store for him, however, he just might have accepted the invitation - after all, as irritating as they tended to be, they were the only family he had.
10
They rode the train up to Yokohama. Most young people preferred to go in the opposite direction and spent their Saturday nights amongst the crowds of Tokyo. But the back alleys of the Minato Mirai Port area possessed a dark undertone which Taro found appealing and the adjacent outcrop of love hotels were there if required.
Hiromi was wearing a white t-shirt and tight fitting blue jeans. The outfit was shiny new and highly fashionable. Taro figured she had been getting reacquainted with her old shopping haunts. Probably Shibuya’s 109, which was nothing short of group therapy for the legions of fashion conscious young women who crammed into it every day of the year. Hiromi would get dressed up just to return a book to the library, so there was nothing to assume in the nature of her attire. But the same could not have been said for her giant pair of sunglasses. They were covering half of her face, including any facial expressions that might have betrayed the thoughts running through her mind. Not that it mattered. Actions were going to speak louder than words.
Taro and Hiromi arrived at Bar Why Not at 11pm. That was the time when the casual drinkers were starting to head for their last trains and the more serious revellers were settling in for the night. A dimly lit, inadequately ventilated basement bar, Bar Why Not attracted the US servicemen from the Yokozuka Naval Base, and also the women who were attracted to them. There were a lot of African Americans, a few white guys, and they were virtually all head shaved and solidly built. They were outnumbering the women two to one.
Of the women, there was no one even close to approaching Hiromi’s beauty. Taro did not mind that all eyes looked past him to her. That was just the environment he had been looking for.
‘Do you still drink Heinekan?’ he asked Hiromi.
Her reply was probably lost somewhere behind those sunglasses. He went to the bar and bought one for her and an Asahi Super Dry for himself. The bar tender was polite and efficient. It wasn’t surprising. The sleaziest bar in all Japan would still offer warm hand-towels.
Taro found himself casing the bar for men. At least, he could be far more objective than he ever was with women. There were plenty to choose from. There was a group of four playing the soccer pinball game. There were three talking over the cigarette machine. Two had cornered the attention of a couple of enthusiastic looking girls at a table. The ones camped around the bar wouldn’t even come into consideration, as Taro wouldn’t be able to approach any of them without the whole lot getting to hear about what was going on. The candidate most likely was perhaps by the very definition the most difficult to spot. He was sitting by himself occupying a back corner stool and table, smoking his cigarette the way people did when they needed more than just a nicotine hit, nursing the ashes into the ashtray with all the care of someone starved of love. Rusty blonde hair and freckles. He had the build of a sailor but without a killer’s disposition. He was approachable.
Hiromi had found a table of her own. Taro went to it and put down the drinks amidst two empty, finger-smeared glasses that were yet to be cleared.
‘I’ve spotted a guy you might find appealing,’ he said. ‘And he’s acceptable to me.’
The head of his beer was too big. After his first long draught, it was almost time for another. The residue on his upper lip reminded him of his high school anxiety attacks, when he would frequently be sporting a moustache of cold perspiration. Hiromi drew patterns in her bottles condensation.
‘If you go through with this you may never see me again,’ she murmured.
‘I don’t see you now,’ replied Taro forcefully. ‘That’s the whole problem. You’re within reaching distance and I still can’t see you.’
‘All I did was go away for a while. That’s all you need to accept. Why did you quit your delivery job?’
Taro, however, would not be side-tracked. ‘Maybe you slept with another guy and maybe you didn’t. I’ll always be wondering about it. But if what I know is as bad as it gets, I won’t need to care about anything else. Don’t you see?’
Hiromi brought her beer to her lips. It was hardly worth the effort for the amount she swallowed. The way she slammed the bottle back down on the table might have been the whole point anyway.
‘Sure if you pick the right guy, I can do it. I’m young. I’ve got hormones. I don’t know about the guys here, but you couldn’t talk to them anyway with your lousy English.’
Taro slipped down off his stool. ‘Watch me.’
He took his beer with him. The rusty blonde haired man wasn’t so sensitive looking up close. His eyes shot up like the dark spyholes of unoccupied homes.
