Sayonara Bar

by Susan Barker

  Aya nods. ‘He just doesn’t want to look like a pushover for letting Yuji off the hook too quickly. Does Mary know what is going on?’

  ‘I doubt it. These stupid Caucasian girls rarely do. What do I care? I do what is best for my son.’

  Mama-san inspects her scarlet talons. Evil is the product of human will. And there is no greater evil than a mother’s will to override all moral agency to save the neck of her criminal son.

  Aya knows this, she was once part of this world too. She nods and smiles.

  I glide 7.3 kilometres due west to where Mary stumbles at the outskirts of town, trying to hitch a lift. Mary is in a state of shock. Her confrontation with the cold steel barrel of an automatic is the single most harrowing event in her twenty-two years, marking a rupture in her personal identity. Trailing behind Mary is her discarded self of one hour ago. An optimistic and happy-go-lucky Mary, displaced from its incarnation by a hardened, wiser version. The Mary of one hour ago has no choice now but to tag along behind with the thousands of other selves Mary has discarded throughout her life, such as the Mary-who-has-never-been-kissed and the Mary-who-wets-the-bed. Most of them it was necessary to discard, in order to progress into adulthood. But the self who-has-never-been-threatened-by-a-gun is one self you hope to hang on to all life long.

  Her suffering makes my extremities numb with fear. I swear I will never let this happen again.

  At the bar Mama-san fusses over little Katsu. Mama-san enjoys these visits from her two-year-old grandson. Now Yuji’s career has gone belly-up, she needs a substitute vehicle upon whom to project her dreams of conquering the criminal underworld.

  Let me tell you about Aya. Meeting the Aya of today it is difficult to believe that she was once a vicious nympholeptic, prone to violent fits of rage. Many men found her kamikaze spirit alluring, including the teenage Yuji, who impregnated then dumped her (resulting in the 117 stitches needed to reattach his upper ear). Yet from this devil-spiked chrysalis emerged the loving mother of today.

  It wasn’t motherhood that transformed Aya. Early motherhood saw her at her lowest ebb, clawing the walls of her bedsit, waking from dreams of mixing meths into the baby formula. The transformation occurred one afternoon as she sat watching TV with the volume up loud enough to drown out her baby’s cries. Through her medicated haze she saw a young actor on the screen. Admiring his chiselled good looks, she thought how perfect it would be if he could climb out of the TV set and become her husband. She imagined their wedding day and to her surprise found herself consoled by the fantasy. This calmed her enough to take Katsu for a stroll – for the first time ever in his six months outside the womb. That night as she ate her noodles she imagined that it was a special dish prepared by her new husband. And so it went on. Each day her fantasies grew, and before long she was spending every moment with her imaginary husband. And who can blame her? He is thoughtful, compliant to her emotional needs, and offers blessed retreat from her cultural demographic as a single mother. He makes Aya happy. Reality is cold and stale in comparison. Even now, sitting at the bar with Mama-san, she is impatient to be alone with him again.

  To witness such self-delusion, such endeavour to negate reality, chokes me with terror. It is dangerous to take such undisciplined flight into the realms of fantasy. The only good thing that can be said about it is that at least it keeps in check Aya’s infanticidal streak.

  Thirty-two of those arbitrary sub-units of time called minutes pass by. I dismantle the pizza oven and follow Mary as she moves through the concrete maze towards The Sayonara Bar. I sweep through her, again and again, whispering, ‘Turn away, turn away, turn away.’ But it is no good. Mary is a totalitarian state governed by the desire to see Yuji. She will not turn back.

  At the urgent knocking at the door Mama-san dismounts the bar stool and scoops Mr Bojangles into her arms. She likes to feel his tiny bestial heart beating next to hers. She looks at Aya and a poison smile slips between them.

  Mama-san pulls open the door and Mary spills in.

  ‘Is Yuji OK? Where is he? Is he here?’ Her hair looks like it has been backcombed with steel wool and her eyes are bright and frantic.

  Mama-san soaks up Mary’s anguish like manna, or life-giving corpuscles of sun. With a kindly, motherly laugh she says: ‘Calm down. Yuji is not here. But he’s in a safe place, don’t worry. I will take you to him later.’

  Mary is so relieved she wants to smother Mama-san with kisses. Her diaphragm contracts in a sob. Mama-san grits her back teeth. The last time Mama-san cried was when she was eight, and her brother had just decapitated her pet kitten by holding it up to the ceiling fan.

