“The end of the world? Who cares?”
Not us.
I couldn’t find the ashtray in the darkness, so I flicked my cigarette in a champagne glass I found lying under the bed. Then I realized that me and Spoon had never drunk champagne together. Somehow it made more sense for us to spoil a fancy glass like that than to use it the right way. And besides, we were far too lazy to make enough money to buy anything as expensive as champagne.
Savoring the taste of the cigarette smoke, I decided that Spoon knew me better than I knew myself, as though his body would be better qualified to fill out my medical reports than a doctor.
“Whenever I’m with you, Spoon, my heart pounds and my legs turn to jelly. Sometimes I’m scared you’ll find out how I really feel about you.”
“I feel like three stars came up on the slot machine,” Spoon answered. “The bells just keep on ringing inside me.”
You try to scoop up the quarters in your hands as the machine spits them out at you, but they pour out so fast you can never keep up. You feel both excited and surprised at the same time, and so happy when you ex-change your quarters for a fistful of dollar bills. I thought it was a perfect way to describe our relationship.
For the first time in my life I felt lucky, like I was a winner. I felt like I could do anything, and optimistic dreams welled up inside me. I felt so good that I’m sure I would have been happy even if I were some kid going to school on a Monday morning in the middle of a rainstorm. And of course, at that moment the old gambler’s saying, “Easy come, easy go,” had never been farther from my mind.
I sat in a corner of the room where the afternoon sun came pouring in, and peeled a hard-boiled egg. A pinch of salt and a sprinkle of I freshly ground black pepper and I was in heaven. Spoon and Osbourne were both sprawled out on the floor dozing, their heads resting on the magazine Spoon had been reading.
I ran my hand over the stubble on Spoon’s chin with the back of my hand. He frowned a little but showed no sign of waking. He was like a big, black cat, sleeping there without a care in the world, and he looked so peaceful that it was all I could do to stop myself from saying out loud, Please, Spoon, won’t you fuck me?
But I held back and just kept gazing at his face. I could feel a sad sense of security in my heart. I had loved Spoon so madly for the past few months, but when I thought about it, I knew absolutely nothing about my lover boy. But it didn’t matter. I realized I could love no one else but Spoon, and I could only love what I knew, so I really didn’t care about his background or his past. Only one thing bothered me: the file of papers he always carried around so carefully. I knew they were some kind of plans; I’d seen them that time I’d thrown them across the room at him. Then, when he hit me, I thought about getting revenge by drawing all over them with colored pencils. Poor little me… I just couldn’t stand it when Spoon was interested in anything else but me. What would I do if he ever left me? What if he just stopped being there? Even if he was alive and well, if he wasn’t with me it would be the same as if he were dead. I’m not like some girls who say they’ll be happy as long as their old boyfriends are having a good time somewhere (not that I really believe them). I needed Spoon to be by my side, to laugh with and to be angry at; and I needed him to be close enough to make love at a moment’s notice. If I couldn’t have that, it made no difference to me whether he was alive or dead. I could only love something if it was right there in front of me. And if it wasn’t right there, I never wanted to see it again—for me it did not exist.
I tried to fight it, but I had a feeling that Spoon might leave me. I wondered if the idea had come to me so I could be ready in case it really happened.
“Please don’t…”
The words came so naturally. I tried to think whether I had ever really asked anyone for something before or not. If I had, it was for something so trivial I couldn’t remember it.
I made some tea and lit a cigarette. The smell of the tea woke Spoon.
The steam must have made my face look hazy to him.
“What would I do if you left me?”
“What makes you think I’ll leave you?”
“I’d probably cry.”
He stroked my hair. “Poor baby,” he said.
“Wouldn’t you cry?”
“I’ve never cried.”
I wondered if I’d have to teach him how to cry, too. He didn’t seem to be able to do anything without my help.
“I’ve gotta make a phone call.”
“Who to?”
Spoon didn’t answer. He just kept dialing. In my mind I told him, I’m worried. I love you.
But outwardly I pretended not to care. Spoon was right there in front of me. He was close enough for me to reach around from behind and unzip his jeans, then reach inside and turn him on. I calmed down.
It would have been easier to love him if I lost my sight and my hearing and was only left with my sense of smell.
UA stands for “unauthorized absence” in navy lingo. In a disco full of sailors, if you were told that one of them was UA it meant that you should steer clear of him unless you had plenty of money and were thinking of keeping him as a pet. It was rare for a girl to know that a guy was UA and still fall in love the way I had. If they were caught, deserters usually had to pay enormous fines. And of course a lot of those guys, who had joined the navy because they couldn’t get a job in the first place, couldn’t pay, and they ended up in military jail. Even guys with minor offenses had their ID cards taken away so they couldn’t leave the base. They were birds in a cage.
And if they were thrown out of the navy, they just went back to hustling on the streets.
I was frightened. Not because he sold drugs, or by the telephone calls he made to some embassy, or even by the file of papers he carried around with him. The thing that frightened me was that Spoon could be taken far away from me for what he had done. If there was anything he was guilty of, it was that he had given me memories. I had never had to deal with memories before. I had always hated them and I had none prior to meeting Spoon. But now I did have memories—memories of him—and I no longer had confidence that I would be able to erase them when he walked out the door. I wondered why I was thinking about this now. It hadn’t worried me a bit when all he had been to me was a helpless jerk.
I had just accepted him for what he was.
One afternoon I got a strange phone call.
“Excuse me, I’m sorry to bother you. Is this an office or a company some sort?”
“Who is this?”
“This is the Metropolitan Police.”
“Are you putting me on? I get this kind of prank call all the tirf! Look, what do you want?”
It was no lie; every now and then some joker would phone and it really irritated me. Once it was one of Spoon’s idiot friends.
“Hello, this is the navy police.”
I’d started shaking, and then when I realized it was a joke I really let him have it. Poor Willie! He hadn’t meant any harm.
“Okay then, give me your number—if you can—and I’ll call you back. That way I’ll know whether or not you really are from the police.”
I dialed the number he gave me, and it was answered by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police. I spoke to the guy again, and he just asked me my name and occupation and then hung up.
I didn’t understand why he had called, but at least I didn’t need to worry that it had anything to do with Spoon—this guy was from the Japanese police. What did worry me was that the police might have been investigating prostitution at the club where I worked. Sometimes I got some of the hostesses to work the odd trick here and there on the side: the Taiwanese and Southeast Asian students were such amazingly hard workers, it was incredible.