Reprieve came in the form of grocery shopping. One of Aiko’s greatest skills was cooking, and that night was her first chance to cook something for her hardworking girlfriend. The night before they only had time to eat fast food amidst their unpacking frenzy, and Aiko wanted to ensure Reina had a proper meal for the first time in…well, ages, probably. Reina was in no way a chef herself, and her mother no longer cooked meals for them. The only home cooking Reina got was from Aiko’s busy hands. Now she can eat well every day!
She had fried pork, steamed rice and vegetables, and her own specialty sauce alongside the usual suspect of miso soup waiting that evening when Reina ambled through the front door. The moment she heard the door clack shut and shoes kick off in the genkan, Aiko rushed into the living area to finish setting up the dishes before her girlfriend walked into the scene.
“Whoa! What is this, a feast?” Reina tossed her blazer onto the floor, her face bright from both delight and the heat clinging to her skin. “Looks good!”
All Aiko could do was bite her lip to contain her smile. As Reina sat down at the table and immediately began complimenting the “feast,” Aiko pulled off her apron and joined her.
“I’ve never gotten to cook for you much, outside of sweets.” If nothing else, Aiko was always generous with the cookies and brownies. “I wanted to make the first meal special.”
“Ehh, I don’t know where to begin!” Reina scoped out every piece of pork, the broccoli and carrots, and the steaming rice and miso sitting side by side in separate bowls. “Do you know how long it’s been since I had a home-cooked meal like this?”
Aiko didn’t respond to her girlfriend’s rhetorical question. Too long. Reina’s mother hadn’t cooked like this in years, or at least not since her husband’s death when Reina was in middle school. They lived on pre-cooked meals and restaurant food. Now Aiko could change her girlfriend’s diet with food lovingly prepared. Watching her dig into the food with declarations about how delicious it tasted was almost as gratifying as sex. Almost.
Aiko sampled her own food and admitted it was decent. Nowhere near Junko’s level of cooking expertise, and probably not as good as Reina’s mother’s before she became too depressed to cook. But she would never have guessed that from the way her girlfriend ate everything with the biggest smile on her face.
“Can we have dinner like this every night?”
The pleading look accompanying those words tugged at Aiko’s heart, as if it were a marionette and Reina its master. She always knows where to prick me inside. “I guess so, but after I get a job it may be difficult…this takes a while to cook, you know.”
“Ah.”
True! Aiko spent over two hours on this meal, from preparing the miso and sauce from scratch and balancing the other ingredients together. Although she loved it, and wished she could have such a meal waiting for Reina every night, she knew it would be impossible once she got a…job. One way Aiko got her girlfriend to agree to move in with her was by promising to get a job to cover the utilities and property taxes. Suffice to say, Aiko had not looked yet.
She diverted the conversation to asking about Reina’s day at work, which led to Aiko’s day and the trip to the nameplate shop and the Shinto shrine. Aiko showed her the YAMADA nameplate she bought and asked her girlfriend to put it up after dinner. When Reina balked, Aiko reminded her they were still waiting for some packages and the television company, and they were under her name since she paid for it.
“By the way, I met some of the neighbors today.” Aiko relayed her encounter with Mrs. Uchiyama and the rest of the welcoming brigade. As she talked about the invasive questions they asked, Reina’s brows furrowed and she no longer appeared to enjoy the aftermath of supper.
“So it’s going to be like that, huh?” She emptied her teacup in one swallow. “I was suspicious of it when we moved in and I noticed most of the neighbors are older family types. You didn’t tell them about our relationship, right?”
“No, of course not. I said we were roommates. Do you think it’s going to be a problem?”
Reina considered the back of her hand as her brain went into deep thought. “I don’t know. But don’t give them too much information about our personal life. You have to be careful with people we live around. It’s not like we moved into Ni-chome.”
“Of course.” Aiko didn’t like the implication that Reina thought she would go around blabbing about her lesbian love affairs to everyone in the neighborhood – and of course they didn’t live in Ni-chome, the one place in Tokyo where everyone was assumed gay. How stupid did Reina think she was? Just because once, five years earlier, she had come out on a whim to her best friends and subsequently lost them? Aiko learned her lesson that day.