‘Hello,’ said Taro. Just the one word dried out his mouth. Hiromi was right that he couldn’t put two words of English together. The teachers would make him write one out twenty times and like a tyre with its tread worn out it would promptly skid out of his memory.
The American seemed to conclude Taro was anything but a threat and his face went impassive, like a prodded sea-urchin content to return to the motion of the currents.
Hiromi, however, may have exaggerated her lack of faith in him; she sprung furiously out of her seat, knocking over her beer as she went. It caught Taro off guard. He felt inexplicably abandoned. It was the same feeling he had had the day she disappeared through the Narita Airport international departure gates.
‘What is it?’ The man was interested now.
Taro shook his head. ‘Sorry.’ He retreated for the exit. Hiromi was already gone. But all eyes in the bar were now upon him. It put him on edge. He supposed that’s the way she had been feeling, too.
11
The Minato Mirai Station entrance was crowded with Saturday night rendezvous, mostly young females happily chatting away while waiting for further additions to their numbers. Those who were alone were earnestly tapping messages into their cell phones.
Taro scanned the area for Hiromi. If she had gone through the ticket gates, it meant she was on her way home and it might even have meant she had passed a test. On the other hand, if she was still on the outside, no matter how agitated, Taro would still be wracked by suspicion. Maybe it was the quality of man that had sent her marching. Perhaps left to her own devices she could come up with someone better. Would that appease Taro? Would it break his spirit? Would they be one and the same thing?
Hiromi didn’t seem to be around the station. Taro would give his search the length of a cigarette and if she hadn’t turned up in that time, he would poke his head into the surrounding bars that might have attracted her interest - the ones with bright lights and English names.
‘Can I trouble you for a cigarette?’ The man looked rich and young. The cheeky, confident smile; the long, silky black hair; the artfully tailored shirt and trousers; the tanned complexion that bore the healthy veneer of good living; at the very least they gave the impression of a man who could afford his own cigarettes. Taro was struck by a pang of suspicion. This man had been amongst the group of three at Bar Why Not’s cigarette machine, and now he was here. It made for an unlikely coincidence.
Taro got a closer look as he offered out his half used up packet of cigarettes. Beneath the surface layer of prosperity, there was something else. An air of danger. Someone so materially content as this young man was either sheltered or into the wrong kind of life. Taro sensed he needed to be on his guard.
The man wedged a cigarette into the corner of his mouth and lit it with a gold zippo. One long drag and he disdainfully spat the cigarette out onto the street. ‘You have an uncle in the tobacco industry you’re trying to support? There’s no other reason to smoke Japanese brands. We don’t make cigarettes as well as our swords, that’s for sure.’
Handsome and incredibly self-assured, Taro could not help feeling awed.
The man took out a gunmetal cigarette holder from an inner jacket pocket and busily lit one up in the other corner of his mouth. ‘These are F
rench. Take the time to visit a tobacconist instead of a cigarette machine.’
The smoke he exhaled was dark and rich. Scent receptors came alive in Taro’s nostrils that he had forgotten even existed.
‘Why did you want one of mine?’ Taro asked testily.
‘I was feeling sorry for you.’ The man was more concerned with gripping the cigarette with his mouth than enunciating his words clearly. ‘I saw you get dumped flat by that girl in the Why Not bar. She was cute. What’s her name?’
Taro hesitated but he knew he would have to give some ground for the conversation to continue. ‘Hiromi.’
‘Well, forget her. Who needs a girlfriend that humiliates you in public?’
‘It was my fault.’
‘The bad act might have been your fault but the public spectacle was hers. At least it livened up a stale evening. I was trying to drag a couple of GIs to a party I know about. They weren’t interested. Why would they be? The Why Not is a GI hangout. The women come looking for them.’
Taro expelled some more smoke, keeping it to the side, self-conscious of the poor quality of smoke coming out of his lungs.
‘You, on the other hand, are a sure bet,’ the man continued. ‘I can see from the look on your face you don’t have any other plans for tonight.’
‘I don’t have much money on me at the moment,’ Taro