Ransom (20 page)

They talked baseball. The sensei demonstrated tricks with matches and coins. But once their sashimi arrived and Ransom started in, the sensei grabbed Ransom's chopsticks with one hand and the back of his head with the other. He showed how easy it would be—given the position of the chopsticks, pointing directly back into the mouth—to skewer Ransom's skull, then demonstrated the safe technique, keeping the chopsticks off to the side of the face so that at worst your cheek was pierced.

The whiskey tasted harsh at first, but the second one was better. The sensei insisted. Two seats down a man was passed out with his head on the bar. As if on tracks, the hostess and her daughter glided back and forth from one
end of the bar to the other. The stereo played hokey love songs. Suddenly, the sensei wanted to sing. He asked the hostess to play the instrumental backup tape to “Onna Hitori.” The other patrons applauded. He pushed back his seat and stood up, as the music began. He closed his eyes and sang:

Kyoto ohara sanzen-in
Koini tsukareta onna ga hitori
Yuki ni shioze no sugaki no obi ga
Ike no mizumo ni yureteita

He had a fine voice. It was a song about lost love, a woman alone, snow falling on a temple, on the woman. When the sensei finished they all applauded enthusiastically.

Did you understand it?
the sensei asked.

Not all the words
, Ransom said.
But I liked it
.

Good. The words aren't so important. It's the feeling
—he patted his belly—
that counts
.

Ransom remembered something: Love to feel everything rather than think. The sensei was a Funky Babe.

When the bottle was dry the sensei said it was time for a bath. The hostess walked them to the door, telling them to be careful and to come again soon. They walked east, toward the river.

The whiskey had given Ransom a headache. The sensei was in fine form, smiling and humming. He asked Ransom if he had ever been to a Turko Buro. Ransom said that he hadn't.
It's time you did
, the sensei said.

Ransom tried to think of an excuse.

What do you say in English?
the sensei wanted to know.

“Turkish bath,” Ransom said.

Do you have them in America?
the sensei asked.

Not really
, Ransom said.

Either you have them or you don't
.

He could plead hydrophobia, Ransom thought.

The sensei stopped in front of a doorway and knocked. A buzzer sounded and the sensei pushed the door open. The empty reception area might just as easily have been a dentist's waiting room: Naugahyde couch and chairs, coffee table, magazine rack. The sensei told Ransom to sit down.

A wooden panel, set into the far wall, slid back revealing a small window and a face. The man shook his head. They were closed, he said through a speaker. The sensei stepped up to the window and held a conference with the man. Ransom sat down on the couch. He could not bring himself to tell the sensei, who would not understand, and would probably be offended, that he didn't want to do this. He tasted something metallic in the back of his mouth.

The sensei joined Ransom on the couch. He said,
I had to convince them you were a good gaijin. Normally they wouldn't take one. They don't want any trouble
.

Thank you
, Ransom said.

I paid for the bath, but for the hon-ban you have to pay the girl once you're inside. It's three thousand yen
.

He picked up a magazine and kicked off his sandals. Then he suddenly turned back to Ransom. He asked,
Do you know about the bubble dance?

Ransom nodded.
I've heard about it
.

It costs extra
, the sensei said,
but it's worth it
.

A door beside the window panel opened. A man with a samurai haircut stuck his head out and looked them over; his face was like a side of beef. He stepped into the room, displaying an improbable tuxedo. The folds of his neck hung over the starched white collar.

“Konbanwa,” the sensei said.

The man grunted unintelligibly. He stared for a moment and left, closing the door behind him.

The sensei had just swapped magazines when a girl in a pink bathrobe appeared in the hall at the other end of the room.
Welcome
, she said. She looked like a well-fed schoolgirl, with a face that was all horizontals.

The sensei turned to Ransom and told him it was his choice: He could go with this one or take his chances on the next one. Feeling queasy, Ransom stood up and followed the girl, not wanting to prolong this further. She led him by the hand down a brightly lit hallway, turning corners until Ransom thought he must be back where they started. The hall was carpeted and everything except for the buzz in his head seemed muffled. She stopped in front of a door she unlocked with a key, then knelt down and removed his shoes.

