Lost Girls and Love Hotels

by Catherine Hanrahan

  “One day Lily’s father returned home early. I was in her bed when we heard the scratch of the key in the lock. He coughed loudly—that awful salaryman cough from too much smoking. He yelled, ‘Tadaima!’ and Lily put her clothes on in panic. It all happened so fast, and I was so frightened, I didn’t even look at her body as she dressed. She was going to go into the living room when she turned around and searched through some clothes piled on the floor for a cotton cooking apron. The kind housewives wear, with stupid English slogans and teddy bears. Her apron said: I FEEL COOKIES. She looked scared. Her hair was fuzzy and knotted at the back. After that I always loved these stupid English sayings on things.”

  Used stayed there in Lily’s bed until her father went to take a bath. Lily kissed him good-bye and laughed a little in relief as he left.

  Things went on like this for a couple of months—the talking, the tea and snacks, the sweet, shy lovemaking—until suddenly Lily told Used that she couldn’t see him in the afternoons for a while. She had to take care of her grandmother, who was ill.

  “I tried to make myself busy after that. I played baseball with my school friends. Once or twice in the month after that, Lily asked me to come over, but things were changed. She seemed tired most days, and I was too full of wanting her to act as normal.”

  Just after winter began, Used started to hear gossip about Lily. She was seeing some boy from another school. She’d go to love hotels with him and bring him to her apartment.

  Used started following Lily after school. He would enter the subway carriage next to hers, stand by the through-doors, and watch her. She was tall for a schoolgirl and always wore a red muffler, so it was easy to find her among the tangle of commuters. After a week of following her, Used started to learn Lily’s body language intimately, as though it was his own. The way she’d rock on her heels when she was waiting on the train platform. Chew at her fingers when she was nervous. Nod her head again and again when her friends babbled at her, like she was urging them on, or urging them to finish. There were things about her that he did not know. Like how she evaded him sometimes, in the narrow streets around the station, disappearing for an hour or two then turning up again at the ticket kiosk. Like what she was thinking when she was alone.

  “I waited by her building one day. She didn’t arrive home until after eight o’clock. All the time that I was waiting there, looking up at the balconies of her building, I remember feeling deeply sad. Almost every balcony had some similar arrangement of the same objects. Some potted plants. A clothesline. A futon draped over the rail to air. I looked from building to building and almost each apartment was identical. Then I started to think about the people in every apartment. I wondered how many of them felt this awful pain of mine.

  “For just a moment I felt comforted by the thought that I wasn’t alone, but that didn’t last long. The sadness, the jealousy, the comfort, they turned into a hard piece of anger. If I squinted my eyes, the buildings looked like grids. If I looked at Tokyo from above, the city would also look like a grid of little squares. I was simply something to fit in one of the slots. The lonely schoolboy. The unsatisfied. I sat there, on the cold cement of the entranceway, and when Lily finally walked up, I didn’t feel anything else, just anger.”

  Lily invited him in but told him he couldn’t stay long.

  “My father will be home in an hour or so.”

  Lily fussed over the tea in the kitchen. She burned herself on the handle of the teapot and sucked her finger.

  “How is your grandmother?” Used asked. A blank white space was filling his body, like anesthesia taking hold.

  “She’s okay,” Lily took careful little steps with the tray in her hand. “Are you hungry?”

  “Why don’t we go into your bedroom, huh?”

  “Well, my father will be coming—”

  Used took the tray from her and put it on the table. Maybe she could feel the white space inside him, or maybe she felt guilty, but her hand was stiff and clammy when he led her into the bedroom.

  She was still wearing her school uniform—the scratchy brown tunic and blue cotton blouse. He pulled the tunic off easily, holding her hands above her head. She didn’t struggle. The buttons on the blouse were trickier, and he thought for a moment about just ripping it open, letting the buttons pop off. His mind worked strangely. He thought he ought to be patient, since she’d be the one—in the absence of a mother—that would have to sew them back on.

