Lights Out in Wonderland

by DBC Pierre

  The gentlemen hear it, and turn.

  Smuts quickly covers his gaffe, announcing to me: “The first course was fugukawa yubiki—that’s a fugu-skin salad with ponzu and red pepper.”

  I smile at the gentlemen. They squint back, and in the time their attention is turned, Tomohiro gives them a token bow and marches out to the elevator.

  “To finish I recommend hire-zake,” says Smuts. “Fugu-fin-infused wine, flame-broiled in its cup. Will you take it in the White Room?” He leads me swaying up the corridor and calls the last waitress to fetch the fugu wine.

  In the White Room he thuds into a chair. “Pack of cunts. It’s nearly midnight.”

  “Can’t we stay out there? I’m enjoying it.”

  “First get some lines out. Bit obvious if we’re both in the restroom. Anyway, maybe the old fellas will take the hint and fuck off.”

  With the fastidious air of bomb defusers, the air of all drunks performing dexterous tasks, we cut the rest of a gram on the back of my wallet, so as not to lose it in the White Room. I also keep one eye on Smuts. His nimbus has stuck at a festering level. One thing I’d forgotten—after a certain point Smuts can fester.

  “Pu-tain.” He slurps a line up his nose.

  Far from taking a hint, the limbonauts grow louder on the other side of the door. Smuts decides to outwait them, but between three rounds of hire-zake—aromatic and generous in its nimbal favors, with a charred fin sticking out—his eyes turn red and begin to flash. At one point his phone rings in his pocket, and he rips it out and throws it across the room.

  Finally the waitress knocks with a message: we’re to join the gentlemen for a nightcap. I’m pleased to return to the salon. My nimbus is lofty, my body numb—it’s time to prepare for a finale. Leaving the room, I send a pulse to the Enthusiasms about poison, which is surely their end-play, as this gathering of elements is too organic to be coincidence. But in attempting a whistle to accompany the pulse, I spit all over Smuts.

  “What the fuck?” He wipes himself with a sleeve. “Pull yourself together. Let’s neck a quick toast with these boys, then get them out. Don’t worry about the language. Have you got any calling cards? Japanese love calling cards.”

  “What would I put on a calling card?”

  Smuts pauses to chew his lip. “True. Then just bow a lot.”

  We reach the table through a thicket of rising smoke. Infant Boss sits nodding as we slide into the group, and up close I see a twinkle behind his edge of shock. In fact there’s a better-than-expected feeling at the table, the noises are just a theater of men playing men. Nimbus is rising, in its local way, with smells of hair gel and rice. In between nods and bows I ponder how remarkable are seekers of nimbus. We spot each other like beacons across any distance. We’re an aristocracy, able to move through all strata of culture and connect through sheer spirit. Yes—nothing less than a natural aristocracy.*

  Smuts calls the waitress for whiskey. She brings a bottle of Suntory, and as Tartan Man charges the glasses Smuts nudges me rather obviously and raises a toast to the old man: “Boned your wife on Tuesday,” he says. “Dry as a brick.”

  The man falters, looking to his cohorts for clues.

  “And I find she uses her teeth too much. I’d check yourself when you get home, probably down to a stub by now.”

  Tension grips the table. I’m about to elbow Smuts when one of the ponytails lowers his glass and says in polite English: “In Japan, what we say with a drink is—‘Campai.’ ”

  It’s an opportunity to correct the moment. I duly smile, and raise up my glass. But Smuts can’t resist a smirk.

  The elder studies him. Weighs his demeanor. Then he stiffens and slams down his glass, unleashing a phrase of such terrifying resonance it can only describe babies at play with a chain saw.

  We flinch.

  A gauntlet has been thrown. The henchmen nod as the Japanese seem to nod, whether they mean yes or no. After a pause the English-speaker turns to Smuts: “Yoshida-san always allows it. Of course, as the challenge is yours—you will join us.”

  Smuts gulps his drink and nudges me: “Watch me score points with the boss. Tomo was too chickenshit to feed them their favorite treat. That’s what the noise was about.”

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “Offal,” says Smuts. “They’re challenging me to some liver.”

  My senses sharpen.

