Number9Dream Read online

  The walk back from Kita Senju station to Shooting Star usually clears my head, but it is impossible not to think of Aoyama holed up in his office with a crossbow bolt aimed at the head of an executive with red braces and pin-stripes. Suga stayed around after work, but I wanted to get away. I didn’t even say goodbye to Suga. At Shooting Star, Buntaro is glued to the TV, spooning macadamia ice cream. ‘My, my, Miyake. You are a harbinger of doom.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Look at the TV! Nothing like this happened at Ueno until you started working there.’ I fan myself with my baseball cap and watch the screen. The camera shows an outside zoomed-in view of Aoyama’s office, taken, I guess, from Terminus Hotel. The blinds are drawn. Ueno Station Under Siege. ‘There is absolutely no question,’ a policeman assures a cluster of interviewers, ‘of a forced entry operation at this present moment in time.’ ‘Lull himinto a false sense of security,’ says Buntaro. ‘What do you make of this Aoyama character? Does he seem like a man on the edge of grand lunacy? Or does he seem like a publicity stunter?’

  ‘Dunno . . . just unhappy.’ And I spat into his teapot. I traipse upstairs.

  ‘Aren’t you going to watch?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh, by the way. About your cat. The cat.’

  I peer down. ‘You found her owner?’

  Buntaro keeps one eye on the TV. ‘No, lad, but she found her maker. Unless she has a secret twin she never told you about. Real coincidence. I was cycling here this morning and what did I see by the drainage channel down the side of Lawson’s? One dead cat, flies buzzing. Black, white paws and tail, a tartan collar with a silver bell, just like you described. I did my civic bit and rang the council when I got here, but someone had already reported it. They can’t let things like that lie around in this heat.’

  This is the worst day on record.

  ‘Sorry to be the bearer of ill tidings and all.’

  The second worst, I mean.

  ‘Only a cat,’ I mumble. I enter my capsule, sit down, and appear to lack the will to do anything except smoke the rest of my Dunhills. I don’t want to watch TV. I bought a cup noodle and a punnet of mushy strawberries walking back from Kita Senju, but my appetite has vanished. I listen to the street fill up with evening.

  Yakushima never returns to its full size when the ferry takes us back the following morning. The day is glossy with sunshine, but heightens the illusion that this boundless island is a scale model. I look out for Anju on the sea wall – and when I can’t find her I have to admit that my elation is dented. Anju is a gifted sulker, but a thirty-six-hour sulk is a long haul, even for my sister. I zip open my sports bag – the man of the match trophy glints back. I look for the thunder god’s shrine on its cliff – and this time I find it. The passengers pour down the gangplank, my team-mates disappearing into waiting cars. I wave goodbye. Mr Ikeda claps me on the shoulder and actually smiles. ‘Want a lift?’

  ‘No, thanks, sir, my sister’ll be walking down to meet me.’

  ‘Okay. Training first thing tomorrow. And well done again, Miyake. You turned the game around. Three–nil! Three–nil!’ Ikeda is still glowing with revenge. ‘That wiped the snotty, shitty sneer off the fat face of their cretin coach! I caught his despair on camera!’

  I kick the same stone from the harbour up the main street, over the old bridge, and all the way up to the valley neck. The stone obeys my every wish. Sun mirrors off the rice-fields. I see the first dragonflies. This is the beginning of a long road. At the end is the World Cup. The abandoned house stares with empty sockets. I pass the tori gate, and think about running up to thank the thunder god right now – but I want to see Anju first. The hanging bridge trembles under my footsteps. Tiny fish cloud the leeward sides. Anju will be at home, helping our grandmother make lunch. Nothing to worry about. I slide open the front door – ‘I’m back!’

  Anju’s foot-thump—

  No, it was only the old house. I can tell from the shoes that my grandmother is out too. They must have gone to see Uncle Tarmac, but somehow missed me around the new harbour building while Mr Ikeda was talking to me. I pour myself a glass of milk, and dive on to the sofa. On the insides of my eyelids I watch the exact parabola of the soccer ball curving over a volcano and under a distant crossbar.

