A Woman's Nails (34 page)

I entered the bar, no bigger than a shipping container, squeezed past a group of young women on the dance floor, climbed the short flight of steps to the L-shaped counter and planted my arse on a vacant stool. After ordering a
Heineken
, I glanced back towards the people dancing or chatting below and recognized a number of fellow barflies. Among them was Kazuko, the butch-dik
e who had introduced me to
Umie
back in April
.

Seeing me, Kazuko hurried up the steps to greet
me. “
Mistah Oh Really-san. I’
m see
ing you, berry, berry surplised!!!
”

Kazuko’
s two year’
s abroad had done wonders: no one could butcher the Mother Tongue as fluently as this struggling linguist could. Lord only knows how her English had been before the trip.

“I’
m sur
prised to see you, too, Kazuko.”

“What doing?”

“What am I doing here?”
I waved my bottle of
Heineken
.

Not sure why, but Kazuko found this terribly funny and burst out laughing.
She could be as charming as a mule’s back hoof
.

“
You funny man, Mi
stah Oh Really-san,”
she said with a thwack to my back just as I was taking a swig of beer. Beer dribbled from the corner of my mouth past my chin and down my neck.

I thanked her for that
.

“Oh! Solly, solly!”

“
No problem.
”
Then, p
ointing to the arm
y surplus pants she was wearing, I said, “Nice fatigues.”

“
Oh,
sankyu
, sanky
u
,”
she replied happily.
She
then went on to utter the following barely c
omprehensible series of words: “
Souss irandoh
, Okinawa . . . recycle
shoppu
. . . I
botto
,
”
suggesting to me and the
Glenfiddich
running wildly through my system that Kazuko had bought the fatigues at a second hand store on the southern island of Okinawa. Really, if only Kazuko would speak Japanese, things would be so much better. I might find that I enjoyed speaking to this person rather than search for the nearest exit.

Kazuko introduced me to her friend, who
, like Kazuko,
had all the femininity of a gym sock
.

The friend, whose name I can't for the life of me remember, saddled up next to me and proceeded to riddle my patience with the usual bullets: could I eat
sushi
and
nattô
, could I use chopsticks, could I read Chinese characters, and so on. O
nce she had exhausted her ammo—
Questions-to-Ask-
Gaijin
—a
welcomed silence fell between us. I considered being an arse, to throw the questions back at her, asking whether she liked hamburgers and hotdogs, or could use a knife
and fork
, but then I had already wasted enough time entertaining her as is. I might have been lonely, but,
good God,
I wasn't
that
lonely.

I went to the beer cooler, took out a
Heineken
, paid the bartender, and returned to my bar stool where Kazuko’s friend was looking through some pamphlets on diving and windsurfing.

“Are you my Bluebird of Happiness?”
I asked.

“Happy? Me? No,” she answered gloomily. “If I had more time, I’d like to take lessons.”
She added that she was currently working ten hour
s a day, often six days a week.

Ten hours a day, six days a week. Christ! I hated working the six days a week that I did, but I was still only putting in a grueling four hours or so a day. I confronted the unique and enviable dilemma each day of having far too much time on my hands. Much more than was good for me, because all I did with that time was stew, and stew, and stew, on my discontent. Being as busy as I had been last year in Kitakyûshû was a mixed blessing of sorts. I thought I was going to die like a proper Japanese
salaryman
of
karôshi
, death from overwork, but I now realize it was the only thing that kept me from disl
ocating myself from this world.

4

Befo
re I could comment on Kazuko’
s
friend’s
lamentable situation, an explosion of laughter like a tangle of firecrackers going off distracted me. Turning to my left, I discovered an attractive young woman
, no a girl of eighteen or nineteen,
sitting a few
places
down
at the counter
, between two men in suits. She had a lovely, narrow face with a broad smile, and large friendly eyes, eyelashes like brooms. Adorable and aware of it, she flirted shamelessly with the men at her sides and the narcissistic bartender who had stopped preening himself to lean in toward her.

So much life and energy radiated from
the
girl
, causing those lucky enough to be near her to cast long shadows. God, how I wanted to be with her
rather than sitting with Kazuko’
s friend who was giving my already cramped style the Mother of all Charlie horses.

Kazuko’s
friend tried her best, but inevitably failed, to draw me into a conversation. She mentioned music, the bands she liked, and, making the common mistake
of
assuming that having come from America would have favorably biased my tastes i
n such a way to provide the
common gro
und upon which to walk together. She
asked if I liked this band
or
that
one
. I replied
, “No”, or “Not really”, or “
You’ve gotta be joking, them? Hell no!
”

Even the most aggressive of women would have packed up her bags and moved on, but this woman was unrelenting. Now that I think about it, Kazuko's friend must have been even lonelier than me.

