Bathtime at La Chapel Blanche (Seven Tales of a Tokyo Love Hotel)

by Richard James

  *ping*

  Right, shut up. We’re here. Now what are we doing on the second floor. Do we want to find the stairs?

  No, no. Not the stairs…okay, okay, I’ll explain. You know where we came in?

  uh………

  Oh God, of course not. You refused to look. Bloody hell. Well anyway, I was looking and if you’d have done the same you’d have seen the elevators open right in to the lobby and the stairs come out right next to them. That hunched up little receptionist would see us for sure and then we’d really be in trouble. We’ve got no money remember.

  So what are we going to do then? Hide out up here. For how long? We’ve got a game tomorrow…no, no actually technically it’s today. Great.

  Ah, stop whingeing. Of course we’re not going to hide. It wouldn’t do any good anyway. We’re going to jump. It’s only the second floor. There must be a window around here somewhere.

  Jump? I can’t jump! What if I’m injured? How would I explain that?

  How would you explain being caught penniless in ‘La Chapel Blanche’, you idiot? An injury? An injury’s a piece of cake. I slipped by the pool, I fell down a drain, I dropped a bottle of low sugar, high energy, super oxygenated, hydroponic, clorofolic, glucabotic sports juice on my toe.

  Right fine, fine. Okay we’ll find a window.

  Masataka lurched off down the corridor twisting his head around searchingly.

  Here we go.

  Okay. Open it up.

  I can’t. It’s stuck.

  What’s it stuck on? Is there a catch?

  I’m looking…okay, here we go. Should I wrench it?

  Yes. Go. As hard as you can. Get it open.

  Here we go. Okay, let’s…damn it there’s a grille!

  Well get it off. Kick it or…wait, what’s that?

  What’s what?

  That. That little light. That flashing little…fuck! It’s an alarm!

  Shit. What should we do?

  Eh…make for the stairs. Where are they?

  Back this way, back here. Damn you, you imbecile. It’s your hastiness again. Your goddamn impatience. Right. Okay. Here we are. Where to? Up or down? Our room? Let’s go back up.

  No, wait. They’ll expect us to go up. We’ll go down. We’ll hide and wait and when the police come we’ll run out in the confusion and no one will know what’s going on. They probably think it’s someone trying to break in not out. And if anyone sees us we can say we were on our way home and saw the trouble and wanted to see if we could help. Who’s going to doubt golden boy Masataka Takawa? Ha, it’s perfect. Come on. Down we go.

  Perfect? You know I’d hardly say it’s perfect. You know what would be perfect?

  If we caught that deceitful little bitch and…

  NO! No. What would be perfect would be to be in bed asleep, preparing for the game tomorrow. That would be perfect.

  Oh shut up will you? Look, there’s that withered little crone. We’ll wait here. Get across there, into the shadows. Right, now get down. Do you see her?

  Yeah, yeah. I see her.

  Well, what’s she doing?

  Mie was pretending to read something on her desk but really she was keeping an eye on the tall foreigner looking at the pictures of the rooms. She’d once seen one try and push one of the lights next to a picture as if it was a vending machine. This one seemed a little more composed. She’d even called a greeting to Mie as she entered the lobby. Now she was coming over to the window. Mie returned her attention to her desk then looked up when the girl was closer.

  “Welcome,” Mie said.

  “Good afternoon…” Mie looked at the clock. It was two a.m. “I want…sleeping.”

  “Would you like a room? Is it only for you? This is a love hotel. I think you’re probably looking for a youth hostel.”

  “Room is how much? One item. No! One…person.”

  “8,500. For one night in a double. You pay per room not per person.”

  “Eh? 8000? Having cheap room? One person. One person only.”

  Mie looked at the girl. At least she was trying. She was doing a whole lot better than most of the others who just pointed and grunted. Maybe she could help her out.

  “This – is – a – love – ho-tel. Go – to – this – hos-tel.”

  Mie took the time to draw a little map and pushed it under the window to the girl.

  “It – is – chea-per.”

  “Ah? Ah! I understand! Thank you. Thank you very much. Please pardon my impoliteness.”

  The girl bowed several times as she backed out the entrance and Mie smiled at her encouragingly. Why did they always learn these ultra-polite phrases and not the things that really mattered. Things like reading the sign for ‘Love Hotel’.

