Tuvalu (7 page)

The toilets were drab, in stark contrast to the bar. I avoided the short urinal and stepped into a flimsy cubical. I urinated in uncharacteristic circles, around and around the bowl, agitatedly plotting escape. But it was hopeless and when I returned to the bar everything was exactly as before. Mami shot me frequent looks, although her now black eyes gave away nothing beyond distaste. She looked to be on the verge of leaving, which concerned me. She refused a lemon sour and only sipped at her glass of cold tea while Phillip— for reasons beyond my comprehension—droned on about fishing.

‘Marlin can really swim,' he said. ‘One got caught off the coast of Australia, then was hooked again four years later near Costa Rica.'

The bar drew me away from his talk, as it did Mami. I found myself following her gaze, first towards the bar staff, all glancing at Phillip, then towards the jukebox (an anachronistic, vintage piece everyone seemed to want to rub). Mami's eyes eventually came to rest on a small, silent TV off in a corner. This TV was a concession by the interior designer to good business sense. A number of North American types huddled around it as if it were a fireplace. They were all professionals and drank premium beers in big gulps. With drunken eyes they stared at the screen intently, absorbed in an ice hockey match.

‘I love ice hockey,' Mami said. ‘It's a unique sport.'

I confessed to understanding nothing of it.

‘Do you know,' she said, seeming to cheer up a little, ‘that in ice hockey it's okay to bash each other up? You see it all the time. It's great. They stop chasing that puck around, drop their gloves and go at it, punching each other. The referee just stands back and watches. How many sports do you know like that?'

‘Boxing,' said Phillip.

Mami glanced at him, and answered with a steadfast silence.

Phillip swapped to tequila, buying rounds and drinking Mami's when she palmed them aside. Soon his balance began to betray him and a small swag of female admirers, far from losing interest, redoubled their efforts to seduce him. Coming to understand that Mami was not the least bit interested in anything he had to say, and unable to tolerate the humiliation, he eventually allowed himself to be dragged to a table full of young available women.

Mami immediately asked, ‘Why did you bring him?'

‘He wanted to come.'

‘So?'

‘Sorry,' I said, not bothering to argue.

Thirty-odd minutes later the bar closed. Phillip—now carried by three impossibly young girls—gestured up the frosty street.

‘We're going this way for ramen noodles,' he called. Drunk people bumped my shoulders as they passed from behind, a few muttering apologies.

‘You go ahead,' Mami called back. If her words gave the impression we intended to catch up, her voice told Phillip that she wanted nothing more to do with him, not then or ever. He stared back, puzzled, hurt even, then shrugged and let the young women pull him away. When Mami turned back I expected the same treatment, but her face was conspiratorial.

‘Let's get noodles,' she whispered, turning me in the opposite direction. ‘I know a place that's open all night.'

She led me into a maze of small dark streets. I was excited and confused. Why did she choose me over Phillip? I could not say, not exactly. I focused on the touch of her fingers, the smell of her perfume, the clack of her gold heels. I was, despite myself, proud to be in the company of such a beautiful girl.

The restaurant had only three tables, evidently certain it would never be struck with an influx of business. We were the only patrons. The chef spent most of his time standing in front of an old TV mounted to the ceiling. He could well afford to spend long nights doing this because he had an apprentice who did all the work—cooking, serving and cleaning. This young man looked fed up as he placed two bowls of soy sauce noodles in front of us.

‘Enjoy your meal,' he said flatly, eyes bloodshot.

Occasionally the chef would laugh and point at the TV for our benefit. We drank nothing stronger than green tea, eating and talking quietly about whatever popped into our heads. Outside the alley was empty, motionless.

After the assistant cleared our bowls, Mami dropped her chin onto the base of both palms, fingertips beside her eyes.

‘You should come and get your denim jacket.'

‘I'm not sure that's a good idea.'

‘But you want to?'

‘I suppose,' I said, trying to hide a welling desire.

‘Good. We'll go then.

The chef gave us a discount and held open the door.

‘I told you it was great food,' Mami said, phoning for a cab in the deserted alley.

‘Best Chinese ever.'

I tried to locate the moon but the sky was featureless. Nearby a window was edged open and there came the ticking and soft whoosh of a heater being lit. I smelt kerosene.

The cab driver wanted to speak English. I could not see him. His bucket seat had swallowed him whole. But I could hear him. He owned a set of ‘World English' cassettes which he played for us, rewinding the sentences he knew best and repeating them aloud. I offered what little advice I could but he did not understand a word. Mami was far more help. She gave him an explanation of grammar in Japanese, which he ignored.

‘I'm female,' she said to me at last with a sigh. ‘I look Japanese and I speak Japanese. What the hell do I know about English?'

Outside her hotel, Mami greeted the doorman. He bowed deeply, asking me if I had luggage.

‘No, just visiting.'

‘Enjoy,' he said, leaving me to wonder if I had seen the hint of a smirk on his puffy, small-featured face.

