Lost Girls and Love Hotels (9 page)

I’m sixteen. Frank is fucked.

Tony Varda holds my hand. When we walk, the carpet of dry leaves goes
shoop-shoop
. It’s one of those Indian-summer days when you don’t know what to wear. It feels like the whole world has been distilled down to two hands. One clammy. One trusting. There’s a small stream, and he pulls me across. The wet sock will make a sucking sound with every step when I walk home, but I can’t hear it yet.

At the clearing, there are two boys waiting. “What’s going on?” I ask. (Like, as if she didn’t know.) I giggle. I don’t scream. (She fucking laughed, man.) Paul MacKay goes to hold my arms back, and panic squeezes the air from me. “No! I’ll do it.” (She wanted to put on a show for us.) The whole time I’m thinking about diving. “Keep your chin tucked in. Keep your legs together.” I think I even mouth it, like a mantra. (She’s fuckin’ crazy, just like her
brother.) I look down, past the white of my body, to the damp earth at my feet. I expect to see worms and those bugs that curl into balls, but there’s already been a frost. Indian summer can’t bring them back to life.

Frank is sitting on the front lawn when I get home. I sit down next to him. I’ve done the buttons on my shirt up wrong, and one side hangs down lower than the other.

“Frank?”

Frank rocks a little.

“Frank?”
It’s the beginning of a new era.

I smack him across the face. Frank hangs his head to one side, and I see Mom running from the kitchen, her mouth held tight, wiping her hands on her apron.

T
he staff at Air-Pro are stiffer, more robotic than normal. Their birdlike chorus of “welcome” trails off at the end when I step into the lobby. The five of them, pert and perfect in their faux stewardess uniforms, tuck their chins into their jaunty scarves and shuffle papers around in choreographed synchronicity.

The recruits huddled around the bulletin board disappear when they spot me, scattering in various directions like cockroaches after a light’s been turned on. In the distance, I hear the click-clack-click of Ms. Nakamura’s heels. I instinctively locate the fire exit.
EMERGENCY TRAP DOOR
reads the illuminated sign.

I turn down the hallway toward the bank of vending machines. A can of syrupy coffee is necessary before I can face Ms. Nakamura. Passing by the Deportment Studio, I catch a glimpse of a dozen or so recruits kitted out in black
leotards and tights, lined up along a bar, like a rehearsal for
Anorexia: The Musical.

The slogan on the drink machine urges me to “Enjoy Refresh Time.” I doubt if I can comply. The clicking is getting louder, closer. For a moment, I consider hiding in the ladies’ room, perching like a bird on the toilet seat until the coast is clear, but I don’t, for the same reason I don’t apply expensive eye creams—What’s the point in delaying the inevitable? I put the coins in the machine, choose a can of black coffee, down it like a shooter, and walk toward the clicking.

I meet Ms. Nakamura in front of the Face Make Lab. Her mouth is a tight slash of red. In my heels, I’m a good five inches taller than she. Looking down at her gives me vertigo. To steady myself, I stare at the pulsing, bulbous vein near her temple.

She hands me an envelope. “Final pay,” she barks. “Leave now.”

“You’re firing me?” I think about my work visa, which Air-Pro sponsors. “Why?”

The thump of blood at Nakamura’s temple slows, relaxes. She must smell the fear on me. “You have tried to derange the recruits! Madoka-chan is telling!”

“We went dancing.”

“Carousing!” she screams.

I can’t help but laugh. It’s either that or cry, and I’d sooner commit hara-kiri than shed a tear in front of Nakamura. I hold my hands up. “Okay. I caroused. I’m guilty.” I do an exaggerated bow, nearly toppling over.

“Shameful!” She squints, purses her lips, scrunches her nose until her face resembles a crab-apple doll wearing lipstick. “You have face splotch and smell of meat! You are more worse than average foreign person.”

“You are more worse than average vampire.” I grab the envelope and head for the lobby.

On the way out, I corner Mikiko near the Emergency Trap Door. Her face is as poreless and unreal as always, but a faint crease appears between her eyebrows, which seems to convey sympathy. She grabs my elbow and holds it with the tips of her fingers, like a little knob. The gesture is inordinately intimate.

“Where’s Madoka?” I ask her.

She clasps her hands under her chin and whispers, “Ms. Nakamura sent her for Intensive Remake.”

“That sounds awful.”

“
Iya, iya!
Madoka will be fixed!” Mikiko sighs wistfully, peers up at the fluorescent lighting panels on the ceiling.

“Fixed,” I repeat. Like a TV set on the blink. Like a cat.

