A Woman's Nails (6 page)

“Hey, Peador,”
Chris
said, bending over to tie his shoelaces.

“Going out?”

“Yeah. We’re going into town to catch a movie.”

“A movie, huh? I can’t remember the last time I saw a movie.”

“At eighteen bucks a pop, who could blame ya?,” he said, standing up, then turning to his girlfriend behind him, added quickly, “Oh, man, I’m sorry. Peador, this is Machiko.”

The girl was little more than skin and bones, but she had the kindest eyes.

“Hajime-mashite,” I said, stretching out my hand.

She gave me a cold sardine of a handshake and smiled demurely.

I met Machiko a second time only last Sunday morning. The girl had been so quiet that I was surprised to find her in the kitchen. Dressed in panties and a t-shirt, she was standing on her tippy toes, hand stretched above her, reaching for a box of Frosted Flakes on the top shelf of the cupboard. The t-shirt rose, revealing a narrow waist and what looked, I couldn’t be sure, like the edge of a large tattoo on her back.

“Ohayô,” I said as I entered the kitchen, giving the girl a start. “Let me get that for you.”

Standing next to her, I reached up and grabbed the cereal box. As I passed the box to her, I saw again what appeared to be a tattoo peaking above the collar of the t-shirt at the base of her neck. She thanked me with a smile and a nod, then sat down at the dining table where
she poured herself a bowl. Chris
emerged from the hallway, dressed identically in an oversized t-shirt and underwear, and sat down besides her.

“Would either of you like some tea,” I asked as I put the kettle on.

They shook their heads.

With my cup of tea I sat down at the opposite end of the table and pretended to read
The Economist
.

Though
Chris
had mentioned before that he had only recently met Machiko, they exhibited a familiarity with each other that suggested otherwise. They took turns taking large spoonfuls of cereal and whispered nonsense to each other that had them giggling like children.

I could almost have envied them their affections and apparent happiness, had it not been for the stubborn curiosity piqued by the flashes of indigo at the edges of Machiko’s t-shirt. I couldn’t help wonder what would ever drive a girl as seemingly timid as she, to get her entire back covered with a massive yakuza-style tattoos
?

Chris
asks what I’ll be doing. I tell him I’m meeting someone in town.

“He’s a playboy,” Machiko says to
Chris
. “I saw him yesterday with a pretty girl.”

Who’s she got me confused with
, I wonder, but laugh it off and return to my bedroom where I get ready to leave.

6

I’ve got four dates lined up for today: Chie, Mayu, Risa, and Aya. Four names of women I know next to nothing about except that they will be waiting at specified times and locations expecting this
gaijin
to show up.

Ooh, the intrigue
!

Chie finds me in front of the Iwataya department store standing before a wall of TVs. When she walks up to me asking if I am Peador, I am tempted to say that she must have me mistaken for someone else because where there ought to be teeth in the woman’s head, there are what look like the pickets of a weathered fence. This poor Chie could have a face that breaks hearts, a body that drives me wild with desire, the compassion of Mother Teresa, but I would never be able to
overlook those dreadful teeth.

Listen, I have become rather magnanimous in my attitude towards dentistry since coming to this country--call me British, if you will--but this woman’s mouth puts that generosity to the test. If I had those teeth, I’d suppose I might spend my days in reticence, mumbling through tightly closed lips only when necessary, but this Chie won’t shut up! She goes on and on and on: yackety-yak-yak.

Mayu is waiting for me outside the International Center two hours later. The girl is not all that bad looking, but the get-
up she’s got on takes the cake.

Mayu is tricked out in a blouse, ridiculously frilly with broad sleeves that gather in yet more frills and ribbons at the wrist. Under the sky blue skirt she’s wearing is a multi-layered petticoat causing the skirt to flares out from her thin waist. Fluffy white lambs have been sewn on to the skirt here and there. She looks like Lil’ Bo Peep. All that is missing is a shepherd’s staff.

She apologizes that she hasn’t got much time
that she’s on her lunch break.

Oh, thank G
od!

“Is this some kind of uniform?” I ask cautiously.
Tell me it’s just a costume.

“Well, yes, in a way, I suppose it is,” she replies. “Isn’t it cute?”

“Um . . . Where is it that you work?”

“At Pink House,” she says, then suggests going there. I tell her she needn’t trouble, but she insists on taking me straightaway. “It’s just around the corner,” she tells me. So, I follow after her like one of her many sheep.

Once at the boutique, Mayu introduces me to her co-workers, all of whom are dressed in similarly ludicrous outfits. They wear eerily pleasant smiles on their faces.

“You don’t always dress this way, do you?” I ask warily.

“Oh, if only I could,” Mayu gushes. “But these outfits are far too expensive for me.”

I take a look at one of the price tags and I’ll be damned if my eyeballs don’t pop out. The petticoats alone cost a thousand dollars.

The co-workers nudge each other and giggle. They think Mayu and I make a nice couple.

These women are all insane
.

7

“Call me Lisa,” Risa tells me.

Whatever
.

Risa is disappointed when we meet because I am not black. I have so immersed myself in this culture that I find myself unconsciously apologizing for being white.

“I’m sorry, Risa, er,
Lisa
, for giving you that impression.”