  ‘Miyake!’ Buntaro, of course. I lift my head too quickly and yank my neck cords. A hammering on my capsule door. ‘Come quick! Quick! Now!’ I clatter downstairs where customers cluster around Buntaro’s TV. The outside of Aoyama’s office, high above the tracks. Live from Ueno Station Hostage Crisis Centre. The picture is being taken with a night camera – light is orange and dark is brown. I don’t need to ask what is happening because the commentator is telling us. ‘The blind is up! The window is being opened and . . . a figure, Mr Aoyama has . . . yes, that is him, I can confirm that, the figure climbing out of the window is Mr Aoyama . . . he is on the ledge . . . the light is going on behind . . . please wait while . . . I’m receiving . . .’ Background radio scratchings. The consultant . . . is unharmed! The police have taken the office! Whether they broke down the door or . . . now, Aoyama appears to have honoured his promise not to . . . but the question now is . . . Oh, oh, he surely isn’t thinking of jumping . . . The face at the window, I can confirm that is a police officer, attempting to talk Aoyama out . . . he is dealing with a very disturbed man at this moment in time . . . he will be saying that . . .’

  Aoyama jumps from the ledge.

  Aoyama is no longer alive but not yet dead.

  His body cartwheels, and falls for a long, long time.

  Footsteps in the hallway wake me up. I open my eyes – my trophy shines on the table, proof that I didn’t dream the whole glorious afternoon. Evening lights the worn wooden room where my uncles and mother spent their childhoods. And here are my grandmother and Mr Kirin, one of Yakushima’s four police officers. ‘I’m back,’ I say, worried. ‘We won.’

  My grandmother doesn’t care. ‘Did Anju say she was going anywhere?’

  ‘No. Where is she?’

  ‘If you’re lying I’ll, I’ll, I’ll—’

  Mr Kirin gently sits my grandmother down and turns to me. ‘Eiji—’

  I want to be sick. ‘What happened to Anju?’

  ‘Anju seems to have run away—’

  He knows more.

  ‘She wouldn’t, not without telling me. Never.’

  My grandmother’s voice is broken. ‘So what did she tell you? She told me she was going to Uncle Tarmac’s yesterday evening. He called me this lunch-time to find out why she had changed her mind. If this is a game you two cooked up, you are in a sackload of trouble!’ Mr Kirin sits down on the other end of the sofa. ‘I want you to think, Eiji. Is there a secret place where she might have gone?’

  First I think of trees. Then, with sickening certainty, I think of the whalestone. To get even with me. Her swimming costume . . . I run upstairs. I open our drawer. I was right – it’s gone. I remember my promise with the thunder god. Anything that I can give you, you can have. Take it. Mr Kirin fills the bedroom doorframe. ‘What is it, Eiji-kun?’ I get the words out before everything crashes down. ‘Look in the sea.’

  Nearly five o’clock, says Fujifilm. I get up and piss. In my toilet cube mirror a drone looks back at me in mild surprise. I need a cigarette. The packet of Dunhills is empty, but I find one rolled under the ironing board. I light it on the gas stove, and go on to the balcony to smoke it. Dawn sketches outlines and colours them in. Tokyo roars, far off and near. So, that is the end of Mr Aoyama. He ran out of minutes, so he jumped. I sloosh the fungus out of a mug and make myself a cup of instant coffee. I take Anju’s photograph out to the balcony, and drink my coffee in her company. I think about the letter from my mother, and a deal presents itself. Should I? I must do my washing up today. I look in the cockroach motel – I look again. Cockroach escaped. A leg and a smear of cockroach shit remain. I take in my washing and fold it into a neat pile. I tune my guitar and run through some bossa nova chords, but all those sunlit breezes
are not how I feel. Very well, Mother. You are my Plan B. I’ll give you what you want, if you tell me how to find our father. Nearly six o’clock. Early, but people at clinics get up early. That’s the point. Before I change my mind I dial.

  ‘Good morning. Miyazaki Mountain Clinic.’

  ‘Morning. Could you put me through to Mariko Miyake’s room, please.’

  ‘Not possible, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Is it too early?’

  ‘Too late. Mrs Miyake checked herself out yesterday evening.’

  Oh, no. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Quite sure. She even took our towels as a souvenir.’

  ‘Look, this is her son. I need to contact her. It’s urgent.’

  ‘I’m sure it is, but once our guests decide to leave us they never hang around.’

  ‘Did she leave a forwarding address?’

  She doesn’t bother to pretend to check. ‘No.’

  ‘How was she?’

  ‘You’d need to talk to her counsellor—’

  ‘What time does he start work?’

  ‘She. But Dr Suzuki would never discuss a patient with anyone. Even her son.’

  If only I had called yesterday, if only, if only. ‘Did you meet her?’

  ‘Mrs Miyake? Of course. I’m a staff nurse.’

  ‘Can you tell me if she was . . . okay?’

  ‘It depends what you mean by okay.’

  ‘Well, you’ve been really helpful. Thanks so much.’

  She uppercuts my irony. ‘It was my pleasure, sir.’

