Green IslandTripping on a Train
August 20th 2011 06:03
“There are two types of men in the world,” In Arthur’s mind he was styling; his wife had irony fluttering around her full lips, “those men who have to unbuckle, unclip, unzip and make a huge deal about retrieving their little man when standing at a urinal, and those men who simply unzip, remove and piss.”
“There are those men who apologize after sex and those who don’t,” Candy blurted out and then creased over in her seat giggling quietly to herself.
Shnade was buzzing like fuck from the mushrooms that the weird English dude had given him 40 minutes ago. Shnade had tried a bunch of stuff that he had scabbed or bought over the years. He seemed to remember it taking longer to come up. Those moldy mushrooms that looked more like rotting wood bark had baked up his brain a storm. Now he was struggling to see any fundamental dichotomy in the nature of man.
“Yo man there are cowards and there are heroes, dude.” He eventually got out; but nobody seemed to be listening. Shnade undeterred found himself going into auto-bullshit mode.
“Yeah I’ve been around a bit: Hawaii, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Thailand, India, Russia. They all look the same to me after a while.”
“Bullshit, Shnade. You’ve not been to half of those countries. What’s the capital of Russia?” Candy was already starting to feel slightly irked by Shnade. He seemed to have charm in inverse proportion to his starchy bulk.
“I’m telling you. I’ve been to Russia and Siberia.”
“Siberia is in Russia, dude.”
“I knew that.”
Shnade had a moment: he wanted to tear away the cobwebs of stale boasts and reveal his plump dumbness. He hadn’t felt the need to wave a white flag since he was a young bullshitter. Shnade went silent and thought about his parents. The mushrooms were fucking with him. Somehow he felt guilty.
Our heroine was not faring much better. She was slightly panicked by the thought of someone asking her what she was doing. Would she tell them she was about to become a hostess in the same city as they were all heading? Would that be wise? Would they think she was a prostitute? Candy pictured Hiro standing on the busy Tokyo street watching the taxi taking her away. Did she run away from men for a reason? Candy remembered being buried up to her neck in Amazon mud and watching a capybara family coming down to the river for a drink.
Ai was looking at the train window slowly getting mesmerized by the intense green of the rice fields. Finally she started to see every blade of pendulant rice and she pulled away before she reached the point of no return. She thought to normalize herself and the conversation. She remembered that she should try and stop Arthur from monopolizing center stage. Although this odd potato headed character with his fast food brain seem to throw his stupidity all over center stage.
“So, what are you doing in Japan, Candy? You seem to be travelling light.”
Bang, there it was the question that Candy was sweating about. She looked up at Ai and was reassured by her friendly mien.
Candy felt a tingle in her body. Here was an unexpected gathering; again the drug of shifting scenes and unreal moments gave her a buzz. The sheer randomness of it all made her feel safe in confiding.
“Actually, I’m going to a club in Gugu to learn how to be a hostess. It was sort of a spur of the moment decision. And I have no idea if I’ve made the right choice in either getting on this train or accepting the mushrooms you gave me.” With that Candy giggled again. It felt good to sweep past that potential landmine.
“Cool. I’ve been to lots of hostess clubs.”
“Bullshit. You don’t look like you have money to take a piss in a MacDonald’s.” This little barb shot from Ai. Arthur was loving it. The thing was unfolding like a blog post. He couldn’t help but butt in and save Candy from whatever Mr. Schnapps wanted to say.
“You know, Candy. Life is like the Voltaire book called Candide, funnily enough. It’s about a guy that journeys through life with Dr. Pangloss who glosses over everything to make it seem good. As they travel around the world they encounter earthquakes, pestilence, human ignorance. The characters in the book catch all manner of diseases, lose limbs, get fucked up by circumstance. Life seems like a random shit fest to the people in the book. Over and over Pangloss says ‘all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds’ or some such horse. Anyway, they eventually happened upon a great philosopher. Candid asks the philosopher for the answer ‘Do we live in the best of all possible worlds?’ and the philosopher gives them some bullshit about gardening and dismisses them.”
“How’s that like life or like my life?”
“I have no idea. I just wanted to talk instead of Schnapps.”
Who the fuck was this Schnapps guy? Shnade pondered. These British they were all short a hula of a hoop.
Ai felt a sisterly need to talk to Candy and she felt bored with her husband’s usual charming drivel.
“I’m gasping for a fag.”
“Me, too.”
“You want a gay?”
“Do you know where you have to go in Gugu? I can help you get there if you want.”
“A bit of help is always nice.”Candy was feeling that she had made the right choice in revealing information about herself. She really didn’t know where she was going. It didn’t seem to matter in Japan. The less clue you had, the more you seemed to fit in with all the headless chicken nonsense that Japan specialized in.
Arthur followed the normalizing lead of his wife:
“So she’s becoming a hostess. So what do you do, dude?”
