The phone cut out without another warning beep.
‘Shit.’
I hung up and the businessman stepped in, nudging me aside. By the time I bought a new card there was no answer at the farm.
Lexington Queen
Harry got laid.
Although this took place in the room next to mine it might as well have been a threesome. I heard everything —every grunt, every moan, every whispered request and every thank you. I lay on my back listening. The lucky girl, whoever she was, was not afraid to squeal and snort like some pained animal. She seemed unable to decide which sound best articulated her release. They would finish only to start up again minutes later, lasting a commendable half-hour each time.
Around dusk, quite exhausted, I went in search of a cheap meal. I found a largely deserted family restaurant, ordered a bowl of potato wedges and sat wondering what to do with the night ahead. After eating I paid the bill and began to walk without a destination in mind. A man with greying hair passed by on an old-fashioned bicycle. The type of bike was common in Tokyo; what caught my eye was the way he held a tray on the palm of one hand like a waiter. I tried to see what was on this tray, but he whipped past me with a single sharp sounding of his bell and disappeared around a corner. I walked on, staring into apartments as I once had with Harry until, tired and with sore feet, I found my way back to the hostel.
Outside, a girl from the hostess bar—the young naive one—was smoking a cigarette. Though I saw a flicker of recognition in her eyes, she ignored me. I decided it likely this girl had come from Harry’s room and guessed her to be his partner in the earlier activities. She wore stilettos, a skirt and tight-fitting top, just as she had while working. Her make-up was applied thickly, and with it she had accomplished a degree of prettiness without revealing too much of herself. I wondered if she was a prostitute, my interest purely fiscal. There was the question of my loan. By now I had little faith in the Ohio-bound toilets.
Stepping into my room I found Mami at my desk, writing a letter. She jumped up, alarmed, then suddenly angry. ‘Don’t creep up!’
My spirits leapt at the sight of her. Her eyes were puffy as though she had been crying. She picked up the pen she had been using and clicked it a number of times.
‘I wanted to leave you a note and the door wasn’t locked.’
‘You can’t keep coming here,’ I said, without meaning it.
‘You came to the hotel.’
‘My girlfriend’s coming back.’
‘Listen to you …’ She laughed mockingly. ‘Such a player.’
‘I’m serious.’
‘Just tell me when she comes back and I’ll never visit again. But until then, can I sit? I’m tired.’
I gestured towards the bed and Mami sat down. Every item of clothing and every accessory she wore had been selected to convey something—an aloofness perhaps. Her hair was raked back and fastened in a ball behind her head. She had applied an almost white foundation to her face and used a blue lipstick and purple eyeliner. With such additions her skin appeared illusory, her features muted, leaving her with the cold, expressionless face of a porcelain doll. Yet it was not a generic face. Not like the girl outside. It spoke instead of flair, the sort of flair required to make oneself inhuman.
Her clothing completed this carefully sculpted statement. She wore ruby-red high-heeled shoes, purple stockings, a ruffle-edged slip, a silk dress and a thick, dark cashmere coat which fell to just below her shapely knees.
‘You’re all dressed up,’ I said.
‘With nowhere to go.’
‘Why the make-up? Why so much of it?’ I hesitated, then clumsily added, ‘You’re pretty without it.’
Mami laughed. ‘You think that’s why I wear it?’
‘I don’t know. Why do you wear it?’
‘I saw something similar in a back issue of Vogue today and decided to put it together. I added and subtracted things though, so it’s more an “inspired by”. Not all mine and not all theirs, whoever they may be. In this case, Marc Jacobs, Miu Miu and Yoshi Yamamoto. Today’s little project.’
‘I like it.’
‘Or you’re glad I like it, right?’ Mami smiled. ‘That’s what my father would say.’
‘Really?’
‘A practical man. When he sees me dressed up like this he always shakes his head, smiles and says, “I’m glad you like it”. That—aside from the fact he pays for all of it without question—is his best attribute, I’d say.’
