A Woman's Nails (15 page)

“That wasn't my intention.”

“
You
know what your friend Yuki is?”

“No, what?”

“
She's a consolation prize. She's a consolation prize when I want you, you, you, and no one but you so badly I can barely look at another woman without being r
eminded of how much I miss you.”

“I feel sorry for you.”

Yuki returns finding me with Mie's cold, dead fish of a hand in mi
ne and scolds us for cheating, “
Uwaki-wa dah-mé
!”
On whom Mie and I are supposedly cheating Yuki doesn't say. But, Mie takes it as a hint to stand up and give Yuki the seat next to me. Yuki sits then takes my h
and and asks me if I like her, “
Yuki-chan no koto suki
?”

I smile sadly because it reminds me of the very words Mie spoke to me on the floor of her bedroom that first night nearly a year ago when we'd drunk ourselves silly on
sak
é
. “
I love you.
I love you so much I could cry,”
I say to Mie, but it's Yuki who hugs me and kisses me and tells me she loves me, too.

The past has been waiting for its cue to burst in through the tinted glass door of the
Big Apple
and spoil our reunion. I ought to give Mie credit for having known this and tried in her own way to keep the past as far away from the present as possible by carrying on as if our common tragic history no longer had anything to do with us today. But it was an effort that had been doomed to failure when she had extended the invitation over the phone. I am my past, the sum of my disappointments and failures.

Mie tries to maintain a distance from me the rest of the evening. She chain-smokes her
Mild Sevens
, letting them burned half way, rubbing them out in the ashtray and lighting up again. She smokes as if to save herself the effort of having to talk with me on any level but the most onion-skin thin one. If a cigarette isn't pressed against her red lips, then it's a glass of whiskey, unloading the burden of conversation onto Yuki's and my shoulders. Only when it behooves Mie to do so, will she gesture with a cigarette between those cold, rigid fingers of hers, or add an occasional point to guide the conversation away from her comfort zone, before retreating back into a grating silence that only makes me wonder why she asked me out in the first place.

Was it to prove to herself that she no longer felt anything for me, that even if her former lover were to stand before her she wouldn’t be moved? Or was she a sadist at heart, inviting me out only to marvel at the damage she had caused, to watch me unravel, like an arsonist watching a house burn to the ground?

When Mie stands to go to the restroom, I too rise to my feet and silently follow a few paces behind her. I've been far too patient with her this evening and have drunk far, far too much to stop myself from dredging the bottom of my heart and letting the pain that has been festering there finally come to the surface. I know it's a bad idea and I know I really ought to wait, but then I've waited six months already and who knows when, let alone if, I will ever see her again. I stand outside the restroom and when she emerges, she is surprised to see me.

“I want to talk with you,” I say. “
Alone
.”

Good God, I sound desperate. I
am
desperate.

There are times when I wish I could dislocate myself from the past, to look back at the things I did an
d say, “
No, no, no. That? That wasn't me. You must be
mistaking me for someone else.”
If I'd had a knife, big and sharp enough, I would have cut those bits of the past off, amputated entire limbs from my personal history. But then, what would I have had left? A past that looked like a
daruma
—an
atrophied torso with grotesque knobs where the arms and legs had once been. I might still have my dignity in tact, though, which is more than I can say about how I feel about myself now.

She tries to slip past, to return to the carefree distraction her co-worker provided, but I grab her hand and stop her.

“
I
have
to talk to you
, Mie-chan. Anywhere but here.”

She makes another attempt to get away, so I pull her roughly to the fire escape in the back.

“
I don't want to
marry you,”
she says in perfect English, the first English she has spoken the whole evening.

“
This isn't about marriage. God damn it, Mie, I love you . . . And, and all I've wanted these pa
st months is to understand why.”

“
I still love you. But I can't marry you. Tetsu and I will be engaged next month. Our famili
es are going to meet next week.”

“Why?”
It's as if someone has just kicked me in the gut. Everythin
g goes white. My knees buckle. “Why?”

Why did you leave me? Why didn't we talk more so you could tell me how you were feeling? Why did it have to end? Why? Why? Why?

“Why, Mie-chan?”

My heart is overwhelmed by an all-too familiar weariness. I want to just disappear, to exhale one last time and expire and be forgotten. I can't take it anymore. My grip on her arm weakens, releasing her. Did I ever really hold her? Was she ever mine to begin with? I step aside to let her go.

She starts to w
alk away, then stops and says, “We had a baby, Peador.”

Tears fill my eyes. “A baby?”

“
We killed
our
baby,”
she said.

My jaw drops,
the tears fall hard and fast. “
I . . . I
didn't know. You never told me.”

“I tried to, but . . .”

“But what?”

“But you wouldn't listen to me.”

“I listened to you.”

“
You only listened to the
words, Peador. Not my feelings.”

“
I'm sorry. God,
I'm sorry. Mie . . .”

“
Apologizing won't change anything, Peador
. . . And neither will crying.”

Mie walks back to the table leaving me alone to dry my eyes and regain what little composure I have.

