The Yokota Officers Club

by Sarah Bird

  Kit had not even woken up that morning when my father came home and told me that I had two new baby brothers and that Moe was fine. Tired but fine. My father, always so impeccably groomed, had several odd, whitish streaks on his cheeks that it took me a second to realize were the salt of dried tears.

  When my father went inside to tell Kit, I stayed in my perfume factory and the smell of honeysuckle rose around me so sweet I could have drowned in it as Chisaii’s song burbled forth, each note a perfect shimmering bubble floating through the waves of fragrance, up toward Fuji-san.

  Polyvinyl

  “No burusheeto, capisce? Imperial Hotel. No burusheeto. Don’t jack me around or I’ll snap your little Nip neck.” Haneda Airport traffic surges around us as Bobby badgers a small driver standing outside a cab. His white gloves, spindly arms, and short-sleeved shirt make the man look like Mickey Mouse. He bows and nods several times.

  “Imperial Hotel, how much?”

  “Yes, Imperial Hotel.” The driver bows and nods enthusiastically, opening the door of his white Datsun Bluebird.

  “Yeah, sport, Imperial Hotel. How much?”

  “Yes. I take you Imperial Hotel.” He motions for us to get into the Bluebird.

  “Uh-uh. How much?” Bobby rubs thumb and forefinger together. “¿Cuánto cuesta?”

  “Hai! Hai!”

  “I don’t think he understands.”

  “Don’t believe that. They all understand a lot more than they let on.”

  An airport traffic policeman with a white strap across his chest approaches us.

  “You know, we really ought to move,” I suggest.

  “How much, ace? You want the fare or not?”

  I glance away, embarrassed, wishing to distance myself from this crude American. When I look back, the driver is writing a figure on a piece of paper.

  Bobby snaps the paper away. “You crazy, boy-san?” Bobby winds the air around his ear, crosses his eyes, flaps his tongue, then points at the driver. I am thoroughly mortified. The driver laughs, crosses out the figure, writes another.

  “You got a deal, bubeleh. Let’s load ’em up.”

  Tokyo is unremittingly gray and has a cluttered, unfinished look, like a vast machine that has been disassembled for repairs and then forgotten. It smells of polyvinyls poaching in the sun. We pass factories and smokestacks, a deserted racetrack, muddy baseball diamonds. Gray canals crisscross beneath gray congested roads under a gray sky. I search for trees and find none. Even the rows of new buildings, many still under construction, seem leprous, shedding chunks of stucco in the rain, leaving wire lath exposed.

  “ ’Sixty-four Olympics really crapped the place up,” Bobby comments dolorously.

  His bulk presses against me in the backseat of the Datsun, the smell of Brylcreem and Brut overwhelming even the dense residual odor of cigarette smoke.

  “Used to be, you’d drive in through nothing but rice paddies. Mile after mile of rice paddies. I tell you, when I first came here, Tokyo was the greatest city on earth. Right after the war, it was wide open. I defy you to name a bigger party town than Tokyo right after the Occupation.”

  Bobby stabs his finger at me as if I had disagreed with him.

  “Vegas? That’s what you’re thinking, right? Vegas? Did Vegas have the Mikado? A thousand hostesses. A thousand! Each one hotter than the last one. High-class pussy. You didn’t know whether to shit or go blind.” Bobby rubs the air, erasing the argument he is making. “Forget it. You hadda be there.”

  “I was.”

  “You ‘was.’ Right, ‘you was.’ ”

  “I was.”

  “Okay. Where did you hang out? Latin Quarter? Bohemian Club? Papagayo’s? Club Eighty-eight? You must have hung out at the Eighty-eight, am I right?”

  “No.”

  “No! You were here before the Olympics and you didn’t go to the Eighty-eight? The Bohemian? Papagayo’s? Where did you hang out?”

  “Bob Hope Elementary.”

  “Bob Hope Elementary?” Blood rushes to Bobby’s face. “You’re joking.”

  “No, that was the name of my school when we lived on Yokota.”

  Bobby’s head looks like it’s been boiled. “They named a school after that prick? So you think Hope’s a big hero.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Never wrote a line of his own material. Not a word. King of the Cue Card, we call him. They lose that Magic Marker and Hope is dead. Dead! That’s your comic genius. That’s the man you idolize.”

  “I never said I idolized him. Actually, I think he stinks.”

