Tuvalu (28 page)

‘Go away,' I whispered softly. ‘Go on, fuck off.'

But they would not. They continued to linger, talking. I watched them intently. What was it that was below my field of vision? Was there a third, unseen party? Nakamurasan maybe? She was short enough—but dead. I had accepted this as fact. When one of the men tried the door handle I panicked, certain I had forgotten to lock it. Stepping backwards onto a shoe, I fell sideways and crashed into the wooden shoe locker. The sound of this clumsy collision came and went as sharply and incongruously as a gunshot.

Then someone knocked seven times.

I put my eye to the peephole again, frowning.

‘Tuttle, you hermit nut fuck, open the door. I'm in trouble here.' Phillip's voice.

I opened the door, careful to leave the chain on just in case there was a last, remote chance of escape. One of the uniformed men peered in through the gap and I saw a stretcher with a body laid out on it. I could only see the outline of a hand beneath a blanket, but guessed it belonged to Phillip.

At this, I shut the door, flung off the chain and wrenched it open again. My haste was dictated more by curiosity than concern. Phillip looked glum. Heavy white bandaging covered most of his skull and face. The rest of his body was pinned beneath the blanket which, though he wriggled and winced, he could not loosen.

‘What the—' I said.

‘Accident.' He tried to shrug.

I helped wheel him in, apologising for the delay and talking in a garbled fashion about a very important phone call, but the ambulance men appeared not to understand English.

‘What accident?' I asked Phillip.

‘We almost hit a kid on a bike.'

‘Almost? So he's okay?'

‘She.'

‘She then. She okay?'

‘We don't know.'

‘We? Who's we?'

‘Later, Tuttle. Not now.'

The two ambulance men wheeled Phillip into the living room and peered around—looking, no doubt, for furniture, somewhere to set him down. I gestured to the two blankets I had been using as a bed and they nodded. Their bemused faces turned suspicious.

‘You didn't hit the girl, did you?' I asked.

Phillip winced as he was set down on the tatami, a surface hardly softened by blankets. ‘No. I don't think so.'

‘What did you hit?'

‘A shop.'

‘A shop? Shit.'

‘Went straight through a window into something— a steel foundation, I think.'

‘So the police'll be coming?'

Phillip shook his head. ‘Don't worry about it, Tuttle.'

One of the ambulance men glanced at me when I said the word ‘police', but did not ask questions. Together with his partner they moved towards the door.

‘Where's the pillow?' Phillip asked.

‘There isn't one. You just had it made it into a bed.'

One of the men carried a CB radio, which squawked. He ignored it and tried to speak to me in rapid Japanese.

‘Yes,' I kept saying without having understood a word. ‘Yes, yes.'

The radio squawked again and he cut off sharply, either listening to the CB or realising I could not understand him. He was an intelligent-looking man in his mid-twenties with wire-rimmed reading glasses. I had the impression the ambulance work was service to his community. I did not trust this do-gooder with my secret and wanted to finish Phillip off myself, stab him with my butter knife.

‘Insurance,' the man said in broken, hesitant English, nodding towards Phillip.

I groaned.

‘I don't have it,' Phillip said. ‘That's why I checked myself out.'

‘You did what?' I asked.

‘I can't afford further treatment.'

‘Have you had any treatment?'

‘No, Tuttle. The fucking bandages are for looks.'

After the effort of saying all this Phillip lay still in his makeshift bed, staring at the roof. One whole eye was covered in gauze and I worried about the extent of his injuries. The other ambulance man, far thicker-looking with a friendly face and the soft, pleasing aroma of cheap cologne, now handed me a bottle of tablets. The bottle rattled and hearing the sound Phillip held out a hand. I looked down at it, opening and closing, and then to the bottle, but the man who had given me the tablets shook his head.

‘Not to two,' he said, having as much difficulty with English as his co-worker.

‘Not to two?'

‘Not to do, no. Two.'

‘Do what too?'

‘One two, every two.'

They gave me further hopeless instructions and let themselves out.

‘Pills!' Phillip yelled.

I walked back to the living room and rattled the container loudly.

‘Were you driving?'

He shook his head.

‘Who was? Who were you with?'

‘Forget it, Tuttle.'

So I returned to the kitchen and sat stacking up loose change that had amassed, sorting it into useless little piles. I could not decide whether to move out. I needed more information. After a few minutes Phillip proved himself predictable.

‘Pills!'

I took three pills through to him and held them just out of reach.

‘Fucking give them to me.'

‘Tell me everything and I will. You can OD on them for all I care.'

He waved me off, but his eyes betrayed desperation.

‘What happened to your room?' I asked.

‘I moved out a few days ago.'

‘You didn't say goodbye?'

‘You hardly ever said hello. Anyway, I was going to. Today maybe.'

‘But instead you drove into a building?'

‘Yeah.'

‘With who? Who else was in the car?'

Phillip sighed loudly. ‘The couple I went to Guam with. I guess I've been seeing a lot of them. They'd taken me in before all this.'

‘And?'

‘She's hurt. He's not. The girl on the bike … I don't know.'

‘Were you drunk?'

‘And the rest, yeah.'

‘The other two?'

‘Yeah.'

