A Woman's Nails

by Aonghas Crowe

  There’s no response. I shouldn’t really expect any differently. Japanese are so accustomed to the sweet sound of honeyed words that the hint of criticism can come off like nails on a blackboard, especially for someone as sensitive as Yumi.

  “You come here a lot, don’t you?” she says. There’s a prosecutorial sharpness to her tone.

  “Y-yes, I s-suppose I do.”

  “You come here for the easy women, don’t you?”

  “W-w-what?”

  “You come here. You pick up women, and take them home.” The overheated two-stroke engine in her head has finally blown a gasket. “I know you. I know your type,” she accuses. “I know how you . . . how you . . . eat women!”

  Eat women?

  I am too flabbergasted to know what to say. I mean, if it were any other woman, I’d think I was being hit upon, and would raise an eyebrow and reply with a suave, “Yesh, yesh, I do eat women.” But no, this is Yumi speaking and she’s got anger and jealousy and scorn and vindictiveness written all over her ugly face.

  Listen: when I was a child, anytime my parents, my teachers or even an older sibling accused me of something that I didn't do, a nervous, awkward laugh would sneak out from between my lips and betray my innocence.

  “Eat the cake? Me? Heh, heh, heh. No, n-not me. I, heh, heh, heh, d-didn’t even touch . . .” And then I’d get hit up side of the head so hard my future children would feel it. “Ma, I didn’t eat the cake! Honest!”

  “A very likely story,” Ma would say as she shoved the bar of soap into my mouth for the additional sin of lying. Meanwhile my brother Padraig would be in his room, humming as he licked the chocolate frosting off his fingers.

  So, the little nervous laugh bubbles up, condemning me once again and convincing Yumi beyond a doubt that she is right, which gives her all the more reason to resent me and the injustice of the world where scoundrels like myself can do whatever they damn well please and get away Scot-free.

  “Look, Yumi,” I say. “You have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. You think you know everything, but, I’m sorry to say this, you haven’t got a goddamn clue. You think you’re in a gaijin bar, but you’re not. You think I can come into a place like this and pick up any girl I like just because I'm a gaijin. But if that’s the case, Miss Smarty Pants, why the hell am I always alone? You think Japanese girls just throw themselves at foreign guys, but, you know what? The only woman who has ever thrown herself at me is . . . you!”

  “Saitei!” she says, and, uncoiling like a spring, her hand rises swiftly to slap me.

  Only by the grace of our Lord in Heaven do I manage to block her hand.

  “Ha hah! Foiled again!” I say.

  So what does Yumi do, next? She takes her beer, pours it over my head, and leaves the bar in a huff.

  18

  URARA

  1

  My summer vacation, if you could call it that, begins in earnest the moment Yumi leaves me, drenched in beer at Umie. For the next nine days, I don’t have to endure her forlorn glances and heavy sighs, the sarcasm of Reina, or the summary reprimands of my unpredictable boss, Abazuré.

  Blame it on the dreary weather we’ve been having, but I’ve been as homesick as a recruit in boot camp lately. It’s tempting to blow my meager savings on a ticket back to the States, to see my friends and, yes, even my family.

  I miss it all: lazy summer evenings at the zoo, sitting on freshly cut grass and listening to live music; sweaty nights on crowded dance floors in the smoke-filled dives of Old Town; slow Sunday mornings reading the Oregonian over huge American breakfasts; and Bohemian afternoons loafing in cafes in Northwest Portland, sipping demitasses of bitter espresso, the pinky raised ever so sophisticatedly.

  And my mind must be poisoned by nostalgia, because I don’t think I’d even mind being dragged along to the Sunday morning Mass at St. Cecelia's. I could check out how the gorgeous Dougherty girls have filled out in my absence, listen again to the nonsensical sermon of our stuttering and apoplectic Father O'Brien, and, afterwards over the doughnuts and coffee, just to get my father’s knickers in a twist tell him what a bunch of crap it all was.

  I want to borrow a car and take an aimless drive into the countryside, following the road as far as it will take me and talk with the nutty loquacious hicks I'm sure to find out there.