  Finally, he had the shirt off and her bra—the kind that unsnaps in the front—splayed out like little white limbs at her side. She wasn’t wearing panties. Used went to toss the crumpled tunic off the bed when he saw that Lily’s panties were balled up in the pocket.

  “I’m sorry,” Lily said.

  “I grabbed one of the scarves that she had draped over the posts of her bed, and tied her hands together to the top of the bed. Lily whimpered a bit, like a cat. I stood back to check once if she had some sort of scar or burn or something. Something to explain her shyness. Then I tied each ankle to the posts. She had no scars. I left her there.”

  At the station, the train pulled in and spit out a flaccid load of salarymen. Used wondered if Lily’s father was among them. A jolt of panic charged up through him. He thought for a moment about running back to the block of apartment buildings. Untying Lily. He pictured himself. Running. Gulping wind in his throat. But the picture dissolved, and all he could see was the sudden expansion of the field of possibility. Like a drawer filled with options had opened, and he knew he’d be rummaging through it from then on.

  The room is hot. The air stale, twice-breathed. These rooms aren’t meant for talking. There’s a click, and the TV comes on. Loud. The syrupy chirp of an advertising jingle. My legs, bent up like chicken wings, pulse with pain. It starts in my knees, crawls up to my hips, down to my ankles, the arch of my feet. It comes as a relief when finally there is no part of me that is comfortable, no good to hold up to the bad. I can sense some movement, a shift in the distribution of the muddy air. I look at my patch of wall. Breathe into the coverlet that smells of chemicals and peaches. The mattress heaves and I can feel Used behind me.

  “Used,” I wish I knew his real name. I can feel him behind me now. He must be on his knees. “Are you okay?” His hand is hovering over my back. I can feel the heat coming off him. “Say something.”

  He traces a line down my back with his index finger. His hands are dry. My back dewy with sweat. He presses his palm on the sole of my foot, hooks his thumb and forefinger around my ankle as if measuring me. He takes the half-blue, half-blond hairs that are pasted to my face and tucks them behind my ear. In one swift movement, he unties me. In the time it takes me to straighten my legs, the door clicks shut and he’s gone.

  Everything in the bathroom says discreet. But it’s spelled wrong. The soap, the shampoo, the toothbrushes, condoms, hand lotion, razors—everything says “Diskrete.” The name of the hotel. I run the bath and turn to the alibi radio station—the constant sound of trains for the comfort of the cheating husband when he calls home. The pitch and roll, the hollow voices of the announcers in the background, the whoosh of the doors opening—it’s perfect bath music. The Diskrete bubble bath has no telltale scent. Nothing has a scent. It’s as though I’m not really here at all.

  I’m eighteen. Frank’s twenty. He hangs around the house all day. Mom has to remind him to take a shower. He’s prone to crying fits, so Mom says things like “You smell a little ripe, dear,” or “A good hot shower will make you feel like a new man.”

  Most nights, Frank sits on the front lawn, cross-legged, clutching a spiral notebook and a pen, watching the traffic lights intently.

  Mom stands in the kitchen, parts the curtains, and peeks out at him.

  “What’s he doing?” she asks.

  “Fuck if I know.”

  “Language, Margaret.”

  “I think he’s losing it.”

  “Don’t say that!” She sits down at the table, pulls the ash
tray over, and lights a DuMaurier. “He’s just oversensitive.” Mom’s lost weight. She’s up at six every morning, jogging for an hour. I see her sometimes, running full-speed, right up to the driveway, the cords of her neck stretched taut, skin shuddering over her cheeks. Her body has become like a greyhound’s, skin shrink-wrapped to muscle, the thick muscles of her neck supporting her head like an oversized pedestal. I tell her I’m proud of her, but I secretly miss the flying squirrel’s wings of fat under her arms. I miss normal.

  Mom’s sent Frank on an errand. Milk. Toilet paper. Cigarettes. I go into Frank’s room. The curtains are closed, and the room smells like neglected damp towels. I find his spiral notebook and open it. Page after page of the words “green,” “yellow,” “red,” columns and columns of it, greenyellowred, greenyellowred, greenyellowred, in a jittery, childlike scrawl.

