Tokyo Stirs: (Short Stories about Asia)

by Harmon Cooper

  As they talked, she tugged at the edges of her black miniskirt, failing each time to pull it down to her knees. His shadow grew larger and larger. With each tug, the man moved his hands further down her back. With each tug, the girl seemed to shrink into him.

  I stooped into the club and was greeted by an even smaller Nepali woman with her face painted like a doll. As I scanned her, it struck me that she couldn’t be older than fifteen. I quickly tossed this realization aside, assuming the alcohol had warped my vision. A waitress led me a dimly lit corner, facing a stage that ran the length of room. A laminated menu was tossed in front of me.

  As I looked over the menu, a woman in a tight red dress leapt onto the stage. A playful Nepali song erupted from the speakers. She began bobbing her head up and down to the music. Her arms rolled up her body until they were extended at shoulder length, bouncing ever so slightly yet accurately, as if puppeteers lurked in the rafters above the stage.

  A Tiger beer was brought to me and I quickly began to nurse it. I tried my hardest not to acknowledge the awkwardness associated with being the only foreigner in the room. Worst of all, I felt old and creepy, perverted, in a way I’d never felt before. The feelings were certainly warranted, but I remained anchored by my curiosity.

  The dancers in the club grew younger with each passing minute, each sip from my lukewarm beer, each song that hiccupped from the speakers. Their faces softened and their chests shrunk and their dresses grew shorter. The urge to escape continued to rise, but the heat in the bar had a soporific effect, and the stiff seat had started to feel strangely comfortable.

  I relaxed my head back, gazing up at the dark ceiling illuminated by two revolving lights affixed to the front of the stage. A new song started at the crack of one of the speakers and a Nepali girl materialized. She placed a single hand around the shiny pole on stage, began walking in exaggerated circles around it. She never did anything too openly sexual, but the fact that none of her clothes were ever removed made her performance that much more arousing.

  On her third stride around the pole, the front door of the X DANCE CLUB burst open and five Nepali police officers shuffled inside. The sounds of falling trays, squealing chair legs, and tables scraping against the concrete floor defined the moment.

  ***

  The music ended abruptly.

  All the patrons of the X DANCE BAR, including myself, were escorted out. I asked one of the Nepali police officers what was happening and he explained that the bar was illegally opened after midnight. Since I’d been drinking a beer after hours, I too was committing a crime. I protested, claiming that had I known of the curfew, I wouldn’t have visited the bar so late. The Nepali officer shrugged at my rebuttal, telling me to wait with the other patrons.

  I heard a low rumbling in the distance.

  The police officer turned away and without so much as a second guess, I disappeared into the taupe shadows cast by the large trees above the bar. Escape was my only option.

  I darted through the dark corridor as the rumbling sound grew louder. As I ran, my feet grew heavy with the fear and the knowledge of what I was attempting. My lungs scratched at the inside of my chest. Someone shouted behind me. I pushed forward, away from the police, away from the bar, away from my past.

  I hit the main street of Pokhara and brought myself to a full sprint. My stomach filled with air, my heart with trepidation. I heard the Nepali policeman’s footsteps scouring the pavement and I thrust myself forward. I leaped over a sleeping dog, and almost botched the landing. I kept running, my leg muscles straining to carry my weight.

  The law was growing closer, but so was that familiar rumbling sound. A red blotch appeared on the horizon under a street lamp. I started waving my hands in the air.

  I was breathing heavily, aware that I was only fostering my guilt of a committing a crime by running. Undistinguishable cries bladed the air behind me. Two police officers were now after me. I neared the scooter.

  ‘Help!’ I called to The Dreaded Man. ‘Please!’

  His scooter stopped five feet in front of me.

  ‘What happened?’ he asked in an accent I couldn’t quite place.

  ‘They…’ the words started spilling out of me. ‘They’re trying to arrest me for drinking a beer after twelve or something. I don’t know! I didn’t mean to go there. I’m sorry! I’m running from them. I don’t know what to do!’

  The Nepali police officers slowed behind me. One of them was breathing loudly, his exhalations ruffling the nearby trees. ‘You!’ he yelled on the backend of something that sounded like a cough.

  ‘Do you have any money on you?’ The Dreaded Man asked quickly.

