in my realm, where I could admire them in the firelight, the sharp Caucasian topography of their faces so exotic but nostalgic, too. With my belly full and warm, my lust mellowed into a desire for good company, which they were, telling me funny stories of work, imitating the bosses, explaining movies and fads I’d missed in all those years away, teaching me to be American again.
It might have been an illusion, our sudden friendship, but isn’t all human intercourse as fleeting? Strangers become lovers over a few beers; husbands turn to strangers with a single frown. I could already feel the silence of the place when they left, the loneliness.
I wondered how I could get them to stay. It was then I realized what I really wanted from both of them. Or rather, I wanted to give them something, exactly what they had asked for.
For all of those years in my adopted country, I was locked up in silence. There were many things I didn’t know how to say, either with words or in other ways, and so many more it wasn’t proper to speak of at all. What would it be like to tell my story honestly?
‘Do you really want to hear the truth?’ I asked. They both turned to me, chopsticks in hand.
‘Remember? The truth about my life in Japan? You might find some of it . . . surprising.’
Tim nodded. Brad mumbled, ‘Absolutely. I’m all ears.’
‘It’s a story of bygone days. In some ways Japan changes so quickly, but many things stay the same. Oh, and there’s a lot of sex in it. Too much maybe. Do you think you can handle it?’
They exchanged a glance.
‘We’ll give it our best try,’ Brad said in a soft voice. Suddenly I saw an image of myself sitting before them in yukata, the blue-and-white cotton robe you wear to relax at a hot spring. As they watched, I untied the sash, pulling open one panel, then the other, so they could see me as I really was. Not my nipples blushing dusty rose, or the reddish-blond curls where my thighs met, but something softer, darker, deeper than flesh.
I took a long, slow breath. I began to tell my story.
CHAPTER ONE
How did I become an amorous woman? I think this is the best way to describe myself until not so very long ago, although I don’t look the part of the sensuous vamp. I’m more of the gamine. Strawberry blond hair, even features, and an easy smile usually earn me a ranking of second-prettiest girl at the party. And everyone knows we try harder.
I did well in school, a talent not usually associated with the courtesan, but I found that reading books and reading men are not really so different. Being smart meant I was not voted ‘most likely to spend her days devoted to erotic pleasure and the fulfillment of male sexual fantasies’ in my high school yearbook, but given the course of my career, perhaps I should have been.
My parents played a part in shaping my character, of course, if only by their absence. My father died when I was three, his car hit head-on by a drunk driver. My memories of him are few: a dark shape in an overcoat standing in a doorway—I can see the bluish winter light around his shoulders better than his face—and the salt-and-tobacco flavor of his knuckle, a fleeting taste before he pulled his hand away, ‘No, honey. My hand’s dirty.’
In my favorite photograph of us together, a round-cheeked blond girl nestles against a slim man who looks a bit like Humphrey Bogart, his dark hair already thinning, although he would have only been in his mid-twenties. By looks alone we hardly seem related, but I am gazing up at him and he is gazing down at me and our smiles are so radiant we seem to float together in a circle of golden light. Dark, silent, eternally smiling, made mostly of dreams, if I were searching for a lover like my father—and what woman isn’t?—there was no better place for me to look than Japan.
My mother, on the other hand, was a very real presence in my childhood, constantly shifting her look and her mood, the Princess of a Thousand Faces. In the mornings she had the blank, blond prettiness of a princess in my books of fairy tales until she put on the dark skirt and sober face befitting an executive secretary in the law firm of Reed, Garner and Woodson—‘Don’t forget to lock the door when you leave for school, honey, Mr. Woodson needs me at work early today.’ After work, when she changed into pedal pushers and clingy sweaters, she was suddenly younger, an older sister and ally who always took my side against other adults, the teachers who seemed annoyed I knew all the answers, a shopkeeper who scolded me for lingering over a magazine I couldn’t buy.
The biggest change, of course, was when she went out on a date with a gentleman friend. I loved to lie on her bed and watch her get ready, knowing I was witnessing a preview of my own future. Years later, when I read descriptions of Japan’s great medieval warriors ritualistically donning their armor to prepare for battle, I thought of my mother at her dressing table with her lipsticks and powders and perfume.
When she was finished, she was no longer the weary mother I knew. Her chin held high, her shoulders back, she was a model in a fashion magazine come to life, ready to vanquish the large, foreign creatures called men, who arrived promptly at eight to take her away from me and into the night. As far as I could tell, her victory came the moment they saw her, dreamy smiles spreading over their faces, their eyes dancing with a strange light. My mother had a power over them I didn’t understand. I only knew some day I wanted it, too.
On the evenings my mother had a date, Mrs. Muller from the apartment below us would come and stay with me. Mrs. Muller was a different kind of widow from my mother—gray-haired, pink-faced and doughy—but I loved her and was sorry when I grew too big to snuggle in her soft lap. After the click-clack of my mother’s high heels faded from the stairway, she would give me a wink, and then make a show of checking out our refrigerator for the makings of ‘a wee snack.’ As if she ever expected to find anything but skim milk, cottage cheese and lettuce. ‘This won’t do at all. Why don’t you go down to my kitchen and bring up the little treat I made for us, Lydia dear? I swear she must be starving you, you poor girl.’
I always found something wonderful waiting for me in her kitchen: squares of sticky gingerbread that filled the room with the fragrance of cinnamon and cloves, butter cookies that turned to sweet vanilla sand on my tongue, a pyramid of brown sugar fudge that made my teeth ache. But first, before I carried our feast back upstairs, I indulged in a secret pleasure of my own. I opened Mrs. Muller’s refrigerator, full to bursting with jars of cream, slabs of butter and packages of bacon, and eased out one of the jars of her strawberry preserves.
Hoisting myself up onto the counter by the narrow window, I gazed out into the darkness and dipped a finger into the cool jam. Night transformed our block of low brick apartments into a mysterious wonderland. Golden squares of window floated against the sky, streetlamps glowed blue, shadows of trees stirred like veils in the wind. As I licked the essence of berry-and-summer languidly from my finger, my own flesh began to tingle. I always felt a little like Rapunzel, trapped in a tower in a foreign country, longing for her true home. I yearned to slip down the fire escape—a pretty name, I thought, for that rickety, rusting ladder outside the window—not to escape a fire, but to dive into my own heated adventures with dark and faceless men, who would do to me all those things men did to women, although of course I wasn’t quite sure what that meant.
What would it be like to have a lover? I settled on images harvested from movies, distilled in the strange heat of my fantasy, a thick-fingered hand fumbling at the buttons of my blouse, a pair of eyes glittering in the dim lamplight, a husky voice murmuring that I needn’t be ashamed to show myself as I really was, not a pretty girl like me.
This, I later discovered, is not so different from the way it really