  Smuts’s breath is a rag of fish and cocaine. He steadies himself on the table and sets off on a zigzag to the kitchen. In his absence the gentlemen make a ceremony of refilling my glass, resuming their chatter of gasps and grunts. They alternate flattering and scolding each other, which in their drunkenness makes them as charming as old ladies playing poker. The three cohorts are of a lower class than the elder, who tries to project cunning at all times; soon his rebukes grow comically fierce, and before each he catches my eye to join him in the joke of his cohorts’ appeals. Though it’s plain the men are gangsters of some kind, they’ve let alcohol turn them back into children—a glorious function of nimbus. I warm to them, and raise a toast:

  “Here’s to us, and others like us,” I say. “Though they’re all dead.”

  The elder squints up, studying each word in the air. Then he laughs, and all the table nods and laughs along. Nimbus inflates to new heights, and I ask myself: is it a trick or a gift of the Enthusiasms, a push or a pull, that these hours bring such a welcome from strangers? Here across the world I’m with souls of equal whimsy, we understand each other in nimbus, and we’re brothers for the night—which tonight means forever.

  Am I being tempted back to life or bade farewell?

  Because things rarely get better than this.

  All I can do is kneel and make a ceremony of the next drink. I think I see hesitation in the elder’s face as I pour. He sways slightly, the worse for wear.

  Then Smuts returns. He has a bowl and fresh chopsticks on a tray. As he puts the bowl before the elder I see it contains a range of slimy globules.

  Silence descends. Smuts and the elder sit facing each other, chopsticks armed and raised. They peer over lumps no bigger than large peppercorns. The old man struggles to stay awake, eyelids drooping, head swaying. He takes a breath, looks into Smuts’s face. And brings the lump to his teeth, nibbling it, slurping noisily.

  The henchmen gasp.

  Smuts sucks his lump onto his tongue, rolls it around where we can see it. Then bites it through and swallows.

  After this, they sit still.

  The duel is over. I join the cronies in monitoring their faces, which stay blank, downcast, blinking, running tongues around mouths, over lips. Then, as tension reaches its most brittle height—they both look up, and grin. Applause erupts. The pair retire their chopsticks, bow deeply, and shake hands. In a flood of those chemicals that dissolve adrenaline we loft into the sweetest nimbus I’ve ever known, intoxication, danger, relief, and newfound brotherhood soaring in clear, blissful skies. Another drink is quickly poured, and for this we all chatter and grunt and gasp at each other, without understanding but in perfect comprehension.

  Of course climaxes on this scale are taxing on the flesh. By the time the drink is finished, the elder limbonaut has nodded quietly off to sleep.

  His henchmen set about helping him up. Their formation into a single lurching mass makes the octopus swoop through the tank behind us, scattering wrinkles of light across the room. Finally, with the smiling elder lifted between their shoulders, the group moves off as one creature to the elevator, and we follow to say good night.

  Looking around, I note that every last staff member has vanished from the restaurant. I see Smuts swaying and he sees me searching the room.

  “Nobody else would deal with them,” he says, guessing my question. “They’re the boss’s pets, everyone else is scared.”

  “
But—surely they haven’t left you in sole charge of a fugu restaurant? You’re just the apprentice.”

  “They obviously left these boys in charge. Different thing. The old fella probably runs the protection racket for the district. Anyway, Tomo knows I’ve got keys, and someone will have to be back soon to clean out the tank. What could possibly happen?”

  Smuts opens the lobby door: “Oyasuminasai!” he waves after the men. “And boys—don’t let him operate a Japanese toilet, we’ll never see him again.”

  Two arms reach out of the mass to wave goodbye.

  As the elevator doors close, Smuts turns to me. “They had a great night. Didn’t they? The boss’ll be in my pocket, they’re like his homeys.”

  With that, he goes to the table and spits out the lump.

  I follow and peer into the bowl. “You didn’t eat it?”

  “Get real, I don’t have to do that. These fellas probably have immunity. If a tora bit them, the fish’d probably die.”

  I stand looking into the bowl. Tiny condiment dishes also form part of the table setting, and I flag a pair as containers for smuggled offal. I lose myself gazing so long that Smuts takes up chopsticks and picks a lump from the bowl.

  “Open.” He brandishes it at my mouth. “Torafugu liver. Once in your life. Open up.”

  “Do I get a last drink?”

