HEART TO HEART
It was one of those warm, sunny days that sometimes come even in late fall. The weather was so nice that Kokoro had slid back the balcony door to let a little air into the apartment. In its way, this was a brave action. For weeks she had been holed up here with the door locked and the shades drawn, not even daring to turn on the lights at night, but simply huddled in the dark. That was probably an unnecessary precaution, but it made her feel safe.
This place was not her regular apartment-- the one where she had lived as Kokoro Komegura, school nurse. No, this was the place where she kept her money.
She was sitting at the computer, reading her emails. It was part of her daily routine. She read them, but she'd stopped replying weeks ago. Anyhow, they were all just from her mother and Mrs. Suzuki, who were becoming increasingly concerned about her with the wedding day fast approaching. She sighed. She was just about out of excuses, and she didn't have the heart to come out and say, "Sorry, Mother, I messed up again. Sorry, Mrs. Suzuki, but I can't marry your son, Binkan, because he's an herbivore and I'm about to become a fugitive from the law."
"Again," she added out loud.
"And, you know, Shinji, this time it wasn't even my fault. Or, maybe it was my fault for flirting with Brant. Maybe this is my bad karma catching up with me. Is that it, Shinji? I imagine you're in a position to know up there in Pure Land heaven."
She addressed this last comment to a photograph of a young man in a school uniform propped up in front of an empty sake bottle on her desk. This photo had seen better days; it was stained and wrinkled and at some time in the past it had been torn in two and then taped back together again. Next to it was a small bowl of rice and a stick of incense in a holder. It was a make-shift shrine to her lost friend.
Kokoro was sitting at her desk with nothing on but her bra and panties. For weeks now, she hadn't bothered to properly dress. Why should she? When all she did was sit around all day feeling sorry for herself and drinking herself to sleep every night. Not having to undress saved time.
"I always was a very practical girl, Shinji," she said. "So how is it that such a practical girl always ends up making trouble for herself? You're probably looking down on me right now and shaking your head, aren't you? Are you a bodhisattva yet? Or would you have to be reincarnated for that? Would you be my boddhisattva, if I made my confession to you?"
She put her hands together and bowed. "Namu Amida-butsu. Namu Amida-butsu," she chanted.
Then she lit a cigarette and leaned back in her chair. There was a far-away expression on her face as she mentally wound up the thread of her past.
"I was born on Okinawa (did I ever tell you that?), on Kadena Air Base. Mother was a bar hostess from the town and my Father was an American airman. That sort of makes me an American, too, you know. We all lived on the base when I was little. I remember that I was a happy child and had a lot of friends among the white kids on the base.
"But when I was six years old, my parents broke up. Father was going back to America, and he decided he didn't want to take us with him, so he divorced Mother. She was sad and I was confused. I just couldn't understand why he did that. When I met him again, years later, I asked him about it, and all he said was: ‘Madame Butterfly.' He was such a jerk!
"After the divorce, Mother and I moved in with Granny, who lived on Hateruma (an island way far away from Okinawa) in a village that was so small that it didn't even have a name (or, if it did, no one ever bothered to use it). Mother told me to watch out around Granny, because she was nuts and liable to fill my head with crazy ideas. Naturally, I started spending as much time with Granny as I could. In this place, a crazy old woman was just about the best entertainment a little kid like me could hope for.
"As it turned out, Granny wasn't exactly crazy; she was some kind of a witch, or nuru, as they said in the local dialect. Actually, she was a pretty important person in that village. Somehow or other, she knew everything that went on, and most of the people were a little afraid of her. That was because she had something she called the Sight, which was some kind of clairvoyance. She could always find things people tried to hide from her and could sometimes see the future in her dreams. Granny taught me all about the Sight and told me that it ran in our family.
" ‘Granny?' I remember asking, ‘does Mommy have the Sight?' I was worried, because I had stolen some money from her purse the day before to buy candy.
" ‘No,' she replied with disgust, ‘She never had it, because she sinned.'
