The Spare Room by Kathryn Lomer Page A

excited at the prospect of my first job, for that is what this amounted to.
    Many of my friends in Japan had part-time jobs once we started at college, but my father wouldn’t hear of it. He said I was being groomed for his business and he didn’t think learning to cook hamburgers or park cars was going to help in that. My mother felt differently. But she always advised patience as an answer to things. Wait, and what you want will happen, she’d say. In Australia I began to wonder what she might have wanted in life and if she was still practising patience and waiting for it, or if she felt her wants had been fulfilled. It wasn’t the kind of thing we talked about in our family. Did you think about your parents’ dreams, Satoshi? Not for you — I mean for themselves. I don’t know if we ever gave them much thought. Our heads were filled with our own schemes. Remember how we used to dream that one day we would ride around Australia on motorbikes, work in exotic places, learn new languages, meet girls? I hadn’t thought about that for a long time until this job came up. Perhaps some of the dreams I dreamed for myself might come true after all.
    I wondered briefly what my father would have thought about my taking on a part-time job in Hobart. I was allowed to work a certain number of hours per week, so it was all legal. But I knew that he would not only disapprove but forbid me if I asked him. So I didn’t ask him and I didn’t worry about it.
    On my first night, Stolly helped me dress in the black and white waiter’s outfit — tight black trousers, white shirt, bow tie, wide cummerbund. This was an up-market bar with a varied clientele, from business men to honeymooners, to wealthy international gamblers, to people like me who just happened to drop in for a beer that fateful day with Chisuko. When you look back on a train of events like that you wonder at their sense of inevitability. Of course I would bump into Stolly again and we would hit it off right away. Of course he would find me a job and take me under his wing. But what are the chances really? Worse than your chances of winning money at that casino, I’d say. But good things happen in life, lucky things happen, at least as often as unlucky things.
    Anyway, there I was dressed like a penguin and feeling very nervous.
    Stolly said, What’s Japanese for ‘Good luck’?
    Ganbatte kudasai!
    Well then, ganbatte kudasai!
    And I was on my own.
    Can I get you some drinks, gentlemen? I’d been practising, so felt calm about that part. It was the answers that stumped me. One well-dressed man turned to his well-dressed friend and said, What’s your poison?
    I was confused. Ah, an idiom! Of course. I got the two men Cascade beers. I carried the drinks carefully to their table and put one down.
    There you go, love, I said with a big smile.
    The two men looked at each other then up at me in surprise. I hastily put the other drink down and scampered away.
    I took a tray of drinks to another table where the man who seemed to be in charge said to me, What’s the damage?
    Damage? I said. Damage? There is damage? I’m sorry.
    Approaching another table, I said, Good evening, gentlemen. What’s your poison? I was feeling quite pleased with myself for being able to use these idioms.
    My boss suggested I would be better off in the kitchen washing dishes. I didn’t blame him. After all, I got the job under false pretences. I would be chief bottle-washer instead.
    Stolly was upset for me. Remember, there’s no loss without some gain, mate, he said.
    And as it turned out, he was right.

10
    So many things were happening in my life. And when I say my life, I mean MY life. For once it really felt like I was living my own life. There was my life with the Moffats, difficult as it might be; English classes, which I was enjoying; all the other students I was meeting; my new job; my friendships with Stolly and with