  ‘I went to his flat. There was a man there with a gun. He said he was waiting for Yuji. He said . . .’

  Mary’s tear glands haemorrhage, expelling the trauma, drip by salty drip. Mama-san taps her foot irascibly. Aya smirks. How I wish that Mary and I could transcend together. Up to where Mama-san is scattered into a million ugly shards. Together we would raid her memory bank and laugh at how she dances with her reflection in the mirror when she is lonely and drunk. But Mary cries on.

  Before long Mama-san invites Mary upstairs for a bath, leaving Aya to indulge her personality disorder and rock Katsu in his pushchair. I pace the kitchen, trying to determine the best course of action.

  Last night I made a terrible error of judgement. Though I was correct in interpreting Yuji’s sanity to be cracked, my assumption that he is no longer a threat to Mary was wrong. I totally misread his n-dimensional neural geometries. During the hours I slept on the train the threat to Mary reappeared. I should have incinerated him at the Lotus Bar when I had the chance.

  I pan back in hyperspace, to view four locations at once: Mary upstairs with Mama-san; Yuji sprawled at the Lotus Bar; the gunman doing one-handed press-ups in Yuji’s apartment; yakuza boss Yamagawa-san hanging upside down in his wardrobe, like a bat.

  Yamagawa-san’s dopamine levels indicate that he will be asleep for several hours. Mama-san will not do anything until he wakes and phones her, so Mary is safe for the time being. The gunman, code name Red Cobra, is bored from empty hours of waiting. Trained to wound and maim, he itches to take Yuji out. At once I see a way to get Yuji while absolving myself of the dirty work. And all I have to do is superimpose Red Cobra’s spatial co-ordinates with the Lotus Bar.

  Inspired, I sprint out of the kitchen, just as Mama-san emerges from the door leading up to her apartment.

  ‘Watanabe,’ she says. ‘One of the toilets needs unblocking. Get a wire coat hanger from the changing room and see if you can fix it.’

  I stop for a moment and watch the caffeine molecules from her tea excite her postsynaptic membranes. I see myself, carried along by fragments of light, sifting miniaturized and inverted through four scrutineering optic lenses. They hold me in high regard, Mama-san and her dog: right now, they are thinking I have no higher purpose in life other than to unplug their toilet.

  ‘What are you waiting for?’ Mama-san asks.

  Good question. What exactly am I waiting for? Ignoring Mama-san, I run towards the double doors, accidentally kicking over the potted fern by the cash register. Soil and fertilizer nitrates spill over the carpet, but I don’t have time to clean it up. I have a bus to catch.

  I climb the hill to Yuji’s apartment. The clouds part and the hill is flooded with ultraviolet light. In their hillside homes housewives gossip and eat tiramisu. Toddlers watch adults in fuzzy romper-suits caper about on TV. Most people would be scared if they were on their way to talk to an armed yakuza henchman. Not me. Once Red Cobra learns of our shared objective we will be fast friends. I am sure of it. I am not afraid. It would be nice to call my autonomic nervous system to heel, though. The shaking and cold sweats are really becoming distracting.

  I vault back to the hostess bar. Back to Mary, naked in the bath. Her blood vessels dilate as she lies steeping in hydrophilic content. I watch her in this fragile quietude, and for a second I wish that it could last for ever; that she a
nd I will never be exposed to the unknown future. Then I unwish it. Time must run forwards if she is to reach the promised land. And until then I must toil behind the scenes, in the hope of easing her passage.

  I reach the apartment lobby, light-headed with altitude sickness. In the grip of a nervous fever, my body has turned fugitive against my mind. It quakes and perspires, my biorhythms subject to fits and starts. Fortunately my mind is steady as a rock.

  I penetrate the intercom system and trace the emergency-access code. I enter the three-digit code and press the hash key. Nothing. Tricksy things, these electronic codes. I try again, substituting the star key for the hash. The doorbell of apartment 227 begins to buzz. Shit. I will have to pretend I am the TV-licence inspector.

  There is a click as Naomi Takishima in number 227 picks up and shrills: ‘About time! You should know better than to keep a hot piece of ass like me waiting, you stupid man. Get up here now!’

  The receiver is slammed down and Naomi Takishima of room 227 releases the door without so much as checking my identity.

