Authors: Natsuo Kirino
“You’ll have a beer, won’t you, Mr. Arai?”
I opened the grocery bag I was carrying, pulled out the can of beer and the snacks I’d bought earlier, and set them on the rickety table. The oden was my evening meal, so I ate it without offering him any.
“God, you like a lot of broth in your oden,” he said with disgust.
This was the first time we’d seen each other in I don’t know how long, and this was all he had to say to me? I didn’t answer. Oden broth is diet 4 4 8
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food; anyone knows that! It fills you up and then you don’t eat a lot of other stuff. How come men don’t know simple things like this? I drank the rest of the broth. Arai looked at me in annoyance and headed to the bathroom. He used to be so hesitant about saying the wrong thing in front of me, so conscious of his own small-town manners: Mr. Arai from a chemical company in Toyama. When did he change? I sat there for a bit, staring blankly into space, while I thought it over.
“I want this to be our last session.”
Arai’s pronouncement caught me completely off guard. I stared at him in shock, but he avoided my gaze.
“Why?”
“Because I’m going to retire this year.”
“So what? Does that mean you have to retire from me too?”
I couldn’t help but laugh. Company and prostitute were one and the same? That would make me a company employee both day and night.
Or, maybe it’s the other way around: I’m a prostitute both night and day!
“No, that’s not what I’m suggesting. It’s just that I’ll be home all the time and it’ll be hard to get away. Besides, I doubt I’ll have many complaints that I’ll need you to listen to.”
“Okay, okay. I get the picture,” I said impatiently, as I held my hand out in front of Arai. “Then give me what I’m owed.”
Arai went to the closet where he’d hung his wrinkled suit jacket and sullenly reached into the pocket to pull out his paper-thin wallet. I knew he only had two tenthousand-yen notes inside. He always brought just enough to cover my charge of ¥15,000 and the ¥3,000 room fee. He never walked around with anything more than the amount he needed.
Yoshizaki was the same way. Arai placed the two bills on my upturned palm.
“Here’s your fifteen thousand yen. Now give me five thousand in change.”
“You’re short.”
Arai stared at me. “What do you mean? This is what I always pay.”
“That’s just my salary. If I’m an employee in your nighttime company, you need to pay my retirement allowance.”
Arai stared at my open palm but said nothing. Then he looked up at me, clearly growing angry.
“You’re a prostitute. You have no right to that!”
“I’m not just a prostitute, I’m also a company employee.”
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“Right, right, I know: G Corporation, G Corporation. All you ever do is brag about it. But I bet you’re an enormous burden to your firm. If you’d been employed at my company, you’d have been let go long ago.
The era of your debut is long past, you know; you’re no longer the flower-faced office lady you used to be. You’re really weird, to tell you the truth, and you get weirder by the minute. Each time I sleep with you, I ask myself what the hell I’m doing. I can’t figure it out. You disgust me. But then, each time you call, I feel so sorry for you I can’t help but agree to meet you.”
“Oh, is that so? Well, then, I’ll just take what you’ve given me here for the time being. The additional hundred thousand yen you can deposit in my bank account.”
“Give that back. You bitch!”
Arai grabbed the bills from my hand; I couldn’t let him take them. If I lost that money, I’d lose myself. But Arai struck me hard across the face, sending my wig flying.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“That’s what I’d like to know! What are you doing?”
Arai was breathing heavily. “Here, bitch,” he hissed as he threw one tenthousand-yen note at me. “I’m leaving.”
Arai yanked his suit jacket on and folded his coat over his arm.
Once he hoisted his bag onto his shoulder, I shouted at him. “You have to pay the hotel costs too. And you owe me seven hundred yen for the drinks and the snack.”
“Fine.”
Arai reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of change. He counted out the coins and threw them on the table.
“Don’t ever call me again,” he said. “The more I see you the more you terrify me. You make me sick.”
Look who’s talking, I wanted to say. Who was the one who always wanted to get me off with finger play? Aren’t you the one who had me pose for Polaroid pictures; who tied me up and got off on S and M play?
And who was the one I had to suck on until I was nearly blue in the face because he couldn’t get it up? I did all this for youI freed youand this is the thanks I get?
