The Incarnations (49 page)

In the changing room, shoes, magazines and crumpled balls of lipstick-stained tissue litter the floor. Blouses with deodorant-stained underarms hang from the sagging curtain rail. In the midst of it all stands Elena, peering into the slanting mirror, dotting concealer under her eyes. We bounce smiles and greetings off the glass. My back to her, I start to undress, flinging my T-shirt and jeans onto the mound of clothes in the corner. I zip myself into the gold-sequinned top that Katya lent me and a black knee-length skirt.

Elena budges sideways to give me room at the mirror. ‘Nice sequins,’ she says.

‘I know. Couldn’t get away with it anywhere but here. Did you have a good day?’

‘Same as usual: up at seven to get Eiji and Tomo ready, then I had to clean up after the pair of them …’

Elena is petite, jaded and prone to world-weary sighs. She came to Japan with a TEFL qualification and a four-month English-teaching contract. Six years on, she has a Japanese husband, a five-year-old son and a vast catalogue of cross-cultural grievances. She makes me feel young, lightweight as flotsam. I watch her pull an eyelid taut and drag a sharpened kohl pencil along her lashes.

‘Did you hear about the trouble I had last night?’ she asks.

‘Yeah. I hate that creep. He should be made to wear a muzzle or something.’

Last night this salaryman laddered Elena’s tights, then stuffed a thousand-yen note down the front of her dress, telling her to buy herself a new pair. Elena told him her tights cost more than a thousand yen. So he ripped the other leg and tried to stuff another thousand yen into her dress.

‘When I complained to Mama-san she told me to get a sense of humour.’

‘That’s disgusting.’

‘I know. I am leaving at the end of the month.’

‘You should.’

I really wish she would, but she has worked here for two years already and I bet she will be here long after I’m gone.

Her hand shakes, jolting her eyeliner upwards. ‘
Shit.
Can you pass me a tissue? … First I quit this place, then I divorce Tomo.’

‘Hmmm,’ I murmur, not really in the mood to listen to her marriage problems.

We stare ahead at our reflections. I smudge on some MAC Purple Haze eye shadow. Elena traces her lip line in berry red.

‘Did you get up to anything today?’ she asks.

Today I woke at Yuji’s place around two-ish. We tried to get up but were sunk in his bed like quicksand. So that was where we stayed, in a tangle of mouths and limbs. A whole afternoon with the curtains drawn, rutting from one end of the bed to the other, the television chattering in the background. I am sure there were things that mattered before I met him, but Yuji has this way of making me forget what they are.

‘Nothing much,’ I say.

In the mirror Elena clips on a gold earring and smiles.

The other hostesses arrive while I am setting up the bar. Yukiko negotiates a shift swap with me so she can see her boyfriend’s band play at the Metro next Friday. Mandy shows off the henna tattoo she had done on her navel in Bangkok. Katya walks in late, clutching a take-away bag and pushing a french fry between her lips. Her hair is swept back into a silk headscarf, and a faux fur coat flaps at her too skinny calves. When she sees me she heads over. She smiles and grazes my temple with a greasy, menthol-cigarette-scented kiss. ‘Wow,’ she says, ‘that top is hideous. Glad I gave it away.’

‘Thanks, Katya. Appreciate your honesty.’

‘Where are you tonight?’

‘Bar duty. You?’

‘Karaoke booth. Mr Shaky-hands has booked it for his ninety-seventh birthday. Do you want to swap?’

I reject the offer with a rueful smile. Mr Shaky-hands has Parkinson’s – Katya can be quite cruel sometimes. She narrows her eyes and stalks away to the changing room, sinking her teeth into another french fry. We fight tooth and nail for bar duty here because you spend the whole evening airlifting drinks to the lounge and small talk is limited to short, near-painless bursts.

Waiting for things to get busy, I slice up a lemon and watch Supermodel TV. Mama-san put it on the wide screen because our Wednesday night keyboard player called in with stomach flu. Supermodel TV is this satellite channel that broadcasts nothing but fashion models charging up and down catwalks all day long. All these ethereal beings with jutting hips and swan-like necks. Not sure of Mama-san’s strategy here. Perhaps she hopes we will absorb their glamour by osmosis – I do develop this ‘sashay’ in my walk whenever it’s on. But there is something too innate about our imperfections; our bedraggled, lipstick-on-teeth, taut-seams-at-the-hips slovenliness. Something no amount of exposure to beauty will fix.