  I slip down the corridor to Yuji’s apartment, dissecting the plasterboard to see Red Cobra, gun in hand, stiffen at the sound of my footsteps. For one awful moment outside the door my stomach feels ready to void in both directions. But the moment passes and I knock, twist the handle and enter. All the blinds are lowered against the afternoon sun. Red Cobra is behind the living-room door, his gun cocked, reflexes sharpened. This is a delicate situation. I had better announce myself and let him know I am not a marauder, or he will shoot me in the head.

  ‘Er . . . hello,’ I call into the dark, malodorous living quarters of Yuji Oyagi.

  Red Cobra remains silent, waiting to see what I will do.

  ‘Hello,’ I repeat. ‘Er . . . I am safe.’

  Still no reply. Behind the living-room door Red Cobra is on intruder alert. I pause in the doorway, Red Cobra only an eighth of a metre away. Once I introduce myself his defences will ease off. Then we can discuss, man to man, a strategy for annihilating Yuji Oyagi. I walk into the room . . .

  . . . And with a subsonic crack a .22-calibre bullet zips past me at 137 km per hour and buries itself in the plaster by the window. I belly-flop to the floor, the sound of gunpowder ringing in my ears. The fifty-four stay-at-home inhabitants of the apartment building stop what they are doing and look about themselves, trying to discern the source of the noise. A car backfiring? An exploding boiler? Instinct tells me to squeeze my eyes shut tight and press my forehead against the pine laminate floor.

  Red Cobra rubs his right shoulder, aching slightly from the recoil kick of his Glock 18. He looks down at my quivering, floor-hugging form. He sizes me up, drinking in my dirty non-designer jeans and my baseball cap. He scratches the premature five o’clock shadow thrusting through the epidermal layer of his chin.

  ‘Sorry. I could have sworn you were Ace Ishino of the Yamaguchi gang, skinny runt that he is.’

  He is a liar with a poor sense of humour. Three footfalls bring him closer.

  ‘I hope no one has called the police . . . Ah well, too late to worry about it now. Who are you anyway? Get up.’

  My automative response unit has a malfunction. My muscles are paralysed into this position and I cannot move.

  Red Cobra kicks me in the ribs. ‘Turn around so I can see your face,’ he growls impatiently. ‘If you can’t show me that you’re not Ace Ishino, I’ll just have to assume you are and shoot you.’

  Cured of my paralysis, I turn my head sideways.

  Red Cobra’s scar tissue robs his face of expression, but inside he shivers with awe. He senses that I am different. ‘Work at the hostess bar, don’t you? The Mama-san sent you to see who was here, didn’t she?’

  I shake my head, offended by this crude assumption.

  ‘Well, speak, then. What are you doing here?’

  I clear my throat. My emergent voice is strangely castrato. ‘I want to show you where Yuji is.’

  The magic words. A change comes over Red Cobra. He turns away to hide the naked want in his face. Never have I seen such coition of exhilaration and hatred. Revenge beats in him like a second pulse.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘He is hiding in an abandoned bar in Amagasaki.’

  ‘The Lotus Bar?’

  I nod.

  Though Red Cobra senses my genius, his yakuza training warns him to be vigilant. He takes a step back. ‘Mama-san sent you to tell me Yuji is hiding out at the Lotus Bar so I’ll go and get jumped by whatever she has set up for me. Correct?’

  ‘No. She wants Yamagawa-san to let Yuji go free. She isn’t going to make trouble . . .’ My voice fissures, unused to producing so many words in a row.

  Red Cobra is stony with hate. He would rather commit hara-kiri than watch Yuji go free. He will not let it happen. He would sooner violate gang rules and take matters into his own hands.

  ‘If someone is waiting for me at the Lotus Bar you’d better spit it out now, ’cause if there is you’ll be the first to get it.’ Beneath his tailored suit his Glock 18 pulses darkly. He is deadly serious.

  ‘There is no one there but Yuji.’

  ‘OK. Get up off the floor. You are coming with me.’

  Red Cobra parks his Mercedes in the junk yard, 48.3 metres due east from the Lotus Bar. I scythe through the Lotus Bar walls. Yuji lies on his back in the middle of the floor. Other than paying a quick visit to a phone booth to call his mother, Yuji has spent the whole day in the dank, decaying bar. Lucky for him his mind is broken: time passes quickly for the insane.

