(2005) In the Miso Soup (15 page)

Yuko acknowledged the question with another ambiguous
Mmm
. I was still mumbling into Frank’s ear a translation of whatever bullshit Maki came out with, like a simultaneous interpreter. I’m not used to that sort of thing and don’t really have enough English to do a very good job, so my translation
grew rougher as Maki rattled on. The last bit, for example, came out something like, “All Japanese dream of staying at the Hilton,” but I didn’t think it mattered much.

“The Hilton’s not such a high-class hotel,” Frank said to Maki softly, as if to help correct a misconception, but depending on how you took it it might have sounded like a putdown. In fact, that’s how I took it—I thought Frank was trying to dump on her. And that sort of nuance tends to leap language barriers. “You don’t know much about anything, do you?” he told her. “Take the New York Hilton, for example. It’s said that four hundred rooms is the maximum number you can have if you want to maintain the very best service, but the New York Hilton has over a thousand. That’s why the truly rich never stay there. They prefer the European-style hotels, like the Plaza Athénée or Ritz-Carlton or Westbury. The only people who choose the Hilton are hicks from the country and Japanese.”

Maki’s face reddened. She didn’t like being grouped with hicks. Which meant she was probably from the country herself. Yuko said: “Hmm, I guess there must be lots of things about America that only Americans would know.”

Maki pushed her lips out in a pout. “So where is this person staying?” she asked me.

“I can’t tell you that,” I said.

Frank wanted to know what “the broad” was saying now. I translated the question, and he said: “The Hilton.” Yuko laughed, but Maki just resumed her monologue, telling us how she’d stayed at all the finest hotels in Tokyo. How the front desk at the Park Hyatt must be hundreds of meters from the entrance, and how her room at the Westin in Ebisu Garden Place had the most comfortable sofa she’d ever sat on, and so on and so forth. She also made it clear that she only stayed in these places with important people like doctors and lawyers and TV station people, so in effect she was admitting to being a hooker after all, much to Frank’s amusement. As she rattled on I noticed we’d been in this place for just over an hour now and asked the waiter for the hourly tally. He brought me a bill for nearly ¥40,000.

“What’s this?” I said, and his mouth dropped open slightly, making his lip-ring jiggle. “That’s not the price Noriko told us,” I said, trying to speak in a calm, friendly manner so as not to cause any sort of scene. “Who’s Noriko?” he said, then looked over at the counter where the manager was standing. He immediately glided over to us and inquired in a hushed, deep voice if there was any problem. I asked him to bring a breakdown of the bill, but he already had it with him. The original table charge was ¥2000 apiece, the charge to change tables and sit with the ladies ¥4000 apiece (doubled because we’d stayed longer than one hour), the yaki-soba was ¥1200 per, the potato chips ¥1200, the oolong tea ¥1500, the whiskey ¥1200, the beer ¥1500, and in addition to sales tax they’d added a service charge.

“I wish you’d told me when an hour was up,” I said.

Frank looked at the breakdown and shouted: “That’s insane!” He couldn’t read the Japanese, but he could read the figures. “I’ve only had two whiskeys, and Kenji, you only drank one beer!”

They were on an hourly system here, the manager explained in his funereal tones, but as we could see, they were a bit short-handed, so they couldn’t really be responsible for keeping track of how long each customer had stayed. “I’m sure you understand,” he said. I understood all right. Shafted. No matter what I said, he would point out that they were merely charging the standard amount according to the pub’s clearly outlined system. And if I continued to complain, a specialist would show up and suggest we discuss the issue in the back office. End of “discussion.” I told Frank there was nothing we could do. He nodded: “So that’s the type of place this is.” I said yes, I was afraid so, but none of this was strictly illegal so it was useless to argue.

“I’ll explain it all later. But this is partly my fault, so feel free to deduct half the bill from my fee.”

I was really willing to let him do that. It was my responsibility to watch the clock.

“Never mind,” Frank said. “Let’s just pay up for our time so far.”

So far? I thought. Frank pulled four ¥10,000 notes from his snakeskin wallet
and handed them to the manager. They were the oldest, filthiest bills I’ve ever seen. The manager held them between one thumb and forefinger, a look of disgust on his face. The bills were heavily stained and caked with greasy dirt and seemed on the verge of disintegrating. I remembered hearing rumors that some of the homeless in and around Shinjuku Central Park had packets of money stowed away among their bags and rags.

