say the word a hundred times and not feel a thing. It was only seniors who were afraid of it. Not because of their proximity to it - there wasn’t a soul alive who wasn’t a hair’s breath away from death. No, it was because they had suffered so much more in the name of life that they felt they were owed something in return. Something more than company bonuses or government pensions. With the nicer types, like the master of this nameless restaurant, Taro could even wish that they did receive their grand payouts, whatever that might entail. Their fates, however, were etched upon their faces in soft lines of unspoken despair.
6
Here was some more familiarity: with less than three jockeys of beer Hiromi’s cheeks had turned bright pink. She smiled and touched Taro’s arm. ‘I have a souvenir for you. Would you like it now?’
‘No. I have to work at seven. Let’s go to a love hotel while there’s still time.’
It was a test. The old Hiromi would have frowned at such a forward suggestion. But as she tentatively nodded her head, Taro realised he may have erred in his judgement. He couldn’t be sure her assent was really an indication of a new found promiscuousness. Perhaps she just felt that after one year of faithfulness and fidelity he should not be denied any longer. What he should have done was sit on his hands and see if, with a little loosening up from the beer, her touch on his arm had developed to the point of incrimination, a betrayal of experience. Perhaps that would have given him some idea of what she had been up to.
One thing he was certain of was if he made love to her now, he would lose his handle on all those unfamiliar aspects, and their origins would become blurred by the present. Still, he could not back down now. He would have time to think on the way.
He allowed Hiromi to split the bill with him. It was her parents’ money anyway and they were both architects. Their building designs needed to conform to strict building codes to minimise earthquake damage, which was a convenient excuse for cloning the same building a thousand times across Tokyo, while still accepting an equal commission on each. Hiromi couldn’t slap her money down hard enough on the counter for Taro’s liking.
From the restaurant the love hotel precinct was just a short walk. Generally the love hotels were quite expensive, even for the basic three hour “rest”, so Taro and Hiromi had only used them sparingly, either when both their homes were occupied or for birthday celebrations. On the latter occasions they might have stayed the night and treated themselves to a high quality entertainment system that included karaoke, video games and more choices on the TV than just free to air and manga porn.
Hiromi hung back on the sidewalk, wanting Taro to make the choice of hotel; her main focus was on concealing her embarrassment from the office workers and university students who plied these streets during the daytime hours. Taro carefully took his time about the selection. A couple of times he left her standing outside while he went into the foyer to peruse the room pictures on the availability boards. Hiromi was relieved when Taro finally waved her into one. The Pink Pink Hotel. There was a turquoise tiled fountain at the entrance that smelt sharply of chlorine. On the availability board almost every room was lit up, meaning they had a lot to choose from. True to the hotel’s name, the linen was all pink.
‘Any preferences?’ asked Taro.
‘It’s up to you,’ said Hiromi.
Taro chose the room with the four-post bed with the pink trimming. That was how the kings and queens must have slept in their palaces. He fed the money into the slot and pressed its button. The key dropped down into the dispenser.
Riding the elevator to the third floor, Taro realised he had not yet settled on a strategy. A quick glance at Hiromi, who had assumed the adjacent back corner of the elevator, confirmed her stunning new found beauty. It was a beauty he supposed deserved some kind of recognition. But what? A compliment that might come off sounding cheap or hollow? It might even sound resentful. After all, he was sure there were plenty of dour old people in this world who would strive to dismantle beauty and take great pride in proving that it was merely a facade. He stared at Hiromi thinking that he would indeed pay her a compliment. But the elevator’s journey to the third floor was short and the doors promptly opened. The couple stepped out into a passageway of red linoleum flooring and encouragingly clean white walls. A brass plate bearing room numbers directed them left.
Taro walked ahead, feeling a weird tightening in his stomach as he passed the doors on the way. Love hotel doors were not like other doors. They concealed lust and passion and perhaps even love from prying eyes. And they rarely stayed open longer than an instant. Taro slotted the key card into 311 and held it open for Hiromi. She tentatively stepped inside.
