Grotesque (23 page)

“What about your father? Has he similarly benefited?”

“Yes.” Kijima avoided my gaze. “He made an agreement off the books to tutor a girl in the high school. Her family sent their driver to pick him up for each lesson. He was paid fifty thousand yen for just two hours. We used the money to take a vacation to Hawaii. All the students know about it.”

I remembered Kijima had said the students here believed they could have anything for a price. Surely I’d be able to make a killing here as a young prostitute. I looked up at the September skies of Tokyo, where the summer heat still lingered. They were a smoggy gray and seemed to be wrapped in the warmth emitted by the metropolis.

Kijima finished his Coke and looked over the high school playing fields. Girls in navy-blue shorts streamed across the grounds. Kijima tapped my shoulder. “I’ll show you something funny. Come with me.”

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“What is it?”

“Your older sister’s gym class.”

“I’m not going to go. I don’t want to talk to my sister.”

“Come on. Just take a look. It’ll be fun. There are a lot of famous people in your sister’s class.”

A bizarre form of rhythmic exercise class had just gotten underway. A judge of some kind was standing in the middle of the field and students were moving around her in a circle, as if it were a kind of summer festival dance. The teacher raised a tambourine and started to shake it fiercely. As soon as she started, the girls dancing in the circle around her began undulating in weird movements.

“Legs on the third beat, hands on the fourth!”

They stepped to the beat of the tambourine and moved their arms in unison. I wouldn’t call what they were doing exercises, but it wasn’t dance either. They looked ridiculous. I suppose you could say it looked like a folk dance with extra steps added.

“That’s rhythmic exercise. It’s been the pride and joy of Q High School for Young Women for generations, so you’d better get used to it. You’ll be doing it before long too. Anyone who’s ambitious learns to do it.”

“Ambitious? For what?”

“Ambitious for good grades. You need good grades to get into the university—

and students enter this high school so they can go on to Q University.

But you have to be able to do more than just study. Unless you’re the best in this rhythmic exercise routine, your overall grade point average will suffer.”

Kijima’s reply was laced with sighs, as if even having to explain as much to me was an excessive burden. He jiggled his legs nervously.

“So they’re ambitious for something as stupid as that?”

“Well, most people in this world don’t have the luxury of being as beautiful as you. They have to rely on something else.”

It was all a battle of endurance. If you could last, you could get what you wanted. But I couldn’t tolerate such long ordeals. If it were me I’d quit in no time. I didn’t believe in endurance.

I wondered if my sister had an ambitious streak. I stared hard at the circle of dancers. My sister went around any number of times, but she couldn’t keep up with the steps, and before long she quit. The students who couldn’t keep up had to leave the circle and watch from the sidelines.

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My sister folded her arms across her chest with apparent disinterest. She watched the students who were concentrating all they had on getting the steps right. She’d messed up on purpose. I saw through my sister’s strategy.

“Now feet on the seventh beat and hands on the twelfth.”

The movements grew even more complicated. One after another the students misstepped and had to leave the ring. They sat alongside my sister, watching the ones who remained. Before long there were more watching than dancing.

“Check it out, those two are in a dead heat!” Kijima mumbled to himself, barely able to hide his disgust.

Two girls were left. They danced around the teacher, reacting to her increasingly complicated instructions like acrobats. All the students’ eyes were on them. In the distance, even the students in the junior high section had turned to watch. Kijima and I crept closer to the dancers’ circle, careful not to attract my sisters notice.

“Feet on the eighth beat; hands on the seventeenth.”

One of the students was of slight build with a nicely symmetrical figure.

She looked very agile. She danced with amazing precision, as if not even thinking of what she was doing. It seemed she had even greater agility in reserve.

“That’s Mitsuru. She’s best in the school. She always wins. Everyone knows she’s aiming for medical school.”

“And the other girl?”

