Lessons in Human Behavior at Nikko Tosho-gu Lounge

Took that unfinished work from below to where it needed to be. Enjoy.

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Lessons in Human Behavior at Nikko Tosho-gu Lounge


"Would you have a look at what that woman is wearing?" Mirian leaned toward her sister, motioning carefully with a gloved hand. "I tell you it’s just ridiculous. A girl that pretty all dolled up like some –"
"Like some floozy," Josephine chimed in. "Like some little floozy, parading herself around for whoever wants a look."
"It’s just terrible."
"Terrible."
"You know, the poor thing’s liable to pop herself right out the top of that dress."
"Oh, that’s the least of it."
"And such fine skin too."
"Oh, fine skin yourself. I don’t see nothing but cheap snuff," Josephine fussed. "That girl’s looking to wind up in a backseat. Have herself knocked up by some smooth talking Joe Sixpack with a fast mouth and even faster –"
"Josephine!" Mirian brought her sister’s quick tongue to a pause. "Please."
Indiana watched his mother as she eyed his aunt into an unwilling repose. Visibly slighted, Josephine began picking about at the ice in her glass with a tiny plastic sword. She swizzled the drink into a tinkling circus of crystal and purple spirits, and her eyes widened with a sense of propriety as she seemed to focus on some point in the center of the tiny whirlpool.
"I only meant it’s not decent," she said as she cleared her throat. "You know that."
Mirian picked up her knife and sawed through a medallion of pork loin.
"Yes, well," she conceded, "I don’t think Indiana should hear things like that." Then pressing a mild smile across the table to him, "And I don’t think Indiana wants to hear things like that."
Indiana picked up his glass with both hands and lowered his lips to meet the straw. As he drank down the bottom of his third cola, the boy pendulumed his feet underneath the table and studied his mother.
Her eyes were warm but very tired. Faint pouches drooped themselves above her smooth dark cheeks. The skin at the corners of her mouth was creased, bringing to the surface a tiny branching system of wrinkles resultant from years of affected smiling. The green felt-hat under which she had drawn up her wiry hair was less vibrant than he had recalled; the poinsettia on it’s face seemed deflated. It appeared as if the cloth flower was wilting; as if the inanimate bud was somehow succumbing to time. Indiana wondered how long she’d owned the hat, for he could not picture her in public without it. The aged garment was her favorite hat; it was her only hat, and she wore it proudly.
"Oh, come off it Mirian," Josephine blunted. "The boy’s nearly ten years old. He’s bound to start a liking to girls soon and he should know what a decent girl is like." Turning to Indiana, "You should know what a decent girl is like."
The boy looked into his glass and watched as the last of the brown tonic disappear through his straw. He then set the empty glass alongside the others on the table.
"Shoot, Aunt Jo, I know what’s decent and what’s not."
"That’s right, he does," Mirian attested. "Because I’ve been raising him to be respectful."
"Alright, fine. Mirian, I won’t tell you how to educate your son," she said, prodding again at the ice. "Indiana, what makes a girl decent?’
"Josephine."
Indiana looked at the two sisters. Going out with them was usually fine; it meant restaurants, real food, exotic drinks. Their bickering was never before of his concern. The two women tended to absorb themselves in their own short-minded surveys, the topics of which were either above or below him. But now he was involved; his mother looked at him earnestly, his aunt, expectantly. He was being addressed and he did not know how to respond.
"Well. I don’t know," he admitted. "But I bet you I could pick one out. A decent girl, I mean."
"You’re gonna pick her on looks, huh?" Josephine whited her eyes. "Well go on."
"This is silly. Indiana, honey, you don’t have to pick out a girl," Mirian said. "And besides, judging a girl by the way she looks isn’t right."
"Mm-hm," Josephine shook her head and looked down at Indiana.
But the child did not hear this. He was already turned around in his seat, squinting through the leather and floral aromas of cigar smoke and perfume that filled the lounge, scanning the crowd for a decent girl. A decent girl.
All around him the floor was choked with two person breakaway tables, their impermanence hardly disguised by the covering of white tablecloths that freckled the otherwise darkly fashioned decor of the lounge. Seated at each of these many tables were the same two people: a man in formal blacks and a woman in spotless formal whites. The conduct at each table was the same: the woman quietly inclined her head towards the table while the man carried on garrulously, gesturing with his hands as he spoke. His deep voice pushed across wine-colored lips that did not move, but rather were frozen in a wide, gummed grin. None of the men moved their mouths as they spoke. None of the women raised their eyes in response. Boisterous, mouthless one-sided conversations and the clinking of highballs swelled throughout the room.
Indiana turned about in his seat and noticed that the sea of white tables and loud men continued out past several colonnades in every direction, carried off upon a sprawling diamond patterned carpet. There were no walls for his eyes to grasp, as the ceiling and the floor seemed to form a singularity in the distance. He could not discern any entrance or exit to the room, and suddenly Indiana forgot how he had arrived at his table.
"See, you’ve confused him. He doesn’t know what he’s doing."
Before the boy could respond he turned around once more. The women in white bowed lower, slumping towards the table. The men in black arched taller, their faces now completely stiffened as they carried on. The sound of toasts and the tinkling of flatware rose to shattering proportions. All of this began to cover over Indiana, as the undulation of the crowd grew more unmanageable to his senses. For a moment his vision spun, and he felt as though he might pass out. "Bathroom," he mumbled, as he pushed back his chair.
"What?"
"Indiana."
"Bathroom!"
He was up, his eyes shuffling with his feet across the heavily trodden carpet.
"By the entrance."
"By the entrance."
Indiana looked around. A horizon of blurred and blank faces met his. Women in all white with no eyes. Men in all black with no mouths. They had their glasses raised, not to one another but to Indiana, as if with this grey gesture they wished to recognize his place among them. Drinks were raised in every direction, and abruptly the lounge fell silent as an ancient ruin, with hundreds of statued arms vacantly saluting eternity.
In a moment of panic, Indiana reeled and turned back towards his table.
"It’s you."
His mother and aunt were gone, and a man he had never seen before was leaning against the back of his seat. This man was different from the others; he had a mouth. It was sturdy and perse lipped, and moved when he spoke. He had eyes; dark focused eyes that hung in the centers of a pair of black horn-rimmed glasses. Their whites flashed as he glanced quickly around the room.
"It’s you."
The man’s concentration came back to the boy. His hair was coarse and dryly notched to one side. He wore a soft, chocolate brown dinner suit and a mauve bow tie, and racked his hands uneasily as the two stared back into each other. The more Indiana studied him, the more familiar he became.
"I know you."
The two took seats opposite one another and inched their chairs towards the table.
"I know you."
Indiana gripped the fabric of his trousers.
For a time they sat quietly, surrounded by the sightless, voiceless angels of the lounge.
"Listen," the man said, as Indiana reached up to adjust his glasses. "There is no entrance."
But the child could not hear this.


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