I spoke to so many women in the past week, I don’t know to whom I told what, but I can safely assume that I did not tell her, or anyone else for that matter, that I was of African decent. I mean, why
on earth would I?

I go through the filthy hamper of a brain I have, sifting through the unwashed laundry trying to remember what I may have said that led her to believe that I am a brother. Did she misinterpret something I said? This is highly probable; even the most fluent English speakers I know misunderstand much of what I tell them. Perhaps, I told her I was the black sheep of the family--which is true, that I blacked out last weekend from the drink--also true, that black was my favorite color, that I preferred black tea to green, that . . .

“You
said
you were black.”

“I said
I was Irish. Irish-Amer . . .”

“Yes, and then I said, ‘Do you have o
range hair and freckles . . .”

I see, said the blind man as he pissed into the wind, it all comes back to me.

And suddenly I remembered! “I said, ‘No, I’m
black
Irish.’”

“So, so, so, so. You said you were black.”

See what I mean?

Risa-call-me-Lisa takes me to a
monjayaki
restaurant that she says is the best. Outside the restaurant we look at the display case, which features uncannily realistic wax representations of the dishes served.

“Which one do you want?” she asks.

There are a dozen plates of what looks like vomit. I can’t imagine anyone looking at this display and thinking,
Mm that looks yummy! I’ll have the puke with bits of bacon, please
. I’ve seen more appetizing piles of regurgitated
ramen
on the sidewalk.

“I don’t know. They all look the same to me.”

She laughs. “You’re a funny man, Mister Peador-san.”

So I am. So I am
.

Risa-call-me-Lisa is going to have the seafood barf with squid, shrimp and bits of octopus, and I order the standard mixed
monjayaki
called, believe it or not,
The Orthodox
. We sit at the counter before a large
teppan
grill where the cooks prepare the vomit with the seriousness of funeral directors. I can’t help but chuckle.

Risa unzips the silver down jacket she’s wearing to reveal the skimpiest of outfits. She hasn’t got the greatest body in the world, but she certainly knows how to present it, how to put it into a small enough package that it gives me a
personal
boner. Even the cooks can’t help but take their eyes off the
teppan
griddle to sneak a peek.

She asks me if I like what she’s wearing.

“I do.”

She tells me she got it in Tokyo where all the girls are wearing t
his kind of thing.

I should have moved to Tokyo
.

“Have you ever been to Tokyo?” she asks.

“No, not yet.”

“Let’s go with me!” she says.

“Okay, let’s!”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

She asks if I want to drink.

“Is the Pope Catholic?”

“The Pope?”

“Risa, er,
Lisa
. I’m dying for a drink.”

“Beer? You want a
nama
?”

“Draught? Yeah, I’ll have a
nama
.”

She orders two
nama
s which we put away easily before our food is served, so she orders two more. During our meal of
monjayaki
, which is actually quite good, we drink a couple more draughts and by the end of lunch we’re like too old lovers. She touches me playfully to make a point, leans against my body when she tells me something she doesn’t want the staff to hear, rests her head on my shoulder, places her hand on my thigh and says she’s tired. I’m thinking I may actually get laid today. She orders another beer moves her hand to the bulge in my pants that has been impatiently demanding attention ever since she removed her jacket.

“Wow!” she says. “It’s true.”

“What’s true?”

“You know.”

“No, I don’t know.”

“What they say.”

“What do
they
say?”

“You know.”

“I don’t.”

“T
hat Americans, you know . . .”

A waiter places two draughts on the counter before us. Risa keeps her right hand on my friend, drinks with her left. She blushed with the first beer, grew red with the third, but now that she is on her sixth beer, she has lost her color altogether. I ask her if she’s all right. She strokes my crotch, making my cock bob up against her hand, and replies me that I’m the
one we should be worried about.

“Does it hurt?” she asks.

Hurt
? Is this what Japanese men tell women here? That it
hurts
? Is that how the men get laid, by preying on women’s kindness? When in Rome . . . I tell her it does, that I can’t stand the
pain
.

“Do you want me to help you with it?”

“I do.”

“Let’s go.”

Risa nearly falls over as she tries to stand up. I have to put one arm around her waist, place her arm around my shoulder and sort of drag her out of the restaurant the way a soldier would pull a wounded man out of a combat zone. As we pass the restroom, her body stiffens and she says she’s going to be sick. She pushes me aside and staggers into the women’s restroom, leaving me outside with her handbag and the silver down jacket to stand vigil as the sound of retching
resonates against tiled walls.

When she emerges several minutes later, her face is ashen. I give her some gum and she thanks me with a heavy nod then walks quietly towards the elevator. I follow stupidly still carrying her belongings, which she takes from me once we get on the elevator. She struggles with the jacket. I help her get her arm through the sleeve. I put the purse under her arm, the strap over her shoulder. As soon as we leave the building, she places her hand on my chest to stop me from following her. She walks a few uneasy steps forward, turns slightly to wave good-bye and then
collapses
into
the backseat of a
cab.

4

AYA

1

Aya and I sit in the upper floor atrium in the IMS building, a giant golden phallus of a building in the center of Tenjin, and look out over the city which stretches with gray monotony from the bay in the north to the point in the south where suburban obscurity butts into a low range of mountains.