PRIL 21

GOTANDA: KT (?), ¥15,000

Rain since morning. I left work at the usual time and headed toward the Shimbashi Station entrance to the Ginza Subway Line. The man ahead of me kept glancing back vigorously over his shoulder as he walked. I assumed he was trying to spot a cab. The rain bouncing off his umbrella splashed onto the front of my Burberry trench coat, causing it to stain. I fumbled angrily through my purse, looking for my handkerchief. I pulled out the one I’d stuffed in my bag yesterday and patted busily at the raindrops. The rain in Shinibashi is gray and stains whatever it hits. I didn’t want to have to pay for dry cleaning. I quietly cursed the man as he climbed into his cab. “Hey, asshole, watch what you’re doing!” But as I did so I recalled the vibrant way the rain had bounced off his umbrella, and that led me to think about how strong men are in general. I was seized with a feeling of desire, soon to be followed by disgust. Desire and disgust. These two conflicting emotions always accompanied my thoughts of men.

The Ginza Line. I hate the orange color of the train. I hate the gritty wind that whips through the tunnels. I hate the screech of the wheels. I hate the smell. Usually I wear earplugs so I can avoid the sounds, but there’s not much I can do to avoid the smell. And it’s always worse on rainy days. It’s not just the smell of dirt. There’s the smell of people: of perfume and hair tonic, of breath and age, sports pages and makeup and menstruating women. People are the worst. There are the disagreeable salary men and the exhausted office ladies. I can’t stand any of them. There aren’t very many high-class men out there who catch my attention. And even if they did, it wouldn’t be long before they’d do something to make me change my opinion of them as well. There’s one more reason I hate the subway. It’s what links me to my firm. The instant I step down into the subway and head toward the Ginza Line, I feel as if I’m being pulled into a dark subterranean world, a world lurking beneath the asphalt.

As luck would have it, I was able to get a seat at Akasaka-mitsuke. I peered over at the documents the man sitting next to me was reading. Was he in my line of work? Which company does he work for? How did his company rank? He must have felt my gaze, because he folded the page he was reading so I could no longer see it.

At my office I am surrounded by papers. The stacks piled on my desk form a veritable wall all the way around me and I don’t let people peek at my desk while I’m working. I sit there hidden behind the wall of paper, earplugs in place, lost in my work. A pile of white pages stretches in front of my eyes, and to my left and right are other piles. I sort them carefully so they won’t tumble over. But they’re stacked higher than my head. I want them to grow so high they’ll brush the ceiling and cover up the fluorescent bulbs. Fluorescent lights make me look so pale—I have no choice but to wear bright red lipstick when I’m at work. It’s the only way to counteract the washed-out look. Then, to balance out the lipstick I have to wear blue eye shadow. Since that makes my eyes and lips stand out too starkly, I draw my eyebrows in with a dark pencil; if I don’t I won’t look balanced, and if things aren’t balanced it is very difficult—if not impossible—to live in this country of ours. That’s why I feel both desire and disgust for men and both loyalty and betrayal for the firm I work for. Pride and phobia, it’s a quagmire. If there were no dirt, there would be no reason for pride. If we had no pride, we’d just walk around with our feet in the mud. One requires the other. That’s what a human being such as myself needs to survive.

Dear Ms. Sat,

All the noise you make is annoying. Please do everyone a favor and try to be a little quieter when you’re working. You are inconveniencing others in the office.

This letter was on top of my desk waiting for me when I got in this morning. It had been typed on a computer, but I couldn’t care less who wrote it. I snatched it up and walked to the office manager’s desk, waving the paper noisily as I went.

The office manager had graduated from the economics department of Tokyo University. He was forty-six. He’d married another woman in the firm, who had graduated from junior college, and they had two children. The manager had the tendency to squash whatever achievements other men made and to steal the successes women attained. Earlier, he had ordered me to revise a report I had written. Then he stole my original thesis and represented it as his own work: “Avoiding Risks Related to the Cost of Construction.” This kind of misappropriation was an everyday occurrence with the research office manager, and the only way I could succeed was to learn to outmaneuver him. For that reason, I had to try to protect my spirit, to keep things in balance, and accent my most impressive abilities. That was the only way I was going to get to a clear understanding of the true meaning of things. I had to remain firm and concentrate.

