After dark

5

Mari and Kaoru walk down a deserted back street.

Kaoru is seeing Mari somewhere. Mari has her navy blue Boston Red Sox cap pulled down low. In the cap, she looks like a boy—which is probably why she always has it with her.

“Man, am I glad you were there,” Kaoru says. “I didn’t know what the hell was going on.”

They descend the same stairway shortcut they climbed on the way to the hotel.

“Hey, let’s stop off at a place I know—if you’ve got the time,” Kaoru says.

“Place?”

“I could really use a nice cold beer. How about you?”

“I can’t drink.”

“So have some juice or something. What the hell, you’ve gotta be some place killing time till morning.”


They are seated at the counter of a small bar, the only customers. An old Ben Webster record is playing. “My Ideal.” From the fifties. Some forty or fifty old-style LPs are lined up on a shelf. Kaoru is drinking draft beer from a tall, thin glass. In front of Mari sits a glass of Perrier with lime juice. Behind the bar, the aging bartender is involved in cracking ice.

“She was pretty, though, wasn’t she?” Mari says.

“That Chinese girl?”

“Yeah.”

“I suppose so. But she won’t be pretty for long, living like that. She’ll get old and ugly overnight. I’ve seen tons of them.”

“She’s nineteen—like me.”

“Okay,” Kaoru says, munching on a few nuts. “But age doesn’t matter. That kind of work takes a lot out of you. You’ve gotta have stainless-steel nerves. Otherwise you start shootin’ up, and you’re finished.”

Mari says nothing.

“You a college kid?”

“Uh-huh. I’m doing Chinese at the University of Foreign Studies.”

“University of Foreign Studies, huh? What’re ya gonna do after you graduate?”

“If possible, I’d like to be a freelance translator or interpreter. I don’t think I’m suited to a nine-to-five.”

“Smart girl.”

“Not really. From the time I was little, though, my parents always told me I’d better study hard, because I’m too ugly for anything else.”

Kaoru looks at Mari with narrowed eyes. “You’re plenty damn cute. It’s true: I’m not just saying it to make you feel good. Let ’em get a load of me if they wanna see ugly.”

Mari gave an uncomfortable little shrug. “My sister’s older than me and she is just amazing to look at. As long as I can remember they always compared me to her, like, ‘How can two sisters be so different?’ It’s true: I don’t stand a chance if you compare me to her. I’m little, my boobs are small, my hair’s kinky, my mouth is too big, and I’m nearsighted and astigmatic.”

Kaoru laughs. “People usually call stuff like that ‘individuality.’”

“Yeah, but it’s not easy to think that way if people have been telling you you’re ugly from the time you’re little.”

“So you studied hard?”

“Yeah, pretty much. But I never liked the competition for grades. Plus I wasn’t good at sports and I couldn’t make friends, so the other kids kind of bullied me, and by the time I got to the third grade I couldn’t go to school anymore.”

“You mean, like a real phobia?” Kaoru asks.

“Uh-huh. I hated school so much, I’d throw up my breakfast and have terrible stomachaches and stuff.”

“Wow. I had awful grades, but I didn’t mind school all that much. If there was somebody I didn’t like, I’d just beat the crap out of them.”

Mari smiles. “I wish I could have done that…”

“Never mind. It’s nothing to be proud of…So then what happened?”

“Well, in Yokohama there was this school for Chinese kids. I had a friend in the neighborhood who went there. Half the classes were in Chinese, but they didn’t go crazy over grades like in the Japanese schools, and my friend was there, so I was willing to go. My parents were against it, of course, but there was no other way they could get me to go to school.”

“You were a stubborn little thing, I bet.”

“Maybe so,” Mari says.

“So this Chinese school let Japanese kids in?”

“Uh-huh. They didn’t have any special requirements or anything.”

“But you probably didn’t know any Chinese then?”

“None at all. But I was young, and my friend helped me, so I learned right away. It was good: people weren’t so driven. I stayed there all through middle school and high school. My parents weren’t too happy about it, though. They wanted me to go to some famous prep school and become a doctor or a lawyer or something. They had our roles picked out for us: the elder sister, Snow White; the younger sister, a little genius.”

