Suehiro • 末広
I
She leaves the hair dressers technical school thirty minutes late not knowing It will happen in nine hours. With less than thirty minutes to get to her part-time job, she has no time to shower, eat, or rest. She’s been up since five in the morning: studying Italian on NHK, busing to school, studying the art of cutting hair; she’s exhausted.
Fortunately, she tells herself, only three more months before she can get a full-time job as a hair dresser and can stop studying, and working with a minimum of sleep. Sleep, she dreams, is a luxury.
She swings up onto the bus and tries to find a seat but, of course, she doesn’t. She works her way to the front of the bus. She shuts her eyes as she holds onto the overhead strap. She dreams of shampooing and cutting; of styling and coloring. Of sleep.
She dreams of Italian verbs and nouns and their genders. She dreams of being fluent and snipping hair on the beach in Bari or Amalfi. She dreams of traveling from Sicily, with the nice wines, to Milan, with the opera house. She dreams of forgetting Japan and finding herself caught up in an art world or a cabal of artists.
The bus jerks to a stop and she launches herself off and rushes through the afternoon crowd to her part-time job which will keep her hustling for the next six hours and getting home just before eleven when she will collapse on her small narrow bed; she hopes not to have the same nightmare.
She hurries into the shop.
“Capo,” she says to the overweight woman eyeing her entrance.
“Suehiro,” her boss replies.
Suehiro slides into the women’s changing room, in one well-practiced move she drops her jeans and t-shirt to the floor. She slips into a pair of black pants and white blouse, luckily, she thinks, she’s not wearing her black bra.
She grabs a black apron and steps into the dining area.
“So,” she says to her boss, “What’s up?”
“You’re on register one. And don’t screw up. Again. Also, Maeda is out today, so after eight, you’ll be in charge.”
“Me? What about…”
“You,” her boss says, ending the debate on who will be floor manager after her boss leaves for home to sleep.
For five hours and 23 minutes her work is uneventful, boring, routine, and busy. She is tired, exhausted, and dreaming of sleep. She says “Have a nice day” a few hundred times; it has lost its meaning; it has merged into one meaningless phrase. She wishes to say “Buona giornata!” at least once.
She has 37 minutes to go when It happens. Thirty-seven minutes before the shop closes and she no longer has to make coffee, warm up pastries, ring up customers, smile, and wipe off dirty tables. Then…
Then It happens. From the corner booth. A scream. Two screams! She runs to the corner. A man screaming! He holds his face! A woman screaming at him! Another woman swaying in the booth. The man’s shirt is soaked. She grabs a cold towel and rushes to him.
“What are you doing!?”
Suehiro gets the man to lean back; she dabs his face with the cool towel. He’s going to have a coffee-burned red face for the next week or so.
‘This,’ Suehiro thinks to herself, ‘will not look good on the daily report.’
She looks at one woman: she’s angry, a customer is holding her arms.
“He was molesting Shizuka!”
Suehiro looks at a half-naked woman smiling at the customers and asking if she has nice boobs.
“Ma’am,” Suehiro says, “You have to cover yourself up.”
The woman pouts, scowls, and pretends to be sober.
“Shizuka,” the coffee-thrower says, “Ryo was fondling you.”
“Oh?” the half-naked lady answers, her eyes half closed, her body staring to tilt to the right. “I dint notice. Did he like it? Did I like it?” Then she falls over, passed out.
“You did this to my face for that?!” Ryo screams.
Suehiro half listens to the customer and coffee-thrower screaming at each other; she worries about the cops coming. What is she supposed to do? What is she supposed to say? She looks at the clock. ‘No hope of getting out before midnight,’ she mutters, stands and looks at the passed out woman, the man with the coffee-burnt face, and the customer who grabbed the woman.
“Everyone sit. We wait for the police.”
“Did you call them?” the customer asks.
“No.”
The customer turns to the other customers watching the drama unfold. “Anyone call the police?”
No one volunteers a response.
“Great!” Suehiro says a bit too cheerfully. “I mean, great,” she says with a hint of sarcasm. ‘This is a nightmare,’ she thinks.
“I’m out of here,” the burnt face man says as he dabs his face with the cool towel, gets to his feet and stumbles out of the store.
Suehiro watches him walk away. She turns to the customer to thank him, but he’s already shoving his iPad into his bag.
She looks down at the half-naked woman still passed out on the corner bench.
“Great,” Suehiro mumbles.
She returns to her work. She announces the shop is closing. She cleans. She picks up dirty dishes. She closes out the cash register.
“Suehiro?” another part-time worker asks and looks in the corner.
“Yeah?” she responds, her eyes heavy with sleep, her legs aching for bed.
“What about…?”
Suehiro looks over at the passed out woman. She knew she could:
• call the police
• call an ambulance
• wake her up
• order her up and out
• call someone on her cell phone to pick her up.