  Red Cobra takes a packet of Winston from the dashboard and taps one cigarette free. He lights it and smokes in silence. Just as he drove here in silence. The bond we share need not be sustained by words. The interior of the car hums with amity and cigarette smoke.

  ‘He’d better be in there,’ Red Cobra mutters.

  I say nothing. He will see for himself soon enough. I study his yakuza cognitive life, bland and unimaginative but for his revenge fantasies. I watch a reel out of interest. It is quality viewing, all brutal choreographed violence, culminating in the gleaming tip of a samurai sword entering Yuji’s throat.

  Red Cobra blows a nervy smoke ring. He is stalling. He has yearned so long for retribution that, confronted with the real thing, he has stage fright. If I don’t speak up he will stall for hours.

  ‘What are you waiting for?’ I ask.

  Red Cobra stares ahead. Smoke exits his nostrils. ‘I am watching,’ he says.

  This calls for a man-to-man pep talk. I think of telling him that killing Yuji is a pre-emptive strike on the behalf of humanity. Instead I watch the magic tree hanging from the rear-view mirror release aromatic molecules.

  Red Cobra grinds his cigarette into the ashtray. ‘Why have you brought me here, kitchen boy?’ he asks. ‘What’s your beef with Yuji?’

  Thermogenesis pinkens my cheeks. He will never understand. I might as well crouch down in the junk yard and tell it to an ant. ‘Mary,’ I say.

  Red Cobra’s scar tissue creases into a smile. ‘Mary,’ he echoes. ‘I see . . . Well, let’s go and get him then.’

  I nod. This is exactly what I have been waiting to hear.

  We trample over withered grass towards the Lotus Bar. A bullet train streaks by, sending a deep rumble underfoot. We make a formidable team, Red Cobra and I: Red Cobra of the muscle and menacing scars; Watanabe of the hyperintellect. The Lotus Bar quivers at our approach. Field-mice halt their creaturely business and rise up on their hind legs. Cockroaches turn their listening ventricles towards us. Even Yuji senses something.

  At the door, Red Cobra takes one final opportunity to mutter: ‘If this is a trick, I swear to God I’ll pump you full of lead.’

  He creaks the door open and sunshine trickles in, interrupting the constant murk. Dust motes dance, rejoicing in the rays of light. Elsewhere the darkness pants in expectation. As he heard the door open Yuji crawled beneath a table, his heart pounding, waiting to see who we are. Red Cobra squin
ts into the dark, his stage fright slain and dying in the wings. Squinting does not help Red Cobra see, though – the photosensitive pigment of his retina is still night blind. Yuji has one advantage over him: invisibility. Fortunately for Red Cobra I have no need of photosensitive pigments.

  ‘Watch out!’ I shout. I grab Red Cobra’s arm and pull him sideways.

  A fire extinguisher clips his shoulder before slamming into the rotting floorboards. If it weren’t for my quick thinking the extinguisher would have staved in his skull. Red Cobra has no time to thank me for saving his life. He fires a shot into the dark.

  ‘Come out from under the table,’ he says.

  Yuji stays where he is, like a sulking child.

  Our eardrums recoil as another kinetic pulse is fired from the Glock 18. The .22-calibre slug punctures the table top, leaving an 11-cm-diameter exit wound. The bullet has missed Yuji by a gap of .32 metres, but Yuji imagines it bristled the hairs of his cheek. He scoots out from under the table with his hands up. In the half-light he picks out Red Cobra’s grotesque scar. His gall bladder hums with satisfaction.

  ‘Long time no see,’ he says.

  Keeping his gun aimed at Yuji, Red Cobra lifts the fire extinguisher from the floor. ‘Meant for me, eh?’ he says.

  He hurls it, one-handed, over the bar. It collides with the chandelier and sets it swinging.

  Yuji does not cower or beg for his life or protest his innocence. He is motionless. The room reeks of imminent death, but Yuji is unafraid. His mind is broken and his fear responses muted.

  ‘Did you lay a finger on her while I was away?’ Red Cobra growls.

  Yuji shakes his head. ‘I can’t speak for everyone else, though.’

  Red Cobra is upon him. His fist sends Yuji to the floor. Yuji half laughs in deep, painful regret. The snout of the Glock 18 is pressed tight against his pounding temple. Towering over Yuji, the muzzle of his gun exactly where he wants it, Red Cobra is intoxicated, phantasmagoric with power.