In the elevator, a lone recruit eyes me nervously. I have the urge to bark. Growl a little. Sniff my armpits to see if I really do smell of meat. When the doors open, I leap out, break into a run, zigzagging through the crowd, clipping shoulders. Briefcases swing from the hands of startled commuters, cars screech to a halt for me. I hit a clear stretch of sidewalk, feel the wind in my face, the sharp smell of exhaust fumes and ramen broth in my nose, lactic acid eating at my thighs. I hit a bottleneck, a queer forest of shiny heads, blue suits. A politician, wearing white gloves, stands
atop a van, screaming into a megaphone: “I have no religious affiliations! I am an honest man!” The blackboard scratch of feedback vibrates in my ear.

If I had a clear path, I would run until I dropped, until my legs or heart or lungs quit. I’d crumple to the ground like a collapsible plastic camping cup. Flat. Spent. Too tired to think. But I’m weak. The heat and crowds, the weight of my body finally defeat me, and I slow to a dejected gait.

I turn down one of the narrow streets of Kabukicho. Signs for massage parlors and karaoke rooms loom over me. The streets smell of cooking oil, sweat, and exhaust fumes. Like a factory that makes people. Assembles them, feeds them, moves them. I feel like part of a machine. A faulty part.

I walk for a good two hours, until my exposed skin feels hot and tight from the sun. Winter has retreated suddenly and briefly. A gaggle of schoolgirls revel in it—their white shirts tied in knots above the bellybutton. Office ladies produce parasols out of nowhere, guarding their complexions vehemently.

The heat starts to get to me. I crave a climate-controlled labyrinth. I stop. Look for signs. I need the station. I find an underground entrance. Lumber down the stairs, through a dimly lit tunnel and into the station. Into the enormous surge of bodies. There’s a trick to navigating through these crowds without bumping into people. You fix your eyes above the heads of the people. Eschew eye contact. Plot a course like a Zen monk doing walking meditation. Single-minded. Empty of connection. It works for
me for a good forty-five minutes. Chin up. Eyes dead straight. But eventually I need a smoke. Looking for a cigarette machine, I’m herded by a crowd surging from a bank of turnstiles. I see the glow of the machine over the crowns of heads. Drifting away from me like a stray helium balloon. I’m heading toward the exit. The glare of natural light comes as a blow. In a panic, like a dumbstruck animal, I turn back, but the crowd behind me prevents me from backtracking. It’s straight ahead—to the street—or to the left—under a pedestrian walkway.

A sour smell gets stronger as I make my way under the walkway, duck under steel girders, and come to an open area. I look around at the tiny settlement in front of me. Dozens upon dozens of cardboard boxes fashioned into little homes—painted with swirls of color, surreal portraits, grim cityscapes. Smoke rises from fires set under tiny hibachi, the acrid smoke from kerosene heaters mingled with the smell of grilled fish. Little huddles of billy goat–bearded men sit crouched on their ankles, drinking sake and cans of beer.

I make my way along a walkway between two rows of cardboard homes. Peering in, now and again, at the tiny makeshift rooms. Some of them gussied up with curtains and photographs grayish-green with age. Music wafting out of others from cassette-tape players. The twang of the Koto, the click and roar of baseball broadcasts leading me along.

Out of habit, I clutch my purse tight, feel the hard lump of my disposable camera. Feeling touristy, I take it out.
Focus on a mural painted along a series of refrigerator boxes. A frightening cosmos of disembodied heads. Just as I’m about to hit the shutter, a tall, bony man flies out of the trap door hidden among the heads. Howls at me, lunges at me, wielding a stick. I start to back up and fall into the entrance of another box, waking up the tiny man curled inside. Throaty screams everywhere. I look frantically for the way back into the station. The man with the stick chases me back under the girders. Making my way through the knot of people streaming out the exits, I slip into the compartment of a revolving door. Breathe the stale station air like a fish plunked back into water. When I turn around, a Japanese guy is standing there. “They don’t like to have photos taken like things in a zoo.”

He’s taller than most Japanese men, brushing six feet, with tanned skin and heavy-lidded eyes. His T-shirt reads
AMERICAN USED FREAK
.

“Thanks for the advice,” I say.

American Used Freak stares at me for a minute. My heart rate makes its way back to normal.

“Do you live in Japan?” American Used Freak asks.

“Live,” I say. “In a manner of speaking. Yes.”

I look up at an electronic sign. It tells me it’s thirty-two degrees Celsius. It tells me to drink something called Pocari Sweat.

I gulp on the thick air. There’s something weird about American Used Freak’s eyes. Something cold. Something that doesn’t add up. He’s too old to be a student. But he doesn’t look like a salaryman. His hair is too long. The
details are all slightly off. The loose jeans and sneakers. The Rolex watch and stiff posture.