We all stared at the bills. None of us, I’m sure, had ever seen anything quite like them before.

“There,” Frank said, “now we’re paid up for so far.”

“What do you mean ‘so far’?” I asked him.

He wanted to stay longer, he said. The manager, who’d obviously done his share of time in Kabuki-cho, must have sensed something disturbing about Frank’s face and attitude, not to mention the unbelievably dirty money. Generally, he said, their customers liked to wrap things up at about this point. Translation: Please leave. “Frank, let’s go, the system here is for us to finish up now,” I told him, clapping him lightly on the shoulder. The muscles there were as hard as cast iron, and a chill ran from my fingertips all the way down my spine.

“All right, then, shall we move on?” he said. “Oh, wait—those bills I just gave him, I dropped them in the gutter earlier, maybe I should pay with a credit card?”

He pulled out his wallet again as the manager, recognizing the words “credit card,” gave him a quizzical look.

“Kenji, ask if I can use a card.”

A credit card is fine, the manager said warily.

“I have a really unusual American Express card. Look at this. See? You girls look, too. Seriously, lean in here. Now look closely at the card. There’s something unusual about the face of this warrior fellow, right? If you move it back and forth like this in the light . . . Look there. It looks like he’s smiling, doesn’t it? Now watch carefully. . . .”

The two staff members and the pair of women leaned closer and closer to
the card, as if pulled toward it. A familiar, creepy vibe told me that Frank was up to something again. The air seemed so dry it pricked my skin, yet so dense it was hard to breathe. I, for one, wasn’t going to look at Frank’s card. I kept my eyes on the manager and waiter, and sure enough in a matter of seconds I saw a change come over them. Something in their eyes. I once read that when you’re hypnotized you temporarily enter the world of the dead, and whether it’s true or not, I do know that
something
spooky happens. I saw the manager’s pupils dilate as he stared at the Amex card. Then, a moment later, the muscles of his jaw and cheeks tensed up so tight you could hear his teeth grinding, and veins stood out on his neck. It was the expression of someone absolutely petrified with fear, but it lasted only a few seconds. Then the veins deflated and the light went out of his face.

“Kenji,” Frank said in a very soft voice. “Step outside and call your girlfriend.”

“Huh?” I said, and he repeated it slowly, enunciating the words.

“Step. Outside. And call. Your girlfriend.”

The Face was gone. Frank looked strangely radiant, like someone who’d finally finished a long and difficult job and was now about to celebrate with a cold beer. The manager, the waiter, and Maki and Yuko were all in a trance of some sort. The waiter’s lip-piercing jiggled as if in a small breeze, but he looked like a mime frozen in position. Everyone’s eyes were unfocused, and I couldn’t tell if their muscles were relaxed or tense. Maybe both at the same time. Meanwhile, Lady #3 was still singing, and Mr. Children was still negotiating with Lady #5. None of them seemed to notice the extraordinary atmosphere surrounding our table.

“Frank,” I said, nudging him, “that’s not cool.” I assumed he intended to leave everyone hypnotized and walk off without paying. “We can’t run out on the bill. I’ll never be able to show my face in Kabuki-cho again.”

“I wouldn’t do anything like that, Kenji. Just get out of here and let me handle this, will you?”

Or do you want me to kill you? his eyes seemed to say. My spine felt as if
it were packed in ice, but before I knew it I was on my feet, which made me wonder for a moment if I’d been hypnotized too. I turned sideways to squeeze past the manager and waiter. It was like threading my way between a pair of mannequins. My elbow brushed against the waiter’s right hand, but he wasn’t there to feel it. As I walked away from the table I glanced back at Maki and Yuko. They were both leaning forward in their chairs, rocking back and forth as if on seesaws.

I walked out the door toward the elevator hall and flipped open my mobile. I knew Jun would be in my apartment, but I couldn’t bring myself to call her and just paced up and down awhile. Finally I walked back and peered inside the pub through a tinted glass panel in the door. I could vaguely make out shapes moving around inside. And then I saw an unmistakable form lumbering toward me. I dashed for the elevator, but it was too late.

“All right, Kenji, come on back in,” Frank said.

