I began thinking, how could I break the ice and get even one of these Japanese worker dudes to loosen up and look me in the eye and start spilling his guts so I could collect some clues, figure how they run shit out here in Kyoto? Even though I was a foreigner to them and they were all foreigners to me, I figured there had to be something common among men, besides women—a more neutral thing that could get the conversation started and keep the tempers of men from flaring. A plan was formulating in my mind.
At noon I returned to the schoolyard right between the high school and the college in my sweats and my Brooklyn T-shirt with a basketball in hand. I walked up on the guys who posted up on the rocks during their lunch break. I pushed my ball into one of them, right in his chest, and said, “Konichiwa, play ball!” He looked startled at first. Then a smile came through. He turned to his friends, who were slow to pick up. I walked away and he began to follow me. They began to follow him. I didn’t look back, but I knew they were still behind me because two of the five of them were smoking.
On the court I went right to it, getting the feel of the court and the nonregulation basket. Intentionally, I showed them my skills. They stood on the sideline watching like girls. I walked up to the original one and pushed the ball to him. Then I picked two of his guys for my team, and gestured two of his guys to go to his side. I flagged the extra kid who was smoking a next cigarette, letting him know to move off the court and out the way. Using all hand motions, I checked the ball and we began to play. We were off to a slow start. Once the adrenaline started pumping, they would become more comfortable and the pace would pick up.
In three minutes a couple of females got drawn to us and stood watching. The guy I had tapped originally got pumped up at their arrival. Two minutes later he was out of his shirt. I went easy on them, letting them showcase their rudimentary performance. They played ball like they were keeping count of each step and move they made. It seemed like someone had taught them specific plays and moves and they thought they needed to stick to them like dance steps.
More girls collected. They weren’t rowdy though. They whispered to each other and watched with intense gazes. Two girls sat and opened their bento boxes and ate with their wooden chopsticks. Twenty minutes in, one of the players on the other team threw up the time-out signal and ran to the side, lifting the water bottle out of a girl’s hand and drinking some. Now I knew that he knew her, good.
By the time game one finished, there were twelve girls gathered around the six of us men and the seventh one seated on the sideline chain-smoking. I threw up two fingers so we could run the second game. A player from the other side threw up the X symbol, so I knew he had to leave. I motioned to the smoker, and he jumped up and replaced him. Six dudes in a circle organizing a game, but now the girls had formed a circle outside our circle like they were part of it. The original Japanese guy I chose to get the game started said to me in English, “name?”
I answered, “Mayonaka.” A girl from the outside circle repeated, “Mayonaka?” It was in the form of a question.
“Hai, Mayonaka!” I said confidently. I asked her, “Namae?” The two circles became one as they all gasped at my use of one short Japanese sentence.
“Reiko,” she answered, telling me her name. That set it off, and each person in our male/female circle announced their name. As I watched them become a bit more easy with each other, I’m thinking, That’s right, I got my own gokan party going on. The Japanese dudes seemed grateful. I figured they might have sat on those rocks reading Manga and checking out comic-strip chicks with abnormally large tits and smoking for years without getting up the heart to approach one of these females before she graduated! In fifteen minutes that had all changed.
“Brooklyn?” One girl mispronounced it as she read my T-shirt in the form of a question.
“New York,” I responded, knowing that they would be more familiar.
“New York!” three of the girls gasped. One clapped and said, “I like New York.” They all giggled. Then the original Japanese guy, who I now knew was named Udo, pointed to my kicks. “I like,” he said.
“Yeah,” I acknowledged, not used to any male talking about how he liked something I was wearing.
“Michael Jordan?” Udo added.
“Hai, you know it,” I said. He was admiring my Nikes, Jordan’s black 1s. I understood. These joints were famous. Young Michael Jordan had come into the league last year and switched up the game with the all-black sneaker. The league was charging him a five-thousand-dollars violation fee per night just to rock these joints, and he was rocking ’em anyway. That’s why I called these my 5,000s.
Udo was now placing his foot beside my foot and saying “big,” referring to mine. I didn’t correct him. His feet were tiny, but why point it out? I was wearing an American size 10 men’s, not big for my six-foot-one height. I stepped back and bounced the ball to get the second game started. The girls dropped back into the background.
