‘You sit there,’ she says, pointing to the far side of the low table. A monk on heat, a dog in a cassock. Her forearms glisten with sweat. She blows out the candle. We take solemn turns with the joint and say nothing. Our fingertips might brush. Hers contain an electric current. Bioborg. I make out her outline in the glow of the night city, even filtered through the paper. She doesn’t actually touch me, and her demeanour warns me against touching her until she tells me to. The bright tip of the joint travels through the turfy air. Sometimes I am me, sometimes I am not quite. Pearls, moonstone, teeth enamel. A time/space irregularity explores my limbs. Onto the dark, I identikit in her breasts, her hair, her face. If I sneezed right now Godzilla would probably explode in my boxer shorts. ‘You smoke this all the time?’ Her words are twists in the smoke. ‘Ever since my twentieth birthday.’ A scroll, doll, droll troll, a bowing chrysanthemum in a vase. ‘So how old are you, roadie?’ I even hear her lush hair hush. ‘Twenty-three. You?’ Bitter snowflakes flurry. ‘I am one million today.’ One spanky whoop from Velvet and a grrrrrrrrr from Daimon, and Velvet and I are laughing hard enough to fracture ribs, even though no sound comes out. Then I forget why I’m laughing, and I sit up again. ‘Keep your hands on the table,’ she warns me severely, ‘I hate boys whose hands get everywhere.’ After a couple of attempts our mouths meet and we kiss for nine days and nine nights.
The fusuma to the balcony slides open. Velvet and I jump apart. Daimon stands in the moonlight, his torso stripped, with a sort of vampire Miffy the rabbit painted across his chest in lipstick. His nipples are Miffy’s greedy pupils. ‘Miyake! Stoned or boned? Want to swap yet?’ The shoji to the outer corridor slides open. Miriam stands in the entrance, holding a tray of sticky pearls and cubes of watermelon and naked lychees. I glimpse shock, anger and hatred before professional indifference regains control. ‘Miriam! Bearing nibblies! Caviare, no less? One of her assets, Miyake, is her sense of timing.’ She removes her slippers, steps up, and sets the tray on the table. ‘Pardon me.’ She withdraws. ‘Oh, Miriam, you don’t need me to pardon you, not with your powerful and influential patrons to take care of you.’ Pigletty Coffee appears, doing herself up, supporting the fusuma frame to stop it collapsing. She sees Miriam. She is used to ordering domestics. ‘Show us to the powder room!’
Daimon speaks to Eiji, but Eiji finds it hard to concentrate because his head keeps unscrewing itself and rolling into the corner. Coffee and Velvet have been in the ladies’ room since time began. ‘I use a quiet East Shinjuku love hotel near the park, attached to a four-star place so you can order up decent food from the kitchen.’ Eiji is somehow uneasy. Daimon peers in. ‘Not still worried about money?’ Eiji tries to shake his head but nods it by accident. ‘Money is only this stuff my father has too much of.’ ‘The girls,’ thinks Eiji, ‘is it all right, just to—’ Daimon hears his friend’s thoughts, buttons up his shirt and wags a finger. ‘These two are strictly a double act, Miyake. Either both get laid, or they both go home to their lavender-scented bedrooms. You back out on me now and I’ll be left with the most expensive wank on my hands since Michael Jackson last played at the Budokan. And yours has at least evolved problem-solving intelligence. Mine has a fashion sense where her brain should be.’ Eiji is about to say something but forgets what he was going to say the moment before he begins. ‘Girls are like video games, Miyake. You pay, you play, you leave.’ Eiji is all gratitude. He tries to express this, but his words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup, they slither wildly as they make their way across the universe, so he gives up. Another hostess brings the coffee. ‘Who the
fuck
are you?’ Daimon demands. The hostess bows. ‘Aya-chan, Mr Daimon. Miriam-san has come over unwell.’ Daimon begins to get angry. ‘Trot back to Mama-san and remind Daimon who my father is, and what a stroppy fuck I can be if I—’ But his sentence trails off. He pinches the head off the chrysanthemum, and pulls off the petals. ‘Forget I said that, Aya-chan. Give this to the ghost of Miriam, with my profoundest respects,’ and he hands her the flower-stump, which Eiji thinks is sort of cute. Eiji sits in the front of the taxi. Daimon sits in the back with his two concubines. The streets clear, they go over a wide bridge. Atlas holds up his globe in the foyer, Daimon gazes up at the screen showing rooms lit and unlit and prices and presses panels and gets keys. Another elevator ride. Daimon kisses Eiji on the lips and jump-shots him into the room behind. A ten-second shower and uncurious porn on Pay TV. Nine different types of condom. A pink ‘H’ flashes on and off outside. Heads on stalks, sunflower heads. Coffee comes in, a lemon towel around her lozenge honey skin, sort of numb somehow now, rather factually the legendary swimming pool of sex laps, she draws the curtain, close your eyes, she says, and slips into bed, her skin slides out, berries swell, yeah okay you can but you are
