cash after drinking too much, he cowered and averted his eyes as he passed by.

  Idiot, Kanako whispered in her mind.

  Miho Tsuzuki exited the bar. It seemed like she had left the cleanup to the blond staff member. Her bicycle was parked along the edge of the monthly parking lot directly by the establishment. Unhooking the dial lock that tied her bike to the wire fencing, she straddled the saddle and headed Kanako’s way.

  Kanako ducked into the dark riverside alley and hid as Miho rode past her.

 
; So she commuted by biking. Kanako hadn’t foreseen having to tail her in just this manner, but she began to run. A late-night marathon.

  She could hear the wheels up along a street partitioned by shadows and see the reflected headlight. Wanting to shorten the distance between them, Kanako sped up.

  She passed by the hesitant man from before.

  She came out onto the sidewalk of an avenue. Her throat was raw from breathing too hard. She saw Miho’s bicycle beyond the blinking green lights.

  Kanako sprinted across the pedestrian crossing at top speed. She was halfway along when the light turned red. She managed to get across, but couldn’t rest yet. Miho had ridden up a slope. Kanako’s calves were starting to stiffen. She cursed how her body had gotten out of shape though she was still only twenty.

  Maybe she was wrong to assume that Miho lived only a few minutes away since she commuted on a bike.

  They were approaching a dim residential area adjacent to the premises of a women’s college. Kanako twisted her face in anguish, wondering how much further, when they reached the goal.

  It was an old four-story apartment building, and the parking lot was full of bicycles. Kanako could see Miho prying open a space for hers.

  Kanako leaned against the wall of the women’s college and gathered her breath. Sweat dripped from her temples and thick saliva clogged her throat.

  Miho Tsuzuki had become irritated. She kicked over one of the tightly packed bicycles, and several others also fell over.

  Pretending like nothing had happened, Miho rubbed at her stiff neck and ascended the stairs.

  Kanako crept closer to the apartment building. After watching Miho disappear into a room on the second floor, Kanako peered at the nameplates on the bunched post boxes. “Akira Nakagaki, Miho Tsuzuki,” it said in ballpoint pen.

  Living with a man. Cohabiting. Was he not back yet? Miho turned on the lights in the completely dark apartment before stepping inside.

  Kanako had already accomplished her goal for tonight. She had wanted to find out where Miho lived.