Chapter 17 — On a date

"WHAT ARE you going to do?”
    Sam smiled and lined up the cue ball.  “Sink the eight ball and win the game.”
    “That’s not what I’m talking about.  What are you going to do about the cop?”
    The question had disturbed him all week and continued to do so.  He undercut the cue ball and it jumped off the table.  Guacamole dripped off the chins of startled office girls as it clattered across the cement and ran under their feet.
    Sam set down his cue and Helen retrieved the ball.  “You want to play again?”
    “Maybe later.”  He climbed an iron staircase leading to a narrow balcony overlooking the main dining area.  A waitress with short hair and a short skirt brought tall Corona beers and menus printed in Japanese and English.
    “You didn’t answer my question.”
    He hadn’t answered because he knew there was very little he could do.  The cops, a couple of patrolmen who worked for Nakazono, had glanced at the shattered window, jotted down a few notes and disappeared.  With no proof, Sam hadn’t accused their boss of complicity in the crime.
    He’d called his lawyer the next day and asked for advice.  Matsushita-san had been sympathetic but not very helpful, telling him unnecessarily that it was dangerous to antagonize the police and to call her again if something more serious happened.  Insurance would cover the damage, she’d said.  Sam had thought a death threat serious enough but had thanked her and hung up.
    “What I’d like to do and what I’m going to do are two very different things,” he said.  “I’d like to push him out of a very high window but I won’t.  Instead, I’m going to order a cheese burrito, a chicken taco and another beer.”
    “What if he tries something else?”
    “Then I suppose I’ll reevaluate the high window option.  Come on, Helen, realistically, there’s nothing I can do.  He’s screwed the whole neighborhood for years, and just like everybody else I’m going to ignore him and hope he finds somebody else to pick on.”
    Helen set down her beer and leaned across the table.  “That’s a fairly shitty attitude.”
    “What would you do?”
    “I don’t know, maybe I’d push him in front of a train.”
    Sam laughed.  “Get serious.”
    “You don’t think I could?”
    “I don’t think you would.”
    She smiled back.  “Maybe you’re right, but I think it would be a lot of fun.”
    Sam shook his head.  “Unless something else happens we’re all going to be law-abiding citizens.  Remember the other night when May was so upset?”
    “The night of the matsuri?”
    “Exactly.  She may only be a kid but she was right.  I don’t have any choice.  I either do it the Japanese way or not at all.  The country isn’t about to adapt to me, I’m the one that has to change.”
    “So Nakazono gets away with it?”
    “It’s only a window, not life itself.  The insurance paid for it.  May is more important.  What happens to her if the situation gets worse?  My main responsibility is to her.  If I do something stupid and get thrown in jail, who’s going to look after her?  You?”
    “Of course.”
    “I know you’d want to but the law wouldn’t allow it.  Her crazy aunt in Kochi would be here in a heartbeat and you’d be out in the street.  Did I tell you that the property speculator Nakazono’s working with stopped by?”
    Helen shook her head.  “No.  What did he say?”
    “Nothing surprising.  He was quite polite and made me a pretty good offer.  He didn’t mention the window of course.”
    “Did you?”
    “I might have if I wasn’t worried about May.  He wasn’t a cop, after all, and I was still pissed off at the bosozoku.  It would have been easy to lose my temper and kick his ass.  It would have been just as easy to end up facing an assault charge.”
    “So what happened?”
    “Nothing.  I gave him a cup of coffee and turned down his proposal.  I was just as polite as he was and May said she was proud of me when I told her about it later.  It’s a funny thing when your little sister says something like that to you.  It’s even funnier when it means so much.  I ended up as proud of myself as she was.”
    “Don’t expect too much,” Helen warned as the food arrived.  “I brought you here for the pool table, not the food.”
    “It doesn’t look so bad.”
    “Appearances can be deceiving.  The best Mexican restaurant is in Hiroo but it doesn’t have a pool table and you can’t smoke.”
    It was Sunday and Sam had asked Manny to baby-sit.  May had objected, but after the bosozoku attack he was afraid to leave her alone.  She’d only agreed after Manny had promised to take her to his house and cook Filipino food for her and Nobuyo.
    The restaurant was filling up quickly.  Every table on the main floor was taken as were most on the balcony.  Carefully groomed women in tight colorful skirts and matching jackets drank Mexican beer and raised their voices over loud jukebox rock ‘n’ roll.  They talked of travels past or planned, and arched delicate eyebrows at posters of Acapulco and Mazatlan.
    “You know I’m the only man in this room.”
    Helen looked over the railing.  “No, there’s a guy behind the bar.”
    “OK, I’m the only male customer in here.”
    “Does it bother you?”
    Sam laughed.  “No, I kind of like it, but it’s a little disconcerting.”
