Lights Out in Wonderland

by DBC Pierre

  “What’s that?”

  “I don’t even want to hear myself say it. Anyway, uh. This was my last try. I’m twenty-six. Too old to be a fuckwit.” He hangs his head so low it almost folds into his lap. I see a squall of feeling pass through him, tightening his back, forming a pearl in his throat which he swallows. “I’m at the end of the rope. After this, I don’t know what.”

  “Perhaps if you met the boss with this man Didier? A reminder that you’re part of a package of benefits?”

  “Listen to me: Didi’s above all this. He just pulls the strings, fuck knows where he actually is. France, or somewhere. I could tell you rumors about the Basque that’d make your heart stop. He can shut down a high-end kitchen in under an hour, with just a phone call. Shut it down. He can leave hundred-meter yachts rusting at the dock for lack of crew and supplies. Didier supplies the suppliers who supply the world with special things. Has the best chefs in his pocket. He could fill a stadium with Michelin stars and still find somewhere better to eat. And I know chefs who’ve worked on his events who turn and walk away when you ask them about it. They don’t smile and change the subject. They don’t say, ‘I can’t tell you.’ They fucking turn and walk away.”

  “Then isn’t he above caring about one restaurant’s fish?”

  “Not when his name’s involved. Wild torafugu are strictly controlled here. They keep track of them. Huge risk.”

  “Hm. But it’s still just a fish, I mean—”

  “Fucking Pimpernel, I’m not in the mood to teach you how things work, uh. Wake the fuck up. It’s not just a fish. That old guy tonight will have spent two hundred thousand yen to end up on a ventilator. See how your Africans eat rare monkeys for status? See how your Asians eat tiger and rhino? What we put into the body isn’t just calories. It’s medication, spirit, symbol. It’s divinity. Billionaires and princes and sheikhs eat weird shit. They take it deadly seriously. Imagine the clout you get doing favors at that level. That’s Didier. The man doesn’t need a passport. Anyway, it’s all irrelevant now. This was it for me.”

  I nod, and chew the inside of my cheek. Smuts’s phone rings faintly in the White Room, but he ignores it.

  “We’d better fuck off before the place turns into a crime scene.” He lurches up, scattering chopsticks over the table. “I’ll grab a laundry bag and stash some Marius. We might never see any again. Can’t get any more busted than I already am. Call it severance pay. Then let’s run somewhere I can’t be reached, like your hotel. Maybe try calling the Basque, before he hears it all from someone else.”

  We slip back to the larder, where Smuts retrieves the Marius we opened earlier. He takes a long swig and hands it to me. As I drink he sets about filling a canvas bag with bottles, replacing their empty cases at the bottom of the stack. He’s almost finished when a sound filters into the larder.

  A gentle knock on the lobby glass. A timid knock.

  “Uh?” He freezes. Then his face droops: “Ah, fuck me—not now.”

  Peering through the darkened kitchen, I see a small figure at the glass. The dining room is mystical from here, washed in a catarrhal glow, the silence brightened by the bubbling tank.

  Another soft rap at the door.

  “Fucking maguro,” hisses Smuts.

  “What?”

  “Tuna. Dead fish.” He pushes the door open another inch. “Remember that other snag I mentioned?”

  “Who is it?”

  “Boss’s little girl. Ah, mate, fuck. Pass the bottle.”

  “What—how old is she?”

  “Fuck knows. Well, I mean—she’d have to be eighteen, look at her. She’d have to be seventeen or eighteen.” He snatches the bottle and swigs from it, squinting out through the doorway.

  “Hm.” I peer at the form. “If size is anything to go by—”

  “She’s Japanese, remember.”

  “Even taking that into account, she looks about—”

  “Plenty of smaller adults than that, uh.”

  “Ten.”

  “Piss off, she’s in college! Eighteen or nineteen, at least. I’ve seen parts that prove it.” After another knock, Smuts pulls me to the back of the store where he can hiss more freely: “The kitchen’s supposed to feed her after school. College, you know. And—you know. She started coming around. And then. It’s like that. Now she won’t stop hassling.”