“I’ll take care of her,” she says not knowing what she plans to do with the woman.
II
Suehiro wakes up and stares at a pantied groin. She looks up past the abdomen, bellybutton, and sees the two large naked breasts glare down at her. Then the face with a smile plastered on it.
“Good morning,” the woman smiles.
Suehiro struggles to keep one eye open. “Time is it?” she asks.
“A little past six-thirty,” the woman responds. “Want some coffee?”
Suehiro pushes herself to sit up. She rubs her eyes and face. She runs a hand through her hair. She looks at the woman.
“Tu chi sei?” she asks in Italian.
“What?”
“Who are you?”
“Exactly my question,” the woman answers. “Then I found this,” she picks up a pay stub, “and decided you work at a coffee shop. Am I right?”
“You always cheerful in the morning?” she asks.
“Ah,” the woman answers as she pours coffee into the only other cup in the small apartment. “If I sleep well.”
“Last night?”
“Slept like a baby. All night long. For the first time,” she adds, “in a couple of weeks.” She hands the coffee to Suehiro.
“You threw up twice,” Suehiro says as she glances at the bathroom door.
“Ah,” the woman answers. “Explains why I’m naked.”
Suehiro nods her head and points at the woman’s clothes hanging near the front door. “Washed them last night,” she says. “But I’m late. I need to be at school by 8:00.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that.”
“But I like my school. I’m going to be a hair stylist and…”
“Oh, I don’t think so.”
“Why do you say…” Suehiro stops when she sees the woman’s tongue. It’s long. Black. And snaking out of her mouth. It wraps around Suehiro’s throat. It squeezes like an anaconda. Suehiro punches and scratches at it; pulls and tears at it.
But the tongue slips around Suehiro’s throat and into her mouth; choking, Suehiro can’t breathe.
The tongue yanks through her mouth, her throat, and out her nose. It splits in two. One part wedges into Suehiro’s left eye. The other part darts down her body, past her breasts, down to her vagina. It enters.
Suehiro hears the woman laugh. Her tongue invading every part of Suehiro, expanding, pulling, tasting every part of her.
III
Suehiro jerks awake and stares at a pantied groin. She looks up, up the abdomen, up to the rib cage, to the small breasts staring down at her, to the face of the woman smiling at her.
“Hi,” the woman smiles. “You okay?”
“Moi?”
“You were screaming in your sleep. I had to… Nudge you until you fell asleep.”
“Nudge?”
“Yeah. Want some coffee?”
“What time is it?”
“About seven thirty.”
Suehiro watches the nearly naked woman pour a cup of coffee. She sits up. She rubs her fists against her eyes and face.
“I’m tired.”
“Yeah,” the woman says. “You didn’t get much sleep last night. Tossing and turning.”
“You threw up twice. And passed out when we got here.”
“Yeah, but I slept like a baby.”
The woman sat on Suehiro’s narrow bed and handed her the cup of coffee. Suehiro looked at her, at her small breasts, at the roll of fat on her waist.
“Do you remember last night,” Suehiro asks. “At the coffee shop?” She sips her coffee. It’s perfect: not too hot, not too sour, not too much.
“I think someone felt me up. And my friends abandoned me.”
“Yeah, something like that. But I’m late. I have class at 8:00.”
Suehiro rolls out of bed, lifting her legs over the woman’s head. She pulls open a drawer to find her underwear, bra, and blouse. Her jeans are on the floor; her bag against the door.
“I’m going to take a quick shower and then take off,” she hints.
“And you want me to leave, too, is that right?”
Suehiro nods her head and rushes into the bathroom, turns on the shower and climbs in. A second later, the woman climbs in behind her, cups her breasts with her hands and licks her neck.
“I don’t,” Suehiro begins but the woman’s right hand leaves her breast and covers her mouth and nose. She can’t breathe. She struggles against the woman but she’s strong.
Her right hand and arm clamp onto her body like a vise. Her left arm wraps around her waist, pulling in, forcing air out her lungs. The woman pulls her closer, tighter. Suehiro feels the woman’s breasts pushing against her back. She can’t breathe.
She pushes her legs against the side of the shower, slams the woman against the glass door.
The door shatters. Suehiro and the woman crash to the floor. Suehiro feels icy cold fingers jabbing her in the back.
She rolls away from the woman, away from the broken glass door. She looks down. A triangular piece of glass protrudes from her stomach, bloody. Painless.
“You,” Suehiro says but no one is in the bathroom. No woman is on the floor. She’s alone. She leaves the bathroom and looks at her small apartment.
A woman, naked, sleeps on her narrow bed. Her long hair dripping down to the floor. Her left arm angles over the edge of the narrow bed until the back of her hand touches the floor. She looks like a horizontal ballerina.
