Coin Locker Babies (9 page)

“I know you’re feeling burned-up inside,” she said at last. “I wish you’d tell me if there’s something that’s happened since you came to us to make you and Hashi feel this way. If you told me what we’ve done, I could apologize, try to find a way to make it up to you.”

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to, but Kiku couldn’t find the words to explain. He tried to remember if there was something in
Apples and Hot Water
that might do, but his mind drew a blank. He bit into the scallop he’d just put in his mouth and a lump of butter melted on his tongue.

The street outside the restaurant was full of fortunetellers, and Kazuyo took her place at the end of the longest line to ask about Hashi. A few minutes later, a gang on roller skates came barreling down the street. One girl had grabbed the bumper of a car to hitch a ride, and they sped by, horn and radio blaring. Another skater, out of control, slammed into a serious-looking youth in a student’s uniform just getting out of a cab, and they both went flying. The student recovered first and kicked the skater in the face as he tried to get up.

“Dumb punk.”

A fight broke out, and the people waiting in line for the fortuneteller scattered. Kazuyo, however, stood shouting
encouragement to the student and his friends who were, it seemed, outnumbered. Just then, one of the skaters darted away from the group to avoid a beating and hurtled in Kazuyo’s direction. He was skating wildly, as fast as he could, and as he came up to Kazuyo his arm swung out and caught her shoulder, knocking her to the ground with a thud. Without thinking, Kiku grabbed him and smashed his fist a few times into his face; then he dropped the limp boy and gathered Kazuyo in his arms. He had seen her hit her head on the root of a tree as she’d fallen, but she nodded woozily and managed to get to her feet. She looked awful, but Kiku was relieved to see her laughing and brushing the dirt from her dress.

A patrol car appeared and the fight was stopped. Not long afterward, however, Kazuyo was pale, sweaty, and complaining of chills, though she refused to let Kiku take her back to the hotel, despite the fact that she could hardly stand; she agreed to give up on the fortuneteller for now, but they had to keep their appointment with the young man from the bar. Slowly, leaning on Kiku’s shoulder, she made her way through the streets of Shinjuku.

The waiter was shaving in the staff room when they arrived. They could hear the noise of the bar through several doors over the buzz of his electric razor. When he finished, he took a yellow bottle of aftershave from his locker, stubbing out his half-smoked cigarette in what remained of his tea. Kazuyo lay on the couch with a damp cloth over her face.

“This cheap-shit lotion burns your skin,” he grumbled, turning to face them. “Well, I think I’ve found your boy, folks.” Kazuyo cried out and tried to get up. “Whoa, lady,” he said, restraining her, “you’re in no shape to go anywhere. Anyway, I think it’d be better if your son here went by himself.”

She tried to protest, but the waiter insisted that Kiku go alone, explaining that the place was a little rough. Kiku eyed the
tiger-and
-bamboo design embroidered in gold thread on his shirt.

“I’ll draw you a little map so you don’t get lost,” he said, taking out a pen and some paper, and explaining as he drew. “It’s around behind Seibu Shinjuku Station. There’s a big restaurant there, the Futatsu-ya. Out front they have this fish tank—you can’t miss it. The place you’re looking for is in the building right across from the restaurant. The first floor is a pinball parlor, but I think it’s closed by now. Anyway, you want to find the stairs—looks pretty much like a fire escape—and go up to a place with a green door. The sign should say Blind Mice. Go inside and tell a middle-aged guy with a lump on his neck—right about here—tell him you want to hear his Lee Connitz records. That’s the password. Look, I’ll write it down so you don’t forget: ‘his Lee Connitz records.’ When he hears that, this guy is supposed to tell you where your brother is. But watch yourself: this is a serious music bar—you know these types—touchy, hard to talk to.”

A few minutes later, Kiku was staring at skewers of shrimp grilling over coals and the fish tank beyond. It might have been the light, but though the fish—all mackerel—were still swimming around, they looked sluggish, as if they’d been lying in the sun for the better part of a day. Kiku located the staircase and then stood gazing at the cloudy tank a while longer. Two of the fish were clearly dying, and another had a bent backbone, probably some kind of birth defect. As it had grown, the deformed body had apparently put pressure on the gills, and now the fish could barely move. Yet another fish, the victim apparently of its companions’ hunger, trailed ragged strips of its own guts as it swam in diminishing circles in one corner of the tank. A trickle of blood—fish blood turned out to be gray in the water—was
escaping from the wound, mixing with the general slime to cloud the tank.

