“Explain.”
“Where should I start?”
“At the beginning.”
For starters, I had no idea where the hell to begin, and what’s more, I didn’t have any idea how to tell the story so that she’d understand. I wasn’t sure whether it would go over well or not. After thinking about it for ten seconds or so, I started to speak.
“It was hot, but it was a nice day. I swam all afternoon, then went home and, after an afternoon nap, I had dinner. Now it’s after 8pm. Then I got in my car so I could go somewhere and go for a walk. I parked my car on the road near the shore and listened to the radio while I looked at the ocean, like I always do.
“After thirty minutes of this, I all of a sudden got to feeling like talking to people. Whenever I look at the ocean, I always want to talk to people, but when I’m talking to people, I always want to look at the ocean. I’m weird like that. So then I decided to go to J’s Bar. I wanted to drink beer, and I usually can meet up with my friend there. But my friend wasn’t there. So I decided to drink by myself. In just one hour I drank three beers.”
I paused for a moment to ash my cigarette into the ashtray.
“By the way, have you ever read Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?”
She didn’t answer, wrapped in her sheet she looked like a mermaid who washed up onto a beach as she glared up at the ceiling. Undeterred, I went back to my story.
“What I mean is that I’m always reminded of that play whenever I’m drinking by myself. Like a little switch that goes off and lets me relax or something. But in reality, it didn’t go so well. I didn’t even hear the click. After awhile, I got sick of waiting and called up his apartment. I was going to invite him to come out and have a drink with me. However, some girl answered his phone. It made me really uneasy. He’s just not the type to let that happen. Even if he’d had fifty girls in his room and was dead drunk, he’d still answer his own phone. You know what I mean?
“I pretended I had the wrong number, apologized, and hung up. After that call, I started to feel bad. Of course, what I did was ridiculous. Still, that’s just how I am. I finished my beer and called J over so I could pay the check, thinking about going home and listening to the baseball scores on the news. J told me to go and wash my face. You could drink a case of beer, and he’d still that that washing your face would make you okay to drive. There was nothing I could say to that, so I headed to the washroom to wash my face. To tell you the truth, I didn’t really plan to wash my face. Just to pretend to. Because the drain in the sink there is usually clogged up. So I didn’t really want to go in there. But last night, strangely, there wasn’t any water filling up the sink. Instead, it was you, all balled up on the floor.”
She sighed and shut her eyes.
“And?”
“I sat you up and carried you out of the bathroom, then took you around to all the customers in the bar and asked them if they knew you. But nobody knew you. Then, J and I treated your wound.”
“My wound?”
“When you passed out, you must’ve hit your head on a corner or something. It wasn’t a major injury or anything.”
She nodded and drew her hand from under her sheet, then lightly touched her fingertip to her forehead.
“So then I consulted with J. What we should do about you. In the end, we decided that I should take you home. I emptied your bag and found a key holder and a postcard addressed to you. I paid your tab with the money in your wallet, and following the address on the postcard, brought you here, opened the door with the key, and laid you out on your bed. That’s it. I put the receipt from the bar in your wallet.”
“Why’d you stay?”
“Hm?”
“Why didn’t you just buzz off after bringing me home?”
“I had a buddy who died from alcohol poisoning. After gulping down whiskey and saying goodbye and leaving, he went home feeling well enough, brushed his teeth, put on his pajamas and went to bed. When the morning came, he was cold and dead. It was a spectacular funeral.”
“So you were going to nurse me all night?”
“Really, I was planning to go home at 4am. But I fell asleep. I thought about leaving when I woke up. But I gave up on that.”
“Why?”
“At the very least, I thought I should explain to you what happened.”
“You did all this out of the goodness of your heart?”
Feeling the venom laced in her words, I shrugged my shoulders and let them pass over me. Then I looked at the clouds.
“Did I…did I talk about anything?”
“A little.”
“What did I say?”
“This and that. But I forget. Nothing too terribly important.”
She closed her eyes and a grunt escaped the depths of her throat.
