Number9Dream Read online

  ‘I am not used to not winning.’ Daimon gives me a look that would worry me if we weren’t friends. ‘Deep down, you are one devious sonofabitch, Miyake.’

  ‘Poor Daimon. Remember, it’s only a video game.’

  ‘Advice.’ Daimon does not smile. ‘Never punch above your weight class.’

  Coffee makes a confused noise. ‘Like, where’d the velocodrome go?’

  ‘I think’ – Velvet dismounts – ‘Miyake busted the video machine, big time.’

  Daimon swings off his Yamaha. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Like, where?’ Coffee slips off the bike.

  ‘A quiet little place where they know me.’

  ‘Did you know,’ asks Coffee, ‘if you pluck your nasal hair instead of trimming it you can burst a blood vessel and die?’ Daimon leads us through the pleasure quarter as if he created it. I am lost, and hope I won’t need to find my own way back to Shinjuku metro. The crowds have thinned a little from before, the pleasure-seekers all harder core now. A sports car nudges by, throbbing with bass. ‘Lotus Elise 111S,’ says Daimon. Coffee’s mobile phone beeps ‘Auld Lang Syne’, but she can’t hear the caller despite shouting ‘Hello?’ a dozen times. Jazz brays through an open door. A queue of the hippest people wait outside. I enjoy the envious stares we earn. I would die to hold Velvet’s hand. I would die if she slapped my hand away. I would die if she wanted me to take it and I never realized. Daimon tells us a long story about misunderstandings with drag-queens in Los Angeles that make the girls shriek with laughter. ‘But, like, LA is really dangerous,’ says Coffee. ‘Everyone has guns. Singapore’s the only really safe place abroad.’ ‘Ever been to LA?’ asks Daimon. ‘No,’ says Coffee. ‘Ever been to Singapore?’ asks Daimon. ‘No,’ says Coffee. ‘So somewhere you have never been is less dangerous than somewhere else you have never been?’ Coffee rolls her eyes. ‘Like, who says you need to go a place to know about it? What do you think TV is for?’ Daimon defers. ‘Hear that, Miyake? This must be feminine logic.’ Coffee waves her arms in the air. ‘Like, long live girl power!’ We walk down a passageway lit with signs for stand bars, where an elevator is waiting. Coffee hiccoughs. ‘Which floor?’ The elevator doors close. I shudder with cold. Daimon adjusts his reflection, and decides to switch on his good humour. ‘Ninth. Queen of Spades. I have a great idea. Let’s get married.’ Coffee giggles and presses ‘9’. ‘I accept! Queen of Spades. Like, freaky name for a bar.’ The elevator’s movement is imperceptible, but for the changing floor numbers. Coffee picks some fluff off Daimon’s collar. ‘Nice jacket.’ ‘Armani. I’m very choosy about what comes into contact with my skin. That’s why I chose you, oh my divinity.’ Coffee rolls her eyes and looks at me. ‘Is he always like this, Miyake?’ ‘You can’t ask him,’ smiles Daimon. ‘Miyake’s too good a friend of mine to be honest with you.’ I look at the four reflections of our four reflections. Spaceship-humming silence. ‘Stay in here too long,’ I say, ‘and you’d forget which one was you.’ A gong bronzes, and the elevator doors open. Me, Velvet and Coffee nearly fall over. We are on the roof of a building so high Tokyo has disappeared. Higher than clouds, higher than the wind. The stars are near enough to prod. A meteor arcs around. I see a curtain in the night behind Orion and the illusion is obvious – we are in miniature planetarium, less than ten metres across. A gong bronzes again, and a grapefruit dawn blushes up the sides of the dome from the floor. ‘Like,’ gasps Coffee, ‘totally unbelievable.’ Velvet looks quietly impressed. Daimon claps. ‘Miriam! As you can see, I couldn’t keep myself away.’

  A woman in an opal kimono and full geisha make-up slips through the curtain. She bows exquisitely. She is exquisite, from her lacquer hairclip to her sunset slippers. ‘Good evening, Mr Daimon.’ A pillow-hushed voice. Her cosmetics conceal whatever is beneath, but from the way she moves I put her in her mid-twenties. ‘This is an unexpected pleasure.’

  ‘I know it is, Miriam, I know it is. I heard you were due to be going on an exotic holiday tonight – but here you are, still. Well, well. Meet my new bride.’ He kisses Coffee, who giggles but squirms closer. ‘Do tell me Dirty Daddy isn’t on the premises.’

  ‘Would you be referring to . . . whom, Mr Daimon?’

  ‘Hear that diplomacy, Miyake? Miriam is a pro. A bona fide pro.’

  The woman glances at me.

  ‘Mr Daimon senior isn’t here tonight, Mr Daimon.’

  Daimon sighs. ‘That father of mine. Off rutting Chizumi again ? At his age? Has anyone else around here noticed how fat he’s grown? Talk about excess baggage. Does Chizumi dish you the dirt on Mr Daimon senior, Miriam? Is the trysting wig on or wig off? . . . Ah, I can see you’re not going to answer. Well, if he isn’t here, I can entertain my tinkywinky wifey’ – he encircles Coffee’s waist – ‘in the Daimon clan’s private room. Naturally, the evening’s festivities go on Father Ratfuck’s bill.’

