End of the World Blues

by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

  Kit nodded.

  “Fucking hell,” said No Neck. “What happened about the baby?”

  “I took care of things myself,” Kit quoted, then returned the card to its resting place in his pocket. “Pretty obvious, isn’t it?”

  “It was a test,” said Micki.

  “Yeah,” Kit said. “I worked that out myself.”

  “And you fucked up,” said No Neck. Sat next to him, Micki looked as if she was about to burst into tears. Kit went to the bar and bought a final round without being asked, paid for the nachos, and went back to the table to tell the others that he needed to take a walk.

  “Want company?” No Neck asked.

  “No.” Kit shook his head. “Stay here. I’ll catch you all later.”

  “I need a walk,” said Namiko, pushing back her chair. “And it’s good you’re upset.”

  Kit looked at her.

  “If you weren’t,” said Namiko, “that would say bad things about you.” Slipping her arm through his, she steered him towards the door.

  “Where are we going?” Kit asked.

  “For that walk,” said Namiko.

  They went to her room, which was in a small tenement block above an American diner that specialised in post-rock and late forties GI kitsch. That was where he’d seen her originally, Kit realised. She used to wait tables.

  The room was tiny, which was the way with such rooms, and most of its space was filled with computer screens, old laptops, and a jumble of wires. “I farm,” Namiko said, catching Kit’s glance.

  “Make much?”

  “Enough,” said Namiko, handing him a scrap of paper in English. It contained a list of powers, weapons, and gold required by a fourteen-year-old in California who wanted to skip straight to the end of a new computer game. The deal was done through eBay and the fee had already been paid.

  “Not bad,” Kit said.

  Namiko smiled. “You want a drink?”

  “Not really,” he said. “I’ve had plenty.”

  So Namiko put the Kirin back in her fridge and ran a tap long enough to get the water cold. Having washed out her mouth, she gave the glass to Kit, who drank a couple of sour mouthfuls before doing the same. He couldn’t remember saying he needed sex. He certainly couldn’t remember propositioning her. Though Namiko seemed pretty certain that was why he’d come to her room.

  “The sheets are none too clean,” she said.

  Kit shrugged. The whole room was filthy. It seemed unlikely her sheets would be anything else.

  “You like me?” asked Namiko.

  He nodded, because this seemed the right response.

  “Good,” said Namiko. “I’ve always liked you. You’re not like the others.”

  Of course I am, Kit thought. Why else would I be here?

  Namiko stripped easily, with none of the embarrassment he associated with Japanese girls. And her body was riper than he expected, heavy breasts tipped with dark nipples set into stretched circles. Her belly protruded over a tuft of thick pubic hair.

  When Kit was done, Namiko shifted him off her and sucked him hard and clean, then rolled him onto his back and straddled him.

  “My turn,” she said.

  It was only later that she produced a twist of paper and shook out the dirty brown powder inside. “You ever tried this?” asked Namiko. “Like real heroin, but cheaper. Doesn’t dissolve in water,” she added, when Kit looked puzzled. “You smoke this stuff instead…”

  CHAPTER 23 — Thursday Evening, 21 June

  “Find yourself a seat,” suggested Kate, dumping her flight bag next to a recliner in the British Airways lounge at Narita. So Kit left his own case on a chair overlooking the darkened runway and nodded towards a bank of computer screens in the corner. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

  “Sure,” said Kate, settling herself down.

  Kit was able to use the lounge because Kate O’Mally had paid for Business Class flights for the both of them. Having found herself a copy of yesterday’s Mail, Kate was preparing to tut over some celebrity outrage and sip from a glass of mineral water on the table next to her. A Nurofen packet rested beside her glass and an unopened cheese sandwich rested next to that.

  The morning’s tears in Shinjuku Chuo Park were gone and not to be mentioned, Kate had made that clear. She was, it was fair to say, back to being the demanding, hard-eyed bitch that everyone who knew her expected. Which explained why Kit felt the need to kill time at a screen while Kate skimmed her paper on the other side of the room.

