A Woman's Nails

by Aonghas Crowe

  I thanked her for that.

  “Oh! Solly, solly!”

  “No problem.” Then, pointing to the army surplus pants she was wearing, I said, “Nice fatigues.”

  “Oh, sankyu, sankyu,” she replied happily. She then went on to utter the following barely comprehensible series of words: “Souss irandoh, Okinawa . . . recycle shoppu. . . I botto,” suggesting to me and the Glenfiddich running wildly through my system that Kazuko had bought the fatigues at a second hand store on the southern island of Okinawa. Really, if only Kazuko would speak Japanese, things would be so much better. I might find that I enjoyed speaking to this person rather than search for the nearest exit.

  Kazuko introduced me to her friend, who, like Kazuko, had all the femininity of a gym sock.

  The friend, whose name I can't for the life of me remember, saddled up next to me and proceeded to riddle my patience with the usual bullets: could I eat sushi and nattô, could I use chopsticks, could I read Chinese characters, and so on. Once she had exhausted her ammo—Questions-to-Ask-Gaijin—a welcomed silence fell between us. I considered being an arse, to throw the questions back at her, asking whether she liked hamburgers and hotdogs, or could use a knife and fork, but then I had already wasted enough time entertaining her as is. I might have been lonely, but, good God, I wasn't that lonely.

  I went to the beer cooler, took out a Heineken, paid the bartender, and returned to my bar stool where Kazuko’s friend was looking through some pamphlets on diving and windsurfing.

  “Are you my Bluebird of Happiness?” I asked.

  “Happy? Me? No,” she answered gloomily. “If I had more time, I’d like to take lessons.” She added that she was currently working ten hours a day, often six days a week.

  Ten hours a day, six days a week. Christ! I hated working the six days a week that I did, but I was still only putting in a grueling four hours or so a day. I confronted the unique and enviable dilemma each day of having far too much time on my hands. Much more than was good for me, because all I did with that time was stew, and stew, and stew, on my discontent. Being as busy as I had been last year in Kitakyûshû was a mixed blessing of sorts. I thought I was going to die like a proper Japanese salaryman of karôshi, death from overwork, but I now realize it was the only thing that kept me from dislocating myself from this world.

  4

  Before I could comment on Kazuko’s friend’s lamentable situation, an explosion of laughter like a tangle of firecrackers going off distracted me. Turning to my left, I discovered an attractive young woman, no a girl of eighteen or nineteen, sitting a few places down at the counter, between two men in suits. She had a lovely, narrow face with a broad smile, and large friendly eyes, eyelashes like brooms. Adorable and aware of it, she flirted shamelessly with the men at her sides and the narcissistic bartender who had stopped preening himself to lean in toward her.

  So much life and energy radiated from the girl, causing those lucky enough to be near her to cast long shadows. God, how I wanted to be with her rather than sitting with Kazuko’s friend who was giving my already cramped style the Mother of all Charlie horses.

  Kazuko’s friend tried her best, but inevitably failed, to draw me into a conversation. She mentioned music, the bands she liked, and, making the common mistake of assuming that having come from America would have favorably biased my tastes in such a way to provide the common ground upon which to walk together. She asked if I liked this band or that one. I replied, “No”, or “Not really”, or “You’ve gotta be joking, them? Hell no!”

  Even the most aggressive of women would have packed up her bags and moved on, but this woman was unrelenting. Now that I think about it, Kazuko's friend must have been even lonelier than me.

  As I was grunting my way through another series of questions, I watched the girl as she dismounted her barstool. To my surprise she was rather short, her shoulders just level with the counter. From the way she had carried herself, drawing the attention of the men around her, I had expected her to be much taller, as physically striking as her presence was. The unexpected contrast only aroused my interest further.

  She was wearing a tight-fitting cream-colored crepe dress that revealed the modest, yet soft curves of her slender body. As she made her way towards the restroom at the rear of the bar I’m sure I watched her like a starving animal kept its eye on its prey.

  The two men who had been sitting beside her, stood up, descended the half flight of steps, passed through the crowd of people below and left. When the girl emerged from the restroom I assumed she would leave, as well, but she didn’t. She returned to her place at the counter, and, turning towards me, asked over the loud music where I was from.

