y sister had said she’d call again in the evening. I wanted to get out before she called. I wanted to avoid hearing her depressing voice. What the hell is she doing? I wondered. Drifting from one lousy job to another, searching for the perfect one—as if such a job exists in the first place. Or maybe, just maybe it does—in the form of prostitution! I laugh to myself as I stare into the mirror. If you can do it, be my guest. It’s a job in which the finer points are as good as grasping emptiness. I’ve been a prostitute since I was fifteen years old. I can’t live without men, yet men are my greatest enemies. I’ve been ruined by men. I’m a woman who has destroyed her female self. When my big sister was fifteen years old, she was just an ordinary junior high school student, studying herself silly.

Suddenly I’m struck by an idea. What if she’s still a virgin? The younger sister’s a whore, the older one a virgin. That’s just too much. But now I’m curious. I dial her number.

“Hello? Who is it? Hello? Is that you, Yuriko? Come on, who is it?”

She picked up the minute the phone rang.

“Hello! Hello!” My sister is desperate to find out who is calling; her phone must never ring. Her solitude reverberates through the receiver. I let the telephone drop and convulse with laughter, my sister’s voice still echoing at the other end. I can’t decide if she’s a virgin or a lesbian!

Once I hang up I begin to think about what I’ll wear to the club tonight. My apartment consists of a bedroom, combination living-dining room, and a small kitchen. Not much space. The closet and dresser are combined—I hardly have that many dresses anyway. When I worked in Roppongi at the clubs for foreigners, I had a ton of gorgeous dresses. Valentino and Chanel dresses costing close to a million yen apiece. I must have had clothes worth a fortune. I’d slip into one or another of my beautiful dresses and fasten on a diamond as big as a glass bead without even giving it a second thought. Then I’d step into gold sandals that were too extravagant to wear for walking. I would never wear stockings—for the sake of customers who enjoyed kissing my toes. I’d take a taxi from my apartment. After work I’d set off in a customer’s car to a hotel and from the hotel I’d return home by taxi. My muscles were only used while in bed with a man.

But as I began to fall from that world, my clothes also became the kind of cheap garments you can buy anywhere around here. I went from silk to polyester; from cashmere to wool blends. And now I have no choice but to cover my well-worn legs in bargain-basement stockings—legs that are dimpled with fat that refuses to melt away, no matter how I try to exercise.

What’s changed the most is the quality of my customers. At the first club I worked in, the clients were actors, writers, young self-styled entrepreneurs. Many were at the level of company president or were distinguished foreign VIPs. Then at the next club they were mostly businessmen with no limits on the way they spent their company’s accounts. From there I went to salary men with meager monthly paychecks. At present the customers I have are either weirdos who want wacky women or men without money. By wacky I mean grotesque. In this world there are people who prefer beauty after it’s gone away or the dregs of a prosperity depleted.

With my monstrous beauty and my monstrous desire, I suppose I’ll now become a full-fledged beast. My ghastliness has increased along with my age. I’ve written it any number of times already, but I do not feel lonely. This is the true figure of the woman who was once a beautiful girl. I daresay my sister must take great delight in my decline. That’s why she calls me all the time.

I have more to say about Johnson.

When he came to meet me at Narita International Airport he wore a strained expression—and Masami was right beside him, beaming brightly. What a study in contrasts! Johnson was wearing a dark suit, white shirt, and regimental tie, and he was tapping his lower lip nervously with his index finger. I’d never seen him so attired. Masami was wearing a white linen dress—perhaps to show off her tanned skin and a veritable treasure trove of gold accessories that adorned her ears, neck, wrists, and fingers. The jet-black eyeliner at the corner of her eyes was way too dark. It was hard to tell what kind of expression she wore. Was she being serious or playful? That’s why I started watching Masami when she put on her makeup because depending on how she applied it, I could tell—better than by anything she said—how she was feeling. That afternoon Masami revealed an exaggerated joy.

“Yuriko! What a long time since we saw you last. My, how big you’ve grown!”

Johnson and I exchanged glances. Now fifteen, I’d grown almost eight inches since I was in elementary school. I was five feet seven inches tall and weighed 110 pounds. And I was no longer a virgin. Johnson gave me a light hug. His body trembled slightly.

“It’s so nice to see you again.”

“Thank you so much, Mr. Johnson.”

Johnson had told me to call him Mark, but I preferred Johnson. “Idiot Johnson!”: that’s what my sister had called him angrily just before she hung up on me. Whenever I thought of that I silently whispered in my heart, “God-sent Johnson.” He was my one defense.

“I wonder if your sister’s going to come?”

Masami looked around the airport dubiously. She needn’t have bothered. I hadn’t even told my sister of my arrival time.

“I didn’t have time to call her before I left,” I explained. “Besides, I heard my grandpa wasn’t feeling well.”