  The first e-mail Kit opened was from Micki. It showed a kitten drinking milk from a saucer, which was roughly what he’d expect from No Neck’s girlfriend. The second was from No Neck himself, and said simply, Watch this space!

  It was the third e-mail that was unexpected. Micki’s brother Tetsuo had registered Kit with the Asahi Shimbun news site and given his interests as motorcycles, urban development, and political dissent…A link in the e-mail fed to a story Asahi Shimbun apparently thought he might like.

  Kit read it in mounting disbelief. Late that afternoon a hardcore of bozozoku had ripped down the fences protecting a building site in Roppongi and occupied the area, surrounding it with totally unnecessary burning braziers and a ring of motorbikes. Anyone who touched one bike touched them all.

  No Neck could be seen in the accompanying photograph, but only just. The most obvious character was Tetsuo, standing in the middle wearing a studded jacket and a white headband. He was carrying a bokken, while the boy directly behind held a flag. After a second, Kit realised it wasn’t a boy at all. It was Micki, wearing sun glasses and a biker jacket several sizes too big.

  “Fuck,” said Kit, earning himself a stare from a woman on the next terminal. So this was what No Neck meant when he said Tetsuo had an idea. In response to Kit’s query as to what, No Neck had replied, “The 47 Ronin.”

  Quite how that translated into this…? Kit was still wondering, when a frenzy of bowing at the door caught his attention. Both receptionists came out from behind the desk and ushered a young Japanese man into the executive lounge. In his arms he held a cardboard box tied with string. Nothing else, no briefcase, suit-carrier, or overnight bag. None of the badges of status carried by every other passenger in the room. Just a battered box from Circle K.

  Sapporo Ichiban (Chicken) Noodles. 24 x 100gm, read the stencilling on its side.

  Looking round, Hiroshi Sato saw Kit at the terminal and said something to one of the women. She disappeared behind her desk and when she returned it was to whisper something in the man’s ear.

  The man nodded.

  “Nouveau-san?”

  Kit bowed.

  “Mr. Oniji asked me to give you this.” Mr. Sato held out the box, waiting for Kit to take it. He should take the thing, Kit knew that. People were watching…

  “Do you know what it is?”

  The young man shook his head, but he was lying. Hiroshi Sato knew all right.

  What now? wondered Kit.

  The box was packed with straw made from a flat-bladed grass. The choice of material was probably significant, almost everything in Tokyo was. Thrusting his hands into the straw, Kit closed his fingers around something and began to pull.

  “Nouveau-san!”

  So real was the young man’s horror that Kit let go of whatever he held and began to unpack the straw instead.

  “What’s in there?” demanded Kate, curiosity having finally forced her to abandon her place near the window.

  “How would I know?” Kit asked.

  Handful after handful of dried grass piled up on a glass table until Kit could finally see what Mr. Oniji had sent after him. A small bowl, twisted very slightly along one edge where gravity had touched the rim. Flame blackened its inside, but the underneath was fired to the colour of ash. A smudge had been fixed by heat into its base, Yoshi’s fingerprint fossilised like an ancient shell into rock.

  “Fuck,” he said.

  Looking round, Kit realised the entire lounge had come t
o a standstill. Middle-aged men, well-dressed women, complete strangers, even Kate O’Mally; all of them reduced to awed silence.

  “It’s beautiful,” said Kit, speaking entirely to himself.

  The young man nodded. “Her best work,” he said. “Unlike anything before it. It has…” He hesitated, searching for the right words. “A quality we believe only great artists achieve. Mr. Oniji is at a loss to know how it survived the fire.”

  “In a cake tin,” Kit said flatly.

  Hiroshi Sato stared at him.

  “I put it in a ceramic cake tin.”

  The young man considered this. “Still,” he said, “its survival is unusual. When the museum at Kobe was destroyed by an inferno many thousands of priceless ceramics cracked in the flames.”

  A woman behind him began nodding.

  “The bowl was unfired,” said Kit, deciding this would make a difference. “And covered with a damp cloth…” Now Kit came to look, he could see the blackness inside the bowl carried a weave where cotton had smouldered and fallen to ash.

  “Who found it?” Kit demanded.

