met.’
The doctors said it was all about control. ‘We all have impulses, everyone has urges. They are what make us human. The key to a happy and balanced life is learning to control them.’
But by that time, of course, there wasn’t much I could do to put things right. You can’t mend something without practising, and you only had to take one look at my hospital notes, or see me naked, to know that there wasn’t going to be much of a sex life for me in the future.
7
In the end the Russians and I reached a compromise. I let them leave the staples in the skirt, they let me flatten down my hair and wipe off the iridescent eyeshadow. Instead I drew very careful black lines above my eyelashes, because when I sat and thought hard about makeup the only thing that came to my mind were the pictures I’d seen in a book of Audrey Hepburn. I thought I’d have liked Audrey Hepburn if I’d met her. She always looked kind. I rubbed off the blusher and painted my lips in a plain, matt red. The twins stood back to look at the result.
‘Not bad,’ Irina admitted, with a sour look. ‘You still look like widow, but this time not-bad widow.’
Jason said nothing when he saw me. He looked thoughtfully at my legs and gave a short, dry laugh, as if he knew a rude joke about me. ‘C’mon,’ he said, lighting a cigarette. ‘Let’s go.’
We walked in a line, strung out across the pavement. The sun was low in the sky, lighting up the sides of the buildings. In the little streets they were preparing the lanterns for the O-Bon festival later that week – the stalls and the banners were going up in Toyama park, and a cemetery that we passed was dotted with vegetables, fruit and rice wine for the spirits. I looked at it all in silence, every now and then stopping to check my footing. Irina had given me black high heels to wear, they were too big so I’d stuffed paper into the toes and I had to concentrate hard on walking.
You wouldn’t need a street map to get to the club: the building was visible for miles around, the gargoyles choking their red flames into the night. We reached the building as darkness came. I stood and stared up at it until the others got bored waiting, and took my arm and guided me into a glass lift that went up the outside of the skyscraper, all the way to the top where the Marilyn Monroe sign was swinging to and fro among the stars. The ‘crystal lift’, they told me it was called, because it was like a crystal catching and scattering all the lights of Tokyo. I stood with my nose pressed to the glass as it soared up outside the building, amazed by how quickly the greasy street dropped away beneath us.
‘Wait here,’ said Jason, when the lift stopped. We were in a marble-floored reception area, separated from the club by doors of industrial aluminium. A giant model of a red rose, five foot tall, stood in a huge vase in one corner. ‘I’ll send Mama-san out.’ He indicated a plush velvet chaise-longue , and disappeared with the Russians through the doors. I caught a glimpse of a club as big as a skating rink – occupying the entire top of the building, skyscrapers reflected in the polished floor – a constellation of lights. Then the door swung closed and I was left, sitting on the chaise-longue , with only the top of the hat-check girl’s head visible over the counter for company.
I crossed my legs, then uncrossed them. I looked at my vague reflection in the aluminium doors. Stencilled in black on the doors were the words Some Like It Hot.
The club’s Mama-san, Strawberry Nakatani, was an old hand, according to Jason. She had been a call girl in the seventies, famous for turning up to clubs naked under her white fur coat, and when her husband, a show-business impresario and minor hoodlum, died, he had given her the club. ‘Don’t look surprised when you see her,’ Jason warned. Her life was devoted to Marilyn Monroe, he said. She’d had her nose reconstructed, and had got unethical
The doctors said it was all about control. ‘We all have impulses, everyone has urges. They are what make us human. The key to a happy and balanced life is learning to control them.’
But by that time, of course, there wasn’t much I could do to put things right. You can’t mend something without practising, and you only had to take one look at my hospital notes, or see me naked, to know that there wasn’t going to be much of a sex life for me in the future.
7
In the end the Russians and I reached a compromise. I let them leave the staples in the skirt, they let me flatten down my hair and wipe off the iridescent eyeshadow. Instead I drew very careful black lines above my eyelashes, because when I sat and thought hard about makeup the only thing that came to my mind were the pictures I’d seen in a book of Audrey Hepburn. I thought I’d have liked Audrey Hepburn if I’d met her. She always looked kind. I rubbed off the blusher and painted my lips in a plain, matt red. The twins stood back to look at the result.
‘Not bad,’ Irina admitted, with a sour look. ‘You still look like widow, but this time not-bad widow.’
Jason said nothing when he saw me. He looked thoughtfully at my legs and gave a short, dry laugh, as if he knew a rude joke about me. ‘C’mon,’ he said, lighting a cigarette. ‘Let’s go.’
We walked in a line, strung out across the pavement. The sun was low in the sky, lighting up the sides of the buildings. In the little streets they were preparing the lanterns for the O-Bon festival later that week – the stalls and the banners were going up in Toyama park, and a cemetery that we passed was dotted with vegetables, fruit and rice wine for the spirits. I looked at it all in silence, every now and then stopping to check my footing. Irina had given me black high heels to wear, they were too big so I’d stuffed paper into the toes and I had to concentrate hard on walking.
You wouldn’t need a street map to get to the club: the building was visible for miles around, the gargoyles choking their red flames into the night. We reached the building as darkness came. I stood and stared up at it until the others got bored waiting, and took my arm and guided me into a glass lift that went up the outside of the skyscraper, all the way to the top where the Marilyn Monroe sign was swinging to and fro among the stars. The ‘crystal lift’, they told me it was called, because it was like a crystal catching and scattering all the lights of Tokyo. I stood with my nose pressed to the glass as it soared up outside the building, amazed by how quickly the greasy street dropped away beneath us.
‘Wait here,’ said Jason, when the lift stopped. We were in a marble-floored reception area, separated from the club by doors of industrial aluminium. A giant model of a red rose, five foot tall, stood in a huge vase in one corner. ‘I’ll send Mama-san out.’ He indicated a plush velvet chaise-longue , and disappeared with the Russians through the doors. I caught a glimpse of a club as big as a skating rink – occupying the entire top of the building, skyscrapers reflected in the polished floor – a constellation of lights. Then the door swung closed and I was left, sitting on the chaise-longue , with only the top of the hat-check girl’s head visible over the counter for company.
I crossed my legs, then uncrossed them. I looked at my vague reflection in the aluminium doors. Stencilled in black on the doors were the words Some Like It Hot.
The club’s Mama-san, Strawberry Nakatani, was an old hand, according to Jason. She had been a call girl in the seventies, famous for turning up to clubs naked under her white fur coat, and when her husband, a show-business impresario and minor hoodlum, died, he had given her the club. ‘Don’t look surprised when you see her,’ Jason warned. Her life was devoted to Marilyn Monroe, he said. She’d had her nose reconstructed, and had got unethical
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