Ransom by Jay McInerney Page B

half to kill before he had to meet Marilyn. He ate a bowl of noodles with the sensei and rode downtown to a public bath he frequented. Leaving his shoes with the others in the tiled entryway, he pulled back the door to the men’s entrance, paid the attendant and asked for a bucket, towel and soap. In the changing room an aged man wearing the wraparound diaper favored by the prewar generation was dressing a young boy of three or four. The boy pointed at Ransom—“gaijin,” he said—and the two of them openly watched him undress.
    His clothes folded in a basket, he pulled back the glass door and stepped into the blue steam of the bath chamber. The sound of running water slowed and thickened as he closed the door behind him. Two men were submerged to their necks in the baths. Three others sat in front of the faucets along the far wall, one of them very dark-skinned. Closer up, Ransom could make out the dragon-and-flame motif of the tattoos which covered his back and arms. One of the attractions of the bath was that it was a yakuza hangout. The tattoos were worth the price of admission. Missing fingers were a bonus.
    Ransom scooped his bucket in the warm tub and poured it over his head, then sat down on the tiles in front of one of the faucets. He rinsed himself down, lathered up his washcloth, and soaped himself, starting with the toes. Glancing sideways at the tattooed man, he observed the dragon getting doused. Yamada had come here with him recently and warned him not to stare, told him that yakuza were dangerous. Being stared at seven days a week, though, Ransom felt entitled to gawk himself.
    Yamada’s waning interest in the dojo disconcerted him. For two years Ransom had been putting nearly all of his energy and time into karate, hoping eventually to be as good as Yamada, who was three or four years older and had been at it for half of his life. Ransom believed that he would become a different person, better somehow, if he kept training. Without actually cataloguing imagined benefits, he felt that the discipline would tone all of his being. It was a way of knowing himself. He wished to be morally taut and resolute, and at the same time more at ease with his fellow creatures, to achieve a self-mastery that would reduce the complexity of transacting with others.
    When he had finished rinsing, he went over to the first of four tubs arrayed in order of ascending temperature. In movies, the manly, samurai sort of man leapt immediately into the hottest tub, killing millions of sperm even as he proved his virility, but the sensible procedure was to work your way up. Ransom stepped into the first and submerged himself up to his neck. He lay back and closed his eyes. When the water began to feel cool he moved to the next tub, already occupied by two men who shared rough, peasant features and who openly scrutinized the invader.The tattooed man in the third tub stood up and lowered himself unceremoniously into the hottest. Ransom’s two companions were conferring. The thickness of their Kansai dialect and the distortion of the echo obscured the conversation, but Ransom gathered they were talking about him.
    Gaijin are bigger
, one said, standing up,
but Japanese are harder
.
    This, Ransom knew, was the common wisdom.
    The laughter of women carried from the other side of the partition. The men eyed Ransom suspiciously: they knew he had come to steal their daughters and their sisters. These two were old enough to remember the Occupation. Ransom assumed an innocent expression—Nobody here but us eunuchs.
    He lay back in the tub and considered the Marilyn business. Her cause was not exactly a noble one. She had been sleeping with two men—or at least thinking about it—one married and one a gangster, and she’d been caught. The only good thing she had done so far was to keep it from Miles, but her concern for his well-being was riddled with self-interest, a function of diverting shit from fan.