When Yamashita’s girlfriend got angry with him, she would start swearing in English.  He couldn’t always understand the words, but he knew they were coarse. The girlfriend was Australian, tall and big-boned, with hair the color of persimmons. She had freckles from her shoulders to her navel. 

“You little sheet, you gud-dahm buss-tahd,” she’d say to Yamashita if he failed to come home with the type of beer she wanted, or if he didn’t rub her feet long or hard enough.

“You leetle sheet.” she would wail.

“Tell me more,” Yamashita would say, with a grin. 

He had never met such a loud and feisty woman. It was clear that he had a big effect on her and that felt good.

The red-headed woman’s name was Mackenzie Koops. And she was a welcome change from the quiet office girls he had encountered through dating apps, or the submissive bar hostesses he’d meet when he went out drinking. The giggling ones, like Keiko, who encouraged him to buy more booze. Or the naughty ones, like Mariko, who would ease onto his lap like a kitten. He had no real effect on those girls, never had, never would.

The foreigner was younger than Yamashita by a good ten years. She had come to Japan with a work visa to teach English. 

“And absorb the culture, you know,” she said the word culture as if it were some kind of amoxicillin she would be forced to swallow.

Yamashita wasn’t surprised that Mackenzie couldn’t hang on to a job for long. She usually disagreed with the boss, balked at the rules, and stormed off before her second pay check.

“These Japanese employers are way too strict,” she’d say. 

Her father sent money once a month, which Mackenzie promptly spent on trendy boots, asymmetrical skirts, fashion magazines, or nesting lacquered boxes which she filled with eye make-up. 

“That’s the only good thing about Tokyo, the shopping,” she’d say.

She had a hard time with the weather too.  It was a particularly damp fall, and the sky above the city stayed the color of pewter.

“Gud dahmit, doesn’t the sun ever shine here? I’ve never seen so many gud dahm umbrellas.”

Yamashita would watch her lips, sticky with Revlon’s Cardinal Promise, as she spit her hot fury all over his apartment. She was like a volcano. Unpredictable, slightly scary, but magnificent in her own way.

“I can tell you are angry,” he would say with a slight smile, and Mackenzie would get even angrier. 

Yamashita loved watching her cheeks turn scarlet every time she lost her temper. He was fascinated by her translucent skin. The way the blood rose like a crimson tide from her throat to her hairline. 

In the beginning, soon after she moved into his apartment, Mackenzie cursed at Yamashita almost daily. Because he stayed out too late. Or he drank too much. Sometimes she’d accuse him of talking to old girl friends. She couldn’t read Japanese, but Yamashita’s keitai would ring and light up with photos of girls and their names written in Roman letters. 

“Who is this Keiko-chan and why the hell is she calling you at midnight?” she’d say. 

“Just a bar hostess, looking for business,” he’d say. “There’s nothing going on. You’re not jealous, are you?”

“Gud dahmit. Of course I’m jealous,” she’d say with a roar. 

Yamashita felt comforted by her jealousy, by the very heat of her responses to him. They were like little pieces of kindling that blazed up and reassured him of his worth.

Occasionally, she would just go beserk for something really minor. Because Yamashita had forgotten to get her a rice ball at the convenience store, or because he had misplaced the remote control to the heater.

“What in hell are you trying to do? Freeze my arse?” she’d yell.

They soon developed a pattern. Fight and fondle and unroll the futon. Mackenzie’s fury served as a kind of foreplay. She’d stride across the small apartment with her long legs, pacing like a tiger. Her face would become the color of summer beets, the pickled kind that Yamashita enjoyed, all soaked in vinegar and served on a tiny plate next to a delicate chunk of bonito. Then she’d begin to throw random objects: a rice paddle, a tissue box, a tin filled with paper clips shaped like stars. Yamashita enjoyed these eruptions immensely. He knew where they would lead. 

“I think I’ll go out to the ramen shop and come back later,” he’d say as Mackenzie would fling a snow globe across the room. 

In a few short hours, the fury would have disappeared. Yamashita would come home and find MacKenzie curled up on the floor, wrapped in a blanket, flipping through Vogue Japan, her anger melted. He’d kiss the back of her smooth neck. 

“I’m home,” he’d say. 

 “I’m glad you’re back,” she’d answer. “I can’t live in this gud dahmn country without you.”

She would kiss him so hard that there would be welts on his lips. 

Yamashita lived for Mackenzie’s reddenings. He’d sit in his office, thinking about her moods, her sharp tongue, how fast she ignited, how intensely she forced him to live his daily life.  

“You’re lucky you’re with a young foreigner,” said his old school chum, Watanabe, when they met for drinks after work.

“You’d better believe it,” said Yamashita. “My life now, well, it’s like what you see in films.” 

He was thinking particularly about a Korean movie he had watched. All explosive arguments followed by dramatic apologies, followed by shots of two bodies glistening with sweat. 

“She’s a fire-brand,my Aussie,” he confided.

But nothing lasts, of course. Hot lava always cools. After the bustle of the New Years celebrations, and then during the dull days of January, Yamashita began to notice small changes in Mackenzie. She talked more about the slow pace of Queensland, the way the air in Brisbane smelled of frangipani. Her mind seemed to be turning elsewhere, away from Tokyo, away from Yamashita. 

Spring approached. Plum trees blossomed, followed by the famous cherry trees. The air grew sweeter. Yamashita hoped that Mackenzie would venture outside with him, but she shrugged her shoulders at the suggestion.

“Where’s the remote control to the heater?’ she’d ask. “It’s still a bit brisk in here.”

“It must be around somewhere,” Yamashita would answer.

Instead of swearing, she just kept searching under the cushions until she found it. 

Days started going by without a fight. Yamashita felt as if he were invisible to Mackenzie, no more 

meaningful than the cheap wooden chopsticks from the convenience store that they threw away after each meal. He longed to hear her call him “a leetle sheet”.

Even when the bar hostesses phoned him late at night, Mackenzie would no longer get riled. She’d wake up, sigh, and soon be asleep again. Yamashita would turn on the light just to look at her. Her face would be the color of ivory. He’d pull down the quilt a bit and stare at her freckles. They looked like flecks of splattered paint on a blank canvas. 

Some days he tried provoking her, just a little bit. He’d find the remote control, but pretend it was still missing, just to tick her off. See if he could get her blood flowing.

He couldn’t.

He felt he had no choice but to up the ante. Infuriate her. 

“How is your Australian girl?” asked Watanabe, the next time they met.

“Lukewarm, recently,” said Yamashita. “But I have a plan.”

That night he brought home both Keiko-chan and Mariko-chan at the same time. He had never before invited a bargirl to his flat.  Never. Each woman wore too much scent. They had taken off their high heels and held them in their hands. Yamashita carried a half-full bottle of sake under his arm. He had trouble punching in the lock pad on his front door. Yuri-chan had to help steady him. As the door opened, Yamashita called out Mackenzie’s name.  

“Come see who’s here,” he said, parading the hostess girls into the bedroom.

Mackenzie barely stirred. She sat up for a minute and stared, then went back to sleep without a word.

Yamashita had hoped for fireworks. Roman candles bright enough to light up the sky over his apartment. Enough anger to set the bed ablaze, but he didn’t get it. 

A few days later, with no explanation, Mackenzie announced that she decided she was bored of Japan. She called her father and asked him to pay for a return flight to Brisbane. She started to pack up her things. 

Yamashita would have been satisfied to hear even a single curse word coming from Mackenzie’s mouth.  But none did. He looked at her, hoping to see a slight bloom on her face. The redness would let him know that he had mattered. But her cheeks were pale and colorless after a long winter in Tokyo.