Almost Transparent Blue (5 page)

Laughing all the time, Kei licked my toes while lying on her stomach on the rug.

Reiko kept on crying, Durham's semen dried on her face. With bloody tooth marks on his fingers, sometimes growling like a lion from the pit of his stomach—Oh-h, I'm gonna bust, get this cunt off me, Saburô said in Japanese and thrust Reiko aside. Get away from me, pig! he yelled. Reiko grabbed at his legs as she fell forward ; his come shot straight up and splattered and stayed on her back and buttocks. Reiko's belly quivered and some urine leaked out. Kei—

she'd been smearing her own tits with honey— hurriedly slid some newspaper under Reiko.

That's jes' awful, she said, slapped Reiko's butt and laughed shrilly. Moving about the room, twisting our bodies, we took into ourselves the tongues and fingers and pricks of whoever we wanted.

I wonder where I am, I kept thinking. I put some of the grapes scattered on the table in my mouth. As I skinned them with my tongue and spat the seeds into a plate, my hand felt a cunt ; when I looked up, Kei was standing there with her legs apart, grinning at me. Jackson stood up dazedly and stripped off his uniform. Grinding out the slim menthol cigarette he'd been smoking, he turned toward Moko, who was rocking away on top of Oscar. Dribbling a sweet-smelling fluid from a little brown bottle on Moko's butt, Jackson called, Hey, Ryū, bring me that white tube in my shirt pocket, O.K.? Her hands held tightly by Oscar, her bottom smeared with the cream, Moko let out a shriek: That's co-old! Jackson grasped and raised her buttocks, got his cock—also thickly coated with the cream—into position and began thrusting. Moko hunched over and screeched.

Kei looked up and came over, saying, That looks kind of fun.

Moko was crying. Kei grabbed her hair and peered into her face. Ah'll put some nice mentholatum on ya afterwards, Moko. Kei tongue-kissed with Oscar and laughed loudly again. With a pocket camera, I took a close-up of Moko's distorted face. Her nose was twitching like a long-distance runner making a last spurt. Reiko finally opened her eyes. Perhaps realizing that she was all sticky, she started for the shower. Her mouth was open, her eyes vacant, she tripped again and again and fell. When I put my hands on her shoulders to lift her up, she brought her face close to mine. Oh, Ryū, save me, she said. An odd smell came from her body. I dashed to the toilet and threw up. As Reiko sat on the tiles getting drenched by the shower, I couldn't tell which way her reddened eyes were looking.

Reiko, ya big dummy, ya'll jes' drown. Kei shut off the shower, thrust her hand in Reiko's crotch, then squealed with laughter to see Reiko jump up in panic. Oh, it's Kei. Reiko hugged her and kissed her on the lips. Kei beckoned to me as I sat on the toilet. Hey Ryū, that cold feels good, right? Since I was cold outside, I felt hotter inside. Hey, ya got a cute one. She took it in her mouth as Reiko pulled back my wet hair, sought out my tongue like a baby seeking the breast, and sucked hard. Kei braced her hands against the wall and thrust out her butt, then buried me in her hole, washed free of mucus by the shower and dried.

Bob, his hands dripping sweat, came into the shower. There're not enough chicks, Ryū, you bastard, taking two of them.

Swatting my cheek, he roughly dragged us, dripping, just as we were, into the next room and threw us on the floor. My prick, still tight inside Kei, twisted as we fell. I groaned. Reiko was tossed like a rugby pass up on the bed and Bob leaped on top of her. She struggled, raving, but she was pinned down by Saburô and a chunk of cheesecake was crammed into her mouth, choking her.

The record music changed to Osibisa. Moko wiped her butt, her face twitching.

There were traces of blood on the paper. She showed them to Jackson and muttered, That's awful. Hey Reiko, that cheesecake's good, huh? Kei asked, lying on her stomach on the table. Reiko answered, Something's thrashing around in my stomach, like I'd swallowed a live fish or something. I got up on the bed to take her picture, but Bob bared his teeth and pushed me off. Rolling to the floor I bumped into Moko. Ryū, I hate that guy, I've had it, he's a fag, right? Moko was on top of Oscar, who rocked her while he gnawed a piece of chicken. She started to cry again.

Moko, you're O.K.? It doesn't hurt? I asked. Oh, I don't know anymore, Ryū, I just don't know.

