Chapter 21 Hotel by the station’s looking at you, Fuko
Hotel by the station’s looking at you, Fuko
I was wrong about the pub being a great filming location. These... These are new heights.
SCENE
INT. LUXURY APARTMENT FOYER – NIGHT
TOBY and FUKO walk through the doors of a luxury apartment block. A CONCIERGE in a uniform greets them and puts his card on the scanner by the lift. He looks at the woman with a slightly raised brow, as if to ask Another one?
The lift dings and doors open.
CONCIERGE
Have a good evening, sir.
TOBY
Thank you, Rufus, you too.
The doors shut.
FUKO
What would’ve happened if he wasn’t there?
TOBY
Sorry?
FUKO
What would have happened if Rufus needed the toilet?
TOBY
We probably would’ve waited.
FUKO
This just feels like an inefficient system. What if he was stuck in the toilet for half an hour? What, you would have just waited in the lobby without the ability to go up to your apartment?
TOBY
That hasn’t happened yet.
FUKO
Of course not, people do not think about risks before they happen.
INT. TOBY’S BOUGIE APARTMENT – NIGHT
The lift opens straight into the apartment.
The apartment is a page from Architectural Digest. Dark wood furniture doesn’t have a single harsh angle, rounded edges and low lighting against the exposed brick.
It’s clean, but books are scattered everywhere.
National Health Service brochures are stacked under a paperweight, hiding their contents.
Kitchen is spacious, clean but clearly cooked in often.
There are various games under a console. Pictures are stuck around the mirror.
FUKO
(whistles, badly)
Not bad for a bachelor pad, pal.
FUKO takes her shoes off by the entrance, scans the pictures. One has caught her attention—it’s the view of the Toyama Station’s south entrance.
The view is very similar to the one she has herself.
THE END
The memories of that day rush in, interrupting the imaginative flow of the script that alcohol planted.
‘Toby, where did you say you stayed in Toyama?’ I look closely at the picture.
He is pouring himself some whiskey from a crystal decanter, gesturing to ask whether I want one as well. I shake my head.
‘There was a hotel by the station, why?’ He takes a sip.
‘Would you call yourself a little bit of a slag?’
My question catches him off guard. He chokes on his drink and coughs, then nods. ‘I’ve partaken in some endeavours in the past.’
‘Right. Did you partake in them in Japan, by any chance?’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘I think I was under you.’ I hear myself say it and add, ‘My room was under you, I mean. I heard a foreigner with a Japanese woman in the hotel room the day before we met.’
His silence and the complete stillness of his drink tell me what I need to know. I look back at the photo. Some animalistic upset rises in me that I wish was logical in any sense.
‘Unbelievable, that’s why Rufus looked at me like that. You bring women here all the time, don’t you? Or do you pay them?’
‘Woah! I’ve enjoyed casual sex in the past, and yes, I did sleep with someone in Japan, consensually, with no payment!’
My admonishing laugh lacks the usual brightness. I feel so ridiculous, so little and silly, buying all his fate-talk nonsense. Just another girl for the roster. He had enough of the horilka; now he wants a glass of sake.
‘I’m such a mug.’ I start walking to the lift but quickly realise that I don’t know how to call it up. Is there a button? Do I need to call Rufus? This cannot be more luxurious than just having your own key.
‘Fuko, please, it’s not like that.’ Toby pulls me by the hand. ‘I promise you this is not some move. I am not trying to get you into my bed.’
Despite his reassuring and soft tone, and the way his hand is gently holding onto mine, and how his breath is so close to my cheek, a twinge of disappointment hits me.
At first, I thought it was because, for a second, I thought him a liar and a cheat, so it was natural to feel disappointment.
But that wasn’t it—I was slightly, marginally, a teeny-weeny bit upset that he didn’t want to have sex with me.
I am not going to express to him that I felt as if my self-worth decreased because he didn’t want to have sex with me.
Because that’s not a conversation I am ever going to have with anyone.
I am going to lock it away and never think about it again.
The goal here is to prod for truth in his hypothesis.
As if reading my thoughts black on white, Toby adds, ‘It’s not like I don’t want to bed you, Fuko. I am but a man, and you have a beautiful face, and if memory serves me right, a stunning body. But I want to prove to you that this is more than me wanting to fuck you.’