The room appeared smaller that it had in its picture, but such shots were taken with the same friendly lens that restaurants used to capture the fleeting souls of their ideal dishes.
‘The first thing you will no doubt want to do is take a bath,’ he said. ‘You’ve had a very long flight.’
‘That’s true.’ One of the two shoulder bags Hiromi had left out of the station locker contained a toiletries bag, which she fished out and took with her.
Taro turned on the TV to one of those daytime variety programs. The reporter was on a tour of the seafood restaurants of Kumamoto. She was young and cute but was carrying on like a manic depressive at the peak of her up. Taro peeled off his shirt. It was damp with perspiration. The perspiration still on his chest began to cool. Now there was evident a little change of his own. He had been spending a few afternoons a week at the local community sports centre, dusting off some of the exercises his high school karate coach had drummed into him. There weren’t many women in Tokyo who married a man for his muscular body, but a girl who joined a bicycle club would possibly be more attracted than most.
The new muscles were puffing out some old scars. Perusing them in the pink framed dressing mirror, Taro realised his years of karate training had just been another underhand attempt by elders to hammer into him conformity. In some ways he wished they had succeeded. But with the skills he had been taught, he could make them wish that even more.
Hiromi took a shower rather than a bath. It must have been a habit she had picked up in Canada. The water ran for a good ten minutes. When Hiromi appeared out of the bathroom, her hair was wet and she had a soft white towel wrapped around her naked body. Her contacts were still in. The tattoo on her arm was a red barcode. She had no doubt copied that idea from the pop star Namie Amuro. Typical. She sat down on the bed beside him. She smelt so fresh and clean. After a moment she touched his leg.
‘There’s a new public path in Shinjuku,’ said Taro. ‘It offers baths in rice wine and milk, and there’s also a bath with electrodes zapping through the water – that one is supposed to be good for the heart.’
‘You’ve changed, Taro,’ Hiromi said.
‘I’m like a virus that’s mutated into something new,’ Taro replied bitterly.
Hiromi dropped her head apologetically. ‘I left you alone too long.’
The voice was heartfelt and deeply moving. The urge to take her into his arms was incredibly strong. So much more than he had ever expected. It was only the image of the packed trains rushing by his crossing that held him back. All those faceless businessmen in their black suits, the rings on their fingers more a promise to their companies than their wives and families, for it was the company that demanded priority, that plundered the man’s soul and left behind the most meagre of scraps. Just the way it had been for his father. And there was no way around it. If Taro took Hiromi now, made love to her, the company would not only be gaining him but its next generation as well. And he would be marrying himself a company widow. The endless evenings waiting for him to return exhausted from his office, and to share vacations spent in those thirty kilometre traffic jams that surrounded their ancestors’ graves. Faithful or unfaithful, the repercussions had to be the same. He would complete the job on Hiromi that her teachers had only started. He would break her spirit into accepting such a life. With l
ove on his side, he could do a better job than his karate coaches had ever managed on him. But the thought of descending into such a role repulsed him. He would simply not go down that path. The best he could do was turn his demise into something that would fill the silences in the life Hiromi would have without him. He sensed he could do that well. He would be good at it.
‘This won’t be simple.’ He spoke slowly and carefully, as though the edge of each word had to be individually sharpened. ‘If we are to be together again, you’ll have to do it my way. I can’t be the first man you are with.’ He paused. ‘Maybe you were true to me in Canada and maybe you weren’t. But the only way to dispel my fears is to control them.’ He had never heard such darkness in his voice. It was like he was being introduced to a guide for an upcoming expedition into a wasteland.
‘What are you saying?’ Hiromi’s voice had a pitiful tone to it.
Taro did not reply.
Hiromi’s fingers ran along one of his chest scars. ‘You’ve been brutalised, haven’t you?’
Taro hadn’t thought about that particular scar in a while. It had come about from a disagreement with a local bosozoku motorcycle gang. Had he been too quick to fight them instead of join