A Woman's Nails (39 page)

Ooh la la!

4

Yumi’
s friends end up being a refreshingly cheerful bunch and do their best to engage me in conversation despite the obvious gap in our respective communication skills: they couldn't speak a word of
Engrishu
if their lives depended upon it, and, as for
my own Japanese proficiency, I’
m afraid I still feel as if I am scribbling with
Crayolas
. We do manage to communicate, though, the conversation forging ahead from one slippery
flagstone
to the next.

I cannot emphasize enough how rare moments like these are. For if the person I am trying to chat with isn't intent on inflicting his Pidgin English upon me then he is invariably breaking into a sweat and searching for a quick exit. It's natural to feel a bit apprehensive when speaki
ng a foreign language you haven’
t yet mastered, but, good God, the Japanese are the only people I've come across who shit their pants whenever a foreigner
approaches them with a simple “
konichiwa
”
. These charming women, however, are a godsend: they listen patiently; repeat questions when I fail to catch the meaning; and coach me each time I falter. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.

Now, the icing on the cake is that as the evening progresses it starts to dawn on me that th
ese so-called “friends” of Yumi’
s a
re not really friends at all. I’
ve longed suspected from observing and listening
to my co-worker that she doesn’
t have many of what could be called f
riends in a traditional sense—
people you hang out with, talk to, share secrets with, depend on when y
ou’re down, laugh with when you’re up,
and so on. Come to think of it, neither have I. But then, I have the handicap of being a foreign male i
n this silly country.

What’s more, I am delighted to learn that these women are nothing more than acquaintances of Yumi’s. And as far as I can tell, they are only interested in my co-worker in so far as she might be encouraged by their conviviality to purchase yet another outrageously over-priced, terribly impractical and horribly uncomfortable, albeit exquisitely beautiful
kimono
.

Not that I really care, though. The realization that these attractive women have little more than a passing knowledge of Yumi, however, means that they’re fair game
, and if I want to make a move—
and Lord knows I do, I do, I do, so much so tha
t I can barely contain myself—t
hen it is my God-given right to do
that
.

Of course, I am not so callous as to do so in front of my co-worker. I may be an arse as far as Reina and Yumi are concerned, but, be that as it may, I’d like to belie
ve that I am still a gentleman—
warped, and increasingly insensitive, yes, but a gentleman all the same. So, I wait until Yumi joins the other guests in a roaring game of Bingo, the grand prize I'
m told is—surprise, surprise—a
kimono
, before taking out my private name card and passing it out like an ambitious insurance salesman.

I tell them that the magic will soon wear off, that my carriage will be changing back
into a pumpkin, and add that I’
ve had such an enjoyable time with them that I regret having to say good-bye. I suggest meeting again, and encourage them to call me. They nod enthusiastically, and, write down their own phone numbers on the back of their own business cards. By the time Yumi has returned from the Bingo game, frustrated again by the fickle ways of Fortune, I feel like a richer man, my treasure tucked discreetly away in my breast pocket.

5

It has stopped raining by the time we leave the hotel and the evening sky has started to clear up.
Fukuoka Dome
rises before us. As it happens, the gigantic retractable titanium roof has been ope
ned. Noise and light spews out.

Yumi tells me she has never been to a baseball game, so, feeling magnanimous, I suggest we go and have a look.

We walk across the footbridge spanning the wide, slowly flowing Hii River. As the sun drops behind Nokono Island everything is bathed with an orange glow that warms my heart and reminds me of the lazy summer evenings in Oregon.

God, how I still miss home at times
.

With the
Bon
Festival of the Dea
d coming up in a week's time, I’
m tempted to hop on a jet plane and return to everything familiar and dear to me. The homesickness, the heartache, the loneliness of the past several months has been enough to make me want to scream, but at this particular moment I am in as reasonably a good mood as can be expected, something which I must admit I have Yumi to thank for. Had it not been for her invitation tonight,
I wouldn’
t have met the handsome Ms. Yamada,
the adorable Urara
,
and others.

So, for the first time in months, I speak frankly to my co-work
er. I try to explain what I don’
t expect her to understand: the feeling I often have that I am dying a slow and lonely death here in Japan. I tell her how I wake each morning to another day separating me from those I left behind in the States and my dreams. I hint at the memories which, no matter how I hard I try to hold onto them, trickle like sand through my fingers. I feel as if I am losing my roots, and am afraid of
being blown away forever. I don’
t know if she can understand what I am trying to say, but then again I’m only talking to myself really.

“Why did you ever come to Japan?”
she asks.

I’
ve looked a hundred times or more at the photo album I put together just before I left for Japan. Intoxicated with drink or whatever cheap drugs I could afford, the face in the photos always looks back at me with an irrepressible smile. My arm is always around one friend or another.
Yeah, good question: why did I leave?

“I don't remember anymore.”