‘He’s quite conservative?’
‘Conservative … no. He pretends to be in all his meetings, I think. He has to do that. But he despises conformity. That’s why he became a businessman.’
‘How does that work?’
‘True freedom lies in money. If you don’t have money, you conform to things. You have to.’
‘What about his meetings and clients? Isn’t that conforming?’
‘In a way. But a little conformity at the office means he can fly to Europe in a private jet. That’s freedom. Don’t try and tell me you’re free here in this glove compartment of a room, because you’re not.’
‘There are worse places than this room.’
‘Maybe,’ Mami said.
‘You sound like you want to say “but”.’
‘Well, take a look around.’
‘True. Your father has it all worked out by the sound of it.’
‘Yes and no. Sometimes I think he has a little too much freedom. He’s very pig-headed and he’s always right even when he’s wrong. For example, once he makes up his mind about someone he never changes it. If he doesn’t like you right away he never will.’ Mami paused, then added, ‘Though I wouldn’t mind being more like that. I come and go with people. One day I don’t like them and the next I do. I can’t tell you how I’ll feel about you tomorrow. For a long while I was angry with you.’
‘With me?’
She nodded, running the very tip of her tongue across light-blue lips. ‘Not just you, but with everyone else, too.’
‘But me especially?’
‘In a way. You almost killed me. But in another way, no.’
Mami stood and took up her perch on my windowsill, half in, half out. For a while she stared at the one or two stars and scattered airliners visible in the Tokyo sky. Then without a word she climbed down and stretched. ‘Things have been bad,’ she said. ‘I had that feeling I told you about, and I like that you left me alone. But now I need to shrug it off. If you help, I’ll return that denim jacket. Do you have a cigarette?’
‘No.’
‘Very well,’ she said, sounding almost English. ‘We’ll get some on the way.’
‘On the way where? I’m actually quite tired.’
‘You’re always tired. You can’t sleep, remember? Why not be tired somewhere other than here for a change? Don’t you ever get sick of your ceiling?’ Mami had not brought a bag but looked around for one all the same before leading me outside.
‘I don’t care where we go,’ she said, calling a taxi from her mobile phone.
‘You don’t have anywhere in mind?’
‘No.’
We waited for the taxi and, when it came, climbed into the back seat. The driver turned and asked Mami for a destination, but she informed him that she was Thai, that she could not speak a word of Japanese. She pointed to me and set about slipping on light-blue gloves which she had produced from nowhere, and which matched her lipstick perfectly. The driver looked at me dubiously. He raised plucked eyebrows.
‘Roppongi,’ I said, because it came to mind. He spun around and thrust the car into gear.
‘Where are we going in Roppongi?’ asked Mami.
‘I don’t know. You know the area better than me.’
‘I doubt it. It’s not the first suburb to roll off my tongue at night.’
‘Then you should have directed the driver.’
I stared out the window. Office buildings scrolled past. They were tightly wedged together and well lit. T
here was a light rain blurring the convenience stores and traffic lights we passed. The driver, alternately steering and checking a global positioning system on the dash, tuned the radio into a Japanese talkback station.
Mami yawned and glanced across at me. ‘Don’t get all sleepy,’ she said. ‘Not yet.’
Arriving in Roppongi, we made our way through a number of bars, ending up at Lexington Queen. We walked down a steep, dark staircase, at the bottom of which stood a heavyset bouncer all in black.
‘How much?’ Mami asked.
‘Three thousand for him, two thousand for you.’
‘All you can drink?’ I asked, handing him the money.
He nodded and stamped our hands.
Mami put her coat in a locker and sealed it. On the walls around us there were pictures of celebrities visiting the club. In Melbourne these sorts of walls contained local TV personalities. But here they were all Hollywood’s biggest stars—far too many to count.
The bar was staffed by two foreigners, both black and muscular, and the floor around it was packed with fittingly beautiful patrons. Off to the left was a dance floor which was filled to capacity. Some people danced in tight-knit groups, others alone. The lighting was low and there was a rustic, almost dirty feel to the place, like a cavern.
