Airport Limousine Bus

White paper sky was a ceiling on the world set high enough that the departing planes sailed trapped below it. Blustery wind made me grab my blazer and pull the front of it overlapping beneath crossed arms and hunched shoulders.

"We are very sorry," the man said, bowing over and over in short, precise little bobs, the motions of a bird drinking. "Very sorry." The repetition didn't make my luggage reappear.

Between my incomplete Japanese and his broken English I could gather my roll-on had been put on the wrong bus and was probably sitting on the curb at TCAT instead of here with me. It'd been rush hour, and the bus from Haneda I'd been on was full, so they'd tried to send the bags on the next, five minutes behind me. In the fog of jetlag, I hadn't even noticed.

"We will bring it." Officiously confident while still polite, he had on a different uniform jacket than the attendant who'd looked around for my bag, confused, as everyone else claimed theirs and departed. I'd stood there numbly, staring into the empty cargo space under the passenger cab of the bus, getting in the way of the next group boarding. She'd had to call someone more important to deliver the bad news.

She was still there in her drab brown and white, bowing along with him. A simple, long ponytail bounced over a shoulder with each jerking obeisance. Unlike the twenty-something girls they stock the ticketing and checkout counters with here, she wasn't a TV-ready beauty. The uniform was sturdy, workmanlike rather than fashion-plate appealing. Her angular cheeks were pinched by the cold breezes, and her eyes were narrow. "Untrustworthy," a Japanese might describe them as, meaning "less expressive." She hadn't looked very worried about the missing luggage then, or very apologetic now, her face still and downcast while her boss did the talking.

"We will bring it." My claim ticket was proffered back to me in both hands' tobacco-stained fingers. When I'd accepted it, he gestured toward the ticketing counter inside.

"I have to... my flight," I stumbled over the words. The usual musical flow of Japanese was nothing but off-key notes in my mouth today. There was no way the luggage was getting here in time, and I wasn't getting on a plane without it.

"We are very sorry." The repetition still didn't help, but I could tell he wasn't going anywhere until I let him. A small bow from myself was the release he needed, and he scurried away after one more dip for good measure. The attendant went straight to loading luggage again. I remained an awkward obstacle for a moment more, before heading inside to see if I could save anything of this flight.

Long columns of check-in counters stretched behind me to a point in the distance like a perspective drawing. The airline receptionist was very sorry as well. The flight I'd missed was the last one they could have put me on today, thanks to overbooking. I had a hotel voucher in my hand for my troubles, and my bag had actually arrived at the Airport Limousine Bus counter during the time I'd been begging for a flight, any flight, back to the States. But no, I was faced with another night in Japan. Another lost day before the 20 hours of travel facing me tomorrow.

The kanji on the voucher swam over thick card stock when I squinted at it through aching eyes. There were a couple hotel names in English, one in katakana that probably spelled out "Hotel Paradaisu" and some that I just couldn't read. The terms of it were in even more daunting tiny print.

Suddenly the terminal felt hot, the weight of the day behind me very heavy. I was sweating, they keep all the buildings here so warm, and the suit was none too fresh to start with. I'd worn it since I got dressed this morning, through two meetings in Niigata, and then the ordeal here at Narita. My shoulder sagged under my backpack strap. My soles of my feet stung, pounded flat in dress shoes. I needed air. Even rest could wait.

Gusting wind flapped my coat open when I ventured back outside. People flowed around me out to the bus stops, most leaving the airport as flights tapered off. It was cold enough now that puffs of visible breath danced on the lips of people away from the warm glow of the terminal doors. I watched them board buses, going somewhere: maybe home, maybe to a hotel where they actually had reservations.

The bus attendant from before was still there, handing out claim tickets as she put tags on each suitcase and roll-on. A small explosion of vapor escaped her mouth each time she lifted the heavy bags, probably with an under-her-breath exclamation for the effort. She obviously had plenty of practice at shifting them. Her shoulders seemed too broad for her, but it might have just been the old fashioned-looking polyester jacket because the rest of her body tapered down like a skinny isosceles perched on its most acute point. She bowed deep to each bus as it pulled away, her butt curving under heavy uniform pants and her ponytail flopping forward. After that formality she'd rub her hands together and breathe into them until the next bus pulled up a minute later.

