“Have you finished feeling sorry for yourself? You’ve had it tougher than most, but you were put on this Earth to make an effort.”
“My mother…”
“Used to say that. I know. But she’s dead now. You are not. That’s the way it is and the way it has to be. Steve may or may not be dead. You should be thankful that you are very much alive. And for another thing, you’re a lucky girl. But you can’t be forever. I don’t know what the gods were thinking when they made you, but you have a nose for trouble, and that will get you killed. Never assume anything because…”
“I know that one from my journalism classes because it makes an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘me’ but…”
“No. Jesus, what do they teach you kids in school now? ‘Because they will kill you if you make a mistake’ is the correct answer. Look, you don’t even have to think about it. Either Steve was unlucky, or he was no good, or he was wrapped up in something no good. It doesn’t matter. Walk away while you can. You’ve done nothing wrong and you are not involved, so walk away. Who knows who is behind this? Maybe North Koreans. Maybe cops. Maybe self-destructive artists who can’t keep it together on the platform of life. Either way the bastards have it in for you. Make a mistake and they’ll disappear you. It’s time you stopped living in a fantasy world and take help when it’s offered. Come home with me. Emi’s in America with Aunt Tanaka, you could take her room and I’ll get you back on track. Come home with me today and this nightmare is over, and you’re free to get on with life in Japan, your home.”
CHAPTER SIX
I spend the rest of the afternoon in the park trying to convince Uncle Kentaro that he’s wrong and I’m not pursuing a fantasy. By 5pm it’s starting to get dark. But it’s clear that he’ll only take me back if I give up on Steve. I don’t understand his insistence, and he can’t understand why I can’t give up on Steve. Finally, Uncle Kentaro leaves. I choose a bench where Steve and I used to sit. There’s a shade tree and two girls are playing acoustic guitars in the dusk. One of them is singing sweetly and I listen for a while until I realise it’s a Carpenters song and I feel a little sick. Steve doesn’t show up and I have to decide what I’m going to do.
I empty out my pockets to look at my life’s possessions. I have a convenience store receipt for one can of beer and a natto rice ball. I have ¥4,231. If I’m careful, it’s enough to buy rice balls to keep me alive for days. But I don’t think it’s enough for a hotel room. It’s not nearly enough to live past a few days. I don’t speak Japanese. I don’t have anyone to turn to. I don’t have a place to stay. I don’t have anywhere to go. Just a suitcase in a Shibuya lobby and what I have in my jeans pockets. Which reminds me. I unfold the flyer from Steve’s postbox. I study it. There’s enough written in English to figure out it’s offering 50% off something. It’s a manga café. Open 24 hours. There are prices for hourly rates. And something else saying 24h OK! ¥2,000 slashed through and 50% off! The place is near Shibuya station. Decisions are easy when you don’t have any options.
* * *
I wave the flyer at the man in the shop. He seems kindly but has no idea what I’m saying. Then I remember my smartphone and I rustle up Google translate. I type in “I want the cheapest deal so I can stay here until the morning” and show him the translation. He shrugs and types in some numbers on his till, talks at me in bored polite Japanese for a little and shows me the price he’s rung up. ¥1,050. I smile and hand over the money. He gives it back. “Ato de. Ato de,” he says, shaking has hand “no”. Ato de, I say back to him, not understanding, but happy to keep the cash. I try to remember the phrase. Something that makes people refuse to take your money is worth remembering.
I walk down a dark corridor behind the clerk. A fluorescent light tube in the ceiling flickers on and off, whirring like a cicada just before it drops dead at the end of summer. On either side are doors every few metres. I can hear TVs blaring and computer game explosions. A man with a shaving brush walks up to me, and we both have to turn side on to pass each other. At the end of the corridor is a library with manga comic books stacked from floor to ceiling. The clerk motions for me to make myself comfortable on the orange sofa in the room. Unlike the other solid doors down the corridor, this has a frosted glass door. And it’s clear this room is not a private one. I guess you get what you pay for.
