Number9dream

  So I was wrong. Mr. Ota would love to meet me. But tell me this, Mother: why would I want to meet this owner of fat hotels? Twenty years is a little late to start playing the dutiful mother, Mother. Fact is, you only ever make me unhappy. You are making me unhappy now.

  So fine. Get over your drinking problem, get married, live happily ever after and leave me alone. You neurotic, grasping, betraying witch.

  The hatch opens—a pen with a white flag waves—Sachiko’s untouchable Doraemon mug appears on the shelf, emitting coffee particles. The hatch closes.

  “Eiji?”

  The DJ cuts “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” short.

  Why I say what I say now, I could never explain, not even to myself.

  “Mom, can I, uh . . . I’d, uh, like to come and see you in Miyazaki tomorrow.”

  When I finish explaining Sachiko nods. “Not the sort of humanitarian mission I could stand in the way of, is it? But my last order as your superior officer in the great army of Nero is this: phone my roommate before you leave Tokyo.”

  “Did she, uh, say anything?”

  “I can tell her mood by her piano playing. While you were calling her last week? Ai played nice stuff. Yesterday evening, I had to get ready for work to those blocky-cocky Erik Satie pieces he wrote to evict his neighbors.”

  “I, uh, sort of messed up, Sachiko.”

  “Ai is no Miss Twenty-four-hour Sunshine. Life is short, Miyake. Call her.”

  “I dunno . . .”

  “No. ‘Dunno’ is not acceptable. Say: ‘I hear and obey, Miss Sera.’ ”

  “I really—”

  “Say it, or I invent the Miyake Pizza. If you think I’m joking, try me.”

  “I hear and obey, Miss Sera.”

  “Tomomi tells me some heavy vibes are going down, man . . .” Doi appears in the cage with a mini–food blender. “Know what I do to subdue all those spiked-up feelings, man?”

  I turn away. “Doi, this is my last shift. Have mercy.”

  “No tricks, man! Just a magic antistress cocktail . . .” Would he put me through this if he knew I had come within one card and a burst artery of having half my organs removed this afternoon? Probably, yes. “First, strawberries!” Doi empties a pint of them into the blender. He pulls a black velvet hood over the blender and liquidizes them. He removes hood and lid. “Then, tomatoes!” He drops three overripe tomatoes in. “Red food massages away stress waves. Green aggravates. That’s why rabbits and veggies are so uptight. . . . What next? Raspberry juice . . . raw tuna . . . azuki beans . . . all the major food groups.” Doi replaces the lid, the hood, and blends. “And last of all, the crucial ingredient—” With a flourish he produces a pink parakeet from a handkerchief. It flaps, blinks, and tweets. “In you go, little guy!” He gently lowers it into the bright red liquid mush, and replaces the lid and hood. I know it is a stupid trick, so I refuse to look shocked—but I have to watch. He lowers the blender behind the ledge between the cage and my rat run—where he switches blenders, perhaps?—and then shakes the blender jug, bartender-style, to the Hawaiian slide guitar music on the radio.

  “Doi!” Sachiko comes into the cage with her clipboard.

  Doi jumps and guiltily puts down what he is holding.

  “I hate to inconvenience you with this annoying ‘work’ business, but . . .”

  “Still on my break, chieftainess! Three more minutes! I’m showing Miyake my peace potion . . .” He picks up the blender jug, still in its black hood, and liquidizes the contents for thirty seconds. Sachiko, defeated, sits down. Doi removes the hood and lid and drinks the soupy liquid straight back. “Deeelicious.”

  “Wow . . .” Sachiko stands up, putting blender B—I knew it—on the ledge, minus velvet hood. “Did you make this imitation parakeet? It’s so realistic. What’s it made of?” She is genuinely impressed.

  “Lady boss! You gave my trick away!”

  “Then don’t leave your props lying around the kitchen!”

  “Don’t call my Chiko-chan a prop! Parakeets have feelings too, diggit?”

  “Chiko-chan doesn’t look very animated for a live parakeet.” Sachiko extracts the bird from the red goop. Its head detaches in a shower of white powder.

  “Doi,” I say, “please tell me this is part of the trick.”

  Doi’s eyes bulge in pure panic. “Oh, man . . . . . . . . .”

