Grotesque (59 page)

N A T S U O K I R I NO

waiters, and all the others passing on the street took notice of the woman, expressing awe at her exceptional beauty. She wore a glimmering black cocktail dress. Her skin was pallid, her lipstick bright red, and her hair was long, light brown, and wavy.

“Yuriko!”

I called her name without even thinking. There she was in the flesh: my love rival from high school, licentiousness incarnate. She had no need for diligence or study; she was a woman born exclusively for sex.

Yuriko heard me and turned around. She glanced at me briefly, turned back to the man, and took his arm without saying a word. I’m Kazue Sato! You know that perfectly well. Why are you pretending you don’t recognize me? I bit my lip in anger.

“Do you know her?” The kimono-clad woman asked me suddenly. All this time I’d been having an imaginary conversation with this woman. To have her suddenly address me took me by surprise. Her real voice was surprisingly youthful and kind.

“We were in high school together. I was good friends with her older sister.”

“You’re kidding. Her older sister must be a beauty, too.”

The woman could hardly conceal her admiration. I was quick to reply, “No, she was a real dog. They didn’t look a bit alike.”

I left the kimono-clad woman standing there looking shocked and hurried home. I felt a great sense of satisfaction; I think the sight of Yuriko set it off, knowing how humiliated her older sister would be to know what Yuriko was up to. The knowledge released me from my own misery. Here was someone even more pathetic than I was! Yuriko’s older sister was not as intellectually gifted as I. She reeked of poverty, and she would never be able to get a job with a first-rate firm. I was still better than her, I told myself, appeasing my earlier despair. All it took was a petty incident like that and the insects in my heart vanished into thin air.

That night I was freed from the anxiety I thought would hound me forever.

But I still feared the insects would return to torture me—a foreboding that still seemed very real.

I don’t have any good memories of my childhood. I have tried to forget it. Gazing at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, I cannot help recall-3 7 2

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ing unpleasant times from the past. I’m now thirty-seven. I’ve still retained my youthful looks. I diet, so I’m thin. I can still wear a size two.

But I’ll be forty in three years and it terrifies me. By the time a woman is forty, she’s basically an old hag. When I turned thirty I was afraid I was slipping over the hill, but it’s nothing like turning forty. At thirty there was hope for a future. By hope, I mean I thought I might finally get selected for something good at work that would seal my success, or I might meet Mr. Right, or something equally ridiculous. Now I don’t entertain any such notions.

I always get a little crazy when I reach a turning point in age—like when I was teetering between nineteen and twenty or twenty-nine and thirty. I was thirty when I first started the prostitution business. I was annoyed that I had no sexual experience. When I said I was a virgin, I got a customer right away just because he was curious. I don’t want to remember that encounter. But at the time I figured I wouldn’t ever be fifty. I doubted I’d even live to be forty. At any rate, I thought it would be better to die than become an old hag. That’s right. I’d rather die. Life has no meaning for an old hag.

“Would you like a beer?”

I heard the customer calling to me from the other room. I was in the shower washing myself, washing every nook and cranny, washing away the sweat and spit and semen that glistened all over my body—fluids from a man I didn’t know. Even so, the customer that night was not particularly bad. He was in his late fifties. From his clothes and his manners, I would say he was employed by a respectable company. He was gentle.

And he was offering me a beer. That was a first for me.

From the perspective of a fiftyish man, I must have appeared young, even at thirty. If I always had customers like him, I’d be happy; I could continue in the business even after I passed forty. I wrapped the bath towel around my body and returned to the room. My customer was sitting in his underwear smoking a cigarette while he waited for me.

“Here, have a beer. We’ve still got time.”

His relaxed manner calmed me. If he’d been younger he’d want to try to do it again and again.

“Thank you.” I used both hands to lift the glass to my lips, and the customer’s eyes narrowed in a smile.

“You’ve got good manners. You must have been brought up to be a proper young lady. Tell me then, why are you doing this?”