As I was grunting my way through another series of questions, I watched the girl as she dismounted her barstool. To my surprise she was rather short, her shoulders just level with the counter. From the way she had carr
ied herself, drawing the
attention
of the men around her
, I had expected her to be
much taller,
as physically
striking
as her presence was. The unexpected contrast only ar
oused my interest
further.

She was wearing a tight-fitting cream-colored crepe dress that revealed the modest, yet soft curves of her slender body. As she made her way towards the re
stroom at the rear of the bar I’m sure I
watched her like a starving animal kept its eye on its prey.

The two men who had been sitting beside her, stood up, descended the half flight of steps, passed through the crowd of people below and left. When the girl emerged from the restroom I assumed she wou
ld leave, as well, but she didn’
t. She returned to her place at the counter, and
,
turning towards me
,
asked over the
loud
music where I was from.

“America,”
I shouted back, lea
ning over the bar towards her. “
Amerika. Amerika no Oregon Shû.
”

“Oregon Shû des'ka?”
she asked, then turned to the bartender and asked where Oregon was.

The bartender shrugged, so I explained
with elaborate gestures
where the mossy state lie in conjunction
to
sunny California.

We chatted for a while, and boy, what a charming lad Peador can be when properly motivated! The v
ery same questions which Kazuko’
s friend had me bored to tears with were now as welcome as a break in the rain. Could I use chopsticks? Why, of course, I could. I picked up the pair of
waribashi
chopsticks on the counter before me and fumbled clumsily with them, producing another explosion of firecrackers. And could she use a knife and fork, I asked, eliciting more of that cloud bursting
laughter.

And, just as I was starting to worry that I might exhaust the limited resources of my poor Japanese, the DJ, God bless him, put
The Doors
’ “Light My Fire”
on the turntable and made the chance encounter
one
I may never forget. So happy I was to hear the song and so full of
Glenfiddich
and
Heineken
that I began crooning along with my old pal Jim.

The girl climbed off her stool and walked over to the cramped DJ booth, and, standing on the very tips of her
toes, said something to the DJ.

Looking at her figure from behind, her slim, naked legs below the hem of her dress, her narrow waist and the bare shoulders, I
slid
off
of the barstool and stepped over towards her. “
I take
it, you like the Doors?”

“
I like Doahzu!
”
she replied with evangelical zeal.

She asked if I, too, liked
The Doors
, and when I replied that I did, she squeezed my hand and kissed me on the cheek. This was followed by several more questions which when affirmed were rewarded with playful kisses on the forehead, the nose, and, before I knew it, on the lips. Needless to say, I quickly gr
ew into the habit of providing Yeses
to her questions
, l
ike a dog salivating
at
Pavlov’
s bell. She could have given me the same list of hors
eshit bands Kazuko’
s friend had just
asked
me
about
and I would have leapt up clapping singing the praises of
Bon Jovi
and
Mr. Big
if only to get one more kiss from her.

When the DJ put on
The Doors
' “Touch me”, she
meowed
like a cat, an
d scratched playfully
at
my face. “
You like
Doahzu
?”
she asked again.

“Of course. I love them!”

“
You like
me
?”

“I do.”

She kissed me softly, s
lowly on the lips, then asked: “
You
love
me?”

Pulling her into my arms, I whispered into her ear that I did, and returned the kiss. It was no lie. I loved the way she looked, the smell of her long dark brown hair, the softness of her lips. She was exactly what the
baumkuchen
wrapper had promised, with the only excepti
on that instead of a bluebird I’
d been visited by a cat.

“Call me Nekko-chan,”
she said
,
arching her back and
meowi
ng.

“Nekko-chan.”

“
Nyao
.”

“Meow.”

5

I’
ve always found it easy to forget where I am and how much time has passed whenever encapsulated in the cocoon of alcohol and lust. Nekko-chan and I carried on like c
ats in heat and, if Kazuko hadn’
t tapped me on the shoulder to announce that she and her friend were leaving, I would have gleefully fucked the girl right there on the spot against the beer cooler, bottles of
Heineken
and
Asahi Super Dry
rattling away, the fluorescent light flickering madly. Reluctantly, I re
moved my tongue from Nekko-chan’
s throat said my good-byes and nice-meeting-yous, but once Kazuko and her friend were out the door, Nekko and I were back it, as shameless as Adam
and Eve before the a
pple.

After being under for
only
Lord knows how long, Nekko-chan and I finally broke to the surface and breathed in the stale, smoke-filled air of the now half-deserted bar. Most of the customers at the counter had left, the heat of their arses on the bar stools having cooled, and below on the small, d
imly lit dance floor
only a few girls
remained,
jerking mechanically like dashboard hula dolls to the music.