A Woman's Nails (20 page)

“
You remember that evening at Ôhori Park when I told you that Reina
and I weren’t having an affair?”

“
Yes, of course I do. Yo
u . . .”

“I never told you why.”

“
You sa
id that Reina wasn't your type.”

I did, didn’
t I? Reina wasn't
very happy to hear about that. “That wasn't the reason,”
I said.

“Oh?”

Idiot
! If the world were popul
ated with men who only screwed their type
humankind would have gone extinct a millennia ago.

“
Reina and I aren't having an affair was because I'm still in love with my ex-girlfriend. I still miss her too mu
ch to think about someone else.”
I wanted to continue, but tears started to flow from Yumi.

“
But, I love yo
u,”
she whimpered to the table.

Odd that she would have so much faith in those three words as to think saying so could make a difference. Did she sincerely expect me to be moved or to take a second inventory of the barren shelves of my heart and find that somewhere in the recesses, in an overlooked section, covered with dust was the realization that I, too, had loved Yumi all along? What did professing my love to Mie bring to me? A cold steel door shut on my face, and my hopes and dreams locked and chained behind it. Now
Yumi
loved
me
.

To hell with love!

Looking at her, at the black mascara streaming down her cheeks, I never felt l
ess attracted to anyone before.

“I love you,”
she whimpered once more for effect.

If I were cruel I would have laughed at Yumi, at myself, and at the cynicism and perversity of love. How was it that I could still love Mie whose betrayal had nearly robbed me of my very will to live, who had made me suffer so miserably that I was an emotionally and physically emaciated shadow of my former self, yet couldn't bring myself to even consider for even a moment loving this miserable girl before me who seemed willing to devote the rest of her life to me on her faith in love alone?

I paid the bill, then suggested we leave. There was no use in our trying to talk through the tears. A taxi came, the door opened, and I said good night to her as she struggled wearily into to back seat. Although I could sympathize with how Yumi was feeling, that sympathy wasn’t enough for me to take her into my
arms and kiss the sadness away.

4

As the rainy season approached promising unpredictable
volatility in the weather, Yumi’
s emotions settled somewhat. While the pendulum still swung with broad strokes, the reach and breadth of her emotions were less and less extreme allowing me to deal with her as one might deal with, say, an adult rather than the lovesick
, trouble-making bubblehead she’
d been. In the meantime, Reina and my affair continued to bump along, not so much on the strength of our commitment to each other than on the unspoken agreement that we not make too many demands other than sex and friendship. From my perspective it was one of
the healthiest relationships I’
d had in a dear long time. It was exactly what I needed at a time when, feeling bankrupt of emotions, I had little love to invest in a relationship.

But as my twenty-seventh birthday drew near, things started to unravel. Like most things in l
ife, you never really know what’s going on until it’
s too goddamn late to do anything about it.

The fewer the days separating me from the day I came kicking and screa
ming against my will into this g
odforsaken world, the tighter
the noose around my neck grew.

Yumi, who had been painting delicate strokes in subdued tones, was about to start splashing on violently passionate colors onto her canvas and fill our little office once more with a vile miasma of anger and jealousy.

With the days ticking away, and Twenty Seven stalking me, Yumi went to great pains to
plan
her assault on my heart. Reina, who was privy to our co-worker's machinations, would leak what she knew to me. Though she had never held much more than a dim opinion of Yumi, she had come to harbor such animosity towards “Yu-chan” that she started to take sadistic pleasure in telling me the details of our co-worker’s plan, usually while laying naked next to me and trying to arouse another round of
heated, angry sex out my cock.

According to Reina, Yumi had prepared a bottle of red wine, glasses and a corkscrew and was now waiting with increasing impatience for the right opportunity to ask me out. It seems Yumi, having failed to impress me earlier with the depth of her feelings towards me, was now ready to booze me into submission.

To Rein
a's malevolent delight and Yumi’
s repeated frustration, I avoided committing myself for several weeks. An incorrigible procrastinator at heart, I would have continued doing so had Reina no
t started complaining that Yumi’
s recent dip back into the bleak depths of despair was getting on her fucking nerves.

Full diplomatic pressure was imposed: Reina threatened me with an
embargo—no sex—u
nless I did something about Yumi. The thought of not s
haring Reina’
s bed and the sex, which was starting to get exciting, was an acid that easily ate through the hardest of intransigen
ce. I gave in and accepted Yumi’
s invitation to have dinner on the eve of a national holiday celebrating at long l
ast the Crow
n Prince’
s wedding.

5

It was a disaster in t
he making. Not the Crown Prince’
s Wedding, mind you,
my
date
with Yumi
. A date which would go down in the annals of my personal history as one of the very worst, not so much for what occurred that night than for what would come to pass afterwards. It was my own
Apocalypse Now
, after which I could do nothing but grip my sweating brow and mutter a self-pit
ying, “The horror, the horror.”

I really should have had more s
ense than to give into to Reina’s demands and accept Yumi’
s invitation. And yes, it was irresponsible of me to have drunk myself under the table. But it was an unforgivable mistake to let Yumi follow me home. And most of all, it was reprehen
sible of me to try to fuck her.

