Non-Stop Till Tokyo

by KJ Charles

  “I can’t take the chance.”

  “Yeah.”

  My new phone shrilled a tinny version of “La Bamba” into the peaceful air of the garden, and I answered it hastily.

  “Done it,” said Yoshi. “Taka’s sending two men to watch her now, and we’re setting up a move to a private hospice with security. It’ll be pretty expensive, Kechan.”

  “The money doesn’t matter.”

  “No, but…I’ve emptied the account. I have some savings—”

  “Might it be best if you kept that for emergencies? I mean, if this gets worse, or if—you know, if anything happens to me.”

  “Kechan…”

  “We need money available at a minute’s notice, Yoshi, and you’re the guy on the spot. I’ll fill up the panic fund again, and you make sure you can get hold of your cash for later, okay? That way, whatever happens, we’re all three covered. No?”

  “Yeah,” said Yoshi. “Okay. Thanks. I’m sorry.”

  “How’s Noriko?”

  “Not good. They’ve operated but there’s bleeding on her brain. She’s still unconscious. They don’t know what will happen. Maybe she’ll wake up, but…” He sounded exhausted and miserable and hopeless, and I suddenly thought, maybe I should have let him spend his money, even if he wouldn’t make the rent.

  “Yoshi, listen, I have to say thank you for all you’ve done. You’ve been wonderful. You really have. I don’t know what we’d have done without you.”

  “I’ve done nothing,” he said savagely. “Nothing. Nori-chan’s in hospital and you’re being chased by yakuza and I haven’t done anything!”

  “Honey, you saved my life,” I told him as forcefully as I could. “You got Taka to send help, remember? And it came right when I needed it. They nearly got me.”

  “What?”

  “Seriously. You were right about my phone—I didn’t turn off the ring, and they called it, and they chased me, and just when I thought they had me, Taka’s friend appeared, and he beat the crap out of them. It was marvellous. Well, it was really scary, but so impressive.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah. He’s great. I feel so much safer now. I’m going to be fine, and it’s thanks to you. And please thank Taka for me too,” I made myself add.

  “I know you’re still angry with him…”

  “I was wrong about that,” I lied. “I should have listened to you. I really wouldn’t have made it this far without you.”

  “And Taka’s friend. He said he sent the big Hawaiian guy, is that right?” Yoshi was clearly trying to be his normal perky self. It wasn’t entirely convincing, but it was something. “I met him once. He’s kind of gorgeous, isn’t he?”

  “Um…it’s a bit different.”

  “Oh, Kechan. You’re always down on men.”

  “Takes one to know one.” I was rewarded with a choke of laughter. “I have to go. Be safe, and thank you. You’re such a good friend.”

  “Watch out for yourself.”

  I hung up, taking a deep breath and feeling a little tension evaporate. Yoshi had definitely sounded better at the end of the call. If I could just make him believe that he was instrumental in saving my hide, it would be something for him to hold on to, something he’d got right.

  Even if I had to be nice about that nutcase Taka.

  I turned to the nutcase’s friend. He was staring down at me with that cold, blank expression.

  “Yoshi’s got Noriko safe,” I said, wondering what was wrong now. “He’s—”

  “I heard.”

  “Right. Well, I need to find somewhere to charge my phone, because I’m sure they’ll be ringing back.” I bit my lip. “The man who rang me didn’t mention those guys in the alley. Do you think they hadn’t called in yet?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Yeah. It was a great idea, taking those SIM cards. I suppose they’re, you know, not likely to start moving any time soon. Did I say thank you for doing that?”

  He exhaled heavily.

  “Well, thank you.” I was beginning to feel distinctly nervous now. “So, you’re the expert. Where—”

  “Jesus. Shut up, will you?”

  “What?”

  “Shut up,” he said viciously, and there was a hardness in his face that made my stomach sink. “You think we’re all stupid?”

