Women On the Other Shore (20 page)

"You mean the Blue Moon? Yeah, let's go there. I just wish these love hotels would let us stay more than one night at a time."

Finding their locker, they retrieved the bag that contained their combined possessions and started toward the west side of the station.

Several girls about their own age walked by in the other direction, sizing them up with their eyes as they slipped past. Paying them no 152

attention, Nanako began singing the chorus to the song she and Aoi had heard spilling from the open coffee shop door near the disco.

Like a virgin, oooh, oooh...

At the hotel, Aoi flopped across the double bed on her stomach and opened her notebook. Subtracting today's expenses from yesterday's balance put them under the ¥200,000 threshold for the first time.

"Crap. We're seriously running out of money."

"How much do we have left?" Nanako asked from the sofa, where she was watching a singing show on TV.

"¥192,175."

"Sounds like a lot to me." She turned back to the TV and started humming along with Seiko Matsuda.

"Actually, it's really not that much, if you think about it," Aoi said, sitting up. "We're averaging about ¥10,000 a day, which means we've only got nineteen more days like this. If something comes up that costs more, we won't even have that long. In way less than a month, we'll be flat broke."

Nanako stopped humming and turned to look at Aoi on the bed.

Their eyes met, and neither of them moved as Nanako seemed to be considering something for a moment.

"I'll go make some money tomorrow," Nanako said evenly.

Several seconds passed as Aoi wondered what her friend might have in mind. "What do you mean? How?" she finally asked.

"The easiest way there is. I never told you, but I know where to go. That day we split up and I was looking for shops that were hiring, I found this place where girls go to be picked up by guys. A guy tried to pick me up, too. It's no big deal, far as I'm concerned, so if we need the money—"

"But aren't you a virgin?" Aoi interrupted.
What a stupid thing to
say,
she thought the moment the words left her lips, feeling very silly.

153

"Look, it's like I said before about all that garbage at school. I couldn't care less about stuff that doesn't matter. There's only one or two things that really matter to me, and nothing else is worth wasting my worries on. Can't scare me. Can't hurt me."

She held Aoi's gaze as she said it, her voice utterly calm.

That's bull and you know it,
Aoi wanted to say, but she stared back at Nanako, unable to open her mouth. She's actually serious, she realized. She'd really do it. She'd stand on a corner without the slightest fear or misgiving and go off with any old guy who propo-sitioned her. And no doubt she'd come back completely unscathed, too. Because anything that might hurt her would be sucked into that deep, dark void.

Why had Nanako wanted so desperately not to go home that day in Imaihama, Aoi asked herself as she continued to hold her friend's gaze. She had imagined it was because Nanako couldn't bear the thought of being picked on again. And because she hated that empty shell of an apartment she lived in. And because she felt like she would suffocate for the lack of any future, any real choices. But Aoi couldn't help thinking now that her friend truly didn't care about any of those things. In that case, why in the world had she broken down and sobbed that she didn't want to go home? What had made going home such a distressing prospect to her?

A chill gripped Aoi's spine. She suddenly felt like she was standing on a clifftop with a sheer drop below. Her sense of reality—her awareness of where she actually was, in a hotel room—was rapidly deserting her.

"No, Nanako," she said. The sound of her voice seemed to come from somewhere far away. Nanako's eyes remained on her, unblinking. "I've got a better idea," she continued, speaking very deliberately.

"We can shake down my old classmates for money. If they don't have enough on them, we can make them get more. I know where they live." Her voice still sounded very far away, and her sense of reality 154

remained attenuated. Despite that, or perhaps because of it, the fear that had gripped her moments before began to ebb. "We just have to get a knife. If we catch them alone and wave a knife in their face, they'll be so scared, they'll be practically throwing their money at us. Especially when they see your blond hair. They'll be jumping out of their skins." She felt calmer now. Nanako was staring at her, her face still a blank. In the middle of that blankness a mouth gaped open. No doubt this was also how her own face looked, Aoi thought as she held her gaze. She kept her eyes fixed on Nanako as if looking into a mirror. Somewhere very far away the sugary tones of a song by the Checkers poured from the TV.