    “It’s completely normal.  The young guys are too poor to do anything but sit in their dinky little apartments and eat instant ramen.  All these women still live with their parents.  They’ve got nothing to spend their money on except clothes and having a good time.”
    After dinner, Sam stuck with beer while Helen switched to Margaritas.  They kept moving their chairs closer, first Sam and then Helen, so they could hear over the music and the lilting voices of the diners on the ground floor.  They weren’t satisfied until their chairs touched and their knees brushed under the table.
    Sam listened as Helen spoke at length, telling bizarre anecdotes from her days at the Tokyo Sun and talking about a job interview she’d lined up with an ad agency the next day.  He was interested in the substance but even happier with the volume.  She was talking more these days.  No longer was she content to sit back and watch him with those big gray eyes of hers, forcing him to either carry the conversation or sit in silence.
    Maybe it was the beer or maybe it was the heat in the room.  A question slipped out.  He’d held it clenched between his teeth for weeks.  It fell on the table loud and impatient.
    “I don’t understand what we’re doing.  Are we dating or what?”
    Helen stiffened.  She’d known it would come to this.  Not that she didn’t give him credit—they’d been out half a dozen times and he’d kept his desires to himself.  She turned to the waitress and ordered another drink.
    Sam asked for a beer as Helen lit a cigarette and looked across the room.  A song on the jukebox ended and another began.  She cocked her head to listen—the ash on her cigarette lengthened and the song ended.
    Once begun, the process couldn’t be stopped.  He pushed her harder, powerless to control himself—she’s attracted to me or she’s not, we have a future or we don’t.  The possibility of a middle ground was beyond his ability to conceive.
    “It’s a simple question.”
    Helen set her cigarette in the ash tray.  “I thought we were friends?” she asked, not wanting to speak, knowing whatever she said it would be wrong.  The way he was leaning toward her, his forearms rigid and his back straight—she didn’t like it at all.  She slid her chair away from the table and it banged into the wrought iron railing edging the balcony.
    There it was, that hated word.  She’d been stringing him along the whole time.  He flipped through the pages of their history, looking for evidence to confirm his hypothesis.  Her eyes—remember that glance?  Her clothing—designed to entice.  Even her silence.  What better way to lead him on?
    “Friends?”
    She hated being pressed so close to the rail.  “You make it sound like a dirty word.”
    Her voice was temperate, her eyes restrained.  He fought a jittery pressure, familiar and seductive.  It promised the paralyzing distraction of anger and self-pity.  The door was only a few feet away.  Succumb, jump up and turn your back—the hurt will heat you all the way home.
    Not this time, not yet.  He tried to match her composure.  Feeling like an actor, he spoke hesitant lines not yet learned by heart.  “Not at all.  There’s nothing wrong with friendship.”
    “Have I done anything to give you the wrong impression?”  Sometimes I’ve wanted to but I know I haven’t.”
    “No, not really.”
    Helen smiled.  He didn’t sound too bad.  It might work out after all.  “Then we can still be friends?”
    “Sure, why not?  I just don’t think we should see each other so much, that’s all.”
    “How much is not so much?”
    “Not at all.”
    “What?”  She couldn’t hide the distress in her voice.  “What about May?”
    “That’s not what I mean.  It’s these dates or whatever you call them.  I don’t think they’re a good idea.”
    She snubbed out her cigarette.  So that’s it.  A unilateral decision.  “Don’t I have anything to say about this?  I enjoy your company.  You know I don’t have very many friends.”
    “What about Hiroshi?”
    “What about him?”  She’d only seen him once in the last month.  “I can’t talk to him like I do you.”
    Sam knew he was hurting Helen and himself, too.  He struggled to find an endpoint to the conversation—and hurt her more.  “Well, that’s just great.  You sleep with him and talk to me.”
    “You make it sound so sleazy and calculated.  Can’t you see I enjoy being with you?”
    “Not enough, apparently.”
    “What do you want from me?”
    “Let’s not make a big deal out of this.  We see each other all the time at the club.”
    “I don’t see why we can’t have dinner together sometimes.  Friends do that, you know.”
    Sam shrugged.  He really didn’t understand her.  She sounded almost desperate, as if she cared about him.  It couldn’t be true, she’d as much as said so.  Her expectations were out of reach, too deep to fathom.
    “I think you’re missing my point.  It’s unfair to expect me to keep going on these non-dates.  While I’m entertaining you or whatever it is I’m doing, I’m also growing more attached to you.  I can’t help it and I can’t stop it.  One of these evenings I’m going to have to watch you ride away on a train heading for your boyfriend’s apartment.”
    Helen closed her eyes.  What does he want?  She tried to slip across the table and into his body.  It was alien terrain and impenetrable.  She retreated, left without a clue.
    “You’re not going to pretend that you didn’t know I was attracted to you, are you?”
