A Woman's Nails (46 page)

“Wasted?”

“Yeah, wasted.”

We sing the old
karaoke
favorites, syrupy ballads, which transport us back to the middle of last summer when we were so much in love. Mie places my hand on her thigh and hold
s it there like she us
ed to. It’s still warm, as if I ha
d never stopped
holding
it. After several more whiskey ‘n’
waters, and a ro
using rendition Bobbie Caldwell’
s
Heart of Mine
—s
hite though it may be, I sing i
t like I mean it—M
ie leans into me, rests her head on my shoulder. I always loved the fragrance of her hair, the way it would li
nger on my pillow days after we’
d slept together, the way it filled my nostrils and filled my soul. There it was again, just like old times.

After a few happy hours soaking neck deep in this blissful tub, Mie tells Mama
to put the bill on her company’
s expense account.

“I wish I could do that,”
I say.

“
Anytime you
want to drink here, Peador, it’s on me,”
Mie says. I
’
m
almost
tipsy enough to believe her.

Outside the bar, Mama thanks us for coming and bows deeply as we step into the elevator. When the door closes, Mie k
isses me gently on the cheek. I’
ve felt def
lated for so long that it doesn’
t take much to put the wind back into my sails. I take her into my arms and kiss h
er on the lips. Though we haven’
t pressed any buttons, the elevator jerks into motion. When the door opens, a middle-aged man with a cheap toupee finds us in a
n embrace. Seeing
us
, he says, “
Solly, solly
,”
and staggers back a few steps, allowing the elevator to close. I push the button for the first floor.

Out on the street, as we walk towards a long line of ca
bs, I expect Mie to tell me she i
s going to call it
a night and I don't know how it wi
ll affect me to watch her disappear from my life again. Will I be heart-broken? Will I be relieved? Or a little bit of both, emancipated but alone?

“That was fun,”
I say.
“Thanks.”

Mie a
sks if I have to work tomorrow.

“
Y
eah, I do, but not until three.”

“
You want to go somewhere else
?”
she asks.

I take her hand and pull
her into the nearest cab and we a
re off to Oyafukô.

4

Sitting at
Umie
’
s counter, knocking back
imo shôchû
on the rocks. It isn’
t my fi
rst choice of emotional lubricant, but I’
m more than happy to keep pace with Mie.

She asks m
e if I’
ve heard from my former co-worker and next door neighbor Ben.

“
Not in a while. He wrote me a short letter
about two months ago, but didn’
t have much to tell me as always. Gary and he are still looking for jobs. Seems like nobody has jobs. I must say, though that h
e
does have
the neatest hand-writing.”

Mie laughs because Ben’s
dainty penmanship is just one more thing reinfor
cing what we always suspected. “Has he . . .?”

“
No, not yet
,” I say.
“
Every time a letter
from him
arrives, I think, ah hah! This is it. This is
the one.”

“I wonder if he’ll ever admit it.”

“Who knows?”
I
shrug
. How long can someone as obviously gay as Ben remain cooped up in the closet?

We reminisce about last summer and how much fun it was
. The three
of us, Ben, Mie and I traveled
to the Usa
Jingû
shrine and then on to the hot spring resort of Beppu. Ben tortured us the whole way with his off-key humming. Mie would put a Chagé & A
ska cassette in the deck and he’
d keep
on humming even though he didn’
t know the songs. We laughed at every turn, and were occasionally silenced with profound awe. No matter how things
ended up for Mie and me, there i
s no denying what
a wonderful summer it was and I woul
d gladly
pawn
my soul in order to turn the clocks back
twelve months and relive it
.

Mie rests her head lightly on my shoulder and tells me she misses those days. I tell her I miss them too, even more than I miss . .
. more than I miss the States.

Shortly after Mie and I had become serious, her roommate commented over dinner that I somehow belonged here.
Mie had
just
dumped her fiancé
for a foreigner
fresh
off the boat and she didn’
t see anything strange in it. Who knows what she was really thinking
, though
? All I k
new was that I
, too,
had
felt
that
I belonged.

“I was really happy then,” I say and s
he nods
.

There is an impulse to apologize for past mistakes, but I know that the past is the past, and no matter how fondly we reminisce about the good times or how deeply we regret the bad, the past will never stop being anything but gone and out of reach. Just enjoy the moment, I
have to remind myself. I
hold her hand even more tightly.

I still love Mie. Still love what she once meant to me, especially how she delivered me from the isolation and loneliness I had been feeling in those first few months. I still want to be with her, to spend moments like this beside her, to hear the sound of her voice, and feel the warmth of her body against mine. I still want to touch her soft skin with my lips. I still want to make love to her. For the first time, tho
ugh, I understand and accept that it i
s truly, irreversibly over.