They were on the roof of the four-story Domile Isogo looking out over the city. It was the building where Aoi used to live. The sun had begun to dip beyond the urban skyline, easting an orange glow on everything in sight. Here and there the tall gray silhouettes of high-rises thrust up from the cityscape like blades piercing the sky. Among them also rose the slender, soot-covered smokestack of a public bathhouse, spewing white smoke into the same orange sky.

Only days before, the breeze had still felt warm against their skin, but now it brought a chill. A long-sleeve shirt was barely enough to stave off the cold.

"What do you suppose 'domile' means?" Nanako wondered out loud.

"I have no idea," Aoi replied, thinking,
What kind of question is
that at a time like this?
"Though I could tell you what 'amigo'

means," she added before realizing her answer was just as stupid as the question.

"What're you talking about? 'Amigo' isn't anything like 'domile,'"

Nanako said, and broke into a cackling laugh.

A few hours ago, they had carried out their first shakedown. Their victim really could have been anyone, but as it happened, Aoi had spotted Kumiko Takahashi working at the McDonald's on the west side of the station several
days
before.

She and Kumiko had gone to grade school together. In fifth and sixth grade they'd been in the same class, and Kumiko told Aoi she stank. She knocked Aoi's lunch on the floor. She hit her on the head with a blackboard eraser. She yanked Aoi's skirt up and laughed like crazy right along with the guys. They were in the same class again in eighth grade. The older Kumiko had given up such antics, but she went out of her way to avoid speaking with Aoi. She avoided even meeting her eyes, apparently not wanting to acknowledge Aoi's existence in any way. But this wasn't to say that Kumiko was especially mean to her. Everybody in Aoi's class treated her more or less the same way, so she bore no special grudge against Kumiko in particular. She would have been just as inclined to lie in wait for Chitose Hara or Hidemi Matsukawa if she had seen one of them working at McDonald's.

After buying a folding knife at Mitsukoshi Department Store, they waited at the back door of McDonald's for Kumiko to get off.

She emerged still in uniform once to put out some trash. Aoi and Nanako watched from around the corner of the building.

A few minutes after four, she came out again with a coworker.

Nanako and Aoi tailed them at a distance, taking care not to be noticed and waiting for them to split up. When they reached the bus plaza on the west side of the station, her companion waved good-bye and went her own way. Kumiko proceeded down the steps to the underground mall. Aoi shot Nanako a look and they made their move. Catching up with Kumiko at the bottom of the steps, they grabbed her by the arms from both sides and pulled her into the service area behind the staircase. "Hand over your money," Nanako demanded, Kumiko promptly opened her purse and took out her wallet, relieving Aoi of the need to brandish the knife she'd slipped into the pocket of her jeans. With trembling fingers, she pulled out 156

several bills and thrust them into Nanako's hand as Aoi looked on.

Seven thousand yen. "More," said Nanako. "I'm sorry, that's all I have," squeaked Aoi's former classmate in a barely audible voice, her face tense with fright and her eyes averted. She had put on some weight since junior high. Her ears were pierced. She had pimples on her cheeks and chin. Nanako stuffed the money in her pocket and released her hold on Kumiko's arm. Kumiko staggered back to the mall concourse and fled.

For a split second as she turned to go, Kumiko looked Aoi square in the face, but she gave no sign of recognition that she was looking at someone she knew. Aoi gazed blankly after her as she disappeared into the passing crowd. None of it had seemed real to her.

And thanks to that, she had experienced no fear, no jitters. She just kept hearing a ringing in her ears that she wished would go away.

Scoring ¥7,000 brought Aoi no joy; instead, a strange, dull pain arose in the pit of her stomach. She felt like she'd forced down something bitter and hard to digest. She noticed no bounce in Nanako's step, either, as they drifted aimlessly along the underground mall.

"You know what, Aokins?" Nanako said in a woolly voice as they neared the entrance to the station. "I'd like to see where you used to live." And so they had come to Domile Isogo.

"Kumiko didn't even recognize me," Aoi said, grasping the fence that encircled the roof of the building with both hands. The concrete roof felt cold beneath the seat of her pants.