One of the first customers is Mr Mitsui, the head of some corporation in the Umeda Sky building. He and his companions take up a table by the cigarette machine and I watch him twist his neck about in search of me. Mr Mitsui bought me a Gucci handbag once; burgundy leather, it was, with a golden clasp that fastened with a sophisticated click. But Yuji hates it when I accept gifts from clients, so I gave it to Katya. The handbag was a reward for participating in his ongoing English-speaking scam. Mr Mitsui knows a smattering of English and he likes to use it to impress his business associates. He’ll call me over, introduce me to his friends and then we begin to chat.

‘Mary, in your country do you have sushi?’

‘Yes. In Japanese restaurants and sometimes in supermarkets too.’

‘Ah! And your country. Winter. Colder or warmer?’

‘About the same, I think.’

And so on. The whole time his friends make admiring noises in their throats and exclaim things like: ‘Isn’t Mitsui-san’s English skilful?’ He always has different associates in tow, so they have no idea that we run through the same dialogue every time. Tonight I carry over some Martinis and we do the routine for the benefit of two starry-eyed assistants. We have it down pat, word for word, except when Mr Mitsui throws me by substituting ‘sushi’ with ‘escalators’ in a rare spurt of improvisation. Afterwards he chomps on the olive from his Martini and looks proud of himself. He slips me a thousand-yen note and whispers I am not to share it with the other hostesses.

When I told a friend back in London what I was doing out here she was shocked. She thought hostess was a polite synonym for prostitute or something. I had to explain to her that it’s nothing like that. Salarymen don’t go to a hostess bar to purchase sex; it’s sexual charisma they’re after, a different thing entirely. Most of our clients are the older, mid-life-crisis types. Men loaded with prestige and greatness within the corporation, but invisible to young women they pass by on the street. Our job is to sit with them, act interested in them, laugh at their jokes. Create a make-believe world where they are attractive again. And the more exalted a customer’s ego, the more generous the tip. Mama-san likes to recite this old proverb at the end of our more lucrative evenings: ‘With flattery even a pig can be made to climb a tree.’

Flattery isn’t easy, though – it takes stamina and fatigue-proof smile muscles. Sometimes the sound of my simpering turns my stomach. But whenever my thoughts turn to quitting, the money reels me back in. We earn three times what you’d get teaching English at some boot-camp conversation school and I am trying to save to travel round Asia. My savings are pretty meagre so far, but another three months or so should do it. Yuji hates the idea of me leaving. I hate the idea of leaving him too; every one of his embraces squeezes a little more of the wanderlust out of me. Still, I am determined to go. I have invited him along, but he needs to think it over. When the time comes I am sure we will work out a compromise. We are too crazy about each other not to.

I have never known anyone like Yuji before. He’s so energetic, always in motion, too busy living to get dark and analytical. I love that about him. That and the fact he is so handsome it makes my eyes hurt. Yuji says he knew as soon as he was old enough to think that he wasn’t going to be some salaryman. He works for this yakuza faction in Shinsaibashi, riding his motorcycle round Osaka delivering drugs and collecting loan repayments for his gangster boss. Risky as hell, but a damn sight more exciting than kowtowing before some company altar. I am intrigued by what he does, the criminal allure of it, but he rarely talks about his job. I hear more from other hostesses, the girls who’ve had flings with Yuji’s friends. Tales of ex-gang members with shorn-off ears, of bamboo strips driven under fingernails. Yuji laughed and choked on his noodles when I told him this, called my friends gullible. Yakuza mythology or not, hearing about it still quickens the pulse.

Distance has shown me how weak my bonds to England are, the scarcity of people I care about there. My mum and her boyfriend decamped to Spain while I was doing my A levels (not that I minded – he was too quick to use his fists and she too quick to defend him), and my university friends are all busy pursuing careers in law and accountancy, shifting onto sensible, humdrum wavelengths. I have no grown-up ambitions, no desire to rush back and train to be a barrister or whatever. It’s liberating to think that I am free to roam the world as I see fit.

‘Hey, Watanabe. One of these days you’re going to load the dishwasher yourself and give me a heart attack, aren’t you?’