  After the ambulance takes Doi to the hospital for a stomach pump and a course of injections, I offer to do the scooter deliveries. Sachiko says she will because she knows the area better, and leaves Tomomi to handle the phones alone. I prepare and box up three El Gringos—thick base, gorgonzola, spicy salami, tomato and basil crust—by the time Onizuka gets back. Tomomi tells him what happened to Doi—for a moment I think Onizuka may abandon his principles and smile, but the danger passes and he reverts to his sullen self. Business slackens a little. By 07:30 I have already memorized the breakfast news roundup. Trade talks, summits, visiting dignitaries. This is how to control entire populations—don’t suppress news, but make it so dumb and dull that nobody has any interest in it. The weather on Friday, October 12 will start cloudy, with a 60 percent chance of rain by midafternoon, and a 90 percent chance of rain by evening. I scour down the counters, hoping that no more orders come in during the next thirty minutes. I need to work out the cheapest way to get to Miyazaki. I peer into the inferno—six pizzas inching onward, glowing karmalike. The radio plays a song called “I Feel the Earth Move Under My Feet.” Radios and cats both go about their business if anyone is there or not. Unlike a guitar, which sort of stops being a guitar when you close its case. Sachiko lays an envelope on the counter of my rat run. “I fiddled petty cash, but this is what Nero owes you.”

  “Thanks, Sachiko. Sorry to leave you in the lurch.”

  “Well, the Nippon Index will plummet once the news breaks, but somehow we’ll pull through. I may even don the chef’s apron myself, if head office can’t send anyone. It has been known. Call me, when and if you come back to Tokyo—I can’t promise to keep your job open in this branch, but I can get you in anywhere there’s a vacancy.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  “Any idea how long you’ll be away?”

  “Depends on . . . lots of things. If I can help my mother get well.” I fold the envelope into my starved wallet.

  “Phone Ai. I don’t want to be the one to tell her that you’ve skipped town.”

  “I, uh, don’t think I’m friend of the month at the moment.”

  “Ai has no friends of the month, you idiot. Phone her.”

  Tomomi slouches in the hatch. “If you can spare the energy to prepare another pizza before your glorious reunion, the Osugi Bosugi man has ordered his weekly Kamikaze.” She slaps the order dupe on the ledge and disappears. I frown at Sachiko, feeling as if my feet are sliding away. “Osugi and Bosugi? PanOpticon?”

  “A regular order since time began. ‘Kamikaze’ is a pizza not on the wall chart—we should get around to putting it up, only nobody else in Tokyo could stomach it. Mozzarella crust, banana, quail eggs, scallops, octopus ink.”

  “Unchopped chilis.”

  “One of the other chefs mentioned it?”

  This is a mystery to me. “I guess . . .”

  “It is an unforgettable creation. Speaking of which, I have to go and write Doi’s accident report”—so she doesn’t see my face when I look at the order slip. Tomomi’s handwriting is clear as malice. Tsukiyama, Osugi & Bosugi, PanOpticon.

  First, I laugh in disbelief.

  Then, I think: Another trap.

  Then, I think: No trap. Apart from the fact that nobody knows I know my father’s name, since Tsuru died nobody wants to trap me. Mama-san let me go once already. This is no trap but a card trick that Tokyo has performed. How is it done? Look at it stage by stage. I know “Kamikaze” because . . . here it is. I remember. Weeks ago, that night when Cat came back from the dead, a man misdialed, called my capsule thinking I was a pizza restaurant, and ordered th
is same pizza. Only he hadn’t misdialed. That man was my father.

  The rest is simple. My father is not Akiko Kato’s client—he is her colleague.

  Akiko Kato is why I watched PanOpticon from Jupiter Cafe. Jupiter Cafe is why I met Ai Imajo.

  Ai is why I met Sachiko Sera.

  Sachiko Sera is why I am standing in Nero’s, preparing a pizza for my father. No more misdirections, jumped conclusions, lies. To my father, I was a sixty-second amusement. Then I was a zero. Now I am an embarrassment. I feel so, so . . . stupid. I dress his pizza. It looks as disgusting as it sounds. I feed it into the inferno, watch the black glow orange. Why “stupid”? How about “angry”? Since I wrote to Akiko Kato my father has known how to contact me. Morino, Tsuru, everything . . . if only he had just told me to go away two months ago. I would have honored his wish. I even stopped looking—but Tokyo found him. This time, I decide what happens. I don’t know what I will do when I confront him, but I am going to see him. No chance will ever come along again. I open the hatch. No sign of Tomomi. Sachiko gnaws a pen. “If I say that a wild parakeet flew into the blender of its own accord, d’you think head office will believe me?”