The clerk goes back to the front desk. I call Steve’s phone. If I keep hearing his voice I can keep believing he’s alive. I listen to his whole message and leave one myself. “I’m not so good,” I say to his answer phone. “If you are still around. Call me. Better still, come and get me. I’m staying the night at that manga café in Shibuya they always advertise in your mailbox. I could do with being rescued.” I hang up. I’m exhausted. I stretch out on the sofa and grab a manga above my head. I don’t know if they have rules about not sleeping on the sofa, but I figure if I have a manga I can at least pretend I have interests other than sleep.
* * *
I wake up. There is someone leaning over me. Someone with a mask on. I freeze with fear. I don’t know what to do, so I stay still and look through half-closed eyes. He’s about my age. I’ve seen him before somewhere. I back up against the sofa. I reach for something, anything to defend myself with. He smells like the frozen food aisle. If they’d let me wear footwear inside this place I would at least have been wearing my boots. All I can grab is the cushion I was using as a pillow. He keeps leaning over me, looking for something under the sofa. I decide I’m ready to scream. I sit bolt upright. Our heads collide and he reels back into the corner. I sit up and pull my feet onto the sofa, hug my legs to my chest, with the pillow for added protection. My head hurts.
It’s a man. I think. He’s standing in the corner and staring at the floor. He’s fiddling with his hands, but not looking at me. He says something in Japanese, but I can’t tell if he’s talking to me or his hands. He sounds like he’s sorry. He sits and points to a socket and waves his tablet computer at me, and makes a gesture with his finger coming down to his thumb, and points at his computer. He speaks in Japanese. It’s a calm voice. A questioning one, not an ordering one. Then he plugs his computer in.
He bows his head in apology and smiles. I can’t help but smile back. He’s wearing a clown suit? Burgundy red and pink squares. But he has a name label on his chest. I can’t read the kanji, but I know the company logo. 7-Eleven. He’s the clerk who served me before I found Uncle Kentaro. He pulls out a plastic bag from the convenience store and two rice balls. I’m starving. He unclasps one and the smell fills the room.
Natto.
He bows his head again in apology, this time holding his nose and smiles and offers the other rice ball. I grab it. I realise how hungry I am. But I carefully eat the seaweed and rice, and leave the rotting soybeans at the centre of the rice. We both eat in silence and then when we finish, we just sit there. It’s easier than talking and not knowing what we’re saying. But I can’t help myself.
“Thanks for the meal. Next time though, sausage and chips would go down well.”
He looks terrified. Perhaps that I’m testing his English? I try to help him out. I wipe pieces of sticky natto from my fingers on a paper napkin. I type “Thanks for the meal. I wish it was sausage and chips, not natto.” into Google. And show him the translation.
He smiles, and gestures to use my phone. I give it to him and he types a quick message with his thumb, and hands it back.
“A FERMENTED SOY-BEAN DISH IS HEALTH LIFE.”
“Exactly,” I say.
The convenience store uniform. The cheap dinner. A night in the manga café. I guess he’s either on his way home and has no life, or, I think suddenly, this is his life. He goes back to reading his manga. He looks in no hurry to catch a metro elsewhere. I look through the frosted glass door down the corridor. There are cubby-holes for people to do whatever they do on their computers all night long if they want to.
So. A comics fan with a bad job and a girl looking for her dead fiancé. Uncle
Kentaro would be so proud of this match. But I still have to figure out what I’m doing. I pull out the receipt with the letters I’d scribbled on the back. Do I really want to get more involved in this thing? Do I really have a choice? I flip the receipt from the convenience store around in my hand, unsure what to do next. And I’m tired. So tired.
* * *
I don’t realise, but I must have dropped off. I dream about prison cells and letters. I’m being chased by a masked man. No matter what I say, the cops don’t understand me. The masked man comes after me.
I wake up. I’m sweating. I feel like I’ve been running a marathon. I check my phone. It’s 11pm. I’ve been asleep for two hours. I call Steve’s mobile again. Get his same message. I close my eyes. When I open them again my sofa-mate is staring at me.
“What?”
He smiles and bows his head.
He starts typing a response, but he stops. There is something wrong. From the raised voices down the hallway, I don’t have to be fluent in Japanese to understand that something is happening. Doors slide open and slam shut. Men’s voices are raised then suddenly silenced with the splintering of wood. The noises are getting closer. We look through the frosted glass of the door.