  ‘Naturally, Mr Daimon, Mama-san will invoice Mr Daimon senior.’

  ‘Why so formal, Miriam? What happened to “Yuzu-chan”?’

  ‘I’ll have to ask you to sign the guest book, Mr Daimon.’

  Daimon waves his hand. ‘Whatever.’

  I ignore a voice advising me to get in the elevator and leave right now, because I lack any kind of excuse or explanation. I am still buzzing with alcohol, but I see something dangerous in Daimon. The moment passes. Daimon sweeps us on, in Daimon we trust. ‘The enchanted land awaits.’

  Miriam leads us through a series of curtained anterooms – I forget which way we faced when we came in. Each curtain is embroidered with a kanji too ancient to read. Finally we enter a quilted chamber, unchanged since the 1930s. Tapestries of ancient cities hang on the windowless walls. Stiff leather chairs, an unattended mahogany and brass bar, a pendulum swinging too slowly, a dying chandelier. A rusty cage with an open door. The parrot inside opens its wings as we pass. Coffee squeals like a rubber sole on varnish. A number of older men sit around in clusters, discussing secrets in low voices and slow gestures. Smoke at dusk. Girls and women fill glasses and occupy the arms of the chairs. They are here to serve, not to entertain. Alchemy has distilled all colour into the girls’ kimonos. Persimmon golds, cathode indigos, ladybird scarlets, tundra olives. A rotary fan hanging from the ceiling paddles the thick heat. In the shadow of a nightmarish aspidistra a piano plays a nocturne to itself, at half-speed.

  ‘Wow,’ says Velvet.

  ‘Like, freaky,’ says Coffee.

  A powerful odour similar to my grandmother’s hair lacquer makes me sneeze. ‘Mr Daimon!’ A thickly rouged woman appears behind the bar. ‘And companions! My!’ She wears a headdress of peacock feathers and sequinned evening gloves, and flutters a faded actress’s wave. ‘How green and growing you all look! That’s young blood for you!’

  ‘Good evening, Mama-san. Quiet, for a Saturday?’

  ‘Saturday already? The days don’t find their way up this far.’

  Daimon cocks a smile. Coffee and Velvet are welcome wherever there are men’s imaginations to strip them, but in my jeans, T-shirt, baseball cap and sneakers, I feel as out of place as a shit-shoveller at an imperial wedding. Daimon clasps my shoulder. ‘I want to take my brother-in-arms here – and our imperial consorts – to my father’s room.’

  ‘Sayu-chan can show you—’

  Daimon cuts in. His smile is nearly vicious. ‘But Miriam is free.’

  Messages pass between Daimon and Mama-san. Miriam looks away miserably. Mama-san nods, and sort of hoicks up her face. ‘Miriam?’ Miriam turns back and smiles. ‘What joy that would bring me, Mr Daimon.’

  ‘I mostly drive my Prussian blue Porsche Carrera 4 cabriolet. I have a weakness for Porsches. Their curves, if you look closely, are exactly those of a kneeling woman, bent over submissively.’ Daimon watches Miriam pour the champagne. Velvet kneels. ‘What about you, Eiji?’ Wonderful. We are on ‘Eiji’ terms. ‘I’m, uh, more of a two-wheel sort of person.’ Velvet bubbles – ‘Oh, don’t tell me you drive a Harley?’ Daimon barks a laugh. ‘Howe
ver did you guess? Miyake’s Harley is his, how can I put it, his pelvic thrust of freedom between gigs, right? You get so much shit in a rock star’s entourage, you wouldn’t believe it. Groupies, smackheads, drummers, Miyake’s been through it all. Splendid, Miriam, you didn’t spill a drop. I suppose you get a lot of practice. Tell me, how long have you been holed up here as a waitress Imeana hostess?’ Miriam is ghostly but dignified in the lamplight. The room is intimate and warm. I smell the girls’ perfume and cosmetics and recently laid tatami. ‘Come now, Mr Daimon. Ladies never discuss years.’

  Daimon undoes his ponytail. ‘Years, is it? My, my. You must be very happy here. Well, everyone, now the champagne has been poured, I wish to propose two toasts.’

  ‘What are we, like, drinking to?’ asks Coffee.

  ‘One: as Miyake here knows, I recently broke free of a sewer woman who peels promises like a whore – a fair description – peels condoms on and off.’

  ‘I know exactly the sort of woman you mean.’ Coffee nods.

  ‘We understand each other so deeply.’ Daimon sighs. ‘Shall we get married in Waikiki, Lisbon or Pusan?’

  Coffee toys with Daimon’s earring. ‘Pusan? The toilet of Korea?’

  ‘Poisonous little country,’ agrees Daimon. ‘You can have that earring.’

  ‘Like, great. Here’s to freedom.’ We chime our flutes.

