The Woman in the Purple Skirt
Page 2
But she doesn’t work full time. Sometimes she is working, sometimes she is not. And her workplace seems to change over and over again. She’s had a job at a screw-making factory, a toothbrush-making factory, an eye-drop-bottle-making factory . . . The jobs all seem to be for just a few days, or at most a few weeks. She’ll be out of work for a really long time, then suddenly be employed for a whole month. I’ve written down her work record in my diary. Last year, in September, she was working. In October she didn’t work. In November she worked for only the first half of the month. In December she was working, but for only the first half of the month. This year, her first job started on January 10. In February she worked. In March she worked. In April she didn’t work. In May, apart from the annual Golden Week holiday, she was working. In June she worked. In July she worked. In August she worked for only the second half. In September she didn’t work. In October she worked on and off. And now, in November, it seems she is out of work.
When she does work, it is always at a job that involves getting up at the break of dawn and returning late in the evening. She comes straight home, obviously shattered, without stopping off anywhere to get something for dinner. If she does have a rare day off, she stays shut up inside her apartment.
Nowadays, I catch sight of her constantly, at all times of the day: sometimes in the park, sometimes in the shopping district. While it’s difficult to keep tabs on her every minute of every hour, from the look of it I’d say the Woman in the Purple Skirt is in good health. And if she’s in good health, you can be pretty certain she’s out of work.
I want to become friends with the Woman in the Purple Skirt. But how?
That’s all I can think about. But all that happens is that the days go by.
It would be weird to go up to her and say “Hi” out of the blue. I’m willing to bet that in her entire life the Woman in the Purple Skirt has probably never had anyone tell her they’d like to get to know her. I know I haven’t. Does anyone ever have that said to them? It seems so forced. I just want to talk to her. It’s not as if I’m making a pass at her.
But how do I go about it? I think the first thing to do would be to introduce myself formally to her—in a way that wouldn’t feel too forced. Now, if we were students at the same school or coworkers in the same company, it might be possible.
So here I am in the park. I am sitting on one of the three benches on the south side. The bench nearest the park entrance. In front of my face I’m holding yesterday’s newspaper. I picked it out of the garbage can a few minutes ago.
The bench next to the bench next to mine is the Exclusively Reserved Seat. On the end of it is a magazine of job listings, the type available for free at any convenience store. Less than ten minutes ago, the Woman in the Purple Skirt was making her purchase in the bakery. If I know anything about her daily routine, she always drops by the park on days she goes to the bakery. And sure enough, just as I finish reading an entry in the advice column about a man in his thirties in the second year of a sexless marriage wondering if he should get a divorce, I hear the sound of her footsteps.
Hm. That was quick. I peer over the top of my newspaper. It’s a man dressed in an ordinary gray suit. So it wasn’t her after all. On second thought, the sound of his footsteps was quite different. He trudges past me, letting the soles of his shoes drag along the ground, seemingly exhausted, and then plops himself down on the bench in the far corner.
Very likely a salaryman from some office in the city, out paying courtesy calls to potential clients. I notice he carries a black briefcase. Let me guess. Having traipsed into every remotely promising shop in the shopping district with not a single taker, he is now going to take a snooze in the park on the sly. There are five benches total in the park (three on the south side, two on the north). You can always tell the ones who are first-time visitors by the bench they choose. I felt sorry for him, seeing how exhausted he was. But tough luck. It was time to get him to move.
I approached him to explain the situation, but he just glanced up at me with a look of menace in his eyes. Even so, a reserved seat is a reserved seat. Rules are rules. I had no choice. I had to get him to give it up.
I repeated what I’d said several times, and finally the penny seemed to drop: he got up and moved to another bench, though with extreme reluctance. And just at this moment, out of the corner of my eye, I detected that someone else was approaching. This time it had to be her. I rushed back to my seat, and held my newspaper up in front of my face.
The Woman in the Purple Skirt carried a single paper bag from the bakery. After seating herself on her Exclusively Reserved Seat, which had just this minute been vacated, she opened up the bag and drew out her purchase. The usual cream bun. It’s the kind of thing that is typically the subject of TV street interviews. “What did you buy today?” the interviewer asks, stopping shoppers who are carrying bags with the bakery logo and thrusting the microphone in their faces. The soft white loaf and the cream bun are the most common answers. And my answer too would be “A cream bun!” if anyone were to ask me. The distinctive features? Well, I’d say the custard filling, which has to have just the right degree of stiffness, and the delicately thin surrounding dough. Then there’s the sprinkling of sliced almonds on top. That’s what makes that satisfyingly crisp sound when you take a bite.
M-m-unch. Crunch-crunch-crunch. Some almond pieces fell onto the Woman in the Purple Skirt’s skirt. Pitter-patter through the fingers of the hand she held underneath the bun as she ate. She didn’t notice this. She always looked off in the distance as she ate her cream bun. Proof that she was concentrating. Her eyes and ears were closed to the world. That repeated crunching sound again. Nom-nom. Crunch-crunch. Yum. Delicious.