‘You said you didn’t see anything without your glasses.’
‘I lied.’
I am so easily pleased and aroused, it should be studied. Here is subject A, Fuko Brewer. On a scale from 1 to 100, her cumulative self-respect is sitting at a measly 2.
Toby sits me down in the living room as he rummages through some folders.
There aren’t many decorations around that prove that this is Toby Lewis’s apartment and not just a staged room to show prospective buyers.
The art on the walls is modern, but the soulless kind; there are no movie or band posters, no memorabilia to show any special interests.
There are a lot of books, but Toby doesn’t strike you as someone who solely reads in his spare time.
‘Here.’ He drops a thick file on my lap.
‘Is this from uni? What, have you done some calculation that proves we are fated lovers?’
‘No.’ He rolls his eyes and pulls out an A4 scanned page from a newspaper. ‘Look.’
The page reads about the local election’s campaign, the crushing victory of the Lib Dems (rare), some couple’s cruise coupons (those were the times, eh?), and in the top left-hand corner, there is the ending of a story from the previous page.
Wait a minute.
It’s my story. The one that got me fourth place.
The one I wrote about Tateyama. ‘The entrance to hell is hidden at the foot of Mount Tate. Maybe those of us desperate enough to experience it can face it and find peace within its chaos’. How old was I to be so weird?
‘You wrote it, didn’t you?’ Toby asks rhetorically.
There is smugness in his face, but it is hiding an element of something meek. Like a bit of hope and anticipation peek through.
I consider the implications of this discovery. That somehow, the two of us were always going to meet. That we stayed in the same hotel, walked into the same onsen, now work in the same company. I consider that maybe he is right.
But he isn’t. It’s not fate.
‘That is weird. You got me there.’ I nod. ‘Still, that doesn’t quite mean we are meant to be together in my books.’
I half smile, trying to be gentle with my words and tone. A man once believed that we were meant to be, but it turns out he doesn’t even know or care that I am allergic to almonds.
Toby is, however, completely unfazed by my subtle rejection.
‘No, I suppose you wouldn’t think that just by a series of some strange coincidences.
And neither did I, Fuko. My feelings for you didn’t just happen because we miraculously end up in similar locations.
They are there because every time I have spoken to you, you end up lingering on my mind until I speak to you next.
Because I have seen how selfless you are and how you make sure that everyone around you feels comfortable. ’
I was waiting for a laugh or a chuckle, or a gotcha, but nothing of the sort followed.
His body is so close to mine, I can feel the warmth radiating through him. I put the paper back into his folder avoiding eye contact after hearing such unfounded praise. He doesn’t know me. Why would he feel this way about me?
‘I... I am not that...’
‘You are, Fuko. I have tried to ignore it, to write it off as noticing a positive character trait in a coworker. But the more we talked and the more time I spent with you, the more I felt like I was the biggest loser on this earth, wasting my limited time not even asking you out. Like, for example, a man left his wallet on the Tube, and you ran after him, missing the train.’
‘What? When was that?’ I ignore the first part of his declaration completely, because my mouth is dry. All the moisture went into my brain to create a fog over my thoughts, to cloud my judgement.
‘Weeks ago. You were late to the office. I expected you to tell me about the wallet and how that made you miss your train, and I would have said, ‘I know, I saw it first-hand’, but you didn’t. You just sent me a message to say that someone was sitting in your spot.’
‘Someone was sitting in my spot.’
‘It’s hot-desking, Fuko. You can pick any seat you want! But that’s what I mean. You do these small acts of kindness, even when they don’t benefit you in any way. Even if no one is there to witness them.’
‘That’s literally not a big deal.’ I feel as if I am shouting through a blockade.
‘Well, it was to me.’ He is shouting too.
‘And I think it was a big deal then, because I was trying to find reasons not to hurt Alexandra, to continue a relationship that I thought would satisfy everyone, but everywhere I looked I saw you. I couldn’t stop feeling like I had made a horrible mistake.
And we got stuck in the lift, and I found out about the essay, and I just knew that I had been trying so hard not to hurt anyone and doing the thing that was expected of me instead of pursuing what I actually wanted. You.’