“Excuse me, but I just found this note on my desk. I’d like to know what you intend to do about it,” I said to him.

The office manager took out his metal-framed reading glasses and put them on. As he slowly read over the note, a sardonic smirk rose to his lips. Did he think I wouldn’t notice?

“What do you expect me to do? It looks like a private matter to me,” he said, scrutinizing the clothes I was wearing. Today I had on a polyester print blouse and a tight navy-blue skirt accessorized with a long metal chain. I had worn the same outfit yesterday, the day before yesterday, and the day before that.

“So you might think. But private matters influence the workplace environment,” I told him.

“I wonder.”

“Well, I’d like some kind of evidence that the noise I make really is annoying and, moreover, just what it takes to be annoying.”

“Evidence?”

The office manager glanced at my desk with a perplexed look. My desk was piled high with papers. Next to it sat Kikuko Kamei. Kamei was staring at her computer monitor, her fingers flying feverishly over the keyboard. After a minor restructuring last year, all the office personnel who were in managerial positions got their own computers. Of course, I was the assistant office manager, so I was given one. But the rank-and-file Kamei did not. Undeterred, she proudly came to work each day with her own laptop. She wore a different outfit every day as well. At some point one of my colleagues said to me, “So, Ms. Sat, why don’t you wear a different dress to work every day like Ms. Kamei does? It would give us all more to enjoy on the job.” To that I had replied tartly, “Yeah? Well, are you going to increase my salary so I can go out and buy a new outfit for every day of the year?”

“Ms. Kamei, sorry to bother you but would you mind coming here for a minute?” the office manager said. Kamei looked at the two of us. The color of her face changed as she hurried to our side. Her high heels clicked noisily, which caused all the other people working at their desks to look up in surprise. I could tell that she had intentionally made the noise.

“What can I do for you?” Kamei asked, as she looked from the office manager to me, clearly comparing us as she did. Kamei was thirty-two, five years younger than I. Five years but a world apart. She’d joined the company after the enactment of new equal-employment laws. A graduate of Tokyo University Law School, she was extremely conceited. And to top it off, she wore flashy clothes. I’d heard that she spent over half her salary on them. She still lived at home, and since her father had been a bureaucrat of some sort and was still in good health, she was affluent. I, on the other hand, had a mother who was a full-time housewife, and I had had to work to provide for her and my sister once my father died. How was I supposed to have money to spend on clothes?

“I have a question to ask you,” the office manager began. “Does the noise that Ms. Sat makes disturb the others around her? I realize this is an awkward question and I apologize, but your desk is right next to hers, so I figured you’d know.”

The office manager hid the letter I’d received, and spoke to Kamei with feigned nonchalance. Kamei glanced over at me and took a deep breath.

“Well, I’m busy with my typing so I imagine I create a lot of noise myself. I get wrapped up in what I’m doing and don’t really pay much attention to the racket I make.”

“I’m not asking about the noise you make, Ms. Kamei. I’m asking about Ms. Sat.”

“Oh.” Kamei acted embarrassed, but I spotted a glimmer of nastiness beneath her mask.

“Well…Ms. Sat always uses earplugs, so I don’t think she really notices the noise she makes. I mean, it’s small things, like when she puts her coffee mug down or rifles through her papers. And I guess you could say she bangs the drawers a lot when she opens and closes them. But it’s not really a problem for me. I mean, I just mention this because you asked.”

After she said that, Kamei turned to me and said softly, “I’m sorry.”

“Well, is it loud enough that we should ask Ms. Sat to be more careful in the future?”

“Oh, no…I didn’t mean…” Kamei vigorously denied anything. “It’s just that you asked me—I suppose because my desk is next to hers—so I answered. That’s all. I don’t think you should make a big deal out of it.”

The office manager turned to me.

“Okay? Are you satisfied? I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”

The office manager always behaved this way. He never took responsibility for the problems that came his way but always tried to pass them along to someone else. Kamei looked at him disconcertedly.

“Excuse me, sir, but why did you call me over? What does this have to do with me? I really don’t understand.”

“Well, you wrote it, didn’t you?” I was practically shouting at her.

