Lost Girls and Love Hotels

by Catherine Hanrahan

  Once in the thick of the cardboard box city, which at this hour is darkened and quiet, we huddle between two boxes like kids playing hide-and-seek. The policeman’s whistle pierces the air, somewhere nearby. It feels like my heart will jump through my ribs. Curtains are parted on one of the boxes, and a brown, withered hand calls us in. I duck my head in the box. Ines pulls her heels off and slinks in. Inside is like a Morroccan tea house. Box leading to box. Rugs and cushions strewn everywhere. The gauzy-bearded homeowner crouches like a bird by the curtained front door. He looks like something made of leather. Tough skin stretched over delicate limbs. He gives us a suspicious look. Then gestures roughly for us to relax.

  A cat is curled in the corner. It lifts its head up. Gives us a piss-off meow. By the doorway, I see an old pair of leather construction-worker shoes. Laid out carefully. Like artifacts. The man serves us gritty tea. Studies us.

  “Nice place,” I say.

  Ines translates.

  “Good tea,” I say.

  “Will you quit it?” Ines asks.

  The little man seems to get the gist of it and hacks out a laugh.

  We sit.

  I think about harmony. About the cardboard box men. Itinerant workers outside the bonds of family, company, community. Cast into poverty after the bubble burst. Cast adrift. Permanently off-key.

  I think about Frank. And me. Ines. Cast adrift.

  I bury my head in my hands. Heels of my hands pressing into my eyes. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

  “Shhhh,” Ines says.

  Sounds outside die. No sign of the little cop and his whistle. Ines looks at me. “Okay. Let’s think darling. Where should we go? We have to be discreet.”

  Discreet.

  “I know the place.”

  On the way out, I take a few notes from the envelope and slip them under the construction shoes. I nod thank-you. The man’s expression doesn’t change. He’s the symbol of something, but I don’t know what.

  We get the Merry-Go-Round Room at Hotel Diskrete. I crawl up onto the bed and pull off the coverlet. Slip myself into the envelope of the stiffly starched sheets. Animals in lurid pastels encircle me. How can this be sexy? For a few minutes, I try to work out how we will avoid the cops tomorrow. And Kazu’s crazy wife. Tokyo suddenly seems tiny.

  Ines comes out of the bathroom, patting her hair with a towel and smirking.

  “What is it?”

  “I was just thinking,” she says, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “I could write a love hotel guidebook.” She drapes the towel over a unicorn and lets her robe fall to her waist. She pats her shoulders. “Do you mind, darling?”

  “Lost girls and love hotels,” I say, extricating myself from the bedclothes. “The definitive guide.” I sit Japanese-style, legs bent under me, rub the freckly crest of Ines’s shoulders. Exhaustion starts to settle into my body. A creeping fog. Chapter One. The Versatility of The Love Hotel. What most people don’t realize is that apart from the obvious sexual function, the love hotel can provide a refuge for the lost girl. A place to regroup. A place, festooned with the miscellany of childhood, to contemplate all the wrong turns, the bad choices, the fuckups. “Have you ever thought of going home?” I ask.

  “Home,” Ines says, moaning a little. “Last time I went home I lasted three weeks.”

  “Three weeks isn’t bad.”

  Ines lifts her hair into a twist, exposing her neck. “All the people I knew—they were just quoting Seinfeld.” She drops her chin to her chest. “Everything felt like a stupid in-joke.” I knead the stiff shank of her neck. “And I felt—out.” On the TV, three girls in bikinis compete in a hardboiled-egg-peeling race. “That’s good,” Ines purrs.

  “I should go to Italy and meet some swarthy olive farmer.”

  “An idea.”

  “With piercing eyes.” I lie back on the bed and stare up at the mirrored ceiling, like a lovestruck teenager, like a whore on a coffee break. “And a drafty stone villa at the edge of an olive grove.”

  “Big equipment.” Ines curls in next to me, tits cupping my arm. “A thick cock beats love any day.” She throws her arm across me. I think of cats curling together for warmth. We lie there. The poignancy of our silence is grating.

  “Love is an oasis of horror in a desert of boredom,” I finally say, putting on a game-show announcer’s voice.

  “Good God.”

  “I read it on a napkin at a café in Tokyo Station.”