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“I wonder … ” It made me feel good to hear him say I had good manners, so I smiled at him pohtely. “I guess at some point I just got bored with going back and forth to work, day in and day out. Women sometimes want adventure in life. A job like this—I mean, for a woman, I see all kinds of people I might not otherwise have ever had the chance to meet. I guess I get to know a little bit more about the world.”

I do it for the adventure? Oh, please, that had to be the oldest line in the book! But the customer was the type who wanted the fantasy. He wanted a woman who would give him a story.

“Adventure?” He fell for it.

“Selling your body is the ultimate adventure. I’m sure a man couldn’t do it.”

I smiled sweetly and adjusted my wig. Even when I shower I don’t get my face wet, and I never remove the wig.

“You work for a firm?”

“That’s right. But it’s a secret!”

“I won’t tell; let me in on your secret. Which firm is it?”

“If you tell me, I’ll tell you.”

I did my best to build the suspense. If I played my cards right, he might ask for me again. At least that was what I was banking on.

“It’s a deal. I’m kind of embarrassed to say, but I teach at a university.

I’m a professor.”

I could tell he was proud of what he did and who he was. If I could get a bit more information I would have scored a great success.

“You’re kidding. Which university?”

“I’ll give you my business card. And if you have one, I’d like to have it.”

And so, naked, we exchanged cards. My customer’s name was Yasuyuki Yoshizaki. He was a professor of law at a third-rate private university in Chiba Prefecture. Putting on reading glasses, Yoshizaki peered at my card respectfully.

“Well, this is a shock! So you’re the assistant manager of the research office at G Architecture and Engineering. My, my, what a distinguished person. Your job must come with considerable responsibility.”

“It’s not so bad. I do research and write reports about the economic factors affecting our markets.”

“Well, then, we’re practically in the same line of work. Did you go to graduate school?”

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Yoshizaki s eyes revealed both fear and curiosity. I was driven to take advantage of his excitement.

“Oh, no. After I graduated from the economics department at Q University, I didn’t go on. Graduate school was too much for me!”

“You graduated from Q University and you’re working as a hotel call girl? Well, that’s a first! I’m impressed.”

Clearly excited, Yoshizaki filled my glass with beer.

“I hope you’ll see me again. Let’s drink a toast to our next meeting.”

We clinked glasses. I’ll look forward to it, I offered. I queried Yoshizaki as I studied his name card.

“Professor, may I call you at your office? I’d like to meet you without having to go through the escort service. If I go through the office, they take a cut and I lose. If it’s all right, could I have your cell phone number?”

“Oh, I don’t carry a cell phone. But you can call me at my office. If you tell them you’re Sato from Q University I’ll know who it is. Or you could say you’re Sato from G Firm. That’d be fine too. My assistant would never suspect a graduate of Q University of being a call girl!”

Yoshizaki chuckled. Doctors and professors were the most lascivious of all. From what I knew of their world, most men who were obedient to authority figures, as well as those who had earned authority positions, were always idiots. When I recall the anxiety I once felt about being at the top of that world, I laugh so bitterly it makes my teeth ache.

When we left the hotel, Yoshizaki stepped into the street away from me as if he had never met me. But I didn’t care. Instead, it made my heart throb with excitement. Yoshizaki was interested in me as a woman, and surely this was proof that he was destined to become one of my loyal customers. I’d be able to meet him privately, without the escort management taking a cut from my pay, which was the ideal way of earning money in this business. Women use their bodies to earn money—so it seems unreasonable that we can’t stand on street corners alone. Yet there isn’t anything more dangerous than trying to procure your own customers off the street. But Yoshizaki was different. He was an affable university professor who seemed to have a real interest in me. I was counting on him to become a good customer.

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I hummed happily as I strolled through the night with Yoshizaki. I forgot the chilly reception that awaited me at the escort service office, the Braid’s belligerence, the way my colleagues at the firm snubbed me, my mother’s nagging, even my fear of growing old and ugly. I was flushed with a sense of victory. The future was bright. Good things were in store for me. I hadn’t felt this sense of optimism for a long time. For the first time since I entered the escort agency at the age of thirty, my position as an elite businesswoman was appreciated, and I was being celebrated and sought out.

