Madoka sucks in air, shakes her fingers as if they are on fire and she needs to put them out. She points at her mouth, gasping, holds up a finger to signal me to wait. Madoka clearly has something important to say. I wait. After one final inhalation, tears forming at the corners of her white-lined eyes, she comes out with it.
“Margaret-sensei—” breath—“why so cute you are?”
Before I can ponder the question, compose an answer, Ines is back from somewhere, back with a smile on her face, back with the pills.
“Madoka, Ines. Ines, Madoka.”
“Ehhh?” Madoka says, stroking Ines’s hair. “Kirei! Beautiful.”
Ines takes Madoka’s hand and places it on the table. “Paws off the hair, please.”
“You’re beautiful and I’m cute,” I say. “Story of my life.”
“Cute has more currency in Japan, darling.”
“Cute ages badly. Anyway, let’s get happy, huh?”
Madoka is nodding her head, turning her chin to face whoever’s talking. She has the glassy-eyed, falsely rapt expression of someone who hasn’t a fucking clue what’s being said.
“Who’s the go-go dancer?”
“Madoka. She’s one of my stewardess students.”
“She’s very keen.”
“Yep.”
“Maybe we should give her a pill.”
“That’s a bad idea.” I imagine the most illicit thing Madoka’s ever done is drinking beer straight from the bottle. “A very bad idea.”
“Those are my favorite kind.” Ines turns to Madoka. Holds out a pill. “This is a drug, darling. An illicit substance. If you get caught with it, you’ll be hauled down to the police station and your entire family will be shamed for perpetuity. You won’t lose face. You’ll lose face, head, neck, and shoulders. But you’ll feel lovely for the next little while. How about it?” Ines babbles something in Japanese, something that shocks Madoka’s lips into an O. Madoka squints, lolls her head, and before I can stop her, scoops the pill from Ines’s hand and pops it in her mouth.
“Fuck, Ines.”
“She made an informed decision.”
“Now you have to take care of her, you realize.”
“Oh shush. Take your pill, down your drink, and let’s boogie.”
“Boogie!” Madoka says.
After the pills are taken, the booze is downed, Ines and Madoka disappear to the dance floor. I opt to sulk and observe the prickly sensations under my skin. In order to dance without feeling unbearably self-conscious, I have to be under the influence of a substance that either obliterates my ego or expands it to gargantuan proportions. Right now I’m just me. But pricklier.
After half a song of Madoka’s pogo-stick dance moves and Ines’s hardly-moving and staring seductively at Madoka, Bar Let’s Go is a volcano of masturbatory impulses. A few brave souls venture onto the dance floor. Then a few more. A cheerfully violent pop anthem begins, and in seconds the black-and-white tiled floor is no longer visible. Horny boys with three beers in them shout along to the music, fists in the air. I’m ashamed to be human for a moment or two, until, as if on cue, the drug kicks in and I feel like giving everyone a big hug.
Madoka returns to the table red-cheeked and panting, Ines following behind her, a slight spring to her step that tells me she’s high.
“Our work is done here,” Ines says, saucer-eyed. She drags on a cigarette and points her chin to the door.
I make a stop at the ladies’ room. Lean down and slurp water from the tap while I wait for a stall. On the toilet, I have a moment of bravery. Close my eyes and let the sound of Mom’s voice roll over me with the drug.
Happened at some sports bar on The Danforth. He’d stopped taking his drugs and—well you know how he is. Mags, he’s asking for you. Sometimes he seems almost normal. Maybe those rednecks knocked something back into place. He keeps asking for you, Mags.
Save. Save. Save.
I can feel the gentle tug of the night as it starts to unspool. Serotonin floods my brain. Under my life’s bedrock of crap and trauma, I can sense the gurgle and trickle of water. I’m so thirsty.
Tokyo at night, on drugs, is like being inside a pinball machine. Enough has been said about the neon. You can never say enough about the neon. The way it flashes and glitters for you like an electric ballet, the way you can ride the train at night, out of the city, into the suburbs, through town after town, and every time the train pulls into the station, without fail, just beyond the platform, the neon greets you—calls you into pachinko parlors, beseeches you to drink Sapporo beer, to buy Toshiba, to enjoy the delights of hostess clubs, stacked on top of one another like electric Lego. Stare at the neon and close your eyes. Open them and it’s still there, imprinted.