“Your sister is that good-looking?”

Mari nods and takes a sip of her Perrier. “She was already modeling for magazines in middle school. You know, those magazines for teenage girls.”

“Wow,” Kaoru says. “It must be tough having such a gorgeous elder sister. But anyhow, to change the subject, what’s a girl like you doing hanging out all night in a place like this?”

“A girl like me?”

“You know what I mean…Anybody can see you’re a respectable sort of girl.”

“I just didn’t want to go home.”

“You had a fight with your family?”

Mari shakes her head. “No, that’s not it. I just wanted to be alone for a while someplace other than my house. Until morning.”

“Have you done this kind of thing before?”

Mari keeps silent.

Kaoru says, “I guess it’s none of my business, but to tell you the truth, this is not the kind of neighborhood where respectable girls ought to be spending the night. It’s got some pretty dangerous characters hanging around. I’ve had a few scary brushes myself. Between the time the last train leaves and the first train arrives, the place changes: it’s not the same as in daytime.”

Mari picks up her Boston Red Sox hat from the bar and begins fiddling with the visor, thinking. Eventually, she sweeps the thought away and says, gently but firmly, “Sorry, do you mind if we talk about something else?”

Kaoru grabs a few peanuts and pops them into her mouth. “No, that’s fine,” she says. “Let’s talk about something else.”

Mari pulls a pack of Camel Filters from her jacket pocket and lights one with a Bic.

“Hey, you smoke!” exclaims Kaoru.

“Once in a while.”

“Tell you the truth, it doesn’t become you.”

Mari reddens but manages a slightly awkward smile.

“Mind if I have one?” Kaoru asks.

“Sure.”

Kaoru puts a Camel in her mouth and lights it with Mari’s Bic. She does, in fact, look much more natural than Mari smoking.

“Got a boyfriend?”

Mari gives her head a little shake. “I’m not much interested in boys at the moment.”

“You like girls better?”

“Not really. I don’t know.”

Kaoru puffs on her cigarette and listens to music. A hint of fatigue shows on her face now that she is allowing herself to relax.

Mari says, “You know, I’ve been wanting to ask you. Why do you call your hotel Alphaville?”

“Hmm, I wonder. The boss probably named it. All love hos have these crazy names. I mean, they’re just for men and women to come and do their stuff. All you need is a bed and a bathtub. Nobody gives a damn about the name as long as it sounds like a love ho. Why do you ask?”

“Alphaville is the title of one of my favorite movies. Jean-Luc Godard.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Yeah, it’s really old. From the sixties.”

“That’s maybe where they got it. I’ll ask the boss next time I see him. What does it mean, though—‘Alphaville’?”

“It’s the name of an imaginary city of the near future,” Mari says. “Somewhere in the Milky Way.”

“Oh, science fiction. Like Star Wars?”

“No, it’s not at all like Star Wars. No special effects, no action. It’s more conceptual. Black-and-white, lots of dialogue, they show it in art theaters…”

“Whaddya mean, ‘conceptual’?”

“Well, for example, if you cry in Alphaville, they arrest you and execute you in public.”

“Why?”

“’Cause in Alphaville, you’re not allowed to have deep feelings. So there’s nothing like love. No contradictions, no irony. They do everything according to numerical formulas.”

Kaoru wrinkles her brow. “‘Irony’?”

“Irony means taking an objective or inverted view of oneself or of someone belonging to oneself and discovering oddness in that.”

Kaoru thinks for a moment about Mari’s explanation. “I don’t really get it,” she says. “But tell me: is there sex in this Alphaville place?”

“Yes, there is sex in Alphaville.”

“Sex that doesn’t need love or irony.”

“Right.”

Kaoru gives a hearty laugh. “So, come to think of it, Alphaville may be the perfect name for a love ho.”

A well-dressed, middle-aged man of small stature comes in and sits at the end of the bar. He orders a cocktail and starts a hushed conversation with the bartender. He seems to be a regular, sitting in his usual seat and ordering his usual drink. He is one of those unidentifiable people who inhabit the city at night.