  I want to drop in at Escape From New York Pizza, stuff my face with greasy slices of pepperoni and wash it all down with a bucket of Dr. Pepper. I’d love to satisfy that craving for the Satyricon gyros that has been with me these sixteen months, to lick the yoghurt sauce as it drips down my forearm. Oh, to be able to sit on a bench outside of the Santa Fe Taqueria and pig out on carne asada burritos stuffed with frijoles, red hot salsa and cilantro, and put the fire out with cans of Tecate.

  I long to spend an evening in the Dublin Pub, packed to the Reilly with the Irish Diaspora, to rub elbows with the good Catholic girls and rub up against a not-so-good Protestant one . . . introduce her to “Paddy”:

  “Got any Irish in ye?” I’ll say. “No? Would you like some? No?”

  I want to belt out Irish folk songs, keeping the throat lubricated with pint after lovely pint of pitch black Guinness, sing until the bouncer gives me the boot.

  But, more than anything, I want to stop playing the role of brooding loner that was thrust upon me when I stepped upon the Japanese stage. I yearn to have my friends’ arms around me, to be embraced again by that motley cohort of slackers I parted with when I came to Japan. I’m starving for the conversations we used to have, the conversations inspired by cheap bottles of pinot noir and pints of microbrew that would keep us up all night laughing until our sides hurt and the neighbors got sore, and they could fuck off for all we care, so would you like another drink? All the conversations I’ve had the past several months have left my gut half empty.

  Letters from America don’t come as often as they used to, the phone calls have stopped altogether. I worry more and more that I’ve lived for so many months cloistered in this silent vigil, that I am beginning to lose my voice. I feel it in the awkward self-consciousness that overcomes me whenever I talk to someone for the first time, in a new reluctance to break the ice, in the creeping shyness that has its hands around my throat and chokes me where I once sang.

  2

  In the evening, I head back to Umie to return the shirt Shô lent me after Yumi poured beer all over me. I want to apologize for all the trouble I’ve caused the guys.

  I’m expecting Shô to tell me to go fuck myself, but when I stick my head in the door, he greets me with a cheery smile and a booming “Welcome home!” that takes me by surprise.

  I enter, scratching my head with embarrassment and nodding humbling . . . Good God, when did I ever start acting so, so . . . so Japanese.

  When I’ve ascended the steps and am standing before the counter I begin to recite the apology I prepared in polite Japanese earlier today: “Kinô-wa taihen meiwaku-o o-kake shite . . .”

  “Tondemonai!” Shô says—Not at all, not at all—and gestures for me to take a seat at the counter.

  “Ah no, that's okay, I-I just wanted to return this,” I say, opening up a department store bag and removing the shirt, laundered and pressed by yours truly like a proper Japanese housewife. “And this,” I add, handing him another paper bag. “Tumaranai mono des,’” I say. It's a trifling thing.

  "Oh! Hiyoko manju! Yatta!"

  To fill out my Act of Contrition, I have brought him a box of Hiyoko Manju, a popular local souvenir of chick-shaped cakes with bean jam centers.

  Shô stares at me, dumfounded, and says, “Pay-chan, you’re turning Japanese!”

  “Turning Japanese?” I smile awkwardly, and scratch my head again. “You really think so?”

  I suppose Shô means it as a compliment, but coming from someone who has for the most part done his best to ignore me all these months it strikes me as sarcastic.

  He encourages me again to sit down, and when I do, Hiro, the o
ther bartender with lips like Mick Jagger, places a draught before me, saying, “Sahbisu,” meaning it’s on the house.

  “Well, if you insist. Arigatô gozaimas’,” I say, raising the mug of beer. “Kampai!”

  3

  Six beers and a switch to whiskey and water later, a soothing blanket of equanimity is drawn over me. The pangs of nostalgia I was feeling in the morning are replaced by a very Japanese resignation. Shikata ga nai, I say to myself, it can’t be helped.

  Maybe I am turning Japanese after all.