My team won the second game also. It was easy, since all six of the Japanese guys were basically watching me hoop. When we finished, I gave Udo the extra Brooklyn T-Shirt I had stuck in the fence for bargaining. I gave Yoshi my fitted and asked him to call the girl who gave him the water over here. When he came back with her, I asked her, “Himawari-san wa doko ni imasuka?” which means “Where is Himawari?” Yoshi and the girl both looked at one another first. Then the girl repeated, “Himawari-san?”
“Hai!” I confirmed. “Tomodachi,” I said, meaning friend.
“Wakarimashta,” she said meaning that she understood. Yoshi, the guy, and Reiko, the girl, began speaking Japanese to one another, for what seemed like a long time. Yoshi then turned to me and said, “San ji ni,” which means at three o’clock.
“Doko ni?” I asked, meaning “Where?” He flagged me to follow. We all walked back to the rocks that divided the high school from the college.
“Koko ni,” Yoshi said, meaning “Right here.”
“Arigato gozaimasu!” I said coolly. Inside I was excited. After the girls left, I walked down the hill with Yoshi and Udo. Udo worked at a nearby noodle shop. Surprisingly, Yoshi worked at the laundry station on the back lot of the Hyatt Hotel! Both of them asked before going back into their work, “Ashita?” They wanted to play ball tomorrow. All I could say was “Maybe.”
I didn’t know if “maybe” was one of the few English words that they would understand or not.
I stepped inside the Hyatt lobby to cool down. I was thirsty. My non-Ramadan behavior was delivering my punishment rapidly. But I would not break.
After chilling in the plush seating in the lobby and lowering my body temperature, I checked for Chiasa. Her hotel room was cleaned now and as good as new. On hotel stationery on her desk she’d left a note, “Ryoshi, I have all the info. I’ll meet you back here at sunset, wait for me. We’ll eat and drink together, okay?”
On the top of my list of places where my wife might be wandering was the Bamboo Forest. It was back in Arashiyama. I didn’t think I could get over there and through the forest in time to get back to the three-o’clock meet-up with Himawari. So I shifted my strategy and bet on my three-o’clock appointment instead. Besides, I knew that word was traveling now that I was on campus. I needed that to happen to counteract the girl with the pink pumps or Iwa Ikeda, telling my wife that I flew home to New York defeated, so that she could help Akemi to “forget” me. My objective was to let enough students notice me so that if my wife was actually here in Kyoto, it would be impossible for her not to catch word. Further, after thinking about it real hard, I had decided that even though the Japanese wore a game face of uninvolved, unemotional disinterest, they had to be like most human beings, both nosy and curious.
I showered and cleaned up again to cool down some more. After the Asr prayer, I left. I was out of wearing all black for now. Chilling in Calvin Klein, the white linen fabrics were repelling the sun, instead of swallowing it the way my black clothes did. My white-on-white kicks were moving me smoothly uphill.
&n
bsp; I felt only a piece of regret about dropping Himawari’s name at the basketball game when I did not actually know her. The fact was I would never drop my wife’s name out there in a mixed crowd of males and females in public. I knew that wasn’t cool and I knew that there was a chance that Himawari might not show up because of the curiosity or damage it might create around her reputation as a young woman. I had already prepared myself for the possibility that at three o’clock I might end up standing by myself.
Chapter 10
FELINES, FRIENDS, AND WOLVES
As I waited, standing up straight, not wanting to lean against the rocks and fuck up my wears, I saw a real pretty female climbing up the hill with musical grace and rhythm. Her hips swung left, then right, her legs crossed one over the other. Her shoulders were high and and arched back for leverage. Her full and firm breasts bounced up and down, very slightly but impossible for any man in range not to notice. Through my binoculars, her pretty beige skin was shining as though it had a coat of olive oil over it. Her skin tone was even, light brown all over, unlike a white-skinned woman with a suntan, which sometimes causes blotches of brown but not everywhere. My high-powered lens took me between those two tight titties and in there was brown too. Her thighs were well oiled and glistening exquisitely, yet it was her 500,000 yen alligator sandals with the shapely carved short heel and alligator straps that crisscrossed her pretty toes and wrapped around her slim ankles and wound up around her toned calves and all the way up above her knees and tied on the sides of each thigh that killed me. My jaw dropped. Even my binoculars fogged up. I knew it wasn’t Himawari, who I knew was Japanese. Then I realized that my binoculars fogged because she had arrived and was too close to me to be caught and focused in my lenses.