    She shook her head.  “No, I knew it.  I just wasn’t sure what to do about it.  To be honest, I wasn’t sure I wanted to do anything about it.  I like you, I like the fact that you like me.”
    “That sounds selfish.”
    “No more selfish than you refusing to be my friend.”
    It would have been kinder just to kick over the table or knock the drink from her hand.  It would have hurt less if he’d just slapped her face.  Sam snapped, “I’ve got enough friends.  I don’t need anymore.”
    They boarded the Ginza Line at Omotesando.  The train was crowded; passengers on the left and right pushed them together.  Their knees touched, their thighs brushed, as the train clattered through tunnels leading to the older, eastern part of the city.
    The passengers on the opposite seat were just a few feet away, the strap hangers even closer.  The car shivered and leaned into a curve.  Its metal wheels screamed and sparked.  Again and again, the car lost its grip.  Overhead lights failed and battery lamps powered up.  Tired faces, bored faces, flickered white and disappeared.
    Helen and Sam concentrated on the grimy tunnel walls flashing past.  Recidivists, veteran victims, they examined their wounds and calculated how many days it would take to feel good again.  Sam thought six, Helen a few more.  The totals balanced when Helen got off at Kanda Station, saying she was going to spend the night with a friend.

    Sam turned off the TV and got another beer from the kitchen.  He told himself to read or take a walk, ignored his own advice and stared out the window at the shrine across the street.  A taxi slowed as it turned the corner.  A woman paid the driver and ran into the building.  Her hair was as black as the sky and Sam cursed himself.  She wasn’t coming home tonight.  A second car turned the corner and he forced himself to look away.
    May had left a message on the machine, asking to spend the night with Nobuyo and Manny.  It was a school night and he’d called her back, intending to refuse.  She’d pleaded, claiming she was already in her pajamas and very sleepy.  Tired and outmaneuvered as usual, he’d agreed.  Now he wished he hadn’t.  May was the perfect diversion when he was worried or depressed.
    He stepped out on the balcony.  Couples moved down the street arm-in-arm.  They weaved in and out of the darkness, hurrying past lighted restaurant windows, slowing in front of shops closed and shuttered.  The men tugged on elbows and wrists and let free hands brush over bellies and breasts.  The women resisted—refastening buttons undone, keeping slim fingers away from zippers unzipped.  Dragged into the light of love hotels, their breath quickened and their faces glowed pink.  They laughed and reached in their purses, exchanging reluctance for discount coupons hidden away.
    It was a hot night and the windows had been thrown open at the White Rose, the Moonglow and Tiger.  Sam drank his beer slowly, thinking of Helen, watching as silhouettes merged behind gauzy curtains facing east and west.  Across the alley, behind the wooden roof of the bicycle shop, a shade flapped up in a fifth-floor window.
    A thick-waisted man with tight curls and a tattooed back sat on the edge of a bed watching TV and drinking beer.  An agitated woman wearing lace panties and nothing else crossed back and forth in front of the window.  She shook her head and knocked the beer from his hand.  He reached back and pulled down the shade.
    Sam flopped on the couch, picked up a book and read the same paragraph four times.  He left the apartment and started to walk to Sensoji temple.  Air conditioners clattered above his head, sucking hot air into the second-floor bars, shoving out cigarette smoke and enka music.  He thought he heard Chieko’s voice and decided he could use another beer.
    She smiled and led him to a table in the rear.  He stumbled over someone’s foot in the darkness, coughed his way through clouds of cigarette smoke and fell onto a velvet couch.  Chieko brought him a beer and offered to detach one of her girls from a party of middle-aged men to serve as a companion.  Sam refused, the look of hurt on Helen’s face was all the company he wanted.
    The bar was smaller than his living room and filled to capacity.  Overworked salarymen dozed, cigarettes still burning between their fingers.  Others, just a few feet away, clapped their hands and shouted.  One man stood in the corner swinging an imaginary pitching wedge while three others murmured, heads bent low over whiskey-stained spreadsheets.
    One after another, men in suits mounted a carpeted dais and belted out karaoke favorites.  All took the singing quite seriously, aping mannerisms of well-known crooners.  While well-practiced, they were neither talented enough to be entertaining nor bad enough to be amusing.
    At the bar an older gaijin sat beleaguered by his hosts, four men of a like age wearing company pins in their lapels.  One urged him to spear sea slug tidbits with toothpicks, another flashed snapshots of his daughter’s trip to the States.  All pooh-poohed his embarrassment and insisted he sing.
    The foreigner ran his hand through his hair and begged to refuse, repeatedly saying he couldn’t speak, much less sing, the language.  His hosts clapped him on the back and grinned in victory—it was just the excuse they’d been waiting to hear.  They called for song books and rifled through dozens of pages.  All bars provided two songs for shy visitors.  They pointed at his choices and urged him out of his seat.
