“I didn’t have much work at first though.” “How come?” “Western girls are not all that fashionable around here, you know.”
I didn’t know what to say to this, so I just kept silent. “so they came up with a solution: they’d include me into party packs. They’d sort of impose me to the client.”
This was true, I realised. Hajime had asked for the usual girls: Kiki and Mei he knew well, the other three had already been at least once in his luxury condo in Akasaka. But that night Rena had not been available. She was the cute kind, Hajime would assure us, like straight out of high-school. Only when you tried a more “personal” approach you found she was much more knowledgeable about life than her looks gave out. And now I was not so sure about Rena’s availability anymore. Not that I cared in the least bit. Now I come to think about it, I think I hadn’t from the start.
At 0:45 Subaru went to receive the girls at the door and we all stood behind expectant. Except for Hajime none of us had had call girls (or girl for that matter) delivered to our house. I leaned on the straight-lined, immaculate white minimalist kitchen’s door-frame that kept me from eventually hitting the floor. They filed one after another, waiting carefully on the threshold long enough for us to take them in, “ok boys, no rushing, take a good peek and start making your minds up” they seemed to be telling us. The first one must’ve been Kiki, small and dark, boy-short hair and unsettling lively eyes; then Aya (as I’d later discover was her name) of stunning beauty, with a defiant air about her; Sora followed, quiet and sweet, holding the hem of her chequered plaited mini; Mei, the tallest of the four, with long slender legs and waist-length red-dyed hair – to this moment the truly exotic element of the night. Except that just after Mei came Rena’s substitute. None of us knew what to make of her at first.
I couldn’t even tell right away whether I found her beautiful or not. She just didn’t run by any standards I knew. Even so I think I liked her then and there. I made up my mind. She reminded me of an Italian Cinquecento picture I had once seen.
The guys all looked at her apprehensively and instinctively kept their distance. Their body language talked about a feeling of intrusion, I wonder if she could read it on stepping inside, that halo of refusal around her. If she did she certainly did a good job at hiding it. She didn’t seem in the least bit put off by the cold accueil. As I mulled this over, propped against the spic and span white counter, I studied her more carefully: she was tall by Japanese standards but must’ve been medium-height in the Western world; she wore straight plain jeans and suede camel-colour Converse, an Iggy Pop XS T-shirt and a light cardigan with a very low-cut V-neck that enhanced her bosom; a foulard around her long neck with one end thrown backwards completed her outfit. Like Kiki, she wore her hair extremely short and it was certainly becoming. The way she conducted herself, the way she moved around, everything spoke about self-confidence and self-consciousness. No more than a minute had passed since she had appeared through the doorway and everything else became blurred to me, insubstantial, unbearably light- everything but her. Somehow she seemed to have a stronger presence; she seemed more real than us.
“And it worked.” Her sudden exclamation woke me from my reverie. I realised she must’ve been taking for some time. “After the cultural barrier was broken they responded well,”- sure they did, I thought –“and what’s more important: when they called again it was to ask for me.”
She turned to look at me, self-satisfaction gleaming in her eyes. I noticed also that she bit her lower lip when she felt like that and it made me want to kiss her, so I did. “I want to know you.” I had promised myself I’d never throw this line at a call-girl, it was so much like out of the movies… But there I was spitting it like an idiot. Now she’d laugh at me. And sure enough she did. Not a mocking laugh, nor a you’re-not-the-first-one-to-ask-me-that-babe sort of laugh either. More like a… bemused chuckle? A sad one?
“If you were to know me you’d instantly lose the privilege of calling me up.” “I still want to know you.” Another fit of laughter ensued, pure and uncontaminated. “My goodness! Am I that bad in bed?” “You seem so much better in person.” Silence. A weary smile - I was starting to be a real expert identifying her smiles. And then it hit me: she never lost her smile, regardless of her mood. It dawned on me that it had been precisely her subtle challenging smile which had done it, which had pushed me into my decision of picking her up. Or maybe she’d known I’d respond to it. Humpf… This changed everything. Had I been chosen?
“Believe me, you’d rather sleep with me than know how I like coffee in the morning.”
Definitely I had been chosen, shit… there was no doubt, she was the one conducting the conversation, she knew precisely when to cut into my thoughts. Oh, what the hell, who cares anyway?
“Maybe. But I’d much rather make your coffee after having wild sex with you in the morning.”
In the agency she went by the name of Sun [soon]. Her real name I never got to know as I never got to brew her morning coffee. But we did have wild sex from time to time; genuine wild sex, morning or not. Oh, and just a note on that, she’d never had coffee in the mornings, she was out of it.
[after a passage in Murakami’s “Dance, dance, dance…”]
