by Unknown
Marks looked at the man, then turned his head slightly, keeping his eyes on him. “He’s dead.”
“Yup. Murdered. Poison, I think.”
Marks pursed his lips and then turned to face the taller man. “Spense, you call the cops?”
“Not yet.”
Marks waited a beat, raising his eyebrows. A sense of fatigue ballooned inside him. He knew where this was going, because it was a one-act play he’d performed over and over again. When Spencer didn’t nail his line, Marks sighed. “Why not, Spense?”
Spencer grimaced. “They won’t believe me. They’ll rule this a goddamn suicide. That’s why I called you, Philly. We go back, I know you’ve been in some weird shit. I know you take that weird shit serious. I know you’ll hear me when I say, Mr. Aoki? He was murdered.” Without turning to look, he thrust one long arm at the doll. “By her.”
Marks followed his arm with his eyes and stared at the doll. The sense of dread returned, but he wasn’t sure if it was the doll, or his growing sense that he was pushing fifty and still walking up the steps of ancient tenements that smelled like boiled cabbage and cumin, still being shown things he didn’t want to see, still wondering if sobriety was worth it, because not drinking hadn’t exactly transformed him into a prosperous, celebrated figure.
Just as he was about to turn away, say something biting to his old acquaintance, he paused. The dread had clarified, and he knew without doubt it was the doll.
It wasn’t the dead-eyed stare, though he couldn’t imagine sweating and grunting over that face, looking into that empty abyss where eyes should have been. It wasn’t the near-perfect skin, it’s near-perfection somehow worse than complete failure. It wasn’t the unmoving stiffness of the pose, without the telltale humanity of trembles and shivers and twitches. It wasn’t the way the clothes hung off the frame without movement or animation.
It was the expression on its face. On her face.
There was no expression. He knew that. The doll’s face was slack and inscrutable, the mouth slightly open, eyes at half-mast. If anything, it was an approximation of lust—the parted lips, the sleepy eyes. The face stayed with him, though, and even as he struggled down the stairs, Spense calling the police as they escaped, his rough, deep voice guiding Marks through the orange-tinged gloom of the stairwell, he could see it in his mind. The expression was blank. Nothing. And yet it was hungry. Marks couldn’t explain it, but he made his way through life being unable to explain things. It was simultaneously his comfort zone and torture.
As they emerged into the fresher air of Jersey City, Spense snapped his ancient phone shut. “Cops on their way,” he said. “You wanna hang at the diner and I’ll swing by when they’re done?”
Marks nodded. He wanted four fingers of Four Roses, with a sweating bottle of beer for company, and that meant he would spend the afternoon drinking coffee refills until he turned yellow and died. “Why’d you call me, Spense? I don’t write about this shit anymore. Or about any shit.”
Spencer shrugged. “You look into things, right? That’s how you pay the rent, right?”
Marks considered the various definitions of pay and rent. Finally he nodded. “Sure.”
Spencer pulled his shoulders back and opened his eyes wide. “There you go. I want you to look into it. Cops sure won’t.”
It had all circled back to grade-school math. Although, like many other things—most other things, if he was being honest—he’d forgotten grade-school math almost entirely. The experience of it, not the actual knowledge. He could add and subtract and was aware that someone had taught him how—but he couldn’t remember who that had been or what it had been like.
Those skills, however acquired, defined him now. A decade since he’d held a salaried job, he survived on small math problems.
A cup of coffee in the morning, light and sweet for the extra calories and energy: One dollar at a cart on the street. It tasted terrible. Seven dollars a week.
Office space in the communal building where you were supposed to be out by nine and stay away over the weekends, but where he’d been sleeping without incident: Fifteen dollars a week, three bucks a day.
The phone in his pocket, elderly and underpowered: Ten dollars a month, thirty cents a day, and you couldn’t send email or browse the Web on it.
Lunch and dinner (never breakfast): Five dollars a day. He’d lost seventeen pounds in six months.
