Picking danger was like swallowing pills at a night club: you might not know which one would kill you, but it was only when you hesitated did they stick in your throat.
The store at which Taro decided he did not want to look around anymore was the one in which he made his move. He was wearing his cheap reading glasses and expensive cologne and then the single most important item in gaining instant trust with young Japanese women: a tasteful pink tie. The store specialised in brand name handbags, and the attractive sales clerk was too preoccupied with creating the right impression to consider what might happen when Taro got to handle over the counter the surprise birthday gift for his lovely girlfriend. The surprise was for the sales clerk.
Taro sprinted out the store, the Louis Vuitton bag gripped tightly in his hands. Men screamed and alarms rang. Taro suspected it would have been better doing this amidst one of the major sales periods when the sight of a customer running through the store was much less obtrusive. He pushed and weaved his way through the store. The security guards in pursuit were mostly flabby middle aged men and the sales clerks mostly females in high heels; none of them were a matchfor Taro as, with his body topped up on adrenaline, he ran like a spooked gazelle.
He made it onto the street and kept up his pace. It wasn’t until he was deep within the grounds of Osaka Castle did he stop to gather his breath. He took to a park bench and waited. The castle may once have been capable of keeping at bay an advancing army of thousands, but now its strength as far as Taro was concerned was its array of exits. It would have taken a small army of police to corral him in.
Taro waited until his heart rate was back to normal and his perspiration was beginning to dry. Then he sent a message to Tokyo on his Docomo phone informing them that a girl cut from the Takarazuka try-outs was on the way.
28
Rie was already waiting when Taro arrived at Shin Osaka Station. She was eyeing off a large advertising billboard featuring a Takarazuka Review actress holding a credit card in various costumes. Taro sensed her regret and hoped the designer bag would cheer her up.
‘It’s nice,’ she said, ‘but if this job doesn’t work out I may be more in need of ready cash. In that case, will I be able to get a refund on it?’ Her voice was very direct, but that’s how it usually was with people in Osaka.
‘Certainly,’ said Taro, ‘but I have a special arrangement with the store, so you will need to let me handle it.’
Rie shrugged. ‘Alright. I’m ready to go.’ Judging by the three large bags at her side, she was not planning to return to Osaka any time soon. Taro helped her with two of them.
They got to the platform ten minutes before the Nozomi bullet train pulled in from Kyoto. Taro was looking forward to getting on board and away from Osaka. It was the closest he would come to an acquittal for the crime of shoplifting.’
‘Have you had lunch yet?’ Taro asked. ‘Or are you one of those skinny girls that doesn’t like to eat?’
‘If it was a rule that thin girls don’t eat,’ replied Rie, ‘I wouldn’t be a thin girl. Nonetheless, I haven’t even had breakfast today.’
A line of businessmen and women gradually whittled away with the seat numbers, allowing Taro and Rie to claim their own. Taro gave Rie the window and picked up from where he had left off the previous evening in the pool bar, endeavouring to keep up Rie’s spirits with the kind of friendly small talk that hosts made an art of in the kinds of bars Rie was headed for.
‘You’re going to like Tokyo,’ he assured. ‘There are plenty of good pool bars and pool halls.’
‘I’m not going there to live the same life I’ve been living here,’ said Rie indifferently. The train was starting to pull out of the station and she took out her mobile phone. ‘I’ve been waiting till I was on board before telling anyone I’m leaving. It’s too late for them to talk me out of it.’
Taro made way for her as she got out of her seat. She headed for the front of the carriage, where she was able to use the phone politely. Taro meanwhile purchased lunches and beer from the hospitality cart. He consumed his watching her talk. He found she had an intriguing mix of beauty, strength and insecurity. It might not have been what the Takarazuka Review’s audience was looking for, but he would buy a ticket to see it. Her lunch was getting cold and her beer flat, so Taro helped himself. He kept watching her. And she kept talking. Whole hours went by. Outside the window, Mt Fuji came and went.
29
At Tokyo Station Taro received instructions over the phone. He was to send Rie off in a taxi. An address was provided. Then he was to go directly to the Hachiko Statue in Shibuya. The message carried the familiar initials WM.
