Tea From an Empty Cup (7 page)

In her heart, she knew
that
was bullshit of the worst sort, but she wasn’t listening to that part of her heart today. Her futon had been delivered to the bedroom and set up on a platform with cabinets at the head; a spare set of neatly folded sheets had been placed on top of a white chest of drawers. To the right of that was the bathroom, which had a separate chamber for the toilet. All very proper, civilized, livable.

Against the wall opposite the bathroom doorway was the work-station, the oversized screen sitting like an icon of a fat spider within a nest of shelves bearing storage chips. Except spiders didn’t have nests, did they. No. They had webs. Anyone knew that. How stupid was she?

‘Don’t sleep naked,’ she murmured, going over to the work-station. One more thing to worry about, along with the fate of her allegedly nonexistent predecessor, and Tom’s current address. As soon as she touched one of the dark shelves, the screen lit up. Unsurprised, Yuki watched with mild interest as a fractal flower bloomed in the center and kept blooming, seeming to turn itself inside out. Yuki’s mouth twitched with bored amusement; nostalgia graphics didn’t do much for her, though she had to concede the 3-D effect was respectable.

The cabinets at the head of her futon caught her eye again. That was probably where they had put whatever she was supposed to sleep in so she wouldn’t be naked. Maybe special uniform pajamas that could double as street clothes on short notice, in case of any midnight fire drills. Or emergency visits to clubs, to pick up a new victim. She went over to take a look.

Kneeling in the center of the futon, she pulled the cabinet doors open. At first she thought she was looking at an elaborate S&M harness and bridle set with extra restraints and she felt her heart leap with fear as multiple thoughts cartwheeled through her mind, about Joy Flower, the bodyguards, about some of Joy’s Boyz being Girlz. Then she saw what it really was and wasn’t any happier.

Carefully she lifted the headmounted monitor out of the cabinet and held it up. The wires from it were still connected to the lightweight, translucent hotsuit, folded into a square that made her think of wilderness weekends in nature preserves. (She had done a few of those years ago, not so much because she had been such a nature lover but because the people who ran the weekends were so …
intent
on them. They had exuded a sense of purpose more strongly than anyone else she had ever known, and she had liked that – people who knew what their lives were about. Most of them had been subsequently arrested in an eco-terrorist conspiracy dragnet, but strangely enough, Yuki had never been able to find out what had happened to any of them, whether they had been convicted or released or tried at all, or even if any of them had actually had any eco-terrorist connections.)

She put the headmount aside and moved to spread the ’suit out on the futon. It was her size all right, but was this really what the thug had meant by
Don’t sleep naked?
Sleep in a
hotsuit?
What would be the point?

So would this
really
be any more bizarre than sleeping under a canvas shelter – in a sack under a canvas shelter – in the middle of a government forest preserve, back in the good old days?

But it still didn’t make any sense. It wasn’t like you could use this stuff if you were asleep.

So maybe the point is for it to use you
.

God, she thought.
That
was some glorious hot-rod reasoning, more often used as a typical plot of innumerable slay-rides ground out for game modules from movies, or for movies from game modules, in a ceaseless, incestuous, and circular simulated blood orgy.

She felt heavy with fatigue. How was any of this supposed to lead her to Tom? She should have walked away from Joy Flower and her band of thugs; this was just some blind alley and she would probably wake up tomorrow morning in a
real
alley, after a long, horrible night that, if she were really,
really
lucky, she wouldn’t be able to remember.

Was Tom in a place like that now?

She lay down on her stomach, rested her chin on her fists and gazed at her distorted reflection in the shiny black headmount shell. From this angle, she looked sly, knowing, even cynical.
That’s me – good old cynical Yuki Harame
.

Maybe she
was
getting cynical. At last. Too many years of watching Tom fade in and out of her life, unabashedly leaning on her for emotional support but unable to reciprocate. Just when she was about to give in and fall in love with him, he would be gone, usually without saying good-bye in person. She would tell herself that since she hadn’t fallen in love with him, his abrupt departure hadn’t, wouldn’t,
couldn’t possibly
hurt her. Life would move her forward again and her attention would move along as well and pretty soon she would be contemplating the possibility of something completely different, something or even someone potentially forceful enough to displace Tom Iguchi and his gypsy feet.