As I’
m ordering a second round of
shôchû
, Hiromi walks into the bar and sits down at the corner diagonal
ly
from us. Hiromi is, as always, stunningly beautiful, but tonight, wearing a low-cut black dress, she exudes a sex appeal that raises the mercury several degrees.

Programmed as I am, I canno
t help but look at Hiromi. She smiles back at me and, leaning over the counter towards me, reaches out to take my hand.

“Who i
s
this
?
" Mie asks, rankled by the girl’s playful flirtation
.

“A friend,”
I say.

“Thinks she’s sexy, does she? Well, she’s got small tits!”

Saying that, Mie does something that surprises me: She pulls her top down slightly to reveal her own cleavage. Not many women can give Mie a run for their money in the breasts department. Where my ex-girlfriend is a major-leaguer, the others play T-ball.

“Urara will be here soon,” Hiromi says to me. “She’s sad because you haven’t called yet. She’
s been
waiting by her phone every day.”

“Who’s Urara,”
Mie asks coldly.

“A girl I know.”

I never would have expected Mie to be jealous. What does she have to be jealous about after all? She's the one who left me. Twice for that matter! She’s the one getting married in a few months’ time, while I remain as sing
le as ever. None of the women I’
ve been with come even close to
filling the hole Mie left. They ha
ve all been too small, with characters that never quite filled the presence that Mie was in my life last year.
Nearly a year has passed and I a
m just barely managing to get by, one lonely miserable night at a time.

Mie finishes off the
imo shôchû
, orders another. Half way through the second glass, the tension seems to dissipate some. She rests her head on my shoulder, and with my hand in her lap she begins to talk for the first time about last year.

It had been hard to say
good-bye to me, she says. That’
s why after leaving me the first time she ended up returning a few weeks later. But
when she did leave me for good—
the day she left me standing in front of my apa
rtment making me think that she woul
d be back in a week's time—
she cried all the way back to Fukuoka.

She wanted to turn the car around, to be with me, but she was too afraid. There were so many uncertainties, so many barriers we would have to cross.
Tetsu
, on the other hand, was stable, boringly so, but, after so many years of ups and downs, it was
stability she longed for most.

When she looks up at me, there are te
ars in the corner of her eyes. “I’m sorry, Peador,” she says in English. “I’m so sorry to have hurt you.”

A rush of pain breaks against my chest and I could almost cry
myself
.

“I’m sorry,”
she says again.

“I’m sorry, too.”
And I am. Sorry that I couldn’
t have been stronger and more reliable
for her. Sorry that she couldn’
t have found confidence in her love for me at the time. Sorry that
I lost
her before I understood what a
truly lovely a person she was. “I’m so goddamn sorry, Mie.”

Just as I’
m apologizing, Urara comes into
Umie
and seeing me calls out my name. Ascending the steps, she huffs playfully about how d
isappointed she is that I haven’
t called. Then, she notices Mie and falls silent.
It’s awkward to say the least.

Mie sits up, looks at Urara and
releases her hold of my hand. “I better be heading home,”
she says.

I pay for our drinks, then start to make our way out. As I pass Urara, she asks when we can meet.

“
I'll be right
back,”
I say.
“
Wait for me here
.”

Urara begins to a
sk me another question, but Mie i
s beating feet towards the exit.

“She’s an old girlfriend,” I say. “
She'
s getting married soon. Look, I’
ll explain everything to you
later. Promise me you'll wait.”

“
I promis
e.”

“Thank you
,”
I say and kiss her quickly on the cheek.

Mie is clear across the street by the time I emerge from
Umie
. I hurry after her, and grab her hand just as she is about to duck into a taxi.

“I have to go home, Peador,” she says. “You can go back to your
girlfriend
.”

"
She’s not my girlfriend,” I say. “
I want to be wi
th you just a few minutes more.”

“It’
s over. You know
it. I know it. We can't . . .”

“But . . .”

“Bye, Peador,”
she says
,
kissing me softly on the lips. “I’ll never forget you, Peador.”

“Mie?”

“Yes?”

“I’ll always love you.”

She starts to cry and turns to enter the cab. As the cab starts to pull away, I jump into the taxi behind it and tell the
driver to follow Mie’s cab. It’
s a l
ong, expensive drive, but I can’
t help myself.
I have to do this.
The taxi moves along the same route that Mie and I took so many times before when we were dating. All the landmarks are still fresh with memories, made fresher still by the smell of Mie’s perfume on my clothes.

As we approach the
Mikasa
River, I see some kind of lights flowing gently down the river.

“What’
s that in the river
?”
I ask the driver.

“Lanterns.”

“Lanterns?”

“
Yeah, families of the deceased pu
t the lanterns on small wooden b
oats to see the souls off. You’
re not
really
supposed to do it anymore. Pollutes the river and all. Bu
t people still do it anyway.”