I pointed to a skinny girl who was moving jerkily like a puppet on a string. Her hair was thick and heavy, and the expression on her face and the way she moved her body made it look like she had reached the limits of her ability. She seemed to be in pain.

“That’s Kazue Sato. She’s an outsider student. She wanted to join the cheerleading squad but was shot down. She made a real stink about it too.”

The skinny girl looked over at us as if she had heard what Kijima said.

When she saw me she froze. Applause welled up from the onlookers.

Mitsuru had won.

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• 7 •

I suspect there are lots of women who want to become prostitutes. Some see themselves as valued commodities and figure they ought to sell while the price is high. Others feel that sex has no intrinsic meaning in and of itself except for allowing individuals to feel the reality of their own bodies.

A few women despise their existence and the insignificance of their meager lives and want to affirm themselves by controlling sex much as a man would. Then there are those who engage in violent, self-destructive behavior. And finally we have those who want to offer comfort. I suppose there are any number of women who find the meaning of their existence in similar ways. But I was different. I craved being desired by a man. I loved sex. I loved sex so much I wanted to screw as many men as I could. All I wanted were one-night stands. I had no interest in lasting relationships.

I wonder why Kazue Sato became a prostitute. How strange that I met her last night for the first time in twenty years. And on a hotel-lined street in Maruyama-cho at that.

I admit that when money got tight, I took to the streets on my own. I’d stand on the corner and call out to anyone passing by. But the streets along Shin-Okubo with their bars and clubs had been claimed for whores shipped in from Central America and Southeast Asia. The competition there was fierce. The area was cordoned off by an invisible line and if you happened accidentally to cross into their territory you were in for a beating. Police enforced the law in the Shinjuku area, and it wasn’t easy to get away with walking the streets there. Times were tough. I was on my own with no one to watch my back. And that’s how I ended up at Shibuya that night—in an area I had rarely trolled.

I selected a street in front of a row of hotels near Shinsen Station and stood in the gloomy shadows on the corner in front of a statue of Jizo waiting for a man to come by. It was a cold night and a sharp wind was 1 4 3

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blowing from the north. I clutched at the collar of the red leather coat that I had pulled on over my silver ultra-minidress. I wore a thin slip under my dress and that was it. An outfit like this would allow me to get down to business without a lot of fuss, but it offered no protection from the cold. I took a drag of my cigarette and shivered, waiting.

I had my sights set on a group of drunks on their way home from an end-of-year party when a skinny woman stumbled down the narrow road sandwiched between cheap hotels. She looked like she was being blown along by the wind. Her black hair hung down her back nearly to her waist and swung from side to side with each step she took. She’d cinched the belt tightly around her flimsy white trench coat. Her legs, swathed in cheap fleshcolored nylons, were so skinny they looked as if they might snap in two. What was most remarkable about the woman was her appallingly impoverished body. She was so thin as to be nearly onedimensional, a skeleton covered in skin. Her makeup was applied so thickly I at first thought she was on her way home from a costume party, and then I wondered if perhaps she was crazy. Under the glare of the neon light I could see the heavy black of her eyeliner and her bright blue eye shadow. Her lips glittered a deep crimson. The woman raised her hand and waved to me.

“Who gave you permission to stand there?”

I was startled by her words.

“Is it off limits?” I threw my cigarette down and crushed it with the toe of my white boot.

“I didn’t say it was off limits.”

The woman wore a strange expression. She spoke with such force that I worried she was with a yakuza gang. I looked around me to be sure. I saw no one else. The woman was staring at me.

“Yuriko.” Her voice was so low and muffled it sounded like a curse.

But there was no mistaking what she’d said.

“Who are you?” I asked.

She looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her. Her features were distinct but nevertheless somewhat graceless. She looked like someone I knew but I couldn’t remember who, and it was driving me crazy. I stared at her carefully.

Of all her features, her long thin horselike face was most prominent.

Her skin was dry. Her teeth protruded. Her hands were like little bird claws. She was an ugly woman, a middleaged woman not unlike myself.

