The Typhoon Lover

by Sujata Massey

  Hugh said how pleased he was at the turnout for the birthday celebration for someone known to readers of the City Paper as the current “Most Notorious Woman under Thirty.”

  “Rei’s the first girl who’s made the listing without sleeping with a politician, and for that, I’m enormously grateful,” he said as a spotlight suddenly found me in the crowd. I waved reluctantly, because to hide behind Kendall would be pathetic. The people in the crowd were grinning at me now. A cocktail waitress with a nose ring pressed a mojito into my hand, and—ignoring all the warnings I’d heard about taking drinks from strangers—I sipped it, glad for something to do while the roasting continued.

  “Now, when Rei and I met, she thought we had nothing in common until I lured her into my car to listen to my collection of eighties and nineties tunes. To make her birthday really special, I wanted to bring her that music she loves.”

  If a band was the focus, the spotlight would move from me. Great!

  “Knowing Rei’s taste, I aimed my sights at the European bands. I tried for Echo and the Bunnymen, but unfortunately, that lot are playing a show in London tonight.” A chorus of groans. Apparently Echo wasn’t a big favorite here. “Next I went for Bjork, but she’s undergoing a crisis of fashion confidence and won’t leave the house.” There was some light laughter. “Massive Attack are recording the score for the next Lexus car commercial, and Garbage said they have to put out their recycling tonight.”

  There were more groans and a call from the back of the room, “Get on with it!” Hugh refused to be rushed. He took a sip of whisky and said, “I began to think there was some kind of bad star hanging over the night that Rei was born, but in the end, the answer was right before my nose. It’s a mystery band, an up-and-coming British group that had its video premiere on VH1 last month, and made it into the British equivalent of Billboard’s listings. They’re touring the country, and this is their only stop in Washington. They turned down the bloody 9:30 Club to be here with us tonight!”

  There was sharp applause at that, and I began to feel the hairs on my arm prickle. There was only one band that I knew Hugh was close to, and that was his brother Angus’s group, Glaswegian Hangover, which was making a ragtag tour on the west coast at present.

  “So, without further ado, let me introduce a band with true grit and originality. Yes, the band you’ve been waiting for…Angus Glendinning and the Glaswegian Hangover!”

  The lights started flashing, and the band took the stage. I screamed with the others because I hadn’t seen Hugh’s younger, guitar-strumming brother in three years. The twenty-year-old who’d slouched around Tokyo with auburn dreadlocks had shaved them off so only a thin auburn halo edged his head. He wore a black T-shirt studded with rivets and tight blue jeans tucked into motorcycle boots.

  The crowd howled as Angus picked up his guitar and lashed into an old Beatles song, “Happy Birthday,” with a few new lyrics that made me blush. He followed it with a song that I’d heard him working on in Japan, all discordant clanging, but with new lyrics about being dragged into a war by an older brother he’d once loved but now hated with every ounce of his being. I would have liked Hugh’s take on the lyrics, but he was back at the bar, grooving to the music while he waited for another drink.

  I checked out the rest of the band. On bagpipes was a mournful-looking blond wearing a denim jacket and kilt with combat boots. An Indian-looking guy in a Manchester United football jersey was lost in the rhythms of the drums. There was a black bass player dressed in a battered leather jacket and jeans. All they needed was a Japanese to complete their United Nations, but I wasn’t volunteering.

  The band finished the song with a defiant upward-climbing riff and then Angus took a sip from a bottle that a fan thrust up at him. “Thanks, love. And thanks to Shug for organizing the venue and, what’s that, a free round of McEwan’s for all? Brilliant!”

  Half the crowd surged toward the bar, wanting to take advantage of the beer. The die-hards who stayed at the stage started screaming names of songs they wanted to hear. “Methadone Morning!” “On the Train!” “Bleeding Heart Liberal!” I realized that the band’s CD must have aired on more than a few college stations. The Glaswegian Hangover were semifamous.

  “We’d love to get the jam going with a few songs off our new disc, Liberal Elitist. This song’s called ‘Pudding’ ‘cause it’s unhealthy, which is the way we like it.” Angus’s accent was affected Glasgow working-class, which probably was crucial if your band was called Glaswegian Hangover. “We’ll be playing our new songs mixed in with Rei’s birthday track. Oh, and Shug—that’s me brother, right?—wants me to let everybody know that our celebrity guest has arrived and will be appearing onstage shortly.”