Mari asks Kaoru, “You said you used to be a professional wrestler?”

“Yeah, for a long time. I was always on the big side, and a good fighter, so they scouted me in high school. I went straight into the ring, and played bad girls the whole time with this crazy blond hair and shaved-off eyebrows and a red scorpion tattoo on my shoulder. I was on TV sometimes, too. I had matches in Hong Kong and Taiwan and stuff, and a kind of local fan club—a small one. I guess you don’t watch lady wrestlers?”

“I never have.”

“Yeah, well, that’s one hell of a way to make a living, too. I hurt my back and retired when I was twenty-nine. I was a wild woman in the ring, so something like that was bound to happen. I was tough, but everything has its limits. With me, it’s a personality thing. I don’t know how to do things halfway. I guess I’m a crowd pleaser. They’d start roaring and I’d go crazy and do way more than I needed to. So now I get this twinge in my back whenever we get a few days of rain. Once that gets started, I can’t do a thing but lay down all day. I’m a mess.”

Kaoru turned her head until the bones in her neck cracked.

“When I was popular I used to pull in the money and I had people crawling all over me, but once I quit there was nothing left. Zip. Where’d all the money go? Well, I built a house for my parents back in Yamagata, so I was a good girl as far as that goes, but the rest went to pay off my younger brother’s gambling debts or got used up by relatives I hardly knew, or disappeared into fishy investments that some bank guy came along with. Once that happened, people didn’t wanna have anything to do with me. I felt bad, like, what the hell have I been doing with myself the past ten years? I’m getting ready to turn thirty and I’m falling apart and I’ve got nothing in the bank. So I’m wondering what I’m gonna do for the rest of my life when somebody in my fan club puts me in touch with the boss of this house and he says, ‘Why not become a manager of a love ho?’ Manager? Hell, you can see I’m more like a bouncer or bodyguard.”

Kaoru drinks what is left of her beer. Then she looks at her watch.

“Don’t you have to get back to work?” Mari asks.

“In a love ho, this is the time you can take it easy. The trains aren’t running anymore, so most of the customers now are gonna stay the night, and nothing much will happen till the morning. I guess you can say I’m on duty, but nobody’s gonna give me a hard time for drinking a beer.”

“So you work all night and then go home?”

“Well, I’ve got an apartment I can go back to, but there’s nothing for me to do there, nobody waiting for me. I spend more nights in the hotel’s back room and just start work when I get up. What’re you gonna do now?”

“Just kill time reading a book somewhere.”

“Y’know, you can stay in our place if you don’t mind. We can put you up in one of the empty rooms—we’ve got a few tonight. It’s a little sad to spend a night alone in a love ho, but it’s great for sleeping. Beds are one thing we’ve got plenty of.”

Mari gives a little nod, but her mind is made up. “Thanks, but I can manage by myself.”

“Okay, if you say so.”

“Is Takahashi practicing somewhere nearby? His band, I mean.”

“Oh yeah, Takahashi. They’ll be wailin’ away all night in the basement. The building’s right down the street. Wanna go have a peek? They’re noisy as hell, though.”

“No, that’s okay. I was just curious.”

“Oh, okay. He’s a nice kid. He’s gonna be something someday. He looks kinda goofy, but he’s surprisingly solid underneath. Not bad at all.”

“How did you get to know him?”

Kaoru purses her lips out of shape. “Now that is an interesting story, but you’d better get it straight from him instead of from me.”

Kaoru pays the bill.

“Mari, aren’t your folks gonna get mad at you for staying out all night?”

“They think I’m staying at a friend’s house. My parents don’t worry that much about me, whatever I do.”

“I’ll bet they think they can leave you alone because you’ve really got it together.”

Mari does not respond to this remark.

“But maybe sometimes you don’t really have it together,” Kaoru says.

Mari gives her a slight frown. “What makes you think that?”

“It’s not a question of what I think. It’s part of being nineteen years old. I used to be nineteen myself once. I know what it’s like.”

Mari looks at Kaoru. She starts to say something, but decides she can’t make it come out right, changes her mind.