  “Thank you very much. You have been very helpful and kind. It was a pleasure. Thank you.”

  Finally the girl was gone and Mie returned to her papers. Actually the girl had really made quite a good effort. She seemed a very nice young thing. Probably wasn’t for the best that she was in this area at all. Mie suddenly thought about running after her and walking her to the hostel herself just to make sure but then remembered what night it was. The night of the full moon. There would be no deserting her post tonight. Tonight was Shuichi’s night.

  Suddenly the elevator pinged open and the shadowy figure who had turned up an hour ago emerged. He marched up to the counter and Mie gave a small shiver as his shadow fell across her desk. He gave her the creeps. After a moment she realised he didn’t seem to be planning on initiating the exchange.

  “Uh, room 1603, was it?”

  The shadow slid 8500 yen exactly under the glass.

  “Thank you. Eh…do you have the key or will one of the girls…”

  The shadow suddenly paused as if remembering something then raised one finger and turned back to the elevator. Mie watched him go and thought she saw another figure stir from the bottom of the stairwell as the sinister man approached but maybe she was imagining things. The elevator came and the man got inside. As the doors closed, hiding him from view Mie experienced an unexpectedly large sense of relief without quite knowing why.

  They got lots of sinister looking people coming through here. Some obvious yakuza types (in fact they’d had at least a few of those tonight), some clear mental cases, some shaking wrecks, some blatant drug abusers on bad trips, the obligatory hosts, hostesses, prostitutes and pimps - Mie had thought she‘d become pretty much immune to it all yet she had never got such a bad feeling as she did from that man.

  He’d arrived earlier with two women. One was Japanese and walked three steps behind him. The other looked Indian maybe? She’d drunk far too much or taken too much of something Mie had assumed, and looked almost passed out. The sinister man had needed to half drag her across the lobby to the elevator.

  When they’d arrived it had been the Japanese girl who’d done the talking. There was something strange about her too. She’d seemed nervous, scared even, and yet somehow resigned. No, not resigned. More like resolved. Like she was here to get something done. Mie shuddered. For some reason she got the feeling that ‘something’ was not pleasant.

  Mie looked back to her desk and moved some papers revealing a flashing red light on the floor directory. Damn it. An alarm on one of the second floor windows. She was the only person working and Shuichi was already late. She could run up and check but what would he do if there was no one here when he came? Would he wait or would he just leave? She didn’t want to take a chance. It was probably nothing but…what if there was a problem? She didn’t want to get in trouble.

  Suddenly an idea struck her. The minor disturbance alarm. There was a police box just a couple of hundred metres down the street. She knew you were only meant to use it if you couldn’t handle the situation yourself but…she could say something about the figure on the stairs. Maybe she thought she’d seen a weapon. She was only a little old woman. They’d be sure to be sympathetic. She reached under the desk and searched for the button but at that
exact moment in walked Shuichi Nimori. Mie pulled her hand away to wave a greeting, but felt it knock against something. A small light began blinking. Oh no! Oh no, oh no, oh no! It was the wrong one. She felt a dreadful panic. She was so stupid. She would be in so much trouble. She’d flicked the main emergency switch.

  “Good evening”, called Shuichi with as much cheerfulness as he could muster, but the usually friendly receptionist seemed lost in thought. “Um…is room 1604 free please?”

  The woman looked up distractedly then turned away as if the sight of him pained her somehow. She wordlessly picked up the set of keys and slid them across to him.

  “Uh…thank you. Eh, see you later.” He wondered briefly if something was wrong with the woman but since he couldn’t imagine what problem she might have that he, an eighty year old amputee (his left leg below the knee), would possibly be able to fix he turned and walked slowly away and called the elevator.

  When the doors opened on to the sixteenth floor She was there to greet him and he smiled with a strange mixture of joy and sorrow. She surrounded him as he walked, limped down the corridor and fumbled with the lock. 1604. The room he’d died in. Or wanted to. The room in which he’d lost everything. Lost one thing. The only thing. The only one.

  As the door swung inwards She breezed past him and flowed in to the room. He followed Her down the hall and into the brightly lit bedroom where She was swirling round the outskirts and hiding from sight the pink curtains, the mirrors and shades, the silk sheets and dressing gowns, the fluffy pillows and cushions, the tawdry furnishings, the battered and dog-eared instructions describing how to pay for pornography on the television; hiding all this, obscuring it and revealing how it had been before, how it had always been, how it would be again.

