A Woman's Nails Read Online Free

her words assured me of what my friends had been trying to tell me: that there were other women out there, better women even, who would help lay the past to rest. There would be other women who would find a way to coax a smile out of my frown, other women who would make me laugh, other women who would make me savor the joy each day presented rather than merely survive as I had been doing until the night when the promise of deep, dreamless sleep awaited me.
    The phone rings again.
    It’s been such an awful day and I’ve felt like crap for most of it. The only thing keeping me going is a one-act play I’ve been performing all day in my head: The curtains open and the protagonist is standing at a phone booth dialing a woman’s number. The phone rings, the woman answers and the two are engaged in a conversation that has him dropping all his change into the coin slot. Before he runs out of money, though, the woman invites him out for dinner and drinks the coming weekend. The man smiles, the curtain closes.
     
    3
     
    The phone rings again.
    I consider asking Nozomi out for drinks and karaoke . I’ve been a crowd-pleaser all year with syrupy renditions of ballads from the sixties and seventies. I have even mastered several Japanese pop hits. I couldn’t go wrong with karaoke , especially now that karaoke boxes , small private rooms with settee, table, and lights that dimmed are all the rage. No, she wouldn’t turn down the opportunity to belt out a few songs for an hour or two. Yeah, I’ll ask her out for drinks and karaoke .
    The phone rings again and Nozomi answers.
    “Nozomi, hi. It’s me, Peador. Genki?” I ask.
    She answers that she’s fine. When I inquire about her day, she sighs and says something I can’t catch then falls silent.
    It is an altogether different person I’m talking with today and I’m tempted to ask if something’s wrong, but worry doing so will only have her retreating further. So, I try to be genki and akarui as a friend advised because Japanese women love the cheerful , spirited type. They won’t give you the time of day if you’re kurai , she said, that is if you’re dark and brooding . I tell her about the great job I got recently, that I’ll be moving to Fukuoka in a few weeks, bu t it’s not getting me anywhere.
    Nozomi interrupts me. “Peador,” she say s, “have you got a girlfriend?”
    I tell her I don’t.
    “Las t night an American called me.”
    All the kindness that made her voice so sweet to the ear, made me want to crawl into its warmth and curl up into a ball is gone. She’d rather hang up than go to the trouble of telling me.
    “Go on.”
    “He asked me if I’d ever had sex with an American.”
    “He didn’t!”
    “He did!”
    “Just like that?”
    “Yes.”
    “Unbelievable,” I say.
    “I told him I hadn’t and wasn’t interested in doing so, then hung up.”
    “I’m sorry to hear that,” I reply with a sincerity I needn’t manufacture. “There are a lot of creeps out there, Nozomi. You really must be careful.”
    Who am I to talk, though? Wasn’t my intention all along the same as this American’s: to get laid? Did I really occupy a higher moral position merely because I possessed something resembling patience and tact?
    “You know, I have a boyfriend, a Japanese boyfriend,” Nozomi says. Her tone accuses me of assuming things I haven’t. “I’m not some Yellow Cab who’ll sleep with any foreigner just because he called me up.”
    I’m at a loss for words. Not that it matters, though, because before I can reply, she says, “Sayonara” and hangs up. The Lady Luck card pops ou t and the phone starts beeping.
    Dumbfounded, I stare at my reflection in the glass before me for a minute before taking the telephone card and stepping out of the booth. As I head down the hill and back to my dismal little apartment, my head is as clouded as ever. Hopes dashed by a girl, named Nozomi.
     
     
     
     
    3
    RISA
     
    1
     
    I move to Fukuoka at the