  Click, buzz, click, purrrrrrrrr . . . . . . . . .

  Plan B down the pan. The submarines are running, and I feel wide awake, but it is still too early to leave for work. What a night. It mauled me, not refreshed me. Buntaro called me down for a smoke later, in the quiet hour between eleven and midnight. We talked for a little while. I nearly forgot he is my bloodsucking landlord. I put Plastic Ono Band into my Discman and lie down on my futon, just for a moment. Deep bells and beat boxes.

  Plastic Ono Band is long over when a pattering sound pads into my dreams. At first I think it is a pipe dripping splashes, but then I feel her settling inside the curl of my body. I open my eyes. ‘Hey.’ My voice is a croak. ‘I thought you were supposed to be dead.’ She yawns, indifferent to what I think or thought. She regards me with her bronze-spark Cleopatra eyes.

  The fibres in the neck of the thunder god tear, snap and scream. I am still gripping it – I never expected it to come loose so soon. It comes away, the saw goes clattering down, I reshift my weight too far, lose my balance and slide down between his back and the shrine wall. I seem to be falling for the longest time. The floor of the shrine whacks the breath out of my body. I don’t break my back, but within an hour I will have turned into the incredible walking bruise. My enemy’s head rolls away, wood on wood, and comes to a rest on its side, looking right this way. Hatred, revenge, jealousy, rage – all twisted into the same contortions, and pulled tight. A smear of my blood over one nostril. The woods are too quiet. No adult, no police car, no grandmother. The blackbird has gone. Only the cannon boom of the ocean against the rocks a long way down. The gods are all related, and from this day on they are going to be in conspiracy against me. I will live a life without luck. So be it. I get to my feet. I pick up the head, cradling it like an infant, and take it outside to the edge of the rock face. The sea breaks over the whalestone’s humpback, and the spray flies. One, two, three – I watch the severed head of the thunder god, all the way down. It vanishes in a white crown. Now I must vanish too.

  Three

  VIDEO GAMES

  I catch a glimpse of my father being bundled into an unmarked van parked across the baseball field. I would recognize him anywhere. He hammers on the back window, but the van is already through the gates and disappearing into the smoking rubble of Tokyo. I leap onto our patrol stratobike, take off my baseball cap and rest it on the console. Zizzi flashes me a peppermint smile and off we zoom. Lavender clouds slide by. I train my gun on a chillipepper schoolboy, but for once things are exactly as they appear. The sunroof of a midnight Cadillac flips open, and out pops a lobstermobsterBang! Shell and claws everywhere. I drill the rear window and the vehicle explodes in paintbox flames. The van swerves down the road to the airport. In the underpass an ambulance cuts us up – a scalpel-slashing medic leaps on to our bonnet, eyeballs afroth with plagueBang! In the nuts! Bang! Vomit on the bonnetBang! The mutant staggers, but refuses to dieBang! Blasted through a billboard. Reload. ‘You’re my top gun,’ croons Zizzi. We get to the airport just in time to see my father dragged into a vanilla Cessna aircraft. I daren’t shoot his kidnappers at this range in case I miss. A mighty chokmakopter eclipses the sun, and zombie spawn abseil to earth. I pulp dozens in midair, but the semolina army of death sludges up too quickly. ‘Zax, honey!’ says Zizzi. ‘Megaweapon in McDonald’s!’ I fire the golden arches and collect the twenty-third-century rapid-fire bazooka. It purrs as I scythe – soon the runway is a spill of twitching limbs. I pepper the chokmakopter until it nosedives into the fuel trucks. Octane fuchsia explosions light the world. ‘Way to go, Zax! Now to follow your father’s abductors to their laboratory!’ We soar in pursuit of the Cessna – I click my trigger to skip the preamble. We enter the underworld. The sewers are quiet. Too quiet. A gigahydra erupts, nine heads dripping lime slime from nine lassooing necksBang! Cleft like a cabbage. Reload. But from the stump two new heads are born. ‘Deep-fry the freak!’ screams Zizzi, so I aim at the beast’s trunk and activate my flamethrower. Whoooooorrrsh! It shrivels away in my swathe of unlooping strawberry fire. A lily-white Lilith oneBang! and she’s history. A swarm of cyberwasps – bangabangabanga – reload. My hand is killing me. The tunnel narrows to a dead end. An unseen iron door creaks open – a scientist in silhouette. ‘My son! You found me! At long last!’ I relax and flex my gun hand. ‘You are in time’ – he rips off his false beard, his briefcase morphs into a grenade launcher – ‘to die!’ The gritty gloom swarms with intelligent missiles, homing in on my body heat. Bangabangabanga! I miss most of them, and can’t even take aim at the impostor. Scarlet pixels of life-blood splatter the screen. ‘Zax,’ begs my sister, ‘don’t leave me here – insert a coin to continue. Honey, don’t quit now.’