“And the postcard?”
“I put it back in your bag.”
“Did you read it?”
“No way!”
“Why not?”
“There was no reason to.”
I said this in a bored way. Something about her tone was irritating me. Even more than that, she stirred up some kind of familiar sentiment within me. Something old, from a long time ago. If before this hellish encounter we’d have met under different circumstances, we’d probably have had a slightly better time together. That’s how I felt. However, in reality, what those ‘better circumstances’ might have been, I really couldn’t remember.
“What time is it?” she asked.
Breathing a little sigh of relief, I stood up, looked at my digital watch on the desk, put some water in a glass, and came back to bed.
“It’s nine.”
She nodded weakly, then got up, leaned on the wall and drank all the water in one gulp.
“Did I really drink all that much?”
“Absolutely. If it were me, I’d be dead.”
“I feel like I’m dying.”
She took her cigarettes out from under her pillow and lit one, sighing as she exhaled the smoke, then suddenly pitched the match out the window towards the harbor.
“Hand me something to wear.”
“Like what?”
With her cigarette still in her mouth, she closed her eyes yet again. “Anything. I ask you to get me something, don’t ask questions, just do it.”
Facing the bed was a large wardrobe. I opened its door feeling a little confused, but finally chose a sleeveless blue dress and handed it to her. Not bothering to put on underwear, she slipped it completely over her head and pulled it down, zipping up the back all by herself and sighing once again when she finished.
“I have to go.”
“Where?”
“To work.”
She spit those words out, stumbling out of bed. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I looked on, uninterested, as she washed her face and brushed her hair.
The room was tidy, but even with things being neatly arranged, there was an air of something like resignation, and it was weighing heavily on my spirits.
Her room was just six mats in size, and after taking into account the cheap furniture it was stuffed with, there was barely enough space left over for one person to lie down. She was standing in this space brushing the knots out of her hair.
“What kind of work?”
“That’s none of your business.”
And that’s how it was.
For the time it takes to smoke an entire cigarette, I kept quiet. With her back to me, she was pushing her bangs, which hung down to below her eyes, into position with her fingertip.
“What time is it?” she asked once more.
“It’s been ten minutes.”
“Time to go. You’d better hurry up and get dressed and go home,” she said while spraying perfume under her armpits, “you do have a home, don’t you?”
“Yeah, sure,” I said, pulling my t-shirt over my head. Still sitting on the edge of her bed, I went back to gazing out the window.
“Where is your work?”
“Close to the harbor. Why?”
“I’ll drive you. You won’t be so late.”
Clutching the handle of her brush, she looked at me as if she were about to burst out in tears. This’ll be fun if she cries, I thought to myself. But she didn’t cry.
“Hey, just remember this: I drank too much, and I was drunk. So if anything bad happened, it’s my own fault.”
Saying that, she tapped the handle of the brush in her palm a few times in an almost entirely businesslike manner. I was silent while I waited for her to continue.
“Don’t you think?”
“Sure.”
“Still, a guy who sleeps with a girl who’s passed out…that’s low.”
“But I didn’t do anything.”
She was quiet, looking like she was trying to keep her emotions in check.
“Hmm, well then, why was I naked?”
“You took your own clothes off.”
“Yeah right.”
She tossed her brush onto her bed, then carefully stuffed her shoulder bag with her wallet, lipstick, aspirin, and the like.
“Hey, can you prove that you really didn’t do anything?”
“You can check for yourself.”
She definitely seemed to be genuinely pissed off.
“I swear.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You have to believe me,” I said. I started to feel bad after I said it.
She gave up on any further attempt at discussion and kicked me out of her room, locking her own door behind her.
Without exchanging so much as a word, we walked down the avenue running along the river until we came to the parking lot.
While I wiped the dust off the the windshield with a piece of tissue paper,
and after walking a slow, suspicious lap around the car, she fixed her gaze upon a picture of a cow’s face drawn on in white paint. The cow had a huge nose ring, and one white rose in its mouth, smiling. It was a really vulgar smile.