I ordered two vodka shots and beers as chasers.
‘Why did you do this?’ I yelled to Mami as we battled our way through the crowd, looking for a place to sit. We were nudged and bumped by waifs, drunk Japanese youths and big, thug-headed foreigners. My beer splashed onto my shirt as the music changed, and the people on the dance floor thrust their hands up and whooped. The venue was so overfilled it had come to a near standstill.
‘Do what?’ Mami shouted back over her shoulder.
‘Bring me out?’
‘I’ve told you. Because you’re honest.’
‘But—’ I let a sumo wrestler pass with difficulty, then another. Both nodded their heads in thanks. The surrounding mass of bodies pushed me against Mami. My hand came to rest on her thigh. Our mouths were almost touching and I worried my breath was bad. ‘But,’ I tried again, ‘why are you so desperate to hang out with someone honest?’
Mami shrugged. ‘I’m tired of all my usual friends. And they’re probably just as tired of me. They’re rich. We all attend the same events and we all know the same people. I can tell you every word they’ll say before they even say it and they can likely tell you the same about me.’
‘And I’m different?’
‘Very. I can detail myself to you. You’re like a diary. You’re not confident enough to try and play me, to lie, to be cruel. That’s important because either I find people I can trust or I sit at home on my own. New people are a risk—men especially. Who wants to be some foreigner’s exotic Japanese fling? Not me. I’m not saying I’m asexual. I’m just saying I don’t want to be some dickhead’s doll.’
The three foreign men who had been listening to this monologue, nudging ever closer to Mami, now looked away, eyes moving on, darting from woman to woman. Mami had, I suspected, raised her voice especially for them, because she now leant in and placed the tips of all five fingers to my elbow.
‘This might sound mean and I’m not sure I should tell you, but basically I was looking for someone with no clue.’
I pulled my arm away. ‘That was mean, yeah.’
‘Wait, let me finish.’ Mami took my arm back. ‘In my world, my normal everyday world, everything is a competition. Every last thing is a contest. It’s the same in your world, I’m sure. But we inhabit different worlds. In yours, wherever it is and whatever it is, I’d be lost. I’d have no idea. There’d be no way for me to know about it because I wasn’t raised in it. At the end of the day we all only know one world—the one we grew up in.’ Mami paused, thinking. She took a large gulp of beer as if satisfied with all she had said, then, swallowing, seemed to change her mind. ‘Unless we’re moved around a lot by our parents,’ she added, ‘which I wasn’t. Not at all. Do you understand what I’m trying to say? I’m not saying it very well. A shame.’
‘I think I understand.’
‘Maybe you do. Maybe that’s why you’re in Japan. Maybe you’re not ready to compete in your world so you’re holidaying for a while. I don’t know. I don’t actually care. All I know is, you know nothing about my world. That, and you can’t keep anything from me. Two things which make you perfect.’
‘For what?’
‘For telling the truth to.’ Mami, clearly tired of talking, peered down at her beer and suddenly frowned. ‘Why am I drinking beer?’
I thought about my world in Australia, while Mami gave her beer to a Spanish-looking man and battled to order another vodka. There was nothing about this world of mine that Mami would not have understood. It occurred to me that the worlds she referred to were not staked out by borders, but by money. She had only used countries as an analogy to make herself understood without being cruel. And if I was a poverty-stricken pet project, a convenience, then presumably at some point she intended to cut me free.
She returned and, determined not to be angry with her, I struggled to convince myself I was a friend—a unique confidant and respite from her pressured life.
‘I shouldn’t have explained it,’ she said, inspecting my face and handing me a drink. She looked over the dance floor. ‘I want to leave.’
‘You want to go home?’
‘No, I just want to leave.’