I grabbed Yoshizaki’s arm and linked my own around it. Yoshizaki broke into a grin and looked over at me.

“Well, well, don’t we look like a fine pair of lovers.”

“Shall we become lovers, professor?”

The young couples we passed along the hill turned to stare at us and then broke into whispers. A bit old for it, aren’t you? they seemed to say.

I couldn’t care less what they thought and didn’t pay any attention, but Yoshizaki brushed my arm away, looking confused.

“This doesn’t look good. You’re young enough to be mistaken for one of my students—and a mistake like that could cost me my job. Let’s be a bit more discreet, shall we?”

“I’m very sorry.”

I apologized politely for causing any inconvenience, to which Yoshizaki waved his hand in front of his face timidly. “No, no, don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not blaming you.”

“I know.”

He still looked upset, though, and looked nervously around him.

When a cab approached he flagged it down.

“I’m going to take a taxi the rest of the way,” he said, as he began to climb in.

“Professor, when will I be able to see you again?”

“Next week. Call me. Say it’s Sato from Q University. I’ll have my assistant put you through.”

The way he said it was a bit haughty, but I didn’t mind. I was happy.

Yoshizaki had recognized my talent, my superiority. What a fortunate chance meeting ours had been.

Once I made the crest of the hill on Dogenzaka Avenue, I turned to look back toward Shibuya Station. The road rose in a gentle curve. It was past midnight and a breeze had come up, fairly strong for October. It 3 7 6

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ruffled the hem of my Burberry coat. My armor during the day was a flowing cape; at night it became Superman’s cape. By day a businesswoman; by night a whore. Inside my cape was an attractive woman’s body. I was capable of using both my brains and my body to make money. Ha!

The taillights of a taxi winked at me between the trees along the avenue as it slowly made its progress up the hill. A ltttle faster and I would catch it, I thought. Tonight I looked beautiful, full of life. I turned down a narrow street lined with small shops. Perhaps I’d run across someone I know. Tonight of all nights I wanted to give the people at the firm a glimpse of my other self.

“You look like you’re having a good time.”

A businessman who appeared to be in his fifties called out to me, squinting as if into a dazzling light. His suit was gray and his dustcovered shoes were worn and shapeless. His suit jacket was open and the sleeve was being tugged down his arm by the strap of the heavy black shoulder bag he was lugging. I could see a men’s magazine stuffed inside the bag. His hair was mostly white and his face was gray and discolored as if he suffered from some kind of fiver disease. He looked like the kind of man who’d spread out the pages of a sports paper on a crowded train, oblivious to the discomfort of others; the kind of man always short of cash. Definitely not the type who’d have a job at a prestigious firm like mine. I smiled at him sweetly. Few men ever called out to me in the streets, even when I addressed them first.

“Are you on your way home?” he asked, somewhat timidly. His voice bore a trace of some kind of accent. Clearly he wasn’t from the city.

I nodded. “Yes, I am.”

“Well, would you like to stop off for a cup of tea with me or something?”

He clearly wasn’t interested in food or even booze. What were his intentions? I wondered. Was he trying to pick me up? Had he figured out I was a prostitute?

“That would be nice.”

I’ve got another customer! I felt my heart tighten with excitement.

And to have found him so soon on the heels of Yoshizaki. I had to be careful not to lose him; this was my lucky night.

The man looked down nervously. He wasn’t used to women. I could tell that he was afraid of what was going to transpire and I reverted back 3 7 7

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to my former self. When I first entered the water trade—you know, prostitution—it was the same for me. I didn’t really understand what men would want and I was full of anxiety. But now I knew. No, that’s not true. I still don’t know. Perplexed myself, I put my hand on the man’s arm. He wasn’t as pleased with my gesture as Yoshizaki had been and he shrank back instinctively. The hawker in front of the cabaret looked at me and laughed. Looks like you’ve snagged yourself an easy mark there, haven’t you, girlie? You bet I have, I thought, as I gazed back at the hawker, my confidence soaring. I’m having fun tonight.