Inside the lobby—a study in opulence—my every whisper echoed uncomfortably. It took an eternity to cross the marble floor and I was relieved when we finally entered the elevator. Mami pressed a button for the twentieth floor and, as the doors closed, reflecting the two of us, my relief turned to dejection. Staring at myself beside such a stunning girl I had the feeling life would defeat me; that whatever I did or did not do in the ensuing hours I would inevitably be drawn back to them, either by regret or nostalgia. Or by both. As if listening to me, the doors reopened for two businessmen who decided, after much debate, not to enter. I suspected I was being given a last chance to flee. The front desk staff all stood stoically with their hands behind their backs, and a bellhop—a trainee—bowed.

‘Home at last,' Mami said, as the elevator doors finally shut.

Mami's hotel room was exactly as I remembered. The front room went on without end and served a hundred different purposes. Mami washed her face in the bathroom, then padded across to the stereo, tossing CDs left and right.

‘CDs,' she said with a groan. ‘Either the disc turns to shit or the music does. All my best ones have cracks. Look. Look at this.' I looked at a CD well beyond repair.

‘That was a good CD,' she said, before glumly adding, ‘I should get an iPod, but there's something unsettling about those things. They're so generic, so insipid, so …
white
. Like little dishwashers.'

I moved around the room turning on identical lamps. There seemed to be hundreds of them, all with bland, beige covers. Eventually I sat down on her enormous bed.

‘What's with all these lamps?' I asked. ‘All your other furniture's unique. But these lamps are—'

‘There you go talking about the furniture again.' She smiled. ‘Those lamps? They're the originals. They were here when I took this place. Everything else I've added.' She pressed play on a remote and moved away from the stereo. I heard a CD spin, then the opening verse of a song—possibly Lennon's ‘Instant Karma'—until it began to skip and Mami clicked it off with a huff.

‘Lamps are what make hotel rooms into hotel rooms,' she said. ‘Most people think it's the minibar, the beds or the chunky phone. Even the Bible, if you're that way inclined. But it's none of those. I tossed all of that out because it's the lamps. There can only be one “hotel thing” when you move into a place like this. After that you have to make it your own or you feel like you're living in a display home.'

‘It's not something I've ever had to think about.'

I lay back on the bed, tired. Mami lay beside me, curling in. I realised she was now wearing a navy-blue slip but had not noticed her changing. The silk was slippery and cool beneath my palm, like melting ice.

‘You turned on a lot of lamps,' she said softly, half biting, half sucking at her bottom lip.

‘They're good lamps. You were right to keep them.'

‘Thank you.'

She looked beautiful close up. Her nose was small but at this distance somewhat wide and her mouth was long. She was incredibly thin—too thin. But it all fitted. Everything matched up. Looking at Mami, her various shapes, I felt a small but pleasant ache inside me, as if fighting off orgasm.

Soon she was asleep. I stared at her for as long as I dared, then looked away. I was worried she might wake to find me interested in regions I had no claim to. I scanned the room. The bar was untouched, which struck me as odd. All the bottles were full. I wondered if the hotel staff topped them up, if they cleaned the place whenever Mami drifted out to do whatever it was she did.

But what puzzled me most was the cluttered nature of the room. There was a large flat-screen TV with a DVD player (though only one DVD,
Roman Holiday
), the bar, seven or eight couches, a desk, a walk-in closet, an en suite and an antique dining table. In addition to this, scattered across the floor were countless
Vogue
magazines. Not just American
Vogue
, but the British, French and Spanish editions too, some open, others upside down, pages splayed.

I wriggled free and rolled off the bed. I entered the en suite—which was about twice the size of my hostel room— and urinated as quietly as possible. Then I sat down inside the deep, dry spa and extended my arms without touching either side. When I tired of this I climbed back out and crossed to the sink, where large mirrors on opposing walls placed me at the head of an army of clones. Since I did not have a toothbrush I squeezed toothpaste onto my finger, wiped my teeth as best I could, cupped water in my hands, slurped, rinsed and spat.

With this done I returned to the room in which Mami was sleeping. I crept close to her, eyes near her lips. She showed no sign of waking so I decided to explore further. I entered a hallway, conscious of the sound of my socks over the carpet.

One door led into a dining room, another a conference room, neither of which appeared to have been altered by Mami. I opened the third and last door at the end of the hallway and entered a Japanese-style room. This room had tatami matting and was divided at its middle by open, paper-thin sliding doors. I had a vague sense of stepping back in time until I noticed a collection of photographs. They were all in identical black frames and were of naked Japanese women. Many of the women were bound with coarse, heavily knotted rope and one was suspended from a barren tree. I circled the room a few times, taking in each photograph. Then I lay in front of the window and stared over the city below.

All of Tokyo was strikingly uniform. It had replicated itself the way cells do: identically save for minimal error, the genesis of evolution. The buildings were square and squat, and atop the very tallest large red bulbs pulsed silently, warning off aircraft. I thought of the view from Mami's front room by day. Saturated with morning sun, Tokyo had looked like a demolition site. The sharp, square buildings—all white, grey or brown—had taken on the look of scattered bricks. The only exception had been the Imperial Palace, a napkin of green at the centre. From such a height it had been easy to identify the grey roofs shrouded in lush canopies, the beautiful white walls beneath and the various glinting moats. It had intrigued me to think the Royal Family lived there still, sheltered from the city by water alone.

I stood and stretched.