  ‘In my hotel room,’ I said, still panting.

  The Dreaded Man leapt off the scooter and met the two panting policemen before they could apprehend me. He began speaking to them in rapid-fire Nepali. One of them supported his weight with his hands on both knees. His body heaved up and down as he looked up at The Dreaded Man. The other listened intently as I stood with my arms crossed, my body shaking like a wind-up toy.

  Soon, The Dreaded Man was searching in his baggy shorts for his wallet. He stuffed a thick roll of cash into one of the Nepali policeman’s hands. The two policemen turned and headed back to the club. They never said a word to me.

  ‘Let’s go,’ The Dreaded Man said with a tight smile.

  ‘What just happened?’ I asked.

  ‘I handled it.’

  I stumbled towards him and realized how much the alcohol and the adrenaline had affected my motor skills. My heart still thrummed against my chest with excitement. I had run from the cops and survived. Part of me was proud. The other part was shocked at how ballsy I’d been.

  ‘How much do I owe you?’

  ‘Twelve thousand rupees.’

  ‘A hundred and fifty bucks gets you out of police custody?’ I asked.

  ‘In Nepal it does. I bargained him down a little.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘I remember you,’ he said. ‘You were in the restaurant the other day, yes?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m staying at the hotel behind it.’

  ‘We made eye contact,’ The Dreaded Man said.

  ‘I remember. My name’s Tommy.’ I extended my hands.

  ‘I noticed you because of your book.’

  ‘Which book?’ I asked.

  ‘Once upon the Ganges.’

  ‘Have you read it or something?’

  ‘Of course I have. My girlfriend is the author.’

  Fishing with Shiva

  [8]I tell her all the time if she’d just goddamn listen. Damn near drives me insane. I ain’t going back to Kathmandu, not unless I can meet Linda there.

  ‘Linda ain’t there, Honey,’ Ms. Cherrydew says.

  Typical answer. Broken record player worse than me. The hell Linda ain’t there. How does she know anyway? Maybe she’s just trying to get at me. Pick at the scab until it can’t stop bleeding.

  This is the last time I let her take me to the community garden. Always calling my bluff when she’s the one lying. Give this medicine to her. Interleukins. See how she operates. Head cloudy glazed brain dying. I’m well and dandy most days anyhow. Just when things get dim you know the drill, Bob, you know it good and well.

  Play the role assigned to you.

  ‘Linda is dead,’ she says. ‘You ready?’

  Blasphemy never felt so blatant.

  ‘I’m not done torching things,’ I tell her.

  Don’t growl, Bob, she gets hissy when you do that. I’d fight her if I could, but I got no swing left in me and it’s America and I’m rich enough and she’d sue me and be one rich little Southern Bell caretaker when all was said and done. See if I give up my house that easy. Too many people fingering legal triggers like hungry soldiers of fortune. See if I care. The smell of propane tinges the air. The weather’s turning gray and my eyes are watering. Epiphora, where’s my tissue?

  ‘Linda updates her Facebook,’ I tell he
r. I know about Facebook and it ain’t that hard to use as long as Ms. Cherrydew helps me sign in.

  ‘We’ve talked about this before. Your Linda doesn’t have a Facebook, Honey. That’s my friend Linda. You, yourself, don’t have a Facebook either,’ she says.

  How am I supposed to reason with this kind of knuckleheaded logic? That damn Southern accent is too syrupy and nice.

  ‘I just ordered pizza from a website the other day; it appeared at my home and I ate it, dammit.’

  ‘I ordered it, Mr. Latchman,’ she says.

  ‘Don’t ‘Mr. Latchman’ me. If I can order a pizza off the internet and flush it down the toilet the next day it’s real. Linda’s alive.’

  ‘Ok, you’re right. Now give me the torch,’ she says. ‘It’s getting close to your afternoon naptime. I think somebody’s starting to get grumpy.’

  But I want to burn more weeds, I start to tell her. I want to smell the propane sweet and intoxicating. I don’t say this, but she knows, and I know something about watching things wilt and turn black and disintegrate and turn into crumbs. Shiva, you blue bastard, we’re more alike than you think. I’ll give her the torch for now, but I ain’t done with this garden.