  “I don’t—”

  “Shut it. You may be used to twisting men around your little finger, but you can damn well forget it with me. Got it? No more nicey-smiley crap. No making friends and agreeing with everything I say and telling people how wonderful I am when I’m right next to you, like I’d forget that two hours ago you were bawling me out. I’m not one of your paying boyfriends, understand? Jesus, look at yourself.” He was staring at me, and his expression was dark and disgusted. “You grovel to the yakuza, you sell that other girl down the river, you play your boyfriend like a fish, you agree to any fucking thing I say if you think it’ll get you ahead. And you say you’re not a hooker. Like hell you aren’t.”

  I stared at him, those dark eyes, the hard mouth, and I turned and ran away.

  There was nothing else I could do. My face was burning, and hot tears were pressing on my eyes as I shoved my way through a gaggle of obāsan. I felt nauseated.

  That bastard. Goddammit, how dared he? He was completely wrong about me. Wrong about the money. Wrong about me trying to flatter him. I’d only been trying to make Yoshi feel better…

  Alright, so I’d been playing it up a bit, but did that matter? Was it that bad to try and make people feel good? To try to be friends?

  What I did was completely different from sleeping with clients. I just…

  They paid me to be their friend, and I was, till the money ran out. Like I’d been Ito-san’s friend on the bus, till her usefulness ended.

  “What am I supposed to do, then?” I said out loud. I wasn’t a gigantic thug, I couldn’t hit people or scare them. I didn’t have a family or protection or a gun. I had likeability. I made people like me, and if I couldn’t make them like me any more, then I had nothing.

  The path took me through a copse of trees that had been artfully deformed to look authentically twisted with age. I was half-blinded with tears, and the damn garden was huge, and I didn’t know where the hell I would go anyway.

  Just because I tried to be nice. What right did he have to say such horrible things? I’d only been trying to be friendly…

  I’d been trying to use him, and he’d seen through me effortlessly, and I felt as humiliated as I ever had.

  I reached the central lake, and the exit had to be round the other side, but I had run out of energy. Exit to where, anyway? Where was I going to go? What was I going to do?

  I was sitting on the wooden planks of a small jetty with my arms round my knees, staring at the plum blossom, when the whole structure began to shake rhythmically.

  “Oh good. An earthquake,” I said, without looking round.

  There was a deep, reluctant chuckle, then the footsteps paused. “Think this thing’ll hold me?”

  “No. The supports are rotten. You’ll send the whole thing into the lake.”

  “And we’ll all drown, right?”

  “Probably.” I stared forward as he lowered himself onto the creaky but sound boards.

  After a moment, he sighed. “You going to sit here all day?”

  “Screw you, you fat miserable bastard.” I savoured the silence behind me for a second, then added, “Sorry, I thought you wanted me to be honest.”

  “Yup, I did,” he said with a touch of grimness, and something else in his tone that I couldn’t quite read. “I was out of line back there.”

  “Yeah. You were.”

  “Don’t get carried away. I stand by it—”

  “Well, you shouldn’t,” I spat, swinging round to glare at him. “Because I don’t care if you believe me or not, but it was Yoshi I was trying to make feel better, not you. He’s lost his job because of this, and he’s blaming himself about Noriko. He
thinks he’s let everyone down. I was trying to make him believe he’s done right by me, and I don’t care if you think that was manipulative, because he didn’t need to hear me say Taka’s an obnoxious psycho who’s sent me some washed-up lump.” I turned back to stare across the water, not wanting to look at him any more. “And if you think I should have told the yakuza where to get off like I’m some kind of action hero, you’re a moron. You think I’m going to piss them off when they know exactly where to find Noriko? Oh, and incidentally, if you don’t like people making a big effort to be friendly to you, maybe you shouldn’t make it so difficult, you miserable misanthropic grouchy foul-tempered son of a bitch!”

  My voice cracked on the last part. I bit the inside of my cheek and fixed my eyes, wide open, on the lake.

  There was a long pause, then a sigh that ruffled the hairs on the back of my neck.

  “Ah, crap,” he said. “My damn temper.”

  “I thought big fat men were supposed to be jolly and cheerful.”

  “That’s because if we hit snitty little people, they break. Hell. Listen, whatever, you don’t need a hard time right now. It just…when you’re my size, people make a lot of assumptions. Whether you can even read and write, you know? And I don’t appreciate being played for a fool.”