She was rocked in time with the Osibisa record. Kei sat on Jackson's knee, sipping wine, talking about something. After rubbing her body with a piece of bacon, Jackson sprinkled on vanilla extract. A hoarse voice yelled Oh baby. A lot of stuff had ended up on the red rug. Underwear and cigarette ashes, scraps of bread and lettuce and tomato, different kinds of hair, blood-smeared paper, tumblers and bottles, grape skins, matches, dusty cherries—Moko staggered to her feet. Her hand on her ass, she said, I'm famished, and walked to the table.

Jackson leaned over to apply a band-aid and a kiss.

Pressing her chin on the table, breathing hard, Moko attacked a crab like a starving child. Then one of the blacks stuck his shaft in front of her, and she took that in her mouth too. Stroking it with her tongue, she pushed it aside and turned again to the crab. The red shell crunched between her teeth, she pulled out the white meat with her hands. Piling it with pink mayonnaise from a plate, she put it on her tongue, the mayonnaise dribbling onto her chest. The odor of crab flowed through the room. On the bed, Reiko was still howling. Durham pushed up into Moko from behind. Her butt jiggled, she held onto the crab, her face twisted, she tried to drink some wine but with the rocking of her body it went into her nose and she choked, tears in her eyes. Seeing that, Kei laughed loudly. James Brown began to sing. Reiko crawled to the table, drained a glass of peppermint wine and said loudly, That tastes good.

"Haven't I told you over and over not to get in too deep with that Jackson, the MP's are watching him, he's going to get caught one of these days," Lilly said as she snapped off the TV picture of a young man singing.

Oscar had said, O.K., let's finish up, and opened the veranda doors. A piercing cold wind blew in, a fresh wind, which I could still feel.

But while everyone was still lying around naked, Bob's woman Tami had come in and gotten into a bad fight with Kei, who'd tried to stop her from hitting Bob.

Tami's brother was a big gangster, and since she'd wanted to run and tell him, there was nothing I could do but bring her along here to Lilly's place. I'd heard Lilly was a friend of hers, she'd talk her around. Until just a few minutes ago, Tami had been sitting over there on the sofa, howling, I'll kill them! Her side had been raked by Kei's nails.

' 'So don't I always say you better not bring in punks who don't know anything about this Yokota territory? What would you have done without me, huh? You wouldn't have got off easy, Ryū, Tami's brother is real bad."

She drank a swallow from a glass of Coca-cola with a lemon slice floating in it, then passed it over to me. She brushed her hair and changed into a black negligee. Still seeming angry, she brushed her teeth and shot up on Philopon in the kitchen with the toothbrush still in her mouth.

"Aw, come off it, Lilly, I'm sorry."

"Oh, all right, I know you'll just go and do the same thing tomorrow. . . . But listen, you know, the waiter at my place, a guy from Yokosuka, is asking if I want to buy some mesc. How about it, Ryū? You want to try it, don't you?" "How much is it, for one tab?"

"I don't know, he just said five dollars, should I buy it?" Even Lilly's pubic hair was dyed to match. They don't sell stuff to dye the hair down here in Japan, she'd told me, I had to send away for it myself, got it from Denmark.

Through the hair over my eyes, I could see the ceiling light. "Hey, Ryū, I had a dream about you," Lilly said, placing her hand around my neck.

"The one about me riding a horse in a park? I've heard that one before." I ran my tongue along Lilly's eyebrows, which were growing out again.

"No, another one, after the one in the park. The two of us go to the ocean, you know, a real pretty seaside. There's this big beach, wide and sandy, nobody there except you and me. We swim and play in the sand but then on the other side of the water we can see this town. Well, it's far away, so we shouldn't be able to see much, but we can even make out the faces of the people living there—that's how dreams are, right? First they're having some kind of celebration, some kind of foreign festival. But then, after a while, a war starts in that town, with artillery going boom, boom. A real war—even though it's so far away, we can see the soldiers and the tanks.

"So the two of us, you and me, Ryū, just watch from the beach, sort of dreamy like. And you say, Hey, wow, so that's war, and I say Yeah, right."

"You sure have some weird dreams, Lilly." The bed was damp. Some feathers sticking out of the pillow pricked the back of my neck. I pulled out a little one and stroked Lilly's thighs with it.

The room was dimly gray. Some light stole in from the kitchen. Lilly was still asleep, her little hand, with the nail polish off, resting on my chest. Her cool breath brushed my armpit. The oval mirror hanging from the ceiling reflected our nakedness.

The night before, after we'd done it, Lilly had shot up again, humming deep in her white throat.

