Grotesque (64 page)

The neon lights over the love hotel were flickering. At that instant Yuriko’s profile floated in the dark like some kind of heavenly visage. I was reminded again of the ethereal beauty she possessed in high school.

It was as if I’d slipped back in time.

“Yuriko, do you really hate men? I always thought you liked men so much you could never get enough of them.”

Yuriko turned back to look at me. When I saw her face straight on, she looked like a dumpy middleaged woman again.

“I hate men, but I love sex. It’s the opposite for you, isn’t it, Kazue?”

I wonder. Do I love men and hate sex? Do I walk the streets just so I can get close to men? That’s the wrong way of going about it. Yuriko’s question shocked me.

“If you and I became one, we’d be perfect. We’d be able to live the ultimate life. But on the other hand, if it’s the perfect life you want, best not to be born a woman.”

“So, Kazue? When are you going to let me work your corner?”

“Come after I’ve gone home. I always take the last train to Fujimigaoka at twelve-twenty-eight. If you want to come by after I’ve left, that’s fine with me. You can stand the rest of the night if you want.”

“You are too kind. Thank you so very much,” Yuriko said sarcastically.

She walked off toward Shinsen Station, the hem of her coat flapping in the breeze. I looked up at the Jizo statue in irritation. I felt Yuriko had soiled me and the ground I stood on with her presence.

“Saint Jizo, am I a monster? How was it that I became this monster?

Please teach me, I pray.”

Of course, the Jizo does not speak. I looked up into the night sky. The neon signs along Dogenzaka had dyed the sky pink. I could hear the sound of the wind rushing high above my head. It was growing colder by the minute. Seeing the tips of the treetops shivering brought an end 4 0 4

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to the bright mood I had enjoyed earlier. A bitter winter chill had crept into the night air. The minute a man turns up who likes monsters, you can be sure he’ll be the one who’ll do us in, you and me. Yuriko’s prophecy echoed over and over in my head, but I wasn’t frightened. I wasn’t afraid of men; I was afraid of the monster I had become. I wondered if I could ever go back to my old self.

I heard a voice behind me. “Is that statue a god?” Embarrassed to be caught unaware, I quickly adjusted my wig and turned to look around. A man wearing jeans and a black leather jacket stood there. He wasn’t particularly tall, but he was muscular. He looked to be in his mid-thirties.

I felt a rush of excitement. Recently most of my customers had been either old men or homeless bums.

“You’ve been here to pray before, haven’t you? So I’m assuming this is a god.”

He was a foreigner. I stepped out of the shadows and peered at the man’s face. His hair was thinning but he was not unattractive. He looked like he’d make a good customer.

“A god, yes. It’s my god.”

“Really? Well, it certainly does have a nice face. I walk past here fairly often and always wonder what land of statue this is.”

The man had a very polite and calm way of speaking. Very calm. But I had a difficult time understanding what he meant.

“Do you live nearby?”

“Yes, in an apartment building beside Shinsen Station.”

We could use his room and save on hotel fees. I began making the calculations in my head. He didn’t seem to realize I was a prostitute. Curious, he continued to question me.

“What were you praying for?”

“I was asking the god to tell me whether or not I look like a monster.”

“Monster?” The man seemed startled by my response and peered into my face. “I think you look like a pretty woman.”

“Thank you. In that case, do you want to buy me?”

Startled, the man backpedaled several steps.

“I can’t. I don’t have much money.”

The man pulled one neatly folded tenthousand-yen bill from his pocket. I stared at his honest-looking face, wondering what type he’d be.

In my experience, there are two types of customers. The majority are boastful, hide their true feelings, and tell all kinds of lies. They act like 4 0 5

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they have money and pretend to be willing to dole it out. But they’re really flat broke and you have to be careful they don’t take you for a ride.

However they play the game, they are liars and expect you to he about being in love with them. The other type is much less common, and that’s the honest type. They tell you from the very beginning that they don’t have much money, and then they negotiate tenaciously on the price.