  “America,” I shouted back, leaning over the bar towards her. “Amerika. Amerika no Oregon Shû.”

  “Oregon Shû des'ka?” she asked, then turned to the bartender and asked where Oregon was.

  The bartender shrugged, so I explained with elaborate gestures where the mossy state lie in conjunction to sunny California.

  We chatted for a while, and boy, what a charming lad Peador can be when properly motivated! The very same questions which Kazuko’s friend had me bored to tears with were now as welcome as a break in the rain. Could I use chopsticks? Why, of course, I could. I picked up the pair of waribashi chopsticks on the counter before me and fumbled clumsily with them, producing another explosion of firecrackers. And could she use a knife and fork, I asked, eliciting more of that cloud bursting laughter.

  And, just as I was starting to worry that I might exhaust the limited resources of my poor Japanese, the DJ, God bless him, put The Doors’ “Light My Fire” on the turntable and made the chance encounter one I may never forget. So happy I was to hear the song and so full of Glenfiddich and Heineken that I began crooning along with my old pal Jim.

  The girl climbed off her stool and walked over to the cramped DJ booth, and, standing on the very tips of her toes, said something to the DJ.

  Looking at her figure from behind, her slim, naked legs below the hem of her dress, her narrow waist and the bare shoulders, I slid off of the barstool and stepped over towards her. “I take it, you like the Doors?”

  “I like Doahzu!” she replied with evangelical zeal.

  She asked if I, too, liked The Doors, and when I replied that I did, she squeezed my hand and kissed me on the cheek. This was followed by several more questions which when affirmed were rewarded with playful kisses on the forehead, the nose, and, before I knew it, on the lips. Needless to say, I quickly grew into the habit of providing Yeses to her questions, like a dog salivating at Pavlov’s bell. She could have given me the same list of horseshit bands Kazuko’s friend had just asked me about and I would have leapt up clapping singing the praises of Bon Jovi and Mr. Big if only to get one more kiss from her.

  When the DJ put on The Doors' “Touch me”, she meowed like a cat, and scratched playfully at my face. “You like Doahzu?” she asked again.

  “Of course. I love them!”

  “You like me?”

  “I do.”

  She kissed me softly, slowly on the lips, then asked: “You love me?”

  Pulling her into my arms, I whispered into her ear that I did, and returned the kiss. It was no lie. I loved the way she looked, the smell of her long dark brown hair, the softness of her lips. She was exactly what the baumkuchen wrapper had promised, with the only exception that instead of a bluebird I’d been visited by a cat.

  “Call me Nekko-chan,” she said, arching her back and meowing.

  “Nekko-chan.”

  “Nyao.”

  “Meow.”

  5

  I’ve always found it easy to forget where I am and how much time has passed whenever encapsulated in the cocoon of alcohol and lust. Nekko-chan and I carried on like cats in heat and, if Kazuko hadn’t tapped me on the shoulder to announce that she and her friend were leaving, I would have gleefully fucked the girl right there on the spot against the beer cooler, bottles of Heineken and
Asahi Super Dry rattling away, the fluorescent light flickering madly. Reluctantly, I removed my tongue from Nekko-chan’s throat said my good-byes and nice-meeting-yous, but once Kazuko and her friend were out the door, Nekko and I were back it, as shameless as Adam and Eve before the apple.

  After being under for only Lord knows how long, Nekko-chan and I finally broke to the surface and breathed in the stale, smoke-filled air of the now half-deserted bar. Most of the customers at the counter had left, the heat of their arses on the bar stools having cooled, and below on the small, dimly lit dance floor only a few girls remained, jerking mechanically like dashboard hula dolls to the music.

  Nekko-chan bought two Coronas, then taking me by the hand led me out of Umie and onto the crowded street. I sat down on the hard corner of a large concrete planter, overgrown with weeds.

  Nekko-chan hiked her dress up and, straddling me, revealed thighs so white the blue veins shown through the ivory veneer of her skin. I put my hand on her knee, traced the skin up and under the skirt the edge of her panties. Following the line downward with my thumb, I found a few hairs and toyed with them.