  Ines’s hand moves over the little bump of my stomach, to the waistband of my panties. Slips inside, raking the tuft of thick hair. I observe it happening like a film. As if on cue, my hips buck a little. I look down at the two of us. I feel like a plank, lying on my back next to the S of Ines’s body. At the end of the bed, a pink-and-blue pony eyes me disapprovingly. I reach down for Ines’s hand. “Ines. Come on.”

  “Come on what?”

  “I don’t have the right equipment for you.”

  “I’m an equal opportunity slut,” Ines says. “Boys, girls. I’m not fussy really.” She pulls her hand away roughly. The waistband of my panties snaps at me. Ines lies back and fumbles at the bedside for her smokes. Her hand hits a button, and the merry-go-round starts to turn, accompanied by a high-pitched version of “It’s a Small World After All.”

  “I used to think if I traveled around enough I’d eventually find the place where all the people like me are,” Ines says. On the TV, the girl with the yellow bikini and the orange tan peels her egg the fastest. Ines turns away from me and curls into the fetal position. “Now I don’t think there’s such a place.”

  “But there are people like you—I mean there’s me, for instance.”

  “Sure. But we never really stay together in one place. We’re all just orbiting each other.” It sounds like someone’s moving the furniture around in the room above us. I start to get the bedspins. I remember there’s something you’re supposed to do to stop the bedspins. But I can’t recall what it is.

  Ines begins to snore. The most delicate snore imaginable. Like a baby’s chortle and snort. The rhythmic quality of it starts to make me drowsy, and I pull the sheet up to my chin, tuck it in around Ines. Slip my thumb in my mouth. Slip into sleep.

  I dream about the missing girl. She sits at the foot of the bed, smoking the last of my butts. Smirking at me. She looks whole but she’s not really. When she moves to position a pillow between the small of her back and the pink unicorn, I can see that she’s constructed loosely in parts—like a marionette.

  “Are you dead?” I ask her.

  “Do I look dead?”

  “Are you following me?”

  “Why are you running?”

  Her voice is exactly as I’d imagined it—sensuous, with a teenage girl’s nasal insolence at the edges.

  “So what now?” she says.

  “Bali maybe.”

  “Then?”

  “India or China—I don’t know. Fuck. Maybe I’ll just go crazy.”

  “You’ve been in the anteroom to crazy for ages now.”

  I fumble around for a smoke, but the pack is empty. The dead girl smoked my last one.

  “It’s about time,” she says.

  “How the fuck—” I look back at her, but she’s not there. It’s Frank. Knife in one hand. “It’s time,” he says.

  I wake up sweaty. The windowless room won’t betray the time, but something about the air tells me it’s early. Ines is gone. Bags and shoes and all. I sit up and grab for my purse. No passport. I flip through my wallet. Take out the envelope of cash and the Kabuki tickets. I split the cash into two piles. Stand up and inspect the room. It looks, to my nearly sober eyes, like a child’s bedroom. Except for the bowl of condoms on the headboard, it’s all kitsch and innocence. Running my hands over the haunches of the unicorn, I find an opening where its belly meets the silver pole and I squeeze the rest of my identification, my phone and one pile of yen into the hollow innards of the beast. Stand there for a moment, without an identity.

 
In the bathroom, I nearly slip on Ines’s hair. Silky ropes of it carpet the tiny space between the tub and the sink. In an act of solidarity, I grab one of the pink Diskrete razors and hack away at my own mop. After ten minutes or so, I inspect myself in the mirror. Tufts of hair sticking out everywhere. Somewhere between Jean Seberg and a mental patient.

  I send the money down the vacuum chute to pay, and leave the Merry-Go-Round Room. Change is good, I tell myself. It’s a busy day at Hotel Diskrete. Most of the rooms are taken. I close my eyes and lean against the panel. Wait for a beep. For contact. I don’t know where I’m going. I just follow the lights on the floor. Obediently.

  In the Hawaii Sunset Room, a projector plays a looping film of a beach at sunset on the wall opposite the bed. I sit there, slotting wasabi peas into my mouth and memorizing the progression of colors. Blue to purple. Red. Orange. Gray. Black. Someone’s scrawled their initials on the wall, spoiling the effect. Finally I pick up the phone. I pause before dialing Kazu’s number. Pause between each digit. It seems to ring forever. And then the voice mail. “Meet me in front of the National Theater at three P.M.,” I say. “Please.”