CHAPTER SEVEN
It’s the masked man. As he passes each sliding door, he jams his black stick into the handle and pries it open, steps into the doorway a moment and steps back into the walkway, doing the same to the next cubbyhole. A balding man in underpants is shouting at his back, and the masked man just whips the butt of his stick over his head and slams it into the complainer’s face. The old man crumples to the floor.
The masked man is going through each room systematically. Not hurrying and not worrying about anything or anyone. He’s taking his time walking to each booth and kicking the door aside, whether it’s locked or not doesn’t matter. Plywood breaks in half and one by one he’s eliminating hiding places. And nothing or no one is going to stop him. I don’t think he’s here to read manga or play games. It’s just a matter of seconds before he runs out of booths and comes into the sofa lounge.
The 7-Eleven guy takes his tablet from my hand, and blushing a little, reaches between my legs. He mutters something in Japanese. He picks up the bottom of the sofa and up-ends it. I go flying backwards and hit my head on the floor. My legs splay out, but I feel his hands tensely tuck them in beneath the upturned sofa. Then he sits on the top. The effect isn’t perfect but when the masked man comes in, there will be just one geeky guy sitting on a big box.
This is never going to work and I’m about to tell him so, when I see what he really means to do. There on the ground is the emergency chute for use in earthquakes.
The window has a telltale red triangle on it. Mr 7-Eleven smacks it with his open palms and makes a diving motion with his arms. I turn white.
“I can’t. We’re so high up. I can’t jump.”
But he doesn’t understand.
He unclasps the window lock and pulls the window to him and yanks it open. Cold wind blows into the room. Traffic noises from four floors below fill the room.
I peer over the sofa back behind me at the corridor.
The masked man is into the last booth before the frosted glass door. He will be in the room in a second.
I can’t remember what floor I’m on. I look out of the window, it’s a long way down. My new friend has unfastened the chute and thrown one end out the window. I look at the chute. There are cute diagrams of stick men opening the chute, fastening it to the hooks in the floor and being welcomed by happy stick men on the ground. There are detailed instructions in Japanese and English, as far as I can tell it’s a giant sock that you throw out of the window and jump through feet first, like they do with rubble on building sites. Except that rubble on building sites hits the ground in a heap.
The masked man is in the last cubicle before the glass door. I can’t lift the chute myself. We struggle together. I toss the other end out the window and straddle the window. I jam my foot on the window sill.
“I can’t do this.”
The wind blows up through my T-shirt. I sneak a peak down below. It’s at least four floors and it doesn’t look like the chute will reach the ground. It isn’t just the wind that’s giving me goose-bumps up and down my arms.
My friend—I don’t even know what to call him—takes off his clown jacket and puts it over my shoulders. He pushes the sofa against the door. I don’t have the heart to tell him that the door slides open.
He points to the chute and the open window and shouts something urgent in Japanese.
“I really appreciate this, but I can’t do it, I can’t…”
Then the door flies open. And I see, even with his mask on, that it’s the man from the street. My new friend stammers something in Japanese but whatever he’s trying to say, the man ignores it.
The man clambers over the sofa and unsheathes a silver blade from the end of his stick. The gleam of the steel is matched by the gleam in his eyes which dart around the room like a Terminator looking for a target. He grabs the laptop with one arm but that isn’t all he’s after. It dawns on me too late that his target is me. I know I should jump, but I can’t make myself do it. He raises his blade above his head. If he brings it down, there is nothing I can do to stop him. I feel a force on my shoulders. It’s Mr 7-Eleven. He pushes my leg from the window sill. I lose my balance and topple backwards, head first through the window.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I scream as I tumble down the chute. It only occurs to me once I’m in the chute that it’s supposed to be tied to the ground. I pick up speed and there’s nothing to stop me. I’m sure I will die. I will break my neck hitting the concrete. My shoulder grazes the side of the building and I go head over heels. The sound of air rushing outside and my arms and feet brushing against the tarpaulin, like sliding too fast down a rope. My hands and feet warm from the friction. Then they hurt. But if I don’t stick them into the sides of the chute, I will surely die. I stick my elbows and feet out like a starfish and I slow my fall. I’m getting the hang of it now. I can see the bottom of the chute. I’m going to make it even without the stick men.
