barefoot princess

I lived with my wife in a tiny apartment just outside Shinjuku.  We lived just a few red lights away from the red light district, a place famous for its ‘soap massages’.  For a few extra bucks, your pipes could be just as clean as the rest of you.

It was almost two a.m. when I woke up to find myself alone.  The empty side of the bed was illuminated with slits of streetlight that came in through the blinds.  I thought Haruko might be in the living room, but when I checked there I found no one.  I searched the whole place, but there wasn’t even a note.

The strange thing, I noticed, was that her shoes weren’t even gone.  I reflected upon this while I lit up a cigarette.  I’d only been smoking for about three weeks.  I started right after I quit my last job, writing movie reviews for a semi-popular women’s magazine. 

Whenever I get anxious, I cook.  So I started chopping cucumbers while I waited for the rice to boil.  I had three of them cut into slices when the telephone rang.  The voice sounded tinny and distant.

“I need you.  Come find me.  I want to wrap my legs around you.”

It wasn’t my wife’s voice.  It sounded like a younger woman, but I didn’t know her.

“I think maybe you have the wrong number,” I said.

“Aren’t you lonely without your wife?”

There was no chance to respond, as all I heard after that was a dial tone.  I grabbed my jacket and rushed to put my shoes on.  I had no idea where to begin, but it seemed urgent that I at least try and do something.

The steam rose from the gutters, and stray cats scattered with every block I traversed.  Their green eyes seemed to transcend them, pairs of dots connected to another world.  The only open establishment I could see was an all-night burger place. 

The walls and floor were differing shades of yellow.  Not a cheery yellow that you’d see on flowers, but an artificial yellow, like you’d see on cheap crayons or for a race car’s paint job.  There were only three customers.  A young couple sat by the door, kissing and feeling each other up.  In the far corner there was a young girl, maybe fourteen years old, reading a book.  I approached her, trying hard to not seem creepy.

“Did you see a woman without shoes recently?  Maybe she walked by outside or came in here…?”

The girl gave me a disenchanted look and went back to her reading.  I stood there for a minute, but she didn’t say anything until I started to walk away.

“When I was walking here, I did see a lady without shoes.  She was walking next to a man wearing a green striped suit.  It was the ugliest damn thing I’ve ever seen…the suit I mean,”

“How long ago was it?  Which way did they go?”

She narrowed her eyes at me.  “What are you, some kind of stalker?”

I was starting to get upset.  “No, she’s my wife.  Just tell me which way they were going.”

“For a man married to a prostitute, you sure are uptight.”

There wasn’t anything I could say to that.  It was true, after all.  Still, up until then Haruko was doing a pretty good job keeping her personal life separate from her work.  Don’t get the wrong idea, that wasn’t how we met or anything.

Actually, we met at one of the movies I had to review.  I was sitting by myself, as always, and halfway through the film she just plopped down next to me and said it wasn’t natural for a grown man to go to a movie without the company of a beautiful woman.  Yeah, she was modest too.

I ordered a beer and sat down in my own yellow, isolated booth.  After three cigarettes, the girl came over and sat across from me.

“Aren’t you going to ask me how I knew about your wife being a prostitute?”

“I figured her clothes gave her away.” I said emptily.

“It’s because the man with her is my dad.  He gave me a two-thousand-yen note and told me to hang out here until he’s done.  He’s such a sleaze.”

I was only half-listening.  I never wanted details about that aspect of my wife’s life.  I was content just to have her next to me at night, to see her across the breakfast table from me.

“What about your mother, why aren’t you with her?” I asked.

“She was hit by a bullet train when I was five.  People tell me she jumped right in front of it.  I don’t really remember her.”

I happened to notice the name of her book, Slaughterhouse Five.  “So you’re a fan of American literature?” 

“I like anything, as long as it’s good.  It shouldn’t matter what language it’s in.”

About half an hour passed like that, with me smoking and her reading about aliens and World War II.  It was almost three when a man showed up with a shoeless woman.  He was wearing an ugly green suit.

The woman wasn’t my wife.

As they walked over to us, I asked the girl if that was the same woman she’d seen earlier.  She nodded as she stood up to leave. 