She finished eating the bun, then balled up the paper bag, and her eye fell on the jobs magazine on the end of the bench. In an unhurried way she picked it up and started flicking through it. After flicking quickly through it once, she went back to the beginning, then flicked through it again, this time more slowly. There was a special feature in this issue, “Best Workplaces for Team Players.” It took up almost half the magazine. But that wasn’t important, no, skip that. “Part-Time Work in the Hospitality Industry,” “Part-Time Work in Clothing and Retail” . . . No, skip those too. The edges of the pages had different colors—blue, red, yellow, green—according to the type of work. The final pages, “Night Work,” were pink edged. For some reason, she perused these pink pages at some length. No, not there. Look at the section preceding that, the one with the green edges. That small box advertisement to the right of “Parcel Sorters.” I’d circled it with a fluorescent marker. It should’ve been obvious.
Had she seen it—had she got the hint? The Woman in the Purple Skirt closed the magazine, rolled it up, got to her feet, and headed toward the garbage can. Oh, not to discard it, surely? The next minute, she switched the magazine to her other hand, tossed the paper bag in the garbage, and left.
A few minutes later, the children came to the park, straight from school.
Oh, wonder where she is? Restlessly, they scanned the park, then just stood there, obviously at a loss. No doubt a park that has just the Woman in the Yellow Cardigan seated in it wasn’t scintillating enough for them. After a while, they started playing rock-paper-scissors, but with none of the usual enthusiasm, and then, bereft of their usual playtime companion, they embarked on a game of safe-if-you’re-high tag.
The next day, the Woman in the Purple Skirt headed out to an interview. It was for a job in a soap-making factory.
The Woman in the Purple Skirt had not got the hint at all.
Judging from past experience, if she passed the interview and got the job, this would mean that the soul-destroying daily grind would immediately begin. Every day she would be doing nothing but going back and forth between her apartment and her workplace. But if she didn’t get the job, then she would once again be loitering around the neighborhood.
A few days later, the Woman in the Purple Skirt again headed out for a job interview. This time it was at a factory that made Chinese-style steamed pork buns. More evidence of her complete lack of judgment. Didn’t she know that if you wanted to work in the food industry, the first thing they look at is the condition of your nails and hair? No way is a woman with dry, dull, unkempt hair like a rat’s nest, and nails that are black, going to stand a chance. I knew she was going to fail—and of course that’s exactly what happened.
On the same day as the interview for that job, she also went for another interview, at a different company. This one was for a “stock controller—night shift.” I ask you: Why go for a job like that? I couldn’t help feeling puzzled. Didn’t she realize that on night shifts there are bound to be way more men than women? This is just a guess, but I get the feeling that the Woman in the Purple Skirt has an aversion to men. This is not to say she likes women or anything like that. But if you’re working in an environment where you’re surrounded by men, well, inevitably it takes its toll, doesn’t it? But not to worry, because she didn’t pass that interview either.
In the meantime, what with all this time wasting, the period the Woman in the Purple Skirt had spent out of work had reached a new record. It was now a good two months. Of course, this was only since I started keeping track. Any day now, surely, her savings were going to be depleted. Was she still managing to pay her rent on time—not to mention her electricity and gas bills? Wasn’t her landlord going to start making preposterous demands, serving her with formal reminders, threatening to take her to court if she didn’t pay up immediately, demanding that she find a cosigner even though the original contract had not required a guarantor? Because once you find yourself in that kind of position, I’m afraid it’s a slippery slope. I’d say your only recourse is to stand your ground—and do so brazenly. That’s certainly what I had done. Recently I had decided to stop wasting any more thought on how to pay my rent.
It had all started with that stupid collision with that butcher’s display case. That’s when things had begun to go wrong.
The fact was, coming up with the money for the payments for the repair bill had required that I withhold the monthly rent for my apartment, and I was now in arrears. I was still making a bit of extra income with the money I got from selling odds and ends at bazaars, but it was peanuts. With the dire state of my finances, paying both rent and repair bill was always going to be a nonstarter.
That said, I was still very preoccupied with finding ways I could escape from the debtors who I knew were going to come knocking at my door. I had investigated which coin lockers were in which train stations, with a view to transferring the few valuables I had left while I still could, before my landlord or one of his lawyers decided to make a forced entry into my apartment. I had identified a number of low-budget “capsule” hotels and manga coffee shops where I could take refuge if I had to make a quick getaway, and located a total of ten cheap boardinghouses, in this prefecture and the adjacent one, where I could lie low for a while. If it ever came to that, I would happily share this information with the Woman in the Purple Skirt, but it doesn’t look as though we’ve quite got there yet.
As of now, I haven’t seen any sign of threatening letters posted on the Woman in the Purple Skirt’s apartment door. Nor have I noticed anyone who appears to be her landlord staking out her building, waiting and watching for her to come home. At night I see the lights go on in her place, and the dial on her gas meter appears to be steadily ticking over. She must be managing to pay her rent, and her electricity and heating bills.
It would seem, however, that her telephone has been cut off. A few weeks into her job search, the Woman in the Purple Skirt started going out to the pay phone in front of the convenience store to arrange job interviews.