It was getting dark. The attendants were using flashlights now to examine their schedules and tickets. I needed to get somewhere to sleep but couldn't budge. Sitting down even seemed like too much effort, and I wasn't sure I'd be able to stand again if I did.

A burst of Japanese startled me from what my fugue. I'd been staring at a point somewhere through a bus and probably the building across the multilane drive. The bus attendant repeated herself but I still didn't understand and just blinked at her.

"You are still here?" her thin lips gave an exaggerated outline of each word in English. I knew it wasn't what she'd asked in Japanese. Her eyes were open as wide as they could go with the question, and she dipped her sharply pointed chin when she asked.

I just held out the hotel voucher. It had bent into a trough while clutched in my hand. She craned her head to make a polite show of peering at it. A few short hairs had escaped the corral of her ponytail and fluttered on the exposed nape of her neck. Maybe she'd point me where to go because I couldn't figure it out for myself that state.

"This way," back to Japanese. She briskly lead me down the walk in front of the terminal with strides short enough for my shambling walk to match. A blank door opened to her company badge and admitted us to the staff-only areas of the airport.

It was no less noisy here. Bright white walls shocked the eye before giving way to cavernous spaces full of occupied desks. People milled and worked without the courtesy of cubicle walls to damp the chaos. I drifted by the tumult as if sliding down a tube after the attendant. She looked back to make sure I was still there.

Another burst of cold and the noise changed to motors, sirens, and synthesized crosswalk music. We were outside again, and hurrying toward a bus. I almost ran into my escort when she stopped to talk to someone. I heard "hotel" and "luggage" somewhere in the rapid-fire before she was moving again. I followed her aboard and sat down in the seat she picked, trapping her against the window. My apology was a mumbled one, my tongue floundering over the most simple phrase as I struggled to stand back up to let her out to the aisle.

"I am going," she nodded her head vigorously to show I didn't need to move. I collapsed back into the seat, too tired to wonder if the roll-on I didn't have in my hand anymore had made it onto the bus with me.

Lights flashed outside the window. My head lolled with each bounce of the bus' suspension. "My name is Yaeko," she said. It came out of nowhere, but maybe she said something before it. I didn't catch her family name because I only belatedly realized she was talking. It was longer.

I must have told her my name because she rolled it around her mouth to try it on. The emphasis was in the wrong place but when I tried to correct her, I said it the exact same way. Her lips kept moving. They were chapped and pale pink that was very bright against her sallow skin. One yaeba tooth peeked out at me, flashing in the orange and shadow of an underpass.

Cold air punctuated the night again. This time it curled around my ankles and I started. "We are here," the attendant looked at me and then at the bus aisle. I stared back before realized I had to get up. I'd slept.

Yaeko, that was her name, nudged me toward the door with unobtrusive fingertips on my elbow. I stepped out onto a lamplit street while she yanked my luggage from the cargo space beneath. A couple other people disembarked behind me to pause awkwardly before realizing I wasn't getting out of the way and just going around me. They were all wearing the Airport Limousine Bus uniform. "Employee bus?" I asked. She nodded. I didn't know how to say thanks for such an irregularity, so I asked, "where is the hotel?"

"This way." At least she didn't carry my roll-on for me. We walked down the street and she rubbed her hands against the cold I wasn't even feeling anymore. The clean sidewalk underfoot was only broken by a manhole cover with a ginko leaf design.

"Here." I wasn't sure how far we'd walked, but we turned off the street and up a narrow flight of stairs into a multi-floor building nestled between two much larger towers. My arm jarred with each step I dragged the roll-on over. It was the third floor before we stopped. She fitted a key to the door and let herself in. The lip of the doorway confounded my luggage and I stumbled in after, going down hard on a knee against the step up from the entryway. Tears started in my eyes, hot and painful as I turned and planted my ass on the step and clutched my knee.

"Are you okay?" she asked sympathetically in Japanese. Through watering eyes I could see her regarding me with an awkward mixture of concern and embarrassment at having seen me trip. I just nodded and slipped off my shoes. Her own shoes joined mine, leaving her in brown stockings that were probably part of the uniform, too. Apparently I was staying.