‘Who drove? Which one?'

‘He did.'

‘And the police, will they be interested in this?'

‘I don't know. Maybe.'

‘They'll have this address.'

‘So don't answer the door,' Phillip said irritably.

For a moment I said nothing, pacing the room. ‘Why the fuck did you come here, Phillip?'

He tried to roll over, away from me, but it caused too much pain. ‘We'll hide. It only has to work once,' he said. ‘Then we'll run.'

‘You'll run? Like this?'

‘I'll do my best if it means not getting arrested. Now give me the pills and fuck off.'

I ignored his pathetic attempt to intimidate me. ‘Would they arrest us do you think—for being here?'

‘Yeah,' Phillip said, without giving it much thought.

‘Then we should move.'

‘To where?'

I handed him the pills and he chewed and tried to swallow.

‘Where?' he asked again.

‘Wherever. Away from here.' But saying this I thought of Tilly and did not press the point.

Phillip fell asleep. I crossed over to the hostel to see what assistance I could offer Tilly. Even before I entered I could tell the Deconstructionists had returned. It was the noise and dust. It spilled out into the street from doors and burst from holes in walls. There was the usual clatter associated with destruction. Drills screeched and jammed, hammers thudded and an angle grinder squealed before it was let to chew into metal.

Inside, sections of corridor wall had been reduced to skeletal wooden frames. The ceiling was being pulled out, and I noticed tangled wires and makeshift-looking rusted pipes which all took an indirect route to their destination.

Tilly was at work. Tracking down a pen and an old receipt I left a note for her. She was to visit me ASAP, since she could no longer stay in her room. On the way back to the apartment I passed the old man with his even older dog. He looked mildly annoyed. I had the impression he knew I was squatting in Nakamura-san's apartment, and when I bent to pat the dog he abruptly pulled it away.

I took the stairs two at a time and, a moment later, sat down beside Phillip and asked him if he was hungry. He looked to be in pain and immediately wanted pills.

‘Two,' I said, standing to collect them from the kitchen.

‘Four.'

‘Only two for now.' I brought him the tablets along with water in a small margarine container, and he swallowed the lot greedily. ‘You should eat,' I said.

‘Eat what? More noodles? No thanks.'

With the curtains drawn the room was dim and depressing. I had bought a bulb and was using the ceiling light, but it was hardly adequate. In fact, the whole place had lost its appeal. It had begun to feel like a prison. Outside, Moaning Man, who I had not heard shout for months and presumed long gone, let out a groan and kicked something—a wall. The sound echoed in the alley. Wanting light I pulled back a curtain and watched him drift by below, angrily smoking a cigarette, face scrunched in pain.

Mami was immediately drawn in by the misery of the accident and my report of Phillip's suffering.

We met in Ikebukuro rather than our usual Odaiba coffee shop, and she dressed up for the trendy district. She wore a knee-length skirt, the material grey-green, heavy and patterned by texture rather than colour. It accentuated the sharp curve of her hips which sloped into a completely bare stomach, all abdominal muscle and ribs. Much of her upper chest was exposed, too, covered only by a white, bra-like top and an open, sheer, chocolate-brown cardigan. She made little effort to hide any aspect of herself when she sat down in front of me, crossing long, svelte legs. She leant forward to tap her cigarette in the Starbucks ashtray and people stared. In a city of prim women reluctant to show even a strip of skin between pants and shirt, Mami had decided to wear nothing more than a bikini top and towel. Were it not for the exquisite fabrics, she could have been at a beachside café.

‘I'll take care of Phillip,' she said. ‘Nurse him.'

I put down my caramel macchiato and shook my head.

‘He'd love that. But I've got it under control. It's just a few pills and—'

‘No. I want to.'

‘Why?'

She shrugged. ‘I'm bored. It'd be interesting.'

Neither of us finished our coffee that first Friday after the accident, pushing our way out of the store. Mami wanted to start on her new project at once and so we returned to the apartment. Phillip, a little shaky on his feet, was in the kitchen trying to make a sandwich with the same limited ingredients I had used prior to his arrival. He noticed Mami and ran his eyes down her full length.

‘What the hell's she doing here, Tuttle?'

Mami smiled patiently. ‘Me? I'm going to be your new nurse.'

‘I don't need a nurse. I have one.' He clucked his tongue and curtly added, ‘Nice outfit, though.'

Mami glanced down. ‘You like Prada? Does your present nurse dress like this?'

‘Tuttle? Could do. Wouldn't surprise me.'

‘And you like him in it?'

‘I wouldn't,' Phillip said carefully.

Mami reached out and softly ran two fingers along the length of his jaw. ‘That settles it then. I'll be better.'

Phillip frowned, perhaps remembering Mami's noodle snub. Eventually he shrugged his compliance.

At that moment, Tilly appeared at the door, still thin and pale but more energetic than I had seen her in weeks. I let her in and Phillip rolled his good eye. ‘We're trying to squat here,' he said.

She stared at the bandages. ‘What happened to you?'

‘Nothing.'

Mami stepped forward. ‘Hello,' she said.

Tilly nodded a reply and quickly turned to me. ‘I got your note. What do you want?'

‘Good. Let's go for a walk?'