Incidentals, the stuff you never expected to have to pony up for, surprising you: Three bucks a day, give or take.
His whole life: Twelve dollars a day. Three-sixty a month, forty-three hundred a year. Small math.
Coffee at the VIP diner cost a dollar-fifty, but refills were free so he argued to himself that he could average it down to something reasonable. By the time Spencer walked in, looking sweaty and tired, Marks was on cup number three and feeling good about his chances of getting Spencer to buy him lunch.
The VIP had been remodeled a few years before, miraculously looking worse after all the work. Gone were the workmanlike Formica and vinyl booths, in were faux granite and scratchy fabric that reminded everyone of the seats on a municipal bus. Gone were the ancient but beloved dime-a-play jukeboxes at the tables, in was an unwelcome extra three pages of menu offering all the sorts of dishes no one in their right mind ever ordered at a diner. Gone was the word diner, in was the word restaurant.
Spencer slid into the booth and wiped his brow with one hand. “Fucking cops, man,” he said, looking around. “Don’t wanna do nothing, but like to act like they know all about you and are letting you slide outta the goodness of their hearts.”
“You tell ’em about the doll?”
Spencer flicked his yellowed eyes at Marks, looking out from under his brow. “What, I’m an idiot? I tell you that shit because I know you. You’re open-minded.”
Marks nodded. Open-minded, he’d found, usually meant fucking crazy right up until they needed his help on something. “So, tell me.”
Spencer settled himself. “Hideki moved into the place, what, eight, nine years ago? I don’t know shit about the man. Like I said, no English. And I got no Japanese. He kept to himself, didn’t make any noise, but people started complaining.” He looked at Marks and leaned in. “Not really because the man done anything wrong, you see, but because they didn’t like him. Because he didn’t talk. Because he never smiled.” He waved a hand between them and leaned back—looking, Marks thought, like a man who’d been tired since the day he’d been born. “These fucking people. Same folks who call me when their heat don’t work, all piss and vinegar, same folks don’t tip me come Christmas. Shit.” He blew his breath out and shook his head as the waitress arrived and slid a coffee cup in front of him. He watched her pour coffee and then waved her off.
“So I went up there, knocked on his door, tried to explain to him that the tide was rising against him, you know? And the man made me tea.” He snorted. “I’m standing there, being an idiot, talking loud and slow like that’s gonna make the man understand me, and he’s puttering around in his bathrobe and then all of a sudden he brings me a cup of tea. Was good, too. Light. Orangey.”
Marks sipped his coffee. He hated tea. Always tasted like water to him. Water with a defect.
“I don’t know how we became friends. Friends gotta be able to talk, right? I came up for tea. We listened to music. I brought up some of my own, he’d put it on. Sometimes we drank booze, got a little high. Not one word understood between us.” Spencer smiled slightly, studying the light in the windows of the diner. “Not one word.” He looked at Marks and sobered. “One night, I stop up, there’s a box in the hall, all this foam wrapping and plastic, and I go in, and there it is: The doll. Hideki’s Dutch Wife.”
For a moment, Marks saw the eyes: Perfect and empty.
“What can you do? Man marries a doll. I didn’t say anything. Or do anything. He started dressing her up. Boug
ht nice things, expensive things. Started putting a cup of tea out for her.”
Marks studied the coffee cup up close as if it was fascinating. “He, uh, sleep with her?”
Spencer snorted. “I don’t know the man fucked the doll, Phil. You spend ten grand on a sex doll and not fuck it?”
Marks tipped his cup towards him. “You’re pretty sure it killed the old man, though,” he said. “Despite being a doll.”
Spencer didn’t say anything for a moment. He sat looking out the window, chewing his thumb. “Just look into it, okay, Phil? All I’m asking. Call me crazy, you want. Hideki deserved better. I was his only person, you know? Maybe he got family back home, I don’t know. I do know they never once looked for him, reached out. All Hideki had was me. Just look into it. I’ll pay your fee.”
Marks nodded. “And I’ll let you.”
