Colin was tall, as tall as Richard. He was also slightly overweight, a little portly, but it seemed a nice sort of size to Lizzie. He was blond. She had never found herself attracted to blond men, which was probably why she really had not noticed him all this last week, and why he was not making much of an impression on her now. He was just terribly nice. And he was taking her out. He had said, Eight o’clock at the elevators, and he had been waiting there.
Inside the elevator, he looked down at her and said, “Would you like to go back to the hotel before we go somewhere? You know, I mean, to freshen up?”
I must look awful, Lizzie thought. Of course, I have been crying. How thoughtful of him to put it like that, not: your mascara has run and you do look a bit of a mess.
“I'm so sorry to be like this,” Lizzie said. “It is very kind of you.”
“It’s no problem,” said Colin. “I just can’t bear it when women cry. I just want them to... stop.”
On the train, Lizzie worried that she would start hyperventilating. She seemed to be on the verge every few minutes. Every time she felt it coming on, she tried to breathe slowly. Colin was talking, about the train, about his one and a half hour journey to and from the office every day. Lizzie interrupted, “I am sorry. I feel sort of... panicky. I don't know what is wrong with me.”
Colin stopped talking and stared at her, silent for a few moments. Then he said, “You will be all right. Just keep breathing slowly.”
Why couldn’t all men be like Colin, Lizzie thought. So calm, so soft and quiet and gentle. She could not imagine him losing his temper or acting unkindly.
They left the Yuri Kamome train at Takeshiba and Lizzie said, “I must get out of these office clothes. I’ve been wearing suits all week. Normally I don’t wear this sort of stuff. Can I put on leggings? Do women wear leggings in Japan?”
“You can wear anything you like,” said Colin and Lizzie thought, Really? But if he said it was all right, it must be. Surely he wouldn’t want to sit at dinner with someone who was making a huge faux pas.
In the hotel, Colin told her to take as long as she needed while he waited in the lobby. Lizzie put on stripy leggings and her Sydney Opera House sweatshirt. For the first time since she had arrived in Tokyo one week before, she felt at ease, normal and natural. She looked in the mirror. She didn’t look too bad. Not so that Colin should feel ashamed going out with her, at any rate. Perhaps she should touch up her makeup though. I mean, she thought, he has made such an effort and been nice to me.
Worried that Colin would leave again if she took too long, she tried to get ready as fast as she could. But when she returned to the lobby, there he was, still waiting. Just standing and gazing into the middle distance, the only Caucasian male far and wide, or at least on the ground floor of the Intercontinental Hotel, against a musical backdrop of Moon River emanating from the automatic piano.
“So, where would you like to go?”
“Could we just go somewhere inside the hotel?” Lizzie asked. “I’m sorry, I just don’t feel like being very adventurous. I think there are some restaurants around here somewhere.”
Colin looked around. He pointed to the escalators in the corner of the lobby with his umbrella. “Let’s try up there,” he suggested.
The escalators took them up to the third floor lobby, which housed all the beautiful exhibits and vases and statues. Lizzie had not been up here before.
“There’s nothing to eat here,” Colin said. “Let’s try through those doors.”
These were two glass doors with large chrome handles, which were inscribed with Kanji signs. Lizzie tried to push the door but nothing happened.
“It says Pull,” Colin said. He laughed. “Can’t you read?”
Lizzie laughed too. “No,” she said.
They came to another set of doors. “Now we come to the bilingual doors,” Colin said. These doors said Push in English as well as the Kanji signs.
“See, easy,” Colin said.
They were out in a kind of forum. Almost all of the walls were of glass. In the center, a staircase rose out of the mosaic tiled floor, leading, it seemed up and out. There was a large circular cut in the ceiling, giving onto the sky. Through the glass, Lizzie could see the pier and Tokyo Bay. The surrounds, where there was no glass, housed a MacDonald’s, a bakery, and a Pizzeria. There was a large sign with an arrow to the right saying The Glass History Museum.