“Damn.”  I said.

It occurred to me that my wife might have already come home, so I went to the payphone directly outside and put my card in.  It rang three times before I got an answer.  Somehow, it was the same woman who called me earlier.

“I came here looking for you.  Your bed is so comfortable and empty.  Why don’t you come share it with me?”

“How did you get in my house?  Who are you?”

Like last time, she hung up without giving me any answers.

So I ran home, eager to confront this female intruder and find out just what was going on.  When I got there, the place was empty again.  There was, however, a note on my refrigerator. 

            Can’t stick around.

            Maybe we should do this at my place instead.

            Come to the Dolphin Motel in thirty minutes.

            Kiko

            P.S.  I borrowed your wife’s shoes.  Hope she won’t mind.

There was a key taped to the note.  I put it in my pocket and surveyed the apartment to see if anything was out of place.  It looked like Kiko had eaten some of my cucumber slices, but other than that everything was normal.  I got the directory out and called the night manager of the Dolphin Motel for directions.

It was only five blocks away, which was pretty convenient.  I took deep, nicotine-filled breaths as I walked.  Down the road, a streetlight flickered.  In a few hours, it would be dawn.

The Dolphin Motel was probably the dumpiest building I’d ever seen.  There was a thick layer of grime that seemed to exude from the façade of the building, penetrating my clothes, my skin, even my personality.  I scanned the lot, looking for room 206, the number on my key.  I found it and twisted the key in the lock.

“Don’t turn on the light,” she said.

In the darkness, I could make out a body underneath the sheet.  Light from the open door lit up a patch of flesh, but it was hard to see which body part it might be.  It could have been a thigh.

I closed the door behind me and stepped towards the bed.  “Where is my wife?  You have to tell me where she is.”

I could tell even in the scant light that her body was perfectly proportioned.  She rose from the bed and stood in front of me, running her fingertips over my chest.  “There will be plenty of time for explanations later,” she said.

She kissed me and started rubbing the bulge in my pants.  This went on for about three minutes, until the mood was shattered by someone pounding on the door.

“You can’t be here!  You have to hide!”  She sounded panicked as she said this.

She shoved me into the bathroom, into the tub.  She left the door cracked, maybe so it wouldn’t look suspicious.  I couldn’t hear anything she said, but the gruff-sounding male voice came through loud and clear.

“So what’s your count for the night?”

This was followed by a short pause.

“Alright, here’s your cut.”

After that, another pause.

“Yeah, yeah, We’ll leave in a minute.  First I have to piss.  Go wait in the car.”

There were heavy footsteps tromping in my direction, and the door flew open.  I heard heavy breathing through the purple shower curtain.  I held by breath as I crouched down, trying to be as small and silent as possible. 

There was an unzipping noise, followed by the watery splashing that a hard stream of urine makes when sprayed into the middle of the bowl.  He whistled ‘If I Only Had a Brain’, and I found myself wishing I’d had enough brains to not be in this situation in the first place.

I counted the seconds while he pissed and it lasted more than a minute.  After that I gave up counting while I tried to stifle a sneeze.  Sneezing is maybe the second most wonderful feeling of release, but it seems like it only happens at the most inopportune times.

But I didn’t sneeze.  I heard a flushing sound, followed by the light going out, and then there were footsteps and a door slam as he left the motel room.  He didn’t even wash his hands.

I crept out the front the door and back into the street.  I’d only gone a few feet when I felt the fist come crashing into my face hard.

“Next time, don’t leave the key in the lock.” He said.

Collapsing to my knees, I saw the girl in a grey car.  Her head was turned so I couldn’t see her face, just her shoulder-length dark brown hair.

“How do you know I’m not a customer?” I asked.

The reply was an elbow coming down hard on the back of my head.

When I regained consciousness, I was in my own bed.  It was morning, and my head was kind of sore, but I didn’t think I was bleeding.  I felt someone clinging to my arm, asleep.  It was Haruko.  Maybe it was just a dream, I thought as I got up to brush my teeth.

I noticed her dainty little feet poking out from the edge of the blanket, the bottoms black with dirt.

(c) 2003  J Baugher