Marks leaned against the warm chassis of the car and fished another nut from the plastic bag. Honey-roasted peanuts, one dollar from a vending machine that looked like it had last been serviced in a previous decade. They tasted like corn syrup and salt and made him sick, but he figured he needed every empty calorie he could get.
Across from him, a dark green metal door opened, and a uniformed police officer exited—fat, edging towards middle-aged, and wearing his uniform like it had been found, mysterious, in his closet that morning. He walked furiously up to Marks and handed him a bundle of files wrapped in several thick rubber bands. “We square?”
Marks glanced at the files as he stuffed the bag of nuts into his jacket pocket. “One more thing: The doll. I’m gonna need it.”
The officer’s eyes bulged. “The doll?”
Marks shrugged. “No one’s gonna miss it.”
The officer pulled one large hand down his face and left it covering his mouth for a moment. “Shit, Phil, I know I … I mean, the official ruling’s a suicide and there’s no family, but shit, that’s in the lockup, you know?”
Marks nodded. “I told you it would be a big favor.”
The policeman nodded, slumping. “All right. I’ll call you.” He started to turn, then stopped. “The doll, Phil?”
Marks sighed, extracting the bag of nuts from his pocket. “Christ, Stan, I’m not going to fuck the doll.”
Marks drove to the Starlight Motel and paid forty-one dollars for a room, using the wrinkled and worn fives and singles Spencer had given him. It felt like a huge expenditure, all for a room that had been theoretically cleaned, hot water, and that exotic feeling of a private space sealed to the elements. He stood in the doorway for a moment, rain crashing down outside, and tried to remember how he’d gotten here. The series of decisions, the flowchart of his existence. It was vague, as it had been as long as he could remember. He assumed he’d been clear at some point, but there was a … live wire in his memory. When he touched it, he jumped back, and when he came to he’d lost another five seconds.
The room was larger than he’d expected. It had a living area with a couch and a table and a TV, a small desk area, and the bed. A thin-looking door hung half-open in shadow, the bathroom. The room smelled strongly of disinfectant. He wasn’t sure if this was encouraging or discouraging.
Turning, he picked up one end of the duffel bag and dragged it into the room, kicking the door shut behind him. He unzipped it, pulled the doll from it, and set it on the small couch, its upholstery orange and angry-looking.
The doll looked awkward, the limbs jutting out stiffly, and he had to resist the urge to arrange it, to make it more comfortable-looking. He didn’t like looking at it, and turned to inspect the rest of the room. He didn’t like looking at that, either. Green carpet, heavy, oily-looking bedspreads in floral patterns that almost, but not really, matched the walls and carpet, an ancient television on top of a pressed-wood dresser he never wanted to touch. He had an idea that if he pulled open a drawer, bats would fly out, or roaches, or bedbugs, a torrent of wriggling bodies that would envelop him and consume him.
He turned and dragged the blond wood chair from the desk and sat down, crossing his legs and folding his hands in his lap. He stared at the doll. The easiest way to earn his fee from Spencer was to simply demonstrate that the doll was just the most creepily realistic sex doll he’d ever seen.
It did look realistic. The skin, the hair, the teeth hinting out from the slack, half-open mouth. The eyes, blank and dead but with a believable shine to them. The eyelashes, delicate, soft. He could imagine, in low light and from the right angle, mistaking her for a zoned-out girl just sitting in a room, staring at nothing. And he could imagine, every year, the lighting getting a little higher and the angle getting less severe, until one day in broad daylight you’d walk by this doll and fall in love.
He startled. The light in the room had changed, and he pulled his phone from his pocket. Two hours had passed. His head ached. Sleep came easy for him, these days, but he never felt rested. He woke up with headaches, all the time. He stood up and staggered, his legs asleep and filled with needles. He stretched them out, walking around the room turning on all the lamps, suffusing it in a weak orange light that felt cold and useless. He wanted a drink and a cigarette and stood in the middle of the room, frozen and afraid to move.
The doll hadn’t changed expression or position, but he was aware of it. As if it was putting out a specific signal that he could feel.