“Well, let’s try there,” Colin said, indicating the Pizzeria.
They went to the reception of the Pizzeria and Colin spoke with the woman at the reception desk. After exchanging several words, he turned to her and said, “Nope, they’re full.”
“Do you speak fluent Japanese?” Lizzie asked.
“Yes,” Colin replied. “Come on, let’s try up there.” He pointed to the stairway to the sky.
Lizzie was very impressed. She followed him up the stairs. “We can always eat MacDonald’s,” she said.
At the top of the stairs, they followed the maze around until they came to another sign saying The Glass History Museum with an arrow pointing downwards. “Must go there sometime,” Colin said. He continued walking and Lizzie continued behind him until they reached the restrooms and Colin turned round sharply and bumped into her. Lizzie laughed. “Wrong way,” he said.
“Well, let’s go back to The Glass History Museum,” Colin said. They started down the stairs again and this time Colin slipped and nearly fell. Lizzie grabbed hold of his arm. “Oh, do be careful,” she said. Oh no, she had nearly lost him. Just when she had found him.
Now they were downstairs again. “Right, let’s start again,” said Colin. “There’s The Glass History Museum. Must visit it another evening. Look, how about asking at the Pizzeria how long it will be before a table is free? Then we could have a drink in a bar or something.”
“OK,” Lizzie said. She had very easily slipped into a role of following his lead.
She followed him now back to the Pizzeria. Colin said, “Half an hour. Is that OK?” The woman at the reception asked him “Onama-e wa nan desuka?” and he said, “Colin.” He said to Lizzie, “Let’s go and get a drink. What do you think?”
“Oh yes,” said Lizzie. “OK.” She asked, “Do you always give just your first name?”
“Yes. It’s easier to pronounce than my last name.”
“What is your last name?” Lizzie asked. She realized that she was out with a man about whom she knew virtually nothing, not even his last name.
“Can’t actually pronounce it myself,” Colin said. “It’s McCa... McCor... McAt... No, see, it’s no good, I can’t say it.”
Lizzie laughed.
“There’s a bar,” Colin said. “Let’s get a beer.”
Lizzie was dubious about getting a beer. Was it a good idea to drink a beer if you were on the verge of a panic attack or hyperventilation? Would that not make it worse? Anyway, it had been quite a long time since she had drunk a beer.
“Go on,” said Colin. “Why should you not drink a beer?”
“I’m just a bit worried,” said Lizzie. “You know, I feel sort of panicky. I don’t want to feel worse, or, you know...”
“Well, come on, then,” said Colin. “Then you should definitely drink a beer. That will make you feel better. Honestly. I know.”
“OK,” Lizzie agreed. Colin ordered. He said, “Would you like Japanese beer or a Budweiser?”
“A Budweiser,” Lizzie replied. They were not too strong, she thought.
“I’ll have one too then,” said Colin. He ordered two beers.
“What was that?” Lizzie asked. “How do you say two beers in Japanese?”
“Ah, now, that’s where you start getting difficult,” Colin said, smiling. “You see, one in Japanese is ichi. Two is ni. But that changes depending on what sort of object you are describing. So if I say one beer, that isn’t ichi bieru. Then I have to say bieru hitotsu. And when you get to two beers, it’s bieru futatsu. Can you say that?”
Lizzie tried, “Bieru futatsu.” She laughed.
“Right,” said Colin. “If you’re me, of course, you can sit in a bar and drink fourteen bierus, that’s bieru ju yom hai then.”
Lizzie laughed again. She thought, it is a long time since I have laughed so much.
“It’s a lot of Yen though,” said Colin. He took a drag of his cigarette and gave Lizzie an odd sideways look.
“So do you drink a lot then?” she asked. But she meant, do you drink too much then?