  She tapped my arm, saying, “Dah-mé, dah-mé.”

  Having been on second base, sucking each others faces dry, for, I checked my watch, well over an hour, I was eager to round third and steal home.

  “Ah, zannen,” I replied. What a pity.

  “Mah-da, mah-da.”

  Not yet? What was that supposed to mean? Not yet, tonight? Not yet, here on the pavement? Not yet, in this lifetime?

  She asked again me if I loved her.

  “I do.”

  “Nande?”

  “Because, you're my Bluebird of Happiness.”

  Corny as it was, it was the truth. Thanks to Nekko-chan, I was able to stop thinking about Mie for once. Kissing her was a far stronger anesthetic than the alcohol I had been drowning in all these months. Nekko-chan kissed me on the lips and hugged me so tight I nearly fell off the planter.

  “I love you, too, . . . Namae wa nani deshtakke?” (What was your name again?)

  “Peador.”

  “Pay-doh-roo?”

  “Hai, Pay-doh-roo.”

  “I love you, too, Pay-doh-roo, demo . . .”

  “But what?”

  She brushed the hair from my eyes, kissed me tenderly on the nose and said, “We can’t date.”

  “Nande?”

  “Gaijin dakara.”

  “Because I’m a foreigner? Nekko-chan, to me you’re the gaijin.”

  I suppose it could have hurt to be told such a thing, but then I knew where she was coming from. Even Mie had worried that people would consider her a “yellow cab” for dating a gaijin. Besides, I wasn’t really pinning my hopes on Nekko-chan being The One. A Pentecostal moment with her naked and screaming in tongues above me, however, would not have been a bad consolation.

  But, therein lay the rub. How was I going to whisk Nekko-chan off my lap and into my futon? It may not have been the Bataan Death March back to my apartment, but it was still quite a hike back, especially for a woman in heels. I didn’t have the money for a cab, let alone for a “rest” at one of the love hotels nearby. And, like most good Japanese girls, even those who drink themselves silly in bars and pick up the first warm gaijin they meet, Nekko-chan, I assumed lived with her parents.

  I asked if she did and she nodded her head. So, there would be no going back to her rabbit hutch, either.

  Still, what with me being mad out of it, and Nekko-chan sloppy with the drink, I was determined to get her back to my miserable little apartment, even if I had to piggy-back the girl the whole damn way.

  “Uchi ni konai ka?” I asked. (Wanna come back to my place?)

  “Iya.”

  “No?” I asked again, but she was dead set against it.

  Well, that didn’t work, and neither would trying to ply her with more alcohol; Nekko-chan was full as a boot already.

  She dropped her Corona, the bottle crashing against the pavement and sending shards of glass and foam everywhere. As we were standing up to go back into Umie she knocked over a bicycle. When she stopped abruptly to hug me in front of the bar, she bumped into a scooter, sending it rolling slowly off the curb and toppling into the street. No, another drink was a not a good idea: it would only have her scurrying off to the jakes, genuflecting before the porcelain altar, rather than getting down on her knees before me.

  So, we ventured back into Umie, back into the darkness, back into the noise. But, rather than ascend the steps and return to the counter, we parked ourselves on the lower level, just off the small dance floor, in a darkened corner which promised to conceal our affections better than the fluorescent brightness of the beer cooler had.

  Nekko-chan dragged a stool over, and patted the seat. Once I sat down on it, I lifted her light body up, and set her down on my lap. Then, brushing the soft black hair away, I kissed her forehead. I kissed her small nose, her cheeks, her lips, and nibbled at her lovely slender neck.

  Blame it, if you like, on the courage of the alcohol that was coursing though my veins, or humor me by accepting that a man could be so enamored of the beauty of a woman in his arms as to blindly stretch the taunt ligaments of propriety until they snapped. Had it been any other night, with any other girl, anywhere else on this whirling merry-go-round of ours, I doubt I would have done what I did that night with Nekko-chan on my lap in a dark corner of Umie. Spreading her legs slightly, I moved my hand tenderly up her leg until I touched her panties.