Suehiro looks at the woman. At her hands. Her hair. Her naked back with the odd freckles scattered about. She looks at the bathroom door. It isn’t broken. There’s no blood on the floor or on her. There is no shrapnel of glass sticking out of her ribs. She looks back at the woman. She crawls into bed beside her and only realizes her hair is wet. She snuggles in close to the warm naked body beside her; she tries not to get her wet hair on the woman’s back.
She looks at the clock on the kitchen table. It’s 7:30 and she should be leaving, getting ready for school, and leaving. She doesn’t want to be late; she likes her classes. She closes her eyes. ‘For just a minute,’ she says to her self.
The woman rolls over until she is facing Suehiro. She puts her arms around her and pulls her close; she is still asleep and, Suehiro thinks, still dreaming.
The woman squirms until her breasts rest below Suehiro’s so she can get closer to her; their stomachs touch, their legs intertwine.
Suehiro drifts into sleep.
IV
Suehiro wakes up and stares at a pantied groin. She sees the bellybutton, the rib cage, the breasts bigger than hers. The face.
“Hey,” the woman asks.
“Qua?” Suehiro answers.
“I was just looking at your calendar and you’re late. You have class today at 8:00. It’s 7:30. I made you coffee and lunch. Your clothes are ready. Hurry up and get up or you’ll never make it to class. Come on! Come on!”
Suehiro jumps naked out of bed and into the shower. She washes everything but her hair, then jumps back into her bedroom/kitchen and slips on the clothes the woman has arranged for her. Right down to the right bra.
She gulps the coffee and looks at the woman as she dresses.
“Thanks.”
“Yeah, yeah, hurry.”
Suehiro throws on the clothes and rushes to the door.
“Don’t forget your lunch,” the woman says as she forces it into Suehiro’s bag.
Suehiro throws open the door and wonders why suddenly she can’t breathe. She clutches her throat and coughs.
She looks down at her hand. It’s covered in blood. She spins around to look at the woman.
She stands in the entry way with a smile on her face and a knife in her hand. A large kitchen knife. With a thin thread of blood across the blade.
She fades. Suehiro slumps down. She falls against the open door. She tilts over into the hallway. She sees her blood covering the concrete. She hears the woman’s voice.
She’s saying “Have a nice day,” over and over and over and over again.
‘I’m not going to make it to Italy,’ Suehiro thinks as her body grows cold, her vision disappears, and she hears “Have a nice day” again and again and again.
Until it stops.
V
“I’ll take care of her,” she says aloud.
“Okay,” the part-time worker says. “See you tomorrow night, okay?”
Suehiro watches the workers wave, laugh, and leave the coffee shop. She looks down at the passed out woman in the corner booth with drool seeping out of her mouth and her boobs seeping out of her blouse. She punches 117 into her phone.
“Yeah, I need an ambulance,” she says. She listens. “A woman has passed out in my coffee shop.” She listens and nods. “Okay. Knock when you get here. I might be asleep.”
She looks at the clock on the wall behind the cash registers. It’s 11:45 and she needs to get some sleep. She goes to the booth closest the front doors and falls asleep.
The ambulance crew banging on the front door wakes Suehiro up.
She stumbles to the door and fumbles with the lock to allow them in. She points at the corner booth and sits.
“We’ll be out of your way in no time,” one paramedic says.
“No rush,” Suehiro says, her eyes closed.
“What time did she pass out?”
“About 11:00. Just before closing.”
“Was she alone?”
“Her two friends left her here.”
“Nice friends.”
“One felt her up. The other threw coffee at him. They yelled at each other.”
“Real nice friends. Looks like a recent graduate.”
“Yeah. They’re all set. Full-time office jobs in big companies.”
“I couldn’t do that,” the paramedic states.
“But,” Suehiro argues. “You are. For the ambulance company.”
“Ah, this,” he looks over at the other paramedics who examine the woman and try to keep her boobs from exposing themselves. “This is just for three more months.”
“And then what? Open a ramen shop somewhere?”
“No, no. I’m going to Italy. To study drawing and painting.”
“Italy?”
“Yeah, the one in Europe,” he replies.
They look at each other and smile.
“Puoi parlare italiano,” the paramedic says.
“Voglio andare in Italia. Voglio essere un parrucchiere itinerante.” She has practiced this sentence for months.
“Quando?”
“In tre mesi”
They look at each other.
“Ti piace l'opera italiana?” she asks.
“Not as much as Italian beaches,” he answers.
“Would you…” they both say. They laugh. They smile.
“We have three months,” he says, “to know each other.”
“I have nightmares,” she says.
“Me, too,” he answers.
The paramedics lift the half-naked woman onto a stretcher.
“See you here next week?” he says. “You can buy me one of those giant frothy things.”
“Not tomorrow?”
Epilog
And so their adventure in life begins.