Women On the Other Shore (19 page)

These words were lost on Aoi. As when her friend had declared that nothing scared her, she assumed they were mere bravado.

They both fell silent as they sat and sipped at their juice. Suddenly a key rattled in the front door, and several high school girls came in. They wore a style of uniform Aoi had never seen before, with skirts that went nearly to their ankles, like kimono, and they had makeup caked on as thick as an actress on stage.

Ignoring Aoi and Nanako, the gaggle of girls trooped noisily into the adjoining tatami room, then reemerged several minutes later dressed in gaudy street clothes and went out the door again. Breathing the powerful perfume they left in their wake, Aoi watched them go with her mouth agape. She half wondered if Nanako was letting strangers use her apartment as a changing room.

"My little sister and her pals," Nanako explained with a little chuckle, her eyes averted. "You saw the dogface with the heaviest makeup and the tightest perm? That's my sister."

Aoi started home about the time the cracked cement wall opposite the window turned orange in the evening light. Her friend came along to the bus stop and stood with her until the bus arrived. While they waited, they joked and laughed and talked about one thing and another exactly the way they always did. As if Aoi had never set foot in Nanako's house. As if Aoi had seen nothing, and nothing had 145

been revealed. And ever since that day, Aoi had stopped trying to learn anything more about Nanako's private life. Whether the things her classmates said about Nanako were true or not, she, at least, was determined to hold her gaze on the Nanako she could see with her own two eyes.

As the weeks went by, Aoi remained unable to resolve the dispar-ity between the smiling girl in front of her and the home she had visited that day. Only after leaving Izu did the image of Nanako growing up in that hollow ruin of an apartment begin to make sense to her. She realized she really hadn't known anything about the real Nanako.

Aoi had told her parents she'd be home on August 24, but both that day and the day school was scheduled to start went by without the slightest sign of concern from Nanako. It apparently never occurred to her that they could be picked up as truants, or that somebody might see their pictures in a missing-persons bulletin and report them to the police. Far from being weighed down by such worries, she seemed to gain new vitality with each passing day.

Nanako was the one who suggested they try staying at love hotels.

Since most inns and B&Bs charged per person, even the cheapest places were always going to set them back six to seven thousand yen a night, she said, but love hotels charged by the room, so they should be able to stay for well under six thousand, especially if they took advantage of bargain time. Plus they provided things in the rooms that other places didn't. When Aoi asked what bargain time was, Nanako explained matter-of-factly that after a certain time at night, usually around ten o'clock, you could stay until nine or ten the next morning for virtually the same price you'd pay for a two-hour "rest."

When they got off the train at Oiso, they had to walk quite a distance before finally coming to a cluster of love hotels along Highway 1, skirting the coastline. An aura of illicitness hovered over the entire area, and Aoi's steps faltered as she fought off a sudden attack of the jitters unlike any she'd ever experienced before. But Nanako picked a hotel and marched right in without the slightest hesitation. Affecting a practiced air, she studied the panel that showed the available rooms, pushed a button, and took the key from the slot. Aoi stood and stared, as if watching a stranger from some unknown land.

In the less t h a n two weeks since they left Mickey and Minnie's Place, Aoi had noted with growing alarm how quickly their money disappeared on just food and shelter, so both the lower cost and the extras that came with the room were a welcome change. The cheap hotels they'd used before this hadn't even provided shampoo, but the love hotels typically supplied not only shampoo and rinse but facial wash and lotion, sanitary napkins, cotton swabs, and even potato chips and coffee.

Aoi admired Nanako's street smarts and pluck, and was grateful for them, but at the same time she felt more strongly than ever the presence of the impenetrable void she'd first sensed at the station in Imaihama. T h e boldness Nanako demonstrated contained a reckless, self-abandoned element that somehow reminded Aoi of the apartment she had seen, with its all but forsaken air.