To say the apartment was tiny doesn't do the word justice. It was narrow: my bag barely fit through the gap between kitchenette and wall to get to the single living space. At her gesture I limped in on threadbare black dress socks and left the luggage behind by the shoes box. The room itself was constrained by a wardrobe and set of drawers that were so generic they had to have come with the apartment. Her bed took up another corner. It was Western-style, but little larger than a cot. Dingy plastic tatami crinkled underfoot.

She'd lingered by the entryway where the kitchenette actually extended almost to the door before stepping into the bathroom opposite. She didn't close the door. Thin shoulders emerged from under her brown polyester uniform to leave a white undershirt almost hanging off of her. The sturdy grey pants were cinched in tight at the waist, at least a size too large. I could see she was whip-skinny without the jacket, much smaller and probably younger than my first impression. She was probably only a little over half of my 40-some years.

Water gurgled in the pipes for a few seconds before splashing weakly from the tap. She splashed some on her face, then stripped off the white undershirt carelessly while I watched. Flesh-toned, with perfunctory lace along the top, her bra showed nothing of her small breasts. It was a simple affair, the sort worn when a shirt will cover everything anyway. Still oblivious to my dull gaze, she splashed water in her armpits and ran wet hands around her neck. I didn't think to look away until she'd started drying herself with the hand-towel laying on the countertop.

Unable to keep staring, I tried paying attention to the rest of the apartment. Some cheap clothes hanging on a free-standing rack, a small flat-screen on the wall across from the bed, mismatched boxes, some wrapped in plastic bags, stacked against another wall, nearly everything she had was on display. Several empty cup ramen containers were set on the floor near the foot of the bed, along with a couple of small bottles. A lopsided cushion on the floor was the only place to sit. The wardrobe door was open halfway and I could see stacked boxes up to the level of some hanging garments there, too.

Only one hint of feminine occupation struck me: a small vanity on the drawers attended by a jumbled array of half-empty cosmetics. The tiny apartment was almost completely without decor. A single window showed only a square of nighttime darkness.

Yaeko walked by me, her skinny legs and feet now bare. The undershirt was back in place, but the points of her nipples poked at the thin fabric. She hung her bra from the clothing rack and let the uniform pants just fall to the floor next to it. Mismatched black cotton panties peeked at me from below the hem of her shirt. Her ponytail was undone now, but still stubbornly holding the shape it was cinched into all day.

She waved toward the sink. "You can wash your face," she offered, "and there is a toilet." Shocking cold water chased the pain from the hollows under my eyes for a blessed moment. I heard Japanese voices and canned laughter from the room. The TV. The only towel smelled of long use when I wiped my face, but the fresher feeling of scrubbed skin it left behind made me miserably aware the rest of me was sour and grimy. I shucked off my blazer and draped it over the rod above the shoes box. There was no hanger for it. The rumpled button-down shirt beneath followed, leaving me in an undershirt as well. I mimicked her example and washed my neck and armpits.

When I set down the towel I could see her watching me from where she was standing in the other room. Her narrow eyes were frank in their assessment. She tucked in her chin to look at me through short eyelashes with painfully obvious flirtation. The tip of her pink tongue emerged to wet her lips. The clumsy coquetry made her seem even younger.

"Don't you want to sit?" Another burst of Japanese followed that and she pointed at the clothes rack. I looked back at where I'd left my blazer thinking she wanted it somewhere else. She shook her head and indicated my pants. "Press!" she made a smoothing motion. They were already wrinkled beyond salvage outside of a dry-cleaner.

Expectation glittered in her slitted eyes. I dimly realized that I was making a decision between going home slightly less exhausted, and something else, something of this lost, nighttime world I'd sleepwalked into. I wavered, actually wobbling, but the feeling was of standing with my toes off a cliff, rather than of being too tired to keep my balance.

Numbly, I undid my belt and started to pull off my slacks. Yaeko squeezed by me, apparently satisfied enough that she didn't need to watch. I creased them as best I could and hung them on the flimsy rack. It sagged under the extra weight.

When I turned around, I saw my host stooped over and reaching into the mini-fridge, unconcerned about the way her panty-clad butt was thrust out from the hem of her undershirt. The glare of the interior light showed only a pair of styrofoam boxes and a silver can. Asahi. "Beer?" she asked, taking it out and cracking it open without waiting. I nodded anyway.