Everyone on Omotosando-dori is beautiful, their skin seems to glow as if lit from underneath. Even the boys are pretty, pouty-mouthed, hair-do’d, dressed in the minimalist uniform of black and slate gray. You feel as if you’ve come to some understanding, but you’re not sure what it is or how you got there. Something about the fragility of youth. It’ll come to you. No rush.
Ines and Madoka are walking a few steps ahead of you, arms linked. Every now and again some joke is passed between them, and you can see their faces in profile, laughing, mouths open. You can’t hear them above the hum of the street. They are miming bliss. You can see their teeth. Teeth never looked so lovely. At one point, at one joke, they lean in too far and knock foreheads. A moment of surprise, hands to heads. More laughter, which you can’t hear.
You wish you could articulate the understanding that you’ve come to. You’re dying to tell someone. Anyone. Any of the beauties walking past you would do. I want to tell you something.
Along the edge of the small creek behind Omotosando-dori, fortune tellers sit at folding tables, in the halo of light cast by paper lanterns. An old woman sells fried squid balls. Some teenagers practice an elaborately choreographed hip-hop dance routine.
At a bend in the creek, a small crowd has formed. Ines and Madoka insinuate themselves through the cooing little throng. You stand on your tippy-toes peering over the heads, but all you can see is an empty wire cage. On the inhale, a hand grabs you at the bicep, on the exhale you are standing next to Ines. You can see now that the cage is not empty. It’s filled with fireflies. Hundreds of them, flickering on and off. The man opens the top of the cage, and the fireflies hover in a cloud of light above your heads. The cloud begins to splinter off, until you follow just one fly, squint as the light gets fainter, until you are staring into the dark and you remember to breathe again.
Even in your chemically altered state, your mind starts up the same old pattern. Take something good, pick it apart. Analyze it to death. Memorize it. Squeeze it dry until it’s as special as the instructions on a shampoo bottle. Keep the fireflies in the cage until they drop one by one.
Ines turns to you. “How about Tengu?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Neither am I, but I want to look at food.” She’s shouting but it sounds like whisper to you. Like a purr. “Sit at the counter and watch the chefs.”
Outside the pub, a wooden figure of Tengu, the mischievous little goblin with the six-inch nose, stands guard. Ines, who inexplicably knows every Japanese legend, informed you that the mythical figure of Tengu has special powers fueled by the water that resides in a bowl at the top of his head. Always wreaking havoc, Tengu could only be defeated if an opponent tricked him into bowing and spilling the water. For a moment, I think about hopping on top of Tengu’s nose and simulating an obscene act, but I think better of it. I am above that. Besides, the last time I did it, a red-faced cop yelled at me for five minutes and I was barred from entering the restaurant. I was stoned and had the munchies. It seemed tragic.
I wonder why all of my good memories involve illegal substances.
“Remember when you fellated Tengu?” Ines asks.
“I did not,” I say.
“Agedashi-dofu,” says Madoka.
“—?”
“Fried tofu in broth,” translates Ines.
“I love you all,” I say.
“There’s only two of us,” Ines points out.
“I love you both.”
Down the stairs, the cavernous pub is teeming with people, sitting elbow-to-elbow at the long communal tables, padding around the tatami floors in slippers. Squealing women sound like seagulls. The waiters scream at each other in rough boys’ Japanese. The laughter is almost organic, rising in waves, pulling back into the clink of glasses, chopsticks against plates, and rising again, louder still. We lock up our shoes in little wooden cubbyholes and make our way to the counter seats, where we can watch the chefs. They shuffle around the narrow kitchen like an insect ballet, hands manipulating the food with a skill and intimacy that’s almost sexual. Steam rises from cauldrons of soba broth. Skewers of chicken cartilage cackle over the grill. Not a bead of sweat soils the chefs’ blue cotton headbands.
“I’d like to take them all home with me and have them suckle me like a mother pig,” I say.