Rie had seemingly talked herself out on the two and a half hour train journey. She was subdued as Taro escorted her to a taxi and assisted the elderly, white-gloved driver with loading her bags into the boot.
‘Good luck,’ Taro mouthed, waving off the taxi. He wondered if he would see Rie again. He could not say he expected a happy ending to her story. Tokyo was a city where people lived their lives, sometimes they lived them well, but it was not a city of happy endings.
Taro went back into Tokyo Station. There was a frantic pace in the crowded passageways. Taro sacrificed for the sake of personal wellbeing the straight lines he wanted to be taking. He ducked and weaved like everyone else in the great current of humanity, his travel bag in-tow. He reached the loop line platform. The customary announcements and warnings over the loudspeakers marked his train’s arrival.
It took another thirty minutes to reach the Hachiko Statue at Shibuya Station. Taro was feeling besieged by how so comprehensively the relentless city had inundated the ever growing space between Rie and himself. The encounter he had shared with her was already descending into a dream-like quality, a fleeting moment in time when he had been armed with something to offer some of the most beautiful and talented girls in Japan. But he was back to reality now.
Waneta was waiting for him at the crowded dog statue. She was wearing a brown and white patterned blouse, a white silk scarf and loose black pants that covered her feet up to the turquoise painted toenails squashed together in high heels. Any congratulations she may have intended to offer for his success in Osaka had apparently slipped down into the cracks of her frown. ‘Let’s go to a love hotel,’ she said.
She strode ahead, not looking back, assuming Taro would be able to keep up. They came together again at the foyer of the same love hotel as last time. Waneta purchased a key. Taro felt flat. He suspected he had spent too much adrenaline in shoplifting the Louis Vuitton handbag. He glanced at his watch without seeing the time. It was the same way he looked at Waneta. They went quietly up the stairs and into the room. It was exactly the same room as last time, lulling Taro further into complacency. But suddenly Waneta spun round, clasping a hand onto his waist.
‘Your reflexes are not especially quick,’ she murmured. ‘Perhaps I won’t have a chance to hold onto you long.’
‘What do you mean?’
Her hand slipped down to his hand. ‘Come with me.’ She walked him to the bed, took him down to a sitting position. ‘Take off my scarf.’ She guided his hand in the act, letting it brush down against her braless cleavage.
Taro sprung at her excitedly, only to be stopped by a hand to his forehead.
‘I’m not a teenager,’ she said. ‘I don’t bang teeth when I kiss. And I’m not going to find out what I like when you go to work. In fact, it’s you who’s going to find out what I like.’ She pressed him down onto the bed and kissed him from on top.
30
Taro had thought she had been wearing heavy cosmetics to cling onto a fading youth; but now he could see what existed beneath all the colouring was actually an entirely different woman: relaxed, straight forward and with a sense of humour.
She sat up against the bedhead and released a rush of cigarette smoke through her nostrils.
‘Now I see why Tokin holds you in such high regard,’ she said. ‘You’re as malleable as a nervous freshman on his fi
rst day at the office. A puppy wagging his tail, waiting for the leash to be put on. Did you even want to make love with me?’
Taro lay on his stomach down around her waist. ‘I didn’t give it much thought.’
‘Well, you may come to think of this as a pleasant encounter which left you as sore as if you had developed a harsh case of genital warts.’ She measured up her cigarette as though she was about to cauterise a wound. ‘We did come here to discuss a job. So let’s discuss it.’
‘What’s the job?’
‘Well, if you thought nice looking girls were the only kind of person you were going to deal with, you’re in for a shock.’
‘No, I didn’t think that at all. What do I have to do?’
Waneta’s eyes remained on the cigarette. ‘There’s a photograph in my bag of the man who has been hired to kill you.’
‘What?’
‘Tokin has hired him. His name is Akutagawa. He’s a skilful assassin based in Tokyo.’
It seemed too fanciful to be taken seriously, so Taro merely chuckled. ‘Does Tokin want me to be target practice?’
‘No, that is not what he has in mind.’ Waneta’s eyes seared up at him then. ‘What I am to tell you now is between you, Tokin and myself. If it ever comes to be public knowledge, Tokin will kill both of us without qualm. So, you see, we have been joined by
Weeds in the Jungle Page 15