She squeezed by me again and sat on the edge of her bed, knees and toes pointed inward, watching with that mysterious expectation. Compared to her sallow thighs and calves her knees were an angry, chafed pink. I sat on the thin cushion, facing her. She took a sip of the beer, then handed it to me. On the TV, someone shouted a catchphrase in an incomprehensible Osaka accent. More canned laughter. The only other sound was a muffled thump: someone moving in the next apartment over.

Our fingers brushed when I took the can. The rim was wet with her saliva and the residue of beer. It was ice cold, but stale and skunky like it had been in her fridge for months. I still guzzled half of it greedily and handed it back. This time our hands overlapped.

Another sip for her, taken while peering over the rim of the can, watching, gauging. Up close, she had tired and bruised-looking circles under her eyes to rival mine. Her presentation of the can was a parody of how one might serve tea, two-handed and submissively formal. I swallowed another mouthful and returned it to her inquisitive grasp. She traced the backs of my hands and the length of my fingers before accepting the can.

The last of the beer vanished down her throat in an un-ladylike gulp. "All gone," she announced in accented English, perhaps an advertising slogan. A wrinkle in the tatami tipped the can when she set it down and I leaned over instinctively to pick it back up even though it was empty. I'd thought to move quickly but the reality was a slow-motion lurch toward her.

Yaeko made a thoughtful noise. She leaned forward as well, parting her knees and our faces were suddenly well inside Japanese person space. The inside of her thighs flashed fish-belly white, all the way to the black of her cotton panties. A few strands of pubic hair poked through the thin material. Nudged by her small foot, the beer can rolled under the bed. Her tongue was luridly red when she licked pale lips again.

I shuffled on my knees and her legs parted further, beckoning. I'd expected cold, but her thighs were warm as I pushed between them. The closer I got, however, the further away she leaned. Finally her back was arched, her elbows keeping her from falling flat onto the wrinkled, dingy coverlet.

That was as far as I could go. My legs met the edge of the bed, and my pelvis hers where the smooth heat of her thighs funneled me to her center. Only boxers and panties between us, and I was somehow plank-hard despite my fatigue. The pulse of blood in my shaft ached and mirrored the pounding behind my exhausted eyes. "How interesting," she muttered. A spike of irrational anger shot through me at her mocking tone. The day was too long for this.

"You!" I started as I leaned over her, mangling the use of the pronoun. My mouth was open when it crashed into hers and I didn't have to say anything else. The coquetry vanished and she surged up to meet me. Our teeth clashed, then our tongues, ramming past and around each other in a wet tangle. The kiss was violent, gnawing, our jaws working as our hips ground together in turn.

She let herself fall back against the bed, cocking one leg up so she could lay down. I couldn't help battering myself even harder against her spread-eagled crotch. She seemed to weigh nothing when I grabbed her thin ass to lay her out completely. I climbed onto the bed with her, in the notch of her cheap mattress where she lay. A melange of smells hit me: sour unwashed skin, stale sheets, and the raw scent of her arousal.

"No, no, no," she keened in Japanese, even though her small, chilly hands were flat against my back under my shirt and pulling me closer. I shoved her shirt up to her armpits to bare small breasts under me. A large mole, only a little darker than her sharply erect nipples, stood out below the shallow curve of her left tit. There wasn't a lot to seize, but I sank my fingers into one breast, and she yelped. "No, no."

Her bucking hips ground against mine and I abandoned her breasts to try to do something about her panties. I yanked down one side past her protruding hipbone and uncovered the exquisite crease where her leg met her pelvis and the top of her sparse pubic thatch, but couldn't get it further. The grinding motion of her mons against my member, now shoved through the fly of my boxers, was too much for my whirling thoughts to solve the undergarment conundrum rationally. I was harder than I'd ever been in my life, I thought, and I'd have come long ago if I wasn't so tired.

My fumbling grasp tangled in her panties and pulled them away from her bony bottom hard enough I could hear elastic give out even over her whines. Short, wiry hair brushed my cock and I let my weight pin her, writhing, to the bed. The lips of her labia met my head and I pushed, almost bending painfully double before they split and I hilted in a strangling rush. She was wet, but her passage so tight I wasn't sure I could pull out having finally forced my way in. Yaeko gave a choked sob at the penetration and she spasmed around me while holding on for dear life.