  “Who is it?” I called out.

  Angus shook his head. “Don’t know exactly, but it’s supposed to be a Japanese celeb. So don’t go awaaayyy!” He launched into “Pudding” with a crash of guitar strings.

  I wondered who the musician might be as I started dancing with Hugh, who had suddenly showed up and grabbed me around the waist. I had trouble keeping my balance, given the two mojitos I’d downed in the last half hour. Hugh moved behind me as the band slowly segued from its song about a Scottish school dinner gone wrong into the Grandmaster Flash classic, “White Lines.” I was quickly wrapped up in the beat and the feeling of Hugh’s body behind mine—finally, Hugh had to physically direct my attention to the stage, where I saw the Japanese guest: a young woman in a gold leather skirt, white go-go boots, and a white halter top. A curtain of perfectly streaked hair—gold and black—hung before her face, and when the hair flashed back, I saw my twenty-two-year-old cousin Chika’s face.

  “Chika!” I screamed in delight.

  “I gave her my frequent-flier miles!” Hugh shouted in my ear. “She didn’t want to miss your birthday!”

  I turned and hugged him. “So she’s staying with us!”

  “Yes, she’ll come back with us tonight. And I hope you don’t mind, but the, ah, band will be with staying over, too.”

  “But where?” I knew I should be accommodating, but I felt a frisson of annoyance. Every week, it seemed, Hugh invited at least one or two overnight guests. Whether they were lawyers from his office having wife trouble, rugby players who’d been served eviction notices, or drinking buddies from Adams-Morgan who’d had one too many, Hugh unfailingly brought them home. He liked company. Hell, he’d been keeping me in his apartment, on and off, for years.

  “Any free bit of floor,” Hugh shouted again to make himself heard over the din. “The lads are accustomed to bunking in bus stations and bathtubs. And they’ll only be here a couple of days. It’s not going to be like when Angus stayed for months in Tokyo.”

  “Hope not.” I winked at Hugh, because I was actually fond of his hard-living brother. I turned back to the stage to admire my cousin Chika dancing in her high-heeled boots. Almost mechanically, she moved her arms and turned her hips, a robot-like contrast to the wild and woolly band, and the flailing bodies in the mosh pit in front of the stage.

  “Chika’s too cute,” Kendall shouted in my ear as she danced by me. “Find out where she bought those boots.”

  “I’ll ask!” I was overflowing with so much happiness that I wasn’t shy anymore. My head felt light and my body full of rhythm as I jogged up onstage to join my cousin. We embraced, and before I knew it, Angus had grabbed us both in a pelvis-grinding hug. Chika pulled away, obviously startled by the bald white boy, and the audience roared.

  Angus launched into my favorite 1980s classic, “Lips Like Sugar.” As Chika and I started to dance together, I gazed over the mosh pit and into the crowd. All the way from the bar, I saw Hugh smile at me and raise a McEwan’s in salute.

  Kendall had commandeered some male friends to boost her from the mosh pit to the stage, and the next instant she was dancing alongside Chika and me. I wasn’t surprised; Kendall was the most competitive woman I knew. She wasn’t one to stay out of the limelight for long.

>   I danced between my cousins, thinking about my Japanese past on one side, and the American future on the other. I was shot through with joy, not caring that my Lycra top was inching upward, revealing the navel ring glinting in the spotlight. Chika was performing a careful series of steps, and Kendall was unzipping her black leather jacket and, now, pulling off her T-shirt.

  Her T-shirt? I took a second look. Kendall, seemingly delighted by the catcalls of the audience, was wearing only a red lace bra and jeans. I glanced at Chika, who looked unimpressed, probably because girls in Japan had been disrobing on nightclub stages for years. Now I glanced back over the bobbing heads on the dance floor, looking for Hugh. He wasn’t at the bar. He was probably close to the stage, getting a bird’s-eye view of Kendall’s cosmetic enhancements. That’s what they had to be. We’d shared an outdoor shower during a beach vacation in college, and she’d been much smaller. Although maybe I was being unfair—could the breasts be a result of childbirth?