I realize I’m still clutching the envelope from Ms. Nakamura. The paper is dissolving with my perspiration. I can see the scowl of some prime minister on the ten-thousand yen notes. Worst-case scenario: I could be on the missing-girl adverts. The missing girl could be dead. I imagine a garbage-bag sarcophagus. Somewhere hidden, damp. Where it’s quiet. Worst-case scenario: Kazu will never call me again.

I look at American Used Freak. He hasn’t shifted his gaze. Worst-case scenario—he could be a psychopath. My little voice says,
Who gives a shit.
“Do you want to go to a love hotel with me?” I ask.

I
’m seventeen. Mom was right. I’ve found my niche. I’m the school slut. My venture into the social realm is over. I watch a lot of documentary television, smoke until my fingers turn yellow, and barf up my food for kicks. Whispers follow me like Pigpen’s swirls of dirt. At school, my favorite place is with my head stuck in my locker. The slams and rummaging in the adjacent lockers reverberate like thunder and lightning in my ears. It’s all I can hear. I learn to love the smell of rotten fruit and leaky ballpoint pens. I have no face. No swollen eyes. I’m not really here.

One day, I’m walking home from school. I cut through the University of Toronto. There’s a place by one of those ancient old buildings. The ones obscene with stonework and stained glass. There’s a place, under a fire escape, look
ing out at a field carpeted with dirty snow and dead grass. I like to get stoned there.

I’m crouched down smoking one day, when I see Mom. She’s walking with her shoulders up by her ears, bracing herself from the wind racing between the buildings. The woman with her has no hat on. She has that haughty Germanic beauty. Her shoulders are relaxed. She has short, spiky hair, so fine and blond it looks like feathers. She puts her arm around Mom’s shoulder, leans into her. I close my eyes before they kiss.

The joint hisses when I crush it out on the ground. I think about genes. A high school pariah who just might be a schizo dyke. Beautiful.

We rent motel rooms after the prom. It’s an old honeymoon motel from the fifties. Someone tells me the tubs are heart-shaped. We have to pay a damage deposit. The rooms smell like Lysol and something feral.

“You’re not still sore about that thing in the woods are you?” Tony asks.

“What thing?”

“We were kids,” he says. “You know?”

There’s a yellow water stain on the ceiling. Someone who left the bathtub running. Someone who didn’t get their damage deposit back. It looks like a Rorschach test. Siamese twins joined at the shoulder. We were kids. Yes. What are we now? I wonder.

He grabs me and pulls me down onto the bed. “Fuck, I
want you so bad.” We’re on our sides, his hand grasping my hipbone like a handle. Our noses are almost touching. I can smell his breath. I think of Eskimos. “You’re killing me,” he says. For a minute I let myself imagine reaching over for the lamp on the bedside table and splitting his head open with it. I can feel his cock pressed against my thigh. I don’t feel excited. Or scared. I feel the tug of the inevitable.

After it’s done, the knocking starts. “Stop hogging the room Ton!” someone yells. I sit up on the edge of the bed and look at the table lamp. See that it’s screwed into place on the synthetic woodgrain of the nightstand. I go into the bathroom and run the water while I pee. A short hush, then cheers. The slap of high fives. The water comes out brown, then yellow, then white. The tub is tub-shaped. I’m disappointed.

When I go out, someone hands me a can of Canadian. Each time the door opens, a gust of air blows in. Someone yells, “Shut the fucking door!” It’s the kind of night between winter and spring, when the air feels like a tonic. I want to throw the windows open. Luxuriate in the last sting of the cold.

Alone is not about people at all.

After graduation, I get a job at a bagel shop. We have twenty different kinds of bagels and twelve different toppings. I’m snotty to the customers, but my boss doesn’t care. Something about the way I ignore him leads him to believe I’ll eventually sleep with him.

I want to get my own place, but I can’t seem to save
money. It’s all I can do to keep myself in weed and diet Pepsi. Mom and I are at each other’s throats.

Dinner conversations go something like this:

“What’s this?”

“Weanies and beanies,” Mom says chirpily.

“Fuck, Mom. This isn’t dinner!”

“Maggie.”

“It’s prison slop.”

“You used to like weanies—”

“Yeah, so did you,” I mumble. Then louder, “It’s starch and lard. Where’re the veggies? The greens?”

“They’re tofu weanies and beans in a tomatoey sauce. Now eat up!”

“This is shit!”

“You’re welcome to cook for yourself.”

“Oh go lick pussy, Mom.”

She picks up our plates. “Lovely, Margaret.” Dumps them in the sink. “Lovely.” Beans slip like lava down the drain.

Frank eats alone in his room.