A Woman's Nails (43 page)

So, when Urara place
s her hand on my arm and says, “
Suki yaken, sonna ki tsukawan dotte
.”
I didn’
t have to translate it inside my head from
Hakata-ben
into standard Japanese, which would have sounded like,
“
Suki
dakara, sonna ki-
o tsukawa nai de
.”
I now
understood her
as having
said
that
she liked
me so I ought to stop tip-toeing so carefully around her.

“Are you here alone tonight?”
I ask.

“
No, Hiromi-chan will be here soon. And, what about you,
Peador?”

There are times the right words just flow from my mouth making me feel as if I had French-kissed the Blarney Stone, and then there are those that make me feel as though
a bloody stone
had been dropped on my head.
Today I am in the
blessed rock's good graces; I tell Urara I was waiting for someone special to show up.

“Oh? And who might that be?”

“You, of course.”

That evokes
a hug and a peck on the lips, which has the effect of putting me in a right sunny mood, Fes
tival of the Dead
not
withstanding
.

“
I saw
your commercial,”
I tell Urara.

“Did you like it?”

It's hard to be diplomatic sometimes. In the commercial Urara is wearing a one-piece bathing suit with
her hips exposed. The outfit—o
r lack of
one
depending on whether you are a glass half-full
/glass half-empty kind of guy—f
latters her narrow waist and long, slender legs, but makes her look even
more wanting
in the breast department than I su
spect she really is. No, it isn’
t the most attractive get-up she or any woman could wear in private, let alone on television, but then these
hai-reggu
get-ups (high-legged bathing suits)
are all the flavor of the month, and young Japanese men just ca
n’
t seem to get enough of them.

What Urara in a bathing suit has
to do with selling used cars—t
his is w
hat the commercial is pushing
, after all
—i
s
a mystery to me, but then I don’
t fit in with its target audience, do I? Perhaps the geeks that tune into late night TV to catch a bit of tit to jerk off to before hitting the sack are moved into a consumer frenzy like a drop of blood in a pool of sharks by that kind of advertising. Who knows? It was a stupid commercial and depressing to watch, but am I going to
tell that to a lovely girl who’
s sat down next to me, taken my hand and ordered a shot of vodka?

“
I liked
your
part,”
I say.

After several shots and a beer to
keep it all down, it’
s easy to forget where I am. I grow oblivious
to the people around us—t
he men to Urara’
s right, Shô behind the counter, Shinji in the DJ booth, the few customers
below—a
s if the dimmer on my consciousness has been turned. In spite of all the people, I feel completely alone in the universe with Urara, a solitary star orbited by a single planet. We lean against one another, holding hands and touching as
if we’
ve known each other for years rather than six days.

And we talk. Good G
od we talk! Urara has that rare ability to draw words and stories out of me, to coax me out of my cave and undress me of the itchy reticence I have been clothed in. She can do it, because she makes me feel that nothing else matters more than to listen to what old Peador has to tell her. She never lets herself be distracted, nor does she ever allow my attention to turn to something else either. If I look away, she touches my chin, bringing my face closer to hers. When I falter, she sque
ezes my hand, reminds me what I’
ve just told her to keep the conversation moving. Why she does this for me, I have no idea. What could she find so interesting in a moody
gaijin
like myself? It’
s time I stopped asking
questions and start thanking my
lucky stars that it is
me
she has her big dark brown on rather than someone else.

“Do you have a girlfriend?”
she asks.

“No.”

“Why don’t you have a girlfriend?”
she says
,
taking a swig from my beer. Before I can reply, sh
e answers the question for me. “
Oh, I get it, you like to date many
different girls, don’
t you? You’re a playboy, aren't you?”

“
You’
ve
hit the nail right on its head,”
Shô interjects with a smile in my direction.

One of the perversions so common among women, and Japanese women in particular, is that they are attracted, often tragically so, to men who are already taken. A guy with a girlfriend is infinitely more appealing than one without. A divorced middle-aged man, or even one who is still
locked in a sexless marriage
, is far more preferable to one who at the age of thirty-eight has never wed. Boggles the male mind, it does.

I’
d ask Urara whether she has a boyfriend as if it actually matters.
These girls, I was slow to understand
, have a fluid notion of commitment. Mie made that clear by taking me along on her self-exploration although she was, for all intents and purposes, eng
aged to be married. I still don’
t quite und
erstand how I fit in her plan—
that is, assuming she ever
had one to b
egin with. No matter how much I’
ve thought about that relationship and, believe me I have
brooded
over it, I am no closer to understanding what happened, or how I managed to fall into the gap between them, or wha
t, if anything, I meant to Mie.