  Mr. Sato looked embarrassed. “No one seems to know,” he said, shuffling immaculately shined shoes. “It was left with a note on the doorstep of a small town house in Akasaka.”

  “This house, did it belong to someone known to Mr. Oniji?”

  Hiroshi Sato’s nod was so slight as to be almost invisible.

  So beautiful. Cold and beautiful and fragile and able to survive the ruining of his life, the bowl had Kit’s attention and held his gaze. Everything he’d loved and respected about Yoshi was represented in that bowl. As was everything he’d feared and failed to understand.

  “You take it,” he told Hiroshi Sato.

  The man opened his mouth.

  “Return it with my heart-felt thanks. Ask Mr. Oniji to keep the bowl safe.”

  Very carefully, as if suddenly aware he might drop it, Hiroshi Sato took the bowl from Kit and put it back in the noodle box. Then he began to pack the box with thin-bladed straw, while all the passengers and both of the women from behind the desk continued to watch in silence.

  CHAPTER 24 — Friday, 22 June

  The battle began at dawn, in a blaze of outrage, long-focus lenses, and electronic flash. A couple of police vans pulled up, blocking the road south from Roppongi’s main drag. Having arrived, they proceeded to do nothing. Which was fine with the bozozoku, because it let them concentrate on one enemy at a time.

  A row of bikes had been positioned to face away from the road, as if the owners planned to ride straight into Pirate Mary’s cinder-block parking area. At five minutes before noon, as baseball-bat-wielding chimpira entered the narrow road that ran along the lower edge of the graveyard, a girl carrying a cat slipped between two bikes and headed away from the coming confrontation. A second later, another girl followed. Although she went unwillingly, still complaining and almost in tears.

  “They should…” Micki said.

  But the ranks had already closed. Namiko left first because of the cat and because no one really knew why she was there in the first place. Micki went, under extreme protest, because her brother Tetsuo felt girls shouldn’t fight.

  Micki had her own opinions on that. Which she was fucked if she was going to keep to herself.

  “Go,” said Tetsuo. “This is going to get ugly.”

  She went, low-level Yakuza thugs with clubs parting under the eye of the cameras to let her through.

  “Wait up,” Micki said.

  Namiko kept going.

  “Wait,” demanded Micki, then added, “Out of my way…” But she was talking to a photographer who’d decided to get close and much too personal. Small, male, and not her favourite person, the man fired his flash right in Micki’s face.

  “Fuck off,” said Micki, using up most of her English.

  Gaz Maguire, erstwhile provider of portfolios to would-be models, grinned, stepped sideways to block Micki’s path again, and snapped another shot at the exact moment Micki stuck one finger up and scowled at the camera. “Perfect,” he said. “Thank you.”

  Gaz was about to say something else when Namiko shoved him aside, grabbed Micki by the shoulder, and dragged her away from the photographers that had begun to gather around her.

  “That’s enough,” said Namiko crossly, passing the cat to Micki. “Come on, we need to get out of here.”

  “What’s going to happen?”

  Namiko snorted. “They’ll fight,” she said, stepping around a vast stone torii near the entrance to the graveyard. Gravel crunched underfoot as they walked towards an old man leaning on a broom.

  “Konichiwa,” said the old man.

  “Konichiwa,” Micki and Namiko said together. Everyone bowed. After names had been exchanged, Mr. Ito made space for them by moving a pile of prayer sticks he’d leaned against a moss-covered tomb. “Big fight,” he said. “But over soon.”

  “How do you know?” asked Micki.

  “Bozozoku,” said Mr. Ito, appearing to weigh the word in one hand. “Little monkeys…” He juggled his hands slightly, before finding the first heavier. “As long as the police stay quiet this will be quick.”

  Mr. Ito was right. As a first wave of yelling chimpira charged towards the bikes, the bozozoku fired up their engines, blipped the throttles, and hit switches crudely wired to the handle bars.

  Micki grinned. “Afterburners,” she said, as flame lanced from each bike and a chimpira dropped his bat and began clutching his ankle.

  “Clever,” Mr. Ito said. “Also inventive.”