Kamei pursed her lips together in shock, as if she had no idea what I was talking about. She really did a good job acting the fool. The office manager turned to me and raised his hand as if to try to calm me down.

“Look, this is a matter of personal sensitivities. A person with tightly honed sensitivities wrote this, don’t you imagine? Let’s just leave it at that. Don’t make it worse than it is.”

The office manager picked up the phone on his desk and started dialing as if he had just remembered something he needed to do. Acting as if she had no idea what was going on, Kamei returned to her desk, her head hanging low. I couldn’t bear the thought of going back to my desk and sitting next to her, so I headed off to get some coffee.

The part-timer in the filing department and our office assistant were already in the kitchen preparing tea for a horde of people. The part-timer was a freelancer and the assistant had been sent over from a temp agency. Both had dyed their hair a brassy brown, cut short, with bangs pinned back off their foreheads. Both of them looked uncomfortable when they saw me enter, so I knew they’d been bad-mouthing me. I pulled a clean coffee cup off the counter and asked, “Is there any hot water?”

“Yes.” The part-timer pointed to the thermos. “We just poured it in the pot.”

I poured hot water over the instant coffee I had just purchased. The part-timer and the assistant stopped what they had been doing and watched me. They looked annoyed. I spilled some of the hot water on the counter, but I just left it there and returned to my desk. Kamei looked up and turned to me when I walked by.

“Ms. Sat, please don’t take offense at what I said earlier. I think I must be pretty noisy too.”

I said nothing in reply, retreating behind my mountain of papers. I was on my fourth cup of coffee that day. I left each cup on my desk when I was finished with them, making space for the empty mugs. Each and every one of them had red lipstick stains on the rims. I figured I could carry them all back to the beverage counter when I was ready to leave for the day. That made the most sense to me. Kamei began to tap away softly at her keyboard. The sound drilled its way into my head. She may have been pretty, and she may have graduated from Tokyo University, but she couldn’t do what I did—and that filled me with a sense of superiority. What would she say, I wondered, if she saw the large pack of condoms I had in my purse? That thought alone gave me pleasure.

The subway emerged from underground and headed into Shibuya Station. It was the moment of the day I loved best: rising from deep underground to the surface. It gives me such an immense feeling of relief, liberation. Ahh. From here I head into the night streets, right smack into a world where Kamei would never tread, a world before which the part-timer and the assistant would flinch in fear. A world the office manager could not even imagine.

I reached the call girl agency just before seven o’clock. The office was in a studio apartment among the shops lining Dogenzaka Avenue. It consisted of a tiny kitchen, a toilet, and a minuscule shower. There was a sofa in the ten-mat carpeted room, as well as a television. The office desk, where a man sat answering the phones, was off in the corner. The man shook his bleached-blond head in boredom and thumbed through a weekly magazine. He dressed like a teenager, but he was in his thirties. There were already about ten girls in the room, watching TV and waiting for phone calls. Some of the girls played with their Game Boys or looked through magazines. It was rainy tonight, and when it rains business is always slow. Everyone was settling in for a long wait.

This is where I transform from Kazue Sat into Yuri, my street name. I took the name from the Yuriko I knew in high school, a beautiful but dim-witted girl. I sat on the floor and spread the economic newspaper that I hadn’t yet read over the glass-topped coffee table.

“Hey! Who left a wet umbrella here? You’re getting everyone’s shoes wet!”

A woman in a sloppy gray sweatshirt, her hair in a braid, shouted angrily. She wasn’t wearing any makeup and her face—lacking any evidence of eyebrows—looked freakish. Even so, once she put on her makeup, she was a reasonably attractive woman so she got lots of requests—which made her bossy and smug. I apologized and got up. I’d forgotten that I needed to leave my umbrella in the hallway out front. Once she knew I was the culprit, the Braid began to make a fuss, hoping to earn a little sympathy from the man operating the telephones.

“You left your umbrella right on top of my shoes, and now they’re so wet—even on the inside—that I can’t possibly wear them. You need to pay me for this, don’t you think?”

I glared at her, folded my umbrella up, and stepped out to leave it in the hallway. There was a blue plastic bucket by the door where everyone else had put their umbrellas; I stuck mine in as well. To get revenge for her outburst, I decided to take a bigger, nicer umbrella out of the bucket on my way out, pretending to do so by mistake. When I went back inside the office, the Braid was still giving me sour looks.