He leaned over it and then crouched down, getting close to its cold, elastic skin. He smelled it—perfume. Light and fruity, citrus.
Something suddenly clicked inside the doll’s mouth, and Marks leaped back, almost tripping over his own feet. Heart pounding with giddy, ridiculous reaction, he knelt down and shuffled on his knees back to the doll. He pinched its mouth between two fingers—the lips parting in a terrible, realistic way—and forced it open.
Inside, on the pink, gleaming tongue, was a tiny turtle. As Marks stared at it in surprise, it slowly, calmly pulled its head back inside its shell.
Marks stood up with popping joints and shaking hands, adrenaline burning off as the silence and thick air of the room crowded in again. Pushing a hand through his hair, he turned and picked up the files, carrying them to the desk area and sitting down. Turning on the lamp, he began flipping through them.
Crime scene photos. Coroner’s report. Incident form—no mention of a turtle, which didn’t surprise him. Thinking it a clear-cut case of suicide, there would be few volunteers to explore the cavities of an old man’s Japanese sex doll.
There were copies of the document Aoki had tucked into the waistband of his boxer shorts: A short, concise will, leaving his only sizable asset—the doll—to Spencer. Marks looked up at the mirror over the desk for a moment, chewing his lip, staring at but not really seeing himself.
Looking back down, he found the photos of the scrap of paper and stared at it, the characters meaningless to him. He folded the photo once, crisply, and slid it into his breast pocket. He turned and stared at the doll. It gave every impression of waiting patiently for the television to be switched on, its mouth still slightly open.
“Kotodama,” the fleshy man in the old sweater said. His hair was in retreat from his face, and the top of his head had been burned pink, peeling eternally. The sweater was shapeless and thin, fraying and stained. Under it he wore a similarly elderly and disreputable button-down white shirt and a pair of soft-looking tan trousers. He wore thin, delicate round glasses that he pushed up the bridge of his nose every few minutes. “Japanese, literally ‘spirit of language.’ If you were an asshole, you could call it a magic spell.”
He slid the photo of the note along the worn wooden bar and picked up a tumbler of whiskey, but didn’t sip it.
“We both know I’m an asshole, Ivan,” Marks said, tapping one finger on the photo while he looked at the collection of amber bottles on the shelf. “What does the note say?”
“Oh, you’re an asshole, all right. No, How are you, Ivan
? No, How’s the research coming for the book?” Ivan leaned back in his chair and sighed. “It’s a request for immortality, essentially. If, as I said, we were both assholes and were going to regard this as some sort of spell, that would be the desired effect.”
“What about the turtle?”
Ivan looked up at the ceiling of the bar, which was rusting old tin in an elaborate design. “If we’re going with my bullshit immortality interpretation, it might be a way of anchoring the spirit. The minogame in Japanese legend is a turtle that’s so old it has seaweed growing on its shell like moss. If I were, say, doubling down on being an asshole, that’s what I’d say.”
He set his glass on the bar and adjusted his glasses. “Phil, you called me here to not have a drink with me and ask me about bizarre Japanese love notes?”
“You’d call it a love note?”
“If I wasn’t an asshole, yes.”
Marks chewed his lip.
In the hotel, Marks had a moment of thinking the doll had moved. Its position seemed subtly changed, as if it had heard him coming and rushed to settle back on the couch. He stood for a moment in the doorway, smelling the stuffy air. It was the scent of burned fabric and cleaning supplies that had made him nervous before.
He shut the door gently behind him and walked carefully towards the doll. He sat on the small wooden coffee table in front of the couch, the doll’s face right there in front of him. He forced himself to look into the perfect, lifeless eyes. He held the position for a minute or so, studying the face, the eyes.
“Your problem,” he said suddenly. “Is you got no backup. No exit strategy. Big mistake. We’re all afraid. Of the nothing, of the unknown. Even me, and half my fucking life is unknown. But I still got options, and that’s the key.”
Then he stood up.
