Tune in Tokio

“What fucking argument?” I ask with petulant exasperation. “What are you fucking talking fucking about?!”

He must have interpreted our conversation in the kitchen earlier-the one in which he’d offered me a Valium and I’d politely declined-as an epic struggle between opposing forces that had ended in a vengeful prank. I should have just taken the damn pill. (It’s not like me to dismiss offers like that out of hand.)

I take advantage of the fact that he’s sorry and prostrate, and I send him to his room with no more vodka.

“Go to fucking bed!” I command him. Still confused and very, very drunk, he sheepishly obeys and limps to his room.

I’m awake for good now. Ewan and I have a cup of tea in the kitchen after cleaning up the remnants of the past eight or so hours and try to think of what to do. Meanwhile, Ron is in his room snoring like a hacksaw. Then, of course, he starts talking-screaming, really-in his sleep. At one point I hear him shout, “Hey, fatty!” but since neither Ewan nor I can generally be described as such, I figure he’s safely asleep and dreaming of Debbie/his mother.

Ewan and I can’t figure out how he had gotten hired by MOBA. Yes, they hire some idiots, but how had Ron stayed sober long enough to get through the interview? Had he not made a bad impression when he’d creamed his coffee with whiskey and then wet his pants?

I spend the whole day at work telling everyone about what happened and worrying about what I will find when I return home. Will he be selling all my CDs for a hundred yen by the side of the road? Will he have turned the refrigerator into a medicine cabinet for his many pharmaceuticals? (Actually, that might be nice.) Will he have killed, crushed into powder, and then snorted poor Ewan?

How could this have happened? Is MOBA so desperate for teachers that they’ve resorted to raiding American rehab clinics, luring the conscripts out with the promise of limitless Absolut and tonics? It’s true, the English conversation school industry in Japan is one of the most fiercely competitive in the country. On trains, magazines, television, newspapers, and billboards everywhere, advertisements for language schools abound. Even celebrities, always up for making a quick buck in the lucrative Japanese market, get in on the fun, allowing their images to be used to convince the Japanese public to say screw it, get a second mortgage, and sign up for some English lessons. Which means you have the baffling phenomenon of Celine Dion’s face on an Aeon English School poster beckoning people to come to Aeon and learn to speak English like an overwrought French Canadian.

I understand the need for teachers to meet the demand of an English-starved public. In Japanese grade schools, kids learn English reading and grammar starting in junior high. But since most English teachers don’t speak English, they are ill-equipped to prepare their students for any real-world English-speaking scenario. So a handsome student named Tatsuya can graduate from a Japanese high school, walk right up to a native English speaker named Cheryl in a dimly lit bar, say something as basic as “I can buy you any drink?” in order to woo her, and because Tatsuya’s pronunciation is so horrendous, Cheryl will promptly hold up her hand and say, “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Japanese.” Their relationship will end at roughly the same time it started. Very sad.

The tragedy of Cheryl and Tatsuya is why native English speakers are a hot commodity here, and all of the competing language schools understandably need a constant influx of teachers from America, Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand in order to meet the demand. But I’m old-fashioned, I guess. I think prospective teachers should be able to do more than present a valid passport and pass the height requirement. They should at least have to pass a breathalyzer.

I call the accommodations department at the head office and talk to Kevin, the man in charge, who thankfully has already spoken to Ewan, so I don’t have to start from the beginning. He apologizes and says that there must have been a mistake.

“We’ll try to get him out of the apartment as soon as possible, but since it’s the weekend, you know, it’s a little difficult to arrange these things.”

“Oh, please,” I say. “Please please please get him out of there.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

He calls me later and says that they won’t be able to move him until Monday night-three days hence!-but that they will definitely be moving him then. He offers me a pearl of advice.

“You and Ron should just attempt to stay out of each other’s way until then, if at all possible.”

Well, that sure ruins my dinner plans. Thankfully, Kevin has spoken to Ron and assures me that he is very sorry and has agreed not to come near us.

When work is over, I prepare myself to return home, with anxiety in my heart and, thanks to my friend and colleague Donna who has a boyfriend at Yokosuka base, a mild sedative in my belly.

Mamta, a teacher from Australia who lives directly below me, says she’ll go home with me.

“I know you don’t want to be alone with the one-legged man,” she says.

When we arrive, Ewan is there, alive and well, but Ron isn’t. We all sit down and have some tea and watch a Discovery Channel program called Travelers that sends young, wide-eyed Americans to exotic places so they can say things like, “I just love shopping in another culture!” We all agree that Ron is a better roommate than any of the retards on the show would be.

To prove our point, a skinny white girl from Ohio named Kim tries on an African head wrap at a street market and says, “Oh, this is totally me!” I start desperately wishing Ron would come back and put us all out of our misery. Right on cue, Mamta looks down the hall at the door and says, “Um, Tim? Yeah, the police are here.”

I stand up and walk to the edge of the hallway leading to the door. Just outside it stand two policemen, leaning in and saying to me, “Your friend? Your friend?” while pointing to-you guessed it-Ron. Not surprisingly, he is drunk as a wombat. I speak to the policemen in my rough Japanese, and they explain, with the help of hand signals and mimicry, that they’d found him on the bridge down the road stumbling and generally looking like a scary foreigner. I thank the officers and apologize, going against my gut instinct to fall to my knees and offer them money if they will just stay the night. They leave Ron propped up against the wall just inside the door, and I go back to the kitchen.

Ron stands in the hallway for some time, leaning against the wall so as to remain more or less vertical. I slump down into a chair at the table and exchange unsure looks with Mamta and Ewan.

“I suppose it’s good he didn’t accidentally fall into the river,” Mamta offers, and we all nod in agreement before changing our minds and sheepishly shaking our heads in embarrassed disappointment.

A growling sound comes from the hallway, followed by the words “Can’t we talk about this?”

I hear him take a few steps toward the kitchen and say, in a more menacing tone, “Where’s that guy who thinks he’s better than everyone else?”

“Who’s that?” I wonder aloud before realizing he’s talking about me. I think this evaluation of my character is completely unfair. Sure, I am most definitely better than certain people, like most of the people I went to middle school with, all the gorgeous guys who have ever ignored me, and anyone who has ever told me I look like Bert from Sesame Street. But I don’t argue. Nor do I raise my hand and say, “Over here!”

I stand and walk over to the kitchen drawers. “There you are,” he says. Meanwhile, I start pulling all the cutlery out of the drawers to hide in my room.

Finally he makes it to the kitchen, launching into a litany of good deeds that he’s performed today.

“I did all the dishes.” I look at the drying rack. He’s washed two soupspoons and a rice bowl.

“See how I washed all the dishtowels and hung ’em up?” he adds, pointing to the balcony. I go out to the balcony and find hanging two formerly white towels covered with big brown blotches and smelling like Ron’s breath had the night before. He must have wiped up the Jack Daniels puddles with them, I figure.

“And I took out that big trash bag.”

“Where did you take it?” I ask him.

He looks uncomfortable and says nothing.

On a hunch I look down to the street and see the bag slumped against some shrubbery, a milk carton sticking out and leaking droplets onto the greenery.

“Great,” I say, coming back inside and taking a seat at the table. “Thanks.”

He twitches and tilts his head, detecting a lack of authentic appreciation. Then he looks at me the way a person looks when he’s about to snap another person’s neck, gets in my face, and says, doing a spot-on imitation of Jack Nicholson in The Shining, “You wanna live here? I just bought this building. And I