All I am certain of is the pain I felt after she abandoned
me,
and the loneliness that has haunted me ever since
. I don’
t really know what I want anymore, to tell you the truth. A year earlie
r, crying on the outside of Mie’
s apartment I would have told you that all I wanted was to have Mie back in my life. Now, however, I suspect that her leaving me, as painful as it has been, was probably for the best. I doubt if I could ever be the kind of husband she was hoping to have. Listening to the way housewives carry on about their
men
has hammered that fact firmly i
nto my usually impervious head.

So, if Mie wasn’
t the answer, then what is? Is it this Urara leaning into
me, holding my hand in her lap?

By the time Hiromi comes to pick Urara up,
the two of us are beyond repair.

“You have my number, right?”
Urara slurs, hobbling off the barstool.

“Yesh.”

“
Well t
hen, call me, call me, call me.”

“When?”

“Anytime.”

“
You
know, Urara, Japanese always say
anytime
, anywhere,
but they, but they don't . . . "

She looks into my eyes, and, with both hands cradling my face,
kisses me slowly on the lips. “
I mean it, Peador.
Anytime
.”

The bar erupts in catcalls and if my face weren’t already pink from the
booze,
I’d be blushing.

Hiromi, too, kisses me lightly on the cheek, and there they go, the two are gone, flitting away as
full of
jóie de vivre
as they
were
when they first came into my life only a week ago.

19

MIE

1

O-Bon
, the Buddhist Festival of the Dead, begins the following day, the thirteenth of August. Unlike other holidays, the
Bon
is greeted wi
th
weary ambivalence. You don’t ask
people
what they’
ll be doing over the holiday, or wish them a Merry
Bon
, because for many Japanese it amounts to three days of somber rites conducted perfunctorily with the dreaded in-laws.
It’s
Thanksgi
ving without the turkey
and
parades
.

On the first day of
Bon
, I have been told,
families go to the cemetery to greet the spirits of their ancestors who have returned from the after world. The tombs
are
cleaned and given
simple
arrangement
s
of chrysanthemum and gladiolus. Sticks of sandalwood incense are lit,
and
silent prayers
are
offered to the souls of the departed.

“Welcome back, Grandpa”

“Please watch over the family and protect it, Grandma”

“
Give me the strength to endure that
bitch of a mother-in-law . . .”

And so on.

This morning the sun deigned to make an appearance. An unenthusiastic participant in the season, he’s been for the past several weeks. The summer has been so cool, according an article in
the Daily Yomiuri
, that even beer sales are suffering.

All the news that’
s fit to print
.

I take my bicycle to Seaside Momochi drawn by images of the beach crowded with young women in colorful bikinis dancing to reggae brighten my mood as I pedal away. When I arrive, however,
I discover that
the beach is all but deserted.
There’
s a small group of high school boys, thin as green beans and nut brown, playing so
ccer in the sand, but there isn’
t a bikini top to be seen, or a note of island music to bob your head to. Even the
umie no ie
beach houses that sell
yakisoba
and beer
have been
boarded up, closed for busi
ness until after the holiday. I’
ve been told the gates of Hell open up on the sea floor during the
Bon
Festival, but I didn’
t think anyone was superstitious enough to believe it. Not in this day and age with an even more
frightening reality, the 21st
century is just seven years away from gobbling us up. Well, apparently, the Japanese
are
, and
they must think I’
m tempting fate when I wade
waist
-deep in the water.

I don’
t stay long. The beach is one of the most depressing places when it is quiet. Nothing but the flat expanse of the gray sea to remind you how ridiculously
insignificant and alone you are in the world.

On the way back to my apartment, I ride the narrow and meandering streets of Tôjin Machi past temples and cemeteries. The smell of incense fills the air. Muted voices come from a charnel house. A family of five emerges from its door, carrying a paper lantern to guide the souls back to their home.

When I return to my apartment building, a large white paper lantern with a family crest in bla
ck is hanging near the entrance, reminding me that
my landlord’
s mother
passed away
a few months ago. If Reina and I were
still speaking to each other, I woul
d ask her what Japanese customs expect of me under the circumstances. Do I bring them a gift? Do I hand over an ornate envelope filled with cash? Do I put my hands together and with eyes closed chant, "
N
amu amida butsu
"
[19]
? Culturally o
ut of the loop as I am, I haven’
t the slightest of clues
as to what to do
.

I check my mailbox before passing through the
front
gate. It’s been so long—four or five weeks now—s
ince I last received a letter from anyone that I seldom bother
to check
anymore. I clean out the mailbox as eagerly as you m
ight sift through a garbage bin, then
clump up the stairs with
the
thick bundle of junk mail
in my arms
. Considering the silence that has replied all the letters I have penned to
friends and family a like, I woul
d probably have better luck
getting a response were I to
slip
a note into a bottle and toss
it into the gray sea.