"I didn't know what Granny meant by ‘sin,' exactly, but I suppose it had something to do with my Father. In any event, I was relieved to know that Mom probably wouldn't find out about my petty larceny. We didn't stay on Hateruma for very long, though. Mom grew restless, and we moved to Tokyo, where she got another hostess job. We lived in a big housing development, where I made friends with a girl named Yoshimi, despite the fact that she was a big tomboy who liked to hit me with a stick a lot. A few years after that, we came here to Moriyoh to live, and Mother started working at the Blue Lounge.
"I was in junior high by then and used to go over to the Lounge after school to wait for her to get off work. I couldn't actually go into the bar, of course, but the owner, a nice lady I called Miss Iris, used to let me stay in her office. I remember this beautiful old table that she owned, where I did my homework. It was all black and had pictures of the animals of the Chinese zodiac on it, and she taught me what they represented.
" ‘See this one?' she'd said. ‘This is the Horse, your sign. Girls born under the Horse are destined to lead an adventurous life. I'm a Horse, myself.'
"What she didn't include, though, was that Horse girls usually come to a bad end.
"Up until the time I hit puberty, the Sight hadn't manifested itself in me, and I'd mostly forgotten all about it. With the wisdom of adolescence, I had decided that Granny probably had been a daffy old woman like Mother had said. Either that, or some kind of a con artist, but then I started having dreams. They were mostly about boys. Boys that I was starting to have crushes on. In my dreams, I saw them touching my breasts or trying to slip their hands into my pants, and it scared me. I used to wake up drenched in sweat, with my heart beating like crazy. I never dated because of those dreams. I guess you could say they saved my virginity. At about the same time, I discovered that I knew what people were carrying in their pockets or handbags just by thinking about it. It was the Sight manifesting itself, and, just like Granny had said, no one could hide anything from me.
"They could still hide their hearts, though.
"I started fighting with Mother more and more after that. I was being bullied at school because I was the daughter of a bar hostess, and, at home, she was criticizing me for not getting better grades. And I started stealing money from my classmates, too. With the Sight, I could. I always knew who had money and where they kept it. But I never stole from anyone who didn't deserve it; just from the rich kids and the snotty ones. I never got caught; but maybe it would have been better for my soul if I had been.
"I got bored and dropped out of high school before graduating and lived the life of a freeter for awhile. But my fights with Mother eventually became so fierce that I decided to move out. I found out where my Father was living in the United States and wrote him a letter, asking if I could come live with him. It was a pretty drastic step, I know, but he actually wrote back, inviting me to come. He expressed how guilty he felt about abandoning Mother and me, and said he'd try to make it up to me. I didn't believe a word of it, because I'd included a picture of myself with my letter and I was pretty sure that the real reason he offered to take me in was because he was intrigued that he had a grown-up Japanese daughter who was¬Öwell¬Önot unattractive.
"So I went to live in the United States of America; Mother used to call it the ‘Big PX.' Getting in wasn't so hard, because I was the daughter of an American citizen. But I did have to borrow the money for the trip from Miss Iris. Mother was so angry when she found out what I was planning that she wouldn't speak to me, much less lend me the money to go, and Father didn't offer any help, either.
" You know, I never paid Miss Iris that money back. I wonder if she still remembers it?
"Father lived in Carbondale, which is, you know, a small town in one of the States named Illinois. He'd been retired from the Air Force for years and now owned a small repair shop downtown. He had another wife, too, and a daughter, Sue, aged fourteen, and a son, Tom, who was eighteen. And now there was me, too, and since Father's last name was Sawyer, I went from being Kokoro Komegura to Kokoro Sawyer. It was my very first change of name, but it wouldn't be my last.
"Being in America was exciting; everything was so different from Japan and so big! Everything was big: big spaces, big houses, big cars and big people. But it had its drawbacks, too. I loved the exotic foods--I was especially fond of Slim Jims. But I couldn't speak the language very well, at first, which was very frustrating. Living with the Sawyers wasn't what I'd expected, either. Oh, Mrs. Sawyer was nice enough, despite the fact that I must have been a constant reminder to her of her husband's past. Sue, her daughter, was a big fan of anime and thought that created some kind of special bond between us, but since I had never watched cartoons much and didn't recognize the names of most of the shows she kept talking and talking about, she eventually decided that I was not that interesting.
They also had a son named Tom. He was eighteen, and I found him interesting.