  “Now you say that. Bob Hope. Biggest prick on the circuit. Ask anyone. Joe E. Brown. That’s who they shoulda named a school after. Ah, well. Whatever, while you were studying how to be a putz there at Bob Hope U, you missed one swinging scene.”

  Bobby calms down and falls into a nostalgic reverie as he recalls the swinging scene I missed with my ill-advised decision to attend elementary school.

  “Luigi’s, my man Lou. He knew how to run a club. All the heavyweights fell by. Ava Gardner. The Duke. Sinatra. You think I’m lying. I see that look.”

  “There’s no look.”

  “I shit you not, the Chairman of the Board was in Lou’s. All the biggies, if they were in Tokyo, they were in Lou’s. I’ll take you. Be an education.”

  The driver makes a sharp left that avalanches Bobby onto me.

  “Hey, you kamikaze? You try to kill stupid Ameko?” Bobby makes his hand into a Zero on a suicide mission flying right at the driver’s head. “You kamikaze us, right? You Kamikaze Joe!” I look out the window, away from both my own and the driver’s embarrassment.

  At the next turn, Bobby lunges forward. “Hey, Kamikaze Joe, you fuckee-fuckee me? Why you take Yamato-Dori? Stay on Two. Ni! Ni! Ni ichi-ban! You take Yamato-Dori fuckee-fuckee me!” Bobby emphasizes his point with a scream of pain and a hand on his wallet. “You kamikaze us, right? You Kamikaze Joe! Kokkasukka!”

  When I figure out that Bobby has just called our white-gloved driver a cocksucker, I scoot down in my seat, the greasy plastic cover sticking to me from my own sweat, and calculate what our chances for survival will be when the driver slams on his brakes and tosses us into the eight lanes of traffic hurtling past.

  “No fuckee-fuckee!” the driver yells back. “No fuckee-fuckee! Yamato-Dori ichi-ban!” He points to Bobby—“Kokkasukka!”—and laughs maniacally when Bobby balls up a giant fist and pretends he is going to throttle him.

  For the rest of the trip, Bobby keeps the driver in stitches by alternately slumping contentedly into his seat and then bouncing forward, fist balled, face a Kabuki mask of rage, yelling, “Kamikaze Joe! Pearl Harbor! Banzai!” To which the delighted driver screams back, “Kokkasukka!”

  At the Imperial Hotel, a doorman holds the door open and three bellboys carry in our luggage, then wait while Bobby and the driver go through the whole routine until he has the doorman and the bellboys yelling “Kokkasukka!” Watching it with my lips twitching in a frozen grin, I try to remember that many, many people find Danny Kaye amusing.

  In the end, Bobby slides two ten-thousand-yen notes out of the silver horse’s-head money clip he pulls from his pocket and stuffs them in the front pocket of the driver’s Dacron shirt to cover the one-thousand-yen fare, all the while pantomiming anal rape.

  “Well, whaddaya think?” Bobby turns to the hotel and spreads his arms out wide. The Imperial Hotel looks like a combination of a very large ranch-style house and a Mayan temple. “Best hotel in Asia. Am I right?” He looks to the doorman and bellboys for confirmation. “Imperial ichi-ban! Yay! Hotel Okura number ten! Boo, Okura!” The bellboys join in, enthusiastically booing the rival inn. They have to raise their voices to be heard above the sound of a jackhammer tearing loose the west wing of the hotel.

  “Is this hotel being torn down?” I ask.

  “Frank Lloyd Wright designed the Imperial. Only thing for miles that survived the ’twenty-three earthquake.”

 
; “It looks like they’re tearing it down.”

  “Sinatra never stays anyplace else when he’s in town. Total class all the way. Wait until you get a load of the lobby.”

  “Look.” Workmen load a section of the front wall onto a truck. “Parts of this hotel are actually being taken away.” I point to the departing facade, but Bobby and his instant entourage have already gone inside.

  The lobby resembles a particularly stuffy British men’s club shortly after a blitzkrieg air raid. An entire wall is missing, the gaping opening covered by large sheets of plastic that fail to keep out the construction noise or dust.

  At the reception desk, three Japanese men in black suits beam smiles of welcome. One of them runs around to the front of the desk and drops into a sumo pose. Bobby grabs a rubber band out of his pocket, quickly pulls his hair into a topknot, and squats down. I back away as swiftly as possible, running into some high-backed chairs occupied by geriatric Japanese gents in traditional kimonos all craning around to watch. The clerks attack Bobby and pepper him with swift chops that he seems not to notice. He grabs one of the clerks, tucks the man’s head under the haunch of his arm, and grinds his knuckles into his laughing captive’s spray of black hair.