  I stand in the center of the square in front of the theater.

  It’s a Japanophile’s wet dream. Ladies in kimonos shuffle along, parasols perched on their shoulders. Ginkgo trees line the square, behind them cherry trees, still green and dormant. Sometimes in Japan everything seems to fit together. Four perfect seasons leading you through the gamut of emotion. The dead cold of winter—the damp of depression—broken when it seems unbearable by the bacchanal of cherry blossom season. Everything interlocks perfectly.

  An hour passes. People fill the square, then disappear into the theater. I stand there like a human sundial. He’s late.

  A recipe: one part desperation, one part panic, a teaspoon of lust, and a pinch of hope. It leads me, after another hour, into the theater. Just in case he’s waiting there. Why the fuck would he be waiting there? Maybe he got the message wrong. It’s more romantic. Waiting in the theater. I’ll pick him out from the back of his head. Slip into the seat next to him. Put my hand in his lap.

  The theater is dark. I look for a bald head among the audience. Row by row, I study the heads. On the stage, a man wets his finger and pokes a peephole into a paper shoji screen. Watches a lover’s rendezvous. Body poised in concentration. I wonder how much can he see through the tunnel vision of the peephole. How much he must construct himself to complete the picture.

  An usher taps me on the shoulder and I turn back, away from the strange light of the theater, past the bowing usherettes at the door, into the city again.

  I’ve always loved dusk—the feeling of the day receding—night crawling in to conceal everything. A chance to hide. To lick one’s wounds. But tonight, something in the sky cracking gray and purple, something in the closeness of the air—it makes me walk faster. I don’t know where I’m going.

  Near Harajuku Station, I watch the Goth lolita kids in their costume-like black dresses with crinolines, stripy Pippi Longstocking socks, sunken smoky eyes on baby faces. They stand in little groups, posing stiffly for photos by tourists. On the fringe of the scene, some boys dressed as spacemen drag on cigarettes and eat crepes stuffed with whipped cream and strawberries. For a moment I feel serene—a freak among freaks. But I keep walking.

  I walk up the stairs to a pedestrian overpass and pause in the middle. Look over Yoyogi Park, the tori gates of Meiji Shrine. I’ve started to know the city well. Too well. If I stay here too long, a time will come when I cannot get lost—when each of the thousands of unnamed streets is like a familiar walk I could do with my eyes closed. The idea chills me, and I continue along the overpass and down again toward Shibuya. If I can’t get lost, at least I can be swallowed up by a crowd.

  Eventually, I find myself at the giant five-pronged intersection at Shibuya Station. On the overhead video screens, pop starlets compete for the pedestrian audience. I look across at the statue of Hachiko—the dog who waited for his deceased owner for ten years outside the station. Hundreds of people stand around the doggie. Craning necks and clutching phones. Waiting for someone.

  The light turns green, and the mass of people begins to move. Through the forest of heads, I keep my eyes on Hachiko. I’ll wait there. For ten years, if I have to. Maybe they’ll erect a statue of me. People will know me only by my first name. I’ll be a landmark. An urban myth. A place to rest for a smoke.

  I get bumped by a thin woman—she looks straight at me—her face like a bug in giant Chanel shades. She makes some gesture, and I look down at her hand. The sushi knife. I stop in front of her. Don’t fight a Japanese wife. I lose my breath and fold over for a moment. A schoolgirl next to me shrieks. Something’s wrong. So sharp you don’t even feel it. The crowd parts. I fall to my knees, blood pooling around me, reflecting the neon.

  PART THREE

  Remember Your Heartful Life

  The woman in the tiara says, “My name is Watanabe. Please call me Audrey.” She pushes something at my mouth. Wipes my face. I hear moans and howls in the background. The squeak of wheels. I’ve gone to hell. The woman in the tiara leans closer. Gurgles something. My eyes scan her. People in hell wear name tags.

  My eyes start to focus, the Vaseliney film clears, and I see that the tiara is, in fact, an old-fashioned stiff nurse’s hat. I reach for my side—feel the lump of bandages under my flimsy gown. My mind flashes back.

  “Frank,” I say.

  “Audrey,” she says.