  “Don’t eat it, just taste it. Open up, Putain.”

  I open my mouth. Smuts doesn’t let go of the liver but pokes it under my lip, running it left and right. Then he removes it, watching me. A tingle jolts my gums. Whoosh. A compelling thing. The Enthusiasms have advanced a taste of my death.

  I hope you observe this, last friend—look at the nature of Fortune, feel its dynamics at work. See how artistically the night’s ingredients fall into place. Surely this also paints a valuable guideline for life, in case you plan to stay back.*

  Smuts returns the liver to the bowl. “Hell of a buzz, isn’t it? Electroshocked my mouth, holding the thing in. You can see why Yoshida took me on—it’s my contact who supplies the wild tora. Did I mention Didier Le Basque?”

  A bad sign from Smuts. Forgetting earlier sermons means he’s fallen out of the nimbus, like an eagle falling from a thermal tube. Although it signals a good time to raid the liver bowl, I also resolve to pull him back for a last private drink.

  We sit down at the table and I toy with the bowl, edging it close. “Funny how, as a name,” I say, “Didier Le Basque doesn’t evoke the Sea of Japan.”

  “Uh?” Smuts sways. “In this business it evokes all rare produce. If I can get a job with him I’ll be made. Especially on one of his banquets. Doors fly open everywhere after a Basque event. And he’s watching me, I can feel it. Testing to see how I stand up. What I need now’s a massive gig in Europe to really win him over. If I was just conveniently there I’m sure he’d call me in.”

  I pull a pair of vodka miniatures from my coat, and with whiskey from the table prepare two Golden Bullets—thin floating layers of whisky over vodka, known to repair the most punctured nimbus. Then a stiff line, followed by Drambuie on ice, to nurse and savor. In this way we soon sit in clear intoxication again, in the crystalline state of late drunkenness that ends at a high plateau, the savannah all drinkers try to return to. It’s the nimbus I aspired to for tonight, one without fear or consideration, a place achieved after hard but fortunate excess, where peaks weren’t reached too early, or if they were, a dose of helpful substances, or tactical vomiting, opened an upward path again; a place that most often exists two or three tries after the state you thought was your last; a place whose climb is helped by dancing but not by food; a place often stumbled upon by accident, you having collapsed just under its crest.

  Here we pass the time like picnickers, drinking and chain-smoking, as the plateau is that final approximate state where more or less of anything doesn’t matter. A glycerine Tibet where you whirl under stars, arms outstretched, free from your self.

  Only the gentle bubble of the tank is up here with us.

  In this state I take possession of the offal bowl. With each tiny liver I remove to a condiment dish, my limbo nudges its tastes closer to the sea, to the cold, to gray water and salt, to the clang of waves on the ear. And as the tastes grow into lusts the wisdom befalls me to confess to Smuts. To leave a note in his mind, for the future. Let him know that my death is but another of our adventures—and for all we might know, not the last.

  But as I turn to him, the elevator clunks and whirrs in the lobby.

  There’s shuffling. The lobby door clicks.

  After a moment Tomohiro comes in lugging a foam ice chest. He staggers past without seeing us, but as he takes a fishnet from beside the tank Smuts starts and turns. The chef looks over.

  “Uh?” Smuts stands. “Is it seven already?”

  “I think it’s barely three,” I say.

  Tomohiro drops his gaze. Seeing the bowl and dishes of offal before me, he approaches to look. His face falls even further and he walks to the kitchen, returning a moment later with a small security flask, as might be used for medical specimens. Inside are some larger organs—and as they become clear, Smuts starts to frown.

  Tomohiro takes up chopsticks and collects a lump from my bowl, holding it beside the flask for comparison.

  “Fuck me.” Smuts snatches up the bowl. “Were these ovaries?”

  9

  “The old guy’s on breathing equipment,” hisses Smuts. “Tetrodotoxin paralyzes your muscles. Sodium channel blocker; you stay lucid but trapped inside. The boss once told me it took forty-eight hours to know if a client was poisoned. This old fucker was flat in less than three.”

  Air stops circulating in the restaurant.