  “Only if they want to.”

  “Lot of use you are.”

  “But I could deliver this Kamikaze for you.”

  Sachiko checks her watch. “Your shift ends in two minutes.”

  “PanOpticon is on my way to the station.”

  “You are an angel sent from heaven, Miyake.”

  The door to PanOpticon revolves in perpetual motion. Palm trees sit in bronze urns. Gaudy, people-eating orchids watch me pass. Nine identical leather armchairs wait for occupiers. A one-legged man crutches across the polished floor. Rubber squeaks, metal clinks. Behind the desk is the chubby security guard who threw me out when I tried to see Akiko Kato two months ago. A smear of shaving foam is under one ear. He puts down his sports paper and yawns as I approach. “Yeah, son?”

  “I have a pizza for Mr. Tsukiyama in Osugi and Bosugi.”

  “Do you?”

  I hold my box up.

  “‘Never fear-o, it’s a Nero.’ No explosives in there now, are there? You international terrorists always smuggle weapons into buildings using pizza boxes.” He thinks this is very amusing indeed.

  “Put it through a scanner, if you want.”

  He waves a night stick at the elevators. “East elevator, ninth floor.”

  The Osugi & Bosugi reception area appears deserted. A console piled with files, plants dying of sun starvation, a monitor on screensaver mode—a computer face drifts from anger to surprise to jealousy to joy to grief back to anger. A single corridor runs to a pane of morning. A photocopier intones. Where do I go? A human head rises up from a swamp of sleep. “Yes?”

  “Morning. Pizza for Mr. Tsukiyama.”

  “Fine. One moment.” She drags herself to a higher plane of consciousness, clips a headphone over her ear, and presses a button on her console. She lights a cigarette while waiting. “Mr. Tsukiyama, Momoe here. Pizza boy with breakfast. Shall I send him along or are you still projecting possible positions with your client?” She suctions in her cheeks while my father replies. “Received and understood, Mr. Tsukiyama.” She jerks a thumb up the corridor and removes her headphone. “All the way, turn right at the end, Mr. Tsukiyama is dead ahead. And knock first.”

  The carpet is worn, the air-con is old, the walls need repainting. A door ahead opens and—right on cue—Akiko Kato appears, carrying a wire basket of shuttlecocks. Her silver sea-urchin earrings dangle. She is older and more lined than in the picture I got from Morino. Akiko Kato catches me sneaking my glance at her as I catch her looking at me. I say nothing—what could I say?—and keep walking, reminding myself that I am doing nothing illegal. I reach the end of the corridor, turn the corner, and nearly collide with another woman adjusting her shoe. She is my age, with sexier legs than Zizzi Hikaru. I smell perfume and wine. She regains her balance and walks the way I came. Ahead is a single door, ajar—DAISUKE TSUKIYAMA, PARTNER. Daisuke. I never liked that name. Inside, a man—my father, I guess—is on the telephone. I eavesdrop. “Darling, I know! You’re overreacting—you—just—darling—LISTEN TO ME! Are you listening? Thank you. I had to spend the night here because if I give this one to the underlings they’ll fuck it up and then I’ll have to spend even more nights here sorting out the mess and my client will be pissed off too and take his account somewhere swankier, so my bonus gets slashed and then how am I supposed to pay for the fucking pony in the first fucking place? Stop—stop it, darling—yeah, I know her friends all have ponies, but all her friends’ daddies are judges with more money than fucking Switzerland . . . You think I like doing this overtime-slave shift? You think I like—what? WHAT? Oh, oh, oh, this is what we’re really talking about it, is it? Paranoia strikes back! Ever occurred to you, darling . . .” He is now shouting. “WHAT? You didn’t! No. Tell me you didn’t. You did. Well, this is your morning bombshell. A private investigator. You stupid little woman. Of course private investigators feed you bullshit! Why? Because they want repeat business! I am too outraged to continue this conversation. I have a company to run. And if you have cash to throw away on your detective games, why all the hurry to sell off the shares the old man left? Yeah, you have a nice day too. Darling.” He hangs up. “And throw yourself off the balcony, darling.”

