Tuvalu (2 page)

I half opened it, anticipating a searing slap. Instead I was greeted by feathers. This plumage was arranged in lush, navy blue balls at her temples, and in seductive, fiery red fingers around her neck, sliding towards her throat lustfully to entice and possess and strangle her all at once. Beneath them was a beige leather necklace, also tight. Its pale beads reminded me of macadamias.

‘Good,' she said lazily, before I could say a word about the feathers. ‘It is you.' If Mami noticed the mess on the floor or my mounting discomfort she said nothing about either, only, ‘I got lost.'

‘Like I said, it's a mess, sorry.'

She stepped in, faintly amused. Her eyes, the top lids a vivid blue, were narrowed, and her orange-red lips curled in a half-smile, accentuating angular cheekbones. She circled the pile of feminine knick-knacks on the floor without concern. When she removed her cashmere coat, her long, glossy black hair slid over it like oil. Underneath she had on a light satin print dress with small feathers, all in muted whites, blues, reds and an understated gold. She touched her finger to an inky strand of hair placed diagonally across her forehead, as if to make sure it was still in place, then crossed to my window and determinedly stuck her head out, checking left and right.

‘I always forget things if I don't stop to check,' she said. ‘But I don't think I had anything with me. Don't you hate days when you have nothing with you? I always step off trains and panic, thinking I've left my bag on a seat or something. It feels wrong to have nothing, wouldn't you say?' She turned, caught my eyes on her slender, shapely bottom and smiled. I averted my gaze and began toying with a long red hair on my bed until it occurred to me what it was—what I was drawing attention to. I brushed it aside. Mami set her coat on my desk and returned to the window.

‘It's a dull coat, isn't it?' she said, looking not at the coat, but at the discarded hair. I could see thin, grey, smoke-like rings at the outermost edges of her irises. These, I knew, came and went depending on the light and her mood. ‘It's the bit that won't fit. The rest is Zandra Rhodes, British
Vogue
, December 1970.'

She returned to my desk and sat on the edge. She removed the blue feathers but left the red where they were, tenderly choking her. I tried not to glance at the magazines or perfume, at anything belonging to Tilly. But it was all there in the middle of the room like a police haul, impossible to ignore. It seemed the more I tried to avert my gaze, the more my eyes drifted to it.

‘I told myself,' Mami said, setting the blue feathers atop the coat, ‘that I didn't want this coat. It's not that I don't like it. Actually, no, that is it.'

‘I like it.'

Mami frowned. ‘The coat? You don't. Or you shouldn't. I've worn it in public now though, so I can throw it in the bin with a clear conscience.' She sucked in air. ‘God I'm talking a lot. And about nothing. Were you really sleeping when I arrived?'

‘I was.'

She looked around my room, confused. ‘This is it? This is everything?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘There are no other rooms?'

‘No, this is it.' I was embarrassed. I had never been embarrassed by my hostel room before. Everyone in Nakamura's inhabited the same cramped quarters, after all. Had the same splotchy yellow carpet, the same faded green curtains, the same bed with hundreds of lewd messages chiselled into its cheap pine frame. If anything, my room was a notch up on most. It had a wardrobe, cast-iron desk and antique lamp. But looking at Mami's amazed face I felt like a bum. I suppose it had to do with knowing she lived on the top floor of a plush Tokyo hotel, with knowing her father was a prominent Japanese hotelier. I picked up a few magazines and straightened them ineffectually, as though this might lend the room a certain elegance.

‘You know,' Mami said, as if the idea had only just occurred to her, ‘it's a good day to get out—a good day for Odaiba.'

‘What's odaiba?'

‘Traditional Japanese wig-making,' she said, face deadpan. When I nodded she groaned. ‘Foreigners! A place, idiot. Odaiba's a place. A fun place, as it happens. But we'll have to go now or we won't have time. Actually, no, that's a lie—we'll have plenty of time. But let's go.'

‘I can't. I have plans, sorry.'

‘What plans?'

But I could not conjure a single plausible engagement.

‘Nothing?' Mami asked, amused. ‘Of course not. You're too shy to have plans.'

‘Can you at least give me a minute to get changed?'

Mami pretended to think this over, then rolled her eyes and nodded.

‘With you outside,' I added.

She tilted her head. ‘I've already seen it, remember? Don't be such a prude.'

In the end I changed just my T-shirt while Mami made a point of staring out the window. My body tingled at the suggestion of sexual familiarity. It willed me to act until I caught sight of my bony shoulders, ribs and soup-white skin in the mirror. I hurriedly covered myself. I was a coward. Only drink—for which I had a genetic frailty— had facilitated the encounter leading to Mami's present visit. And now, paradoxically, I despised myself as much for having succumbed in the first place as I did for not attempting to do so again.

‘Can I smoke in here?' Mami asked, rummaging through her coat. ‘I have cigarettes somewhere. Normally I don't smoke, but your stress is making me want to. You look like you are about to do everything incredibly quickly—finish dressing, brush your teeth, eat a cereal bar. Like Superman. One colourful blur. Except you're too stressed so you've stalled. I need a cigarette.'

‘Go ahead.'

‘Don't worry, I'll smoke out the window.'

‘You don't have to.'

But Mami did anyway, drawn perhaps by a clinking of bottles and down-shifting of gears as the recycling truck came to a halt. I noticed a packet of tampons on the sill.