  “Her name’s Maguro?”

  “No—Keiko. Maguro’s what they call your traditional girls—who just lie there, who you don’t know if to fuck or resuscitate.”

  He empties the bottle upright into his mouth.

  “Does the boss suspect?”

  “I’ve still got ten fingers, so probably not.”

  Another rap at the door.

  “I can’t deal with her tonight.” Smuts goes for another bottle. I watch him misjudge his reach and almost topple over.

  “Just wait quiet,” I hiss. “She’ll go away—won’t she?”

  “Ah, fuck, that’s the thing. She’s been waiting longer and longer. Like it’s love or something. She’s imprinted like a duckling.” Smuts shakes his head. “That’s why I’ve been volunteering for morning chores, getting out early. I mean, she’s a good girl, uh. I’m not saying she’s not. Smart girl. And really hot. But—ah, fuck. I just get sick of myself, I should know by now.”

  We decide to wait quietly. In the bubbling half-light a revelation comes to me: that a person’s life is nothing more than a finely orchestrated circus of rats, always on the brink of crisis. Never with fewer rats in play than make chaos a certainty if one of them breaks step. Smuts may have more rats than most—and I’ve tonight flung open his door and blustered in, waving cheese. My heart sinks. I say nothing, but all this runs through me. Still the girl waits at the door, knocking every so often.

  Smuts starts to pace. When he realizes he can’t pace without making noise, he teeters on the spot, lunging this way and that. Twice I stop him grinding his teeth. Smuts is the worse for wear.

  “Told you I wasn’t off till fucking Wednesday,” he finally hisses. “Now look at it. We have to get out of here.”

  The hiss is too loud.

  “Neru-san?” comes a little voice.

  Seeing him quake with foiled energy, I grip his shoulders and try to calm him. “Smuts,” I whisper, “listen—”

  But it’s too late. “You’re like a sawn-off fucking stalker, Keiko!” He explodes through the kitchen: “What the fuck, uh! Nerusan, Nerusan, Nerusan!”

  Keiko shrinks back as he blasts into the lobby. I watch the pair clatter into the dining room, Smuts raving, the girl trying to stroke him from afar, pawing the air, tossing squeaks like a kitten. Light from the tank plays on them. The girl seems a third his size, though watching her in three dimensions I note she has the figure of a young woman, a perfectly formed miniature.

  Smuts throws her facedown over a table, snatching up her skirt at the back. She giggles and flails. Her boots fly through the air.

  I’m frozen at the larder door, feelings racing to catch up, stumbling through a day that’s yet to be understood, of unleashed forces, of ambiguous notes from Fortune. With a shiver I realize these visions won’t be sorted at all, I have no time for sequels, nor analysis, in my life. As for the scene before me, well, with your ardent mind you can imagine the havoc it wreaks on the senses of a young sphinx watching.

  “Is this what you want! Nerusan, Nerusan, Nerusan! Following me around like a fish on the fucking tide!” He rips off his shirt and his form grows unreal in the light, abdominal strakes welling like biceps, arms crawling like rope.

  I move out to the bar, electrified. All Smuts’s passions ignite at once. “Fish, fish, fish!” he shrieks. “Toxic fucking fish!”

  I slip behind the bar, crouching. From here the tank shines as green as a winter sea, framing the
pair, adorning the scenario with pufferfish, chilling it with the knowledge of an octopus hiding in a temple. Smuts yanks one of the girl’s legs off the floor, snatches her by the waist, and hoists her over his shoulder. As Keiko kicks and writhes I see white cotton twist and bunch over her loins till spider-legs of hair poke out both sides, and finally darker skin. Smuts turns to the tank. Fish flee to the back.

  I hold my breath.

  With one explosive thrust, a mighty baring of his figure, he tips her over the edge.