  The crowd was screaming for me and Chika to take it off, too, and I felt a twinge of nervousness. I’d brought it on myself, I knew, but suddenly I felt that my navel ring was more than I wished anyone had seen.

  “I’m stepping down!” I shouted to Chika as “Lips Like Sugar” drew to a close.

  “Okay, I’ll come along,” she shouted back. “That girl is crazy!”

  After we made it offstage, Chika asked me where we could get water. I was parched, too. I glanced back and saw that Kendall had started working on the top button of her jeans.

  “Where’s Hugh-san? I’d like to say hello to him—he was so kind to give me the ticket. Business class, even!” Chika’s happy chatter brought me back to the reality that I was with her, and life wasn’t as out of control as I’d feared.

  “The last place I saw Hugh was the bar,” I said, leading my cousin along. But he wasn’t there. After Chika and I each bought a bottle of water, we threaded through the crowd to the back, where Andrea was standing at the door, checking names against a guest list. She was being very hard-hearted with a group of Georgetown students who were claiming they should be on the guest list.

  “But I know Rei,” one of them was saying. “She’s, like, my best friend.”

  “Do you know this girl?” Andrea, her arms folded over a skintight “Power to the People” T-shirt, appeared ready to grind the girl under the her six-inch boot heels.

  “Sure. Let them all in. Hey, have you seen Hugh?”

  “Last time I saw him he was buying drinks for all his rugby friends. Are you loving your party?”

  “Very much so,” I said, and gave Andrea a quick hug before going back into the depths of the club.

  “Is that Hugh-san?” Chika tugged my hand and I followed her down a hall lit only by a sign for an emergency exit. There, one of the suits was vomiting over a trash can.

  “Oh, no!” I said, because I recognized the suit. It was Hugh’s.

  “What did he eat for dinner?” Chika asked in a horrified voice.

  “I don’t think it was the dinner.” I’d tried everything Hugh had eaten, and the restaurant had an impeccable reputation. Hugh must have been done in by the bottle of wine chased by whisky followed by the lager. It wasn’t really his fault—he’d once been able to drink like that and hold his ground, but now he was thirty-two. Perhaps his metabolism had changed—as mine would, too.

  I sent Chika into the ladies’ room to bring back both wet and dry paper towels, while I helped Hugh through the end of his agony.

  “Sorry,” he said, sounding weaker than I’d ever heard.

  “Don’t be.” I stroked back his hair, examining him. The charming Scot who’d toasted me with champagne a few hours earlier had been replaced by a red-eyed stand-in who had almost lost his accent. It was getting exhausting, living like this. Just two nights before that he’d gotten sick after a dinner party in Kalorama. I reminded myself that this was the same man who’d loved me enough to let me live in his apartment, who hauled antiques without complaint, who made a pot of tea for me every morning.

  “I’m missing a great show, aren’t I?” he asked, sounding pitiful.

  “Angus and the band are amazing,” I said. “But you’ll hear them again.”

  “Yes. He’s coming home with us.” Hugh sat down on the floor, his back against the wall for support.

  “That’s right, but a little later on. I’ll figure everything out. We’ll have to take a taxi home, because I can’t drive either.”

  “Don’t take me home,” he said. “You’re having a—grand time—a birthday time—”

  I shook my head. “Staying here doesn’t matter. I’m as trashed as you are, practically. I’m beat.”

  It was true. Three years earlier, I would have stayed the whole night. But now I just felt exhausted.

  My twenties were over. Thirty had already taken a very dirty toll.

  3

  The claim I’d made about a morning meeting had been all too true. I woke up at eight-fifteen with a pounding headache, knowing that I had to be at the Smithsonian within seventy-five minutes.

  I dragged myself into the bathroom, where Hugh was sleeping in the tub. I pulled the shower curtain to give myself privacy while I used the facilities. I would have loved a shower, but it wasn’t worth drowning Hugh.

  I felt bad that he’d slept there. But he’d been sleepy enough to drop anywhere, and the spare bedroom and living room were filled not only with Angus’s bandmates but with two roadies as well. In the bedroom I usually shared with Hugh, I’d placed Chika, who was still sleeping facedown in her tiny chemise. Before I’d gone into the bathroom, I pulled the sheet over her, just in case anyone stumbled into the room. I also wrote DO NOT DISTURB! on a Glaswegian Hangover flyer and taped it to the door.

