Number9dream

by David Mitchell

  “Excuse me?” Daimon leans over to Coffee. “May I?”

  I could swear there was an ashtray when we sat down.

  “Sure.”

  “Thanks so much. The night of the concert, she takes sedatives, they get dressed up, have a candlelit dinner somewhere high up, and they take their seats in the front row. The trumpet starts—you know”— Daimon hums the opening bars—“and she freezes. Her eyes are ice. Her fingernails sink into his thigh until they draw blood. She starts trembling. Forget the embarrassment, he has to get her out of there before she gets hysterical. Out in the foyer she tells him. The cymbal clasher— in the orchestra—she swears on her ancestor’s tomb that he was the man who raped her.”

  I notice Coffee and Velvet are tuned in.

  “I know what you’re thinking. Why not go to the cops? Nine cases out of ten, the judge tells the woman she was asking for it by wearing her skirt too high, and the rapist gets away with signing an apology form. She tells him that unless he avenges her honor, she’ll throw herself from the top of the Tokyo Hilton. Now. You met him. He’s no mug. He does his homework, and gets an unregistered gun with a silencer, surgical gloves. One evening, while the orchestra is performing Beethoven’s Fifth, he breaks into the cymbalist’s apartment—he lives alone with his pet crystals. What he finds backs up his wife’s story. Internet porn printouts, S and M gear, manacles hanging from the ceiling, a seriously worn and torn inflatable Marilyn Monroe. He hides under the bed. After midnight the cymbalist gets back, listens to his answering machine, has a shower, and gets into bed. My friend has a sense of the dramatic, and growls: ‘Even a monster should check under his mattress.’ Bangabangabanga!”

  “Quite a story.”

  “Not over yet. My damn lighter isn’t working—” Daimon leans over to Coffee, who is already opening her designer handbag. “I’m terribly sorry to trouble you—thanks so much.” She even lights it for him, and then one for me. I nod shyly. “Revenge is medicinal. You probably remember the local rags—‘Who Banged the Cymbal?’—but a successful murder is only a question of planning, and the police have no clues. His wife recovers in a matter of days. She starts teaching at her school for the blind again. Chucks out the video games. And come spring, when the Saito Kinen Orchestra goes to Yokohama, this time she insists that they buy front-row tickets. Like before, but happier. He can live with his conscience—he only dispensed natural justice. The state would have done the same if it had sharper cops. They get dressed up, have the candlelit dinner, and they take their seats in the front row. The string section starts in—and she freezes. Her eyes are ice. Her breathing changes. He thinks she’s having some sort of attack, and manages to get her out into the lobby. ‘What?’ he asks. ‘The second cellist! It’s him! The man who raped me!’ ‘What? How about the cymbal clasher I killed last year?’ She shakes her head like he’s crazy. ‘What are you talking about? The second cellist is the rapist, I swear on my ancestors’ grave, and if you don’t avenge my honor I’ll electrocute myself.’ ”

  “Unbelievable!” gasps Coffee. “Like, what did he do next?”

  Daimon rotates, Coffee crosses her legs, and we become a four-some. “Went to the cops. Confessed to the cymbal player’s murder. By the time he was brought to trial, his wife had accused nine different men of raping her, including the minister for golf.”

  Cherry is aghast. “Did all that really happen?”

  “I swear”—Daimon blows a wobbly smoke ring—“every word is true.”

  When I get back to the table after placing my order with Santa, Daimon’s arm is around Coffee’s chair. “Like, aha”—Coffee pokes out her tongue between her white lips—“Santa’s little helper.” Her face is marshmallowed with cosmetics. Velvet swivels toward me. Her tights whisper and Godzilla wakes up. “Yuzu-kun tells me you’re in the music biz.” I smell her perfume, moistened and salted with sweat. “I’m modeling at the moment, doing a series of shoots for Tokyo’s biggest chain of body-correction clinics.” She leans toward me, her Lark Slim awaiting a flame, and in my nether regions Godzilla rears his fearsome head. Daimon spins his lighter across the table. Velvet’s face glows. A whole evening without thinking of Anju, until now.

  Velvet wraps her arms around my chest as we lean into the first corner, less than a second behind Daimon’s Suzuki 950. My Yamaha 1000 bucks and growls down a gear. The sun-buckled stadium, the golden trumpets, the giant BRIDGESTONE airship: the touch of Velvet’s hands makes it hard to concentrate. Daimon clips a row of dancing police cones, and above the din I hear Coffee puppy-squeal. “C’mon!” Velvet whispers in my ear, just for me, and her whisper is a love ghost potholing naked in the curves of my inner ear. I feel as hard and full as the Yamaha fuel tank. Coffee whoops. “Better than the real thing! Giddyup!” Daimon leans into the chicane. “Realer than the real thing,” he mutters. I follow his drive line, and down the long straight I nearly pass him, but Coffee watches my screen and tells Daimon when to block me— “Gotcha!” she laughs—I skid through a patch of oil, at 180 k.p.h.— Velvet’s fingers dig into me, the rear wheel overtakes the front, but I keep my bike on the road. We scissor through the zoo, I glimpse zebras streaming, manes flowing. Coffee retrieves her cell phone—it beeps “The Star-Spangled Banner”—and proceeds to have a conversation about where she is and how totally unbelievable her night is. Recklessly I lean my Yamaha into the long, banking curve—I cut inside Daimon and we are neck and neck. “Say, Miyake, this is as valid or as stupid a test of masculinity as anything else, don’t you agree?” I risk a side glance—“I guess.” He flashes a dangerous grin. “Like, a twenty-firstcentury duel,” comments Coffee, putting her phone back in her bag. “For sure!” replies Velvet. “Miyake is going to make you eat grit, right, Miyake?” I say nothing but her little finger mines my navel and threatens to worm farther down until I say “Okay.” “Settled, then,” replies Daimon, and veers into me. Velvet screams as I lose control and slam into an oncoming Jomo fuel tanker. BAAANNNNNNGGGGGGGGG! When the fun-size nuclear explosion dies down, Daimon and Coffee are disappearing into the distance, small as a period. “Nasty accident,” tuts Daimon. My Yamaha stutters into second gear. “Like, ruthless!” laughs Coffee. “No way he’ll catch up now.” Daimon glances over at me. “Poor Miyake. Remember, it’s only a video game.” An absurd idea comes to me, which owes more to two whiskeys on two beers than original thinking. I skid the Yamaha through a U-turn, and discover that, yes, I can drive counterclockwise. The “seconds elapsed” tick down. The zebras in the zoo stream backward. A programmer as nutty as Suga must have written the software. Velvet’s hands tweak my nipples to show approval. We pass the start line—“Laps Completed” reads “–1.” I tear up the swing bridge—the bike flips up as we leap through space, and shudders as we land on the far ramp. Here comes Daimon on his Suzuki. “Like, what?” Daimon begins a sentence with “You—” I mirror his evasive swerve, and skid straight into his headlamp, round as the moon on a bright day. No explosion. Our bikes freeze in midtilt, the music stops, and the screens die.