Ines nods. “Have them make breakfast.”
“Can you imagine them all squished up around the hot plate in your room?”
“No, no darling. I know a love hotel with a gourmet kitchen room.”
We go back to watching the cooks. Mention of the hotel veers my thoughts to Kazu. The high begins to ebb. My face melts into melancholy.
“You’re not still thinking about what’s-his-name are you?”
“Who? No.”
“Why don’t you just call him?”
“I don’t have his number.”
“I do. Got it from his cell phone while he was taking a pee.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m crafty. Besides, you never know when knowing a guy like that will come in handy.”
Tengu is underground. No cell phone reception. You feel like an anachronism. A person waiting to use a public phone. A salaryman screams into the mouthpiece. His suit looks tired. It wants to go home. The suit’s man slams the phone down on the receiver. Slams it down again. Again. The swaying drunk girl in front of you sobers suddenly, straightens her spine, backs away from the phone. The man. His suit.
The screaming man comes to his senses. You’ve always liked the expression “come to your senses.” You wonder where you come from. The man looks down at the receiver. His face softens in apology and he takes a step back. Bows at the phone. Shallow nods of his head leading into deep bends at the waist. You stifle a laugh. A man bowing at a phone. The man turns to the queue. Continues his frenzied apology. The people waiting seem to convey, with their smug pursed lips, that this is what one ought to do to make amends for a phone-booth hissy fit.
“I’m ashamed! I’m sorry! I’m ashamed!” the man barks in Japanese. He seems to shrink inside of his suit. Until he’s all suit and scalp.
If it’s greed that fuels the West, then shame must turn the karmic wheel in Japan.
You clutch the scrap of paper with Kazu’s number. Clench your jaw. Squeeze your eyes shut and open again. Time curves in on you, and you’re at the front of the line. It’s your turn.
“Moshi-moshi,” Kazu answers.
“It’s me.”
He trills a sentence of Japanese. Too fast for you to understand. Tacked on the end, a snippet of English.
Be patient.
Dial tone.
Along its edges, your field of vision is fractured, pixilated. You hadn’t noticed it before. Now it is all you can see.
I’m sixteen. Frank is fucked.
Tony Varda holds my hand. When we walk, the carpet of dry leaves goes shoop-shoop. It’s one of those Indian-summer days when you don’t know what to wear. It feels like the whole world has been distilled down to two hands. One clammy. One trusting. There’s a small stream, and he pulls me across. The wet sock will make a sucking sound with every step when I walk home, but I can’t hear it yet.
At the clearing, there are two boys waiting. “What’s going on?” I ask. (Like, as if she didn’t know.) I giggle. I don’t scream. (She fucking laughed, man.) Paul MacKay goes to hold my arms back, and panic squeezes the air from me. “No! I’ll do it.” (She wanted to put on a show for us.) The whole time I’m thinking about diving. “Keep your chin tucked in. Keep your legs together.” I think I even mouth it, like a mantra. (She’s fuckin’ crazy, just like her brother.) I look down, past the white of my body, to the damp earth at my feet. I expect to see worms and those bugs that curl into balls, but there’s already been a frost. Indian summer can’t bring them back to life.
Frank is sitting on the front lawn when I get home. I sit down next to him. I’ve done the buttons on my shirt up wrong, and one side hangs down lower than the other.
“Frank?”
Frank rocks a little.
“Frank?” It’s the beginning of a new era.
I smack him across the face. Frank hangs his head to one side, and I see Mom running from the kitchen, her mouth held tight, wiping her hands on her apron.
The staff at Air-Pro are stiffer, more robotic than normal. Their birdlike chorus of “welcome” trails off at the end when I step into the lobby. The five of them, pert and perfect in their faux stewardess uniforms, tuck their chins into their jaunty scarves and shuffle papers around in choreographed synchronicity.
The recruits huddled around the bulletin board disappear when they spot me, scattering in various directions like cockroaches after a light’s been turned on. In the distance, I hear the click-clack-click of Ms. Nakamura’s heels. I instinctively locate the fire exit. EMERGENCY TRAP DOOR reads the illuminated sign.