  The curtains flutter in the breeze and the moon spills in to the room. There are no bright lights now. Just the soft, subtle moonlight on the tatami floor and the short shadow of the low lying table on which Shiori’s calligraphy lies spread out. An ink pot has been knocked over and the contents are making their way across a fresh sheet of paper to the table’s edge where they drip, drip, drip onto a cushion on the floor. There is a small movement at the edge of Shuichi’s vision, in the corner of the room, but he doesn’t want to look. Doesn’t need to look. It’s all he’s seen for nearly fifty years.

  She calls to him but still he stares at the dripping ink.

  She calls again and tears begin welling in his eyes.

  She calls and he turns.

  She whispers and he goes to her.

  “Who…who…who did…this…?” he whimpers as he approaches. “Wh…who?” She sits slumped in the corner, engulfed in shadow, her hands holding her stomach. Her face is shrouded by the dark but the darkness which spills from between her fingers is of a different kind. Vivid and terrible. Trembling, he reaches forwards and takes her hands in his and the sticky darkness clings to him too.

  “Who did this?” he asks again, more boldly now. “Who did this to you?”

  She shudders involuntarily and coughs, splutters. Trails of darkness blacker than any shadow ooze from the corners of her mouth. She leans forward in to the moonlight and he sees her smile, sees that smile and he begins to howl even before she speaks.

  “My love…my love, it was you.”

  When Shuichi next looked up the room had returned to its twenty-first century reincarnation. He was crouched facing the empty corner but still he could feel Her at his back. He rose and without turning to the room he wiped his eyes and made his way out onto the balcony.

  A full moon. An oppressive heat. A view of rusted fire escapes, giant air conditioning units, flashing signal receivers, water tanks, phone masts, satellites, maintenance shafts. The hum of generators. The hiss of neon. A gentle weeping?

  He turned in the direction of this last noise and saw on the balcony next to his a young woman leaning out over the railing. In the light of the moon and the glow of the billboards he saw her eyes were closed. Her body shook softly with her sobs.

  “Excuse me, miss? Are you alright?”

  Shuichi forgot about himself as the girl turned solemnly round to face him. Her eyes were pits of sorrow covered with a thin film of radiant tears. Her sorrow sparkled there, hard like a glittering shaft of icy moonlight. He felt something pass between the two of them. Something unexplainable. Indefinable. A whisper. A ghost. The merest hint of a smile flickered at the corner of her lips then died. Shuichi felt something lift from his soul as she turned away and slipped back inside.

  What’s your name dear?

  The body lay perfectly still. She looked so beautiful. Her black hair spread out in a circle beneath her head. Her slender brown limbs standing out against the white sheet. Her pale blue sari so redolent with life, even now.

  Asami? Asami. What a pretty name.

  But what was her name? Now she would never know. She wondered if the contact had known. If any of them had known. If any of them had cared enough to find out. For some reason it crossed her mind that the old man might know. What had happened between them? She went back out to the balcony but he had gone. Something else she would never know.

  Asami.

  The body called her back.

  Asami. Keep me. I want you to keep me.

  She would keep her! No one could take that from her. From them!

  Keep me Asami. Keep me in here

  The woman had touched her chest as she spoke.

  “Shut up, the pair of you.” The contact had lost patience with the delay. Asami had nodded gravely to the woman and given her silent vow.

  “Now give me the weapon. Where is it?” Asami had taken the gun from her handbag and held it out with her fingertips when suddenly she was gripped with a crazy resolve. She had dashed to the balcony and flung the gun from the edge then watched it bounce off a couple of other balconies below before clattering and skittering to a stop.

  “You stupid bitch. You stupid, fucking bitch.”

  The contact hadn’t attacked her or harmed her as she’d expected. Instead he had just dragged her back in the room and locked the sliding door. The woman had still been lying on the bed. Despite the turmoil it didn’t look as if she’d even moved but then she tilted her head to look at Asami.

  “Your boot laces. Give me one of your laces,” the contact had commanded, but Asami merely looked back at the woman and remained unmoving.

  “Your fucking laces! Give them to me.” The woman had smiled simply and nodded her head. Asami bent over and undid one boot before holding out the long red lace.