“You know, I don’t know who you think you are, rustling your stupid newspaper when you can see the rest of us are trying to watch television. And why do you think you can spread your stuff out all over the table here? Other people use the same space, you know. Try being a little considerate. You can’t go around acting like you’re the only one here. And the same goes for the jobs. You’ve got to take your turn.”

The girls here were nothing like Kamei; they said just what they thought. I nodded begrudgingly. But it was clear the Braid was jealous of me. She had some inkling of the fact that I had a good education and a job in a top-notch firm. That’s right, you little bitch, by day I have an honest job. I graduated from Q University, and I am able to write intelligent and probing essays. In short, I’m nothing like you. Well, I could tell myself that all day long, but at night, on the street, a woman has only one thing going for her. And once she’s past thirty-five, she can’t help but despair over the fact that she is losing it. Men have excessive demands. They want a woman to be educated and to have a proper upbringing and a pretty face, and they want her to have both a submissive character and a taste for sex. They want it all. It is difficult to meet those demands and to live in a world where demands like this take precedence. No, more than that, it’s ridiculous even to expect that one could. And yet women have no choice but to try to manage, searching as they go for some redeeming value to their lives. Well, my greatest value was my ability to achieve a balance—and to earn money.

The phone rang. I turned to look hopefully at the dispatch operator. I wanted him to pass me the job. But he pointed to the Braid. She went to the vanity in the corner, pulled out her makeup kit, and began putting on her face. The other women continued watching television or reading their magazines, hoping they’d be the next to go. I started to eat the food I’d bought earlier at the convenience store, pretending I didn’t care. I returned to reading the newspaper. The Braid let her hair down and wiggled into a tight red minidress. Her legs were straight but heavy and her hips were wide. What a pig. I looked away. I hate fat people.

It was nearly ten o’clock, and the phone still had not rung again. The Braid had long since returned. She sprawled out on the floor, seemingly exhausted, and watched television. The mood suffusing the apartment was one of resignation. I was depressed, figuring it was now too late for much of anything. And then the phone rang. Everyone perked up their ears and looked over at the dispatcher. He had a troubled look on his face as he pushed the hold button on the phone.

“It’s a request to visit a private residence. An apartment in Gotanda that doesn’t have a bath. Do I have anyone who’ll go?”

A woman with a face like a horse whose only redeeming feature was her youth lit a cigarette and said, “I’m sorry, but I draw the line at men who don’t have their own bathing facilities.”

The Braid ripped into a bag of chips and spoke in agreement. “What a jerk. If a man doesn’t have a bath in his apartment, he’s got no business calling for a girl to visit him there.”

A number of angry voices concurred here and there.

“Okay then, I guess I’ll have to tell him no.” The dispatcher glanced over at me as he spoke.

I stood up. “I’ll go.”

“Will you, Yuri? That’s great. I’ll make the arrangements.”

The dispatcher looked relieved, but after he told the man on the other end of the phone okay, I noticed that he was smirking to himself. I realized that he might have been grateful to me for my willingness from a business point of view, but from a personal point of view it was clear that he despised me.

I pulled out my compact and touched up my makeup. The other women looked at me in disgust. I knew they were thinking, My, my, you certainly pay a lot of visits on men without bathrooms!

Don’t be so squeamish, girls, I wanted to say. You’re too soft. If you do business with a man who has a handicap like that, you can turn it to benefit yourself. Serve him shorter and charge him more for the inconvenience. Laugh at me now, but you wait and see what it’s like when you’re thirty-seven. Then you’ll understand. I wasn’t going to let those silly girls get me down.

In three years’ time, I’ll be forty. That’s when I’ll retire from this group. I’ll have to. My time will be up for this line of work. If I can’t get work as a call girl, I’ll market myself as a “mature lover.” Or I’ll start trolling the streets and procure my own customers. And if I can’t stand it, I’ll have to quit all together. But once I’m no longer able to find liberation in my night work, I imagine my day job will fall apart as well. That’s what I fear, but I have to keep on living even so. So my biggest obstacle is my own insecurity. If I can’t keep my balance, I need to harden myself further.