Colin knew exactly what she meant. He looked at her directly and said, Yes. He pushed his cigarette out and looked up at her again. He said, “I’m a border-line alcoholic. Probably. But I can go several days without a drink. And I’ve got these Irish cousins – I’m half-Irish, you see - and when I go to see them, well, they can drink me under the table. They say, Shit, Colin you can drink nearly as much as us. Keep practicing. So then I think, well, I don’t drink THAT much then.”
“No,” said Lizzie. “Of course not.”
“When I go home,” Colin said, lighting another cigarette. “My wife will be watching TV. I’ll be sitting in the same room, that’s because we haven’t got another one, except the bedroom, just about one meter away from her, and I’ll just be drinking, and she’s... gone. You know? Just gone. TV’ll be blaring away, my wife’s there, but she’s not. I can drink it all away.”
Lizzie understood. She had done it herself frequently. Come home from work, put a video in for the children, started cooking their dinner and drinking a beer. Often two. Give the children their dinner and finish the beer. Her own private time for one, two hours, until the film was finished and she went to sit with them, get them ready for bed, read bedtime stories. Until one day, there had been a kind of breakdown, and she had been sick for weeks, and the panics had started and she hadn’t wanted to drink any beer at all for a long time.
“I know exactly what you mean,” she said.
“So often,” said Colin, lighting up another cigarette, “I’m drinking the whole night away, and then it’s like four in the morning. So there’s me, peddling my pushbike to the nearest convenience store, going out to buy alcohol at four in the morning. You know, it’s like, you’re drinking whiskey, and suddenly, you realize you’ve drunk half the bottle. That evening. And then one day, you realize, you’ve drunk the whole bottle. That evening.”
Lizzie stared down at the floor for a moment. Actually, she didn’t know what he meant. It was strange, because he didn’t look like an alcoholic. At least, not like her idea of an alcoholic.
“You married?” Colin asked out of nowhere.
“Divorced,” said Lizzie.
“Ah,” said Colin. “Yes, I’m about to become divorced. Wife’s already got someone else, she’s hardly ever there. Don’t know what the hell my family’s going to say. Good Catholic family, my lot. I’m the black sheep.”
“Are your family in England?” Lizzie asked.
“All in Wisconsin,” said Colin. “All of them. Don’t know what they’re going to say when they hear about this.” He shook his head and swigged his beer. “My wife lied to me,” he said, turning to Lizzie with a hurt look. “She lied. I can’t believe how she lied. She’s ten years older than me, can you believe this? Told me she was five years younger. And, she didn’t tell me she’d been married twice before! Tschk.” He shook his head again.
Goodness, Lizzie thought. And she had thought she had problems. Here was this nice man, so kind and sweet and gentle, and he was being taken for such a ride and drowning his sorrows in whiskey. He was certainly giving her an awful lot of personal information. And how could he have been so duped? She didn’t want to say, how could you have been so stupid as not to realize she was ten years older? So she just said, “How comes you didn’t realize she was ten years older?”
Colin turned and looked at her. A very intense look. He said, “Well, when we got married you see, I couldn’t read the Japanese on all the certificates. Plus, she used to be a model. Retired now of course. She’s beautiful. She’s ten years older than me, and she looks younger than...” he looked at Lizzie.
Lizzie looked at him. She waited for him to say, “You.”
Colin said, “...us. So I believed her. Huh. Divorce. We’re still living together. Oh, it’s all very amicable. But I think I’m going to look for someone more my own age next time.”
“How old are you?” Lizzie asked.
“Me?” said Colin. “How old am I? Hang on. Thirty-..er. I was born in nineteen fifty-er. December. So that makes me, er... 38, nearly 38.”
“Oh,” said Lizzie. She was surprised. She had thought he was younger, 31, maybe 32. “I’m 38,” she said. “Just had my birthday.”
“Yeah, really?” Colin turned to her. “Is that so?”
She felt as if he did not trust any woman now. “Yeah, really,” said Lizzie.
“I think that half-hour’s up,” Colin said, sliding off his stool. “Let“s try and find that Glass History Museum again.”