"The brown hair and makeup might have something to do with it," Nanako pointed out.

Clouds in many different shades of pink moved slowly across the sky. A red-on-white neon sign declaring
If it's sake, it's Ozeki
flickered to life in the distance.

Someone new was living in the third-floor apartment where Aoi had once lived. As when they'd first arrived in downtown Yokohama, she felt no particular emotion when they got off the train at Isogo 157

Station, nor when they came out onto the bustling street of shops she used to walk up and down every day, nor when they reached the apartment building that had been her home from the time she was in kindergarten. She felt neither nostalgia nor loathing. It was like approaching a building she'd never seen before in a town she'd never visited.

"Want a caramel?" Nanako asked, fishing a small box of the candies from the pocket of her jeans. The folded bills she'd stuffed in the same pocket fell out and a gentle gust of wind started to carry them away. Aoi jumped to her feet to chase after them. As she picked up the money, a deep pang of guilt sliced through her, unlike any she had ever felt before. Keeping her face averted, she wedged the wad of bills into her own pocket and sat back down on the concrete where she'd been before.

"I've been meaning to ask you something," she said.

"Yeah? What?"

"How come you write your name 'fish child'?" she asked, watching the orange sky slowly yielding to indigo. "I've never heard of the kanji for 'fish' being read
nana."
She tossed a caramel into her mouth.

"It's from a kind of weaving. You know how our town is pretty big in textiles, right? Apparently there's this really pricey fabric they call

'nanako
weave,' and they write it that way. My grandma chose the name for me."

"You have a grandma?"

"Not anymore. She died when I was in grade school." Nanako carefully peeled the wrapper from a caramel and placed it on her tongue. "Believe it or not, there were five of us in that same tiny apartment. Then Grandma got cancer and had to go into the hospital, but the weird part was, nobody seemed the tiniest bit sad. They happily went about divvying up the space. Like my little sister would have the right-hand room, me and Mom would share the left and Dad would get the space in the kitchen. It was so stupid. And they 158

started throwing out Grandma's things right and left—her chest of drawers, the plum wine and pickles she loved to make, lots of other stuff."

The hallway lights flickered on in an apartment building diagonally to one side. The blast of a car horn echoed through the dusk.

The caramel in Aoi's mouth was rapidly shrinking as she chewed.

"But I'm in no position to criticize," Nanako went on. "Grandma was wasting away really fast, and I couldn't bear to see it, you know, so I never went to visit her in the hospital. Then one day they told me she'd died, and it was like this great big sense of relief. I thought, shit, what kind of coldhearted jerk am I? I'm so cold and mean, I must have no heart at all."

Chewing on her caramel as she spoke, Nanako paused and looked hard at Aoi sitting next to her.

"Tell me honestly, Aokins," she said. "Do you want to go home?

Are you tired? Are you maybe wishing you could just go on home?"

Aoi returned her gaze. She noticed for the first time how dark it had become. Nanako's face floated dimly in the gloom.

"No, I'm not wishing I could go home," she said.

When they left Izu, she'd been convinced that a glorious future lay ahead of them, somewhere far away. She was sure that all the pieces were going to fall perfectly into place, and that she and Nanako would reach that future together. In fact, she still believed this. If they could just find jobs, the wheels of fortune would begin turning their way. But ever since arriving in Yokohama, she'd begun to wonder if maybe there was no such thing to be found, no matter where they went. Just as the good life her mother remembered living in Yokohama never really existed, maybe the place where she and Nanako could be together, and the wonderful future where everything would go the way they wanted, didn't exist anywhere either.

"I'm not wishing I could go home," she repeated, "but I'm definitely feeling tired." The moment she'd put it into words, her weariness seemed to grow. She ticked off in her mind all the things they had to do: Get something to eat with the money they stole. Find another love hotel where they could spend the night. Lie on the bed and enter today's expenses in her account book. Think about how they were going to make some money. Keep on chasing that elusive rainbow. Her head spun to think about it all. She felt so utterly drained, she could scarcely imagine even getting to her feet right now.