"But Father was a problem. I didn't need to use the Sight to know that the only reason he invited me to live with him was that he wanted to have sex with me. Imagine, my own father! It was so disgusting. But it was funny, too, because he was also a very religious man. Not only that, it was one of those Christian religions that are against everything, and sleeping with your daughter was right on top of the list and that left him with quite a problem on his hands. The way he thrashed around between his lust and his principles amused me, and it gave me a certain amount of leverage with him when I wanted something. But I was scared, as well, because you never know about these religious people. How could I be sure that Father was going to be able to keep his hands off of me forever? So I turned to Tom for protection.
"Well, Shinji, you can probably guess what happened next. Tom and I became lovers. It was a really stupid thing to do, of course. He was my half-brother, after all, and if Father had ever caught us, he probably would have killed us both.
Kokoro paused and put out her cigarette.
"You know, I think it must have been my affair with Tom that set the pattern for all the other impossible relationships with men I've had over the years since then.
"I decided then and there that I had to get away from the Sawyers as quickly as I could, so I talked Father into paying my way through Nurse's School. You want to know why I chose nursing, Shinji? I had my reasons. For one thing, it would take me out of the House of Incest, and nursing sounded like a very attractive profession. I watched a lot of American television shows that took place in hospitals, and the nurses on those shows were always doing lots of exciting things: they travelled to exotic places, owned expensive cars, lived in nice apartments and were surrounded all day by handsome doctors. It was all so glamorous, and I needed some glamour in my life. If you'd ever seen Carbondale, Illinois, you'd understand why.
"When I graduated, I found myself a job in San Francisco. I didn't tell any of the Sawyers about it. I just packed up and left in the middle of the night. I needed travelling expenses, so I broke into Father's shop and took the money in his safe. I figured he owed it to me, anyway.
"It was sad leaving Tom behind, though. I really liked him a lot. But-practical girl that I am-I knew that it was never going to work out. He wanted us to go east, change our names and get married. I took part of his suggestion and changed my name, but, instead, I headed west-alone.
"San Francisco was a reality check. Nursing, it turned out, wasn't very glamorous, at all. The hours were long and the work was hard. The pay was lousy, so there were no trips or fancy cars or nice apartments. And most of the doctors I met were not very handsome, at all. Besides, they all treated the nursing staff like their personal harem.
"But the hardest thing I learned, Shinji, was that nurses eat their young. I'd experienced some ijime in school back in Japan, but that was nothing compared to the bullying the senior nurses gave to the younger staff. And in my case, it was all the worse because I was a foreigner and my English still wasn't all that great.
"I didn't stay in San Francisco for long. When I learned about an opening at a health care company in Singapore, I leaped at it.
"It was good to be back in an Asian country again. It wasn't Japan, but a lot of people there spoke Japanese or English at my level, so it was quite easy to get along there. And my job at the health care center was pretty easy, being mostly secretarial: processing insurance claims and such.
"And then there was Low.
Kokoro paused again.
"Yes, Low," she whispered, her voice becoming almost reverential.
"She was the most beautiful woman I've ever met.
Kokoro let out a sigh.
"I mean she was the most beautiful person I ever met. She was beautiful physically, but she had a beautiful heart, as well. She was my sempai at the health care center and, unlike those bitches back in San Francisco, she was generous and helpful, funny and she liked to gossip. We became like sisters in no time.
"Low personified to me all the imagined glamour that had initially attracted me to the nursing profession. She always had money it seemed, and owned lots of nice things. Her taste was perfect. She always shopped at the most expensive places. Eventually, she started taking me along and buying me nice things, too. Then we'd dress up and go out to the trendiest clubs and dance all night long with rich guys.
"I was in heaven.
"I was staying in a modest little rabbit hutch of an apartment, until one day she suggested I move in with her. I'd seen her place a time or two, and it was really nice, so I didn't hesitate. Now we were living together, working together and partying together. We became pretty notorious in the Singapore club scene, and we shared everything: adventures, men, drugs and, eventually, each other.
"I hope that doesn't shock you up there in Pure Land heaven, Shinji. Wait, I need a drink.
Kokoro bent over and opened the bottom drawer of her desk, which contained a six-pack of beer. She freed one of the cans from the plastic ring that chained it to the others, popped open the tab on the can and brought it to her lips.