There was no sign on the door; instead, “Blind Mice” was carved right into the wood. Inside, Kiku found a room whose walls were completely covered with old records. There were no other customers. On a shelf behind the bar was an impressive tape deck. Just the kind of place Hashi might like, thought Kiku. The squint-eyed man at the counter wore glasses and had a fist-sized lump on his neck. The pores of his skin were so large, Kiku could make out each one individually even in the dim light.

“If you’re selling theater tickets, we don’t want any,” said the man.

Kiku took the slip of paper he’d been given from his pocket and read out the password:

“Uhh… I’d like to hear some Lee Connitz… records, I mean…”

The man looked startled for a moment and then gave a wide grin.

“What’s that? Did you say ‘Lee Connitz’? Hey, I’m impressed; for such a young guy, you really know your jazz. Nobody comes in here asking for the old West Coast stuff any more. Well… let’s see what we’ve got in this treasure trove. How ‘bout this little number: a duet with Miles Davis. It’s out of print now in the States, and it never even sold in Japan. I picked it up long ago in New York…

“You hot, kid? The air conditioner’s broken and it gets pretty steamy in here. Still, makes it feel a bit like summer in the Big Apple. Not bad, huh? Hot night, cool sound…

“Hey, by the way,” he went on, wiping his steamed-up glasses on his shirt, “you didn’t come in here looking for somebody, did you?” Kiku, who was himself drenched in sweat, tried to answer
but the man stopped him. “Never mind, you don’t have to say a thing. And there’s nothing to be embarrassed about. I’ve heard the whole story. They tell me you’re a pole vaulter; that for real?” Kiku slumped onto a stool, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and nodded.

“So where is he?” he asked.

“Who?” chirped the bartender.

“Him. The guy I’m looking for,” said Kiku.

The man with the lump began to whistle casually as he crushed some ice. “You shouldn’t call him a ‘guy,’” he said. “But don’t you worry, I’ll make a phone call and he’ll be here in half an hour. I already told him you’d be coming today, and he was pretty happy to hear it. He said it’s been a long time. But you have to do these things at the customer’s convenience, so we weren’t that definite about the time. You get me?…” So saying, he went to the phone and, after a brief conversation in a hushed voice, came back to the bar with a wink for Kiku.

“You know, kid, I like you. You’ve got style. While we’re waiting, mind if I come around and take a seat out there with you?” The skin on the lump strained as he made his way around the bar, and Kiku caught a glimpse of bulging bluish veins. Just like a fish belly full of eggs, he thought, remembering the cold, early morning boat trips with Kuwayama when they had often cut the roe out a fish while it was still squirming and eaten it with a little hot salt water to keep warm.

The man sat next to Kiku and put his hand on his shoulder. His fingers were hot and trembled slightly. The room was shut tight, and Kiku was dripping.

“You’ve got a city feel to you somehow,” the man continued. “But it beats me how someone so young could have developed so much style. I bet I know, though: I’d say it’s because you’ve
suffered. But, of course, there’s suffering and there’s suffering. I suppose you could say a hick suffers smelling cow shit and rolling around in the weeds all day, but that’s not you. Then there’s the guy who rows a little boat around a fishing port that smells like dirty cunt, just to support his sick mother; but that’s not you either. You’re more like me: born with that big-city sophistication that breeds its own kind of pain… Aren’t you?” As he stopped talking, the man began to run his fingers through Kiku’s hair and along his neck, making little lapping sounds in the sweat as he caressed and stroked.

“I couldn’t be wrong,” the man went on, “otherwise, why would you be coming in here asking for Lee Connitz. You and me, we’re two of a kind. We’re guys who like noise and good friends, who sit down in front of a juicy steak, rare, of course, and work out how much jogging we’ll have to do—and how much fucking we’ll miss out on—to burn off the extra calories; but we
eat
the steak!

“It blows your mind, doesn’t it, a city? You feel yourself—your body, your mind—being worn down, the life being sapped out of you by the energy of the place. It’s that energy blows you away. Guess that’s the best way of putting it: that easy-come kind of pleasure that just sneaks up on you. But I don’t have to tell
you
any of this. There’s no getting around it, this sleek, crazy energy. Yeah, that’s not bad… ‘sleek, crazy’… right kind of words. It’s a sleek, crazy life; that’s me, that’s Tokyo… that’s you, kid. It’s West Coast, it’s Lee Connitz. It’s this sad, crazy wreck of a city.”