  ‘Why are you stalling?’ she asks. ‘Let’s go, rain’s-a-coming.’

  Stalin. You hear the things she calls me? Caretakers these days love to figure out the best way to get under your fingernails, like a damn yellow fungus growing and growing. The Cold War never ended for many of us and it never will. Now she’s jiggling her keys at me like I’m some sort of canine companion. It’s a shame how people treat their dogs like little princesses today. Lassie dead, Bob here dying, humanity slipping, tit for tat, ad infinitum.

  ‘Ready to go for a ride?’ she asks sweetly.

  ‘Ready as I’ll ever be.’

  She hustles me into the minivan and buckles me into the backseat like a damned toddler. I hate that minivan. The wretched thing must have been designed by a team of Japanese crackhead sushi logs. A/C blows through four bars instead of three? The big red button on the belt impossible to unfasten? Rearview mirror two sizes too small? Child locks? Strawberry air freshener? I told her before, I like the vanilla one better and I remind her again and again every chance I get. Here I go, telling her again.

  ‘I know you like the vanilla one better, Mr. Latchman, but the store was all out. Now you just settle in back there and I’ll get you home. You take a little nap back there if you want. I’ll drive smooth.’

  ‘Yeah, you’re good at that,’ I say.

  You have to keep the worker bees happy, otherwise they revolt against you. A thousand years of kings and queens and presidents and prime ministers is good enough evidence for me. Dictators aren’t evident of this, but you get the point. Throw them a bone and watch them nibble; take the bone away and watch them pray and prey.

  ‘Thanks,’ she says.

  Hearing those tires scrape against the pavement and the light drizzle tapping against the minivan windows triggers a reaction in me better than any sleeping pill ever has.

  Hazelnut eyes, chapped lips, hair smelling like morning mountain air, skin white enough to see the blue vein map – spring 1971, Kathmandu, Nepal. I knew Linda wasn’t dead.

  A far cry from the sunburned hippies over on Freak Street, smoking copious amounts of marijuana and weaving bullshit and escaping their pasts and copulating with each other every sick chance they got. Linda was compiling research for her dissertation on masculinity shifts in the Tamang people. She was sipping a cup of milk tea at a small café in Thamel on a sunny afternoon.

  Linda sat under a canvas poster of Shiva with a burgundy pashmina scarf was wrapped around her neck and a red tika pinned to her forehead. I was in Kathmandu on a whim, but that story is for another time, another place, another life.

  I had a blistering headache because I’d drunk some roxi given to me the night before by the owner of the guesthouse. Trying to poison me on my vacation! He’s lucky I wasn’t Hemingway; otherwise, I would’ve punched him square in the nose. Vicious gnawing hangover the kind that makes you want to end it all. I made my way over to the bar and sat down next to her.

  You from England? I asked.

  What clued you in? I’m Linda.

  Lucky guess, the name’s Bob.

  Guess wasn’t lucky. I heard her order milk tea and I noticed that Brit twang of hers. Always makes me feel dumber, my American drawl. Wish I’d been born somewhere else, still do.

  Om namo Shiva, she said to the painting tacked in front of us. I don’t know if she was just trying to impress me or she really felt the need to praise Shiva in my presence. It was a wasted gesture and she’d soon find out why.

  Nice painting, huh?

  Wonderful and exceedingly local, Linda said. Notice how he’s seated on a tiger skin signifying he has conquered lust. Then there’s that brilliant mala of human skulls, do you see it? The trident represents the three Gunas. Typical. All of them have that. Oh, and that ash smeared across his body. Nice touch, huh? Parvati would be proud.

  She always was pedantic and I loved her for it. I listened in as Linda started telling me the story of Shiva’s most famous son, the elephant-headed man Ganesha.

  ‘Mr. Latchman, we’re here,’ Ms. Cherrydew said.

  Wake me up from my dream! I swear Shiva, you and Ms. Cherrydew destroy everything. Ms. Cherrydew is your conduit, my brain is your host. Eat away, most of it’s already gone anyhow. I’m surprised you haven’t strangled me yet with your garland of snakes.

  Ms. Cherrydew is beeping in the security code. Perimeter security alarm. Watch tower and moat to follow, maybe a crocodile or a tub full of rabid piranhas. Keep safe, America, keep safe, because someone is always coming. I’d sleep with a revolver next to me if Ms. Cherrydew would let me.