Kaoru says, “The Skylark is near here. I’ll walk you there. The boss is a buddy of mine, so I’m gonna ask him to take care of you. He’ll let you stay there till morning. Okay?”

Mari nods. The record ends, the automatic turntable lifts the needle, and the tone arm drops onto its rest. The bartender approaches the player to change records. He carefully lifts the platter and slips it into its jacket. Then he takes out the next record, examines its surface under a light, and sets it on the turntable. He presses a button and the needle descends to the record. Faint scratching. Then Duke Ellington’s “Sophisticated Lady” begins to play. Harry Carney’s languorous bass clarinet performs solo. The bartender’s unhurried movements give the place its own special time flow.

Mari asks the bartender, “Don’t you ever play anything but LPs?”

“I don’t like CDs,” he replies.

“Why not?”

“They’re too shiny.”

Kaoru butts in to ask the bartender: “Are you a crow?”

“But look at all the time it takes to change LPs,” Mari says.

The bartender laughs. “Look, it’s the middle of the night. There won’t be any trains running till morning. What’s the hurry?”

Kaoru cautions Mari, “Remember, this fella’s a little on the weird side.”

“It’s true, though: time moves in its own special way in the middle of the night,” the bartender says, loudly striking a book match and lighting a cigarette. “You can’t fight it.”

“My uncle used to have lots of LPs,” Mari says. “Mostly jazz records. He could never get himself to like the sound of CDs. He used to play his stuff for me when I went over there. I was too young to understand the music, but I always liked the smell of old record jackets and the sound of the needle landing in the grooves.”

The bartender nods without speaking.

“I learned about Jean-Luc Godard’s movies from that same uncle, too,” Mari says to Kaoru.

“So, you and your uncle were kinda on the same wavelength, huh?” asks Kaoru.

“Pretty much,” Mari says. “He was a professor, but he was kind of a playboy, too. He died all of a sudden three years ago from a heart condition.”

The bartender says to Mari, “Stop in any time you like. I open the place at seven every night. Except Sundays.”

Mari thanks him and from the counter she picks up a book of the bar’s matches, which she stuffs into her jacket pocket. She climbs down from the stool. The sound of the needle tracing the record groove. The languorous, sensual music of Duke Ellington. Music for the middle of the night.

image

The Skylark. Big neon sign. Bright seating area visible through the window. Equally bright laughter from the youthful group of men and women—college students, likely—seated at a large table. This place is far livelier than the Denny’s. The deepest darkness of the nighttime streets is unable to penetrate here.

Mari is washing her hands in the Skylark restroom. She is no longer wearing her hat—or her glasses. From a ceiling speaker at low volume an old hit song by the Pet Shop Boys is playing: “Jealousy.” Mari’s big shoulder bag sits by the sink. She washes her hands with great care, using liquid soap from the dispenser. She appears to be washing off a sticky substance that clings to the spaces between her fingers. Every now and then she looks up at her face in the mirror. She turns off the water, examines all ten fingers under the light, and rubs them dry with a paper towel. She then leans close to the mirror and stares at the reflection of her face as if she expects something to happen. She doesn’t want to miss the slightest change. But nothing happens. She rests her hands on the sink, closes her eyes, begins counting, and then opens her eyes again. Again she examines her face in detail, but still there is no sign of change.

She straightens her bangs and rearranges the hood of the parka under her varsity jacket. Then, as if urging herself on, she bites her lip and nods at herself several times. The Mari in the mirror also bites her lip and nods several times. She hangs the bag on her shoulder and walks out of the restroom. The door closes.

Our viewpoint camera lingers in here for a while, observing the restroom. Mari is no longer here. Neither is anyone else. Music continues to play from the ceiling speaker. A Hall and Oates song now: “I Can’t Go for That.” A closer look reveals that Mari’s image is still reflected in the mirror over the sink. The Mari in the mirror is looking from her side into this side. Her somber gaze seems to be expecting some kind of occurrence. But there is no one on this side. Only her image is left in the Skylark’s restroom mirror.

The room begins to darken. In the deepening darkness, “I Can’t Go for That” continues to play.