“Great,” Colin replied. “I’m not very hungry myself.” He ordered two pizzas.
Lizzie stared down at the table and thought about Richard. She wished that things had been different, wished she could understand where she had gone wrong. This Colin, she thought, he is worth twenty Richards. Look, he makes me laugh, he is kind, we can talk together. Why couldn’t I get involved with someone like him instead of someone like Richard? Not that I am even involved with Richard.
Colin said, “So, how old are your children?”
“Oh, they’re eleven and nine now,” said Lizzie. “It’s easier, now that they’re older.”
“And, do you have a partner?” he asked quietly.
“Well,” said Lizzie. “Thing is, I’ve had a few boyfriends over the years, but... well, it’s just that they never seem to accept the children, you know. Just want me. So I decided to wait maybe until the children were older until I started thinking about having another serious relationship.”
“Mm,” said Colin.
“How long have you been in Tokyo?”“ Lizzie asked.
“Six years,” said Colin. “I only intended to stay a short while, but then I met... my wife. I married her on the rebound. See, I’d been with this Chinese girl... you know I grew up in China... for eleven years, we were engaged, and then it broke off, and I met my wife and got married to her.“
“Eleven years?“ Lizzie was incredulous. “You didn’t marry her after eleven years?“
Colin was silent for several moments before quietly replying, “No.“
“But why not?“ Lizzie asked.
“Well, you know, these Chinese families. You don’t know how it is. Can’t marry straight away.“
“So you met her in China?“ Lizzie asked.
“No, no,“ said Colin. “I was with her in Wisconsin. I went from China to England, and then after three years to Wisconsin. That’s where I met her. I mean, you know, that’s just the way it was. My family was a bit surprised of course. That I ended up marrying this Japanese woman, I mean. After I’d been going with this Chinese woman for eleven years.“
Well, thought Lizzie. All I’ve done is raised two children. Other people are raising hell. In all these years, this is the sort of thing other people have been doing. While I have been boring.
She looked up and realized that Colin was once again staring at her intensely. Lizzie said, “Please, could I tell you something?”
“Of course,” Colin said. He sat very still, his eyes fixed on her.
“Please don’t tell anyone,” Lizzie said. “I... I shouldn’t have done it. I don’t know how it happened. It’s just... Richard. I sort of... well, I sort of went to bed with him.”
It was out. She had had sex with her boss.
“Well, I guessed that,” Colin said.
Lizzie swallowed hard. “What, you mean... you knew?”
“Course,” said Colin. ”It was obvious. Richard attacks everything. I mean, I could tell you stories about him… first time I met him, he was asking me which girls in the office were easy.”
Oh great, thought Lizzie. That makes me sound just great.
She said, “Well, it was my fault.”
“I doubt that,” Colin said.
“No, it was,” said Lizzie. “I just felt so awful, I... I was stupid. I asked him if we could have a cuddle.” She looked quickly up at Colin, it seemed so ridiculous now, and what on earth would he think of her? “I just wanted a cuddle. Only he... he sort of wanted more. But I mean, I sort of provoked it, you know? It wasn’t really his fault. I mean, in the end we didn’t sleep together. I found something else... I could do. Another way. I couldn’t sleep with him. But I felt I had to do something. But it was the most boring sex of my life and I got nothing out of it, not even my cuddle. And he has been treating me so shittily since then....”
She was crying a bit again. She tried desperately to wipe away all the tears very quickly so that Colin would not think she was a baby.
Colin said, “Well, I wish you had come to me if you had wanted a cuddle.”
“What?” Lizzie whispered. She stopped in mid-brush away of tears.
Colin said, “Well, of course, all right, you didn’t know me then.”
No. Lizzie thought. What is he talking about? I don’t know him now.
“I am so angry with Richard for treating you like that. He is a bastard.”
“No, no really,” Lizzie said quickly. “It was all my fault, really, I... I seduced him.”
“That wasn’t a seduction,” Colin laughed.