I stepped into the tiny bathroom and changed into a blue miniskirted suit. I’d bought it off the bargain racks at the Tokyu Department Store for ¥8,700. Next I put on a long-haired wig. The hair fell all the way to my waist. Kazue Sat had turned into Yuri. I felt I could do anything. I picked up the slip from the dispatcher with the address and phone number of the client and walked out the door. I searched through the bucket, selecting what was probably the Braid’s long stylish umbrella, got in a cab, and headed toward the man’s apartment in Gotanda.

The apartment was beside the train tracks. I paid the cab fare and made sure to get a receipt. Some agencies have their own cars and drive girls to their customers, but my office has us pay for cabs. Then they reimburse us later.

Mr. Hiroshi Tanaka, Apartment 202, Mizuki Heights. I took the flight of stairs on the outside of the building and knocked on the door to apartment 202.

A man opened the door. “Thanks for coming,” he said.

He was nearly sixty and had the rugged physique of a construction worker. His face was brown from the sun, his body hard. The apartment smelled of mold and cheap liquor. I peered in, quickly scanning the interior. I wanted to be sure there were no other men inside. We didn’t have to take this kind of precaution when we were sent to a specific love hotel. But at a private residence it was important to be careful. A girl I know went to service one man and then had several others show up, one right after the other. She ended up being gang-raped by four men. That meant they only paid once for the price of four. What a ripoff.

“I don’t mean to be rude, but I really expected them to send someone younger.” Tanaka looked me up and down without the slightest hesitation and sighed with audible disappointment. The furniture in his apartment was cheap. How the hell did he expect to get some hot young thing with the pathetic kind of life he lived? I turned to look back at him, my trench coat still wrapped over my shoulders.

“Yeah? I was hoping for a younger client, myself.”

“Well, then, I guess that makes two of us, huh?”

Resigned to his disappointment, Tanaka tried to laugh it off. I looked around the apartment without so much as a smile. “Hardly. I understand you don’t have a bathroom on the premises. Nobody wanted to come over, but I took the call as an act of kindness. You should be grateful.”

My complaint had hit home. Tanaka scratched the side of his face, clearly embarrassed. I had to take precautions to ensure he didn’t try to abscond without paying. The first thing I did in the apartment was call the office to let the dispatcher know I’d arrived and all was well.

“Hello. It’s Yuri. I’m here.”

I put Tanaka on the phone.

“She’ll do. I mean, I don’t have any complaints. I guess I can’t expect too much, without a bath. But next time won’t you send a younger one?”

His gall really pissed me off, but I was used to it, so I didn’t take any real offense. Instead, I took my anger and applied it to my eagerness to get the job done. I wanted to get my money and get out of there. I’d get my revenge by gouging Tanaka a bit on the price.

“What do you do for a living?” I asked.

“Oh, a little of this and a little of that. Mostly construction.”

Well, I work for an architectural firm, you asshole. I’m the assistant manager of the research office, and I make ¥10,000,000 a year. In my heart I screamed this at him. I could feel my anger rising; it was what sustained me. I despised the man. Customers who are passive and weak-willed tend to be a lot of fun even for the prostitute.

“Save the small talk. I’m paying by the hour.” Tanaka looked at his watch as he spoke. He wasted no time spreading out a wafer-thin futon. The quilt he dragged out had been wadded up and looked filthy. I felt my resolve slipping. To bolster my courage I asked curtly, “So did you clean yourself there?”

“I washed, yeah.”

Tanaka pointed to the sink.

“Just a little bit ago, I washed it real good, so how about sucking it some?”

“I only do straight-up sex,” I said brusquely, as I fished a condom out of my purse. “Here, put this on.”

“I can’t get it up just like that,” Tanaka mumbled uneasily.

“Well, I get paid whether you do or not.”

“You’re a cold bitch.”

I took off my trench coat and folded in neatly. The rain marks were still there on the front. I put some spit on my finger and tried to rub them out.

“Hey, why don’t you stand there and take your clothes off? Give me a striptease.”

Tanaka hoisted his T-shirt over his head and pulled off the workman-type trousers. Men are such pigs, I thought, as I looked at his shriveled sex organ under the mound of white pubic hair. Thank God he was small. I don’t like large men because it always hurts later.

“No, I don’t do that sort of thing,” I reminded him gently. “I’m just here for the main event.”