This type usually just wants straight-up sex and doesn’t want anything to do with love or passion or any of that. I’m not very good at handling the honest type. I’m just a prostitute who’s good for an old-fashioned lay.

“Is that all you have?” I asked the man.

“I have ten thousand yen, but I can’t spend it all. I have to have money to get to Shinjuku tomorrow.”

“Well, let’s see. To get to Shinjuku from Shibuya and back will take three hundred yen round trip.”

The man shook his head. “I’ve got to have money for lunch and for smokes. And if I meet up with a friend I’ll want to buy him at least one bottle of beer. I mean, that’s the right thing to do.”

“Well, you should be able to do all that on a thousand yen.”

“No way. I’d need at least two thousand.”

“Okay, then let’s say eight thousand. I’ll do you for eight thousand yen.”

I quickly linked my arm through the man’s before he could change his mind. The man looked at me in shock and shook his arm free.

“You’d sell your body for just eight thousand yen? I can’t believe it.”

I can’t believe it. The man repeated this over and again. Well, I was having a hard time believing it myself. After I’d done the homeless man for the same amount it was as if something inside me had begun to crumble. I was willing to take any man as a customer; I would do it anywhere and at almost any price. Once I hadn’t wanted to go below ¥30,000 but now I was willing to do it for anything. I’d fallen to just about the lowest rank of prostitute possible.

“This will be the first time for me to buy such a cheap woman. I wonder if it’s safe,” the man said.

“What are you talking about, safe?”

“I mean, you aren’t that old. And even though you’re wearing heavy makeup, you’re not that ugly. So why would you charge so little? I just think it’s odd, that’s all.”

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I detected a glint of derision in the man’s eyes. I fished my corporate ID out of my purse.

“Well, then, let me set the record straight. I’m employed as a staff member at one of the biggest firms in the nation. I graduated from Q University, so you know I have to be intelligent.”

The man walked over to a streetlamp and studied my ID card. After he pored over it, nodding as he did so, he brought it back.

“I’m impressed. The next time you try to pick up a customer you should show him your ID. I’ll bet a lot of men would be drawn to a woman who’s employed at such a distinguished firm.”

“I do show them.”

When the man heard my response he laughed, flashing his white teeth. The way he laughed took my heart away. I hardly ever saw men laugh like that, and I found myself drawn to him. I enjoy it when men make a fuss over me—especially men who are my superiors. It was like this with my father. It was the same when I first joined the firm. All my superiors there treated me to praise and I loved it. And now here I was, wrapped in nostalgia. I peered up into the man’s face and said in a littlegirl voice, “Did I say something funny? Why are you laughing?”

“God, you’re so cute. I thought you were doing this to raise your value.

But things aren’t what they seem, are they?”

I could not understand what he was trying to say. There were men out there, like Yoshizaki, who got off on the fact that I was a graduate of Q University and an employee at a top-rate firm. And that’s why I made a habit of showing my ID card to all potential customers. So what was this guy going on about?

“Why do you say things aren’t what they seem?”

“Forget it.”

He brushed my question aside and turned to leave.

“Hey, wait. Where’d you like to do it? I’ll do it wherever you want. I’ll even do it outside, if you want.”

The man waved for me to follow and I rushed after him awkwardly. I was willing to do it for ¥8,000 and do it anywhere. I didn’t want this man to get away. I’m not sure I understood why. The man turned left at a dark intersection and followed the road that dipped down before ending at Shinsen Station. I wondered if he was taking me to his room. I could feel the damp night air on my cheeks as I followed him, full of nervous 4 0 7

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excitement. The man turned down a narrow road in front of Shinsen Station, walked about three hundred feet, and stopped in front of a fourstory apartment building. The building was old and the entry hall looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned in ages. Torn newspapers and empty cans lay scattered about. But it was close to the station and the individual units themselves didn’t seem particularly small.

“You live in a nice place. Which room do you rent?” I asked.

The man pressed his finger to his lips, signaling for me not to speak.

Then he headed up the stairs. There was no elevator, and the stairs were strewn with garbage.

“What floor are we going to?”