I just keep using more, no matter what, I've got to cut down pretty soon or I'll be an addict, right? she'd said, checking the amount left.

While Lilly had been rocking her body on top of mine, I'd remembered the dream she'd told me about, and also the face of a certain woman. As I'd watched the twisting of Lilly's slim hips . . .

The face of a thin woman digging a hole right next to a barbed wire entanglement around a large farm. The sun was sinking. The face of a woman bent down to thrust a shovel into the earth, beside a tub full of grapes, as a young soldier threatened her with his bayonet. The face of a woman wiping away her sweat with the back of her hand, hair hanging over her face. As I'd watched Lilly panting, the woman's face floated through my mind. Damp air from the kitchen.

Is it raining? I wondered. The scene outside the window was smoky, milk colored. I noticed the front door was ajar. Yesterday, since we were both drunk, we must have gone to bed without closing it. A single high-heeled shoe lay on its side on the kitchen floor. The tapering heel stuck out, and the curve of firm leather over the front was as smooth as part of a woman.

Outside, in the narrow space I could see through the open door, stood Lilly's yellow Volkswagen. Raindrops stuck to it like goose bumps, and then the heavier ones slid down slowly, insects in winter.

People passing like shadows. A mailman in a blue uniform pushing a bicycle, several school children with book bags, a tall American with a Great Dane—all passing through the narrow space.

Lilly took a deep breath and half turned her body. She gave a low moan and the light blanket that had covered her fell to the floor. Her long hair stuck to her back in an S shape. The small of her back was sweaty.

Scattered on the floor was Lilly's underwear from the day before. Far away and rolled up small, the garments were just like little burn marks or dyed spots on the rug.

A Japanese woman with a black shoulder bag looked around the room from the doorway. Her cap bore some company insignia, the shoulders of her navy jacket were damp—I thought she must have come to read the gas or electric meter. When her eyes got used to the dim light, she noticed me, started to speak, seemed to think better of it, and stepped outside again. She glanced back once more at me, naked and smoking a cigarette, then went off toward the right, her head cocked to one side.

Through the space outside the door, now open a little wider, passed two grade-school girls, talking, gesturing, wearing red rubber boots. A black soldier in uniform ran by, leaping over the muddy spots just like a basketball player dodging a guard to shoot.

Beyond Lilly's car, on the other side of the street, stood a small black building.

Its paint was peeling in places; "U-37" was written in orange.

Against the background of that black wall, I could clearly see the fine rain falling.

Over the roof were heavy clouds, looking as if someone had smeared on layer after layer of gray pigment. The sky in the narrow rectangle that was visible to me was the brightest part.

Thick clouds swollen with fever. They made the air damp, made Lilly and me sweat. That's why the crumpled sheets were clammy.

A thin black line slanted across the narrow sky.

Maybe that's an electric wire, I thought, or a tree branch, but then it rained harder and soon I couldn't see it anymore.

The people walking in the street hurriedly put up umbrellas and began to run.

Puddles appeared on the muddy street even as I watched and widened out in a series of ripples. Played on by the rain, a big white car moved slowly along the street, almost filling it. Inside were two foreign women, one adjusting her hairnet in the mirror, and the other, the driver, watching the road so carefully that her nose was almost pressed against the windshield. Both were heavily made up ; their dry skin appeared to be caked with powder.

A girl licking an ice cream bar passed, then came back and peered in. Her soft, blonde hair was plastered to her head, and she took Lilly's bath towel off the kitchen chair and began to wipe herself dry. She licked ice cream off her finger and sneezed. When she raised her head, she noticed me. Picking up the blanket and covering myself, I waved at her. She smiled and pointed outside.

Putting my finger to my lips, I signaled her to keep quiet. Looking toward Lilly, I laid my head on my hand to show she was still sleeping. So be quiet, I gestured again, my finger to my lips, and grinned at her. The girl turned toward the outside and gestured with the hand holding the ice cream. I turned my palm upward and looked up in a pantomime of noticing the rain. The girl nodded, shaking her wet hair. Then she dashed outside and came back drenched, carrying a dripping bra that looked like one of Lilly's.

"Lilly, hey, it's raining, do you have washing hanging out? Get up, Lilly, it's raining!"

Rubbing her eyes, Lilly got up, saw the girl, hid herself behind the blanket, and said, "Hey, Sherry, what are you up to?" The girl tossed the bra she was holding, yelled in English "Rainy!" and laughed as her eyes met mine.