‘Listen, that kind of dancing isn’t about talent. That’s not so important. It’s all about whether you’re beautiful or not.’
That long-time dream of mine had crumbled away years ago. I just didn’t want to accept that then.
‘You’re still beautiful,’ the bar manager said. She seemed to have a soft spot for me for no discernible reason. I’m sure she found it strange herself, but anyway I got a lot of dresses and accessories out of her.
‘You been doing those drugs? You really shouldn’t, you know.’
‘I’m still doing them.’ My voice was low and clear. My medication had been labelled a narcotic and controlled substance a couple of years ago. I’d taken to paying my pharmacist friend to sell it to me under the table.
‘I hear the side effects are horrific. If you do too much, your body starts to fall apart and you age much faster than the average person.’
But those drugs were good. My anxiety would disappear. When I was so bored I could die, it made time feel shorter. It could even go the other way around.
Those drugs may have caused my last divorce – no, I started taking them because things weren’t going well already. Which was it? Not that it mattered either way.
The door opened and a boy walked in. His hair was long and he had a girlish face. He was so skinny that his horrendous pink shirt with yellow polka dots hung like a dress on him. Wow, he’s just my type, I thought. I can’t help having bad taste. Girls have weird taste these days. And the only people who have the hots for manly men tend to be mainstream homosexuals.
‘Been a while,’ the manager said.
He ordered a beer in high spirits.
‘This must be Reiko!’ he exclaimed as he sat down on the stool in front of me.
‘That’s right. The one who used to dance.’ The manager didn’t seem to like this one much.
‘I know. I used to admire her,’ he purred.
When I popped a cigarette into my mouth, he lit it for me. That was ten years ago, I thought, there’s no way he’d have seen me dance. He would have been in primary school then.
‘I was mature for my age,’ he said, reading my bemusement.
When I moved my fingers in an odd way, he gave me his handkerchief. This guy is hyper-attentive, I thought. My palms were sweaty from the drugs. Back then, I was washing my hands more than twenty times a day.
The conversation continued, with no new orders.
I felt slightly nauseous so I went to the bathroom. My stomach was shot. I didn’t know if it was because of my recent insomnia or the drugs. Shaking, I threw up a little. When I raised my face, it looked greenish. I was so horribly nearsighted that my features looked blurry. I knew that my skin was in bad shape, though. I pulled out my compact and powdered my nose.
I was still feeling rather queasy when I got back behind the counter. When I squeezed my wrist, he said, ‘Let’s see,’ and felt my pulse.
‘Wha – that can’t be right.’ He tried again. It wasn’t a mistake. ‘That’s gotta be one-forty.’
I nodded.
‘Isn’t a normal pulse sixty to eighty per minute?’
To change the subject, I said, ‘Oh, I dig this sound. It’s pretty good.’ The manager held back her laughter and pointed at the record cover. What was ‘pretty good’ was John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. Something must be wrong with my head.
I did something like that again later that night. ‘I hear this one a lot. What’s it called again?’
‘Um, it’s probably a very famous song,’ he said, continuing to smile. The guy’s brightness felt slightly fake. Too much need to please.
‘Yup. It’s famous alright. Dolphy’s Last Date.’ The manager paused. ‘You don’t look well,’ she said, sticking out her chin.
‘My head doesn’t feel good,’ I said in a monotone.
‘I’ll take you home then. I know I sound innocent but maybe my ulterior motive is to take you somewhere dark,’ he said.
He showed a lot of gum when he laughed.
In my dreams, he appeared as a woman named Jane. When I awoke, I found him staring at me intensely. His eyes were unnecessarily big – it was horrifying. When I rolled over in bed, he put on a forced smile. He picked up a hairbrush.
‘I’ll brush your hair for you. I’m really good at doing things like this. I can do any kind of housework, too. I’m way handier than most women. It’s like… I can survive by myself. I’m the kind of guy who never need get married.’ He kept yapping on about things he couldn’t care less about. Jane sometimes fell into a hole all by himself. Whenever he caught me silently looking at him, he would immediately start to clamber out and get all excited. It was hard to figure out what he was actually thinking.
‘You’re beautiful,’ I said as he teased my hair.
‘No way! I really hate my face. It’s too smiley.’
‘But you’re ugly on the inside.’
Jane’s head was tilted away from me as he tried to brush my hair on one side, so I couldn’t make out his expression.
‘Maybe it’s because I’m two-faced? Been this way since I was a child. I don’t trust others, you know. I tell myself there’s no way that anybody will ever like me. As a result, even though I’m craving some love, I can never accept it. You know? It’s like someone starving to death but not eating the food in front of them because they can’t stop wondering if there’s poison in it.’ When he put the brush back down, his face became expressionless.
‘You’re afraid of other people?’
‘Yeah, it’s never turned out well. I have no close friends. Friends are to be used. I’m very good at pandering to others, though.’ A feeble smile remained glued to his face.
‘I want to do something about that.’
‘You shouldn’t think like that. It’s best to leave people like me alone. We prefer it that way.’ The smile had completely disappeared. ‘I didn’t want to get into this kind of relationship with you. I wouldn’t have let things get so far if I’d known you were serious. Now it’s… different than with the other girls. That’s a problem.’
‘What are your relationships usually like?’
‘Totally throwaway. I anticipate the break-up and hint towards it to prepare for a smooth exit.’
‘What happens to you afterwards?’
‘Nothing, really.’
I sighed and put my hand in my bag, reaching for my pill box.
‘Again?’ His eyebrows knitted together.
‘Yeah, I… can’t.’ I stood up, poured myself some water and gulped down a bunch in several rounds.
‘Why so much? I feel… responsible.’
‘It’s not like you’ll do anything about it.’
‘Yeah, that’s why.’
‘You’re emotionally stingy.’
‘I wonder why that might be.’ He said it like he was talking about someone else.
The sun was starting to set. The two of us sat staring at each other in the dimming room, without turning on the lights.
‘What happens when you take them? Is it like marijuana?’
‘I had this one crazy experience smoking pot. It felt like I was being reborn alongside the birth of the universe. Even when I was aware of talking to someone, five minutes felt like a hundred years. It’s rare to get an experience like that. Usually, I just get hungry and sleepy. This stuff, however, always works.’
‘Does it make you feel happy?’
‘More like euphoric. It lets me feel love towards the world and everyone in it. You want some?’
‘I can’t take pills. They get stuck in my throat.’ Jane declined with a wave of his hand.
‘What are you like when you’re alone?’ I slumped against the wall and took a drag from a cigarette.
‘Why do you care?’
‘Do you ever feel regret?’
Ignoring me, Jane began to choose a video cassette. ‘Want to watch a Jean Harlow movie? Or maybe Theda Bara?’