Chapter Twenty-Five #3
The woman’s name was Tomoko. After replacing the pen and notebook in her bag, Tomoko smiled in a friendly manner at Joan, though the smile was only polite instinct.
Tomoko was adept at smiling when she did not feel happy; she was also not a businesswoman, as Joan assumed, but a hostess, at an establishment called the Silver Pearl.
At the Pearl, where Tomoko was one of its top earners, she entertained customers—who often paid the astronomical bills using their corporate expense accounts—with Dom Perignon and elaborate fruit plates.
When Tomoko first felt Joan’s tap she thought it was another client, which would have been a disaster, as she was meeting one of her most important relationships, Rex Fujihara, a senior executive at Mitsui Bank, that night.
When she saw it was another woman, she felt the same light pulse of revulsion and panic she normally experienced when encountering a female she couldn’t immediately classify (wife, heiress, worker) in an expensive setting.
Within moments Tomoko had identified Joan as a tourist, however—a noticeably older one—and relaxed.
They began to converse. Tomoko spoke enough English that they could communicate, and in a few instances when there was difficulty, Joan translated the word into Chinese in her head and then retranslated via a different route back to English.
She found it hard not to stare at Tomoko as she spoke.
Joan thought she looked like a doll, not just doll-like but a real manufactured toy, as if she had been designed by a maker whose aim was feminine perfection.
Joan had always believed she took rather good care of herself—she cut her hair every three months and had amassed a generous array of cosmetics as a result of her weakness for Clinique and Lanc?me “gift with purchase” promotions—but looking at Tomoko she understood that there were all kinds of details she had neglected, and that by doing so she had been existing in a secondary tier, as a less than optimal woman.
Tomoko’s ears shone with diamond studs (and each ear itself was beautiful, round and smooth with a perfect lobe); her nails looked as though they had been painted yesterday; there was not a visible pore on her face.
“It probably doesn’t seem like much to you,” Joan said at one point.
She had been describing her landscaping plans for Falling House, which did interest Tomoko—the hostess had dreams of operating her own inn, a luxury ryokan someplace like Niseko, where she had once been taken on a getaway by a former boyfriend.
“My deciding between persimmon varieties must seem so silly, given that you probably manage accounts for a famous bank or something like that.”
She thinks I’m a business woman, Tomoko realized with a start. She thinks I work at a company all day!
Tomoko was cheered by this thought and began to act how she thought a businessperson might, professional and warm.
Which wasn’t much different than how she acted at work—she had to be warm there too, and interested, asking the men all about their body aches and how their business mergers were proceeding.
She kept the conversation on Joan: she heard about Bill and Joan’s children and how she’d come to be in Japan.
Joan enjoyed the conversation so much that when Tomoko eventually did leave, she didn’t feel lonely, as she had before—Joan was still alone, yes, but now she was a satisfied alone.
Her isolation was bearable again, even pleasant, as if her time with Tomoko had set a luminous haze over the rest of the evening.
Later in the night, Lee returned. The young man she brought with her was medium height with glossy hair; he had classical features and was clean-cut in his clothing.
“This is Marc,” Lee said. Joan said it was nice to meet him.
Marc gave Joan a short introduction on himself: he worked in finance and was in Tokyo on a month’s assignment.
His company’s office was across the street, and they often had meetings at the hotel.
“I was just talking to the loveliest young woman,” Joan said. “I bet she was in finance. She had the nicest clothes too.”
“Mom,” Lee said. “She wasn’t in finance.”
“What do you mean?” Joan didn’t like Lee’s tone; sometimes Joan noticed Lee could be rude about Joan’s friends. Lee claimed Joan had been the same way with Lee’s own friends in high school, but when had Joan been anything but very nice?
Lee nudged Marc. “Tell her what you told me.”
“No, no,” Marc said. “It’s okay.”
“No, tell her.”
“Yes, please do.” Joan finished her chardonnay, unconsciously adopting Tomoko’s easy, loose style of holding the stem.
“She’s a hostess,” Marc said apologetically. “She works at a host bar.”
“What’s that?”
“A friend at Nomura took me to one. In Ginza. I saw her there. It’s not the kind of place where they, uh, have sex with you,” Marc added hastily. “Though they have those here too.” He reddened even more.
“Yes, but then what do you actually do ?” Joan asked impatiently. She did not think this young man was a pervert; she simply wanted to know!
“They talk to you. The hostesses. They play drinking games if you like.”
“What else? Do you eat?”
“Yes. Well, I had some grapes and strawberries.”
“Why so many questions? Do you want to go?” Lee asked, looking curiously at Joan.
“To one of those places? Why?”
“I don’t know. You asked to visit the bar tonight. Who knows what else you might want to try?”
Lee was teasing, Joan knew, although she could—she could go.
She wasn’t as shocked by Tomoko’s employment as Lee and this man likely thought, but rather she was turning the idea around in her head, trying to understand all its angles.
Tomoko had asked so many questions about Falling House.
Not just any questions but good ones—insightful queries that proved she’d been listening.
Answering them had been one of the first times Joan had felt enthusiastic about the project, but now she realized her excitement hadn’t been about the house itself but, rather, explaining it: which rooms had been hers and which Bill’s; her favorite reading corner, the creative pockets of storage.
It was one of those conversations when you don’t feel you’ve said anything wrong, where every cue is understood and returned—an authentic connection with another person.
Although maybe it wasn’t so authentic. But did that even matter?
Joan wondered about the place Tomoko worked, if it was filled with charismatic women just like her.
And not only women—why not men? Gorgeous interiors, and maybe one could order food as well, a rich slice of chocolate cake or maybe a bowl of beef noodle soup, although since it was Japan, Joan supposed it would be soba or udon…
And with that Joan knew she would never go to the place. It was best left in her head.
Perhaps that’s how Falling House should be, she thought with surprise. Left in my head.
Lee coughed, and Joan looked up, startled. “Well?” Lee asked. “ Do you want to go?”
Perhaps confusing Joan’s silence with hesitation, Marc commented: “You probably need a reservation. It’s overpriced, anyway. The place I went, a bottle of champagne was a thousand dollars.”
“It’s a little sad, don’t you think?” Lee said. “To pay so much just to talk to someone.”
“They’re lonely, I guess,” Marc said. He looked uncertainly at Joan, who stared down at the glass between her hands.
It would be near impossible, she knew, to explain to these young, beautiful people how difficult it could be not to be lonely.
Young people like Lee and Marc imagined loneliness as a consequence—something you did or didn’t do to end up on your own.
There was truth to that; sometimes it really was the miserable who were alone and the deserving who were surrounded.
Sometimes. Youth didn’t understand, however, how much luck played into it, that loneliness wasn’t always a choice.
Whereas at Joan’s age, you knew it was always somewhere ahead, waiting. It could happen to anyone.