The horror, the horror
.

My recollection of the night was mercifully
cloudy
, limited again to an
random
collection of
images
: sitting at a bar counter slamming shots of
Lord
knows what; standing at the gate of my apartment building not sure how I got there, nor knowing why Yumi had followed me all the way like
, the Japanese say,
shit trailing out of a guppy's arse; inviting her up for a drink; sitting on the floor of my apartment next to her, our backs against the wall; and kissing. Kissing! Yes! Kissing! And groping, groping, groping! God, help me, I groped! My maladroit hands plunged through the buttons of her blouse! They had a will of their own, those goddamned hands of mine, and climbed up her skirt where they found a girdle! A girdle? Yes, a girdle! Good God, a girdle! And, there the rest of the night is truncated by the deepest, black
est absence of recall.

Early the next morning, the doorbell rang, jolting me awake and sending a bolt of panic up my spine.

My G
od, did we fuck? No, no, no! God, why did I have to drink so goddamn much? What the fuck was I thinking?

The doorbell rang again, followed by a quick series of knocks. Silence. Knocking again.

Go away, go away, just go a-way!

At that time of the morning and with that kind of determination, it couldn't have been anyone but Yumi. There was nothing I could do but remain quietly where I lay and hope that she and the spare change of memories jangling in my head would just go away and leave me alone.

After ten minutes of laying motionless in bed, and holding my breath, I could hear the click of her pumps as she descended the steps. After the gate downstairs closed with a loud metallic clash, I peeled the sheets slowly off and discovered to my relief that although I was undressed from the waist up my trousers were still on, belt buckled and, as they say in Japanese, society's window was shut. I got up, tipped-toed to the door, which was unlocked and looked out the peephole. Finding no one there, I gently turne
d the bolt and locked the door.

Telling myself, I’
ll never make that mistake again, I returned to bed to try to sleep off what was promising to be the mother of all hangovers. I would miss the royal wedding altogether.

6

A nine-months pregnant silence hung over the office the next few mornings. I should have said something, should have apologized for my deplo
rable behavior, but then I wasn’
t sure what had actually happened. Pathological optimism enco
uraged me to judge my co-worker’
s determined reticence as meaning she would prefer to just forget the whole affair and move on.

The silence didn’
t last, of course. Just as I was beginning to enjoy how peaceful the m
ornings had become without Yumi’
s overly rehearsed and pained attempts at conversation, the pregnant silence went into labor. Before long a fat, ugly and screaming baby would enter our lives. But, not quite yet.

Yumi, contrary to my expectations, my hopes, my dreams, and my desires, was not the type to forgive and forget. S
he had little need for the Lord’
s Prayer and its hope that we may forgive the trespasses of others, something which has sustained me through a lifetime of mistakes like an open credit
line for a degenerate gambler.

No such luck; Yumi was a Buddhist.

Her imagination had given birth to a fantasy as ridiculous as it was dangerous, and she held it close to her breast, nursing it with a vengeance so that she could get as much mileage out of it as possible. After we had closed the office down for the weekend and I'd gone home, she mentioned off-handedly to Reina that she'd gone back to my apartment Tuesday night.

Reina, it goes without saying, wasn't particularly delighted to hear that. She was even less amused when I waffled that there was a possib
ility, albeit extremely small—so small that it wasn’t really worth our time—t
hat in the thick, thick, pea soup fog of dru
nkenness, I may have tried to—t
he thought, I must say,
ha h
a
, sickens me—m
ay have indeed tried to
. . ., em,
kiss
Yumi. Nevertheless, she too
k it like a sport: as soon as I’
d apologized for my stupidity, she retuned me to a state of grace below her by fucking the penitence out of me.

The doorbell startled us awake early the next morning. It was Yumi again ringing the bell and knocking on the door like a bill collector. How she managed again to get past the locked gate downstairs was a mystery, but one I could ill afford to ponder when I made the
distressing realization that I’
d failed to lock
the door—a
gain. God, what an idiot I could be at times! Reina, sharing the sentiment, mouthed, “
Baka!
” at me.

When the commotion subsided, I made an elaborate series of military h
and signals to Reina, who, butt-
naked, tip-toed as quickly and quietly as humanly possible towards the kitchen where she squatted down in the corner, with all of her belongings bundled up in her arms. I then moved with the silent agility of a
ninja
to the
genkan
where I picked up Rika’
s shoes made my way back to the kitchen where I handed them to her. When one of the shoes fell to the floor echoing like cannon announcing noon and causing Reina to let out a small yelp, the doorbell began ringing again. It left me no choice: I answered the door in my birthday suit.

It's not ea
sy to describe the look on Yumi’
s face when I opened the door. It was contorted with both delight and horror, av
ersion and compulsion: she didn’
t quite seem to know whether to plunge in and be willingly ravished or run away screaming. And so, she stood before me, her eyes fixed upon my dingdong, speaking in tongues.

“Sorry, I was sleeping,”
I said
,
scratching my balls.