  Women have a way of letting you get within a diving chance of home before they come to their senses and tag you out, ending the game without a run. I expected the same from Nekko-chan. But, rather than push my hand away, she spread her legs further. Leaning back, and tilting her lovely face upward, she opened that wonderfully broad mouth of hers and sucked me in. And, so that I would not misinterpret the cabbalistic nuances of the female language, she grabbed onto my family jewels and began buffing away.

  Gauche from excitement and drink, I tugged clumsily at her panties, as you do, managing to yank them with the delicacy of a blitzkrieg over her small bottom, down to just above her knees.

  Nekko-chan adjusted herself on my lap, and invited me to venture further into her garden, to pick the flowers, so to speak.

  There beyond the gates, the soil was in good tilth, fertile and wet. Running my hands through it like a furrow, a tremor rocked through her body. I removed my hand and inhaled her fragrance on my fingers. Nekko-chan took my hand, and with a seductive purr, motioned for me to continue.

  Hidden among the dewy folds of sepal and calyx was her flower, a lovely little daisy. I plucked one of the petals, producing a moan. She loves me. Plucking another, she answered with silence. She loves me not. I plucked again and Nekko-chan's mouth parted as if to say something, but produced a heavy sighing, “Nya~o.” She loves me. She loves me. She loves me.

  With her head leaning back all they way against the wall, I watched the expressions on her pretty little face. The eyes were half open and turned up, nothing but white staring at me. Her broad mouth opened wider, and a whimper emanated past quivering lips. I continued to work at it, and as I did her body grew increasingly rigid until, exhaling one last time with a deep moan, she wilted in my arms.

  When I stopped, her eyes cracked open, slowly and unsurely, as if she were emerging from a deep sleep. She looked forlornly into my eyes, and after a moment kissed me tenderly. Then, taking my hand, the hand that had given her so much pleasure, she kissed it, licking each finger one at a time, all the way down my palm and to my tired wrist, kissing my hand as it had never been kissed before. Then, taking my sweating face into her small hands, she kissed me good-bye.

  6

  It kills me that I forgot to get Nekko-chan's number or give her mine. I returned to Umie the next night and the following, came again last night and am here for the fifth time in a week pissing my salary away one cheap drink at a time hoping she would reappear and bring a little happiness my way
.

  Where the Devil are ya, Nekko-chan?

  I’ve never spoken much with Umie’s bartenders. Don’t care much for the guys, to be honest, what with the way they stand behind the counter preening themselves like exotic birds. They wouldn’t know service if it came up and spat in their pretty faces. Still, I crawl through the mutual indifference that lies between us like a craggy, barren no-man’s land and ask them whether they have seen Nekko-chan. They haven’t, but they’re happy I ask because it gives them the opportunity to poke a little fun at me rather than merely ignore me as they have all week.

  Growing up like I did with six older brothers and sisters, you develop a high tolerance for pain, and a Teflon coating. Jokes played at your expense don't usually stick. So, I don’t take the teasing seriously the way a pantywaist or an only-child might. I smile when they kid me, laugh heartily at my own expense. I even inflate my chest with pride when they call me a playboy, but deep down I’m in pain.

  “Play with girls,” Shinobu had advised. I did and, for a few heavenly hours, I managed to forget all about Mie, the loneliness and the longing. But, the nail that was soundly driven into her coffin popped right back up, and just like a strong anesthetic wearing off, I now ache more than before.

  The boys behind the bar continue to laugh and mimic the way Nekko-chan and I were groping each other. They have no idea what going through my mind as I try hard to get drunk, try to numb my emotions, so I can pretend to be the ladykiller they have worked me out to be. And now that I’ve drunk more than ten bottles of Heineken, one after the other, like a chain smoker sucking on fags, I finally give up on ever seeing Nekko-chanagain. I get up and leave Umie.

  The weekend will soon be over with little to show for it save a hangover, a heavier heart and a lighter wallet.

  “Peador, the playboy walks home,” I say to myself. “Sometimes, it’s best to give the poor girls a break and spend some time alone.”