He followed her into a tatami room furnished with a bed and a standing wardrobe, which opened onto a tiled bath chamber with turquoise tub and ceramic Cupid fountain.

Undoing the buttons of his shirt, she asked his name. Hers was Haruko. She hung his shirt in the wardrobe and helped him out of his pants and shorts. Ransom was glad, at least, that she wasn't a talker. She removed her robe, revealing a plump body, and a pair of black lace panties.

She led him into the tiled room and seated him on a plastic bath stool. Cupid was pissing into a golden oyster shell. The tub was empty. She turned on the water, holding a bucket under the spigots, then soaked him down and told him to relax. Ransom looked her over for signs of abuse, bruises, needle tracks, tattoos—anything to confirm his sense of the involuntary nature of her line of work, the kind of work Marilyn might be forced into. But she looked healthy enough.

She shampooed him first, then soaped up a washcloth and worked her way down. He looked very strong, she said, and again told him to relax, he was as tight as something that wasn't part of Ransom's vocabulary. She massaged his shoulders and back.

When her hands went below his waist, she was as thorough as she had been elsewhere. She looked up briefly at him and asked Ransom if he would say that he was an average gaijin.

There was no such thing, Ransom said, as an average gaijin.

She said she meant, was he average physically?

Ransom knew what she meant, and shrugged.

Suddenly coy, she asked if he wanted the bubble dance.

Ransom shook his head.

She ran her soapy hand down the inside of his thigh.
I do it very well
, she said.

I'm sure you do
, Ransom said.

Are you sure?
she said, running her hand back up between his legs.

Ransom said he was sure.

She finished with his feet, washing and massaging each
of his toes. Finally she rinsed him off and gestured toward the bath. He eased himself in, Haruko adding a burst of cold water. The water was fine but the whole procedure was happening to someone else and Ransom wanted only to be outside, headed home. She started kneading his shoulders again. He was sorry that she had to wash and fuck strange men for a living, but his sympathy wasn't going to do a thing for her. She told him again how tight he was.

When the bath was finished Haruko asked if he would like the hon-ban, gesturing toward the bed.

No, thank you
, he said.

Most of the younger men get the hon-ban
, she said.

I'm sure they enjoy it
. Ransom felt ridiculous, standing nude in the middle of the changing room, trying to be polite.

You're the first gaijin customer I've had
, she said. She looked him up and down as if committing the details to memory, then she went to get his shirt. He tried to tip her, feeling that he had been a financial disappointment, but she wouldn't accept it.

He waited for the sensei in the reception area and after a few minutes heard his voice. A woman on his arm, he strode through the doorway, nearly radiant. He and the woman bantered for a few minutes, and Ransom received his fair share of comment.

Once they were out on the street, the sensei asked what he thought of the bubble dance.

Terrific
, Ransom said.

They turned a corner into a narrow, covered passageway and caught sight of a geisha, ghostly in her white
makeup, framed in a doorway. She froze, looking at them, and Ransom was reminded of a deer caught in headlights. Then she turned, hurried across the street with tiny pigeon steps and disappeared in another doorway. Ransom and his teacher stood in the passageway, both looking at the door.

For two years Ransom had been watched wherever he went, and he had gradually stopped noticing that conversation paused when he entered a restaurant, that all heads turned when he boarded a train. But now, if he was glanced at by a man in a suit, his first thought was that he was under surveillance. Where before he had felt only curiosity, he now detected hostility. These people didn't want him in their country, and some of them might feel more than a vague resentment. According to Marilyn, Kyoto was owned and operated by the yakuza; the police were in on the take, every bath operator and street vendor paid protection, and every third-rate entertainer on television was in their pocket, not to mention government officials.