  “No. Frank—my brother—he—” I try to sit up, but the pain in my side makes moving impossible.

  She points to her nose, intones in sweet condescension, “Ah-do-rhee. Nurse.”

  My brain is floating in drugs. “My brother stabbed me.”

  “Brah-zah? No.” She pushes me back down firmly by both shoulders. “Don’t overdo it. Now is relax time!”

  Audrey starts to pull the curtain around the bed, and I push myself up on my elbows. Pain twists my innards. “Tell me what happened.”

  She yanks at the curtain, and before it’s closed, sticks her head back in. Moon face and dingy vinyl. “It was the wife,” she whispers.

  Audrey tells me, “Tomoko is really vixen woman. Her efforts cause of when Yukari did suicide. Hidetoshi is the handsome detective. Ex-boyfriend before of Tomoko’s twin sister, Hitomi, who is also good nurse like me.” I slip between a drugged stupor and a waking state punctuated with pain and force-feedings. Audrey tells me what’s going on in the Japanese soap operas. It’s comforting somehow—all of the double-crossings and evil twins, miscarriages and family secrets. It makes me feel normal.

  It is like Frank is in the room with me. The two of us. Beaten down and bloody. He’s a young Frank. Twelve or thirteen. Long-limbed. Nervously happy. Grasping hungrily at the world.

  Audrey comes in, and I’m crying.

  “Why sad?” she demands.

  “I’m not sad,” I tell her.

  “What are you?” she fiddles with my IV bag. “Pain?”

  “I’m nostalgic.”

  “What is it? Bad?”

  “I don’t know how to describe it Audrey. Forget it.”

  “Important to know words. Meaning. History. I’ll find the history for you. Information is key. I know from English school.”

  “Fine,” I say with a laugh.

  By the third day, they’ve eased off the sleeping pills, and I’m awake for most of the day. The food is strange—strangely delicious. It comes in paper bags stamped Takashimaya Department Store. Pretty chi-chi for a hospital.

  Audrey insists on spooning an elaborate jellied orange dessert into my mouth. She wipes my mouth and sits down to torturously read the Japan Times to me.

  “Why is the food here so good?”

  “Japan has—” She holds a finger up and goes to her idiom dictionary, “extensive life expectancy.” Snaps it shut. “Fault of food.”

  “No—the hospital—why does the hospital have such good food?”r />
  “Iya iya. You are funny. Families are bringing the food. There is no hospital food. Only kiosk.”

  “But I have no family in Japan—”

  “So desu ne. Fat man bringing your dinner. Giant fat man. Chotto kowai. Scary.”

  “I’m confused.”

  “Your body is sick,” she tells me slowly. “As well your head. Listen to me practice English.”

  I settle back in the bed. Gaze up at the inside of my eyelids.

  “Listen! Cherry Blossoms in Bloom in Fukuoka!”

  I open one eye a slit to look at Audrey. Her eyes are sparkly, and she hops a little in her chair. I close my eyes. Inside of my eyelids is black with red snow.

  “Do you understand?” Audrey asks. “Sakura! Cherry blossom! Beautiful times are coming! Open your eyes!”

  “Heavy teaching load perverts teachers,” Audrey says haltingly. Hebi road. She begins to read the article to me. The words poke at me.

  “Just the headlines,” I tell her.

  She frowns. “Hai!” Her pronunciation becomes deliberately worse. “Just-o. Head-o-rines. Okay Julia.”

  In the hospital, they do not call me Jane Doe. They call me The Gaijin. Audrey thinks of a new name for me each day. Katherine. Betty. Mariah. Finally, I tell her, “My name is Margaret.”

  She looks at me disapprovingly. I’ve exposed myself. My charade of amnesia. Audrey pulls her shoulders back. “If that is your choice. Shimashiou. Let’s call you Margaret.” She turns back to the paper. “Typhoon in Okinawa. Pop Star’s Mother Speaks Out. Missing Girl’s Remains Found.”

  “Stop.”

  “May I read?”

  “Read it. Please.”

  Audrey snaps the paper and holds it close to her face. Sounding out the difficult phrases. Slow-motion punches. Dismembered. Positive identification. It seems like forever, but she finishes the article.

  I turn my head away. Pull the sheets up around my shoulders. Stare at the curtain. I wish I had a window.