  By the second whiskey, I’ve also forgotten that I have given up cigarettes and accept a "vanilla taste" Caster from the young salaryman next to me. According to his meishi, he works for JTB, the very same prestigious travel bureau that dear old Reina used to work for before she left her husband and Tôkyô for the glamour of an English school in Fukuoka. The salaryman says he hates his job and wants to quit. When I tell him the feeling is mutual, he buys me a drink, God love him.

  When I ask him what he wants to do with his life, he says travel and—drum roll please—surf. Only, the way he and most Japanese pronounce the word, it sounds like “sahfu”.

  “‘Serf? Why in heaven’s name would you want to be a ‘serf’?”

  Naturally, he’s confused and tells me so.

  “A serf is a kind of dorei,” I explain.

  “No, no, no. I don’t want to be a dorei. I already am a slave for my company. No, I want to surf, you know, surfing.” His gestures remind me of a clown balancing on a giant rubber ball.

  Now, the only reason I'm teasing him is that after living in this country for almost a year and a half I have never seen so much as a ripple on the surface of the sea—not much to skip a pebble on, let alone ride. Still, I have met so many goddamn surfers, that were I to throw a rock into the crowd of pedestrians milling about Oyafukô, I’d surely hit one, if not two of these poseurs.

  It’s ironic, I tell him, that travel agents in Japan are so busy they seldom travel themselves. He doesn’t see the humor in it, though. I guess I wouldn’t either if I were working six ten-hour days a week and my summer bonus had just been cut again because of the recession. No, I don’t think I’d find it funny at all.

  “So, if you really want to travel and surf, then why not just do it?”

  He drops his head dejectedly and mumbles, “It’s difficult.”

  When he asks me what I want to do with my life, I answer: “Build things.”

  “Daiku?”

  “No, not a carpenter, you dummy, an architect,” I say, chuckling. “Kenchikuka. Here, let me show you.”

  I borrow a pen from Shô and in matter of a few minutes draw a pretty good rendering of Umie on a napkin.

  “Sh'geh,” he exclaims. Wow!

  I tell him that’s nothing; any kid with a good eye, a steady hand and a prescription of Ritalin can produce a picture like this, especially the kind who’ve got their noses in manga all day. On another napkin, I sketch a plan for what Umie could look like with minor changes, such as moving the DJ booth to the other side, losing the beer cooler, adding a second, narrower counter that would run parallel the current one for standing customers, halving the restroom with its single Japanese style toilet such that a second room with a urinal could be built, and so on. Again, this is something any boared housewife with a subscription to Better Homes and Gardens could manage.

  Just as I am about to knock his white socks and black loafers off with a sketch of how Umie could be by resembling what its name implied, a beach house, rather than the mildly seedy bar that it is, two women sit down on the empty stools besides me. I look up from the napkin and make the happy discovery that they're both gorgeous.

  The one sitting further away, while the better looking of the two, possesses a beauty that is almost too perfect, rendering her unapproachable. Not that I am missing out on anything because the girl is so obviously enamored of Shô it is as if a sign saying “No Unauthorized Personnel Permitted” is hanging around her neck.

  I get the feeling I’ve met the one closer to me befoe, but, alas, can’t remember where. With her hair done up in pig-tails, she has such an innocent look about her, what the Japanese call the “Loli-type”, that were she not drinking shots of vodka I’d place her age at around seventeen or eighteen. Not that I’d have a problem with that; I can be, I have shown before, equal opportunity in that regard. Call me ecumenical.

  Pigtails turns to me and asks, “Don’t you remember me?”

  “Of course, I do,” I shoot back, scrambling through the dimly lit, cobwebby labyrinth of my mind, frantically running my fingers through dusty filing cabinets, searching for a clue, a bone, a hint. “We met . . . the other day . . . at . . . um . . .”

  “At the kimono party last night,” she says.

  “Yes! Urara . . .”

  “Oh, you do remember me after all?”

  With a name like Ooh-la-la?

  “How could I forget?”

  Mind you, the Urara sitting next to me looks nothing like the Urara I chatted with at the kimono party only twenty-four hours ago. Not only her hairstyle, but her make-up as well couldn’t be more different. She’s like a chameleon that has changed its colors. This adorable Urara, in a matter of only twenty-four hours, has gone from looking like an exquisite Japanese doll to being a spunky, little peaches and cream cheerleader.