  I take a deep breath—

  He may recognize me—

  He may not recognize me, and I may tell him—

  He may not recognize me, and I may not tell him—

  I knock.

  A pause. Then a cheerful “Come!”

  I recognize my father from the photograph I got from Morino. He lies on a vast sofa, wearing a dressing gown. “Pizza boy! You overhear my telephone call?”

  “I did my best not to.” My first words to my father.

  “Let it be a lesson to you.”

  “I’m sorry, I—”

  “Remember: it costs more to keep a pony in straw than a whore in fur.”

  “I can’t imagine ever needing to remember that.”

  My father grins—a grin that is used to getting what it wants—and beckons me over. There is a great view of skyscrapers in the background, but I drink in every detail. The too-black hair. The racks of shoes in his closet. The photo of Half-sister on his desk as a ballerina swan. The shape of his hands. The way he swivels upright. His body seems to be in better shape than his company—I guess he works out at a gym. “You’re not Onizuka, and you’re not Doi.”

  No, I am your son by your first mistress. “No.”

  “So?” My father waits. “You are?”

  “The chef.”

  “Oho! So you make my delectable Kamikazes.”

  Don’t just see me, look at me. “Only this week. I’m temporary.”

  “My creation must have come as quite a surprise.”

  You really don’t know who I am, do you? “It’s an unusual combination.”

  “Unusual? Unique!”

  I smell perfume and wine.

  “Are you all right?”

  I tell you now, or I go away forever.

  He grins. “You look like your night was almost as long and hard as mine.”

  How you love yourself. “Goodbye.”

  Mock-offended surprise. “You don’t want me to sign anywhere?”

  “Oh. Yeah. Here, please—”

  My father scribbles on the receipt.

  I want to smash your skull with your golfing trophy.

  I want to shout and I think I want to cry.

  I want you to know. Your consequences, your damage, your dead. I want to drag you down to the seabed between foot rock and whalestone.

  “Hell-o-oo-ooo!” My father waves his hand. “I said, ‘Is Doi back next week?’ ”

  I swallow and nod and leave this man. How is it that I feel nothing, when, for so long, meeting him was everything. I doubt I will ever meet him again, so I look back once—his eyes close as his jaws sink i
nto black stodge.

  Outside PanOpticon, I buy a pack of Hopes, sit on a post, and watch the traffic stop and start. Twenty years translated to two minutes. I smoke one, two, three. The cloud atlas turns its pages over. Crows dissect a pile of trash. Tokyo is the color of a dirty eraser. Summer left without notice or ceremony. Drones in Jupiter Cafe tuck into their breakfasts. I want to stop a passerby, and tell the story of the last seven weeks, from PanOpticon stakeout up until this moment. How do I feel? Oh, I cannot begin. But hey, Anju, I kept my promise. I wish Ai were working at the Jupiter Cafe today. I would ride in on my Harley-Davidson like Richard Gere in An Officer and a Gentleman, our argument would be forgotten, she would climb on, and we would vanish down the narrow road to the deep north. I watch the pedestrians crossing en masse when the green man says so. I join them. I cross Kita Street—I feel disappointment that our father turned out exactly as all the evidence said he would. I wait for the man to turn green. I cross over Omekaido Avenue—I feel shame that his blood runs in my veins—and I wait for the man to turn green. Then I cross back over Kita Street—I feel sad that I found what I searched for, but no longer want what I found. I wait, and cross back over Omekaido Avenue. I feel release. I complete one, two, three circuits. A scooter beeps. Release. I can go now. The scooter beeps again and I hear my name. Onizuka has pulled up on his Nero’s scooter. I am immune to surprise, now and maybe forever. I don’t know what he wants, but I rule out walking away from Onizuka in case he knifes me in the kidneys. “C’m here.” He clears his throat and spits. “Been looking for you.”

  “You found me.”

  “Been watching you walking in circles.”

  “Squares. Not circles.”

  He toys with his lip stud. “Want to ask you something.”

  I go up to him.

  He thumbs toward Nero’s. “Mouth says you’re going to Miyazaki.”

  “Tomomi?”

  “Mouth.”

  I half-snigger against my will. “Yes, Mouth is right.”

  “Your mom’s ill?”

  “She is, yeah.”

  “Short of cash?”

  Where is this going? “I’m not exactly the Bank of Japan, no.”