I turn down the hallway toward the bank of vending machines. A can of syrupy coffee is necessary before I can face Ms. Nakamura. Passing by the Deportment Studio, I catch a glimpse of a dozen or so recruits kitted out in black leotards and tights, lined up along a bar, like a rehearsal for Anorexia: The Musical.
The slogan on the drink machine urges me to “Enjoy Refresh Time.” I doubt if I can comply. The clicking is getting louder, closer. For a moment, I consider hiding in the ladies’ room, perching like a bird on the toilet seat until the coast is clear, but I don’t, for the same reason I don’t apply expensive eye creams—What’s the point in delaying the inevitable? I put the coins in the machine, choose a can of black coffee, down it like a shooter, and walk toward the clicking.
I meet Ms. Nakamura in front of the Face Make Lab. Her mouth is a tight slash of red. In my heels, I’m a good five inches taller than she. Looking down at her gives me vertigo. To steady myself, I stare at the pulsing, bulbous vein near her temple.
She hands me an envelope. “Final pay,” she barks. “Leave now.”
“You’re firing me?” I think about my work visa, which Air-Pro sponsors. “Why?”
The thump of blood at Nakamura’s temple slows, relaxes. She must smell the fear on me. “You have tried to derange the recruits! Madoka-chan is telling!”
“We went dancing.”
“Carousing!” she screams.
I can’t help but laugh. It’s either that or cry, and I’d sooner commit hara-kiri than shed a tear in front of Nakamura. I hold my hands up. “Okay. I caroused. I’m guilty.” I do an exaggerated bow, nearly toppling over.
“Shameful!” She squints, purses her lips, scrunches her nose until her face resembles a crab-apple doll wearing lipstick. “You have face splotch and smell of meat! You are more worse than average foreign person.”
“You are more worse than average vampire.” I grab the envelope and head for the lobby.
On the way out, I corner Mikiko near the Emergency Trap Door. Her face is as poreless and unreal as always, but a faint crease appears between her eyebrows, which seems to convey sympathy. She grabs my elbow and holds it with the tips of her fingers, like a little knob. The gesture is inordinately intimate.
“Where’s Madoka?” I ask her.
She clasps her hands under her chin and whispers, “Ms. Nakamura sent her for Intensive
Remake.”
“That sounds awful.”
“Iya, iya! Madoka will be fixed!” Mikiko sighs wistfully, peers up at the fluorescent lighting panels on the ceiling.
“Fixed,” I repeat. Like a TV set on the blink. Like a cat.
In the elevator, a lone recruit eyes me nervously. I have the urge to bark. Growl a little. Sniff my armpits to see if I really do smell of meat. When the doors open, I leap out, break into a run, zigzagging through the crowd, clipping shoulders. Briefcases swing from the hands of startled commuters, cars screech to a halt for me. I hit a clear stretch of sidewalk, feel the wind in my face, the sharp smell of exhaust fumes and ramen broth in my nose, lactic acid eating at my thighs. I hit a bottleneck, a queer forest of shiny heads, blue suits. A politician, wearing white gloves, stands atop a van, screaming into a megaphone: “I have no religious affiliations! I am an honest man!” The blackboard scratch of feedback vibrates in my ear.
If I had a clear path, I would run until I dropped, until my legs or heart or lungs quit. I’d crumple to the ground like a collapsible plastic camping cup. Flat. Spent. Too tired to think. But I’m weak. The heat and crowds, the weight of my body finally defeat me, and I slow to a dejected gait.
I turn down one of the narrow streets of Kabukicho. Signs for massage parlors and karaoke rooms loom over me. The streets smell of cooking oil, sweat, and exhaust fumes. Like a factory that makes people. Assembles them, feeds them, moves them. I feel like part of a machine. A faulty part.
I walk for a good two hours, until my exposed skin feels hot and tight from the sun. Winter has retreated suddenly and briefly. A gaggle of schoolgirls revel in it—their white shirts tied in knots above the bellybutton. Office ladies produce parasols out of nowhere, guarding their complexions vehemently.
Lost Girls and Love Hotels Page 8