When the Woman in the Purple Skirt goes to the convenience store, she never enters—she simply uses the pay phone outside. It falls to me to enter the store. I go right inside, head for the corner where the magazine stands are, take the latest issue of the jobs magazine, and then leave it for her to find on her Exclusively Reserved Seat.
The jobs magazine comes out on a weekly basis, unless it’s a double issue. But don’t assume the contents change just because there’s a new cover every week. Workplaces that are continually short of staff place the same ad in every issue. While I didn’t accompany her to every interview, the Woman in the Purple Skirt applied for a number of other jobs too, after that spate of attempts, and often in tandem. She didn’t get any of them. Hardly surprising, considering the kinds of jobs she chose—all totally unsuitable. Telephone receptionist, shopping plaza floor guide, et cetera. Would you believe that she even applied to be a waitress? Why would anyone hire someone as a waitress in a café who is happy to drink straight from the water fountain in her local park? Clearly, the repeated rejections were affecting her mind. Needless to say, the café told her immediately to get lost.
And so, I am sorry to say, it was a good three months before the Woman in the Purple Skirt finally had a telephone interview to work at a place that was willing to consider hiring her. During that time, I had visited the convenience store to collect the jobs magazine for her a good ten times.
It’s possible that I was to blame for this having taken her so long. Maybe I should have done more than simply circle listings with a highlighter—maybe I should have dog-eared the pages, or added little sticky notes. I’m sure there were any number of things I could have done better, but never mind—eventually, the Woman in the Purple Skirt came to the right decision. One evening, I saw her leave her apartment and make a beeline for the pay phone outside the convenience store. I could see that she was holding a little scrap of paper tightly in her hand.
Clutching the receiver, her face taut, she nodded several times as she listened. “Yes . . . Yes . . . I understand.” And then, “No . . . Yes . . . No, never.”
She used a felt-tip marker to write something on her palm. Was it “3,” perhaps, and then maybe “8”? Definitely numbers. Three o’clock on the eighth? The date and time of the interview?
After she’d put down the receiver, her face remained tense. That didn’t surprise me. Every single one of her interviews up till now had ended in failure. Who wouldn’t be worried? But (not to get ahead of myself) this time, at this workplace, I was sure it was going to be different. This time, I could guarantee one hundred percent that she would get the job. Because this was a workplace where they were always short of workers. Basically, anyone who applied was going to be welcomed with open arms.
Even so, it would be good to go to this interview with, at the very least, a clean head of hair. She should trim her nails—and also apply a bit of lipstick, if she had such a thing. Because first impressions count, and little touches like those might make all the difference. Whenever I saw her, her hair was its usual mess—dull, dry, sticking out all over the place. I strongly suspected she was washing her hair with soap. I’d once had a part-time job at a shampoo factory, and I still had a fair number of shampoo samples from the huge stash I’d managed to collect. What about getting her to use some of my shampoo?
It was just after midday. I was standing at what was pretty much the epicenter of the shopping district, holding a translucent plastic bag stuffed with every shampoo sample I had. This was the spot where TV camera crews conducted their street interviews. There were always throngs of people, since the roads leading off the main shopping street, which ran on an east–west axis, led to a large supermarket on the right and a pachinko parlor on the left. Occasionally people handed out flyers there, but rarely product samples. Shoppers and passersby gladly accepted the freebies I was offering. One or two of them even took one, moved on, and then came back for another. It was gratifying to see that my efforts were being
appreciated, but at this rate I was going to be left with none for the person who needed them most. To anyone who came back a second or third time, I now simply shook my head and turned them away.
When I was down to five of my little packets of shampoo, the Woman in the Purple Skirt finally made an appearance in the shopping district.
Noticing me handing out free samples, she cast a curious glance at the contents of my plastic bag. But she didn’t actually come over to me, and instead walked straight on by.
Just as I was swiveling myself around to follow her and press a sample into her hands, I felt somebody grab me by the elbow.
“Hey. Who are you? You’re not from around here, are you? Have you got permission from the Shopkeepers Association?”
It was the proprietor of the Tatsumi sake store.
The Tatsumi sake store is the oldest of all the stores in the shopping district. Its proprietor is also the president of the local Shopping District Shopkeepers Association. Normally a courteous, smiling sort of man, he proceeded to grill me in a very unfriendly tone.
“Answer me. Come on! What are you handing out? What are those things? Let me have a look.”
I shook my arm free of his grip.
“Hey! Oi! Wait!”
Normally, there is nothing I hate more than having to run, but this was one time I needed to. As I ran, I soon caught up with the Woman in the Purple Skirt, then left her far behind me. Once I’d made my way through the shopping district and was out on the main road, I kept running, repeatedly glancing over my shoulder, certain that the proprietor of the Tatsumi sake store was chasing after me. At a certain point, however, looking over my shoulder for the umpteenth time, I realized he was nowhere in sight.
Eventually—much later, after dark—I made a special excursion to the apartment of the Woman in the Purple Skirt and hung my bag of shampoo samples on her doorknob. This is probably what I should have done in the first place. I put my ear up against the door and heard a faint, steady scrubbing sound. It seemed she was brushing her teeth. Well, that was a good sign. If she kept this up, maybe she was even going to wash her hair.