A Woman's Nails (40 page)

There’s no response. I shouldn’
t really expect any differently. Japanese are so accustomed to the sweet sound of honeyed words that the hint of criticism can come off like nails on a blackboard, especially for someone as sensitive as Yumi.

“You come here a lot, don’
t you?”
she says. There’
s a prosecutorial
sharpness to her tone
.

“
Y-yes, I s-supp
ose I do.”

“
You come here
for the easy women, don’t you?
”

“W-w-what?”

“
You come here. You pic
k up women, and take them home.”
The overheated
two-stroke
engine
in
her
head
has finally blown a gasket. “
I know
you
. I know
your
type,” she accuses. “
I know how you . . . how you . . .
eat
women!
”

Eat women?

I am too flabbergasted to know what to say. I mean
, if it were any other woman, I’
d think I was being hit upon, and would raise an e
yebrow and reply with a suave, “
Yesh, yesh, I do
eat
women.”
But no, this is Yumi speaking
and she’
s got anger and jealousy and scorn and vindictiveness written all over her ugly face.

Listen: when I was a child, anytime my parents, my teachers or even an older sibling accused me of something that I didn't do, a nervous, awkward laugh would sneak out from between my lips and betray my innocence.

“
Eat the cake? Me? Heh, heh, heh. No, n-not me. I, heh, heh,
heh, d-didn’
t even touch . . .”
And then I’d get hit up side of the head so hard my
future children would feel it. “
Ma, I didn’
t eat the
cake! Honest!”

“A very likely story,”
Ma would say as she shoved the bar of soap into my mouth for the additional sin of lying. Meanwhile my brother Padraig would be in his room,
humming as he
lick
ed
the chocolate frosting off his fingers.

So, the little nervous laugh bubbles up, condemning me once again and convincing Yumi beyond a doubt that she is right, which gives her all the more reason to resent me and the injustice of the world where scoundrels like myself can do whatever they damn well please and get away Scot-free.

“Look, Yumi,” I say. “
You h
ave absolutely no idea what you’
re talking about. You th
ink you know everything, but, I’m sorry to say this, you haven’
t go
t a goddamn clue. You think you’
re in a
gaijin
bar, but you’
re not. You think I can come into a place like this and pick up any girl I like just because I'm a
gaijin
. But if that’
s the case, Miss Smarty
P
ants, why the hell am I always alone? You think Japanese girls just throw themselves at foreign guys, but, you know what? The only woman who has ever thrown herself at me is . . .
you
!”

“
Saitei
!”
she says, and, uncoiling like a spring, her hand rises swiftly to slap me.

Only by the grace of our Lord in Heaven
do I manage to block her hand.

“Ha hah! Foiled again!”
I say.

So what does Yumi do, next? She takes her beer, pours it over my head, and leaves the bar in a huff.

18

URARA

1

My summer vacation, if you could call it that, begins in earnest the moment Yumi leaves me, drenched in beer at
Umie
. For the next
nine days, I don’
t have to endure her forlorn glances and heavy sighs, the sarcasm of Reina, or the summary reprimands of my unpredictable boss
, Abazuré
.

Blame it on the dreary w
eather we’
ve been having, but I’
ve been as homesick as a recruit in boot camp lately. It’s tempting to blow my meager savings on a ticket back to the States, to see my friends and, yes, even my family.

I miss it all: lazy summer evenings at the zoo, sitting on freshly cut grass and listening to live music; sweaty nights on crowded dance floors in
the
smoke-filled dives
of Old Town
; slow Sunday mornings reading the
Oregonian
over huge American breakfasts;
and B
ohemian afternoons loafing in cafes in Northwest Portland, sipping demitasses of bitter espresso, the pinky
raised ever so sophisticatedly.

And my mind must be poisoned
by nostalgia, because I
don’t think I’d
even
mind being dragged along to the Sunday morning Mass at St. Cecelia's
. I could
check out how the gorgeous Dougherty girls have filled out in my absence, listen
again
to the nonsensical sermon of our stuttering and apoplectic Father O'Brien, and, afterwards over the doughnuts and coffee, just to get my
father’
s knickers in a twist tell him what a bunch of crap it all was.

I want to borrow a car and take an aimless drive
in
to the countryside, following the road as far as it will take me and talk with the nutty loquaciou
s hicks I'm sure to find
out
there.

I want to drop in at
Escape From New York Pizza
, stuff my face with greasy slices of pepperoni and wash it all down with a bucket of
Dr. Pepper
. I’d love to satisfy that craving for the
Satyricon
gyros
that has been with me these sixteen months, to lick the yoghurt sauce as it drips down my forearm. Oh, to be able to sit on a bench outside of the
Santa Fe Taqueria
and pig out on
carne
asada
burritos
stuffed with
frijoles
, red hot salsa and cilantro, and put the fire out with cans of
Tecate
.