My hands graze along the pavement. And then I’m on the street, in a crumpled mess with my legs in a ball. My knees smack me in the jaw.
But I make it. I smile. Maybe the masked man will come down the chute after me? Is he crazy enough to? He may be but he was too fat to make it though the window. I hear the scraping of tarpaulin and look up but it’s the chute falling from above. It has come unstuck from the window. It falls beside me in a pile. No masked man. But now I’m out on the street. How long before he catches up with me? No one is running out of any buildings. It’s raining. No one is looking up, and if anyone on the street saw what just happened, they’re keeping it to themselves. But what could I say to them if anyone did? How could I explain what I don’t understand myself? I should just run off, but where to?
I’m in a quiet street, it must be late. Only a few people are out with their umbrellas up. There are no shops to duck into. There’s a Tokyo Metro sign. The entrance to the underground. There has to be another way out of here. Has to be. But it’s a long street and no cars or any alleyways to run down. And my boots are back in the manga café entrance hall. The masked man could find and kill me in seconds if I don’t get out of here. After my father was crushed by a train, I swore I was never going to ride a train ever again. From now on I walk, no matter what. But the glint of the man’s eyes and the steel blade was too close. Stay above ground and get slashed or head under the city. I shiver. It has to be the underground.
Once down the steps under the lit Metro sign, it’s very narrow and steep. I can feel my chest constricting the further I get underground. Warm, stale air rushes up from the corridors below me and a wave of nausea comes over me as I smell the shochu breaths, the sweat on salaryman heads and the smell of something else. It’s a smell from back in Ishinomaki. The stink of rotting flesh, the stagnant seawater from a tsu
nami that has picked up everything that was in the sea and on the shore and dumped it all around. It’s the same smell here in Tokyo only when it hadn’t been raining for weeks and then a little rain reignites the smell. In the same way Uncle Kentaro gets even drunker if you give him a glass of water after an all-nighter. I try to control my breathing. But I know I’m panting and my palms are wet on the rusting steel banister.
I look back up the staircase behind me but see no one as the concrete steps disappear into the light from the roof of the shelter over the hole in the ground. I can’t believe I have come this far down. A shape darts in front of the lights behind me. I turn forward and will myself onward despite my protesting muscles. I hear footsteps behind me. Women’s heels clattering two steps at a time.
I lunge towards the ticket gates. It’s only now that I remember you are supposed to have a ticket or a pass card. I have nothing. I just run through. The ticket gates slam shut in front of me, leaving a few centimetres gap, and when I push hard, the gates give enough to let me through. A siren blares and a red light revolves beside me, I see movement out of the corner of my eye -behind the glass of the guard’s office. The red lights reflect off the glass. He is tall with an Adam’s apple that I can see moving even before I hear him speak. He’s adjusting his hat and opening the door. I hurtle down another escalator, two or three steps at a time. There's no one around, but I can hear a train pulling in to the platform. It’s one of those platforms stuck between two tracks. Trains for both directions are there. The doors of both trains are open. I have no idea which direction I should take, or even which line it is, it doesn’t matter: just get as far away from here as possible. Right or left. I choose right, skipping over the yellow braille paving for blind people marking the edge of the platform. I push my way through a small crowd of passengers, the ones who are running late for a night out or are coming back early from one. Much like me, neither group really wants to be there. But they’re on their way somewhere. I get on the train and walk through the carriage. What if the guard stops the train to look for me? They can probably do that. There is a mass of announcements. I can’t make out anything. Then in English: Warning, doors about to close. This is the train bound for Kuki. This is a Hanzōmon Line train. This train is bound for Kuki, calling at Nagatacho. The guard is talking to a stationmaster. There is another announcement: this train is going to be delayed. Not this train though. That train. The one on the other tracks across the platform. I’m on the right train then. Doors now closing. Doors now closing. And I think: I’m safe. I can get away. The train will pull away and the guard and the masked man will be left on the platform.
Year of the Talking Dog: A Hana Walker Mystery (The Hana Walker Mysteries Book 2) Page 4
