Ma Belle Amie

Bill

We met in Tokyo. Roppongi, actually. Buried deep in the back alleys no one remembers after the sun rises is a tiny little concrete box with a black bandstand just big enough for three musicians. The bar is opposite, a long swathe of blood red plywood with a Formica top that covers the entire five and a half feet of the longest wall. They call the place the "Gaijin Zone", because Japanese patrons are too smart to bother coming in the door. What little space is left features six chairs along the wall and one small table in the middle.

Sunday, a bad night to go bar hopping, except in Roppongi. After hitting a dozen places and coming up cold, I fell through the door of the Gaijin Zone, nearly broke an ankle on the three steps down to the floor, and oozed up to the bar with all the nonchalance I could manage. She was sitting at the table and saw me first, I'm sorry to admit. Not the way these stories are supposed to go, I know, but there it is. I was halfway into my seventh beer of the night when she slid one arm around my waist and whispered in my ear, "Buy a lady a drink, sailor?"

I'm not sailor and she was no lady. Her ebony silk skirt slid past narrow hips and featured a slit so high on one side I could see the frilly line of her panties. Even drunk I could see she was pushing fifty and holding onto it with everything she had. Her cheeks clung fairly tight over bone structure as graceful as a butterfly on the wing. Those little cracks creeping in around her mouth and eyes were smile lines, no doubt about it. The perfectly formed eyebrows above her steeply slanted eyes looked to never have been plucked, even though they were touched up a bit with liner. In the darkness it was hard to make out colors, but she had just enough eye shadow to reinforce her already elegant appearance and thin lipstick that followed the curve of her mouth rather than trying to make it larger. She'd never have made it as a model, but she was good-looking enough to have any man our age she wanted and at the moment, she wanted me.

Everything else is a fog I have spent years trying to work through. I can still see her face, it's burned into the back of my eyelids, and I'll never forget that silky line of frill peeking out from under the slit in her skirt. I woke up in a love hotel, but I don't remember if I pleased her or fell asleep the instant I hit the bed. All I have left now is a crinkled note torn from the hotel memo pad. Across the top, the hotel's logo, an arrow through a heart with "Ma Belle Amie" in a fancy Latin script. Scrawled across the lower half, a single phrase, "It wasn't love."

* * *

Ben

Bill and I had taken the only table at the Gaijin Zone. Since we were the only two patrons, the six by twelve barroom felt tight and cozy rather than stuffy and confining, but then, today was Tuesday. Nobody with any sense comes to Roppongi on a Tuesday night, but there Bill and I sat, sipping Corona beer and nibbling on stale popcorn. Keiko, the petite but fearsome when angry bartender, was a constant buzz of motion behind the cheap Formica bar and its supporting wall of blood red plywood. A lonely guitarist named Fumi sat atop the miniature bandstand strumming away on a Fender guitar that was at least twice her age. She used a barstool for a seat, propping her guitar on one raised knee, the foot carefully wrapped around one none too steady cracked wooden rung. It would win no awards for class and sophistication, but the Gaijin Zone was the one place we could come where the staff always spoke English, albeit, somewhat badly. Fumi started in on a fair rendition of "Bridge Over Troubled Water", Keiko started polishing spotless glasses, and Bill continued dumping his problems on my drunken shoulders.

"Money, the root of all evil. Tha's wha' they say, you know?" He looked to me for confirmation and I shrugged, rolling one hand through the air like a cameraman filming a silent movie.

"Well, it ain' true, Ben. No sirree. Not a word of it. Women, now," he glanced at Keiko and Fumi, "they can cause a man a world of grief! Here, le'me show ya somethin'."

He dug around in the pockets of his suit coat, finally extracted a carefully folded piece of light pink paper torn from a memo pad. The arrow through a heart logo across the top was for a nearby love hotel that called itself "Ma Belle Amie." Scrawled hastily across the bottom half of the page in a curling feminine script were the words, "It wasn't love."

"Tha's all she left me, Ben! I don' even 'member her name. I don' think she gave me a chance to as' her."

The more Bill drank, the worse his speech got. If we didn't leave soon, I'd probably have to carry him to a cab. Still, he stared into my eyes with the kind of unfocused intensity only a drunk can manage.

"Wha'm I gonna do, Ben? How'm I gonna fin' her again?"

I shrugged. It didn't matter what I told him, he would still order another round. No doubt about it. Tonight I was going to wind up carrying him off to a taxi. I'd probably have to ride home with him and carry him upstairs, too. Well, at least he was the one buying.

"I don't know, Bill. I suppose you could ask Keiko. If she's a regular, Keiko will know when she usually comes in and might even know her name."

He blinked at me. It took so long for the thoughts to work their way through his alcohol poisoned brain I could almost see the synapses misfiring all along their path.

"Tha's a good idea, Ben." He lurched to his feet, swaying a bit before he staggered off toward the bar.

Fumi shifted smoothly into "Sister Goldenhair" without missing a beat. If she ever got around to taking voice lessons, she might even have a shot at the big time. I took another sip of Corona, the lime still strong enough to taste. Fumi met my eye and winked. She's seen Bill through many of his moods and even dated him a time or two. We both knew his one goal in life was to find a nice Japanese girl to settle down with and open his own English school. We also knew the sure bet was that he was far more likely to die of liver failure. I saluted her with my bottle of Mexican beer and she accepted it with a nod, never missing a single note as she strummed her way through the chorus.

Bill came back a moment later carrying two more Coronas and some fresh lime. He dropped heavily into his seat, crushed his lime and dropped it into the bottle. "Wha'm I gonna do, Ben?"

I crushed my own lime and forced it through the bottle's long neck and down into the beer where it generated a nice, satisfying little cloud of foam. "Drink your beer, Bill. Maybe she'll be here again this Sunday."

Money, the root of all evil? Maybe so, but I'm more inclined to think we make our own evil. Besides, money buys the beer.