“You might have noticed, I need a job that requires a lot of sitting. If I speak English, maybe I can get something a little better than this one.”
“I don’t know. I speak English, and it hasn’t helped me get the job I want.”
“What job do you want?”
“I don’t know. Maybe that’s part of the problem.”
That glimmer of amusement flashed in her eyes again, then was gone. “Do you really speak English?”
I nodded. “I’m half American.” I didn’t know why I said it. It wasn’t something I ordinarily shared with Japanese.
She scrutinized my face, searching, I knew, for the mongrel in it. “Now that you mention it, I think I can see it. Your mother was Japanese?”
I shook my head. “Father.”
“Where did you grow up?”
“Both places.”
“You’re lucky. America’s where I want to go.”
“Why?”
She looked around. “Because I hate it here.”
Given my own love-hate relationship with the country, I wasn’t sure how to respond. So I just nodded.
She looked at me. “You don’t?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Were they hard on you?” She didn’t need to be more specific than that. She was talking about the ijimekko—school bullies.
“Sometimes.” A monumental understatement.
She held my gaze for a moment, then slid the thousand-yen-note under the glass, followed by a room key. I took both, feeling I was being dismissed, trying to think of something I could use to engage her further, coming up with nothing.
Finally, in a fit of creativity, I said, “I’m Jun.” Jun was my given name, bastardized to John in English.
She nodded as though this was possibly the least interesting thing she’d ever heard.
“What’s your name?” I said, going double or nothing.
She looked at me for a long beat. I imagined I knew what a microbe felt like under a microscope.
“Why would you want to know my name?” she said.
“I don’t know. So I have something to call you, I guess. Wait, now you’re going to ask why I would need to call you something, right?”
She raised her eyebrows and nodded slowly as though impressed by what a quick study I was.
“I don’t know,” I said, flailing but plunging ahead regardless. “In case I’m back here. If I come back, it could be the third time I talk to you. I feel like the third time I talk to someone, I should know her name. I’m not sure why. It just feels…like I should.” I realized I was babbling and couldn’t seem to find the off switch.
“I’m not familiar with that custom.”
Jesus. “Yeah, well, I guess that’s because I just made it up.”
She smiled at that, I thought half out of good humor, half out of pity. “Well, Jun, if you come back again and we talk for a third time, maybe I’ll tell you my name then.”
I tried to think of something witty to say and couldn’t. So I just nodded and took the key, then headed for the elevator. I hoped she would think my wordless exit was confident and cool. But I was pretty sure she knew better.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I went out early the next morning, the same time as the day before. I wanted to catch the girl again before the shift change.
She watched me wordlessly as I slid the key under the glass. “Don’t you ever get any sleep?” I asked, casting about for something to start a conversation.
She shrugged. “Sometimes I nod off. It’s usually pretty quiet after three or four.”
“Well,” I said, screwing up my courage, “this makes three times.”
She looked at me, saying nothing.
“So…you know, the custom. I thought you’d tell me your name.”
“Doesn’t feel like three times to me. I’ve been up all night.”
“Hmm, I think that’s a technicality.”
“Just trying to respect your custom.”
Was she trying not to smile? I couldn’t tell. “You’re really not going to tell me your name?”
“How old are you?”
The question caught me off guard. “Why?”
“Are you sensitive about your age?”
“What? No. I’m twenty.” That was true. By about a week.
She raised her eyebrows. “Are you lying to me?”
“No, why would I lie?”
“Because you look like a kid.”
I felt myself blush, doubtless reinforcing the impression. “People have always said that about me. I think it’s because I have small ears.”
“What?”
“It’s true. Small ears make you look younger. Because your ears grow by about one one-hundredth of an inch per year. That’s why old people have big ears. I read it in a magazine.” I turned my head. The crew cut I’d worn in the military had grown out, but my hair was still short enough for her to see.
She took a long look, then laughed. “I think you might be right.”
It was the first time I’d heard her laugh. I liked the fact of it as much as the sound. Before I could think of some way to keep the conversational ball in the air, she said, “Actually, I can’t figure out how old you are. I was thinking pretty young. But with that drunken guy yesterday, you looked…”
She trailed off. I waited, wondering what she thinking. Finally, she said, “I don’t know. Serious, I guess. Even scary. Not like a kid.”
At that point in my life, girls were still a mystery, and trying to navigate the unfamiliar terrain of conversation with an attractive woman made me feel anxious and awkward. But violence…violence I knew. I supposed it stood to reason that I would come across as ungainly in romance, and confident, even imposing, in a confrontation. I could see where the contrast might have confused her. But it wasn’t something I wanted to explain. Instead, I said, “How about you?”
“What about me?”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-five.”
“That’s a good age.”
She frowned. “Good for what?”
“I don’t know. Just sounds…good.” I imagined a fighter jet burning into the tarmac and exploding in flames.
She shook her head and laughed again. “Why aren’t you in school?”
“You mean college?”
“Assuming you graduated from high school.”
I hadn’t, in fact, having skipped out during my junior year to lie about my age and join the army. But I didn’t expect she would find any of that particularly impressive.
“I don’t know. I guess I haven’t gotten around to it.”
The truth was more complicated than that. At the time, life in Tokyo’s universities was dominated by various radical student factions, some complaining about Japan’s complicity in America’s war in Vietnam; others about how the American military was going to remain on Okinawa even after returning the island to Japan; and still others agitating for socialism, communism, real disarmament, discontinuation of construction at the new airport in Narita, and other such things. Several Tokyo universities had been paralyzed by student occupations and pitched battles with police — armed battles featuring tear gas, rocks, and staves. There had been rampages, bombings, arson, hundreds of arrests. I didn’t see any real difference between the students and the Japanese Red Army, which was busy hijacking airplanes and taking hostages in pursuit of paradise on earth. At best, they all struck me as pampered narcissists and dangerously misguided dreamers. Maybe they meant well, but to me it all felt like the same undifferentiated mob that had meant well during the riots that killed my father. I’d seen how the world really worked, and had paid for the privilege. I had nothing in common with any of them. I would make my own way.