Parade

by Shuichi Yoshida

  We were eating bowls of nothing-to-write-home-about katsudon when, as the waitress predicted, we were asked to share the table. I looked up and who was standing there but the middle-aged man who lived in apartment 402. His hair was just as it was when I saw him in our building – slicked back with pomade. Who uses that any more? His lips were thick and purplish, the heavy beard on his hard-looking skin freshly shaved. Ryosuke was still working on his katsudon. He didn’t look up so I elbowed him in the ribs. He let out a little yelp. ‘What did you do that for?’ he complained, rice grains sticking to his pouting lips. And then he seemed to take in, for the first time, our neighbour standing there. Ryosuke tensed up. In an attempt to cover it up, he called out to the waitress, helplessly. When she trotted over he quickly gulped down his almost-full glass of water and asked for more.

  The guy from 402 was already seated across from us. We’d seen him a number of times in our building so he had to know we were his neighbours, but he pretended not to notice and, with narrowed eyes, studied the menu taped to the wall. Everything about him gave me the creeps, even the way his Adam’s apple stuck out. He ordered goshiki soba, the Girls’ Day dish – not exactly what you’d expect a man to order. When I thought of how he helped dirty old men hook up with young girls – this guy sitting right in front of us! – I totally lost my appetite. The plump egg in my bowl of katsudon suddenly looked like a wart on the forehead of one of those old lecherous men, the droplets of moisture clinging to the lid of the bowl like sweat, and I felt like I was going to hurl.

  I couldn’t stand it any more so I grabbed Ryosuke by the arm and tried to pull him up so we could leave. He started to get up, but he looked longingly at the last slice of pork left between his chopsticks and wouldn’t let go. The man from 402, engrossed in a copy of Shukan Jituswa, a sort of smutty weekly magazine that always featured a pin-up on the cover, gazed up at us with a smirk.

  I flung down the money next to the register and we went out. ‘Did you see it? That guy’s face? Unbelievable!’ I yelled, not caring if anyone else heard us.

  Ryosuke, still chewing a bit of pork, said casually, ‘You think he noticed we’re his neighbours?’

  ‘Of course he did!’ I yelled back. ‘And did you see how nonchalantly he ordered goshiki soba! Can you believe him!’

  Ryosuke ignored how upset I was and calmly walked on.

  I grabbed his shoulder. ‘Hold on! It doesn’t bother you?’

  ‘There’s nothing we can do about it. There’s all kinds of people in the world. People who plough fields, people who sing in front of the station, people who sell cigarettes, people who drive the Shinkansen . . . all sorts. So what’s so strange about people pimping for prostitutes?’

  ‘How come you’re so knowledgeable all of a sudden?’

  ‘Well, Naoki and Mirai said that – that there’re women who are happy to sell their bodies . . . Plus, keep in mind that relationships with neighbours in the city can be pretty delicate.’

  ‘But what about that girl you saw crying on the stairway?’

  ‘I know, but there are lots of girls who cry for some reason. At least according to Mirai.’

  ‘Come on – they’re running a brothel next door to us!’

  ‘I know, but still . . .’

  ‘Damn, you’re making me crazy here! If that’s what they’re doing, we need to expose them.’

  ‘How are you going to do that?’

  ‘Well . . . You could be a client.’

  ‘Me? No way!’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I just – don’t want to.’

  ‘If you’re worried about the money, I’ll give it to you. After you figure out what they’re up to, then you can make an anonymous call to the police.’

  ‘You’d really give me the money? . . . Nah. I don’t want to do it.’

  ‘Maybe you’ve never been to a place like that before?’

  ‘Never!’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘How the hell can you ask me that?’

  From there our conversation went in a whole new direction. Ryosuke insisted that he would never pay for sex. But we decided that Naoki might – though ultimately we concluded that while he didn’t have a regular girlfriend, he often met up with his ex, and probably just took care of business that way. Eventually apartment 402 dropped out of our conversation altogether.

  When we got back in front of our building, Ryosuke said, ‘I’m going to go wash Momoko. You want to come?’

  ‘To wash your car? Will you pay me?’

  ‘In the end you’ll be the one asking to pay me.’

  He wanted me to tag along, so I decided to do just that. If I went back to the apartment now, I’d have nothing to do. I rode on the back of his bike to where Momoko was parked.