  Her scream becomes a chime as she smacks the water. Waves fly up to breach the tank’s rim and clap to the floor. But as she thrashes to the surface, a second, more enchanting life blooms underwater, where her clothes rise off her with chilling calm, where her skin shines and shimmers and her panties turn filmy like semen, clinging till her mysteries all appear, well at home in the deep.

  Smuts vaults into the tank.

  I recoil as tidal waves set off up and down it, smashing to the floor, spattering over the nearest tables. Reflections burst across the salon in shudders and shards. Fish panic and swarm, bristling with spikes, and as churning water swirls to the bottom and starts to raise sand, the octopus scoots up, menacing through its skin with flashes of color.

  Smuts snatches it by the bulb and mashes it to the girl’s ass, where it sucks itself astride her. She gags and screams. Clamping a hand over her mouth, he pulls her to him, rasping into her ear, ramming her close by the small of her back. In the pedaling of her legs, her vulva appears for an instant, green-gray frills and folds, in their element, mingled with tentacles.

  Then the view’s gone. Smuts is inside her. He lifts her legs around his waist and thrusts, grappling and grunting till a rhythm takes hold, the speed of a resting heartbeat at first, building slowly as his feet sink foundations in the sand. Her head throws splashes down the tank, hair whips streams into the air. Smuts grits his teeth and pumps. Eventually the pace sends the octopus to its shelter, and with this relief Keiko’s eyes pop open and lock on to Smuts, first in shock, then fluttering until their lids surrender and droop. And as the cold hardens their skin and tensions are gradually spent, the girl’s cries break apart, and moans rise up which Smuts echoes back. The pair caress, and when they kiss it’s in the same slow motion as their bodies underwater, touching, tracing each other with fingertips. Until without a word they each draw breath and sink, entwined to their full lengths, mouths sucked together sharing air. Their form revolves to the bottom, and they buck there, softly, fondling in a cloud of black hair. After a moment I see, or fancy I see, fluids puffing from their sexes, smudges and gnarls and wisps curling up.

  So compelling a spectacle is this, so entrancing a theater of nature, the merman Smuts and the fugu succubus—that I miss the lobby door opening.

  The first clue is a sense of not being alone. I turn and find a man in the gloom to my left. Sour-faced, in a black suit. Behind him come three uniformed shadows, then a shadow with a briefcase and clipboard.

  They skid across the salon floor, arms swept back in alarm.

  Smuts and Keiko have absorbed each other. They float to the surface as one, eyes shut like infant dead. A tinkle as their heads break the surface. A gasp, a puff of breath.

  Water laps and drips into quiet.

  After a minute—cloistral tranquillity.

  Then the lights click on.

  Whoosh.

  10

  An officer leans smoking outside the police station. He squeezes a cigarette beside his cheek and watches us descend like a monstrous circus, the leviathan Smuts, the shark-finned sphinx, and their teeming wranglers. Fish samples are first to enter, borne in a bombproof chest, flanked by officers.

  Marius clinks time from the rear.

  The bag of wine has been attributed to me, and an officer has been appointed to carry it. I savor the distraction of its clinking as he tries to avoid Smuts’s trail of water, setting a course left of it, then right, as though it were infectious. I lose myself in this as we lose ourselves in our holidays from the platform where we depart them. I suppose because the next stop is my pocketful of substances.

  As we step into the building, a policeman ropes Smuts’s and my handcuffs together, sitting us on a row of chairs against a charge-room wall. Two local types slump at the end, similarly crushed under Saturday’s mallet. While I reflect what a coarse occupation policing is the world over, with its tattered fixtures and decor of maps and flyers, Smuts’s mouth forms the turtle beak it does when he thinks hard. It’s usual to imagine the brain as a circuit board flashing with notions and answers, but with Smuts a notion is like a ball in a wooden bagatelle: you hear it echo all the way to a slot, where it clicks and stays forever. This is what happens now in his brainatelle.

  “I’m so fucked,” he croaks.

  A lengthy pause follows, during which officers strut around pointing at things and frowning. Apparently an interpreter will arrive, and the evening’s first witness. In the meantime I hear Smuts answer the occasional question in Japanese. It sounds like his kitchen French, he slides and bumps over it running.

