Free Popular Hits of the Showa Era by Ryu Murakami Page A

dresses to the clubs. Iwata Midori wondered if she was the only one who felt such gratitude to the jacket of her suit. It efficiently covered her soft, bulging tummy and love handles, her dark, oversized nipples, and the three Pip Elekiban magnetic patches on her shoulders. Whenever the Midori Society met at a karaoke club instead of someone’s apartment, Iwata Midori would spend several minutes trying to decide whether or not to remove the patches, which did so much to relieve the age-related stiffness in her shoulders and neck. She only went to these clubs to enjoy the karaoke and knew perfectly well she wasn’t going to meet a man or anything, but—well, you never knew. What if she were to meet someone who was just her type and drink too much and lose her head and end up in a love hotel, and he, helping her undress, were to find the magnetic patches she’d forgotten all about? The shame would be unimaginable. It wouldn’t simply be a question of a man she was attracted to discovering her Pip Elekiban. The shame would be in the fact that, just when she’d managed to awaken her sex drive with alcohol, the man would glimpse her reality, thereby becoming a part of that reality, and she’d have to quit pretending there was any real libido at work inside her.
    But why was she thinking thoughts like these as she walked the midnight streets home? Iwata Midori paused beneath a streetlamp to take some slow, deep breaths and try to sober up. The karaoke club was just outside Chofu Station, an easy walk from her condo. The other four Midoris had piled into a taxi at the station, singing a shrill Matsuda Seiko song. She’d waved goodbye as their taxi drove off, and as soon as she was alone something unpleasant took hold of her. She called this unpleasant something “harsh reality,” but of course it was really just herself. She walked down the street in front of the station and turned the corner at a narrower, darker street, on the right side of which stood the grounds of a large shrine. The streetlamps were fewer and dimmer here. She passed a video store that had recently gone out of business. Separating the shrine from the street was a narrow concrete irrigation ditch, and on her left were darkened houses. Iwata Midori always enjoyed this ten-minute walk to her condo. It was muggy tonight, though, and her underthings began to cling moistly.
    She thought about the songs she’d sung, and the slow dance with the young sales rep type. Henmi Midori had shouted into the microphone, “All right everyone, it’s cheek-to-cheek time!” and launched into a ballad in English—she couldn’t remember the title, but it had a nauseating, syrupy rhythm—and a group of young men had approached their table and asked them all to dance. Some of the young men were better-looking than others, but the sales rep with short hair was the handsomest by far, and he had taken Iwata Midori’s hand. “Waah! Wataa! No fair!” Tomiyama Midori had cried, pushing out her lips in a mock pout. The one who’d held his hand out to Tomii was young but short and hairy and puffy-faced and looked rather dense. At first Iwata Midori had stood apart from the handsome young man with the short hair, holding his hands lightly, but he knew all the right things to say. He began by asking if she came to this place often. As they conversed, he slowly tightened his grip on her hands, then slipped one hand behind her back and let it wander a little, but his face was so beautiful that it didn’t feel creepy at all.
    “What a nice fragrance.”
    “Complimenting me on my perfume—you’re teasing me, right? Teasing the Oba-san?”
    “Absolutely not. I don’t normally care for perfume.”
    “Oh? Why is that?”
    “My mother was a damn nightclub hostess.”
    “You shouldn’t talk about her that way.”
    “I respect my mother, of course. But you can’t make yourself like something you don’t like.”
    “That’s true, I suppose.”
    “I do like this