  He was right. I ended up enjoying it so much I told Ryosuke to bring me along the next time he took the car to be washed. It was a coin wash, and I found out something I’d never known: car washes have a time limit. Three minutes to rinse the car off, then you soap up and wash the car, and if you slack off even for a second the alarm will buzz to tell you that you only have thirty seconds left. ‘Koto! Get that spot over there – over there,’ Ryosuke instructed me and we were able to wash the whole car. Then comes the final rinse, and this has a time limit, too. I shrieked as my hair and face got soaked, but we somehow managed to finish washing the car. ‘If it’s this much fun,’ I pouted, ‘you should have invited me a long time ago.’

  Afterwards, we took the sparkling-clean Momoko for two nine-kilometre rides, and got home before five. Then Ryosuke went to work at the restaurant and I sat there as always, fantasising about Tomohiko. The days really do race by.

  Five months ago, when I caught a ride in the large truck with the brother of that guy who was trying to pick me up in the club, and landed in Tokyo in the middle of the night, it was Ryosuke, in Momoko, who came to pick me up. The truck driver was much older than his brother, a nice guy around forty with a wife and kids. ‘You’re lucky you got me to give you a ride,’ he said, laughing. ‘Some of those other guys would be trying to get it on with you in the back seat by now.’

  I phoned home when we stopped at a rest area in Shizuoka. My mother couldn’t believe it – the notion that her daughter, who’d gone out to go dancing, had suddenly just hitched a ride to Tokyo to see an old boyfriend was completely bizarre to her. The only thing she said was ‘Tokyo?’ Then she went silent.

  ‘Tell the office I’m sick or something, okay?’ I said.

  ‘When are you coming back?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know yet.’

  ‘What should I tell your father?’

  ‘Can you just figure that out yourself?’

  ‘How can you say that? And are you really in a truck? Not a plane or a train?’

  ‘Yes! I caught a ride in a truck.’

  ‘Hmm . . . a truck . . .’

  Naturally when I got out at Tsukiji, I called Tomohiko right away, but nobody answered. I let it ring ten, twenty times but it didn’t go to voicemail. I started to feel lonely for the first time and began to cry. And as I was crying, I phoned my one and only friend in Tokyo, Mirai Soma.

  ‘If you’re going to cry all over the phone, I can’t figure out what you’re trying to say!’

  Hearing her voice, the same as always, made me happy and I cried even more loudly.

  ‘What?’ she said. ‘All I can figure out from what you’re saying is that a nice truck driver bought you a bowl of kitsune udon in a rest area.’

  I explained the whole thing. ‘You idiot!’ she shouted. ‘The trains aren’t even running at this time of night, so I’ll ask Ryosuke, this guy I’m living with, to collect you in his car.’

  I was finally able to get in touch with Tomohiko five days later, after I’d settled down in this apartment. Even if he was just being polite, Tomohiko sounded happy to hear I’d come to Tokyo.

  ‘How come you came all the way to Tokyo?’ he asked in his usual cheerful voice.


  ‘I came to see you,’ I said, and he burst out laughing.

  Once when he used to work at a DIY store, I went to check him out while he was working. He was in the Gardening section, wearing a green apron and gloves, and carrying a potted benjamin out to a customer’s car. My chest tightened painfully. It was the first time that seeing a man working had done this to me. As he walked back from the car park, I waved to him from the entrance. He looked a bit put out, but then trotted over and said, ‘What’s going on? How long have you been here?’ It sounded a little forced, but he did look happy.

  Tomohiko and I dated for a year and seven months. The DIY store was open 365 days a year, and was especially busy when college girls like me had time off – summer and winter break and other long holidays – and usually he couldn’t even get a couple of days off in a row. Still, whenever we could get together, we did.

  I knew that he was living with his mother. And I suspected that she had some health issues. The reason I say this is that often, when we were out on a date, he would call his home or the caretaker at his apartment. Plus, no matter how sweetly I tried to get him to stay the night in a hotel, he never would.

  Only once in the year and seven months that we went out did he sleep over, and that was when we went to the beach. The place we stayed at was a cheap bed and breakfast that didn’t have air conditioning and all night long we had to listen to the owner’s baby bawling downstairs. Still, though, I always think that it’s because of that one night that I have such strong feelings for Tomohiko.