  This is not the first time Bobby has stayed at the Imperial.

  Still laughing, the noogied man runs back to the other side of the desk to check Bobby in and hand him two keys. The bellboys confer with the clerk, then hurry off. I watch my blue Lady Baltimore luggage with the giant daisy decals disappear.

  Bobby pulls me close as we walk toward the elevator. “Keep an eye peeled. You never know who you’ll run into. All the biggies stay here. Ava. Frank. Shirley MacLaine stayed here while they were shooting that—what’s the name of that picture she shot here? Had that pantywaist Bill … Bob … you know, that chowderhead with the …” When I can’t supply a name, Bobby squints his eyes in annoyance and brushes the air above his own head to indicate a crew cut. “You know—”

  I shrug. Bobby rolls his eyes, exasperated by my lack of knowledge of the biggies.

  A sign next to the elevator reads:

  We offer pardon to guests of fresh and highly refined culture. We are determinate to render with thoughtfullness and consideration thorough services. Especially, we want to be a host at dinner of your house.

  An architect’s rendering of a high-rise hotel labeled NEW IMPERIAL jutting into the Tokyo skyline high above the phantom shape of Wright’s original is more informative.

  “Had to pull some strings to get us in.” The arrow hand on the old-fashioned floor indicator above the elevator swings down to L and the doors open. “They’re carting the whole megillah away to some museum. You can tell your grandchildren you were one of the last got to stay at the real Imperial.”

  The prospect of grandchildren seems particularly remote as the elevator shudders when Bobby steps on, then again as the jackhammers start up and the ancient lift sways and creaks its way upward.

  On the third floor, I start to follow Bobby off but he stops me, jabbing his finger upward. I check my key: 903. “Oh.” I step back into the elevator feeling vaguely embarrassed, as if Bobby had just been forced to parry my unwanted advance.

  “You’re in the new section, kid. Enjoy.” The doors slide shut, framing Bobby on a black-veined marble floor, an immense mirror in an ornate gold frame behind him, a crystal chandelier sparkling above his head.

  On the ninth floor, signs direct me out of the original building. I wind my way through a maze of increasingly narrow corridors.

  Room 903 turns out to be a single bed framed by a tiny border of open floor. I squeeze past the bed to a narrow window. By standing at the window’s extreme left edge, I can see a corner of the olive-green moat that circles the massive stone barricade surrounding the Imperial Palace. A shrill ring alerts me that the room contains a phone. I find it in a niche set into the wall.

  Bobby doesn’t waste time on preambles. “Meet me in the lobby in fifteen minutes. Wear something classy.”

  When I zigzag my way back down to the lobby dressed in a paisley polyester pants suit created by the Koza sew girl, Bobby rolls his eyes and smacks his forehead. “Oy vey. Who taught you from class? Come on.” He has Kamikaze Joe waiting outside. The taxi is now a haiya car, a car-for-hire.

  “Depaato Mitsukoshi Nihonbashi, Joe.”

  “Hai! Hai!” Joe explodes the syllable, apparently delighted with his mission. Without a glance in the rearview mirror, he aims the Bluebird into a solid wall of traffic and slithers in.

  We drive past repeating sequences of pachinko parlors, fruit shops, and stand-up bars studded against blocks of reinforced-concrete office buildings and apartments. The streets are jammed with other Datsun Bluebirds, with Toyota Publicas, three-wheeled trucks, diesel buses, and delivery boys on bikes with boxes strapped to the handlebars; through them all zips a droning swarm of Honda motorbikes.

  The Ginza is dominated by an enormous electronic board that displays how bad the pollution is alongside another readout giving the decibel levels of noise from traffic and construction machinery.

  At the department store, Joe hits the button that automatically opens the back door of the Bluebird to let us out. The sidewalk is jammed with an unbroken stream of pedestrians whose black and white clothes move past in a gray blur. Like Joe, Bobby plunges in and, somehow, the gray waters part. I follow in his wake toward the entrance of the depaato.

