The Salaryman's Wife(86)

“Is the Mama-san here tonight?” I interrupted.

“Yes, but if you’re asking for a job, I’m sorry. Mama likes younger girls.” Esmerelda began distributing the cards with a practiced hand. “What shall we play? Strip poker? For that we need a privacy booth.”

“A private booth?” Richard sniffed. “I’m not shy, baby.”

“I’m feeling nauseated. I’d better go to the bathroom.” I swung my backpack over my shoulder and got up, unable to watch the two men I was closest to dissolve into a molten pool of testosterone. Hugh I could understand, but Richard?

“In the back.” Esmerelda didn’t look away from her conquests.

As I sauntered past the table where Mariko had rejoined her customers, one of them said something and gestured to me. I smiled, angling to join them. Mariko shook her head.

“Hey, I like your lipstick. Meet you in the ladies’ room?” I said to her in English.

I never made it there. In the unlit hallway that sprung off from the main room, I was grabbed. I struggled briefly against the arm that cut in below the rib cage and knocked the wind out of me. They’ll never know what happened, I thought as a large, sweaty hand clamped over my mouth and a knee shot into the back of my thigh.





24


My moan was absorbed by the attacker’s hand, and I was propelled into a dark, overheated room that stank of fuel. I flashed back to my nightmare with the gas heater in Shiroyama and realized this time I might really die. Hugh and Richard would be consumed for at least an hour with the tantalizing Esmerelda.

A fluorescent light came on overhead, revealing I was with Mariko’s Mama-san in the dressing room. A kerosene heater burned, smelly but not lethal.

“We have a lot to talk about, Keiko.” I swayed a little as I took the stool in front of the mirror, the room’s only seat, a power play she couldn’t miss. I looked at her leaning against the door as if to revalidate her authority. Now I saw past the grape-colored velvet dress stretched too tightly around the abdomen and the unflattering feathered haircut to hard, cool eyes that were very much like Setsuko’s.

“My name is Kiki.” Her voice remained calm. “Being a foreigner, Japanese is a little hard for you, maybe.”

“Kiki is a nickname for a hostess who wants to disguise who she really is. And the blood that runs through me is Japanese and American, like your sister’s.”

“Setsuko wasn’t my sister,” Her eyes darted to the door. Who did she think might enter?

“I didn’t say she was Setsuko, but I thank you for confirming it.” I unzipped my backpack and pulled out the photo album, flipping to the picture of the two teen-aged girls in the arms of the businessmen.

“This was back in Yokosuka, wasn’t it? In the nightclub that’s now a bank.”

As Keiko glanced at the picture, her expression changed. I let her take the album in her hands, go through the pages herself.

“I want to know why the daughter with pure blood wound up working in a bar while the konketsujin got the salaryman and house in the suburbs,” I said, my fear starting to subside.

“There’s nothing wrong with what I do. I pay my rent and taxes and employ twelve people—how many women in this country can say they do that?” Keiko pushed the album back at me.

“But you can’t tell me the bar has been a good environment for Mariko. Where will she be in ten years? She has no security, must rely completely on men.”

“Men rule the world, don’t they?” Keiko stared at her sagging face in the mirror.

“Tell me about Mariko’s father,” I said, pushing my luck.

“He was an American soldier here on R&R.” She spoke in a monotone. “When he went back to Vietnam, he stepped on a mine. Setsuko heard about it just before Mariko was born.”

“Really?” If this was true, it would mean Mariko was more American than me—three-quarter’s worth.

“Look here.” Keiko took the album back and showed me a group shot I’d glanced at without much interest before. A young Setsuko sat cozily on the lap of a good-looking, light-skinned black man who looked around twenty, clearly military from the cropped hair and the dog tags he wore around his neck. I judged the time period to be the early 1970s based on her short, flared dress. I had the same reaction as I did to the picture of her with the Japanese businessmen—she was too young for this. Her open, excited expression reminded me of uniformed schoolgirls I saw giggling on the subway.

“Setsuko was stupid to get pregnant just as she was starting in the business. Stupider still to go ahead and have the baby, someone you could never pass off.”