Back at the table, I gather up my blazer and bag, and say good night as calmly and as plea
santly as I can. I search Mie's
eyes for a trace of the woman I fell in love with a year ago, but she isn't there. When she broke up with me, she had protected herself behind a chained door, now she has chained her hea
rt shut
. As I turn away to head out the door, the two jump to their feet and scramble after me. God only knows why, but they insist that I stay, but I am beyond persuasion. Not even Yuki's suggestion that we all take a taxi back to her apartment can dissuade me. It's an offer I know I'll regret not taking, but as desperate I was to see Mie again, all I want now is to get the hell out of here before I lose it completely.

Sadness grips my throat. I speak in short, difficult bursts to keep from crying
again in front of her. “
I'm sorry, but .
. . I . . . gotta go . . . Bye.”

Mie kisses me affectionately on the cheek, a soft kiss dampened by a warm tear.

What is that tear for, I wonder. Is it a tear of sadness and frustration, or a tear of anger and exasperation? Did it fall for me or for herself, or for the baby we didn't have? I know what I'm going to cry for. My tears will stream from these burning eyes for all the things I should have understood about her and all the things I should have done for her, but didn't. I know that as soon as I have left Mie’s sight, I will mourn the devastating loss of a woman's love and the demise of the hope that had kept me going all this time. I will drop to my knees under the weight of regrets of horrible mistakes I've made because they can never ever be undone.

I start running, turning off at the first corner, run as fast as my legs can carry me. Finding a telephone booth, I take the
Lady Luck
phone card from my wallet, and dial the only number I know.

“
Moshi-mosh
,” Reina says.

“It's me . . . I need a friend,” I blubber into the receiver.

8

REINA

1

“
If you're just having sex
with me, I want you to stop it,”
she says, shoving me away
once her hands are free.

Her brown hair is matted against her face and neck. When I try to brush
it away, she slaps at my hand.

Her wrists are red, with deep braided indentations in them, and on her tummy are drops of semen, scattered like a broken strand of pearls.

She turns away from me, and faces the wall. The sweat of our bodies has soaked through the sheets to the
futon
, forming an unnavigable body of perspiration between us.

It's not that I'm “just having sex”
with her, but then it's not quite
love that I am making, either.

So Peador, what are you doing still screwing her? I don't know. I really don't know. And I don't know what to say to calm her anger or reassure her. All I can do is try to make a gesture of affection, to kiss her tenderly on her back and pull her closer to me.

“But,” she says, softening, “
if
you want something more . . .”

I kiss her on the lips, then maneuver above her, gently spreading her legs and easing inside her for the third time this morning.

Reina and I went to the neighborhood
yakitori-ya
after work the evening following the disa
ster with Mie.

Feeling as if I'd been pulled emotionally and physically, through a wringer, I didn’t feel much like eating. I pushed the menu aside, and told the master to just bring me a beer.

“Bottle or draught?”

“Draught. Biggest you've got.”

“
Futsukayoi
?”
he said, asking if I had a hangover.

“
Hai
,”
I answered, massaging my temples.

The master laughed heartily and
hollered back to the kitchen, “
Nama icchô!
”

As if on cue, a middle-aged woman in a white kerchief and smock emerged from behind a dingy
noren
curtain with my personal savior in a tall mug, frosted with ice. I mumbled “
kampai
” to myself, and s
tarted glug-glug-glugging away.

The cold beer soothed my parched throat, tamed the nausea in my gut, and loo
sened the screws on my temples.

Close, but not quite there yet. Waving the woman in the kerchief over, I gave her the em
pty mug and asked for another: “
Moh ippai
.”

Judging by the way Reina eyed me I could tell she wasn't impressed.

“Trust me,” I assured her. “I know what I'm doing.”

“And that's supposed to help?”

“
Reina, it is
the only thing
that does help.”

I had tried their vile little bottles of elixir concocted from turtle blood, deer horn, horse testicles, and what have you, but they didn't do a damned thing except leave a foul taste in my mouth. Beer, glorious beer, on the other hand, worked like a charm. Nothing beat it for the hangover. Of course, I was well aware that pounding beer after beer wouldn’t cancel the previous night's debt. No, all I could hope for was breaking the hangover down into manageable installments.

“
You know what we call
that
in Japanese?”
Reina asked.

“
What? Drinking when you've got a hangover?
Mukaezake
, of course.”

“Eh? How do you know?”

“
I'm Irish, Reina. Words like 'hair of the dog' constitute a basic survival phrase for my people. And, I'll also have you know, the very first Chinese character I ever learned was '
sa
ké
’
.”

“
Aruchû des'ne
,”
she said, calling me an alcoholic.

“
Hai, aruchû
des’
!”
And, there you have it. I admitted to being a drunk. I was now theoretically one step closer to becoming a reformed alcoholic. But good God,
where would the fun in that be?

The woman in the kerchief came to my rescue me with another chilled mug of beer. One step forward, two steps back; the folks at AA would have to start their meeting without me.