“I’m sort of semi-retired. I came into a lot of money. You know. Going back to Gugu to see my baby daughter and to hang out with my homies.”
“Hang something out with your homosexuals? What’s that about?”
“Ha, ha. Very funny.”
“So what did you mean by the Voltaire story?”
Arthur beamed.
“Voltaire was against the Catholic Church and the Inquisition. He was also against the stupid positivity of Pangloss. He’s saying life is just the way it is, and that you might just as well get used to it. It’s more productive to try and nurture something than to look for an answer that doesn’t exist. Some Indian dude said, ‘You can cover the world in leather or you can wear sandals’.”
“Sometimes I feel an answer exists.” Candy said it as she thought it for the first time.
“That’s like a Beatles song. What’s that song oh yeah: ‘There must be an answer. Let it Be.”
They all started to hum and then to sing a chirpy and somewhat truncated rendition of the Beatles classic.
All four of our characters were thoroughly enjoying the ride, oblivious of the disapproving flicking of eyes of the few Japanese in the same carriage.
____________________
Arthur was airing his brain dust in public:
“Hey, what’s the saddest thing about fucking Google? Before you try to guess let me tell you: it’s the fact that if you type in “Amazon” the first thing you get is a shop and not the biggest bio-reserve on the planet. How can a virtual shop have more relevance than the lungs of the planet? That’s the saddest thing.”
Shnade came back flushed in the face after a pipe in the toilet and exhalation in the carriage join. As he squeezed in next to a Candy determined to give him as much room as possible, Arthur was already holding his audience captive on the random topic of golf.
“Golf is an example of a closed system. Fashions come and go but those dudes continue to wear the same outrageous clothes. Sure the cut changes and plus whatevers go in and out of style but the premise of looking like a silly twat that you would want to beat up doesn’t change. Their white studded belts and one white glove - somehow a cross between a Japanese taxi driver and an Oompa-Loompa from Charlie’s Chocolate Factory.”
Arthur continued he was a digging a rich vein (or so he thought):
“Outrageous check trousers and pink shirts. The sweaters are completely gay – white, yellow, bottle green. And then they’ll complete the fashion burlesque with a pink polo shirt. Gay shoes with tassels. Horrendous color combinations. I was watching it the other day. That Ryo cunt makes the obsasans just wet in the pants.”
That last comment caught the attention of Ai.
“Terrible,” she said clapping.
Shnade had a vague moment of paranoia while Arthur was talking about gay stuff, wondering if this British dude somehow knew about his recent oral mistake. He twisted around to get a good eye full of Candy’s tits just to reassure himself that the mojo was working in the right way. Since he was stoned, on mushrooms and lacking sleep his mojo was sending out mixed signals. The fact that Shnade’s glance lingered long enough for Candy to notice indicated to Shnade not only that he couldn’t be a hommer but also that he was busted.
Candy gave him a withering stare. She wished that she had had time to change before boarding an early morning train. She felt dirty inside and now the stuff that Arthur had made her chew and swallow had made her feel dirty and off base. Still this Arthur character was speaking to her on other levels. His conversation twisted and turned like a wind chime but at the same time it all seemed to revolve around a few ideas that held some sort of relevancy to her life. She wanted to read that book he mentioned earlier.
“Hey, I have a brilliant idea. Ai, get the mobie out. Get some golf on TV. I’m sure the gay twat open is on somewhere.”
Within a minute Ai had found her silver phone with chilli pepper accessories and was getting a good signal of the gay twat open. And indeed there was Ryu kun the Japanese golf darling wearing pink baseball cap, pink sweater and pink bum hugging trousers.
Sniggers bounced around the carriage. Just then.
The train came to a stop at a bright and empty station by the side of a small bamboo forest. Candy was watching the birds flittering around the culms. Ai was looking at the carriage doors. Things flew in just before the doors whooshed shut.
“Ugh, fuck, no. Arthur. FROGS!” Ai shouted as she reared up on her seat ready to leap on to the baggage rail.
Sure enough other people in the carriage started making Japanese noises of shock. Arthur could see vague shadowy traces of small green things leaping from one side of the train to the other. One woman in tights and heels indecorously stumbled past them and into the other carriage. Arthur wondered if she would smell the residual ganja and decided she wouldn’t notice even if she had shit herself with the fear that she exhibited.
A ‘flog’ launched itself towards their section. A beautiful parabola like a peach of a golf shot and found a hole in one down Candy’s sticky cleavage.
Arthur and Shnade watched mesmerized as they were given the green light to look at the one place they had tried for hours to avoid looking at. It was cathartic. The view couldn’t have been better. Ai was mortified of frogs and so couldn’t offer Candy any assistance.
In the end after going through odd spasm-like movements Candy reached in and scooped flesh and amphibian from the cup. Pink puckered flesh and luminous green bedazzled the eyes of onlookers for a fraction of a second before the frog had gained reluctant egress. It was heading to the toilets. Perhaps it wanted to get stoned Arthur thought.