not
to touch me there, snagged on a twig, yeah okay, does he normally swap over like this? Your friend? Yuzu Daimon? What a name,
Yuzu
, like the fruit? I guess. Shush. Waxy chocolate, cheap and teeth biting midriff, mossy nooks, nervous push, no I said you are
not
to touch me there, Godzilla retreats, nervous tricklets of sweats down our back, hoisting, lowering, raising, all technical stuff,
that’s it there
, Godzilla changes his mind again, roots dig in harder, boughs thrash back and forth, her fingers grasp, her toes find leverage, swimming in the blue, the sheets of blue, billowing and grunty and lethargic, she gasps for air, she dives, winces, and
yes
is this all there is
no
and surface and
yes
and under and
no
and surface and
yes
and under and surface and under
coming
and
coming
if
coming
you – don’t – wake – up – before – you – hit – the – ground – you
I wake up in a round bed, alone as a chucked-away toy. This love hotel room is a temple of pink. Not flower pink – offal pink. The curtains are soiled with morning. I hear jackhammers, traffic crossings and crows. Husky sunflowers bend in their vase. My head is corkscrewed from temple to temple. My tongue has been salted and sun-dried and shat on by desert weasels. My throat has been attacked by geologists’ hammers. My elbows and knees have been friction-burned raw. My groin smells of prawn. The bedsheets are twisted, and the undersheet is dashed with crusty blood. So, two virgins defrocked one another.
That
groin sneeze was sex? That was no Golden Gate bridge to a promised land. It was a wobbly plank across a soggy bog. Nobody even gives you a badge to sew on. This room is a public tissue – love hotels must have the highest sex-per-cubic-metre ratios this side of . . . where? Paris. I grope for a cigarette – empty. Still. All things considered, I got off lightly. The telephone riiiiiiiiings. Daimon calling from the room next door, I bet.
‘Good morning, sir, this is reception.’ A man, brisk and breezy.
‘Uh, g’morning.’
‘This is just to remind you that your suite is booked until seven . . .’
My watch is on the bedside: 6:45. ‘Okay.’
‘After seven, hourly charges reapply.’
‘Okay, I’ll be right out.’
‘Will you be paying cash or credit, sir?’
‘
What?
’
‘When your lady friends left just now they didn’t know if you were paying cash or credit. Two rooms for all night comes to fifty-five thousand yen, provided nothing is taken from the minibar, and that you vacate the room in the next fifteen minutes.’
Cold shock squeezes down my colon.
Still brisk, less breezy. ‘So I’m calling up to ensure there has been no kind of unpleasant misunderstanding.’
Would vomiting help?
‘No kind of problem, is there, sir?’ Veiled menace.
‘No, none at all. Uh, I’ll pay cash, I think. I’ll be right down.’
‘We’ll be waiting for you in the entrance lobby, sir.’
I get dressed in my gummy clothes and dart into Daimon’s room. Nobody. Identical to mine, only on the mirror, scrawled in some sort of jelly, are the characters – ‘
ONLY A VIDEO GAME
’. Daimon, you primetime bastard. Miyake, you idiot. I turn out my jeans pockets and find 630 yen, in small change. This isn’t happening. I try to wake up. I fail. This is definitely happening. I am 54,370 yen short. I need a fantastic plan in the next nine minutes. I sit on the toilet and shit as I run through my alternatives. One: ‘You see, the guy I was with, he promised he would pay for everything on his, uh, father’s expense account.’ The Yakuza king places his fingertips together. ‘Eiji Miyake, employed in a lost property office? A position of trust. How fascinated your employers would be to learn how you spend your weekends. I feel it is my civic duty to report this matter unless you are willing to compensate us with certain
duties
, not all of which, I must warn you, could be described as
pleasant
.’ Two: ‘Buntaro! Help! I need you to bring me fifty-five thousand yen to a love hotel right now or you’ll have to find another tenant.’ Not a choice that poses him much difficulty. Three: ‘The Yakuza king licks his razor blade. So,
this
is the thief who attempted to escape from my hotel without paying for services consumed.’ I raise my bloodied head and swollen eyelids. My tongue lies in his shaving bowl.
