Coin Locker Babies (8 page)

The next day he went out and bought
Apples and Hot Water
, but there was nothing about the bougainvillea lady in the book. Kuwayama and Kazuyo hadn’t been watching the program and knew nothing about his pressed flowers, so he had only Kiku to give him advice. But Kiku wasn’t much use; the whole episode had made him oddly angry. Why, Kiku wondered to himself, did this dumb story have to come and upset Hashi now like this?

Hashi borrowed some money from him and began to make plans.

“And what are you going to do if you find your mother?” Kiku wanted to know.

“I’m not sure,” he said, shaking his head. “I just want to see her, that’s all. I don’t even have to meet her necessarily. I’ve been giving it a lot of thought, and I suppose actually meeting her would be pretty scary; so I think I’d just watch her from a distance, see how she talks, how she walks. That kind of stuff.”

Since then, only one postcard had come, telling them he was alive and well. The postmark was Tokyo but there was no return address. Kazuyo turned the card over and over in her hand,
held it up to the light, and even sniffed it, looking for anything that might lead them in his direction. She had already filed a missing persons report and placed several items in the “Personal Inquiries” columns of Tokyo newspapers, but they had heard nothing. When Kiku picked up Hashi’s postcard, however, his reaction was a little different from Kazuyo’s; the card made him feel that he too would like to go somewhere far away and send someone a card just like this.

Kiku did his best not to think too much about Hashi, though somehow he had lost interest in almost everything, including
pole-vaulting
practice. But it had nothing to do with Hashi, he told himself; it was just that everything suddenly seemed a bit stupid—the island, the way the sea sparkled, the smell of fish drying, the canna lilies down by the hill, Milk’s barking… everything. I’m bored, he thought, standing on the practice field. The warm, soft breeze blowing from the sea was particularly unbearable.

Kiku was reading a novel on the Bullet Train. The summer of the year after Hashi had left home, Kazuyo had announced that she was going to Tokyo to look for him, so Kiku agreed to go along. As he read, she picked over a box lunch they’d bought at the station, looking as though she were about to burst into tears, but Kiku was secretly in a good mood. Looking up from his book, he gazed at the fresh green fields as the train hurtled along. Hashi will probably be waiting on the platform for us, all smiles, he thought, but the feeling might also have had something to do with the fact that he’d almost finished
Apples and Hot Water
. It was nice to reach the end of a book; liberating somehow.

“Next stop, New Yokohama Station,” the public address system on the train repeated and repeated until it seemed to Kiku that it was urging him personally to dredge up memories of Yokohama. But the only memory he had was shut inside a coin locker, and he wasn’t anxious to take it out and dust it off.

At Tokyo Station they were met on the platform by a staff member from the National High School Track Association. A coach at Kiku’s school, realizing they knew no one in Tokyo, had made a phone call that had apparently resulted in this small man in a green suit standing by the stairs calling Kiku’s name in exactly the same tone as the recorded announcements on the train. His jaw pumped so regularly and his tone was so flat that
Kiku thought of a robot. Machinelike, arms folded, the green suit repeated its taped message: “Kikuyuki Kuwayama! Kikuyuki Kuwayama!”

All the same, Kazuyo seemed pleased to be met. When she caught sight of the little robot, she paused for a moment, pulling a mirror from her purse to check her makeup, and then rushed up to the man bowing at full speed. She said her hellos, then went on bowing to what Kiku thought was a ridiculous degree.

“He liked music,” she was saying to the man as Kiku approached. The green suit told them that runaways tended to congregate in Shinjuku.

Their hotel had been picked by Kazuyo from a picture in a travel magazine. It turned out to be behind a pinball parlor in east Nakano: “Hotel Springtime,” in large neon letters with the “t” in “Hotel” burned out. In real life, the outside didn’t look much like the magazine picture. In the photograph there had been a little pond stocked with goldfish and, flowing into the pond, a waterfall flecked with maple leaves. Parked in front were big foreign cars, and a foreign couple was walking out of the door arm-in-arm under a colorful display of flags. Since the picture was taken, however, the waterfall had dried up and a movie poster had been pasted over the cracked cement. The pond, also dry, was stacked with boxes, and a cleaning woman with dyed hair was standing in for the couple in the entranceway. She puffed away at a cigarette as she slopped water around with a mop, keeping one eye on the television in the lobby blaring a program about an air show. The silver in the cleaning woman’s teeth glinted as she flicked her cigarette ash into the mop bucket.

At the front desk were two men in bow ties who interrupted their game of checkers to greet the new guests. Kazuyo took her time filling out the registration card, carefully writing “beautician”
in large letters in the blank marked “occupation.” After giving them the key, one of the men carried their luggage to the elevator where two dark-skinned, strong-smelling women were just getting out. One of them turned to look at Kazuyo and Kiku and said something in a foreign language. As the doors were closing, Kiku could see them pointing at Kazuyo and laughing, and when he turned to look, she was checking her dress, makeup, and nylons, trying to decide what was wrong. The man with the bags was staring at Kiku, but looked away with a smirk when he glared back.