“She said you would look. ‘It’s impossible for him not to look,’” the beige girl said, spoken in perfect English with a soft and peaceful manner.
“Who said?” I asked her, trying to control my eyes from traveling off on their own.
“Your wife.”
Off guard, I paused. Then my smile came through naturally. “Josna?” I asked.
“Ha!” she said.
“You mean hai?” I asked.
“In Hindi ‘yes’ is ha. Japanese ‘yes’ is hai. I’ll just say ‘yes’ in English, okay?” She settled and smiled. A point-two diamond was set in her gums. It appeared sparkling, right between two of her pretty, perfectly white teeth. When the sun angled on the diamond, my eyes cast down from the light it tossed. That’s when I saw her diamond belly ring set in her navel so sweetly, it seemed she might have been born with it. She wore a tight turquoise half tee and a turquoise miniskirt made of soft, paper-thin cotton. The loose-fitting thin cloth was decorated with miniature gold-colored bells hanging all around the hem. I was 100 percent guilty in the glare of the Ramadan sun of admiring such a beautiful girl.
“These are Akemi’s sandals,” Josna admitted. It made sense now. That’s why her clothing could not compare to the extravagance of her footwear.
“She made me wear them for you, although I didn’t mind at all.” Again, she smiled, revealing unflawed, brilliantly white teeth. “You want to meet Akemi, yes?” she asked me.
“Definitely” was all I said.
“She will meet us at my studio. So you should come, if you please.” She turned and was more than confident that I would follow her. As her hips swung, the bells jingled and there was nothing I could do to keep myself from being turned on. She rocked a short, short haircut, the bare minimum. Her hair was an artistic design of jet-black swirls, shorter even than finger waves, but glistening and mesmerizing, a style only taken on by a female who is a thousand percent certain of the complete elegance and design of her face. I had to laugh at myself struggling to remain focused. Allah was not only above comprehension, but Allah also had a dimension of humor, I felt. As I eased up to walk beside her, I could see that instead of earrings she wore beautiful printed Hindi letters around the perimeter of her ears. Even around her wrist were drawn-on jewelries consisting of Sanskrit designs. I wanted to know what it all said and meant. I had no idea. Oddly, she smelled like saffron, a precious and expensive seasoning Umma used and I tasted and enjoyed.
Turquoise toes with a thin gold line on each nail. She was a motherfucking work of art. A woman so beautiful, a man loses his religion and thoughts and there’s nothing left but curses on his tied tongue. Perhaps she was one of my wife’s unique drawings, come to life. When we reached the last hill remaining to descend before reaching the bus stop, and three blocks before reaching the first train station in walking distance, Josna’s musical hips stopped moving, breasts stopped vibrating. Her bells came to a slow jingle and then ceased.
Seated before her was a wolf on a leash. Its wild eyes flashed a serious warning. It didn’t belong on a leash, I thought to myself. Yet the leash lowered and then canceled out the threat. As I looked up at the girl walking the wolf, I saw that her eyes were the same as the wolf’s, wild, dangerous, filled with energy, and completely unpredictable. She was backed up by three girls, who seemed invisible standing behind the ice princess with the peculiar pet. The princess didn’t move out of Josna’s way or crack a smile. She looked me over thoroughly from head to foot first and then from foot to head. She was surely pretty, but she was exuding coldness and Josna was an exquisite pure blue flame. I could have snapped out of my trance, the one Josna had cast over me, and moved the cold princess out of her way, but for some unknown reason, the ice princess was wearing my Umma’s two gold bangles, one of four bangles, two gold, two diamond, that I had gifted to my wife on our marriage day.