“I’ve got friends staying in my apartment, so we can’t go there,” the man muttered, in a low voice. “So I thought we’d go to the roof. Okay?”

“I don’t mind. It’s warm tonight.”

I was going to do it outside again after all. Being in the open air had its advantages. But it also seemed so dirty, like going to the bathroom in the woods. My feeling of freedom did not really overcome the filthiness. I climbed the stairs in a state of confusion. The flight of stairs from the fourth floor to the roof was littered with all kinds of stuff, as if someone had dumped the contents of their dresser drawers there. There were sake bottles, cassette tapes, stationery, photographs, sheets, torn Tshirts, and English-language paperbacks. The man picked his way through the junk, kicking it to the side as we went. I glanced at one of the photographs that he kicked aside. It was a picture of a white man surrounded by young Japanese men and women. They were all smiling. There were other photographs of this man too.

“That’s a Canadian language teacher. He defaulted on his rent and ended up living on the roof for a couple of months. He said he didn’t need this stuff so he just left it behind. It’s all garbage.”

“Photographs and letters are garbage? A Japanese person would never throw away a letter someone had sent him or pictures of himself.”

I could hear the man laugh in the darkness.

“If you don’t need it anymore, it’s garbage.” He turned back to look at me. “I suppose Japanese people don’t like to see this kind of thing. But as a foreign laborer myself, let me tell you that I’d like to forget all about Japan. I’d leave it as a big empty gap in my life if I could. It wouldn’t bother me. The most important things are in our home country.”

“I suppose it’s nice to have a home country.”

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“It is.”

“Are you Chinese? What’s your name?”

“I’m Zhang. My father was a government official from Beijing, but he lost everything in the Cultural Revolution. I got sent down to a small commune in Heilongjiang Province. Once I got there, I’d get picked on if I even mentioned my father’s name.”

“So I guess you were a member of the intelligentsia.”

“No. I was a smart kid, but I was always prevented from advancing my education. Someone like you wouldn’t be able to understand.”

Zhang offered me his hand. I grabbed it and he helped me onto the trash-strewn roof. It was surrounded by a concrete wall about three feet high, and in one corner a refrigerator stood alongside a mattress—just as if it were a room without walls or ceiling. The mattress was soiled and torn in places so that the springs showed through. There was a rusty toaster oven and a suitcase with a smashed lid. I looked over the wall at the street below. There wasn’t a person in sight, but the cars whizzed past at an immoderate speed. I could hear a man and a woman talking in one of the second-floor apartments of the building next door. I saw a train on the Inokashira Line bound for Shibuya pull into Shinsen Station.

“No one can see, so let’s do it here,” Zhang said. “Please take off your clothes.”

“All of them?”

“Of course. I want to see what you look like naked.”

Zhang crossed his arms and sat on a corner of the filthy mattress. With little choice I stripped until I was completely naked. While I stood there shivering with cold, Zhang shook his head, “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but you’re too skinny. A skinny body like yours just doesn’t turn me on. I’m not going to pay you eight thousand yen.”

I yanked my Burberry coat over my shoulders, furious.

“How much will you pay?”

“Five thousand yen.”

“Okay then, five thousand.”

When he heard me agree, Zhang asked incredulously, “Why? I don’t believe it!”

“Well, you’re the one setting the price here.”

“I’m negotiating. You give in too easily. I guess that’s what you’ve always done. But in China you wouldn’t last a day. Lucky for you you 4 0 9

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were born in Japan. My little sister wouldn’t have let me get away with a bargain like this.”

I couldn’t figure out what Zhang was trying to say and was just about at my wits’ end. It was freezing. A cold north wind had come up, and there was no trace of the earlier warm night air. I stared down at the torn blanket covering the mattress and said nothing. Zhang began to grow impatient as well.

“So? What’s it going to be?”

“You decide. I only try to please the customer.”

“Aren’t you in this for the business? I can’t believe you’re so lacking in ambition. You are really an unattractive woman, you know. I’ll bet you aren’t any better at your other workplace either. Japanese people are all the same. If you had a little more individuality, you might be a better prostitute. You would, wouldn’t you?”