Now she was beginning to feel quite stupid. “No?”
“No,” said Colin. She could tell he was really angry. But was he an expert on seduction then? And did he know the difference between a seduction, mistake, a misunderstanding, an it takes two to tango, a willingness to participate, a feeling of guilt, a provocation?
“Forget about Richard,” Colin said. “I am sure he will never say anything about it.”
“No,” Lizzie sniffed.
“If we want another beer,” Colin said, “I think we will have to go to the bar.”
“OK,” said Lizzie.
Back at the bar, Colin ordered bieru futatsu again. He said, “So this Chinese girl. We never had sex or anything. Well, once. We did it once. I persuaded her. She didn’t like it though.”
They seemed to have broken the sex discussion barrier. And he had amazed her. Well, this Colin, he is really something, Lizzie thought. Waits eleven years for his girl who won’t even have sex with him. “You mean... you had sex once, in eleven years?” she asked.
Colin looked directly at her. “Yes,” he said. “Well, yes.”
“Gosh,” said Lizzie. That’s even less than me, she thought.
“Been anywhere else in Asia?” Colin asked, changing the subject.
“Well,“ said Lizzie. “You know I was born in India. Then I went to Singapore, a couple of years ago. That’s about it.”
“Some dangerous places about,” Colin said. “Lots of drugs. Guy came up to my hotel room in Bangkok. Offered me cocaine. At the door. Caught smuggling, you’re dead. Vietnam, don’t go there. Laos was the worst. This guy comes up and offers me four hundred dollars to sleep with his wife. If he could watch.”
“Wow,” said Lizzie. She thought, he is way out of my league. What can I say? So she said, hoping that she sounded cool, “Four hundred dollars? That’s not much. I hope you asked for more.”
“Well right,” said Colin. “Exactly. And child pornography. They come up and offer you young girls, little kids. You can have anything you want. You know? Any sort of sex you’re after.”
Lizzie thought, but Colin, he’s pure. I mean, about as pure as I’m going to meet. He’s not into all that stuff. Obviously, he is like, really experienced in all the things that are going on in the world. Unlike myself. If it hasn’t happened in my living room, I don’t really know about it.
“So what happened with the Chinese girl?” Lizzie asked. “After eleven years?”
“Well, we were getting ready for the wedding,” Colin said. “You know, choosing all the guests, and so on. I wanted my best friend to be my best man. Unfortunately, he was bald. So my girlfriend says, he’s got to wear a wig. If he doesn’t wear a wig, he’s going to ruin all the wedding photos. Going to ruin all the wedding photos!” he did an imitation of what Lizzie supposed must be the Chinese fiancée in a squeaky female American-Chinese accent, going spare over the bald best man. “So I said, that’s it. I can’t take it any more. That’s when I left.”
“Sure,” said Colin. “I thought, if that’s how it starts, it can only get worse. So I got the hell out of there and came to Japan.” He laughed. “Now I’m trying to get out of here.”
Right, thought Lizzie.
“She’s still thinking about wigs,” Colin said. “Keeps phoning me, says, when are you coming back? I say, oh soon.”
“Right,” said Lizzie. She tried to laugh, tried to imply, poor you.
“Anyway,” said Colin. “I think I have to go. I have three trains to catch and still over an hour to get home.”
As they left the bar, Lizzie said, “Look, do you think you would have time again tomorrow evening? I mean, I promise I won’t seduce you or anything...” she stood still and made a sort of desperate gesture with her hands. “I mean, that only happened once, and I’m not like that, I mean... it is just it is my last night here, and...”
“Sure,” said Colin. “It’s no problem. I’ll call you in the hotel. Sometime during the day.”
“Oh thank you,” said Lizzie. “I’ll walk with you to the station. Just in case you missed the train.”
There were still Yuri Kamomes running. Lizzie said, “Thank you so much. It was lovely.”
“Good night,” Colin said. “See you tomorrow.”
She realized he had not asked her for the number of the hotel.
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