  How my head hurt! I would never drink like that again. I’d recklessly chased one glass of wine with another at dinner, then spent the rest of the night slamming down hard liquor. The evidence was all over the place—red pupils, triple creases under the eyes, and a greenish tint to my skin.

  After gulping down two Aleve tablets and patting on a bit of makeup, I dressed in dark blue Donna Karan suit handed down from my mother, which I’d laid out the day before. I had a bit of panic when I couldn’t find my panty hose, but they turned out to be on my dresser, coiled underneath a potted bonsai tree—yet another birthday gift that had appeared in the foyer the night before. I lifted the pot up and gingerly pulled out the stockings, praying they hadn’t been torn. They were fine. I took this as a good omen—the only thing, maybe, that I had going for me on such a challenging morning.

  I wasn’t quite sure how the Sackler had located me, because I hadn’t applied for any job there except for a college internship that never happened. Of course, I sent out résumés all the time, so when a brisk-sounding woman had called the week before, asking me to come to discuss a potential consulting job, I’d immediately said yes. Any offer of steady employment would be fantastic, given that I’d finished a big restaurant decorating project and was at loose ends.

  I stepped into the Bally alligator pumps I’d gotten at the San Francisco Opera thrift shop the last time I’d been home, visiting my parents. Then I returned to the bathroom to bring Hugh clothes for his own workday.

  “Who bashed in my head?” he muttered.

  “You did it to yourself,” I said, then relented. “You must feel awful. And I’m sorry we put you in the tub last night to sleep, but I needed a bed for Chika—she’s sleeping in our room right now, so I brought you some clothes.”

  “Oh.” He yawned. “Where are you going so early in the morning?”

  “It’s already eight-forty and I have that meeting at the Smithsonian in less than an hour.”

  “Sorry about last night.” He sighed. “And I—lost it, didn’t I? You saw me at my worst.”

  “You’ve seen me sick, too.” But compared with him, I was the picture of blooming health. “It was a wild night. Parts of it were wonderful.”

  “I swear that I j
ust had a whisky and a lager or two—”

  “You also had a half-bottle of wine and a glass of champagne at the restaurant.” I began brushing my teeth at the bathroom sink.

  “Right. We drove from there—My car! Where is it?”

  “I’m sure it’s still wherever the valets put it yesterday evening. I can swing by after my meeting to retrieve it.”

  “No, no, I’ll do it. I’ll take care of it today. That shall be my penance,” Hugh said darkly.

  It was a twenty-minute walk to Dupont Circle, plenty of time to get the blood moving. I had a skim latte with four sugars in hand that I’d carried out from Urban Grounds. I’d have to finish drinking it before I entered the Metro, which had a strict prohibition against food and drink. As I sipped, I considered the situation ahead of me. I’d have to present myself to strangers, without knowing what they were after. But they had thought enough of me to seek me out. That was something I could cling to, with hope.

  I regretfully tossed my half-full coffee and boarded the train. I held my bag closely against me, protecting it from the crush of people. Inside the bag were two different résumés. The first one presented my work as an antiques buyer; it focused on freelance work I’d done for a restaurant in Washington and private clients in Tokyo. The second résumé made me look more like a scholar—citing a sale that I’d made years ago to a folk craft museum and the writing I’d published about a historic collection of Japanese flower-arranging vessels. There were a few flamboyant successes on both résumés, but sadly, no evidence of a real job anywhere. The longest job that I’d had since getting my master’s degree was working as an English teacher in Japan, and that, I sensed, was totally unrelated to anything the Smithsonian might want me for.

  I hopped out at Gallery Place–Chinatown, but instead of turning toward the restaurant district as I did for my last job, I walked the few long blocks to the Mall. The sun had broken out at last. It was a day on which, if I hadn’t had a headache, I might have jogged to the gym where Hugh and I shared a membership. I’d become addicted to gym classes, especially the ones that featured weight lifting, yoga, and ballet. It sounded like over-the-top fusion cooking, but I was happy with the new, sinewy muscles that had emerged in my arms and shoulders. Hugh said the best part of it was that I could now move heavy furniture without his help.