We walked to a Family Mart convenience store. As we stepped inside two store clerks chimed their usual welcome. One was straightening magazines, the other standing behind the register intently filling out a docket. Evenly spaced fluorescent lighting had chased out all shadow, bathing the store in the sort of light more commonly encountered midway through a sunny morning.
‘What are we doing here?’ I asked.
‘Getting supplies. Drinks.’
‘To drink where?’
‘Out in the street.’
‘Classy.’
‘Classier than that club you took me to.’ She pulled off one ruby-red shoe and inspected its base.
‘Are you drunk?’ I asked.
‘A little, I think. I get very drunk very easily. But that’s not why I’m holding my shoe up in the air. It’s got a stone in it. I’m sure of it.’
Mami turned the shoe upside down and flapped it but nothing fell out. With a sharp, satisfied nod she slipped it back on and dragged me across to the brightly labelled drinks fridge, filled with the usual Japanese beers and liquors.
She pointed to a pre-mixed gin and tonic. ‘Tell me, Noah, have you ever stolen anything? Even something cheap?’
‘No.’
‘And why not?’
‘It’s wrong.’
‘At least you’re consistently dull. That’s what you said about the train ticket.’
‘So why ask me now?’
‘Why?’ Slightly unsteady, Mami looked at me, her eyes glazed. ‘Because you’re going to steal this gin and tonic. In fact, now that you ask, you’re going to steal seven things from this store.’ She held up seven fingers. ‘Seven exactly.’
‘I am not.’
‘You are. You can ask why again if you want.’
‘Why?’
‘Because if you don’t, I’m going to.’
‘You’re drunk.’
‘What a rude thing to say. Shall I get started selecting my seven things? She slurred her words slightly. She was far more drunk than I had realised.
‘Let’s go, Mami. I’m sure they both heard everything.’
‘Who? The store clerks? If their English was that good, they wouldn’t be working here at … what time is it?’
‘Well past midnight.’ I started towards the door. Mami did not follow, but I went ahead and left anyway.
I sat outside on the pavement and tried not to think about her. If she got herself arrested, that was her problem. I could not be involved. I was not, after all, Japanese, and my father did not own a string
of expensive hotels. He was struggling just to keep a car. There would be no fancy lawyers for me, no golden get-out-of-jail-free card.
When she failed to exit I stood and casually peered into the store. Mami had taken a basket and now floated down the aisles, occasionally placing things into it. But mostly she seemed interested in chatting with the sales clerks. One nodded and disappeared out back. Then the other followed, hurrying to meet the first. Without paying any attention to either, Mami rounded the end of an aisle and kept on walking. She passed straight through the front doors and out onto the footpath with the basket clasped in both hands.
It was the most brazen act of thievery I had ever witnessed.
‘Now,’ she said calmly, ‘we run until we’re completely lost.’
I felt angry and elated all at once, running. Delinquency had never been a strong point of mine, but I took to it well enough. I wrenched the basket from Mami’s arm and followed her blindly. She pelted along on her high heels with amazing poise, especially for a drunk woman.
We finally slowed at a fish tank full of ghostly grey albino carp and stopped to rest on a metal staircase. Rusted out and with a heavy chain hanging across it, this staircase— like the building it belonged to—appeared unused. We slipped under it and sat sucking up the humid night air. My throat was gluey and my chest hurt. Mami glanced sideways and suppressed a smile. Then, without speaking, we both began to laugh, the sound echoing hollowly in the narrow, built-up street.
‘I’m crazy?’ Mami asked incredulously. ‘You enjoyed it far more than me.’
‘Tell me,’ I said, trying to calm myself in order to articulate the question, ‘when you jumped in that moat did it feel like this?’
‘No.’
‘No?’ Still grinning, I shook my head. ‘If you ask me, that’s a bad deal. You jump in a moat to feel better and when you climb out, maybe you do. I’d want to be sure.’
Mami’s smile faltered. ‘You didn’t ask me that. You asked if I felt like this. This is nothing. After the moat I felt invincible.’
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