Lost Girls and Love Hotels

Chapter One

Sometimes, when I'm staring down a room of Japanese stewardesses-in-training, looking across a sea of shiny black coifs, a chorus line of stockinged legs, knees together, toes to the side, when I'm chanting "Sir, you are endangering yourself and other passengers!," I think I should have let my brother stab me. I shouldn't have run when Frank came at me with the carving knife, yelling "Satan! Satan!" I should have faced him, arms outstretched, eyes closed in sacrifice, and let him put the blade into me.

I wake up to the sounds of Ines having sex in the next room. Ines is loud and she'll screw nearly anyone. If they don't meet her expectations, if she doesn't come three times, feel like she's transcended to a higher plane, speak in tongues, and get a postcoital foot rub, she makes them pay her. Cash. "Fuck them, little shits. I deserve money if they waste my time!" I used to be outraged. Used to think she was crazy. Now it all makes perfect sense. I sell my time and kill my body. She sells her body to kill time.

I look at the alarm clock. Ines has an orgasm. My bladder calls. It's time.

I have never, in my ninety-six days in Tokyo, been pressed into a subway car by the fabled white-gloved subway-pushers. I feel ripped off&#8212it was just the sort of nightmare of modernity that I came to Japan to be a part of. That and drunk businessmen eating thousand-dollar sushi meals off the bodies of naked girls. Vending machines with schoolgirls' used panties on offer. Doomsday cults and death by overwork.

The morning train is all lolling heads and bad breath. It's coldseason. Half the subway carriage wears surgeons' cotton masks. A forensics convention, hurtling through the tunnels.

Near Yoyogi station, I read a pornographic comic book over the shoulder of an old man. An octopus having its way with a girl in a kilt. A group of huge-eyed horny schoolboys is about to rescue her when the falsetto voice of the train conductor calls my station.

Air-Pro Stewardess Training Institute is on the fourth floor of the ABW Building. One floor above True Romantic Collection marriage agency and one floor below the offices of Toyama Waste Disposal. Two months ago, when I first started working at Air-Pro Stewardess Training Institute, still under the spell of Tokyo and jet lag, blissfully sleepless and anonymous, I liked the building. The strange ceramic- tiled exterior&#8212like a giant inside-out bathroom. The tiny elevators that jerked and sputtered to their destination. I was happy to be somewhere where I couldn't understand a word, spared from the torture of random snippets of conversation. For a brief few days I used the word "lucky." Applied the word "lucky" to myself.

One day I asked one of the secretaries what ABW stood for. She smiled and gave me the address of the building, carefully wrote down the city, ward, and street number, as though I was an amusing idiot. "No," I said to her. "I know where it is, but what does it stand for." She smiled even more. "Yes. Standing," she answered. I've realized that ABW and most Japanese acronyms stand for nothing. They stand for the Roman letters themselves. Mysterious and sturdy and decorative. Sometimes, on my way to work, I invent my own meanings for ABW. Academy of Beauty and Weaponry. Abandon Belief Within. Acme Brain Wedgies.

I have realized that no matter what I do, Air-Pro Stewardess Training Institute will never fire me. So, I've been driven to dressing for shock value, like a petulant teenager&#8212strolling into the lobby in ski pants and ballet slippers. The ski pants rustle when I walk. I like the way the bib just barely conceals my little boobs and chafes my nipples a bit. I still have my platinum blond Louise Brooks– style bob that everyone thinks is so cute, but I've dyed the tips robin's-egg blue.

The staff scream "good morning" violently as the elevator doors open. I see them register my outfit. They struggle to maintain their professional smiles, but they shudder ever so slightly.

"Morning," I grunt, heading to the bathroom to change into my little blue suit.

Mikiko, the director's assistant, runs up behind me. Mikiko is fanatically cheerful, despite the tragedy. I heard about it from another staff member. She spoke about it in a hushed voice, the way some people talk about cancer or infertility. Mikiko is a failed flight attendant. With her degree from Tokyo University and her sylphlike figure, she made the cut for Japan Airlines&#8212the dream of every Japanese girl with lofty ambitions. But during training, calamity struck. In the form of a cold sore. As the stress of her cabin-crew training grew, so did her blister. The doctors confirmed her worst fears. Herpes simplex 1. Her employers had no choice but to let her go. Pus-addled and dejected.

"Margaret-san! O-genki desu ka? You look so funky. Like a rock star, ne? You are really, really nitwit!" Mikiko says breathlessly.

"It's too early, Mikiko."

She follows me into the bathroom.

"Did you just call me a nitwit?"

"My boyfriend Kevin always says I'm nitwit. Like Meg Ryan. I love Meg Ryan. Do you love Meg Ryan?" Mikiko stares at me expectantly. She's a pretty girl with a bad overbite. Since her double eyelid surgery, she has the look of a startled animal. I expect one day she will pounce on me, tear at my jugular. I keep my distance.

"Yes. Love her. I'm going to get naked now."

Mikiko just stands there, eyes popping, big white teeth tipped with hot-pink lipstick, resting on her lower lip. "I need some privacy," I whisper.

"Oh! Sorry! I have a good news. Today is starting a new recruit, Madoka-chan!" Here at Air-Pro, or trolley-dolly boot camp, as I refer to it, we call the students recruits. Our slogan hails, "Air-Pro. Putting young women in the air. Where they belong."