  Ever since I was a child I have believed that you shouldn’t bring up a topic the other person avoids mentioning, so I never asked about his mother. But that night, when he said, ‘Let’s shoot off some fireworks,’ and we went down to the beach, I said, ‘You know, if there’s anything I can do to help out, I want you to tell me.’ At first he didn’t seem to understand. He was holding a Roman candle up towards the sky, and said, ‘What?’

  ‘. . . I mean, with your mother . . .’

  At that instant purple flames leapt out from the tube in his hands.

  It wasn’t until we’d finished with the fireworks and were walking back, arm in arm, towards the bed and breakfast, that he responded.

  ‘The president of the store where I work – the guy who owns the whole chain – has a son who’s the same age as me. The son is just nineteen but he drives around in a BMW. Sometimes, during college holidays, he makes the rounds of the stores with his father. The manager and floor chief of our store are these older guys, but you should see how they bow and scrape to the president’s son. I guess it’s not surprising – happens all the time that employees will fall all over themselves at a company’s successor-to-be. But I was thinking, is that really the way things should be? I’m not that smart, you know, and I’m not great at explaining things. And I do know that the president deserves our respect. But the other guy’s just his son, so does that really make him great too? I said this to the floor chief once, during a break, and he said, He’s the next president, so of course he deserves our respect! I supposed he’s right.’

  I didn’t understand what Tomohiko was getting at. I just smelled the sea and held on tight to him.

  ‘Like, take North Korea,’ he went on. ‘I read in a magazine how the son of Kim whatever-his-name-is went to boarding school in Switzerland. Since grade school, I think. And they sent another boy the same age to be with him and take care of him in the boarding school. Like a medieval retainer. When I read that, I was eating lunch and it sent a chill through me and I totally lost my appetite. This might be a leap, but I was thinking that maybe there’s really no reason to bow and scrape to the company president’s son. Maybe all these things we take as a given just shouldn’t be.’

  I pictured a young man in a classroom, expressionless, hurriedly kneeling down to pick up the eraser a boy has dropped. We made our way back slowly to the B&B.

  Back in our room, we took turns taking a bath. While I was bathing, Tomohiko went outside to play a trick on me. He was going to peer in from the window to scare me, but the owner discovered him and gave him a good slap across the back with a stick. I heard him scream, ‘I’m telling you the truth! That’s my girlfriend in there!’ so I leaned out to the owner to explain, and to rescue Tomohiko. My face was bright red, not from the hot bathwater, but from the embarrassment of hearing him yell out – so loudly his voice must have carried all the way to the beach – that I was his girlfriend.

  ‘My mother worked for years as a housekeeper,’ he told me, when he came back inside. ‘You remember Kengo? That guy that was with us when we first met? My mum was their housekeeper.’

  When Tomohiko quit his job at the DIY store and went to Tokyo, I only found out about it second-hand. This was just after I graduated from junior college. I’d already broken up with him. You could say I ran away from him, but putting it that way is a little misleading. What I ran away from was the circumstances surrounding him.

  It still makes me shiver to remember the first time I met his mother. She was sitting on the steps of their apartment, nude from the waist down. When Tomohiko saw this, he shoved me aside, raced up to her, threw his jacket over her waist and slowly led her, step by step, up the stairs to their apartment. She’d been sitting outside, vacantly gazing at the moon in the night sky.

  I stood there, frozen, not knowing if I should follow after them or turn around and go home. One voice in my head urged me to follow them; yet another told me to go home. I started to panic. Back on the beach I’d promised him If there’s anything I can do to help out, I want you to tell me, but now what was I meant to do? The half of me who raised her hand then, I’m sorry to say – and I mean really sorry – is the half that was afraid and wanted to go home.

  He phoned me early the next morning. ‘I’m sorry about last night,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to apologise for,’ I told him. But the spell was broken for me. Every time after that – when we went bowling, when we drank a vanilla shake, or even when my younger sister said You’ve got a call from Tomohiko – the image of his mother haunted me. Going out with him meant going out with his mother as well. He’s the one who said he wanted to break up, but I’m the one who made him say it. I’d just turned twenty then – I was in college and was just out to have some laughs and a good time. Both the angel and the devil sitting on my shoulders were in innocent, high spirits all the time, badgering me with questions: Now what? Now what are we going to do for fun? Hm?