  I turn to leave, and Frank is there. Arms like dead things at his side. Expressionless. I’m not sure when he grew so tall, when his small impishness stretched out into the skinny, ashen-faced, greasy-haired man in the doorway. I’m afraid of him.

  He walks past me, to the television, pops in a video, and sits down on the bed. It’s a nature video, a monkey sitting in the elbow of a tree, chewing at a mango pit.

  “Frank?” I say. He doesn’t look at me. I walk toward the door.

  “Watch the monkey scare the children,” he says suddenly. I turn, look at the screen, but it’s just the monkey, the tree, the mango pit. I wait for the children, but they don’t appear.

  “Watch the monkey scare the children,” he says again. Blue light flickers over his face.

  The exit of the hotel leads to a shady alleyway. I look up to a honeycomb of balconies and air conditioners. Then to the side—to the black car idling there. Some dust rains down on me from a shuttered window, and I look up to see a hotel attendant beating a futon. The sight of a human being startles me, then consoles me. But as swiftly as safety washes over me with the dust, the arms disappear inside the room, the futon is yanked back in. Sun reflects off the black of the tinted windshield in a star of light. I walk toward the street, and the black car follows. The air stops in my throat.

  I pick up my pace. There will be people on the street. I’ll be safe. I could kill you, and no one in Japan would care. I’ll be safe.

  The car is beside me. The door opens, scraping against the wall, blocking my way. A man’s arm. Shoulder. Neck. Someone would care. “Come in the car,” Kazu says.

  I plant my hands on my hips and let the air spill out of me. Hot and bitter. “You scared me.”

  He frowns. “Are you safety girl now?” His eyes open just to slits. “I don’t think so.” He points at the passenger seat, and I climb in.

  “Don’t you want to know why I was at the hotel?” I ask.

  “I am not a stupid man,” he says, placing his hands on the steering wheel, precisely at three and nine. “And you are not a patient girl.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say feebly.

  Kazu starts to drive. Winding down tiny back streets. Clinking his rings against the steering wheel.

  “I said I’m sorry.”

  Kazu pulls out onto the street. “Only a word. I’m sorry.”

  “How did you find me? Were you following me?” We pull onto the expressway, and Kazu’s driving becomes more aggressive.

  “This hotel.” He swings his arm back as though Hotel Diskrete was directly behind us. The expansiveness of the gesture disturbs me. I look back. The gray outgrowth of the city seems to be trailing away with the waning day. “This hotel is my hotel. I am owner. Do you understand?”

  His hotel. The implications roll over me like a cold sweat. Was he watching us? What is the exact distance between anger and violence? Where am I right now?

  “I have your boyfriend,” Kazu says.

  “Have him?”

  We drive for another fifteen minutes or so. Past a sad-looking amusement park. The Ferris wheel spinning uselessly without passengers. He slows and pulls into a private parking lot. “Asoko,” he says. Over there. We stop. “Get out.”

  The parking lot overlooks the water. In the distance, joggers as tiny as ants make their way along the water’s edge. The parking lot is empty except for a lurid pink van with big wheels and a neon underbelly.

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” I say. “I’ve never had a boyfriend.”

  “Nani?”

  “I mean I’ve had lovers. I’ve had regular fucks. But no one has ever called me their girlfriend. Except maybe this weird stalker guy. But he was deluded—”

  “Stop talking,” Kazu says.

  Kazu opens the trunk and reaches his arm in, helping American Used Freak out as a gentleman would help a lady from a carriage. Used’s hands are tied together in front of him. His palms pressed together as if in prayer. His nose is broken. A mess of pulp and bone and red. It hurts to look at him. But I can’t turn my head. One perfect bubble of blood on his nose inflates and deflates as he breathes. He looks at me glassy-eyed, then something comes into his eyes, a brief clarity—This is all your fault—I read from the short glimmer.

  Kazu turns. Presses his palms to his temples. “I am not a bad man,” he says. It looks like more words are trying to come out. Twisting in his mouth. He swallows, and they’re gone. He reaches in the trunk and pulls out a black wooden box, closes the door, and places the box down.