And somehow, that was always the cue for Tom to come back into her life. He seemed to have an instinct. He seemed to understand exactly how long it would take her to get him out of her system so that she might build up a resistance, possibly even an immunity to him. Before anything of the sort could happen, he would descend on her, sweep his problems around her like an enveloping blanket, and the next thing she knew, he was sleeping on her couch, eating her food, and radiating angst and charisma in whatever proportions were necessary.

Well, at least he isn’t using you as a sex-toy
, she would tell herself, and the realist in her would answer,
Of course not – sex requires some giving
.

She knew why he would always come to her. They were both full Japanese, if, indeed, it was still possible to be Japanese at all when the land itself had been all but obliterated. Grandma Naoka had been among the last to visit the islands before the last earthquakes had shattered them into bits too small or too ravaged to support even one small city. Yuki couldn’t imagine the Japan Naoka had told her stories of, with a Tokyo so overcrowded that transit trains needed special employees to push and shove and pack the masses of people inside each car.

But the most interesting stories were about what Naoka had called the water trade. It was a euphemism for something that seemed to be close to prostitution, that perhaps even was prostitution at times, but was, more often, just not quite.

In those days, Yukiko, many people did not know how to enjoy themselves after a day of hard work. We showed them how. We helped them have a good time; they helped us make a living. We were all women, even those of us who were men. And of course, the ones who came to us, without exception, they were all men
.

Yuki remembered thinking that she wouldn’t have lasted long in that Japan. She would have much preferred being a Samurai. And then again, maybe she would not have done very well in any Japan. Perhaps it was just as well that she was what Grandma Naoka had called a sansei, a Japanese who had been born and raised outside of Japan.

And Tom – well, who knew about Tom? Most of the time, he seemed to her to be too …
disorganized
for the real Japan. She could not picture him as a salaryman, not the way Naoka had described the eager young men in their business suits, clustered around their bosses in the clubs, drinking gamely and then stumbling home to apartments the size of a postage stamp. As for old Japan, she thought it was more likely that Tom would be on the receiving end of a Samurai sword than the handle. No, the only role for Tom was the one he already had – daft young man who happened to be of Japanese descent.

And where did that leave her? Friend of daft young man who happened to be of Japanese descent. Now and always, friend of daft young etc Gullible soft-touch of a friend of daft young, etc And for what? The chance to approach strange and unsavory people in bars.

Of course, there were plenty of other people out there doing likewise with much less justification. She surprised herself by getting up, stripping off her clothes, and pulling on the hotsuit. What the hell, she thought; she might learn something.

The ’suit was one of the pricier models, soft, weightless, scented even. Was this one of the newest ’suits, with triple-density coverage, she wondered, or possibly an advance working model of the famed Climax Envelope? If the CE was real and not just another techno-myth. It was supposed to develop segments that mirrored the wearer’s own nerves, making the sensations that much more customized and subsequently that much more authentic. Whatever
that
meant. How authentic did it get before there was no point in putting on a ’suit at all?

Maybe she should have asked Tom that question.

The sensation of the ’suit adjusting to the contours of her body was both comforting and disturbing, like being caressed by a stranger who seemed to know you as well as you knew yourself. She left the genital area of the ’suit inactive. While her sex life left a lot to be desired lately, she wasn’t in the mood for a virtual encounter in a strange ’suit. Even if the ’suit did look as if no one else had ever used it.

She hesitated with the headmount, looking into it carefully, as if she might find something that she had never seen before. But it was only a very ordinary headmount with all the usual technology – no Aladdin’s lamp, no magic carpet, no door into summer.