  Tomohiro says nothing more to us. With the substitution of fish complete, he turns off the lights and walks out with the ice chest, shuffling like a zombie to avoid spilling water. The offal leaves the building with him, including my specimens from the table. We listen to the elevator doors close as if their whirr and clunk described the unstoppable grind of destiny. The elevator goes down. Our nimbus flickers—then descends. Smuts hunches forward with a sigh. His head rolls into his hands. “I’m so fucked,” he croaks.

  An impulse takes me to just throw myself in the tank. But I’m frozen here. Some things do matter. “Look,” I say, “the man was thoroughly refreshed when he left here. He might just be sleeping it off. The others may’ve told the hospital he’d eaten fugu, and they simply presumed—”

  “Can you just fucking talk normally for a minute? ‘Thoroughly refreshed,’ what the fuck! It’s like being stuck on death row with fucking Frasier Crane!”

  “Sorry. He was off his face when he left—”

  “You don’t get it—I couldn’t tell an ovary from a liver! How smashed is that? I served him an ovary from one of Didier’s Trojan toras. And Japan’s the wrong place to get blamed for anything. High conscience, not like back home. I’m so fucked.”

  “But he could barely keep his eyes open to eat it.”

  “Now Tomo knows. And he knows I’m wasted.”

  “Hm. Well, I tasted some too. Was that an ovary? You even sucked some.”

  Smuts grunts. His hands stay over his face, as if longer blindness will pull a brighter reality after it. “Fuck knows anymore. Best have some lines, that’s supposed to open up the airways. Best keep the lines up tonight and see what happens. I don’t know if to drink or fucking kill myself, uh.”

  We sit in silence for a while, smoking. Even our smoke is too weak to make plumes, it just crashes to the floor. As for the Enthusiasms, well—what can this mean? A farewell, a tethering back—or just a callous trick? The night’s been devoured by death themes. As if death themes rode here on my back, then bumped into another swarm and lost their bearings. The night’s just death, death, death, death. I’ve become a magn
et.

  I ponder the ironies while Smuts’s jaw clenches and crackles.

  “But then,” he says, “he ordered poison. Ordered it!”

  “Exactly. Forced you with threats.”

  “In a noble establishment specializing in deadly poison, where the customer’s always right. A place that serves risks. What am I going to do—not serve him? If he comes to a place that serves risks, and orders risks—of course I’ll serve him risks. Is it my fault if he’s unlucky?”

  “No two ways about it.”

  Smuts struggles to kindle hope. But after a moment his head falls back to his chest.

  “Yeah, like they’ll really see it that way.”

  I stare at my friend. Only now is it clear why I instinctively sought him out: because he spent much of his life in a limbo. My father always spoke of Smuts’s carelessness, because he was—orphaned, because he lacked the anchor that can chain us away from the abyss, the anchor of a first stable parent. But it wasn’t carelessness my father saw; it was independence. Baby Smuts, before he could think in pictures, had to decide whether he was alone in the world or in a compact of care.

  He was alone.

  And in life we always rush back to the state we first know.

  “I’m so finished now,” he says. “And if the Basque’s name gets dirty over this—fuck only knows. There won’t be enough ovaries in the sea.” His jaw sets hard with the thought. Seeing my greatcoat on a chair beside us, he leans over to rifle through it for miniatures. None are left, all he finds is the bottle of Jicky. Still, he unstops it, sniffs it, and carries it to the bar, where he uncaps a bottle of chilled vodka, pours two shots, and knocks a drop of Jicky into each. I smell the drinks approaching, almost see them trailing starlight.

  “Angel’s tears,” says Smuts.

  They take our breath away. When I eventually recover my speech, I feel it falls to me to say: “Sorry if I unhooked you tonight.”

  Smuts nods, looking up at the tank where the new fish hang in limbo. “You are a cunt, Pimpernel. We don’t seek you here, we don’t seek you there. But I also have free will. Typical, the situation was stacked too high. Not just that Didi sponsored me, and everything hangs on it—but I also told him I’d find it a bit easier. A lot easier, in fact. I’m just getting sick of myself, to be honest. I didn’t know a fugu license can take ten fucking years. I thought I’d be in and out in six months—and that was six months ago! All this big talk to Didi, like I was starting from the finish line, like it was a formality. And you know I don’t even like fish. Hate fish, so I came to a place where the boss even looks like one. And then there’s this other little thing brewing. Typical little hitch of mine. Fucking stupid. Just brewing away.”