“I guess I don’t have to worry about seeing them much.” Reina licked the last of the sauce off her plate. “I don’t want to know the neighbors anyway.”
She went out to hang the nameplate while Aiko cleaned the table and washed the dishes. Through the window she watched Reina’s shadowy form pace back and forth before the fence, the setting sun washing out her black hair and illuminating her white shirt. I get to see her every single day now. The reality still hadn’t hit her yet. I get to make this place our home.
When she was a child, Aiko dreamed of growing up to become a housewife. Yes, a housewife. She wanted to create a positive environment for her husband and their children, cooking them meals she loved to create and keeping them safe and clean. Well, she knew now that a husband was not her destiny. Nor were children, probably. But she could live without both those denominators if it meant she still got to create a home for a woman she adored more than any husband.
She glanced at the newspaper on the dining table, aware she should start searching the classifieds. Yet no job could be as rewarding as making her girlfriend smile.
A smoky haze filled the back room of the bar from ceiling to corner. The table, surrounded by a dozen men and women in suits, erupted into laughter as the section chief told a story about his wife chasing her dog down the street in nothing but her nightgown. Whether the joke was actually funny or not had no bearing on the response – he could have told a story about how “hilarious” his constipation was and his underlings would have eaten it up like candy.
Thus Reina stopped listening and took her cue to laugh whenever the men on either side of her cracked up. She downed her third beer and lit a cigarette to accompany her drink. One of her female coworkers stopped by her seat and refilled her glass without a thank you.
These Friday nights out with her coworkers were both Reina’s favorite and least favorite parts of her job as an entry-level cubicle worker. She liked them because it gave her a reason to get drunk and party – not that she needed many excuses, but corporate sanctioned revelry didn’t bother her. Yet she turned her nose up at the thought of being held hostage by her coworkers on a perfectly good Friday evening. Especially now, one week after moving into her new house, when she could have been home fucking her girlfriend.
One last round of chicken wings and fried potatoes made its way to everyone, and with it came the last kanpai in the name of company cohesiveness. Reina clanked her frothing beer with her male coworkers and downed half of it in one gulp, a feat her seatmate Suzuki commended as “positively masculine.” Reina took it as a compliment.
Around nine, the section chief dropped his glasses and decided that meant it was time for him to head home. He asked the servers to put the bill on the company tab, and while he fumbled for his jacket and briefcase, a female coworker darted up to help him put on his clothes and hand him his things. These women have no agency. Reina thought herself above the demeaning work of secretaries, of which almost all the female coworkers were comprised. Their little pencil skirts and black heels made her drunken gut miss sex.
Since the section chief called off the tab and stumbled his way out with half the coworkers, Reina and her two work friends, Suzuki and Kimura, lagged behind and veered down another street from the common gaggl
e. Reina managed two steps in the darkness before she tripped over her own feet and splattered on the ground.
“Yamada-senpai!” Kimura threw himself beside her and lifted her up with shaking hands. “Are you okay?”
Drunken laughter shot out Reina’s mouth until she snorted. The alley spun in circles. I am so fucking plastered. What else was new?
“She’s fine!” Suzuki flung his briefcase at a stack of crates and nearly tripped as well. “I’m not too sure about me, though…”
The only one of them not totally shitfaced was Kimura, whose humbleness hovered around both his senpai like a towel boy at a baseball game. He recently joined the department a few months before, fresh from university and ready to please; Reina and Suzuki were equals, both semi-veterans from the year before. Kimura liked to hang around them since they were his superiors but not too much so.
Reina’s favorite thing about these two assholes was how easily she got along with them – Suzuki had an agreeable, humorous disposition, and Kimura was a good listener. Suzuki’s short stature and stout frame also kept him from being a physical threat on drunken nights like this, and Kimura, although tall and gangly like herself, kept his head down and showed more respect toward Reina than any man she ever met. Like now, when he offered to carry her briefcase the rest of the way to the train station.