Yuki ran a hand through her thick, short hair. Two days ago, she had cut it off herself, thinking it would just be easier, one less thing to fuss with. Ash had told her it made her look like a sex-change of indeterminate direction – asexual and apathetic. Yuki thought that would probably be easier, too. Ash had disagreed.

‘Being attractive, beautiful, sexy – all that is always useful. It helps. It makes people care more about you,’ he had argued, tapping the remote in the arm of his couch. ‘There’s no excuse not to be beautiful anymore, it’s so easy.’

The mural-sized screen obediently delivered a live cam shot of the exterior of Waxx24, the on-line club he’d never been able to get into. He could get into the actual club downtown, but anyone could. The virtual club on NETsuke was much tougher. Ash complained bitterly that he had never been able to get past even the first checkpoint, and they wouldn’t even give him a hint. Privately, Yuki thought it was probably because he was too beautifully eager.

‘If it’s that easy, how do you know if you’re really beautiful?’ she had asked.

Ash had rolled his eyes. ‘Don’t be obtuse. Everybody knows if they’re really beautiful or not.’

‘All right. What if I tell you that this –’ she had brushed her bad haircut with both hands – ‘makes me beautiful? All right, then it makes
me feel
beautiful,’ she added quickly.

‘
I
say you’re lying. You’re a dumpy little Nisei. You’ve got that classic daikon radish body that all you full Japanese females are cursed with. Your parents should have tried to give you the benefit of custom genes.’

‘And
I
say your standard of beauty must have got mixed up with your laundry. Too much starch, and all the color’s bleached out.’

Her reproach hadn’t bothered him in the least, perhaps because he’d known she hadn’t really felt offended. ‘Don’t try to fool me. I know you weren’t raised ethnic. Hardly anyone is anymore. After all, what would be the point?’

‘Well, maybe not in America or some places in Western Europe, Ash, but I don’t think they see it that way in other countries. Like, say, Japan.’

‘They don’t see much in Japan, period. What few of them are left. The news says there may be only about three dozen people left where Tokyo used to be and less than half that in the crack formerly known as Kobe, and most of them are lost crazies who’ve been dodging rescue crews.’

‘Doesn’t mean Japan is dead. It just means everyone’s left the geographical coordinates that once marked the location of the country that was called Japan. It doesn’t mean there isn’t a Japan. Somewhere.’

Ash’s haughty pink face had taken on an even haughtier expression. ‘How spiritual. Don’t tell me – you’re going on a quest to find the lost motherland.’

She had almost told him that they didn’t call Japan the motherland and decided that she didn’t want to have to argue with him any more than she already had. To her relief, he had allowed her to change the subject to Joy Flower and their absent friend Tom. He didn’t believe that Tom had become one of Joy’s Boyz, but neither had he said it was impossible.

Again, she ran a hand through her chopped-off hair and yawned. Maybe she should defy her employer, strip off, and go to sleep. With any luck, she’d wake up fired.

You’ve come this far. It’s all absurd, but can you think of anything that would get you closer to Tom?

She pulled on the headmount; it molded itself to her head with a sensation like a million tiny slender fingers pushing into her hair, sliding along her scalp. The stimulation was so strong that she lost all awareness of her body for several seconds, except for the nasty sting of the needle sliding, hard and cold, into the base of her neck.

An improbably large and impossibly bejeweled dragonfly was humming circles around her head. As she brushed at it, long strands of straight black hair kept snaring on the thick seams of her white gloves. Remembering, she froze with both hands raised, staring in amazement at the long hair caught between her fingers.

The hair fell away; she could feel its feather touch as it came to rest below her shoulders. The dragonfly positioned itself in the frame of her hands but just out of reach. The jewels seemed to strike sparks in the air. Confusion mixed with vertigo swept over her in a wave.

The sensation of falling ended sharply, not with an impact but with Yuki solidly on her feet in the middle of what looked like a gigantic combination train station and airport. People moved around her, past her, uncaring that she had just materialized among them. If they had even noticed. The dragonfly receded to a pinpoint of light and vanished. She turned slowly, trying to get her bearings.