  “You need a pick-me-up?” Bobby asks, when we reach the safety of the entrance. He points to a lady holding a face mask attached by surgical tubing to a green tank marked O2. A man with a navy-blue plastic valise tucked under his arm and a cigarette jammed in his mouth hurries up and tosses a hundred-yen coin in the woman’s bowl. He sucks the cigarette down to his yellowed fingertips, tosses it aside, takes the mask, and breathes deeply while the attendant turns a knob until oxygen hisses through the tubes.

  “They got ’em all over the city. Tokyo air’s like sucking on a Mack truck’s exhaust pipe. Go on. It’s a kick in the head.” After the third deep breath, the man starts hacking wildly. The attendant removes the mask and holds it out to me.

  “Uh, no, thanks.”

  Bobby shrugs like it’s my funeral and we surf into the store on a wave of Tokyoites. A team of young women wearing pillbox hats and pink Jackie Kennedy suits along with the ubiquitous white gloves beams at us as we enter. A chorus of Irashimase spoken in the silvery tinkling tones of forest sprites greets us, along with a puff of perfume. It has the light, powdery smell of the cologne Fumiko used to spritz herself with before she left us in the evenings.

  One greeter runs up to Bobby and begins buffing his nails, which are surprisingly small against his puffy fingers. With his free hand, Bobby fluffs his hair and pretends to put on lipstick. Once the manicure girl starts giggling and a crowd forms, Bobby plucks at imaginary undergarments, tugging down a girdle, tucking in bra straps, adjusting stocking seams. By the time he hikes breasts up over a push-up bra, schoolboys in black caps with book-satchel straps across their chests are pounding on each other in helpless mirth.

  Bobby finishes by licking a forefinger and smoothing down each eyebrow; then he twinkles the polished nails at me and asks in a falsetto, “Don’t they look just divine?”

  Suddenly, the crowd, several dozen dark heads, all turn to me. Clearly the straight man, I attempt what I hope is a smile.

  Bobby buys four manicure sets from the girl and tips her several thousand yen. I lose track because he leaves several times, then, with the girl and most of the crowd waving bye-bye, he turns and comes back with another thousand, acting like their ever-louder farewells are demands for more money.

  On the elevator, Bobby hands me one of the sets. “That one’s for Moe. Oh, yeah, the sister. Jesus, the sister.” He rolls his eyes exasperated and puts another one on the stack. “Now I suppose you got a grandmother. Okay, one for Grannie.” He gives me the last one. “Okay, I’m out. You happy now? I’m flat. This means you gotta do this ha
nd.” He holds up the nails that haven’t been polished. “I’m outta balance.”

  The elevator attendant puts down the rag she is using to polish the gleaming brass on the automatic panel and asks in a high-pitched voice, “Wichi furoru?”

  “Dresses. You know.…” Bobby does a little girl holding up her skirt, grinding a toe into the floor.

  “Ah! Doresu. Hai!”

  “Yeah, dressoo.”

  Within moments of debarking on the fifth floor, Bobby is holding court for three salesgirls, while a fourth takes the manicure sets away to be wrapped. “Dressoo,” he instructs them. “For girl-san here.”

  “Hai! Ooruokeejondoresu? Oorushiizundoresu? Kakuterudoresu? Infoomarudoresu?”

  When we don’t respond, the salesgirls confer for a second, then add even more uncertainly, “Wedingudoresu?” And then, almost horrified, “Matanitudoresu?”

  “What the hell are they saying? Doesn’t anyone around here speak English?”

  The twittering voices, shy, self-conscious, are like a scent I first inhaled a dozen years ago. They bring back an entire world in one sniff. I feel as if I am back in my perfume factory, talking with Fumiko, and can understand everything she says when no one else can.

  I translate for Bobby. “They want to know if you’d like an all-occasion dress, an all-season dress, a cocktail dress, an informal dress or, or”—I roll my eyes and take a deep breath—“a wedding dress, or”—I can barely make myself say the words—“a maternity dress.”

  The three tiny salesgirls bow and nod, gleeful with gratitude for my translation.

  “Wedding? Maternity? That’s rich.” Bobby pantomimes an enormously pregnant bride holding a bouquet lumbering up the aisle. His lumbering is quite good, and one of the salesgirls has to cross her legs, she laughs so hard. Then Bobby wipes away the comic moment and gets back to business.

  “Cocktail,” he dictates. “But classy, you know. Your best stuff. No hippie shit.”

  “No ah hi-pee shee,” they echo in their wood sprite–chipmunk tones, fanning out to cover the racks of dresses. Within minutes they return, each one bearing a stack of dresses.