“Have a good stay,” muttered the bow tie before abruptly leaving them in a room overlooking some workmen’s sheds, a building in the process of being demolished, and a line of drying laundry.

“You used too much powder,” Kiku said as soon as he had gone, pointing at her chest. A white line of sweat and makeup ran from Kazuyo’s neck down between her breasts.

For quite a long time they sat on the edge of the bed without saying a word while the gasoline-scented breeze from the air conditioner dried Kazuyo’s breasts.

“What could Hashi want in a place like this?” she muttered at last. The crash of a wrecking ball striking concrete rattled the window.

Shinjuku. Gaudy movie palaces with fountains; drunks and drifters in equal numbers. Squatters camped out on newspaper and crushed cardboard boxes, guzzling sake and silently watching the road; a man in a plastic mask feeding dried fish to his dog; a violinist, pretending to be blind, holding the bow in his teeth. Kiku was particularly depressed by the sight of two beggars—a father, wearing a ragged wig and old kendo armor, accompanied by his child. For passersby who threw money, the two of them would switch on a portable phonograph and act out a story to a
scratchy record. The father would always end by sinking to his knees, with the child yelling triumphantly, “My fallen mother is avenged. Prepare to die!” as a tube of red paint hidden in the man’s armor split and spewed everywhere.

Kiku and Kazuyo went from bar to bar, every place they could hear music playing. They were usually welcome enough at first, but each time they showed the picture of Hashi and explained that they were looking for a runaway, they were told to check with the police and asked to leave. The tiny bars were stacked vertically, with dozens in a single building, and it seemed to Kiku it would take a hundred years to check them all. His nerves were already shot from the harsh blur of neon, smoke, topless girls and drunks. On the staircase of a building without an elevator, Kazuyo slipped on some newspaper that had been laid out to cover a pool of puke, taking a hard fall that left her dress covered with yellow slime.

They went into a small bar to rest. The only other customers were three women, all with makeup heavier than Kazuyo’s. Kiku drank his Coke in one gulp, but Kazuyo didn’t touch her cacao fizz; she had given up smoking and drinking—even tea—until they found Hashi. She did, however, hold the glass and sniff at the drink.

“It can’t hurt to have one,” said Kiku. She shook her head but, reaching across the table, put the glass under Kiku’s nose.

“Smells good, doesn’t it?” The cloudy brown liquid gave off a sweet odor; sugared mud, thought Kiku.

As they were getting up to go, they could hear the women at the bar discussing their children, all apparently in kindergarten.

“His skin is so delicate, he breaks out all over his body just from a mosquito bite…,” one of them was complaining as the door closed.

Back in the street, they were stopped by a young man who said
he’d seen them come into the bar where he worked earlier that evening; the places were all running together in their heads, but they thought he meant a bar with especially loud music and a woman dancing topless in a huge lighted ball.

“You’re from Kyushu, aren’t you?” he asked after introducing himself. Kazuyo nodded, and the man explained that he came from there himself. “I was working when you came in, so I couldn’t talk, but I want to help if I can.” When Kiku showed him Hashi’s picture again, he said he thought he’d seen him somewhere. He took them to the staff room of the bar he worked in and brought Kazuyo a damp towel to wipe her dress with.

“Mind if I keep the picture a while?” he asked Kiku. “I’ve got a hunch I could find him for you. When I get off work tonight, I’ll do some asking around. I know this town; it’ll take me half an hour to find out what you’d need a year to dig up. There are only so many places where runaway kids hang out, and I can hit them all. Come back tomorrow and I’m sure I’ll have something for you.” Kazuyo took a ten thousand yen bill out of her wallet, but he refused to take it.

“If you want to know, about four years back I ran away from home myself. I guess somebody must have come looking for me pretty much the same way… but I heard my mom died last year… Anyway, I don’t need your money. And don’t worry, we’ll find your son.”

They went back to the hotel exhausted. In the elevator, the cleaning woman was wiping down the walls. Though quite elderly, her hair was dyed, and she wore dark eyeliner and bright red lipstick that filled the deep wrinkles around her mouth.

“Hot, isn’t it?” she said to Kazuyo.

“And terribly sticky,” answered Kazuyo pleasantly as the old woman spat in her mop bucket.

“Hey, by the way, you two find anything weird in your toilet?” she asked suddenly. “Those Filipina whores been throwing some pretty strange stuff down the johns. It’s a bitch having to clean them out. Rubbers you expect, but this is getting ridiculous.”

The elevator had reached the fifth floor, but when Kazuyo and Kiku got off, the woman left her bucket and mop and followed them.