  “This knife,” he says. “Sushi knife.” Kazu picks up the ancient-looking thing. Inspects the blade close to his face. “Maybe two million yen,” he tells us. “Gift, ne?”

  “Kazu—” I choke his name out.

  “This knife for cutting big things. Head to ka, spinal to ka—Maybe so sharp—” he presses his finger against the blade, and slowly blood sprouts in a perfect line across his fingertip. “No feeling.”

  “Kazu—” This is the way it will go. I am the chorus. Kazu, Kazu—

  “Behind the face every man is bad.” He brings the knife down Used’s front. The knife grazes his chest, slicing a window in the T-shirt, his chest is tan, unscathed. The knife stops under his crotch. Kazu turns the knife to face up. I try to close my eyes, but can’t. With a flick, the tip of the knife slices through the cords around Used’s wrists. For a moment, Used just stands there. Perfectly still. The rope falls away. Kazu makes some gesture. A quiet word in Japanese. Then Used runs. Jelly-limbed. Flailing. Toward the water’s edge.

  Kazu packs up the knife. Cracks his neck and packs the box away in the trunk.

  All I can think of is Used riding the Ferris wheel. Hoarding freedom.

  “Get in the car,” Kazu says.

  A shouting match in my head. He’s a fucking psychopath. He really loves me. He’s a fucking psychopath. Oh, God, he really loves me. “Where are you taking me?”

  “To a safe place.” His eyes disappear behind sunglasses. “For talking.”

  Kazu is silent as we drive. I try to calm myself by looking at the scenery. Industrial wasteland melting into housing estates melting into neon-tangled entertainment districts. And back again. Every so often, along the highway, a life-sized cardboard cutout of a police officer stands in admonition. We hit a bottleneck of traffic and idle beside one of the cutouts. The cardboard cop holds his mouth tight, eyes squinty and vigilant. Warning me of something, but I don’t know what.

  The air is hot and stagnant in the car. Like sitting in a dog’s mouth. “Can you turn on the air-con?”

  “No need,” Kazu clips. “One minute. Arrival.”

  I look out at the tangle of wires crisscrossing over the maze of residential streets and lanes. Laundry draped everywhere. Abandoned bicycles and children’s toys lying in piles, like modern art. Tokyo is back there somewhere. We pull out onto a main street, into a parking lot. “Hai!” Kazu says. “Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum. We are here.”

  “Where?”

  “Ramen museum,” he says. “History of noodles.” He jerks his head, urging me out of the car. “Also safe talking place,” he adds.

  We make
our way through the huge concrete structure to the Shitamachi—a detailed replica of a Tokyo street circa 1950—old wooden structures housing ramen and sweet shops. Tour groups and families crawling through it at a snail pace, cameras clicking like a thousand disapproving mothers’ tongues.

  “Onaka ga peko-peko,” Kazu says. “Starvation, ne?”

  Kazu chooses a shop, and I find myself playing the woman—I shoo him to sit down while I wait at the counter with the other wives and mothers. I look back at him, sitting at one of the rustic tables, palm toward me, examining his fingernails. I want to serve him. I feel repulsed with myself. But it feels good. I can’t hide my stupid smile as I walk back to him.

  “Do you know your walk is interesting?” he says.

  “It was you following me, wasn’t it?”

  He waves his palm left and right. “No need to follow.”

  “My walk?”

  “So desu ne. Like a Japanese child. Five years maybe. Before giri begins. Duty.”

  “Duty,” I say, linking my arm with his and leading him to the row of wooden facades near the exit. A small group of teenage boys and beleaguered fathers crowd around a chrome ashtray, sucking joylessly on cigarettes.

  “You are loose legs, free legs. I have my job. My wife. I have made promises.”

  We find an empty bench. Kazu says, “Excuse me,” and drags the ashtray and its pedestal over to the bench. The smokers look stunned for a moment. Kazu says, “Dozo! Dozo—” And the little group shuffles over with the ashtray, nodding their heads in thanks.

  “Listen to me, Margaret.” He puts his ramen bowl on the side table.