_____________________
Taka had recovered consciousness ten minutes after Shnade had left. He opened his eyes and was momentarily unsure as to where he was. It all came rushing back; he tried to get up to find his phone but pain shot through his left side and his ears popped. Taka noticed the blood coming from his face.
It wasn’t long before Taka had assessed the damage and phoned a taxi. Already his blood was boiling.
____________________
“Man, it’s been great meeting all you folk,” Shnade began in some mock drawl designed to be endearing, “why don’t we take this party to a combini and then out onto the river. I know this sweet spot not far from the station. I’m still buzzing.”
The group nodded. They were still buzzing. It had been a while since the attack of the frogs but the adrenalin of the episode had given the shrooms a boost and they had topped that off with another pipe each and now were heading nicely to Sunday morning second wind. The only thing that bugged Candy was that she wanted a shower, and she had a vague feeling that they would be expecting her immediately at whatever club.
She had a genius idea. She turned to Ai.
“Excuse me. Could I borrow your phone?”
She took her bag and Ai’s phone to the next carriage and phoned Masa’s number. It was an answering machine. Perfect. She didn’t want to have to deal with Masa right now.
“Hello, Masa. Uh sorry. I fell asleep on the train and missed my stop. Can you tell the people in Gugu I’m gonna be late. I’m speaking from a stranger’s phone. She’s going to a different place to me, I think. Thanks.”
It was impulsive, Candy thought regretfully. Still she was in no fit state of mind to deal with gangsters and molls right now.
____________________
Shnade didn’t have that choice. As soon as the foursome stumbled out of the train he spotted two burly looking Japanese dudes wearing dark suits and sunglasses. They were meant to look like salarymen but their shiny slick back hair and insouciant postures sent out a warning. The Japanese hurrying on and off trains gave them a wide berth. The sheep instinctively shied away from the wolves.
Shnade stopped. He knew that he had been spotted. One wolf nudged the other.
Candy noticed the disconcerted look on Shnade’s face.
“Hey, friend. What’s the matter? Let’s go and get those beers you mentioned.”
Shnade was torn. The angel of survival wanted to draw his new band of friends to his side, wanted to elicit help from the station guards, wanted to kick up a storm of attention to ward off the wolves. At the same time he found another angel, a long forgotten one, whispering in his ear. This other voice told him not to involve the good people who were with him; that he should stand up and face his demons. He felt that he had been running away from the consequences of his stupid actions ever since he left the States with misappropriated vacuum cleaner money. He had left his wife and baby for another woman and then left that woman. He had repaid Jay’s hospitality by sleeping with his girlfriend. And finally the misdemeanors had crossed over to crime – he had physically assaulted a gay guy and stolen his money. He saw how stupid it had been to come back to Gugu. That wasn’t very convincing running away.
Arthur and Ai waited at the bottom of the steps leading off the platform. Candy waited by Shnade watching his pale sweaty face. Something near to empathy welled up inside.
“Is it something to do with those two thugs standing over there?”
Shnade snapped out of his introversion and made a decision.
“Hey, Candy. We don’t have much time. Just walk off and join Arthur and Ai. I don’t want to involve you in the trouble I got myself in. You know all my life I’ve been jumping from one sinking boat to the next. When I’m on the boat I pretend I’m the captain and when it’s going down I shout my innocence. This is where the buck stops. Here is my chance to change.”
“Don’t be silly. Here is your chance to get hurt.”
“So, be it. Now fuck off, please.”
Candy walked off and stared hard as she passed the two goons. They ignored her.
Shnade waited until everyone had left the platform and he was left alone with the two nemesis figures. Shnade picked up his duffel bag and guitar and walked farther down the platform. They slowly followed. Shnade got to the end of the concrete and turned around briefly. His pursuers were just a few yards away. He jumped off the end of the platform and started to run. He could see a level crossing ahead. Perhaps he could make it to the side streets of Gugu and duck in a shop and hide. He fought the pain as his overweight bulk struggled to keep up the effort. No point turning around. Just keep going. Keep running.
Shnade made it to the crossing and headed north until he found a dismal covered shopping alley. Surely he was safe here, and surely Candy and his other train friends were now out of harm’s way. He stopped by a tobacconist and turned around. As he did so he felt a sharp pain in his stomach. He was eyeball to eyeball with one of the gangsters. The other was holding him up and going through his pockets. Shnade was feeling cold; he looked down and saw a bloom of blood across his T-shirt. A moment past and the man rifling his pockets retrieved an envelope of cash. The blade slid out.
They left Shnade slumped against the counter of the tobacconist. Nobody was behind the counter. Before he passed out Shnade laughed and thought, “I should have stolen some cigarettes.”
| 17 |
| Vote |
Add To: 
subscribe to this blog