Arai opened the door and addressed me curtly. “Sato-san, you ought to be careful.”
“What do you mean?”
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“You’ve got the shadow of death over you.”
With that he closed the door. Once I was alone, I looked around the room. Well, thank God I hadn’t pulled the tab on the beer can! Funny, that’s all I could think of at the time. I was more offended by Arai’s claim that I was tantamount to a corporation than I was by his sudden change of heart. A man’s work and prostitution are the same? If a man has a retirement age in the corporate world, then should he also retire from buying prostitutes? It was the same as the lecture I’d been given long ago by that woman in the Ginza. Well, enough of that! I stuffed the beer and snacks back in the plastic bag and turned off the hot water.
I returned to the Jizo statue. There was a man standing there waiting for me. At first I thought Arai might have changed his mind, but then I noticed that the man was taller than Arai and was wearing jeans.
“You look well,” Zhang said, breaking into a smile.
“Really?”
I opened my trench coat as wide as I could. I wanted to seduce Zhang.
“I’ve been hoping to run into you.”
“Why?”
Zhang brought his hand up to my cheek and stroked it softly. I quivered.
Be good to me. I flashed back to that rainy night. But I wasn’t going to say those words again. I hated men. But I loved sex.
“I’d like to do a little business,” I told him. “What do you say? I’ll give you a good price.”
“Three thousand yen?”
Zhang and I started walking. I keep a record of the men I have liaisons with in my prostitute’s journal. But the marks that I’ve used in my journal tonight are in reverse order, aren’t they? They’re backwards. This time I’ve marked Arai, WA, instead of the foreigner, with a question mark. This indicates those men with whom I will probably not have sex again. In other words, it marks the men I think are rotten.
Zhang and I linked arms and walked from one dark alley to the next. Past the kitchen assistant, who threw water at me and told me to get lost; past 4 5 1
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the man who told me no one does that anymore, when I tried to exchange beer bottles for money; past the sake shop owner who treated me callously; past the convenience-store clerk who refuses to say a word to me, even though I’m constantly buying stuff in her store; past the punks who shine their flashlights on me and burst out laughing when I’m in the empty lot having sex. I wanted to shout at them all, Look at me now! I’m not just some street-corner whore, some bottom-feeding slut.
Here I am walking for all the world to see with a man who was waiting for me in front of the Jizo statue. A man who is good to me. I am the sought-after, the desired, the capable: the queen of sex.
“We look like a pair of lovers!”
I squealed in delight. I’m with Zhang. I’m an employee of G Corporation.
My article won a newspaper prize. I’m the assistant office manager.
How come I was never able to get by without saying all these things?
Was it simply that I wanted to say them to customers? No, it was more than that. I had to say what I said because if I didn’t I would feel they were making fun of me. I had to be the best at everything I did. It was important to me as a woman. And that made me want to show off. I wanted men to watch me, to appraise me. Moreover, I wanted them to approve of me. That was me in a nutshell. In the final analysis, I was really just a sweet girl who needed approval.
“What are you mumbling about over there?”
Zhang peered at me. His eyes were wide and awash with uncertainty.
“I was talking to myself. Could you hear?” I asked Zhang, surprised by his question. But he just shook his balding head.
“Are you feeling okay? I mean, mentally?”
Where’d he get off asking such a question? Of course I was okay!
Nothing wrong with my mental abilities! I got up on time this morning, boarded the train, changed to the subway, and worked like an aggressive career woman in one of the biggest corporations around. At night I transformed into a prostitute sought out by men. Suddenly I remembered the argument I had had earlier with Arai and stopped short. I’m a company employee day and night. Or is it that I’m a prostitute night and day? Which is it? Which one is me? Is the area in front of the Jizo statue my headquarters? Then was the Marlboro Hag the chief of operations before I took over? That thought amused me so much I burst out laughing.
“What are you doing?”
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Zhang turned around to stare at me as I stood there laughing. When I looked around me, I saw that we’d arrived in front of Zhang’s apartment building. I put my hands on my hips and declared, “Tonight, I’m not doing a whole host of men!”
“Don’t worry, none of them want to sleep with you anyway,” Zhang said. “No one but me, that is.”