Watanabe is hunched over a chopping board, his knife a silvery blur as he slices an onion. Watanabe the anaemic kitchen ghost, the teenage catatonic. Did he hear me? Does he hear anyone? The kitchen taps are on full and a potential landslide of dirty plates sits on the draining board. While I am skidding about trying to put things straight Mama-san appears in the doorway, swaddled in a red silk kimono. She surveys the mess, one hand on hip, the other resting against the door frame so the sleeve of her kimono hangs down, cascading embroidered waterfalls and mountain scenery. She is made up geisha-style, her face chalky with powder, her lips nipped scarlet. I admire her flamboyancy, the flair and festivity of her outfits. I hear she was a beauty in her youth – she is still a very striking woman.

‘Watanabe: two orders of Kimchee noodles for table thirteen, please.’

Whenever I give Watanabe a food order I always repeat it twice, popping back at regular intervals to make sure he hasn’t been distracted. Mama-san’s army drill-instructor bark gets it through first time. She sees me scraping pizza crusts into the pedal bin and gives me a frosty nod. I counter with a lukewarm semismile. You’d think we’d be on friendlier terms seeing as I am the girlfriend of her only son. I reckon she doesn’t like Yuji going out with one of her hostesses, or a foreigner, or both.

‘Mary, come here.’ She beckons me over to the doorway and directs my gaze to a couple of salarymen fumigating the lounge with cigar smoke. ‘I want you to join those two men over there, Murakami-san and the doctor. It is too quiet a night to have you on bar duty.’

‘OK.’

‘Take them hot flannels and a menu. Recommend the teriyaki chicken.’

‘Right.’

Mama-san gives me a quick up-and-down, her gaze hardening as something catches her eye. She pulls at the bottom of my sequinned top, where she’s spied a fag burn. Shit. ‘Mary, do you know how much money our customers pay for an hour of your company?’

I nod. How can I forget? She only reminds us every five minutes. ‘Yeah … I’m sorry. It’s so small I didn’t think anyone would notice – not in this light anyway …’

‘The men who come here pay a
lot
of money. The least you can do is appear well groomed. Please don’t wear this again. Go.’

Go
? I walk away, indignant. Who does she think she is?

‘Oh, and, Mary …’

What now? I turn back, straining a complaisant smile.

‘If Murakami-san starts to blow on your neck, just remind yourself how well he tips for the privilege.’

The smile vanishes. Three months. I will be out of here by then.

I walk over to Murakami and the doctor with a tray of sake and neatly rolled hand towels. The two men rise and bow with such exaggerated chivalry that I cannot help but laugh. Stephanie hurries over to join us, autumnal curls tumbling to her shoulders, which are bare in her strapless dress. They bow once more.

‘Good evening,’ we chime.

Stephanie seats herself next to Murakami-san, which saves me from having to deal with the neck-breathing thing. She has been really attentive to Murakami-san lately, ever since the night he promised to pay her tuition fees for this course in homeopathic medicine she wants to enrol on back in Florida. It’s an empty promise, but she treats him like an emperor, just on the off-chance it might be true. Truly heart-breaking to watch.

I smile at the doctor and sit down, shivering and rubbing at my goose-pimply arms. The air conditioning is really fierce tonight.

‘You look lovely, Mary,’ he says. He beams and his eyes stray downwards from my face, making leisurely pauses en route to my knees.

It’s like cockroaches scuttling over my flesh. Call me naïve, but doctors are meant to be pillars of society; decent, moral and devoid of lecherous impulses. The doctor is not generally like this: usually he’s just chubby and jolly. When I’m around him I always get this urge to reach out and tug at the flesh of his face, which gives the impression of being pliable, like dough. When he laughs he looks like a laughing Buddha, his cheeks bulging, his eyes diminishing into tiny gashes.

‘Would you like some sake, Doctor?’

‘Yes,’ he says and pounds his chest. ‘Sake makes me strong.’

A curious theory for a medic, but I smile and pour him a glass. ‘So how has work been lately?’ I ask.

‘Very busy. It’s hay-fever season,’ he says. ‘They come to the surgery in droves, wanting to be cured of their red, weepy eyes and dripping noses. “There is not much that can be done,” I tell them, “short of leaving the country until June.”’

‘Or wearing a surgical mask,’ I say. I saw two old ladies wearing them on the train yesterday.

‘And how is the blossoming poet? Any new haiku?’

When I first got here I went through this phase of writing bad poetry, haiku that strained for the sublime but were hopelessly mired in the pathetic. Fortunately all my poetry-writing time these days is burnt up by Yuji.