  What was most interesting was that the police continued to do nothing.

  True, they’d left their vans. But that was the only movement they made, apart from securing both ends of the street and moving the press back slightly. And yet, in their black-visored riot helmets, body armour, and studded gauntlets they looked easily the most frightening of the three groups gathered at the site of Kit’s old bar.

  “When it’s over,” said Mr. Ito. “That’s when they’ll move.”

  Micki looked at him.

  “I lived through the sixties,” he said, with a smile. “You watch. They’ll arrest the losers…”

  Ito-san’s prophesy probably explained why the police eventually climbed back into their riot vehicles, having done little more than watch, keep casual spectators off the street, and stop the photographers from getting themselves hurt. Because when the battle ended, everything was pretty much as it had been.

  Paramedics treated five chimpira with burns, but since all the burns were below the knee, the journalists were refusing to take the injuries seriously. A couple of bozozoku had broken heads and one chimpira had been carried away unconscious, his colleagues angrily refusing offers of medical help.

  “Interesting,” said Mr. Ito.

  “What is?” asked Micki.

  “Most things,” he said. “Particularly this.”

  CHAPTER 25 — Friday, 22 June

  Five miles above Siberia, with the clouds below the plane set out like a slab of ice, the youngest of the Japanese cabin crew brought Neku a copy of TunaBelly to sign.

  Approaching diffidently, the girl dropped to a crouch beside Neku’s seat, before producing the battered paperback.

  “I wondered, perhaps…?”

  Without a word, Neku produced a pen and opened the book at its title page. TunaBelly was a million-selling novel about teenage lust, love, and murder set in the half-lit world of Tokyo’s Tsukiji market. It featured drugs, graphic sex, and a working-class boy who loved a twenty-eight-year-old Yakuza hit woman against his better judgment. The neatly made-up girl holding the book looked exactly like Neku’s idea of the target reader.

  Cherry, read the nametag on her jacket. So Neku inscribed the book to Cherry, added her best wishes, and signed the title page with a scrawl.

  It was as well the real Mika Aiko was a recluse. This was the third copy of TunaBelly to be thrust at Neku since she presented herself at the check-in counter with
a regular ticket and a fake passport. If anyone had known what Aiko really looked like then Neku would have been in trouble. As it was, the fake passport was a good one, its biological data was spot on, and fame, even borrowed fame, was becoming addictive. Not least for its ability to clear problems out of the way.

  If the woman at the check-in counter had got her way Neku would now be travelling Business Class, maybe even first.

  “No,” Neku had insisted.

  “We must, please,” the woman had said. “It would be terrible for us to make Mika Aiko…”

  Neku’s first excuse having faltered against the woman’s certainty that anonymity could be guaranteed wherever Miss Aiko sat, Neku admitted that her real reason for wanting to travel Economy was because this was how her next heroine would fly on a similar trip to London.

  After that everything was easy. Neku was given a choice of the remaining seats and chose one right at the back—near the toilets—where no one could sit behind her. So far Neku had refused offers of wine, gin, and beer and turned away a meal one of the crew tried to serve her an hour after take off. This seemed to be entirely what the cabin crew expected of a media brat travelling as incognito as five piercings, red hair, and a ripped skirt allowed.

  “Miss Aiko?”

  Having checked that her celebrity passenger really was awake, the stewardess who’d wanted her book signed wondered if Miss Aiko would like to see the cockpit. Since refusing seemed rude, Neku agreed—and found herself being escorted through a darkened cabin towards the front.

  A handful of people watched their screens in Premium Economy and a solitary man in Business was stubbornly working at his laptop, surrounded by darkness. Most of the beds in first were empty, with the only bed actually occupied carrying two people, though they slept chastely, curled around each other and half covered by a blue blanket.

  Neku smiled, though mostly her amusement was reserved for Kit Nouveau and his companion. They were on this plane, as she’d been told to expect, on the far side of Business, their seats ratcheted back and their feet on flip-up stools. The woman slept with a whisky glass clutched in one hand. Nouveau-san had a copy of Hagakure Kikigaki open on his lap.