Lost Girls and Love Hotels Read Online Free PDF Page A

thought it must be a Japanese death cult recruiting members. It was saddening to find out the banal truth—he was only hawking tubers. The song, the “Sweet potato, delicious sweet potato!,” is getting louder.
    I’m still in the numb phase of my hangover. Brain scooped out. Belly screaming for food.
    I throw my robe on. Where’s the sash? Shit. Some guy left me in bed one night with the sash tied around my ankles—so tight my feet swelled up. Ines had to rescue me, cut the sash off me with a pair of nail scissors. It was a running joke for two weeks.
    The truck is almost at the corner when I reach the street,the low sad song trailing away. I scream after it. “Hey! Wait! Chotto matte! Hello. Moshi moshi! ” I laugh at my word salad of Japanese and English. My slippers go flop! flop! as I run, one hand in the air, waving madly, the other clutching my robe so I don’t flash the neighborhood.
    The truck stops, and I walk panting toward the little man, whose face is frozen in an expression revealing horror, delight, and confusion.
    “ Futatsu o kudasai, ” I say, holding up two fingers. The smell of the roasted sweet potatoes fills my nose. Smoke billows up from the back of the truck.
    The withered little troll sings thank-you, hands me the paper bag with both hands, steals a peek at my bare legs when he bows.
    A sudden and bizarre urge overtakes me—to skip back to the house, click my heels like Frank and I used to do as kids. It was fine for me to do it, to yelp and click, but Dad said Frank looked like a little faggot. Eventually we stopped clicking altogether. Walked like normal people. I resist the urge.
    When I get inside, I realize I’m turning Japanese. I look down at my feet, at my “Cherry Girl” room shoes—the kind with little plastic reflexology nubs on the insoles, the kind emblazoned with a cheerful half-mouse, half-human, apple-cheeked cartoon character—I look down and feel a little wave of horror. I’ve worn my room shoes outside! I’ve contaminated my “Cherry Girl” room shoes with outside dirt. I’ve already stepped up from the renkan , the all-important two-foot-square space that separates the outside from the inside . The outside dirt and chaos is on my “Cherry Girl” room shoes. I’m bringing it inside. Not sure what to do, not sure why I even care, I take off my “Cherry Girl” room shoes and carry them upstairs.
    The-Guy-Whose-Name-Nobody-Knows is shuttling yet another Japanese girl out of his room. To her horror, we meet at the top of the narrow staircase. The-Guy-Whose-Name-Nobody-Knows shuttles girls out of his room several times a week. Different girls. Usually late at night or early in the morning. They do the walk of shame down the length of the yellow-walled hallway, past the sour-smelling row of toilet rooms, down the stairs to the front door. Sometimes I listen for the passionless little kiss before the door closes, for the awkward exchange of mobile phone numbers. After they leave, The-Guy-Whose-Name-Nobody-Knows usually goes into the kitchen and nukes a frozen burrito. He tells me twice a week how to order frozen burritos and canned ravioli from the Internet. They are, he insists, “a lot cheaper than that Japanese shit.”
    The guy says little else to me or anyone else in the house. We are simply ugly reminders that he is not the exotic, globe-trotting, boy-band-member look-alike that he likes to think he is. He is doughy and pale. During the week, he wears bad suits that don’t fit properly, and on the weekend, bad jeans that don’t fit properly. He has many T-shirts that advertise the many exotic places he’s visited. On nights he isn’t fucking Japanese girls, he probably reads his passport, wishes the high school jocks could see him now. One long-haul flight and he’s gone from zero to hero.
    The girl being shuttled has buck-teeth that distort her otherwise doll-like face. She walks like a wind-up toy. Squeaks a little when we meet on the stairs. Her hand