Tuvalu (20 page)

‘Maybe.'

‘The vibes I got from this girl were bad and I knew it had to do with me. I was upsetting her, even though she didn't show it. I don't believe in a god, like I said, but I do believe in karma. And my breed of karma dictates that those who dish out bad waves without due cause get the same back. Maybe not then and there, but sooner or later. Why? Because waves always take the easiest path. So I told this girl no, paid and left. Even gave her a tip.'

‘You felt bad?'

‘Yeah. But let me be clear: prostitution—the idea of prostitution—wasn't the problem. The problem was bad karma. With another woman at another time I might've had a ball and gotten great vibes. Hell, I have on countless occasions. So there's your proof.'

I did not have time to question Harry about any of this. A young girl who I doubted was even twenty years old brought us our jug of beer. She laughed somewhat nervously at the sight of us, two foreigners sitting expectantly.

‘I don't speak much English,' she said in Japanese.

Through her top I could discern the outline of her nipples, and her white denim pants appeared to have been made for a child. The way she laughed when I spoke, I might well have been the first man she had ever talked to. She sat and we all tried to communicate. But she did not stay long: with her youth and put-on naivety she was in high demand. The blonde woman quickly moved her to a table which had filled with five young Japanese men in exaggerated hip hop outfits, who welcomed her with open arms. They took a direct, hands-on approach, and though her eyes remained almost closed she remembered to giggle.

Fifteen minutes later, when we ordered a second jug of beer, an older girl came and sat with us. She proved to be sour-faced, although Harry got her to smile once or twice. She had narrow eyes which conveyed distrust and maybe contempt. Stuck for things to talk about we took to guessing each other's age. She guessed mine at twenty-five and—though I would have put her at thirty—I offered twenty-four in return. This set her small mouth in an unattractive pout. Apparently she wanted me to believe she was nineteen, which I was happy to do since it made no difference—I disliked her whatever age she was.

Harry eventually had me ask this second girl if he could squeeze her breasts. She shrugged, picked up Harry's lit cigarette and enjoyed a drag. Harry took this to be a yes. He went ahead and did as he pleased until the girl protested and the blonde-haired woman came over to move her to another table. Feeling genuinely awkward, I offered up the best apology I could, but no one was interested in hearing it. The girl Harry molested hated me for suggesting she was twenty-four far more than she did Harry for thrusting his hand towards her crotch, and the blonde woman wanted us to shut up and drink her exorbitantly priced beer.

‘No bad vibes?' I asked Harry while we waited for a third girl.

‘Yeah,' he said. ‘But I took the easiest path—or my waves did.'

The last girl to sit with us stayed quite a while and Harry kept his hands largely to himself. He again appointed me translator, though this girl understood his questions well enough in English. So long as he talked about sex it seemed she had all the vocabulary and slang she needed. In halting English she told us she loved our eyes, our white skin and hair. She confessed to secretly wanting to sleep with foreigners and I believed her until she told Harry he looked like Brad Pitt.

‘Really?' he asked, butting out his umpteenth cigarette and grinning. ‘Brad Pitt. That's horseshit but don't stop there.'

When it came time to pay, Harry went to the toilet. I handed over about 10,000 yen for five jugs of beer. The establishment—like most snack bars—had taken the supermarket price and multiplied it by ten. I dropped the money on the counter with a sigh and took the lift back down.

‘How did you like it?' I asked when Harry finally stepped into the steamy evening air.

‘Great.'

I waited for more but he said nothing about the bill. He instead pulled his jacket collar up and, with his hands deep in his jean pockets like some balding, midget wouldbe James Dean, started off down the alley.

Two days later Phillip appeared at mydoor. ‘Bored?' he asked.

‘Yeah. You finished with JR?'

‘A couple of weeks ago. Just got back from Guam.'

‘Guam?'

‘Guam.' But he did not explain. ‘The posters are up. C'mon. You need to get out.'

We made our way into the city. Svelte women in miniskirts handed out plastic fans smeared with ads and Phillip made a point of conversing briefly with each. The air both inside and outside the station hung thick and still. People, most walking as if carrying an unseen boulder, dabbed attentively at their foreheads with handkerchiefs.

‘How was Australia, anyway?' he asked as we made our way through a surging tide of bodies towards the Yamanote Line. ‘How was Tilly? You didn't tell her about Mami?'

‘No,' I said, searching for a way to avoid the topic. ‘So how does this work? Are you the new face of JR?'

‘Something like that. It's kind of a two-way deal. Here in Japan I'm advertising these Freedom Pass things. And overseas they'll use me to help sell discount packages to foreigners. They want the retiree market. You know—safe but exotic Japan, temple-hopping, a little drum-banging then home.'

‘Good money?'

‘Outstanding. Though for a moment I didn't think I'd see it. They sprung a medical.'

‘A drug test?'

Phillip paused, letting a gaggle of loosely uniformed, self-absorbed high school students pass. One nudged him anyway.

‘Can't have been—I passed. I think it was a medical to make sure I'd be around for a few more years. They're keen to have me do a string of these things.'

‘So what was the problem? Why were you worried?'

Phillip shrugged. ‘Truthfully,' he said, ‘they couldn't find my heart.'

‘You're joking.'

‘I'm not.'

‘Talk about incompetent.'