“Himawari?” I said suddenly, having put the pieces together. Her eyes turned away from Josna and onto me again.
“Hai?” she answered, and with the sound of her voice, her wolf stood up on all fours from his previous seated position.
“She doesn’t speak English,” Josna said, in a tone which let me know that these two already knew each other and also suggested that Josna felt that she was superior to Himawari. I ignored the bad energy between them since I was the one who had invited Himarawi to meet with me. I checked my Datejust and saw it was now 2:55 p.m. Uninterrupted, Himarawi would have arrived right on time.
“Konichiwa,” I greeted Himawari. “Boku wa Mayonaka des.”
“Watashi wa Himawari des,” she responded. The three with her bowed to me but she did not. Josna intervened in Japanese, fluent, rapid-fire—soft but powerful Japanese spoken with passion and emphasis. Himawari’s glare at Josna was filled with a definite expertly controlled anger, but she removed the two bangles and handed them to me. She extended her hand toward me. Her nails were unusually long, five inches, and lovely and colorful and curved. I reached out my hand. She flipped my palm. Her wolf growled. She spoke softly in Japanese to the wolf as though he was a close and beloved friend. He stopped growling and sat still. She reached out with her other hand, and without her saying anything, one of the invisible girls handed her a pen. She wrote down her telephone number on the inside of my palm, or at least that’s what I believed it was. She did print the numbers in English with no extra words or kanji.
“Arigato gozaimasu,” I said to her. “Thank you for coming,” I added in English. Maybe one of the invisible girls would translate my few words. Then I turned my attention toward Josna. Her little bells had begun jingling again. “Ja mata,” I said to Himawari, and turned to follow Josna’s bells. After all, she was the one giving me what I wanted, my wife.
We rode the train in silence, like all the other passengers. I wrote Himawari’s phone number down in my notebook.
I found myself asking myself stupid questions, like, How come Josna has no polish on her fingernails? Then I answered myself, Because like my wife, she is an artist who works with her hands. Staring at her sideways, I thought to myself she was prettier than a peacock or a cobra or a lynx. Although if she were a wild cat, she would definitely be an exotic cheetah. As I mulled it over in my mind, my thoughts changed directio
ns, separating the beauty of Josna from the feeling of Josna. She had the feeling of a mongoose, the swift and beautiful snake killer. Unlike Iwa Ikeda the hyena, or even Himawari the wolf, who was better than Iwa yet just as unpredictable, Josna felt like a true friend to Akemi. Furthermore, how clever was Akemi to send them both there to meet me at virtually the same time, both wearing items that would reassure me that their messages had come from her. If one failed, the other surely would not. I wondered how Akemi knew I had arrived in Kyoto. I doubted that it was the basketball plan. Could Akemi have organized both of her friends that quickly? And why hadn’t she appeared in person to meet me instead?
* * *
“Akemi should be here, um … soon,” Josna said, as we approached an odd-shaped house. The front of it was like an igloo I had once seen in a National Geographic magazine. Instead of blocks of ice, it was made from blocks of cement and was semi-oval with no windows.
The middle of the house was one story higher than the semi-igloo and rectangular with a chimney on top. The rear of the house was only one story high, just like the igloo portion, but was triangular like a directional arrow. Both the left and right side of the triangle had beautiful stained-glass windows. The architecture of the three different yet simple shapes each connected to the other was unlike anything I had ever seen anywhere.
Now both Josna’s door keys and skirt bells were jingling as she pushed the key in and then pressed her body against the metal door.
“Please come in, it’s okay,” Josna said, sliding her door open. I looked around outside, thinking only that this was not the type of block I thought girls or women should be traveling down alone. On the left side there were only woods. On the right side there was one six-story factory, the first three floors of windows clouded so no one could see in. Next to the factory was what appeared to be a huge warehouse surrounded by a large parking lot. And then there was this odd-shaped templelike place where Josna lived. Forty feet down from Josna’s place was a row of six one-story wooden houses that looked more like they were for play or for pets than for families or full-grown adults. I’d have to bend over or squat low to enter into any of those front doors. Once I entered, their size would’ve prevented me from standing up straight.