2.27 Agog

As a stranger in a land as strange as Japan where enduring and satisfying human relationships can sometimes be hard to come by, necessity often forces you into tenuous friendships with people you might not otherwise associate with. More often than not, the only thing bringing a group of gaijin together is an aversion to drinking alone.

It was no different with me.

I had an odd collection of drinking buddies, like a drawer full of mismatched socks, I had picked up over the years. We would meet, get shit-faced on cheap beers at gaijin watering holes or, better yet, pig out at inexpensive izakaya with all-you-can-eat, all-you-can-drink deals, and score the occasional skank.

I have to admit it had been fun in a sophomoric sort of way for a while, but it had never  been a fraction as fulfilling as the time I was now spending with Jean, drinking Zacapa and meeting, beautiful women, yes, but also getting to know men who were going places and doing things with their talents and connections. Shôhei and his partner, for instance, would by and by open an upscale restaurant that would be the launching pad for a chain of fine dining establishments located throughout the Kantô and Kansai regions, making the two of them multi-millionaires and celebrities in their own right before their thirty-fifth birthdays.

Talk about bending reality. In those first several months that we had become friends, Jean had already bent mine into a pretzel and I doubt anyone will ever come close to influencing the way I lived and the thought the way the Frenchman would over the next several years. True to his name, Jean-Baptiste would be the prophet who would lead me out of the desert of my life.

“By the way, I have to go to Tôkyô next week for a show,” Jean said. Leaning in close, his voice becoming a whisper, he added: “I’m going to be meeting some mates from Columbia.”

“Columbia?”

“If you’ve been a good boy, Santa may pay you an early visit this year.”

If my face had been lit up like a pachinko machine before with that first sip of Zacapa, I wonder what it must have looked like when I learned that it was going to snow this spring. Jackpot!

“Won’t be cheap,” Jean said, taking a drink of his rum, “but I assure you it will be well worth it. Interested?”

Interested? Fucking agog, I was.

I nodded my head, yes.

© Aonghas Crowe, 2010. All rights reserved. No unauthorized duplication of any kind.

注意：この作品はフィクションです。登場人物、団体等、実在のモノとは一切関係ありません。

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

No. 6 is now available on Kindle.