A Woman's Nails (29 page)

“What party?”

I raise my fist at her and threaten to pop her in the nose. She apologizes demurely, bowing her head slightly, the palms of her hands resting on her lap.

“I met him at a wedding.”

“Who's wedding?”

“
Oh, for the love o
f G
od, Tatami! Is it important?”

“Well . . .”

“No! It's not important.”

“
Ye
s, but I want to know his name.”

“
Dave! His name is Dave!
Happy now?”

“Debu?”

“
Not
Debu
. Dave.”
Debu
means
fatso
.

“
Ha ha ha. And
Debu
-san is a good friend.”

“
Well, e
r, not really.”
I hardly knew the guy and was surprised to be invited to his wedding. It was only after I accepted the invitation that I beg
an to suspect the only reason I’
d been invited was so that Mr.
Fatso
could have one more sucker to collect a gift of cash from.

“
So you and
Debu
-san
will go to Thailand together.”

“
Alex.
”

“
Alex
, too? Will his wife come?”

“Huh?”

“
Alex
-san is married.
Is his wife . . .
”

“No,
Alex
’s single. Happily so.”

“
You just
said
Alex
got married recently.”

“I did not.”

“You did, too.”

“Did not.”

“
You
said . . .”

“Tatami, I’m sorry to say this, but you’re not a very good listener.”

“
And I think y
our Japanese is not very good.”

Tatami finds this immensely amusing and sits next to me tittering for a full two minutes during which time I untie my right shoe, remove the lace, and begin to strangle her.

“Let’s try this again,”
I say and retell the whole non-story without pausing to listen to or answer any of her silly questions
, which bubble up like carbon dioxide
in a glass of soda with each sentence I complete.

“I see,”
she says when I have finished.

As we are cleaning up, collecting the garbage and stuffing it in a plastic bag and wrapping the empty
bentô
box back up in the
furoshiki
, it starts to rain. Heavy raindrops fall with a thud onto the damp soil and splatter against
the lily pads. Before long, it’
s pouring and Tatami and I have to scramble up onto the causeway and duck under the long drooping branches of a willow tree to keep from getting drenched. I open her parasol and we huddle under it, her hand on my arm, her cheek resting lightly against my shoulder.

Were it anyone but her, I’
d be thanking my lucky stars, but with Tatami, I just feel uncomfortable. I suggest making a dash for the Ôtemon Gate at the end of the causeway and waiting out the rain there, bu
t Tatami embraces me and says, “
I like it her. I w
ish we could stay here all day.”

Good God, what have I done
?

14

SHINOBU

1

“You look thin,”
Shinobu says whe
n I walk into the hotel lobby. “Have you lost weight?”

“A bit yes. It’s this heat.”

I sit down in the beige leather Egg Chair next to hers, and settle into a comfortable slouch.

“
Nice chair
s
,
aren’t they?” I say. “They’re
an Arne Jacobsen original
s,”

“What?”

“Arne Jacobsen.”

“
Aru
. . .?”

“Never mind.”

“
Peado
r, you really have lost weight,”
she says taki
ng a better look at me. “Is everything all right? Are you eating?”

I shrug. Who could eat with this humidity? I haven't had an appetite in weeks and when I do manage to eat, it just goes right thro
ugh me as if I'd been slipped
an
Ex-lax
Mickey
Finn
.

“
You really sh
ould eat,” she insists. “
Ah, so, so, so!
Doyô no Ushi
is coming up next week.”

“
Doyô no
what?”

“
Doyô no Ushi
. It's a special day for eating
unagi
.”

“
Eeuw, eels? Thanks for the warning, Shinobu. I'll be sure not to accept any
invitations to dinner that day.”

“
Pe
ador, it’
s won
derful. You really must try it.”

“I have.”

“And?”

“And, it was good . . .”

“See?”

“But!”

“But what?”

“
That was
before
I actual
ly saw what an eel looked like.”

On that very first night out with Mie exactly a year, two months and two weeks ago today, which ended with us drunk and half nake
d rolling around in each others’
arms on the floor of her bedroom, I was taken to a hostess bar in Nakasu
, Japan’s version of Sodom and Gomorrah
. In addition to the usual
yatai
lined up along the Naka River where drunk
salarymen
stuffed their faces with
ramen
and
yakitori
, there were several stalls with games. They would become a fa
miliar sight at the festivals I’
d go to over th
e coming year.