“Maa, what do I do with nothing to hold?” She slammed into a light post. “See! I’m off balance! Oi, Kimura, give me back my briefcase!”
“Hai, Yamada-senpai!”
“Atsuko!” Suzuki stood in the middle of the alley and shouted to the stars above. “I love you so much!”
“Who?”
Kimura dusted off Reina’s briefcase. “His girlfriend, Yamada-senpai.”
“I knew that!” All these men had girlfriends, or fiancées, or wives. Somebody had to wipe their asses for them when they got home. Although Reina never recalled hearing about Kimura’s significant other at any time. Maybe he was the special unicorn in that regard. I wonder who wipes his ass for him. Luckily Reina had Aiko to do that for her now. If only I had one of her delicious dinners tonight. She burped at the thought.
Suzuki rumbled past them like a boulder smashing down a hill. His glasses floundered off his nose and nearly plummeted to the asphalt before Kimura leaped forward and snatched them in mid-air. “Atsuko!” Suzuki cried again, ignoring his coworker’s pleas to take the glasses back. “Atsuko, I love you!”
“Oi, Suzuki,” Reina said, her feet stumbling toward the short man. “What’s this Atsuko look like? Is she hot?” The only time she could talk women with her male coworkers was when she was drunker than shit.
“Atsuko is like the most…the most delicate flower petal!” Suzuki opened his arms to the sky, as if Atsuko were the moon, ready to bless her poor slobbering boyfriend.
“Feh.” Delicate flower petals were stale and boring. The best women were the feisty ones whose bodies could hold their own through anything, like a thorough fuck-over from Reina Yamada. Aiko’s feisty. And had a sturdy body, petite as it was. Now Reina just wanted to get home and top her wife all over their new house. Praise the neighbors!
Suzuki mopped his dripping forehead with the back of his sleeve. “No, you don’t understand. My Atsuko is more beautiful than a garden full of flowers…no, a field full of flowers! I don’t deserve her!”
It took both Kimura and Reina to calm their friend down enough to the point he could walk again – and then all he cared about was crying, the alcohol so embedded in his blood that he sobbed for his girlfriend.
“You know what I’m going to do?” Suzuki turned to Reina. “I’m going to ask her to marry me. I should! Life’s too short to live without Atsuko as my wife!”
Kimura clapped him on the back and congratulated him on his initiative; Reina stayed behind and rolled her eyes. Married! What a funny concept straight people talked about. The only marriage she was familiar with was her parents’, and that only lasted until her father got clobbered by a car. What was the point? Shared taxes and insurance? How romantic, indeed.
“I’m gonna do it!” Suzuki shook Kimura’s arms and then jammed a finger into the air. “I’m gonna ask her to marry me!”
“Congratulations, Suzuki-senpai!” Kimura clapped his hands.
When they reached the station, Suzuki had gone over five times how he was going to ask his girlfriend to marry him. Of course, the method changed each time: at a fancy restaurant; at her mother’s house; in the park; in the back of a limousine; at the beach while they watched the waves roll in and out. Kimura lauded every idea as better than the last until Suzuki confirmed he would do it in the hostess club where they first met. Reina tried not to laugh.
They saw Suzuki off on his line before heading on to theirs. By chance Reina lived on the same train line as Kimura now, who continued to stay with his parents until he saved up enough for his own apartment in the suburbs.
“If you don’t mind me asking, Yamada-senpai, why have you decided to move into Kita Ward? I thought you lived with your mother until now.”
Reina fought with her change to buy a ticket home – blast the fucking train passes! After dropping more than one coin, which Kimura dutifully picked up for her, she mumbled, “I moved in with a friend who got a house. Do you think I still want to live with my mother?”
“Oh, well, it’s common for unmarried women to live with their…”’
Reina grabbed her ticket. “I’m not like most unmarried women.” She shoved the ticket into the turn-style and stumbled through, Kimura right behind her.
Although they lived on the same line, Kimura elected to take an express train while Reina had to take a local. Her train arrived first, and she waved goodbye with a floppy hand and sloppier gait.
