Tokio Whip (44 page)

–
Well, I suppose, but –

–
But nothing. Kissing is … kissing is … it's like a sign, it's tender, it's a –

–
And fucking?

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Well, fucking is something else.

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Some people call it making love.

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Yes, some people.

–
And you?

–
Well, it can be that. But it can also be something else.

–
And with me?

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It's
something else
!

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Uhm, thanks.

–
Don't mention it. Did everyone really go? So early? Why?

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I told you why.

–
Oh yeah. Mmm, this is good, what's it called?

–
Brandy Alexander.

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Like the Greek? I studied history, you know.

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No, I don't know. Comeon, Hiromi.

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Comeon what? Wanna kiss me?

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I thought it wasn't proper?

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Everything in its place and time.

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So, can we go home?

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Is that proper?

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At 4AM, I think so.

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Will you fuck me again, properly?

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Improperly.

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Promise?

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Promise.

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Ok. Remember, you promised.

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I promised.

–
God, what a dull party.

***

Oh you're true, and you're duplicitous too, Tokyo. I have your number – and I have hers.

***

SCENE TWELVE: RESTAURANT

A restaurant in Yanaka, three storied, wood, Taisho Period – really, a monument to that era, here in
shitamachi
, what an older Tokyo resembled
– kushiage
, everything on sticks, good if a bit monotonous, not cheap. All of the private rooms are taken (a fashion magazine party; a tryst; a sealed deal). There is a “waiting room-cum-coffee/tea shop” next door. A row of tables, a thin aisle, a three-tatami kitchen, and so unlike the restaurant in its minimalist décor, quiet mood. They are a pair, big sister and little, trad girl and modern, tea and coffee with cream.

But this is her last photo, her last chance to meet her man.

But it is also too late.

In slow motion – like something out of Jean Epstein – we see the woman enter the now empty restaurant – how had she missed the departing customers? – except for an attractive woman, the shop's kindly owner – apologizing, explaining that they have closed, is something wrong?, can I help you? – and then she sees the portfolio in the Woman's arms, even seems to recognize it: “Oh, I believe this belonged to that nice gentleman who just left. Is he a friend of yours? He mentioned that someone might be coming by to pick up a package for him. Here, he left this for you.” And she hands the Woman a portfolio filled with color photographs of twelve different buildings in Tokyo. “He said you would know where to find him.”

END

As the credits for the film roll by, behind them we see footage of van Zandt's original film, the one that caused the rupture between he and his once closest friend Roberta.

We see the legs of the man, going up a flight of stairs. We hear a door slam. We hear a muffled argument between a man and a woman. We hear a door slam and a man's steps rushing down a staircase. We then see the Woman rushing out of an elevator on the same floor where the argument occurred. Too late.

Marui in Shibuya. We see the great escalator system, the shoppers like ants or bees bringing their food – blouses, skirts, accessories, bags – back home. She rushes in. A crowd of young shoppers. The sound of the man's rushing steps. She stops and buys an accessory – cheap, kitsch – on the first floor.

A helicopter shot of Shinjuku that circles in on the station building. We see the woman get off the Seikyo Line – why has she been north? Interior: She climbs a flight of stairs but it does not lead to any exit, rather another mall of shops and fast-food stalls; she goes down another flight, turns left, no not that way, doubles back, finds at least a place to turn her ticket in, but still no station exit. This goes on and on, the woman rushing towards what appears to be an exit but in fact is not and only leads to many more false leads, banks, copy shops, cafés, and so on. It is – Roberta was right – almost a parody of Kafka. At the end of this sequence, she half kneels in exhaustion, hiding her face in her handkerchief – as we see the man's legs pass directly in front of her.

Two cars approach as two pedestrians approach. A screech, a scream. A moment of silence, a siren.

The steps of a station. All feet rushing. No faces. The rush of feet; the Man's feet; the Woman's. Doors shut before the Woman can get in.

We see a car stop, a door opens, a hand appears, shoes are handed out, laid on the ground, feet and legs emerge and fill the red leather shoes. The car takes off. Are they the Woman's leg's? This last is repeated and varied over the remaining credits, in increasingly closer shots on the woman's feet and shoes until the colors of flesh and leather merge into a blur that resembles a photograph of … the first building.

***

So today they asked me what I think of his idea of loving the whole city? Do those idiots really expect me to take away from the company's and my valuable time to respond to such an absurd question? Absurd for what I should think would be obvious reasons. First, you don't love a city, you live in it and work in it. If you make enough money, you can enjoy more parts of it than I can. If you don't, well you enjoy what you can afford, a few friends, a few bars and restaurants, maybe a park if we had any. You don't even love your home, you take care of it, like your family. If not, then you're out. Second, can this even be considered a city? It is a monster, it's unnatural. It would take an unnatural love to love this thing. I can't waste my time on this, I have work to do. (“Kaoru! We need you for a minute.”) If he wants to “love the whole city,” let him do it without bothering me any further.

***

She walked pigeon-toed at an angle that put her face before her feet, as if she were forever about to stumble, as if she had learned to walk going down a flight of stairs.

And when she sat she would put the toes of her two feet together and stare at her two-tone, round-toed shoes, wondering why both those boys van Zandt and Lang wore pointy-toed shoes, “points,” they called them. Points? She didn't get it.

She wondered if she would forever be doomed to walking the streets unrecognized; why did fame elude her?, where were the hordes of screaming fans outside the city's television stations that were her birthright?, why was it that she so often spent time – alone – in cafés, gazing at the passing crowd, flipping through magazines and comics and only looking at the ads and the nudes? And speaking of the crowd, what was that word van Zandt had taught her, agoraphobia?, at least it was easy to pronounce, and reminded her of one of her favorite Spielberg movies. Why, when she preferred the cheap and good coffee at Doutor, Pronto and the other chains, why did van Zandt prefer Rilke in Shimbashi or Poem in other places, for that matter why did he get his hair cut at Dante? His style of doing things was certainly not that of her usual crowd of friends. Would she ever understand him? And if she did, would that lead to fame? Would he ask her to be in one of his films? And if she did achieve fame that way, would she then have to share it? Could she?