  When we’re alone he hisses, “I think the octopus bit Keiko. They have beaks, you know. That’s why the boss hasn’t arrived. She must be at the hospital. Look at the symmetry: everyone’s either in hospital or jail. Some night, uh. Some coke. Have you still got the coke?”

  I look down and scratch my head.

  “You’re so fucked.”

  The sergeant’s desk, or that of his local equivalent, stands facing us and draws our gaze in default of anything more hopeful. After another long silence Smuts says without turning: “Hope you can pay for your own lawyer and your own food in jail. I’ll be struggling to look after myself.”

  “Hm. And your sponsor—?”

  “Get real—he did me a favor. Doesn’t mean he sends pocket money. Doesn’t mean he’s going to bring me up, and sew fucking labels into my school clothes. Pimpernel twat. Wake up!”

  Needless to say, our nimbus has crashed.* And in that way the spirit has of sampling outside conditions from time to time to refresh its decor of metaphors, this limbo that began as a glance across tanning beds has turned into bad sex in a Travelodge. All things, it seems, have a life span of innocence hurtling to dismay. All creation is a first clay vase made at school. Ah, nature, that vicious turd.

  Wistfully I look back on earlier times.

  “Surely mine’s the worse position,” I say. “My crimes are still in my pocket, and as a tourist I’d be unlikely to get bail. Whereas your only proven offense is a romp in a fish tank. At home you’d get off with a warning and be a legend for life.”

  “Immaterial. Here they can hold you weeks without charge. Meantime, Sardine Face’ll get me for the poisoning, and whatever else. I’ll get a sword through my eye in jail over Keiko.” Smuts turns a filthy gaze: “I just wish you’d tell me what the fuck you’re even doing here. This morning I had things under control.”

  The moment’s bleak. Never did a comrade more deserve the respect of truth. But against gray daybreak my plan looks foolish. I face the hardest choice of a friend: to be brutal or to humor. Being brutal means exposing the limbo, which would show its absurdity in this context, and set Smuts’s stubborn mind to dismantling it. I have to keep it safe from the absurd, safe from anything that might erode it—it’s all I have left, and its momentum grows by the hour. Death wishes like this may even be self-propelling, they may throw a switch at the outset, unleashing a juggernaut of Fortune, making it impossible to maneuver or change your mind.

  Pondering is called for. My diagram of Fortune has collapsed. For now, though, I’m aware of Smuts watching me, waiting for me to answer why I’m here.

  “Just came for a drink,” I finally say.

  “A drink?” His mouth falls open. “You were just going to get off a plane in Tokyo and have a drink? Mate”—he drops
his head—“mate, Putain.”

  An officer approaches and unties us, leading Smuts away down a corridor beside the charge desk. Smuts doesn’t turn to me. I watch him move off with a sticky gait, shining in wet trousers. “A drink,” I hear him mutter down the hall. “Tss.”

  My body cringes into a fetus. So much for Enthusiasms. Limbo was too rampant to unleash on others, or even to bring near them. Too despotic by far, a maelstrom of mayhem and death. And it was an airtight sealing of my fate, because limbo, with its sense that I had nothing to lose, coaxed out things that I still did have to lose.

  And lost them.

  After a while an officer comes for me. Behind him walks a wiry older woman, who is the interpreter. Her gaze slides around behind glasses. She explains that I’ll be searched while statements are taken elsewhere to clarify the night’s events. I move off down the corridor, noting that limbo had a form after all—it was a passage to a goal, a narrowing cone to it, and because the goal receded out of sight, the form itself dissolved. Enthusiasms aren’t sucked to it anymore, nor luck, because death has for the time being become impossible.*

  Whoosh. It’s gone.

  We enter a small interview room. Although a table and chairs are here, I’m told to stand. The strangeness of our gathering strikes me—the sphinx, the lady, and the officer, somehow together in Japan. The officer motions me to spread my limbs.