“Good night, then—we’re pretty tired,” said Kazuyo, trying to slip into the room, but she grabbed her arm.

“I’m finding these big wads of pubic hair—must be shaving down there. Clogs up the pipes and I have to clean it out by hand. But that’s not the worst of it. A while back I found eggs stopping up one toilet, and I
don’t
mean chicken eggs. It was
frog
eggs—these huge frog eggs. Well, I thought that was a bit peculiar, so I did some asking around and found out those Filipina girls keeps the frogs as sort of special pets, real special. Seems they like to stick them up inside themselves… feels good and squishy. But somebody’s got to clean up after them, and what kind of job is that—pulling frog eggs out of a toilet?… Goddamn Filipino hookers and their goddamn frogs… I ask you!” Bursting into tears, the maid held tight to Kazuyo’s arm. Her mascara began to run and black canals formed along her wrinkles.

At last Kazuyo managed to wriggle free and escape into the room. As Kiku stood for a moment looking at the weeping cleaning lady, he had the disturbing notion that she might be the woman who had left him in the locker. Then suddenly he was almost certain; this body of his—standing here anointed with the ripe scent of strippers, the ooze of cacao fizz, the aura of beggars, puke, and noise—probably
had
come from the belly of that broken-down old charwoman.

All night they could hardly sleep for the giggling and groaning in the rooms on either side, and as they lay in the dark, wide
awake, Kiku insisted they find another hotel first thing in the morning.

“This place is full of creeps,” he muttered.

“Yes, let’s move,” said Kazuyo, tossing and turning and finally drifting off with both arms wrapped around her head.

In the morning they went to the police station, but since there was no news of Hashi, all they could do was reconfirm the missing persons report. It was hours till the appointment with the waiter from the bar, so Kazuyo suggested they see a movie and then go out for dinner.

“Let’s find the best restaurant in town, better than any place we’ve ever been before,” she said as they strolled beneath a row of dusty trees. “We can’t do anything about Hashi right this minute, and this is the first time we’ve ever been in Tokyo together—and, who knows, maybe the last.”

They went to see a movie at a big, elegant theater, about a Russian ballerina defecting to America who was forced to choose between love and dancing in her homeland. She had to make her decision while she was performing
Swan Lake
. To Kiku, she was an idiot: people who don’t know what they want, he firmly believed, never get it. During the last scene, as the heroine was dying in her lover’s arms, Kazuyo was crying out loud. Afterward, they went to an amusement park and rode the whirling teacup and the roller coaster.

“I used to say I wanted to ride one of these just once before I die,” said Kazuyo, ecstatic.

At dusk they walked through a park near the Imperial Palace eating ice cream, fed popcorn to the pigeons, and lay on the
close-cropped
grass. The smell reminded them of the hills back home. As she stared off into the distance, Kazuyo began to talk about her childhood in Korea.

“Every day, when I got home from school, I’d throw my book bag in the house and head for the fields. About this time of year, the wild strawberries were ripe, and since we didn’t have any candy or things like that, we loved those strawberries. But I was the oldest, so by the time I got home, my little brothers and sisters would always have eaten all the ripe red ones. How many times did I eat myself sick on the green ones?… Someday, when you boys are older, I’d love to take you to Korea.” It was the first time she had ever spoken of her childhood to Kiku.

“Fine by me,” he said softly, “but I never want to go back to see that orphanage where Hashi and I grew up.”

“That’s because you’re still young,” she said, staring off into space. “When you grow up, I promise you, you’ll want to see the old places.” Kiku realized then that he knew nothing about his foster mother. He was just about to tell her that he’d take her to Korea himself when she jumped up, brushing the grass from her dress, and pointed in the direction of the palace: some children, using a hook and a piece of string, had caught an enormous, brilliantly speckled carp. As the children must have known, fishing in the palace moat was strictly forbidden, but they probably hadn’t counted on catching anything; so now as they stood with their huge, struggling prize, they were frantically looking around for someone to help them out. The scene was so innocent and charming Kazuyo clapped her hands and laughed with pleasure.

In the restaurant that evening, surrounded by cool white walls and thick red carpeting, they feasted on things they’d never even dreamed of. A blind pianist in the center of the room was taking requests, and Kazuyo asked for “Morning in the Meadow” as the waiters appeared with exotic dishes: sautéed scallops served in the shell, a chilled soup in hollowed-out halves of cantaloupe, steamed pheasant with currants. Again and again she asked Kiku
if he was enjoying the meal, and laughed contentedly when he said he preferred her rice omelettes.

“You boys certainly are fond of those omelettes,” she said. When the pianist began playing “Morning in the Meadow,” the fork dropped from her hand and fell to the carpet. She bent over to retrieve it, but before she had straightened up again, a waiter had appeared with a clean one and a towel for her hands. Suddenly, as she was settling back into her seat, her shoulders began to heave and she covered her face with the cloth.