I hurriedly got out of my underwear and lay down on the thin mattress. Tanaka looked at my naked body and started to rub his penis. Twenty minutes had already passed. I looked at the watch that I’d set beside the bedding. I had one hour and ten minutes to go. But I planned to trick him into shortening that to fifty minutes.

“I’m sorry, but would you mind spreading your legs apart and giving me a look?”

I gave in to Tanaka’s request, slightly. He was so meek and mild, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to indulge him just this much. If I were too cold it could backfire and make him angry. That would be dangerous. But he was a complete stranger, someone I’d never seen before, and for some reason that always allowed me to act more audaciously. It was strange. I’d heard about one prostitute who killed her john in an Ikebukuro hotel. It wasn’t really self-defense, so it was somewhat unusual. But those things happen, now and then. The john had tied her up and was videotaping her. He stuck a knife in front of her face and threatened to kill her. I can well imagine how scared she must have been. I haven’t yet had an experience like that, but you never know when you’re going to end up with some weirdo. It’s scary, but I almost want to have something like that happen, as long as I don’t die. Being scared out of your wits helps affirm that you are alive.

Once Tanaka finally got an erection, he picked up the condom with trembling hands and tried to put it on. It took him forever. I normally help the guy out in those situations, but since Tanaka didn’t have a bath in his apartment, I refused to touch him. Sheathed, Tanaka fell on me and started to squeeze my breasts clumsily.

“That hurts!” I complained.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Tanaka apologized over and over as he tried to stick his penis in me. I was afraid if he didn’t get it in soon he’d lose his erection. I certainly didn’t want to start all over and was beginning to be irritated. So, with little other choice, I grabbed his penis and guided it into place. Finally we got it all the way in. Because he was old, it took him awhile to come, which thoroughly disgusted me. But before long he finished up and then rolled off to lie beside me. He started stroking my hair.

“It’s been a long time for me.”

“Well, then that was good, wasn’t it?”

“God, it’s good to fuck.”

Yeah, well, I do it every night, you old fart. I certainly didn’t want to lie there exchanging pleasantries with Tanaka, so I got up to get dressed. Tanaka, left behind on the futon, looked up at me, disappointed.

“Stay beside me for a while and let’s talk dirty. Isn’t that part of the deal? The whores in the old days always did.”

“What era was that?” I asked, and laughed as I wiped myself off with tissues before stepping back into my underpants. “Just how old are you, mister?”

“I’ve just turned sixty-two.”

To be living such a pathetic life at that age! I looked around his shabby apartment. One room, six mats big. That was it. No bathroom. He had to go down the hall to use the toilet. I sure as hell didn’t want to end my life like this. But then, if my father were still alive, he’d be about the same age, I thought, and I took a closer look at Tanaka’s face. His hair was sprinkled with strands of white. The flesh on his body sagged. When I was in school I suspected that I had a father complex, but that was a long time ago. Here I was with a man the same age that my father would have been.

Suddenly Tanaka was angry. “Don’t laugh at me!” he shouted.

“I’m not laughing at you! What’re you talking about?”

“You are. You’re standing there staring at me like you think I’m stupid or something. I’m the customer, remember? And you’re nothing but a fucking whore. You’re no spring chicken yourself, you know, and standing there naked like that—why, you’re nothing but a bag of bones. I can’t get hard with a body like that. It just pisses me off!”

“I’m sorry. I said I wasn’t making fun of you.” I hurried to finish dressing. No telling what Tanaka might do now that he was mad. At any rate, this was his house. He could easily pull out a knife or who knows what. I had to calm him down. But more than that, I had to get my money.

“Are you leaving already? You’re really pissing me off.”

“Call me again, okay? Business is slow for us, too. I’ll give you an extra treat.”

“Extra? What’d you mean?”

“I’ll go down on you.”

Tanaka started grumbling as he climbed into his briefs. He looked at the clock. There was still more than twenty minutes left. I didn’t care, I wanted to leave.

“You owe me twenty-seven thousand yen.”

“The flyer said twenty-five thousand.”

Tanaka pulled out the flyer and checked it to be sure. He must have needed glasses, because he had to squint his eyes up into a ridiculous grimace to read.