  At the earliest, Naoki gets home at nine p.m., Mirai at ten. Naoki works for a small film distributor. He explained what he does once, but it was sort of confusing and I can’t say I totally get it. Mirai’s job, though, is easy to understand. She works in a store that deals in imported goods, and even takes the occasional buying trip abroad. She insists she just does it for money, and that her real calling is as an artist. I’ve gone out with her several times when she sells her drawings – she spreads them out on a cloth on the pavement along Omotesando, or at the entrance to Yoyogi Park, and even next to the pond in Inokashira Park.

  Compared to Ryosuke, who comes straight home after his part-time job, I’m never sure when Naoki and Mirai will be back. It’s not just because they’re working late. They’re very different types of people, but they both tend to get really drunk. They love to boast about how there’s not a street in Tokyo – in Ginza, Akasaka, Roppongi, all the way to Kabukicho in Shinjuku – that they haven’t passed out on. When Naoki comes home wasted, he isn’t much trouble. He goes to the bathroom and groans and retches for a while, but once that’s over, he collapses wherever he is and peacefully snores away. His one problem, though, is what he says in his sleep, which isn’t normal. One night I was going to the kitchen to get a drink of water and Naoki was asleep on the kitchen floor, still in his suit. All of a sudden he yelled, ‘Watch where you step!’ I was sure he thought, mistakenly, that I was stepping on him, so I gently said, ‘Don’t worry, I won’t step on you.’ But then he sat up and said, ‘’Cause there’s
one like – this big,’ and he held his thumb and index finger apart.

  ‘Huh? What is?’

  ‘There’s one this big there, so don’t step on it.’

  Naoki looked towards where I was standing, his eyes darting around anxiously, then plopped back down on the floor and shut his eyes. I was the one who was taken aback – what was he talking about? ‘Where is it?’ I said, hopping about the dark kitchen.

  The next morning Ryosuke told me that Naoki often dreamed about a tiny elf. Ryosuke had even heard the spell that Naoki intoned in order to make the elf appear.

  Still, compared to Mirai, there’s something kind of charming about Naoki’s drunkenness. When Mirai staggers home drunk it takes for ever for her to settle down. She doesn’t hurl in the bathroom, or pass out on the floor; instead she insists on drunkenly acting out the performance she gave to entertain her friends at whatever bar she happened to be at that night. Needless to say, as soon as she comes home, Ryosuke and I beat a hasty retreat to our bedrooms.

  Even if we do that, Mirai will stay in the living room alone, practising, with dance steps thrown in, the song ‘Nowhere to Stay’ by Masanori Sera. Somehow she just isn’t satisfied with the performance – I don’t know what aspect of it doesn’t meet her standards, but nobody knows that song nowadays anyway, so who cares?

  Despite all this, I like living here. It’s fun, though there is a fair amount of tension in the air that comes with living with others. But I especially like the fact that, should my situation change, I can move out at any time. If I told them I’m moving out tomorrow, I don’t think any of them would complain, and even if Mirai left, I think at this point I could stay on.

  To put it another way, take the world of online chat rooms. I’m hopeless with technology and try my best to avoid it, but according to what my friends from junior college tell me, our life here is kind of like living full-time in a chat room. The main reason I don’t use the Internet is, like I said, my complete ineptness when it comes to technology, but also, if I could be completely anonymous then I might say something totally cruel. And if I feel that way, so does everyone else . . . and then we’d all be backstabbing and wasting time. So no thanks. Still, my friends tell me that not all sites are so evil. They say there are some where you can actually open up in a real way. These seem to be sites that are full of goodwill. Places where you can unload about your problems and be sympathetic, maybe even encouraging, towards others, and get the same in return. If, on occasion, someone shows up saying something nasty, the others respond with something like I’ve gone through some tough times, too, so let’s all hang in there or Thank you. You’re absolutely right, which then provokes someone to write something like Heh, heh, heh – you want to suck my cock, don’t you? which, naturally, everyone else totally ignores. This is a space where only those of goodwill can enter, and you’re free to come in or out any time.