T h e void she had glimpsed in Nanako stirred faint feelings of dread in Aoi, but it also held a strong attraction for her. Its deep, dark emptiness was like a black hole whose powerful gravitational field could vacuum up all fear and anxiety and misfortune and hesitation and boredom and hatred—and every other brand of negative energy that swirled about in this world—and let her feel at ease.

"You know what, Nanako?"

In the bathroom of a love hotel named Extracurricular Lessons in Chigasaki several days later, Aoi raised her voice to be heard over the sound of the shower. Nanako was rinsing peroxide from her hair in the glass-enclosed splash area next to the bathtub, her body wrapped in a towel.

A scare they'd had two days before this, when a woman who acted 147

like she might be a truant officer came up to them at a supermarket in town, had led them to make some adjustments. Since the large nylon bags they both carried attracted too much attention, they cut their luggage to a minimum by dumping all their extra clothing, towels, swimsuits, sunscreen, and anything else they didn't absolutely need in a trash bin at the station. One thing they hung onto was the makeup Ryoko had given them, which they plastered on to make themselves look older. And a little while ago they'd bought a bottle of peroxide at the drugstore to bleach their hair.

"What?" Nanako's answer was muffled by the spray of the shower.

"When I'm with you, I feel like I can do anything," Aoi said, leaning against the wall of the dressing area.

Nanako twisted the handle and the shower fell silent.

"Of course we can do anything," came her utterly self-assured reply.

Aoi no longer felt nervous or hesitated as they approached the heavy upholstered door. She knew all the discos were basically the same.

On the edge of the commercial district east of Yokohama Station flowed a small river whose banks were lined with food stalls. Aoi vaguely recalled her father warning her in junior high to stay away from that part of town because it wasn't safe. She didn't realize this was the place her father meant until she and Nanako had already made several trips to the discos in the area.

They pushed through the door and were enveloped in a darkness filled with deafening sound and continually flashing colored lights.

The floor in the middle of the room was jammed with dancers like a commuter train at rush hour. Not even glancing at the dance floor, Aoi and Nanako found a table in the corner. They took turns watching their things while the other went to fill up a plate at the buffet. T h e menu remained mostly the same from one day to the next: greasy macaroni gratin, dried out pasta, soggy fried chicken, oversalted fries. Today they also found steamed dumplings, pizza slices, and toasted rice balls. T h e girls sat across from each other with their plates piled high, tucking away their main meal of the day without a word. Aoi glanced at their reflections in the wall of mirrors. There sat Nanako, her hair a shocking blond; across from her was Aoi, who'd learned from Nanako's mistake and achieved a good shade of brown. They both looked like strangers to her. On the floor the dancers were now gyrating to the sounds of Kajagoogoo.

"This sure beats t h e other day."

"You mean the Love Queen? Gag. That place was bad."

"Shall I go get some sodas?"

"Let's wait. We still might get somebody to buy us whiskey sours or something."

This was the third week of September. For a week now, the two of them had been wandering around Yokohama, staying at love hotels near stations like Hiranumabashi and Shin-Yokohama and Higashi-Kanagawa. They looked for work during the day, going without lunch, and in the evening they found a disco having a ladies'

night or handing out discount coupons and filled their stomachs at the all-you-can-eat buffets. When they were lucky, college students or young workers would come over to chat them up and buy them drinks, and in one case they made a date to meet again several days later and the guys had paid their admission.

As they were eating, a man in a business suit approached with beads of sweat standing out on his forehead.

"Aren't you girls gonna dance? You keep eating like that, you'll wind up like pigs."

Aoi sneaked a peek at Nanako, who shot her a look. Getting the message, she ignored the man and went on twirling her fork in her pasta.

149

"Snooty bitches," he spat out as he walked away.

The music changed to Earth, Wind
&
Fire and a cheer erupted from the dance floor.

Aoi herself couldn't tell the difference between this man and the twenty-year-old office worker who'd treated them to bowls of ramen the night before, but Nanako seemed to have a sixth sense that told her whether a guy was safe or not. Aoi had no way of verifying how often her friend actually got it right, but at least so far, following her instincts had not gotten them in trouble.