More and more, Ransom found himself watching his back. The sensei, he remembered, told him that the old karate masters never approached a corner directly, but always moved out and around. Taking immediate inventory of people in public places, Ransom suddenly noticed that the proprietor of his local newsstand was tattooed. In the Osaka subway one morning, he glanced at the overhead strap beside his and saw a hand one finger shy; that
same night, riding home, a man in a brown suit and hat had stared at him from Osaka to Takatsuki, sitting directly across from him, his gaze never wavering when Ransom looked up from his paper.

Ransom addressed him:
Is something the matter?

The man raised his eyebrows and said nothing.

Find something else to do with your eyes
, Ransom said.

The man acted surprised, even sheepish, and when he trudged off at the next stop Ransom feared he had overreacted.

Maybe, he thought, it was the weather: the air thicker and wetter by the day, the barometer plunging.

Marilyn called him at the coffee shop the next morning, Saturday. He didn't want to meet anywhere in the city, and if they were followed, the country wasn't safe either. Deciding that crowds provided good protection, Ransom gave her the number of a bus and told her to take it to the end of the line to Arashiyama. They would meet at six in the park beside the river, where people gathered to watch the pelican-fishing, but not likely anyone they knew.

At five-thirty Ransom set out, riding east along the Arashiyama road. The Scrambler lagged and surged, and Ransom wondered how Udo was making out with the 350. The city thinned and gradually disappeared, soon giving way to temples and rice fields, knee-high in green in the late afternoon sun. Turning into the parking lot, he smelled fried food from the stalls along the riverbank. The unpaved lot was unattended, but the Nissans and Toyotas were parked in perfect rows.

The riverbank was carpeted with tatami mats on which
families camped with picnic gear. Roman candles and rockets hissed and sputtered over the water. Ransom picked his way through the crowd, looking for Marilyn. Hawkers in the food stalls invited him to buy grilled squid, barbecued corn, chicken parts on sticks, hot dogs fashioned from mysterious animal and fish products and binders. As the Kyoto bus rattled to a stop in the parking lot, the first boat rounded the bend upriver.

Ransom waved to Marilyn, who walked cautiously, in high heels, toward the river.

“Where are we?” she demanded.

“Relax, it's a festival. One of my students told me about it. We're just a couple of tourists watching the pelicans.”

“What kind of festival?”

“Beats me, maybe an equinox or something.”

“It smells terrible.”

Ransom untied the rolled tatami mat from the back of the Scrambler and coaxed Marilyn to a spot upriver where they could spread out. He bought a handful of Roman candles from an old man and fired one out over the water.

“You really know how to show a girl a good time,” Marilyn said.

“I guess you had all kinds of festivals in Vietnam.”

“Sure, lots of fireworks during Tet—grenades coming through restaurant windows, car-bombs in the street.” Although she was wrapped in a fox jacket and the temperature was easily seventy, Marilyn sat stiffly on the mat, hugging her body with her arms.

“I just wanted to meet someplace out of the way.”

“I'm kind of edgy,” she said, fishing a cigarette from her purse. “I've been thinking. It was nice of you to try to help,
but I don't think we better see each other anymore. I had a hell of a time getting away today and my oyabun, he might do something crazy.”

Ransom looked out at the boats coming down the river.

“Someone put sugar in my gas tank.”

“Gas tank? What are you talking about?”

“My motorcycle's. The sugar pretty much screws up the bike.”

She stared out at the water. “That means he's found you. Please, I don't want you to get hurt.”

“Maybe it wasn't him.”

“You have other enemies?”

“Somehow sugar in my gas tank doesn't quite strike me as a yakuza move.”

“Well, one day he threatens to kill me and the next day he brings me flowers and cries in my lap.” She drew on her cigarette. “He says we're going to get married soon.”

“What do you say?”

“You seem to forget that I don't have any choices. Anyway, why don't you get out while you still can?”

The sun had fallen behind the mountains, and Ransom watched the silhouettes of the boats against the river. Marilyn looked at him. “Whose lap do you cry on?”