    Knowing he was beaten, contemplating contracts, he finished his whiskey and took his turn on the dais.  He rejected Sinatra’s My Way and croaked his way through Country Roads.  Everybody cheered and his hosts decided he was a man they could do business with.  Even the golfer in the corner joined the applause.
    Sam watched Chieko work the room.  She glided between tables and bar, refilling glasses and patting customers on the knee.  They patted, too, aiming for her bum and breasts, usually missing as she slipped away with gentle chastisement.  None argued or tried very hard, most laughed and promised to behave.  They winked at their buddies as she walked away.  Touching up mama-sans was as de rigueur as karaoke and everybody wanted to be one of the boys.
    Chieko’s skirt and jacket were gray-blue, the color of smoke billowing from ash trays on every table.  Sam tracked her back and forth across the room, watching as she bent, stretched and whispered.
    More diverting than playing Tetris with May, better than a walk in the park, sex was voracious and all-consuming.  He meditated on her breasts and pondered her thighs.  Soon bosozoku were veiled in lace and Nakazono restrained by straps and clasps.  Helen went down last, pinned by the heavy weight of speculation: were Chieko’s panties black or blue?
    “Sam-san?”
    He groaned and opened his eyes.  Chieko was leaning over him, her hand on his shoulder.  “You’d be more comfortable in your own bed.”
    “How long have I been asleep?”
    “Quite awhile.  It’s nearly three.”
    She handed him a glass of water, aspirin and a hot towel.  “You’re stupid to drink so much.”
    He couldn’t disagree.  The bar was still jammed and if anything, even nosier than before.  The golfer and the gaijin were gone, replaced by a party of drunk office girls.  A trio crowded onto the dais, waved their hands and began screeching into the microphone.  He swallowed the aspirin and lowered his head into his hands.
    “Come on,” Chieko said, ”you look terrible.  Let’s go.”
    He wiped his face with the towel and felt marginally better.  She pulled him to his feet and marched him out the door.  The night was cooling and quiet as he tried to maneuver her into the shadows of the stairwell.
    “Forget it,” she said, taking his hand and pulling him down the stairs.  “Not this time.  You’re too drunk and I’m too busy.  I’ll walk you back to your apartment.”
    Not quite ready to give up, he fumbled with a button on her skirt and reminded himself that Helen was sleeping with Hiroshi.  She pushed his hand away as they entered the lobby.  The elevator arrived and Chieko leaned against the back wall.  She was smiling and he wondered what she was thinking.  He was drunk, tired and not very imaginative.  Her thoughts remained her own but of one thing he was certain, she wasn’t using Helen as an excuse to justify her behavior.
    He closed his eyes against the sharp light, opened them again hearing a clatter of high heels and a shout.  Helen jumped inside just as the doors began to close.  Her words of thanks faltered and her smile faded.
    The elevator began to move and she felt her face redden.  She wished she could say something but the elevator was too small.  Sam’s elbow brushed her side, Chieko’s breath was hot on her neck.  She heard a foot scrape across the floor and listened to cable motors winching.  She stared at the doors, wanting only to escape to the safety of her apartment.
    Sam held out as long as he could but the silence was so loud it hurt his ears.  Chieko had turned sideways and was watching him with half a smile.  She wasn’t going to be any help and Helen was standing with her nose nearly pressed into the door.
    “So you decided not to spend the night?” he asked, his voice less casual than he’d hoped.
    She felt so stiff, as if she might crack.  “Hiroshi has to get up early.”
    It was a lie.  Hiroshi didn’t live in Kanda, she didn’t know anybody that did.  She’d spent a couple of hours in a coffee shop and had walked the streets alone.  The lights of Kanda had grown dark around her.  When her feet had begun to hurt she’d sat on a curb and watched waitresses and cooks pass by on their way home.
    Twice men had tried to pick her up.  She’d snapped at the first so loud he’d panicked and dropped his briefcase in the gutter.  Busy trying to rescue muddied papers from beneath the wheels of passing cars, he’d forgotten his desire for Helen.  The second had backed away frightened and thrilled by the anger in her eyes.
    Why had she lied?  Why had she got off the train at all?  She’d promised to never let a man hurt her again and to never hit back if they tried.  She’d hoped to see with eyes clear and new but her emotions were traitors patient and cunning.  They tainted the present and frightened the future.  She saw Sam as a friend, they only saw the woman by his side.
    “Looks like you’ve been busy.”  The accusation sounded pathetic and she wanted to bang her head into the wall.
    “Chieko’s just walking me to my apartment.  She owns one of the bars on the second floor.”
    Helen turned.  “I’ve known Chieko longer than you, Sam, and you don’t owe me any explanations.”
    He wished he did.  Anger could fade, indifference was immutable.  The doors opened and Helen walked away.