She stood next to the train doors, one hand on a steel grip while her body slouched against the back of a seat. The train lurched forward and took her stomach with it. She closed her eyes so she wouldn’t get too sick too fast.
Married, huh? Her mind wandered there, to torture her, she supposed. One thing that being a lesbian made her grateful about was the fact she never had to marry her girlfriend. Oh, sure, Aiko was into romance, sappy as it was. So were lots of the other girls Reina had dated. Most of them moved on to have their happy marriages with men. Once, Reina thought Aiko would leave her for the same reason, and then she worried her girlfriend would begin to get antsy as their adult years commenced. But with this whole moving in thing, she figured she had saved herself some years of grief. She hoped Aiko would get a job soon.
Ah, just the thought of Aiko, in her cooking aprons and negligees, made Reina wish she were a little more sober so she could gallantly sweep her girlfriend off her feet the moment she stepped through the door. Truly, the best part about moving in together was all the sex. They made up for the past five years of sneaking around and quickies in love hotels by doing it every night that week. Reina hadn’t felt so sexually satiated in years. She assumed Aiko spent her days walking funny in front of the neighbors.
As the notion of a gaggle of middle-aged women disappeared from mind, the train came to a grinding halt at Reina’s station and dumped her off. She took the corner outside the turn-style too fast and found herself running into the restroom to deposit half her beer.
Lighter, she wandered down the street, hair disheveled and breath stinking of vomit. She also had a headache. Ai-chan will soothe me. She passed one of the neighbors out sweeping the street in front of a house – the neighbor was nice enough to greet Reina, but she merely tossed her tongue around before falling through her gate.
“Oh, Reina!” The door was open and Aiko hung outside before Reina reached the porch. “There you are! I was wondering when you would get home…”
Reina checked her watch. “I told you I was going out with my coworkers.”
“Hora! You’re drunk!”
“Keen observation.” Reina sat down in the genkan and fought with her shoes. “I’m a little dizzy, that’s all.” And nauseated.
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“Is this how it always is when you go out with them?”
“Pretty much.” It had been a while since she last puked, though.
Aiko continued to flit around her like an excited bird. “I’ve never seen you like this before! You remind me of…” she paused as Reina threw a shoe across the genkan. “My father!”
Reina shoved past her and crawled up the stairs. No bath for her that night. Not when drunken fatigue called and she felt liable to pass out at any second. Aiko was behind her when she reached the top of the stairs, and it took both their prowess to get Reina into the bedroom and onto the bed without falling over.
“Nee, Ai---chan…” She grabbed Aiko’s wrist. “Come on, let’s do it.”
“Are you stupid? You’re drunk!” Aiko shrugged her girlfriend’s hand off.
“Please? I’m horny!” She actually wasn’t sure about that. But odds were if she stopped and thought about it, she would feel sexual desire somewhere inside her…probably next to the nausea. I’ll fuck her until the motion makes me puke again. Sexy!
However, Aiko was not impressed. “Maybe tomorrow. You need to sleep this off.”
That seemed like a decent idea. Reina rolled over onto her side of the bed and closed her eyes. The last thing she heard was Aiko yelling at her for going to sleep with her work clothes on and then mumbling about “I didn’t sign up for this.”
In the oncoming dream, Aiko stripped her clothing and whined about Reina’s stupor. “I didn’t sign up for this!” Reina moved in her sleep. Sure you did. And I signed up not to give a shit.
For the first time in her life, Aiko wandered the dark streets of Ni-chome on her own.
She knew where she was going, but nerves struck her nonetheless – she left Reina behind in her favorite bar to hang out with some old acquaintances. No alcohol, though. Reina had woken up that morning with a hangover the size of a torrential rainstorm. Who am I kidding? She’s drinking again.
Aiko meandered the alleys until she found the building she searched for. Like the others around, it was at least five stories tall, its bottom three floors home to busy bars for queers. Aiko rechecked her piece of paper before ascending the stairs outside.
Kataomoi Page 3