"Ahhh! That's good. But I need something stronger. I hope booze boy doesn't take too long getting here."
The she continued her confession.
"It was all a seduction, of course, but not in an evil way. Low could never be evil to me. What I did to her later, well¬Öthat was evil.
"You see, Shinji, our jobs at the health care center didn't pay very much. It certainly wasn't enough to support our gaudy life-style, and I wasn't naive enough to believe that she'd made a lot of money from beauty contests, which is what she told everyone else. I waited, and then, as I expected, one day she revealed her secret to me.
"On this occasion, she came to me and whispered in my ear, ‘Let's stay after everyone else leaves, okay.'
"I nodded and we both pretended that we had a lot of extra work and would have to stay late to finish it all up. Then, after everyone else had left and most of the lights in the building were turned off, she came to me.
" ‘See this?' she said, opening up her shirt and pulling a small silver object from her bra.
" ‘A key?' I replied.
" ‘Uh huh,' she replied, and the expression on her face was the same as if she had found some particularly fine piece of jewelry in some trendy shop.
" ‘It's a skeleton key," she whispered.
"We were the only two people in the building, yet she was afraid to say it out loud. It was like she thought we were little girls sharing a secret under a blanket at a slumber party.
" ‘What's it for?' I asked.
" ¬ëIt can open anything,’ she replied. ¬ëCome on.’
"She took my hand and led me to a room and unlocked the door. It was pretty dark in there, but I could see that it was filled with filing cabinets and computers.
" ¬ëThis is where we keep all of our patient’s confidential files,’ she said. Then she explained that these files contained all sorts of personal information about our customers-- names, addresses, credit card numbers, bank accounts, etc-that some people she knew were willing to pay well for. And I suddenly remembered something that I had never paid any attention to before. Whenever we went out-to a club, or even to one of her favorite shops-she always took a fat envelope with her; an envelope that would disappear during the course of the evening. Low called what she was doing ¬ëdata-mining,’ and the people she gave this stuff to (some of whom, I’m sure now must have been our ¬ëboyfriends’) were identity thieves.
"Well, Low took me under her wing and showed me how it was done. So now we were partners in the data-mining business. I don’t know why she did that. She really didn’t need me to help her. I’m sure she was doing just fine on her own. Maybe it was because we were already intimate is so many ways, or maybe it just scared her to work alone? Who knows?
"All I know is that we were going along just fine for awhile living the good life, and then I started having dreams. I saw Low and myself doing our usual things: working, shopping, and partying; but, almost out of view, there were these men. They looked ordinary, but the Sight was showing me the guns and badges hidden under their clothes. And, with each dream they kept getting closer.
"Obviously, the dreams were telling me that the cops were closing in on us. So, I did the only thing I could think of; I ran away.
“But, wait, Shinji. It gets worse.”
She drained the last dregs from the beer can and crushed it in her fist.
"We had a joint bank account, Low and I, which I emptied as I left. I also took her skeleton key with me¬Öas a memento.
“Well, I fled back to Japan and lived off of Low’s money as long as I could. Which wasn’t for long, because she’d gotten me hooked on the high life back in Singapore, and I tried living in the same style I was accustomed to in Japan. Soon I was broke and desperate. I don’t know what I’ve had done if I hadn’t seen that ad for a school nurse at Cromartie¬Ö
She was startled by a knock on the door of her apartment. Her heart thumped wildly until her nerves settled down and she realized who it must be.
She got up and walked over to the door. There was a chair near the door with a robe draped over it. She put on the robe and drew the sash tight around her as she opened the door.
“Hello, Ryo. Get in quick.” She said and closed the door tightly as he slipped into the room. “You’re late, you know. Did you bring my stuff?”
He was holding two bags in his hands. One of then was a plastic bag that bore the logo of a local liquor store.”
“Here,” he said, handing it to her. “I’m sorry, but I had Thanksgiving with Xallie and her family. In fact, their expecting me to come back this evening for karaoke, but I brought you some leftovers.”
He held up the other bag and offered it to her. It was a brown paper bag, stained here and there with grease and smelled warm and appetizing.
“Happy Thanksgiving,” he said.