Fuyuki was talkative. He’d had a big win and later that night he’d be hosting a party at his apartment. The message soon got round the table that he’d stopped here to trawl for hostesses to take home. Just as Shi Chongming said he might. His house, I thought, running my fingers across my hair, up my calves to smooth out my stockings, maybe the place his secret was kept. I adjusted my dress so that it ran in an exact straight line across my shoulders. Are they all so pretty in England?
Amazingly, Bison was there. Still confident, blue-chinned like a henchman, his elbows resting on the table, jacket sleeves rolled up to show his massive forearms and still entertaining the group with stories – the club circuit in Akasaka, a scam he’d become embroiled in, shares that had been sold in a non-existent golf club. On and on went the stories, but something in his face was missing. He was subdued, the ready entertainer’s smile had gone, and I got the impression that he was there under duress – the court dwarf. I pretended to listen politely, smoking and nodding thoughtfully, but actually I was staring at Fuyuki, trying to work out how to pin my existence into his head.
‘They’d sold nearly all the shares when they were rumbled,’ Bison said, shaking his head. ‘Imagine that. When Bob Hope heard a Japanese golf club had been set up in his name, he nearly killed someone.’
‘Excuse me,’ I said, stubbing out my cigarette and pushing back my chair. ‘Excuse me for a few moments.’
The toilets were in the corner block abutting the entrance hall. I’d have to pass Fuyuki’s wheelchair to get to them. I smoothed my dress, straightened my shoulders, let my arms drop loosely at my sides and began to walk. I was trembling, but I willed myself to keep going, slowly, in a fake sexy way that made my face burn and my legs feel weak. Even above the music and conversation I could hear the shoosh-shoosh of nylon as my thighs brushed against each other. Fuyuki’s small head was only a few feet from me, and as I drew nearer I dipped my hip, just enough to catch the back of his wheelchair and startle him.
‘I beg your pardon.’ I placed my hands on the chair to steady it. ‘I’m sorry.’ He raised his arms slightly, trying to twist his stiff old neck round to look at me. I calmed him, pressing my fingers reassuringly on his shoulders, deliberately moving my right leg against him again, letting the beguiling crackle of nylon static and warm flesh rise up to him. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I repeated, and pushed the chair back to where it had belonged. ‘It won’t happen again.’
The henchmen were staring at me. And then I saw Jason at the bar, frozen with a glass of champagne to his mouth, his eyes fixed on me. I didn’t wait. I straightened my dress and went on my way. I got to the bathroom and locked myself in, shaking uncontrollably, staring at my hectic face in the mirror. This was incredible. I was turning into a vampire. You would look at me now and not think me the same person who had arrived in Tokyo two months ago.
‘My advice is, don’t go,’ Strawberry said. ‘Fuyuki ask you to his apartment, but Strawberry think it bad idea.’ When the gang had first arrived she’d got the table arranged, then retreated moodily behind her desk where she’d stayed all night, drinking champagne as fast as possible and scrutinizing us all with her narrow, suspicious eyes. By the time the club was empty, all the chairs were on the tables and a man with an industrial polisher was moving silently between them, she was furiously drunk. Under the floury Marilyn makeup her skin showed a deep pink round her nostrils, her hairline, on her neck. ‘You don’t understand.’ She pointed her cigarette-holder at me, stabbing it in the air. ‘You not like Japanese girls. Japanese girls understand people like Mr Fuyuki.’
‘What about the Russians? They’re going.’
‘The Russians!’ She sniffed indignantly, pushing a tiny straggle of white-blonde hair off her forehead. ‘The Russians!’
‘They don’t understand any better than I do.’
‘Okay.’ She held up her hand to stop me. She drained her glass, sat up straight and patted her mouth, her hair, trying to regain her composure. ‘Okay,’ she said, sitting forward and pointing the cigarette-holder at me. Sometimes when she was drunk like this she’d show her teeth and gums. The funny thing was that with all the surgery she’d never had her teeth fixed – they remained discoloured, one or two were even black. ‘You go to Fuyuki apartment you be careful. Okay? If it me, I don’t going to eat nothing in his house.’
‘Don’t what?’
‘I don’t going to eat any meat.’
The hairs on the back of my neck rose. ‘What do you mean?’ I said faintly.
‘Too many stories.’
‘What stories?’
Strawberry shrugged. She let her eyes wander out to the club. Fuyuki’s cars were waiting fifty floors down and most of the girls were already in the cloakroom getting their bags and coats. Outside a sour wind had started to blow, and from the panorama windows we could see that it had taken down power lines. Parts of the city were in darkness.
‘What do you mean?’ I repeated. ‘What stories? What meat?’
‘Nothing!’ She shook her hand dismissively, still not meeting my eyes. ‘Just jokes.’ She laughed then, a high, artificial laugh, and noticed her cigarette had gone out. She plugged a new one into the holder and waved it at me. ‘Better we finish this. This discussion finish now. Finish.’
I stared at her, my mind cantering forward. Don’t eat the meat? I was thinking how to pursue it, how to stalk her, sure she was dropping a vital clue, when quite suddenly Jason appeared, sitting next to me, leaning forward and gripping my chair, turning it round to face him.
‘You’re going to Fuyuki’s?’ he whispered.
He had already changed out of his waiter’s tuxedo into a grey T-shirt with a faded Goa Trance slogan. His holdall was strapped across his chest, ready to walk home.
‘The twins told me,’ he said. ‘You’re going.’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I’ll have to go too.’
‘What?’
‘Because we’re spending the night together. You and me. We’d already agreed that.’
I opened my mouth to speak, but I couldn’t make anything come out. I must have looked odd, my pupils wide, my mouth open, a light haze of sweat on my neck.
‘The Nurse,’ Jason said, as if I’d asked a question. ‘That’s why I’ll be welcome.’ He licked his lips and glanced at Strawberry, who was smoking another cigarette, her eyebrows raised knowingly at this exchange. ‘Let me put it this way,’ he whispered. ‘She’s kind of itchy for me. If you know what I mean.’
28
Fuyuki and his entourage had gone ahead, leaving a string of black cars, with ‘Lincoln Continental’ written in curlicue script on their boots, in the street to pick up the guests. I was one of the last to leave the club, and by the time I got to street level almost all of the hostesses, and Jason, had followed him, leaving just one car. I slid into the back seat with three Japanese hostesses whose names I didn’t know. As we drove they chattered about their customers, but I was quiet, smoking a cigarette and staring out of the window at the moats of the Imperial Palace flashing past the car. As we came through Nishi Shinbashi we passed the garden where I had first met Jason. I didn’t recognize it at first: it was almost behind us when I realized that the odd rows gleaming in the moonlight were the silent stone children lined up under the trees. I swivelled in my seat to stare at them through the back window.