It was just about eighteen months since Aoi had left Yokohama, but she felt nothing on her return: neither nostalgia nor loathing. It was as if she had come to a town she'd never seen before, and she was surprised to find it such a lively place. No doubt she would have the same reaction if she went to Isogo Ward, where they had actually lived. After all, she'd done nothing but watch her step all those years; she'd never had a chance to look up at the sky overhead or buildings and signboards around her. If she'd never really gotten to know the town she lived in then, why should she have any feelings for it now?

They'd come to Yokohama hoping to find work. When they left Mickey and Minnie's Place, they had the money they each started out with and the rainy day funds Aoi's mother gave her, plus the pay they'd received from Ryoko—altogether about Y450,000. But despite staying at love hotels, washing their clothes by hand, walking if it wasn't too far, and going without breakfast and lunch as well as in-between snacks, their money was melting away at an alarm-ing rate, leaving them with barely ¥200,000 after less than a month.

Aoi started keeping accounts in the notebook she'd been using for English, hoping to turn up some nonessential expenses they could eliminate, but found they were only spending on necessities. Their biggest splurge was when they bought themselves one long-sleeve outfit each after arriving in Yokohama.

ISO

They needed to get serious about looking for work, so one night at a hotel in Tanmachi they filled out resume forms, entering fake information for everything but their names, and the next day they began making the rounds of the job boards tucked down passage-ways in underground malls and retail towers like Porta and Joinus and More's and Lumine, applying for every opening they could find. When necessary, they split up, one of them looking for new listings while the other went on interviews. But whether because their resumes looked suspect or their bleached hair sent the wrong message, they kept getting turned down day after day. For the time being, going to discos gave them the best return on their money.

The buffet tables were all-you-can-eat, and they had a good chance of getting someone to buy them drinks or treat them to a late-night snack.

Several others came up to their table that night, but Nanako blew them all off. When it was after ten, they got up and headed for the door. A slow number was playing, and pink spotlights swept back and forth across the couples swaying in each other's arms on the dance floor.

Bare bulbs lit up the food stalls lining the riverbank, their reflections flickering on the water. An endless stream of cars could be heard speeding by on the expressway overhead, and the lights from buildings all around brightened the nighttime sky. Two middle-aged drunks staggered past shoulder to shoulder, slurring the words of an off-key song as they barely managed to hold each other upright.

A pair of lovebirds came along arm in arm, lost in their private rap-ture. The voice of Madonna spilled from the open door of a coffee shop. A ridiculously low-slung car crawled by with its windows rolled down and techno music blaring from speakers.

Until coming here with Nanako, Aoi had never actually seen any of Yokohama's nightlife. She found it dazzling and loud and gay, without the slightest hint of a shadow anywhere. Or maybe, she 151

thought, the exuberance she felt came not from the attractions of Yokohama itself but just from being with Nanako.

As she took in the color and clamor of nighttime Yokohama, Aoi thought of her mother. She felt truly and deeply sorry for her—for the woman who deluded herself about the glorious life she used to live in this town, and who couldn't stop looking down her nose at everything since their move. Her mother had to be absolutely furious with her right now. She'd implied more than once that Aoi had only herself to blame for the bullying. After bringing it all on herself and forcing the entire family to move away to the country just for her, Aoi had run merrily off without a care—there could be little doubt that this was how her mother viewed her disappearance.

She'd never be able to forgive her for it, the poor woman. She would probably pass the rest of her days in that town she so detested, complaining without end, regarding everything around her with all the contempt she could muster, and flitting unhappily from one dreary job to another.

"I was hoping we could get someone to take us to Penguin's Bar again," Nanako said. "But we didn't meet any deep pockets today."

"You liked the place that much?"

"Sort of, I guess. I mean, we had such a good time when that guy took us there the other day."

"Well, some days are bound to be washouts. You have the key to our coin locker, right?"

"Yeah, I've got it. Where do you wanna go tonight? That hotel over toward Mitsuzawa? I liked that place, didn't you?"