‘Actually, it's not entirely their fault. It's on the wrong side. The tip of my heart's on the right side of my chest. Liver and spleen, too.'

‘Backwards?'

Phillip nodded. ‘It took them a while to track everything down.'

‘Did you know about this?'

‘Of course. I was born with it. DSI.'

‘DSI?'

‘Dextrocardia with Situs Inversus. Back-to-front guts. It sure baffled the Japanese doctor. There were lots of meetings. Eventually JR figured out it made no difference.'

At the ticket gates Phillip pressed his complimentary Freedom Pass to the flashing sensor. It beeped and opened compliantly. I had to buy a conventional ticket.

We boarded the train and Phillip's ad was everywhere. Dressed in a flashy suit he held up the new Freedom Pass. The message was clear even without being able to read the Japanese. Phillip was standing inside a busy metropolitan station while behind him stressed-out Japanese commuters battled to get through the ticket gates with regular, stamp-sized tickets.

‘Like it?' he asked.

‘I want one of those passes.'

‘Good.'

Around us a few Japanese commuters made the connection between the blond standing beside me and the man in the glossy ads. They tapped friends and whispered.

Because we had no plans, we got off at Akihabara and followed the English signs ‘To Electric Town'. When we stepped outside it was dusk. Buildings were lit but their lights were weak against the still-bright sky. Across the street the Sato Musen store's escalators ran diagonally up one wall, each atop the next and all encased in bubbled glass, people standing patiently on every level. In front of us, banners hung from streetlamps and flapped loudly in the evening breeze. And at a nearby white-striped crossing a grumpy-looking man unloaded a beeping delivery truck, wrestling boxes into the street like each was a troublesome drunk.

After wandering for a few minutes we entered a McDonald's for coffee.

‘Have you met that new guy on our floor?' I asked, pouring in cream.

‘Harry?'

‘Yeah.'

‘He introduced himself a while back,' Phillip said. ‘A con artist.'

I sat up straight. ‘Why do you say that?'

‘He asked me for a loan.' Phillip shook his head. ‘Don't give him the time of day.'

My stomach churned.

Three hours later I was pressing the phone to my ear so hard it hurt.

‘I'm more just ringing to find out if you're coming back,' I said.

There was a soft groan at the other end of the line and I immediately regretted calling her.

‘I don't know,' Tilly said. ‘Probably.'

‘When?'

‘Sooner rather than later.'

‘Tilly, what's going on?' I felt it was time to ask. ‘I'm sorry to put you on the spot but I need to know. It was great seeing you, don't get me wrong, but things … they … they …'

‘Felt different?'

‘Right.'

‘That's not your fault. It's nothing to do with you.'

‘Meaning what?'

‘There are things you don't know, Noah—about my family, about Dad.'

‘Then tell me.'

‘I will.'

‘Not some day, Tilly. Today. You hardly ever contact me and you're always cagey when you do—what the hell am I meant to think?'

Tilly said nothing.

‘Please, Tilly.'

I felt angry with her then, as if I was being made a fool of. I had placed the call from the train station and ran my eyes over the pairings that passed me, people sensible enough not to conduct their relationships from different ends of an ocean.

‘You know he drinks.' The quiet voice at the other end of the line was hesitant.

‘What?'

‘Dad. You know he drinks, that he's an alcoholic. I've told you that.'

I had no clear recollection of ever having heard such a thing, but said yes.

‘And you know,' Tilly continued, ‘how Mum died.'

‘Yes.' This particular secret I had been let in on— cancer.

Tilly again fell silent. I had the impression that if I said anything—even one word—she would discover a way to skip over everything and round up the call.

‘You can't see it but Dad has bad burns. They're on his body. When that happened all the drinking finally came to an end. Throughout my high school years he was sober, or close enough. But he's drinking again. Not all the time.'

‘What caused the burns?'

‘That's kind of a long story.'

‘I don't mind.'

Another lengthy silence. My breathing was loud in my ear until she sighed and went on.

‘Mum hated the hospital. All cancer patients do, I guess. After a while it just becomes a prison. There's hardly a draught of air, everyone's sick and dying, and it's difficult. When you have a terminal illness, befriending other terminally ill people only to watch them die isn't always the best idea. Well, I don't think it is. Mum did it though. At first it was a support but after it happened twice Mum wanted to come home, even if it meant dying on the way. That put pressure on Dad. The farm was doing badly and I was still really young—eleven years old. He was basically Mum's nurse. A woman visited sometimes but she could never stay. This farm's too cut off and she had a hundred others she had to help.'

I had never heard Tilly talk so candidly.

‘Dad did amazingly well, you know, but no one can be perfect when things are messed up. They weren't married but basically he was losing his wife, his best friend. And at the same time he was trying to run the farm and get me to the bus for school and everything. He had nowhere to hide—nowhere that was his. So he drank. He'd always done it to relax, and it was natural to him to keep on doing it.'

A Japanese man in a bland-looking suit stopped a metre in front of me. He put his briefcase down on the floodlit station floor, waiting for the phone.

‘The problem was,' said Tilly's soft voice, ‘drinking only stressed him. He'd get in these funks and growl at Mum, then regret it because who knew how long they had. By the time Mum was really sick he was drinking almost every day, trying to prop himself up.'