  “I am not used to not winning.” Daimon gives me a look that would worry me if it were from a stranger. “Deep down, you are one sneaky son of a bitch, Miyake.”

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

  Daimon does not smile. “Never punch above your weight class.”

  Coffee makes a ge? confused noise. “Like, where’d the velocodrome go?”

  “I think”—Velvet dismounts—“Miyake busted the video machine, big time.”

  Daimon swings off his Suzuki. “Let’s go.”

  “Like, where?” Coffee slips off.

  “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 the Shinjuku subway. The crowds have thinned a little from before, the pleasure see
kers all harder core now. A sports car nudges by, throbbing with bass. “Lotus Elise 111S,” says Daimon. Coffee’s cell 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 line of the hippest people wait outside. I enjoy the envious stares Daimon and I 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 makes the girls shriek with laughter. “But, like, L.A. is really dangerous,” says Coffee, “everyone has guns. Singapore’s the only really safe place abroad.” “Ever been to L.A.?” 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 to 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 hiccups. “Which floor?” The elevator doors close. I shudder with cold. Daimon adjusts his reflection, and decides to switch on his good humor. “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.” If the floor numbers were not changing I would not have known the elevator was rising. 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, 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 to be honest with you.” I look at the four reflections of our four reflections. Hyperspace hums. “Stay in here too long,” I say, “and you’d forget which one was you.” A gong bronzes, the elevator doors open, and Daimon leaps into an abyss of night. Velvet, Coffee, and I sway unsteadily. 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 a miniature planetarium, less than ten meters across. A gong bronzes, 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 makeup slips through the curtain. She bows exquisitely. Everything about her is exquisite, from her lacquer hair clip 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 vacation 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?”

  “Such diplomacy!” He stage-whispers at me: “Miriam is 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 worship at the altar of my passion”—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 for your friends in the guest book, Mr. Daimon.”

  Daimon waves his hand. “Whatever.”

  I ignore an inner voice warning me to get in the elevator and leave right now, because I lack excuse or explanation. I am still buzzing with alcohol, but I see something dangerous in the way Daimon . . . I dunno, in the way he is. The moment passes. Daimon sweeps us on, in Daimon we trust. The enchanted land awaits.

  Miriam the hostess 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-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 color into the girls’ kimonos. Persimmon golds, cathode-ray indigos, ladybug scarlets, tundra olives. A ceiling fan paddles the thick heat. In the shadow of a monstrous aspidistra a piano plays a nocturne to itself, at half-speed.

  “Wow,” says Velvet.

  “Freaky,” says Coffee.

  A powerful odor similar to my hairspray makes me sneeze. “Mr. Daimon!” A thickly rouged woman appears behind the bar. “And companions! My!” She wears a headdress of peacock feathers, and flutters a faded actress’s wave. She wears sequined evening gloves. “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 shoveler 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 hikes 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 in submission.” Daimon watches Miriam pour the champagne. Velvet kneels up. “What about you, Eiji?” 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. “How 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 has it been you’ve been holed up here as a waitressImeana hostess?” Miriam is ghostly but dignified in the lamplight. The room is intimate and too 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 from a female vampire who peels promises the way a whore—and this is an appropriate descri
ption—peels condoms on and off.”

  “I know exactly the sort of woman you mean,” nods Coffee.

  “We understand each other so deeply,” sighs Daimon. “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 a chrysanthemum drooping from a vase.

  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 replies, “Waterfowl are more dependable, I hear.”

  “Dependable? Or dependent? No matter. Don’t you agree that Miyake and I are the two luckiest men in Tokyo?”

  I cannot meet her stare. 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 onto a balcony. Tokyo rises from the floor of the night. Four weeks ago I was helping my cousin repair Uncle Orange’s tea-plantation cultivator. Now look. A six-story can of KIRIN LAGER BEER pours dandelion neon, over and over. Across a light-year of streets, buildings, and neon murk I can see aircraft warning lights pulse on PanOpticon’s crown. Altair and Vega fade in and out on 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. “I do declare,” says Daimon, the friend who is giving me all this on a plate, “I have rolled the perfect joint this side of the whorehouses of Bogotá.”