I long to spend an evening in the
Dublin Pub
, packed to the Reilly with the Irish Diaspora, to rub elbows with the good Catholic girls and rub up again
st a not-so-good Protestant one
. . .
introduce her to
“
Paddy
”:

“Got any Irish in ye?
” I’ll say.
“No? Would you like some? No?”

I want to belt out Irish folk songs, keeping the throat lubricated with pint after lovely pint of pitch black
Guinness
, sing until
the
bouncer
gives me the boot.

But, more than anything, I want to stop playing the role of brooding loner that was thrust upon me when I stepped upon the Japanese st
age. I yearn to have my friends’
arms around me, to be embraced again by that motley cohort of slackers I parted with when I came to Japan. I’m starving for the conversations we used to have, the conversations inspired by cheap bottles of
pinot noir
and pints of microbrew that would keep us up all night laughing until our sides hurt and the neighbors got sore, and they could fuck off for all we care, so would you like another drink? All the conversations I’ve had the past several months have left my gut half empty.

Letters from America don’t come as often as they used to, the phone calls have stopped altogether. I worry more and more that I’ve lived for so many months cloistered in this silent vigil, that I am beginning to lose my voice. I feel it in the awkward self-consciousness that overcomes me whenever I talk to someone for the first time, in a new reluctance to break the ice, in the creeping shyness that has its hands around my throat a
nd chokes me where I once sang.

2

In the evening, I head back to
Umie
to return the
shirt Shô lent me after Yumi poured beer all over me. I want to apologize for all the trouble I’ve caused the guys.

I’m expecting Shô to tell me to go fuck myself, but when I stick my head in the door, he greets me wit
h a cheery smile and a booming “
Welcome ho
me!”
that takes me by surprise.

I enter, scratching my head with embarrassment
and nodding humbling . . . Good G
od, when
did I ever start acting so, so . . .
so
Japanese
.

When I’
ve ascended the steps and am standing before the counter I begin to recite the apology I prepared in
polite Japanese earlier today: “
Kinô-wa taihen meiwaku-o o-kake shite . . .
”

“
Tondemonai
!” Shô says—
Not at all, not at all
—a
nd gestures for me to take a seat at the counter.

“
Ah no, that's okay,
I-I just wanted to return this,”
I say, opening up a department store bag and removing t
he
shirt, laundered and pressed by yours truly lik
e a proper Japanese housewife. “And this,”
I add,
handing him another paper bag. “
Tumaranai mono des,
’”
I say.
It's a trifling thing
.

"Oh!
Hiyoko manju! Yatta!
"

T
o fill out my
A
ct of
C
ontrition
, I ha
ve brought
him
a box of Hiyoko Manju, a popular local souvenir of chick-shaped cakes with bean jam centers.

Shô stare
s at me, dumfounded, and says, “Pay-chan, you’re turning Japanese!”

“Turning Japanese?”
I smile awkward
ly, and scratch my head again. “You really think so?”

I suppose Shô means it as a compliment, but coming from someone who has for the most part done his best to ignore me all these months it strikes me as sarcastic.

He encourages me again to sit down, and when I do, Hiro, the other bartender with
lips like Mick
Jagger, place
s a draught before me, saying, “
Sahbisu
,” meaning it’
s on the house.

“
Well, if you insist.
Arigatô gozaimas
’
,”
I
say, raising the mug of beer. “
Kampai!
”

3

Six beers and a switch to whiskey and water later, a soothing blanket of equanimity is drawn over me. The pangs of nostalgia I was feeling in the morning are replaced by a very Japanese resignation.
Shikata ga nai
, I say to myself, it can’
t be helped.

Maybe I am turning Japanese after all.

By the second whis
key, I’ve also forgotten that I ha
ve given up cigarettes and accept a "vanilla taste" Caster from the young
salaryman
next to me. According to his
meishi
, he works for JTB, the
very
same prestigious travel bureau that dear old Reina used to work for before she left her husband and T
ô
ky
ô
for the glamour of
an English school in
Fukuoka. The
salaryman
says he hates his job and wants to quit. When I tell him the feeling is mutual, he
buys me a drink,
G
od love him.

When
I ask him what he wants to do with
his life, he says travel and—drum roll please—
su
rf
. Only, the way he and most Japanese pronounce t
he word, it sounds like “sahfu”
.

“
‘Serf? Why in heaven’
s name
would you want to be a ‘serf’
?”

Naturally, he’
s confused and tells me so.

“A serf
is a kind of
dorei
,”
I explain.