Mie took me by the hand to a shallow tub of water filled with aimlessly swimming goldfish and suggested I give it a shot. The old, weather-beaten w
oman running the stand took Mie’
s money and
handed me a small paper paddle.

“
Koh, koh
,”
the old woman said
,
flashing me a toothless smile.

“
Like this?
Koh
?”
I said, dipping the paddle into the water. It immediately disintegrated like toilet paper. I turned to Mie and said, “Is this supposed to be fun?”

She just laughed and passed the old woman some more money.

The
woman, making a gentle scoop
ing motion just above the water’
s surface with her hand, told me to keep the paddle at an acute angle and dip it in as a goldfish swam by. Trying this new approach
,
I managed to catch two fish, causing Mie, the old woman, and several others watching me to explode with applause and laughter.

The woman put the two fish into a plastic bag with water and gave them to me. Although one died
within
a few days
—no
doubt from the trauma of being repeatedly paddled s
enseless by drunks like myself—the
other, whom Mie name
d
“Guppy-chan”
,
w
ould
still swimming blissfully around and arou
nd
a small fishbowl when
I was
dumped
five months later
.

As we were walking away, I noticed another stand with deeper tubs of water. Curiosity compelled me to take a closer look. I wish it hadn't, for slithering in the murky
oily
water was a tangle of black eels.
A twig for a skinny
old man
who ran
the stand held out a short fishing pole. A slimy hoo
k hung at the end of a string. “Piece a cake,”
he said as if it was
the
difficulty
of the task
that was holding me back
rather than the disgust
. And though I needed no convincing, he gave me a demonstration, dipping the hook into the dirty water and pulling an eel out by its gill. Any desire I may have
still
harbored to
ever
try the delicacy again was arrested by the sight of that long black cock dangling before me.

“
I really do think I'll pass, Shinob
u.”

“
Well, you really should try to eat something, otherwise you'll get
natsubate
.”

“Well, I’m afraid, it’s a little too late for that,”
I reply. The summer has already taken its toll, my appetite being the first casualty. And now, just getting up and walking to the toilet in the morning taxes the little energy I have after nights of sweaty, fitful sleep.

She insists that I eat, so we leave the air-conditioned comfort of
the
hotel lobby and go back outside where it’s so muggy you practically have to wade through the humidity. She takes me to a
famiri resutoran
,
or
a “family restaurant”, that is just across the street.

Without looking at the menu, Shinobu tells
a darling of a waitress that she’ll have the “lady’
s
setto
”.
And though I really can’t be bothered to eat, I go ahead and
order the Caesar
sarada
and minestrone
suppu
.

“
Is that all yo
u’re going to eat?”
she asks.

I shrug. Considering I would have been satisfied with a lovely pint of ice cold beer, I thought ordering soup and salad would be welcomed as a generous concession. Alone a
s I am in this country, Shinobu’s really all I’ve got at the moment: she’
s my best friend, my
confidante, my big sister . . .

“No meat?”

. . .
and my surrogate Jewish mother.

“
There should be s
ome bacon in the salad, Mama.”

Our table is near the window offering us a view of the tree-lined boulevard outside, along which a seamless parade of beautiful young women tortures me. I ought to be encouraged by the prospect of so many pretty girls, but I know I would still be paralyzed, prevented from reaching out to them, even without a windowpane separating us
.

How in the world did I ever get to be so frustratingly timid towards the so-called weaker sex?

Selective recollection easily convinces us that we were once more charming, athletic, intelligent and capable
than we truly were. But, I can’
t remember a time when it was ever more difficult for me to meet women, to go up and ask someone I was interested in out on a date. It was never a problem for me to close the deal. Even back in the eighties when everyone was scared celibate because of AIDS, my batting average was still fairly high.
Since Mie dumped me, however, I’
ve been releg
ated to the bench in the equivalent of dating’s farm league
. When another heartbreaker passes by the window, all I can do is sigh dejectedly.

“
Have you met anyone . . .
special
?” Shinobu asks.

“
Special? Not really . . .
No.
No, I haven’t.
”

“
What about that co-worker of y
ours? Are you still seeing her?”

“
Already old
history, I’
m afraid. She doesn’t talk to me anymore.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she says. “Anyone you’re interested in, then?”

As if on cue, our waitr
ess brings my minestrone soup. “
Well,
since you ask, I wouldn’
t mind taking sweetheart he
re home in a doggy bag.”

“You’re terrible.”

“No. I’
m
honest
.
”