  “It must be awful for you. Much worse than people assuming you’re a callous manipulative hooker.”

  “Alright, I take back the hooker bit,” he said, with less apology than I felt it warranted. “You telling me you aren’t manipulative?”

  “Do you think I have a choice?” I demanded, and my voice broke properly this time. I pressed my lips together hard, sure if I did start to cry he’d accuse me of turning on the tears.

  I was looking through a crack in the planks at the dark waters shifting below. The lake looked thick and viscous from this angle, gently swelling and sinking as though with a giant heartbeat. “Maybe you didn’t get me wrong,” I heard myself say. “Maybe I’m calculating and manipulative, and everything you said. But Yoshi needed to hear what I told him. He’s lonely and he’s desperate, and he feels like a failure. I had to make him feel better.”

  “Thought you said he wasn’t your boyfriend.”

  “He isn’t.”

  “No?”

  “It’s not compulsory,” I snapped, twisting round again. “Actually, it’s not even optional. And while we’re on the subject, seeing as apparently you’ve got some ideas about tonight, let me remind you all this started with a murder in a love hotel, and I have very little imagination.”

  Chanko threw back his head and laughed like summer thunder. A duck took panicked flight.

  “Goddamn, how do you ever get away with that girly act? Ah, hell. Okay, I’m sorry I bawled you out. You want to start over, Butterfly?”

  As simple as that?

  “I want you to stop calling me that,” I told him, holding on to my anger but feeling its energy drain away. “Why are you calling me that?”

  He whistled a few notes of a vaguely familiar tune. I’m not musical, but I took a guess. “Don’t tell me, Madame Butterfly. Thanks a bunch. What’s wrong with Kerry?”

  “You tell me. I don’t seem to have much luck figuring you out.”

  “You could stop jumping to conclusions,” I said, but my heart wasn’t in it. He’d jumped to the right ones, even if he’d missed some of the details. “Look, I need you. I’m scared, my friend’s in a coma, I’ve got the mob on my back and I don’t know what to do. So if you’re sticking around, I’ll try and be nice—” I felt the air temperature drop. “Or not be nice, seeing as it upsets you. What is your problem?”

  “Why do you have to be what I want?”

  “Because I need you!” I almost screamed. “I need you to protect me from the yakuza, okay? And I don’t know why you’d do it if you don’t even like me, and whatever Taka’s paying you—”

  “Not everything’s for sale.” There was something in his voice that shut me up. “Listen up, Butterfly. I’m going to protect you because I promised Taka I would. You don’t pay me in sex, you don’t pay me in money, and it don’t matter a damn if I like you or you like me, because nothing—and I mean nothing—is going to get rid of me till you’re out of trouble. Not the yakuza. Not the Hello Kitty act, God help me. Not even the real you. So drop the act, and we’ll get along fine. Okay?”

  I swallowed. “Really?”

  “Yup.”

  “What do you owe Taka?”

  “Why do I have to owe him anything?”

  “Everyone else does. Fine, you’re a saint. A one-man charitable institution for the relief of hostesses. They’ll deify you as a Shinto god. I’ll have them make a shrine with an extra-wide gate.”

  “O-kay. When I said I wanted you to be honest…”

  “Changed your mind already?”

  “Hell, no.” I could hear the grin in his voice.

  I was feeling almost buoyant on a sudden wave of relief. I still didn’t have the first idea what his problem was, and I couldn’t even begin to work him out, but he’d said he was going to stick around, and I’d have staked my life that he meant it.

  Come to that, I was staking my life.

  “Okay,” I said. “Start over. My name’s Kerry, don’t call me Butterfly.”

  “My name’s Joe, call me Chanko. Nice to meet you, Butterfly.”

  “You too, Joe. Look, I’ve been run ragged for the past two days, I haven’t slept properly for God knows how long and I’m still dizzy readjusting to daylight hours. I’d like to find a hotel where I can have a shower and a couple of hours’ nap, and recharge this damned phone so the goons can shout at me some more. Can we do that?”