“Don’t you remember?”

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She laughed gaily. When she laughed the smell of stewed foods wafted up around her, a nostalgic smell. It lingered briefly in the cold winter air and then was snatched away by the northern wind.

“Might we have met at a club somewhere?”

“Guess again. My, you’ve grown old. Look at the lines on your face!

And all that flab! I hardly recognized you at first.”

I tried to remember the face I found behind the layers of makeup.

“When we were young we were like night and day, you and me. But just look at us now: we’re not that different. I suppose you could say we’re the same—or we might even put you a peg or two lower. What I’d give to show you to your friends now!”

The gloating words that spewed from her red mouth were tinged with bitterness. The black eyes beneath the layers of smeared eyeliner darted brightly. They resembled eyes that had glanced over at me one time long ago. Eyes that revealed—even as they tried to conceal—that their owner was at the end of her rope. I could tell that meeting me made the woman nervous by the way she sucked in her breath and chattered away. I realized that the disgusting-looking woman standing in front of me now was the student who had tried her hardest to keep up with the rhythm contest.

Despite the years that had passed since then, I could still recall her name: Kazue Sato. She was in my older sister’s class. A strange girl who had had some interaction with my sister. Kazue had had a bizarre interest in me, following me around like some kind of stalker.

“You’re Kazue Sato, aren’t you?”

Kazue gave my back a sharp push. “You got it! I’m Kazue. It took you long enough. Now get out of here! This is my turf, you know. You can’t be picking up men here.”

Her words were so unexpected they made me laugh bitterly. I repeated her own words. “Your turf?”

“I’m a hooker.”

Her words pulsed with pride. I was so taken aback to learn that Kazue was a streetwalker that I didn’t know what to say. Naturally, I thought I was special. Ever since I had reached the age of self-awareness I was convinced that I was different from other people. And I have to say the realization left me feeling somewhat superior.

“Why you of all people?”

“Well, why you?” Kazue shot back without hesitation.

I stared at her long hair, unable to answer. I could tell at a glance it 1 4 5

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was a cheap wig. Men don’t go for women who try to turn tricks in wild getups. There was no way Kazue was going to get a good customer that way. But then, there weren’t many good customers heading my way either. Even though they said nothing, I could tell by their expressions that they weren’t interested in me. Quite a contrast from when I was young. Now we lived in a world where young amateurs played at being prostitutes. A professional like me or Kazue was practically worthless.

Kazue was right: I was nothing like I was twenty years ago, and she and I weren’t much different.

“But you know, Yuriko, I’m not like you. I work during the day. I bet all you do is sleep.” Kazue pulled something out of her pocket and showed it to me. It was an ID card for some company. “During the day I earn an honest living,” she said, somewhat sheepishly. “I’m a businesswoman in a first-rate firm. I do a difficult job that you could never even dream of doing.”

Then why are you involved in prostitution? I caught myself just before the words left my mouth. I didn’t want to know. She’d just add one more reason to the list of reasons women go into prostitution. And I didn’t care.

“Do you come here every night?”

“I work the hotels over the weekends. I’d like to come every day but I can’t.”

Kazue spoke like a pro. At the edges of her words lurked a kind of happiness.

“Do you think you could let me use this spot on the nights you’re not here?”

I wanted my own turf. I’d been a prostitute since I was fifteen, but I didn’t have my own territory or a pimp to help me out.

“You want me to let you use my corner?”

“Do you mind?”

“Well, under one condition.”

Kazue grabbed my arm roughly. Her fingers were so bony it was like being gripped by chopsticks. My arms prickled with goose bumps.

“I don’t mind if you use the corner when I’m not here, but you have to dress like me, see?”

I saw her point. If the same woman worked the same corner, she’d build up a base of regulars. But would I really be able to look so hideous?

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I found the prospect so unnerving that I began to tremble. But Kazue couldn’t have cared less. She had set her sights on a pair of salary men on their way home.