“Do you like me?” I asked Zhang, reeling with excitement over his last words. Say it! Say it! Say, “I like you.” Say, “You’re a good woman. You’re attractive.” Say it!
Zhang didn’t say anything. He fished around in his pockets.
“Where are we going? To the roof?”
I was afraid the roof would be too cold. I leaned against one of the walls and looked up at the night sky. But then, if Zhang was good to me, I wouldn’t mind the cold. Suddenly I was seized with doubt. What did it mean for a man to be good to you? Did it mean he’d give you lots of money? But Zhang didn’t have money. More likely he’d try to haggle over the ¥3,000. Was it something that you felt, then? But I was afraid of feeling. I mean, for a prostitute it’s supposed to be about work.
“Did you hear what I just said?”
Zhang walked past his apartment building and stopped in front of the one next to it. It was a peculiar building. There was a bar in the basement, and I could see orange fights leaking out onto the asphalt from windows that were at street level. When I peeked in the windows, I saw customers seated with their drinks, their heads about level with our feet.
The building was three stories tall, but it looked to be only about as high as a two-story building. The top of the basement windows were at street level, and the first floor started just above that. The boisterous noise coming from the basement bar seemed oddly incongruous with the quiet loneliness of the surrounding buildings. I found it a little unnerving.
Even though I’d come to Zhang’s apartment any number of times, I’d never once noticed this shabby apartment building that was right next door.
“Has this building been here all along?” I asked.
Zhang looked taken aback by the dim-wittedness of my question. He pointed up to the top of the building.
“It’s been here all this time. Look over there; that’s my room. I can see this building from my window.”
I looked up to the fourth floor of the other building and could see two 4 5 3
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windows that opened out above us like eyeballs. One of the windows was dark, the other was bright with a fluorescent lamp.
“You’ve got a direct view.”
“That I do. I can see if someone’s in or not. The super of this building sometimes gives me a key to one of the apartments.”
“Then, if I lived in this apartment, you would know exactly what I was doing at any given time.”
“If I wanted to.”
The idea made me happy. Zhang looked puzzled. He swung his head down. He stopped in front of the apartment at the end of the other shabby buildingNumber 103and pulled a key out of his pocket. The apartment next to it was pitchblack. It didn’t look as if anyone was living there. It looked as if there were vacant units on the second floor too.
Three grimy-looking mailboxes were tacked to the thin Sheetrock wall at the entryway. Above these was a sign that read GREEN VILLA APARTMENTS.
Condoms and leaflets were strewn across the concrete floor. I shivered. The filth in the apartment foyer reminded me of the garbage on the roof of Zhang’s building and the stench of his bathroom. I sensed this was a place I shouldn’t see and shouldn’t be visiting. I shouldn’t do this.
“Hmm, I wonder if I’m doing something I shouldn’t?” I asked Zhang, without thinking.
“I doubt there’s one thing in the world that fits that category,” Zhang answered, as he opened the door.
I looked inside. It smelled like an old person’s breath. It was pitchblack inside; the odor that greeted me seemed to have risen out of a vast emptiness. We could do it in here and no one would know, I thought to myself. Zhang left me standing there and disappeared into the darkness.
It seemed he knew his way around. He’d probably brought any number of women here already. Well, I wasn’t going to let them get the better of me, I thought, as I slipped quickly out of my high heels, causing them to shoot off in both directions.
“There’s no electricity, so watch your step.”
Brought up to be a polite young lady, I turned around and straightened my shoes neatly in front of the entry step. The step was cool on my feet. And even though I was wearing stockings, I could tell it was covered in dust. Zhang was already sitting on the tatami in the back room.
“I can’t see. I’m scared,” I called out in a syrupy voice, hoping Zhang 4 5 4
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would hold out his hand. But he didn’t come to me. I groped my way to the back room. The apartment was entirely bare, so I had no reason to fear bumping into anything. It didn’t take long for my eyes to adjust to the dark. Light from the outside filtered in through the kitchen window, so it wasn’t pitchblack. It was a small apartment. I could vaguely make out Zhang sitting cross-legged at the back of the six-mat room. He held up his hand to motion me over.