‘I really like this area,' she said, sitting beside the tampons, body half in, half out of the room. ‘It's nowhere at all.' She puffed a long cigarette ineffectually until her body stiffened. ‘Is that gospel music?'

‘I can't hear anything.'

‘It is. Ugh! Down there somewhere.' She pointed along the exterior of the hostel.

‘That's probably Catalina,' I said. ‘Is it Portuguese? She's here with a church. Don't let her see you or—' I stopped.

‘Or?'

‘She hates smokers.'

Mami burst out laughing. ‘You're a terrible liar, Noah. Do you know that? You're lucky. That's what first appealed to me about you in that horrible dark bar.' She picked up the packet of tampons and dropped them on my desk. Then she swung her long legs around and dangled them out the window, so that only her bottom was left inside. She showed no regard for the satin dress. I strained to hear her voice.

‘You were given a five thousand yen note and coins, remember? Change for drinks you never bought. I would have shot out of the place, never looked back. Anyone would have. But not you. You couldn't keep a hold of it. Dropping the coins, then chasing them round. “Excuse, exc—, excuse me? This note, this isn't … This isn't mine.” ' Laughter, possibly forced, took a hold of Mami. She coughed and waved off smoke. ‘I was charmed though, Noah, really. You have to understand, I learnt to lie from liars. Every liar does. Learns from watching others lie, or worse, from being lied to—from believing.'

‘Charmed?'

‘You were something new to me.'

‘How so?'

‘It didn't enter your head to steal that money, did it?'

‘No.'

‘See. I'd reached a point where I didn't believe people like you existed.' Mami again began to laugh. ‘Sorry, I shouldn't laugh, I know. I don't even know why I'm like this. I've been doing it all morning and for no reason. Always at the stupidest things. But I loved that stammer of yours. I heard it and I thought, Mami, here's someone who won't ever lie to you.'

‘Because I can't?'

‘Exactly.'

Then, as if Mami had seen something awful in the alleyway—a car crash or murder—her laugh cut out. When she faced me again her eyes narrowed. I had the sensation that all fun, all warmth had flooded from her.

‘So tell me again,' she said, ‘why you don't want this Catalina girl to see me?'

‘Because she's a friend of my girlfriend, Matilda.'

Mami nodded, threw her still-lit cigarette into the street and rolled her legs back into my room. The very edges of the feathers at her throat flashed white in the sunlight. I thought she was angry—leaving. But I glimpsed amusement in her face, and she flopped casually onto my bed.

‘Matilda's the girl you share this room with?'

‘Yes.'

‘And where's she?'

‘In Australia, visiting her father.'

Mami smiled—a full, beautiful smile revealing straight, white teeth, teeth with a confidence all of their own. I shifted uneasily.

‘To Odaiba,' she said.

Our train trip out to sleek Odaiba was unremarkable, except for the fact that Mami stole her ticket. While I was slotting change into the ticket machine she set her face in a pout and strode up to the stationmaster. I had no inkling of what it was she was doing or why she was upset. Nor could I understand a word she was saying. But her pleading tone was clear. There was something she wanted from this fat, balding man, something she was not meant to have. He peered through his window with the tired, resigned look of a harangued civil servant. Only when Mami shot him an awful look did he shrug, print a ticket and slide it under the screen. He looked unhappy with the whole affair but nevertheless bowed his head when thanked.

Mami found me at a newsstand reading an English newspaper which featured, among other things, the weather and a photo of a schoolboy, hand in his mother's, glossy red backpack strapped tightly on, returning to school for the winter term. I held up my ticket. Mami took an excessively firm hold of my wrist and flung me through a ticket gate.

‘Hurry up,' she said. ‘You're too slow.' She dragged me through clumps of people, up stairs, around rubbish bins and into a train.

‘What was that all about?' I asked.

‘What?'

‘Before, with the ticket guy.'

‘Oh, that. I lost my ticket.'

‘Lost it? You had a ticket?'

Mami thought for a moment, chewing at the inside of her lip. A number of commuters glanced at her, at her dress and the red feathers. She had dropped her cashmere coat in the bin outside the hostel. ‘No. Not really. But I told him I did.'

‘So you stole this ride?'

She recoiled playfully. ‘What are you talking about?'

‘You stole your ticket.'

‘Stole? So I'm a common thief now? Is that what you're saying?' Still smiling, Mami jutted out her jaw. ‘Okay. For how long then? Exactly?'

‘How long what?'

‘How long will I be a thief?'

I shrugged. ‘Until the end of this trip?'

Mami swivelled to look out the window, thinking. ‘I can live with that,' she said finally.

We sat in silence after this. Mami pulled a rubber band from somewhere, stretched it, then curled it on her fingers. Around us, commuters typed messages into phones, did make-up with hand mirrors, slept, drank and exchanged furtive sexual glances. People's lives spilling into trains uninterrupted. The train as bathroom, bedroom and bar.

We somehow changed climates in the space of this fifteen-minute train trip, because when we stepped onto the platform in Odaiba it was snowing big, cumbersome flakes. I had never seen it snow in Tokyo. I watched as Mami held out her hands, trying to catch whatever flakes she could, but they swirled around her open palms and down onto wet concrete.

‘To hell with snow,' she mumbled, wrapping her arms around her body, hunching her head and marching me on. Outside the station two young girls in bright pink parkas jumped excitedly, hands up as if snatching fruit from an unseen tree.