If only crises could be flushed away down toilet bowls too.
In movies people escape along rooftops. I try to open the window, but it isn’t designed to open, and anyway, I can’t crawl down the sides of buildings. I see people in the littered streets and envy every single one of them. Could I start a fire? Trigger alarms and sprinklers? I follow the fire alarms to the end of the corridor, just so I feel I’m doing something. ‘In the event of fire, smoke alarms will automatically unlock this door.’ Uncle Tarmac says love hotels are designed to stop people doing runners – the elevator always takes you straight to reception. What else do people do in movies? ‘Out the back way,’ they hiss. Where is this ‘back way’? I try the other end of the corridor. ‘Emergency stairs. No way out.’ Back ways are through kitchens. I dimly remember Daimon, may his bollocks fester, telling me there was a kitchen. Hotel kitchens are in the basement. I slip through the door and start down the stairs. Stupidly, I look over the handrail. The distant floor is the size of a stamp. The Aoyama escape route. I go as fast and quietly as I can. What will I say if they catch me here? That I get claustrophobic in lifts. Shut up. I get down to the ground floor. A large glass door opens into reception. A huge male receptionist is standing there. An ex-sumo wrestler, waiting for me. The stairs continue down one more floor. I can beg for mercy, or up the stakes and continue down. The receptionist narrows his eyes, running his finger down a ledger. Him and mercy do not sleep in the same bed. I slip by the glass door – a statue of Atlas and the globe blocks his line of sight – and creep down the stairs to a door marked
STAFF ONLY
. Please let it be open. It doesn’t open. I barge it. It judders open. Thank you. Beyond is a stuffy corridor of pipes and fuse boxes. At the end mops are stacked against another door. I turn the handle and push. Nothing doing. I barge it. The door is locked. Worse still I hear the glass door opening one floor above – and I didn’t close the staff only door behind me. ‘Hey? Anyone there?’ Mr Sumo. Doom pisses hot dread on my head. What can I do? Desperate, I knock on the locked door. I hear Mr Sumo’s shoes on the steps. I knock again. And suddenly a bolt slides, the door is yanked open and a chef is glaring at me – behind him a striplit kitchen chops and bubbles. ‘
You
,’ he snarls, ‘had
better
’ – his eyes belong to Satan – ‘be the new mousseboy.’
Huh?
‘Tell me you’re the new mousseboy!’
Mr Sumo is nearly here.
‘Yes, I’m the new mousseboy.’
‘Get in here!’ He pulls me through, slams the door behind meand, giving me my first lucky break of the morning, bolts it shut.
Head Chef Bonki
is sewn into his hat. ‘What the
hell
are you doing turning up for your first morning
forty-five minutes late
, looking like a vagabond?
Take off that baseball cap in my kitchen!
’ Behind him, junior chefs and kitchen hands watch the human sacrifice. I take off my cap and bow. ‘I’m very sorry.’ Cream, steam, mutton and gas. I see no windows and no doors. How do I get out of here? Head Chef Bonki snarls. ‘Master is
disappointed
. And when Master is disappointed,
we
are disappointed. We run a
very
– tight – ship!’ He suddenly yells at the top of his voice and blasts what are left of my nerves away. ‘And what do we do to members of the crew who let the ship down?’ The kitchen staff chant back in one air-punching chorus. ‘To the sharks! To the sharks! To the sharks!’ I seriously consider giving myself up to Mr Sumo, after all. ‘Follow me, mousseboy. Master will conduct his inspection.’ I am hustled between shining counters and racks of pans, past a rack of punch-cards. A door. Please let there be a door. ‘This is where you check in, if Master forgives your disgraceful start.’ Mr Sumo must be at the bolted door by now. All these knives worry me. A boy with a sunken nose scrubs floor tiles with a toothbrush – the chef deals him a powerful kick for no apparent reason. We come to a poky office full of the chug, grind and kiss of a knife-sharpening lathe. On the far side is an open door – steps lead up to a yard of rubbish bags. The chef raps on the door frame, and shouts. ‘The new mousseboy has reported for active duty, Master.’ The lathe dies.
‘Finale
mente.
’ Master does not turn around. ‘Show the scoundrel in.’ His voice is far too high for his bulk. The head chef stands aside and prods me forward. Master turns around. He is wearing a blowtorcher’s mask that reveals a petite mouth. He holds a cleaver sharp enough to castrate a bull. ‘Leave us, Head Chef Bonki. Hang the sign on the door.’ The office door clicks shut. Master tests the blade on his tongue. ‘Why prolong your little deception?’