“Didn’t he tell you? If you don’t have a bath in your house, the price goes up.”

“But I washed! I didn’t hear you complaining.”

It was going to be a pain to explain so I just rolled my head to the side in revulsion. Only a minute ago I’d had a strange man’s cock inside me. I wanted to wash myself off. Wasn’t it obvious? Men can’t ever think about anything but themselves.

“It’s expensive,” Tanaka complained.

“All right, then. For you I’ll come down to twenty-six. How’s that?”

“Fine. Hey, wait a minute, there’s still time left.”

“Oh? Do you think you can go again before the twenty minutes is up?”

Tanaka clucked his tongue as he pulled out his wallet. He handed me ¥30,000 and I gave him ¥4,000 in change. I put my shoes on fast—hoping to get out of there before he changed his mind—dashed out the door, and flagged down a cab. I crawled in, and as the cab splashed through the pouring rain I pondered my own bitterness. The pain of being treated like a mere object. And a sense that this pain would turn into pleasure. It would be best if I could just think of myself as a thing. But then my existence at the firm would become a nuisance. There I was Kazue Sat, and not some thing. I had the taxi drop me off some distance from the office and walked the rest of the way through the rain. That cut about ¥200 off the taxi charge. I could have the office reimburse me for double the amount of the taxi receipt that I got on the way over to Tanaka’s place.

I saw the Marlboro Hag at Murayama-ch—in front of the statue of Jiz, the gentle Buddhist bodhisattva, protector of those condemned to hell and all who wander between realms. The Marlboro Hag got her name because she was always wearing a flimsy jacket with a white Marl-boro logo on the back. She was well known around the office. She had to be around sixty years old. Maybe she was a loony, but she always stood next to the Jiz statue and called out to the men who walked past. Because of the rain tonight, her cheap Marlboro jacket was soaked and her black bra showed through underneath. Not a single man presented himself, but she stood there beside the Jiz as always, like some kind of ghost. She would most likely stay on the streets until the day she died. Once you get fired as a call girl, you have no choice but to go out trolling for your own men. As I stared at the Marlboro Hag’s back, I was terrified that a similar fate awaited me in the not-so-distant future.

It was close to twelve o’clock when I got back to the office. Most of the girls, resigned to a lousy take for the evening, had gone home. The only people left in the office were the dispatcher and the Braid. I handed ¥10,000 to the dispatcher and put ¥1,000 in the kitty for snacks and drinks and such. All the girls who’d had customers for the night were required to do this. Thanks to having gotten an extra ¥1,000 out of Tanaka, my contribution to the kitty did not affect my overall take for the evening. I chuckled to myself at the thought. The dispatcher glared at me as I walked by.

“Yuri! I just got a call from your last customer. He says you overcharged him, and he was plenty upset. Did you trick him into believing he had to pay more because he didn’t have a bath?”

“Sorry.”

What a prick! Tanaka’s ugly face floated before my eyes and I found myself growing furious. What a coward! But now the Braid started in on me.

“Did you run off with my umbrella? I’ve had to sit here and wait for you to get back. You can’t just go off and use other people’s things, you know!”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I just borrowed it for a bit.”

“Oh, I’m sorry? That’s not good enough. You did it to get back at me.”

I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I kept repeating my empty apologies until the Braid shrugged her shoulders.

“I’m leaving!” she shouted, as she flounced out of the office. I hurried to straighten up my things, afraid I’d miss the last train.

At Shibuya Station I dashed onto the 12:28 Inokashira Line train bound for Fujimigaoka. At Meidaimae Station I transferred to the Keio Line and got off at Chitose-Karasuyama. I would have to walk another ten minutes before I got home. It had rained all day long and I felt depressed. What the hell was I doing anyway? I came to a stop in the falling rain. I’d been cooped up in the office all evening and only had ¥15,000 to show for it. I persisted because I wanted to save ¥200,000 a week, but at this rate I wasn’t going to meet my goal. I needed eight to nine hundred thousand a month, ten million a year. If I could maintain that rate, I could save up one hundred million yen by the time I turned forty. I enjoyed thinking about my savings, seeing the money multiply before my eyes. I just wanted to reach my goal; then I could enjoy looking at all I’d saved. In a way, saving money meant the same to me now as studying had earlier.