Her eyes really did look as if they had been formed thanks to a short, quick slice of a razor; barely emergent, like some small beast's, one looked more at the slit than the feeling or intelligence behind or within or wherever it may be.

When she worried, like that guy in the Richie film, she rubbed her nose.

She was incontinent – just a small trickle – when she was sincere.

And she would squeal: at the zoo (the sight of a panda); the first tinklings of the glass chimes attached to the blue and white banners announcing an ice cream stand on the first day of the summer heat; at the sight of a handsome foreigner.

And what was it Lang had told her when she had told him that she liked hiking, day trips outside of Hachioji and around Mount Takao? What was it he said about he being a hiker too – that there was Dogen
zaka
(cigars at Tokyu), Kudan
zaka
(North Indian food), Nogi
zaka
(a detour), and a “Rat Slope” and others with weird names, and one that reminded him of how much he loved Roberta, and all the other slopes worth hiking up – that he was an urban hiker? She just could not understand Lang like she could van Zandt, if she could go so far in saying.

***

R'n'L!!!!!!!!!!!!

The day my first single got into the Top Ten – with a bullet! – and then the day it went platinum!

How about
dis
connecting everything, see what happens, see even if it can be done (maybe not)?

Just got a copy of
The Locket
. (Flashbacks within fl'backs w/in ...) Wanna come over and watch it with me? (“Yes, we do ((we do (((we do))) )),” as the Shangri-las sort of said).

Ah, Tokyo my Tokyo, ten days in the country and how I'm gonna miss 'ya. Ten days, Christ, and I've already packed clothes for twelve. Besides probably three books too many. Hey, I figure you never know when you're gonna be stranded – earthquake splits the world in two leaving you hanging – or invited to a glamorous party. And then I bring my Tokyo maps – some people set up family photos when they travel, I lay out my Tokyo books and maps – just in case anyone asks me very minute particulars.

Tokyo of the future? – Tokyo Baroque.

Oh so much to do, so much to read and write, and .... “I only want to be with you,” as Dusty said, and of whom Jenny gives a mean impersonation, and speaking of whom I had a high-schoolish dirty dream last night. Boy, was I surprised! (Boy, was she!!)

I still haven't fixed that door Hiromi cracked. Maybe I'm keeping it as a reminder.

I'd love to have six months off just for rereading.

The day I escaped from you-know-where, hightailed it to Tokyo and became a man of the crowd. I ain't never looked back, never.

So, are we connected?

Oh, hey, before I forget, we still got so much stuff to talk about: the party for the kids; the plans for August; getting copies of those Screwballs, divvying up the photos, and etcetera!

Elvisly yours,

***

The costs of confusion notwithstanding, Marianne says to herself, confusion indeed. Christ!, how can Lang say it is a systemless system? Did he ever try to read a street sign – what street signs? Try to find an address? So why else do I always have to apologize for being late? It ain't me who's confused, dammit. But costs, why no, none whatsoever.

***

Cafferty, his mind fast, eyes weak, knowing he has gradually been losing his sight these last few years, accepting this inevitable, had begun walking his beloved city with eyes closed (to the sun, to the moon, to the wind and rain), had finally arrived at the point where he could walk the city with eyes closed and know exactly where he was, know what building had replaced what building had replaced what … and describe them all to you but this last (as he has never seen it), or could get in a taxi, tell the cabbie a destination, a direction, and know what street he was on, what bridge he was crossing under or over, what building stood at the corner of the light they had stopped at (and tell you what building had replaced what building had …). Cafferty knew the city now as a lover knows the loved one's body, the he and the she of it, the continuum, the contours, crevasses, the extra flesh here (the less there), the stray wisp, the nerve gone wrong, the endless wonder.

And walk he could: straight (as the heavy wooded rulers he remembered from school), bandied (rubbery, clowns on TV), limp (Little Tramp), as a new bride (jitters), a Midwestern stroll (cornfields gently swaying), a Venetian (the rhythm of the waters), in the DeNiro manner (“Watch out, Buster!”), in the Sanda (woman in a man's suit), and more … with a twitch, skimming the surface of the street, as a footballer, a great lady, as one who has lost everything: in a word, as a Tokyoite.

It was felt, as he always said, in the testicles.

Where had Cafferty come from? He'd once – decades ago – written about Tokyo (some few fugitive essays for airline magazines); he kept now largely to himself, occasionally seeing a few friends (though rarely mixing them); spoke little to newcomers to Tokyo: “You'll see it yourself if you stay long enough.” He was said to work now and then for a large financial company, writing reports, but surely that was not enough to live on; there were rumors a-plenty: a lover (female, male?) of long ago now in Hong Kong, a stipend from an actress friend. He'd met Lang two or three times via Roberta (the last of his newcomers – she just seemed so at ease), but was in that mood when friendship, as much as it may be desired, would come no longer; he'd remarked to himself that night he and Lang were introduced, “Ah, too bad we hadn't met thirty years earlier – how we would have explored the city together!” Friendship now was an impossibility, they might form a “relationship,” a correspondence filled with anecdotes and queries, but no, not what Lang needed. Cafferty knew that what he could give Lang Lang would have to find for himself on his own or within his own circle of friends; it was lonely, granted, but it was gratifying too to become a Tokyoite alone. Lang knew this too, and accepted it. After all, it was his city, too.

***

She was standing there behind the wall, and the wall was transparent, like water.