  ‘What’s your second toast?’ asks Velvet, stroking the chrysanthemum.

  Daimon gestures at Coffee and Velvet. ‘Why – a toast to the flower of true Japanese womanhood. Miriam, you’re a woman, you know about these things. What qualities should I look for in a wife?’

  Miriam considers. ‘In your case, Mr Daimon, blindness.’

  Daimon places his hands over his heart to stop the bleeding. ‘Oh, Miriam! Where is your compassion tonight? Miriam is the duck-feeding type, Miyake. She treats her waterfowl with more compassion than her lovers, I hear.’

  Miriam smiles slightly. ‘Waterfowl are more dependable, I hear.’

  ‘Dependable, did you say? Or dependent? No matter. Don’t you agree that Miyake and I are the two luckiest men in Tokyo?’

  She regards me for a moment. I glance away. I wonder what her real name might be. ‘Only you know how lucky you are,’ she says. ‘Will that be all, Mr Daimon?’

  ‘No, Miriam, that will not be all. I want some grass. Instant-karma mix. And you know how peckish drugs make me, so bring something peckable in half an hour or so.’

  The room has a fusuma screen that opens on to a balcony. Tokyo rises from the floor of the night. Four weeks ago I was helping my cousin repair Uncle Orange’s tea plantation Rotavator. Now look. A six-storey can of KIRIN LAGER BEER pours dandelion neon, over and over. Across the unlit lake of the Imperial Palace I can see aircraft warning lights pulse on the crown of PanOpticon. Altair and Vega pulse either side of the Milky Way. Traffic noises ebb up. Velvet leans out. ‘Miles and miles,’ she says to herself. Her hair shifts in the hot breeze. Her body is made of curves I can feel just by looking. ‘I do declare,’ says Daimon, the friend who is giving me all this on a plate, ‘I have rolled the most perfect joint this side of the whorehouses of Bogotá.’

  ‘And just how would you know?’ Coffee bends down to light it.

  ‘I own a dozen.’ He wriggles out of his jacket and slings it into the room. His T-shirt reads We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are, which I have heard somewhere before.

  Velvet leans out farther. ‘Are those islands or ships? That loop of lights.’

  Daimon peers through the railings. ‘Reclaimed land. New airport.’

  Coffee looks. ‘Let’s go out there and see how fast your Porsche runs.’

  ‘Let’s not.’ Daimon puckers the joint into life, holds the smoke down, and exhales an aaaaaaaaa . . . Coffee kneels, and Daimon holds the joint to her lips. Uncle Money gave me a stern lecture about drugs and Tokyo which I know from one glance at Velvet I shall ignore. Coffee purses her lips as dragon smoke uncurls from her nostrils. ‘Did I tell you’ – Daimon gazes into the flame of his lighter – that this lighter is a piece of history? It used to belong to General Douglas MacArthur during the Occupation.’ ‘Like, sure it did, if you say so,’ scoffs Coffee. ‘I say so, but never mind. Get me a zabuton, my coffeecreamyhoneyhole, let your lungs soak up this beauty, we’ll drive to Tierra del Fuego and repopulate Patagonia . . .’ While Coffee is fetching a cushion from the tatami room the mobile phone in her bag beeps the Moonlight Sonata. Daimon heaves a mighty sigh – ‘Irritating!’ – and passes the joint to me. I give it to Velvet. Daimon answers the mobile in a fair imitation of the royal crown prince. ‘I bid you a splendid evening.’ Coffee dives, giggling. ‘Mine!’ Daimon scissors her to the floor between his legs. She writhes, giggling, mantrapped. ‘No, I’m terribly sorry, but you can’t speak with her. Her boyfriend? Really? That’s what she told you? How awful. I’m fucking her later tonight, you see, so go and hire a naughty video, you sad fuck. But first, listen very carefully to this – this is how your death sounds.’ And he tosses the phone over the balcony.

  Coffee’s giggle has its plug pulled.

  Daimon smiles wide as a stoned toad.

  ‘You just threw my mobile over the railing!’

  Daimon dribbles giggles. ‘I know I just threw your mobile over the railing.’

  ‘It might hit somebody on the head.’

  ‘Well, scientists warn us that mobile phones can harm the brain.’

  ‘My mobile!’

  ‘Oh, I’ll buy you another one. I’ll buy you another ten.’

  Coffee weighs up various factors. ‘The most up-to-date model?’

  Daimon grabs the zabuton, lies back and does a gangster impression. ‘I’ll buy ya da factory, shweetie.’ Coffee does a little-girl pout and holds the champagne glass to her ear. ‘I can hear bubbles.’ Velvet takes my earlobes in a thumbpinch, seals my mouth with hers and marijuana smoke rushes in. Stolen chocolate, smeared and soft. ‘Ohohohohohohohoho,’ observes Daimon, ‘do that inside, you two. It looks like I – and my newlywed – have been overtaken by the young upstart once again.’ I open my eyes, and gasp, and cough. Velvet prods me in the chest, so I go inside.

  ‘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 pro
fessional 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