As he finished his soliloquy, the lump-man plunged his free hand into Kiku’s lap and began to rub, his breath coming in ragged gasps. Kiku looked at the lump, now red and swollen with blood, and realized that the bad feeling he’d had the minute he walked in the bar was right on the mark. Whenever one of
these sinister premonitions came true, Kiku thought of a magnet: somehow, the bad feelings started aligning everything around him, giving them an actual shape. The sweat, the whining alto sax, the lump, and that hand groping him intently; he decided to put up with it for another ten seconds.

“You’re beautiful,” the man was saying, “incredibly beautiful. Just relax. They told me it would be your first time, but there’s nothing to worry about. It’s easier than pole vaulting, I can promise you that. The guy who’s coming owns a stationery business. Not a bad guy, in a way, but… don’t laugh… hasn’t got much to work with, if you know what I mean. Smaller than a fountain pen… But that’s good for you, means he probably won’t even get it in… He’s a sucker, I hear, real tongue man.”

Kiku finished his deliberate counting and then shoved him off the stool onto the floor. As the man tried to retrieve his glasses and scramble to his feet, Kiku grabbed his greasy collar in one hand and the ice pick on the counter in the other. Spinning him around to almost throttle him, he caught the tip of the pick on the lump, drawing a dark ooze of blood and soon a bigger glob of clear, sticky liquid.

“Don’t!” the man screamed. “I’m sorry! I know it’s wrong! I deserve it, you’ve every right to hurt me, but please…” Suddenly, Kiku noticed that they were being watched impassively by a little girl in pajamas clutching a stuffed turtle. Tiny teeth peeked through her slightly parted lips as she peered out from behind the counter. The whitish pus was running more freely now, down the man’s neck and onto Kiku’s hand.

Back in the movie district, Kiku scrubbed his hands in a fountain. The white stuff, it turned out, wouldn’t dissolve in water but formed cloudy clumps that sank to the bottom of the pool. As he
washed, a drunk lying slumped against the fountain grabbed hold of his leg and asked for a cigarette.

“Don’t touch me!” cried Kiku, loud enough to turn the heads of people walking by, but the drunk just whimpered and held tight. “Don’t
touch
me!” he said again, more quietly, and tried to pull free, but the drunk slithered along with him. Then I’ll fuckin’ kill you, Kiku thought, aiming a kick at the man’s head but stopping inches short. He couldn’t help thinking of the
lump-man
at Blind Mice: these guys are brain-dead; you could kick them or beat them senseless and they wouldn’t lift a hand to save themselves. Probably wouldn’t even feel it. Hurts my foot more than it does him. He dropped three hundred-yen coins at his feet and walked away.

When he got back to the room in the other bar where Kazuyo was waiting, the young guy was nowhere in sight. Kazuyo was still on the couch, but she had gone white as a sheet and was shivering. She managed to explain that soon after Kiku left she had given some money to the friendly waiter and he had vanished. Kiku would have gone to look for him, but Kazuyo kept repeating that she wanted to go back to the hotel and lie down, so he helped her to her feet and they made their way down to the street. But they couldn’t get a cab to stop. As she stood leaning against Kiku with her eyes closed, Kazuyo asked whether he had found Hashi.

“You saw him, didn’t you?” she said in a tiny voice.

“No, he wasn’t there,” Kiku answered.

She nodded, then mumbled against his shoulder, “But we sure did have some fun today. Such a good movie…” Her voice trailed off and she was quiet. When Kiku asked if she was all right, she just breathed softly and unevenly on his arm.

Cab after cab sped by, each with the “For hire” light shining
in the window, but none stopped. Kiku was puzzled. Even when he frantically waved his arms, they hardly slowed down, hurtling past as if he weren’t there. There was something in the rules of the city he didn’t understand. Just how do you make contact with these people? Doesn’t seem to be money, or even force—at one point he had gone out into the traffic and waved a cab down, but when he pounded on the window and threatened to break the glass, the driver just laughed and shook his head. He had tried waving money at him and screaming that he’d pay triple the fare, but still the door hadn’t opened. As they stood by the road, Kiku could feel the strength draining from his body, as if blood were trickling from his toes. He had never felt so powerless. After about thirty minutes, by pure chance, a cab suddenly drew up and let them in, and it occurred to Kiku that he had now learned one of the rules of the city: waiting. No need to make a noise, to get violent, to run around; you just stood still, face blank, and waited—until all the energy in you had dissipated into thin air.