  ‘Honey,’ mimics a voice over my shoulder, ‘don’t quit now!’ I replace my gun and turn around to face my spectator and his slow applause. My first thought is that he is way too cool to be hanging out in games centres. Older than me, a sleek ponytail, an earring. Pop star good looks. ‘First time in the underworld, right?’ His real voice is tailored Tokyoite.

  I nod. The real world fades in.

  ‘It was the same for me, my first time in the underworld.’

  Laser zaps, vampire howls, coin rattles, cyclical video game music. ‘Oh.’

  You see your father, so you let your guard down. A dirty trick! Next time, shoot the egghead on sight. It takes about nine shots to kill him.’

  ‘Well. Sorry I died and spoilt your fun.’

  The most casual of shrugs. ‘You’re doomed from the first coin. You pay to postpone the ending, but the video game will always win in the long run.’

  My last half-Marlboro died in the ashtray. ‘Very deep.’

  ‘Actually, I was waiting for my date in the pool hall upstairs. Looks like she’s playing the be-late-keep-him-on-tenterhooks game. So I came down to make sure she hadn’t fucked up and was waiting outside. I saw you, wrapped up in Zax Omega and Red Plague Moon, and had to stay to watch. Did you know your tongue pokes out when you concentrate?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s a two-player game, really. It even took me a fortnight to polish it off.’

  ‘That must have cost you a fortune.’

  ‘No. My father owns a man who owns a distributor.’

  No reply presents itself. ‘Well, hope your date shows up soon.’ ‘The bitch had better. Or I’ll flay her alive.’

  Saturday night in Shibuya bubbles and sweats. One week since my
sleepless night, I decided to come exploring. The pleasure quarter is so hot, one more struck match could ignite the place. Uncle Bank took me out last year to his bar in Kagoshima, but that is nothing compared to this. Neither are the prices. Drones drink in squadrons, ties loose, collars undone. She-drones, office uniforms stuffed into shoulder bags. I damn drones too much, considering I am one now. But I only pretend to be one. Maybe we all start out that way. Same as Mr Aoyama. Couples on dates. Americans and beautiful women in moonglasses. I bet the waitress with the perfect neck has a whole phone book of boyfriends like my spectator in the games centre. A giant DRINK COCA-COLA cascade, magma maroons and holy whites. I suck a champagne bomb and walk on. Hostesses wave geriatric company presidents into taxis. In an amber-lit restaurant everyone knows one another. A giant Mongol warrior scooters past, flanked by bunny girls handing out leaflets advertising a new shopping complex somewhere. Girls in cellophane waistcoats, panties and tights sit in glass booths outside clubs, offering chit-chat and ten-per-cent-off coupons. I imagine scything through the crowds with the twenty-third-century megaweapon. The clouds are candy-coloured from the lights and lasers. Outside Aphrodite’s Soapworld, a bouncer runs through the girls pinned up on the board. ‘Number one is Russian – classy, accommodating. Two, Filipina – attentive, well trained. The French girl – well, need I say more. The Brazilian, dark chocolate, plenty of bite. Number five, English, white chocolate. Six is German, home of the wiener. Not an ounce of flab on the Koreans. Number eight are our exotic black twins, and number nine – ah, number nine is beyond the grasp of ordinary mortals—’ He catches me gawping and cackles. ‘Come back in a decade or so, sonny, with your summer bonus.’ I wander past an electronics shop, and on TV see someone familiar walking past an electronics shop. He stops, examines the TV, amazed and semi-appalled at how he must appear to other people. I buy a new pack of Marlboro. As I pass by the red lanterns of a noodle shop and smell the kitchen vapours pumped out, I suddenly remember how hungry I am. I peer through the window – it looks greasy enough to be affordable, even for me. I slide open the door and enter through the strings of beads. A steamy hole with a roaring kitchen. I order fried tofu noodles with green onions and sit by the window, watching the crowds wash by. My noodles arrive. I help myself to a glass of iced water. Happy twentieth birthday, Eiji Miyake. Buntaro handed me a fine crop of cards this evening – one from each of my four aunts. The fifth envelope was another one from the ministry of unwelcome letters, still operating its Get Miyake campaign. I light up a Marlboro and take out the letter again to reread, trying to figure out whether it is a step forward, backward or sideward.