  “It’s just, I didn't recognize you at first,” I say.

  “I’m surprised you recognized me at all.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Well, you didn’t seem all that interested in me last night.”

  “Nonsense!”

  “You never took your eyes off of Tomoko-san.”

  “Tomoko?”

  Urara bends over pretending to pick up food from an imaginary table before her, then with her finger draws a line from my eyes to her breasts.

  “Ah, right, Tomoko. Was it obvious?”

  “Obvious? You were staring at her breasts the whole evening.”

  “I am what I am.”

  “It must be tough being a man.”

  “It is,” I admit. “It is.” Especially for someone who was bottle-fed.

  “You know, last night wasn’t the first time I saw you,” Urara says tapping me playfully on the shoulder.

  “It wasn’t?”

  “No. I’ve seen you around. In Tenjin and on Oyafukô. Come to think of it, I’ve seen you a quite a few times here on Oyafukô.”

  “Here? Really?” I pretend to be surprised by this, but I am as inconspicuous as a giraffe trotting through a flock of sheep. “You haven't been stalking me, have you?”

  “No!”

  “Ah, what a pity.”

  “Do you want to be stalked?”

  “By you? Yes, definitely. Shall I give you my address?”

  “You already did last night.”

  “Oh, that’s right I did, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “Oh, nothing,” she says. Finishing off her vodka, she holds her empty glass up to Shô who takes it and without a word pours her another shot.

  I’ll regret it in the morning, I know, but tell the Shô to give me the same. Raising our shot glasses to each other, we say, “Kampai!”

  “You like drinking, don't you?” she asks.

  “Does the Pope shit in the woods?”

  “I'm sorry?”

  “I do, yes. A bit too much, I'm afraid.”

  Giggling, she tells me she does, too.

  When I ask her when she first saw me, she replies, “Around Golden Week, I think.”

  As if dislodged by a soft tap, unwelcomed memories flutter down like dust.

  “April twenty-seventh. Urara, you were wearing your hair in pigtails like tonight, and were standing in front of the bank of cigarette vending machines at the corner. You were in a tight-fitting dress with CABIN written across it, weren't you?”

  “Wow, Peador! That’s some memory you’ve got! Have you got a photogra
phic memory?”

  “I do, yes. Unfortunately most of the photos are out of focus.”

  As much as I would prefer not to recall that unfortunate night when Mie and I last met, I can’t keep the more embarrassing images of it from being projected in heartlessly living color against the inside of my skull. This is where I suspect my migraines come from.

  “Did you notice me waving to you?” she asks.

  “That night?” I say. “When I was standing outside Mister Donut?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I wondered who you were waving at.”

  “Was that your girlfriend you were waiting for?”

  “No, no, no . . . No, that . . . That was just, er . . . a, uh, a friend,” I answer without a note of credibility in my voice. Looking beyond Urara to the drop-dead beauty she came in with who has been making the goo-goo eyes at Shô, lucky bastard, I ask, “So, what’s her story?”

  “Hiromi-chan? Oh, she’s just in love with Shô.”

  “You don’t say. I never would have guessed. And, who does Urara love?” I point to Jaggerlips, then to a third bartender named Naoki who is snapping a towel at the lanky DJ. “Any of them your type?”

  She makes a show of glancing deliberately around the bar, taking in staff and customers alike, before answering. “Yes, there is one who is my type.”

  “Yeah? Who?” I figure it’s Jaggerlips because if there is one thing I have learned after coming here all these months is that most of the women who come into Umie fall into one of two camps: those, like Hiromi-chan, who find Shô with his Bundeswehr tank-top and wimpy arms irresistible; and those who go weak in the knees for Jaggerlips.

  “You,” she says, turning those big brown eyes of hers to me.

  “Who?”

  “You,” she says again and takes my hand. It’s a kind gesture, humoring me like this, but frankly I can’t believe it. Especially when she’s been drinking straight shots of vodka and God knows what else. Pump enough booze into any woman and they’re liable to find even a manhole cover charming.