  “You can go now,” the contact had informed her as he snatched it from her grasp, “Dumb bitch.”

  But Asami hadn’t gone. She had stayed and watched. She had borne witness as that dark and threatening shadow of a man had completed his hideous business, flung the keys at her feet and left without displaying a trace of emotion. The woman had offered no resistance as the contact wrapped the lace round her neck and had even seemed to smile, almost mockingly, as her eyes bulged and watered and her fingers twitched and twitched until they would never twitch again.

  Asami walked over to the body and brushed her hand over the eyes closing them. Then she untucked the sheet and pulled it over the dead woman. It was over. Done. But she would keep her. She would remember. She walked from the room and locked the door behind her then called the elevator and pushed the button for the lobby. On the twelfth floor, though, the lift stopped and the doors opened to reveal a frenzied, blood spattered man with tattooed arms and a gun that looked remarkably familiar. Behind him cowered a terrified, dripping wet, Southeast Asian woman in a clinging silk dressing gown.

  The client shouted something at the woman in the elevator. Min didn’t understand what but she was surprised to see the woman step calmly out and wait patiently to one side. She was looking at the gun with an oddly interested concern. If Min had found herself in that situation she’d have run screaming. The client pushed her into the elevator and hammered the button for the first floor
over and over.

  Think of home Min, think of home.

  The doors slid shut and the elevator sank in to motion. In the polished brass Min stared straight at her own reflection. She hadn’t had time to grab a sash and the front of her gown hung open. She pulled it tight. The man was leaning against the wall and squeezing his head with his fists. The gun. The blood. The bodies…

  Think of home Min, think of the sea, think of the sky, think of the sun, the moon, the stars, the…blood, the bodies, the gun, the gun, the gun.

  Min had never seen a real gun in her life. She’d seen the way American children on the beach played with the little black pieces of plastic their dolls always seemed to carry. She’d heard the noises they made until they were shushed by their sunbathing mothers.

  pow pow

  pff pff

  trtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtr

  She wondered where the client had found his. It hadn’t been on him earlier. She knew because she’d searched his clothes.

  When the other men had burst in she’d been so frightened she had tried to hide under the water of the bath but when she came up for air and realised they couldn’t see her in the dark she couldn’t help but watch. They had pinned him against the wall and then a smaller man had approached. He had paced in front of her man for a while then suddenly punched him in the stomach. Two of the black suited men had dragged the client out on to the balcony and Min couldn’t see what was happening until one of them staggered back inside and tumbled over. Min had propped herself up to get a better look then fallen back down in shock as she saw the blood pouring from his chest. Then her man had appeared in the door and she saw the gun. She had seen his hand jolt four times and she had seen four men fall. He had pointed it at the fifth man, the one who’d come in last but this time nothing happened. Suddenly the pair were a tangle of limbs and violence. She had closed her eyes and when she opened them again nothing in the room was moving.

  Suddenly her man had been next to the bath and he was pulling her out. She had tripped and staggered along as he dragged her and had only barely managed to grab the gown she was wearing now.

  In her reflection she saw dark patches spreading across the silk and she started fearfully before realising it was just water.

  The elevator doors opened to reveal the lobby, but she had only a moment to take in the scene. An old woman stood with her back to the elevator bowing apologetically. In front of the woman stood several police officers who looked up as one and suddenly started shouting and reaching for their hips. She felt relief wash over her. She was free. She would escape.

  Suddenly she felt her breathing constricted as the client grabbed her round the neck. She tried to scream but he was holding her too tight. He was shouting. The policemen were shouting. The old woman scurried away. A shadow stirred at the foot of the stairs. Something cold and metallic pushed against her temple.

  It doesn’t work! she wanted to scream. I saw it. It’s broken, but she didn’t know the words in Japanese. Rescue me!

  As her man pulled the gun from her head to push a button and the elevator doors slid shut she was faced again with herself.

  Think of home Min, think of home.

  There is no escape.

  There is no escape.

  About the author

  Richard James was born in Scotland and has spent most of the last decade travelling. He has lived and worked in Poland, Moscow and Beijing. In 2012 he circumnavigated the globe with the Japanese NGO Peace Boat.

  His serialized work Into this World She Woke can be found for free on Jukepop.com.

  He is currently based in Tokyo.