“Oh, I almost forgot!” Masami hadn’t even heard what I’d said. “The admissions examination is this afternoon,” she said, squeezing my arm happily. “We have to hurry home. Q Junior High School will accept you under the kikokushijo category, the one for students returning from overseas. It’s going to be really convenient for you to commute to the school from our place—and I’ll get to brag on you for going to a first-rate school like Q. I’m just delighted you got back in time for the exam.”

Q School. That was my sister’s school. I didn’t want to go to a school like that. But Masami—ever the show-off—was determined to get me in. I looked to Johnson for help, but he just shook his head.

“You can put up with that much, at least,” he said.

“Put up with it.” That was the same thing Uncle Karl had said in the cabin that day when he took those pictures. I bit my lip in resignation. Masami led me by the hand and shoved me into the backseat of her flashy Mercedes-Benz. Next to me on the beige leather, I could feel Johnson’s warm thigh pressing against mine. The incident in the cabin. Our secret. My eyes must have danced to have rediscovered the happiness. I waited for the next joy to unfold. Life doesn’t happen according to plan. But we are free to dream.

On the way from the airport, Masami stopped the car to let Johnson out so he could go back to work. I was left in Masami’s hands. She dragged me off to Q Junior High School in Minato Ward. The main building was made of stone and was very old-looking. The buildings flanking it were more modern; the high school was to the right. Without even thinking, I started looking to see if my sister was there. We hadn’t seen each other since we parted in March. It had been more than four months. If I entered Q School, it would surely depress her. I can only imagine how angry she’d be. She’d studied herself silly so she could get into this school, all in order to get away from me. I saw right through her little ruse. When I laughed bitterly, Masami completely misinterpreted my feelings.

“Yuriko-chan, smile! You’re so pretty when you smile. If you smile you’re sure to pass the interview. Well, it’s a paper test, but in name only. I know they’ll want to have you around for a long, long time since you’re so pretty. It was the same when I took my airlines exam. The competition was awful, but the girls with the best smiles were picked.”

I doubted that a flight attendants’ exam and the entry exam for this school were quite comparable. But since arguing wasn’t worth it, I decided it would be easier to go with a sweet little smile. If I was accepted, what then? It would cost more than my father could pay to send me to this school. But then Johnson had agreed to put up half the tuition. Wasn’t I little more than a prostitute then?

There were about ten students taking the exam to enter the school as “returnee students.” All were kids who had been overseas because of their father’s businesses. I was the only half, and I was the worst of the bunch when it came to the exam. I have no passion for school. What’s more, I hardly have the vocabulary for conducting everyday conversations in either English or German.

That night I was so exhausted I ran a fever. Johnson’s house was behind the Nishi-Azabu Tax Office. The room that Masami had prepared for me was on the second floor. The curtains, the bedspread, even the pillows were all done in the same Liberty print fabric, clearly Masami’s taste. I had no interest in interior design and found the whole business overly fussy, but what did I care? The minute I crawled under the covers, I fell into a deep sleep. I woke in the middle of the night, sensing someone’s presence. Johnson was standing by my pillow in a T-shirt and pajama pants.

“Yuriko? How are you feeling?” he asked in a low whisper.

“I’m just really tired.”

Johnson bent his tall frame down and whispered in my ear, “Hurry up and get better. I’ve finally captured you.”

Captured. A woman to be consumed by men. Unless I accepted my fate, I could never be happy. Again, the word freedom floated up in the back of my mind. I was fifte

en years old. And in an instant I had become an old woman.

The next morning, we got the news from Q Junior High that I had been admitted. Masami was beside herself with joy. After she called Johnson at his office to tell him the good news, she turned back to me in great excitement and said, “We need to tell your sister!”

I had to give Masami my grandfather’s phone number. I knew I’d have to meet my sister sooner or later. After all, we were now both in Japan. Even so, I knew my sister hated me. And for my part, I hated her. We looked nothing alike. We were like two sides of a coin. My sister reacted just as I knew she would.

“If by some chance you should run into me at school, don’t you dare say hello. I’m sure you’re very pleased to be getting all this attention. But I’m forced to do everything I can just to survive.”

I too was doing everything I could just to survive. But I had no way to explain this to my sister.

“Well, aren’t you the lucky one,” she said.

“I want to see Grandpa.”

“Well, he doesn’t want to see you. He hates you. He said you have no inspiration. That you don’t have what it takes to go after something with mad intensity.”

“What’s inspiration?”

“You idiot. Your IQ must not even top fifty!”

And so ended my conversation with my sister. When school started after the summer, she pretended not to know me. After I dropped out in my senior year of high school, all ties with the Q School system were cut. And for years I had no opportunities even to see my sister. Yet recently I’ve been getting all these phone calls from her. I’m suspicious of what she has up her sleeve.