We walk in silence across the footbridge passing the midway point where only three months earlier Reina and I, pretending to be in love, embraced each other and kissed. Feels like a hundred years ago.

“
Yumi said she wants
to take you to a baseball game,”
Reina told me at the time. Yumi's infatuation tickled a nasty bone in Reina. Every time she
talked of her co-worker’
s unrequited love for me, she'd explode with laughter. At the time, it was hard to tell whether Reina was a sadistic bitch, or was merely getting a childish thrill out of having something someone else wanted, but now, after a month of being at the object of her scorn,
I am no longer confused: Reina i
s a bitch.

“
You know, I ha
ve
never been to the Dome
either
,” I lie to Yumi. “
Why
don’
t we see if we can get in?”

We make our way around the Dome to a gate for the outfield seats. Judging by the large number of fans wearing Daiei Hawks
[17]
jerseys and long faces, the game must be
coming to
yet another dismal conclusion. At the gate, I pretend to fumble around my pockets for tic
kets, mumbling to myself that I’
d just had them, but the security guard
isn’t
buy
ing it. Just as I a
m about to give up the charade, though, a man exiting with his son hands me his tickets.

“Wow, you’re so lucky!
”
Yumi sa
ys
after
we pass through the gate.

Reina said the same thing to me several months ago when a homerun ball bounced off of the back of a seat and plopped softly
into my hand, just like that—t
hunk, plop! As it had been the very start of the season, and the Dome had only just opened, it occurred to me that I might very well have been the first
gaijin
to catch a homerun ball there. My fifteen seconds of fame
squandered on a lousy baseball.

We hurry inside, find some empty seats, and cheer the home team on just as they drop the game in the final inning.
Defeated
again by a team with the menacing
name: Nippon Ham Fighters.

Do they fight ham, I wonder. Or
do they bat with
a leg of
ham
? You can’t help but itch
with curiosity.

6

After the game, Yumi and I hail a taxi and head into town to Oyafukô, to
Umie
where my vigil for Nekko-chan has come to an end; the last votive candle
has
fizzl
ed
out.

I grab two
Asahi
s from the beer cooler and join Yumi in the lower section. Handing her a beer, I sit down beside her on the very same stool Nekko-chan and I carried on so shamelessly only two weeks ago.

For a Saturday night, the bar is dead. The lights are up; the volume of the music, down
;
and the small, empty dance floor before us has all the charm and verve of a freight elevator.

The two of us, an odd couple if there ever were one, clink the necks of our
beer bottles together, and as I’
m about to take
my first swig Yumi starts in: “All these girls,”
she says with puritan indignation and
an emphatic sweep of the hand, “
they're all
here just to meet foreign boys.”

“Excuse me?”

Over the past few months it has come clear to me that Yumi toils in a reality of her own like a diligent, yet demented jeweler sitting all day at his workbench under the sickly blue flicker of light, dismantling watches, untuning music boxes, and
smashing
up precious stones.

“Look at them,”
she says
, gesturing
towards the counter. “
T
hey all dress like prostitutes.”

“What? You can't be serious?”

Such is my sus
picion of the machinery of Yumi’
s mind that I ha
ve taken to dismissing off-hand most of what she says as nonsense.
Foreign men? Women dressed like prostitutes?
She must have had one too many at the party
.

I turn around
to have a look. T
o my surprise I find two Iranians sitting at the far end of the counter with women who do, indeed, look like
prostitutes. Funny, but I hadn’t noticed them when I was getting
our
beers.

Before long,
the
two Iranians and their
wenches
get
up to leave, passing us as the head out the door.

“Did you hear their English?”
Yum
i exclaims with horror. “
It was
terrible
!”

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!

My co-worker is no one to ma
ke judgments about other people’
s English ability; you could house a good Catholic family in the room she has for improvement.

“
Does it real
ly matter?”
I ask.

“Yes, it does!”

“
What in heaven’s name for? Just because a person can
no
t speak English fluently doesn’
t mean she ought not try.
I mean, Christ, listen to you!”

It takes a moment for what I said to register, but when it does, her hand makes up for lost time. Before I know what is happening, her palm connects with a loud slap against my cheek.

“
Jesus Christ, Yu
mi! What the fuck was that for?”

“You deserved it!
”

“
I deserved it! Ha! Y
ou’
re
a
funny one today
. Got me in stitches, you have.”

“
Saitei
!”

“‘
The worst’ is it, am I?”

“Yes,”
she says, her bo
dy tightening up like a spring.

“
Look, Yumi, all I
meant was that your English isn’t perfect. It’s good, but it isn’
t perfect. You still make a lot
of mistakes, but, hey, you can’
t make progress without stumblin
g, can you? It's like you
Japanese
say, ‘
Shippai wa seikoh no moto
.’
Failure's a st
epping stone to success, right?”