“Did you paint this?”
“Nah, the last owner did.”
“Why’d he paint a cow of all things?”
“Who knows?” I said.
She walked back and stared at the cow again, looking as if she regretted saying too much to me, then kept her mouth shut as she got into the car. It was incredibly hot inside the car, and all the way to the harbor she didn’t say a word, wiping off her dripping sweat with a towel while she chain-smoked. After lighting a cigarette, she’d take three puffs and stare at the lipstick on the filter as if inspecting it, then snuff it out in the car’s ashtray and light another.
“Hey, about last night, all the other stuff aside, what the hell did I say?”
“This and that.”
“Well, just tell me one thing I said. C’mon.”
“You were talking about Kennedy.”
“Kennedy?”
“John F. Kennedy.”
She shook her head and sighed.
“I don’t remember a thing.”
When I dropped her off, without a word she tucked a thousand-yen note in behind my rearview mirror.
10
It was an extremely hot night. Hot enough to softboil an egg. I pushed open the heavy door to J’s Bar with the back side of my body, as I always did, and the air conditioner had filled the place with pleasantly cool air.
The inside of the place smelled like cigarettes and whiskey and French fries and armpits and sewage, the smells stagnating on top of each other just like a layer cake.
As always, I sat at the seat on the end of the bar, scanning the place with my back to the wall. Wearing unfamiliar uniforms, there were three French sailors with two girls they’d brought, and a couple who must’ve just turned twenty, and that was it. And no Rat.
After ordering a beer and a corned beef sandwich, I pulled out a book and decided to take my time waiting for the Rat.
Just ten minutes later, a thirty year-old woman with breasts like grapefruits and a flashy dress entered the bar and sat a seat away from me, scanning the surroundings just like I’d done and ordering a gimlet. After taking just one sip of her drink, she got up and made a painfully long phone call, then came back and grabbed her purse before going to the bathroom. In forty minutes, she ended up doing this three times. Sip of gimlet, long phone call, purse, toilet.
J came over to me, looking bored, and asked if my ass wasn’t getting tired. He was Chinese, but his Japanese was better than mine.
Returning from her third trip to the toilet, she looked around for someone and then slid into the seat next to me, talking to me in a low whisper.
“Hey, you wouldn’t be able to lend me some change would you?”
I nodded and dug the change out of my pocket, then set it all on the counter. There were thirteen ten-yen coins in all.
“Thanks a lot. If I ask the bartender to make change for me again he’ll be sore at me.”
“No problem. Thanks to you my pockets are lighter.”
She smiled and nodded, nimbly scraping up the change and disappearing in the direction of the pay phone.
Getting tired of reading my book, I had J bring the portable television over to my place at the bar and began watching a baseball game while drinking my beer. It was a big game. In just the top of the forth, the pitcher gave up two homeruns and six hits, an outfielder collapsed from anemia, and while they switched pitchers there were six commercials. Commercials for beer and life insurance and vitamins and airline companies and potato chips and sanitary napkins.
After seeming to have struck out with the girls, with his beer glass in hand, one of the French sailors came up behind me and asked me, in French, what I was watching.
“Baseball,” I answered in English.
“Base-ball?”
I gave him a simple overview of the rules. This guy throws the ball, this other guy hits it with a stick, running one lap around is one point. The sailor stared fixedly at the screen for five entire minutes, but when the commercials started he asked me why the jukebox didn’t have any Johnny Hallyday.
“’Cause he’s not popular,” I said.
“What French singers are popular here?”
“Adamo.”
“He’s Belgian.”
“Michel Polnareff.”
“Merde!”
Saying this, the French sailor went back to his table.
At the top of the fifth, the woman finally came back.
“Thanks again. Let me buy you a drink.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I feel like I have to return favors—it’s a character trait of mine, for better or worse.”
I tried to smile, but it came out all wrong, so I just nodded and said nothing. She called J over with her finger and said a beer for this guy, a gimlet for me. J