  ‘Why’d you wake me up?’ I ask. ‘I was just getting to the good part.’

  ‘Linda in Nepal?’

  ‘You bet. Coming up on Fishing with Shiva. Best story I ever told, aside from the fact that Shiva is in it.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You know,’ I tell her.

  ‘Shiva’s that dish, right? Lentils and rice?’

  ‘That’s dhal bhat.’

  She’s playing me for a fool, but I’ll bite because I’m hungry for memory. ‘Shiva is a Hindu God. Blue, long black hair, looks like an Italian Charlton Heston, muscular arms, holds a trident. I’ve told you this before.’

  ‘Yea, you have,’ she says, unbuckling me. ‘Are your eyes feeling ok?’

  ‘Wait a minute, no I haven’t,’ I say. She’s trying to confuse me, I just know it. ‘My eyes are fine.’

  I take my assisted walking apparatus with the tennis ball feet and try and scurry away from her. The rain seems to land harder with each step I take. Ms. Cherrydew is as fast as a happy lizard and beats me to my front door and scolds me, ‘Mr. Latchman, let me get the umbrella next time. You’ll get wet out here.’

  ‘I got wet in the mountains and never died. No pneumonia, no nothing. Not going to happen in Seattle in the spring. If it does you’ll just find yourself a new job, dammit, and I’ll finally get to tell that bastard that he has won, and I ain’t talking about God.’

  ‘Oh lordy, let’s get you inside before your jacket gets wet.’

  I’m sick of her chatter and I don’t say another word until she sits me in my favorite leather chair. The panoramic picture of the Himalayan Mountains over my TV is beckoning. I didn’t take the photo, but I saw it in real life. Nice to be able to say that.

  Back then, they said I was escaping something, either the death of my parents or Uncle Jack’s suicide, but none of that’s true. I was just spending money because I had it and why not spend it when you got it? Spin the globe, press your finger, and go with an attitude of abandonment. Just don’t go where Shiva can see you.

  ‘Lemonade and cookies?’ Ms. Cherrydew asks. She’s holding a tray of Danish wedding cookies stacked like tires in the snow and two glasses of lemonade that need another stir. Un
der her arm is a white package.

  ‘Oh, and Henry sent you something. I think it’s a book,’ she says. ‘I made a slit in it to make it easier for you to open, Mr. Latchman.’

  She hands me the package and I slowly enlarge the hole with my finger. A thin paperback book slides out onto my lap.

  My youngest brother Henry never sends me much, but when he does, it’s always something he’s thought long and hard about. Rick sends me stuff too, but it’s usually Christian pamphlets and whatnot. Damn born-agains.

  ‘Once upon the Ganges,’ I say, showing the book to Ms. Cherrydew. I flip the book over, examine the back cover. ‘Stories about India. Ganges…where have I heard that word before? Ganges…’

  ‘Isn’t that where that blue man of yours was fishing? What’s his name again?’

  I look from the book to Mrs. Cherrydew. That blue man of mine?

  She’ll remember you one day, Shiva. She’ll remember you when all is lost and she’s sitting in a recliner that she bought twenty years earlier trying to recall the story about you that I I’m about to tell her. She’ll remember you just like I do now. She’ll remember you and nothing else aside from the fact that she’s dying and we’re all dying and dying is the next best thing to living and living is pointless while dying serves a purpose.

  ‘His name is Shiva. Wait a minute, haven’t I told you my story about Shiva?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you sure? How do you know about the Ganges, then? Swear I told you last week.’

  ‘You remembered! That’s good. I think you have told me this story before.’

  You see what I mean? She’s always double speaking me. ‘No I haven’t,’ I say after thinking for a moment. I set the book down on the table and reach for a cookie.

  ‘Do you want to tell me now?’

  ‘Why the hell not? So, Linda was sitting about where you are now,’ I begin. ‘And I was in a little bit of trouble cause I didn’t know who the hell Shiva was, but I’d just promised to tell her a story about him. “So Shiva’s best friend,” I said to her. “Shiva has a best friend? What’s his name?” she asked me. “I forgot his name,” I told her, “Let’s just call him John.”’