I didn’t want to go. But with Frank’s eyes drilling into me, I couldn’t have moved anyway. I had turned to stone, from the tip of each hair on my head all the way down to my toenails. Frank grabbed me by the shoulder and dragged me inside. At the door I lost my balance and nearly fell, but he caught me and easily supported my entire weight with his right arm. He carried me inside as if I were a piece of luggage and dropped me carelessly on the floor. I heard him walk back to the door and pull down the steel security shutter outside it. When I opened my eyes I saw two pairs of legs, a man’s and a woman’s. I knew the woman was Maki by her red high heels and white lace stockings. A wet, shiny, scarlet line slithered down the shin of one stocking. Like a living creature, some sort of parasite maybe, it was crawling along the delicate threads at a slow but steady pace. At a table facing her, Lady #5 along with Mr. Children and Lady #3 sat goggling slack-jawed at Maki. The moment I looked up and saw what they were staring at, everything in my stomach began the journey back up my esophagus. It looked as though Maki had another mouth below her jaw. Oozing from this second, smiling mouth was a thick, dark liquid, like coal tar. Her throat had been slit literally from
ear to ear and more than halfway through, so that it looked as if her head might fall right off. And yet, incredibly, Maki was still on her feet and still alive, her eyeballs swiveling wildly and her lips quivering as she wheezed foam-flecked blood from the wound in her throat. She seemed to be trying to say something. The man beside her was the manager. He and Maki were leaning against each other, as if they’d been positioned to hold each other up. His neck was twisted in an unnatural way, his head turned as though to look over his shoulder, but drooping limply, chin resting on his shoulder blade. Just beyond Maki’s high heels, Yuko and the waiter lay in a heap on the floor. A thin blade, like a sashimi knife, was buried deep in Yuko’s lower back, and the waiter’s neck was twisted like the manager’s.

Lady #3, Mister Children, and Lady #5 sat as still as cardboard cutouts on their sofa, but I didn’t know if they were hypnotized or unconscious or just paralyzed with fear. I struggled to hold down the vomit rising inside me. An acid wave washed up through my chest and throat, and my temples were numb and tingling. I couldn’t think, let alone speak. This can’t really be happening, I told myself. It was like being in a nightmare you’re sure you can’t awaken from. Frank moved into my line of vision, walking toward Lady #3. He had the long, thin knife in his hand now, having extracted it from Yuko’s body. Apparently Lady #3 was neither unconscious nor hypnotized, because she reacted to Frank’s approach—but in the oddest way. Her right hand, still grasping the mike on the sofa cushion beside her, began to jerk frantically back and forth, as if she were pawing at the material. Like a kitten excited at play. The mike was still on, and the sound of it rubbing over the cloth reverberated through the room. She was trying to run away, I thought, but her will was disconnected from her body. Her shoulders shook from the tension in her face and neck, and though the muscles of her legs were straining so hard you could see them bulging, she couldn’t so much as wiggle her toes. The nerves connecting her brain to her muscles had short-circuited, and the movements of her body were random and uncontrolled. I was in a similar state—my vision and hearing were messed up. The backing track to the
Amuro song Lady #3 had been singing was still on, but I wasn’t sure I was really hearing it with my own ears. When Frank stopped in front of her, #3 soiled herself explosively beneath the skirt of her cream-colored suit. As her fluids sprayed over the floor, all the strength drained from her body. Her feet fell out of her strapless shoes, her shoulders drooped, and her face relaxed into something like a smile just before Frank grabbed her by the hair and plunged the knife into her chest. And like a gnat flying out of a clump of grass, something went missing from that peculiar smiley face.

That’s when Lady #5 at last began to scream. It wasn’t like a reaction to #3’s murder specifically, but rather as if someone had finally hit a switch to turn on the volume. Frank pulled the knife from #3’s chest and then tried to take the mike from her, but her fist was so tightly clenched that even he had trouble prying it loose. Her fingers had turned white and puffy, as if they’d been pickled. Frank grabbed her by the hair again and rammed his index finger into her eye. I heard the sound it made from where I lay, and simultaneously I saw her hand release the mike. Something the like of which I’d never seen came out of her eye socket. A thick, gooey, semitransparent liquid speckled with red dots. Frank took the mike and held it up to Lady #5’s screaming mouth. This amplified the scream many times over, of course, but also made it sound, strangely, like a song. He pointed at #5’s throat and looked at me. You could see her vocal cords vibrating as she screamed. Signaling me with his eyes as if to say “Ready? Watch this,” Frank sliced deeply into the vibrating flesh, and the scream dissolved in a loud
shoosh
, like escaping steam.