Her face looked serious. If I wasn’t mistaken, her eyes had a determined look.
Uh, perhaps she’s taken a liking to me. That’s not good.
‘Um, what…?’ I began asking timidly.
‘You forget so easily,’ she said in a low, soft voice. And suddenly I remembered – Reiko! I dated her for a bit, when I was twenty and she was thirty-one. Whatever became of her? There was a while back then when I was really worried.
But this old woman couldn’t be Reiko. She looked a lot like her, though, so maybe she was her mother. I guess my expression changed because the old woman nodded.
‘Want to go get a slice of cheesecake?’ She was acting awfully familiar. I wondered if it was a trap. Would I be taken captive by this woman and interrogated about Reiko? The guilty feelings from back then started to revive in me. I couldn’t help it.
‘Maybe next time. I have work.’ I surprised even myself by how smoothly the lie came out.
‘You’re sure?’ That way she raised her eyebrows looked just like Reiko. It was rare to find a mother and child who looked so alike. Was Reiko a virgin birth? I remember hearing about that in middle school biology. Apparently, if an ovum is stimulated for some reason and begins to divide its cells, a child can be made with no need for a man. In these instances, the child is always female and will be the spitting image of the mother. I mean, could that be true? Pretty dubious. That teacher was probably spouting whatever came into his head.
‘Um, I’m leaving, so…,’ I put the tokens back into her hand. She was staring at me rather intensely. Something wasn’t right. I swiftly left the scene.
I went into a small glass-walled room. This is where I wait in case a machine breaks or somebody has a complaint. That’s my job these days.
I took out a cigarette and lit it. No red light was on, calling for me.
Maybe he didn’t know who I was. Jane hadn’t changed much in three years. But I’ve aged so much. About thirty years’ worth. My body is aging for real. An unbelievable amount. Sometimes when I decide to put on some foundation, to my dismay it gathers around my wrinkles; no matter how well I try to apply it, the foundation just ends up outlining them. The thicker I try to lather it on, the more vivid the lines become and reveal a pattern.
Even I can’t believe just how bad it is.
This isn’t the kind of place that would hire me. They probably hired me because I’m in my thirties according to my birth certificate. On my résumé, I only wrote in the silver ID number we all have below our clavicles, neglecting to mention the fact that my psychologist had given me that treatment. I’ve already cashed my first weekly pay cheque, but I’m sure they’ll wise up soon enough. Could be any day now. What’ll I do if I get fired?
There is no day or night here. Boys and girls wearing fluttery clothes come in hordes and all play alone.
Time might begin to pass at a frightening pace again. It’s why I incessantly keep checking the clock on the wall. But maybe you could say it would be good for time to pass that quickly again, because I’d age further. Aging is the only way I can imagine dying. Any other way is too scary. I’m terribly afraid of death.
The background music had played all the way through, so I inserted a different tape. What is this? A familiar old song. ‘Love’s TPO’ by Chikada Haruo and Haruophone – I listened to it a long time ago with Jane. I’m sure it was more about affairs or games or free love than romance. It’s about a guy with no remorse, who can bring tears to his eyes when he wants to fool a girl.
Nothing needed my attention.
By evening, I had smoked two full packs of cigarettes, doing nothing but listening to music. My eyes hurt. Either from smoking too much or aging too much. Wiping away the tears with the back of my hand, I took the subway out of that level.
I walked for a little while, till I was well off the beaten path. Dingy shops and stalls lined the street. I went into one of them. The old man running the place looked over at me coldly. I took a seat on an unsteady wooden chair and ordered.
Next to me were two young guys sitting side by side. Both were very different from the kind of men who came to the arcade. Those boys have their hair partially dyed or glitter tape wrapped around themselves. They’re more like dolls than living creatures. The guys here smelled of sweat. They had lines on their foreheads.
‘They have lax security,’ one of them was saying. He’d had a bit to drink. ‘We do four or five of them and then get the hell out of there. Won’t take more than five minutes.’
‘You’re so small-time. Going after vending machines.’
‘It’s a pretty promising score.’
‘People are gonna notice us, dressed like this.’
‘That’s no problem. Just cut your hair into a weird shape and then fix a ribbon to the hem of your trousers.’
‘I’ve been wearing the same trousers for three weeks now. They’re pretty grimy.’
A dirty night was falling.
I paid and left. A cheap apartment complex halfway up the winding hill is my current abode. When I took my shoes off at the entrance, I found a hole in the sole. That’d be why my feet kept getting dirty.
Chaotic doesn’t even begin to describe my room. The last time I cleaned was four months ago, after all. Magazines I picked out of the rubbish bin in the terminal were scattered around. The only light comes from the double-ringed fluorescent bulb that hangs unadorned from the ceiling. There’s no lighting on the walls. I leave the place lit up when I go out because it’s lonely to come home by myself at night. Besides if I walk into this room with the lights off, I’ll definitely trip over something.
When I took my clothes off, I saw the side wrinkles on my stomach drooping downwards. There were lots of them. I tried pinching. Gross. It looked like the edge of a pile of futons. I hadn’t thought my body was this sickening.
Because I had aged so rapidly, I wasn’t used to it. It made me question if this was really me, really my body. I still hadn’t quite accepted it.
It was six months after my third divorce. I was working as a part-timer at a jazz cafe and bar. Every other day, I worked from noon to eleven at night. I had just started the job.
‘What’s that guy of yours doing?’ The manager of the bar poured herself a glass of Cinzano. Who was she talking about?
‘Well, aren’t you something… Getting married so many times. Can’t you do anything else?’ one of the customers chimed in. The counter seats at this place always drew a rowdy crowd. The quiet ones tended to sit in the booths.
‘I know, right? Me, I’m just not the family type. It took me ten years to realize that. I’m already thirty-one.’
‘Have you ever thought that the problem might be the people you choose?’ a different customer asked.
‘I can’t seem to say no when someone pursues me. It’s my fault for always being drawn to unstable people.’ I started washing the dishes.
‘You’re not going to dance anymore?’ This one knew my history. I’d been a chorus girl before my first marriage.
‘It’s been too long.’
A slight pain ran through me. I’d loved dancing ever since I’d been a kid. When I was in middle school, I could often be found making up my own moves and dancing by myself in the gymnasium after school. You couldn’t call it modern dance or jazz ballet. I didn’t care what it was, I just moved around to the music that I heard in the moment. I didn’t have any ballet shoes but I would dance till my toenails cracked and bled.