  “Sounds good to me.” He paused for a second, then continued in Japanese, “Okay, let’s go find ourselves that love hotel. One with a big, strong bed.”

  I started to ask what the hell that meant, saw he was holding back a grin, and realised that there were three obāsan standing on the jetty, staring at us open-mouthed. Two looked scandalised. The third made an economical but expressive hand gesture at me, with a questioning lift of the eyebrows.

  “Not nearly as big as you’d think,” I assured her, and trotted off after my protector, wishing I could see his face.

  Chapter Five

  I woke up in the dark.

  I’d been living a nocturnal life for so long that I could scarcely remember waking up except in the midafternoon, but I was confused. The smell of stale cigarette smoke, trace elements of cheap perfume and a lot of cleaning products meant… Was I at the Primrose Path?

  Of course I wasn’t. I was in a love hotel with a sumo wrestler.

  And he wasn’t on the large double bed. I’d have noticed.

  I opened my eyes. The room actually had a window, which was unusual; it was thickly net curtained, but it allowed in a little sodium light from outside.

  Chanko was sitting on the floor in front of the window, cross-legged. I couldn’t see his face, but I heard the slow, shallow breaths, saw the huge shoulders gently rise and fall.

  Was he meditating?

  I could see him as a monk, I reflected sleepily, one of the fighting sects who had defended their temples with righteous violence through Japan’s vicious history of internal wars. A monk or a samurai, a warrior whose whole existence and purpose was only to serve his daimyo.

  That made Taka a feudal lord. Well, from what I’d read they had mostly been madder than a sackful of rats, so he’d have fitted right in. I could see him contemplating a chrysanthemum under a yellow moon while his warriors crucified a hundred peasants on bamboo poles…Chanko by his side in the thick, padded cloth armour of a noble retainer, impassively gazing on…but the peasants had spiky peroxide hair, and they were wearing shiny blue suits…

  “What did you say?”

  I jolted, realising I’d been drifting off to sleep again. “Wha’?”

  “You shouted something.”

  “Did not.”

  “Yeah, you did. You need to ge
t up or go to sleep for real. Want the light on?”

  I seemed to be wearing only a T-shirt and knickers. “No, leave it,” I muttered, rolled out of bed and hurried the couple of steps to the shower.

  Love hotels are something you get or you don’t. Some people would say that hiring a room for sex, with a vibrator vending machine in one corner and a karaoke set for two in the other, is a bit sleazy. I love them. They’re among the cheapest beds you can get in Japan, and the bathrooms are always well stocked with shampoo, toothbrush, toothpaste, comb, razor—everything disposable, everything to make you respectable again once you’re ready to leave.

  Judging by the damp pile of towels, Chanko had showered while I slept, but he’d left me plenty of toiletries, and they all had English pop-song quotations printed on them. Not entirely familiar ones, though.

  “‘Of course I’ve had it in the ear before’?” I said, stepping out of the wet-room swathed in white towelling.

  “Doesn’t surprise me one bit,” Chanko remarked from his position near the window.

  “No, smartass, it was printed on the soap wrapper, and I can’t work out where it’s from.”

  “Yeah, I know. It was annoying me too. Until I got it.”

  “Is that what you were meditating about? Alright, I give up, what is it?”

  “You’ll get it eventually. Wouldn’t want to spoil your fun.”

  “Oh, come on, tell me.”

  “Nope.”

  “You’re not going to leave me in suspense, are you?” I knelt and delved in my bag for clean clothes, making sure I stayed covered.

  “Yup.”

  “Tell me,” I wailed, swinging towards him and catching him looking right at me. I was covered in towelling, with less skin showing than when I’d been in the pink dress, but I suddenly felt very naked underneath.

  Our eyes met briefly, and then he tipped his head back and let his heavy eyelids droop, apparently unruffled. But his voice had a bit of extra gravel in it as he said, “‘Lust for Life’. Iggy Pop.”

  “I knew that,” I insisted, and dived for the bathroom again.

  I wasn’t used to rows, or the aftermath of rows. I don’t have rows. I smile, and the resentment smoulders like a deep-down burn.