by Jeremy Bates
Part III
Shinjuku/Shibuya
Chapter 22
I flew down the concrete steps two at a time. At the first floor, I hesitated, then continued down one more flight, emerging in a well-lit subterranean parking lot. I hustled past rows of parked cars until I came to the ramp out. I followed the pedestrian walkway that hugged the ramp to the top. I ducked beneath the boom barrier and continued along an alleyway crammed with ranks of bicycles that led to a residential back street.
The houses were quaint yet cramped, many featuring tiny gardens. Eventually I came to a large commercial avenue. I ducked inside a 7-Eleven and asked the young female clerk for directions to the nearest train station. All smiles and bows, she told me to walk south for ten minutes.
When I reached the station—Horikirishōbuen, the blue-and-white sign read—it struck me that I had no money to purchase a ticket. No matter though. The ticket barriers were not mini fortresses to stymy fare evaders like their counterparts in Western countries. They merely sported waist-high paddles. I pushed brazenly through the barrier farthest from the clerk manning the ticket booth and stopped before an information board.
This station was on the Keisei Main Line and offered eastbound services to Narita Airport Terminal 1, and westbound services to central Tokyo.
I climbed the steps to the westbound platform.
∆∆∆
As the train sped along the elevated track, I stared out the window at the scenery whizzing by, playing over my escape in my mind while trying to work out my conflicting emotions. I had never gotten into a fight in my entire adult life. I wasn’t a violent person. Having said this, I didn’t feel remorse at punching the drill sergeant. He was a malfeasant who took gratification in the humiliation of others. However, I did feel bad—terrible really—at head-butting Dr. Kobayashi. He was a good man who had dedicated his life to helping others. He did not deserve what I did to him. Moreover, what if the head-butt caused him a more serious injury than a broken nose and concussion? What if he began to suffer migraines or vertigo or other long-term complications?
I told myself not to dwell on it. What was done was done and couldn’t be changed. In all likelihood, Dr. Kobayashi would be fine. A killer headache for the next few days, tape over his nose for the next couple of weeks. But after that he’d be as good as new.
Unfortunately, I was finding it difficult to conjure an equally positive outlook for my own future. Because what was I going to do now? I was no longer locked in a cage like an animal, but I had no money, no bank cards, no passport, no clothing of my own, no shelter.
“Out of the frying pan and into the fire,” crossed my thoughts, and right then the phrase had never seemed so apt.
Chapter 23
More than three million commuters use Shinjuku station each day, making it the busiest railway station in the world—a statistic not lost on me as I moved through the bustling shoulder-to-shoulder mobs.
Given I often stayed in Shinjuku during my visits to Japan, I didn’t have too much trouble navigating the arcades and hallways to the West Exit, which deposited me in Nishi-Shinjuku, the city’s business district.
The afternoon was warm, the air illogically fresh. I went west along the area’s famous electronic street, which was packed with retail stores selling phones and cameras and anything else you wanted. Ten minutes later shiny office buildings soared above me. Around the corner from the cathedral-like twin tower Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building was my destination, the Park Hyatt Tokyo.
An eager bellman showed me to a tranquil lobby on the second floor that featured dramatic sculptures and quirky wall art. The hotel occupied the top floors of a three-stepped skyscraper, and I took an elevator up to the forty-first floor, stepping out of the cab into a light-filled atrium called the Peak Bar and Lounge, where in the past I had enjoyed afternoon tea. I followed a confusing twist of hallways past a European restaurant and through a library to the elegantly decorated reception area.
A male attendant at one of the check-in tables beckoned me over.
“Good afternoon, sir,” he said, bowing respectfully. With his neatly trimmed hair and beaming smile and well-knotted necktie, he was as polished as someone making a little over minimum wage could be. “Do you have a reservation with us?”
“Yes,” I said, butterflies in my stomach. “Gaston Green.”
As he typed my name into his computer, I waited with bated breath. When I spotted the slightest frown crease his face, I knew exactly what he was going to tell me. The faint hope I’d been clinging onto sank like an anchor.
“Green?” the attendant said. “Can you spell that for me?”
“G-r-e-e-n,” I said tightly.
“Green, yes, that is what I entered. Unfortunately, I cannot find a reservation under that name. Could it be under a different name…?”
“Possibly,” I said, forging a courteous smile. “I will check and come back.”
∆∆∆
“Devastated” would be an understatement to describe how I felt as I made my way back toward Shinjuku station. Not because I should have been relaxing in a posh hotel room right then, ordering room service to my heart’s content, but because the fact the reservation didn’t exist confirmed the preposterous speculation that had been brewing beneath my thoughts these last few days. Because I remembered making the booking online with perfect clarity, damn it! Sure, mistakes can happen. A glitch with the hotel’s software, a human error. Something along these lines would have been my natural conclusion had this occurred on any other sojourn to Japan, and I would have patiently worked with the attendant to arrive at a solution.
Nevertheless, this was not any other trip; it was a descent down the rabbit hole where nothing was as it should be and the only explanation for the Bizarro World I found myself in was that, yes, somehow, inexplicably, I was in a timeline that was not my own.
∆∆∆
Heading away from the hotel, I tucked these miserable thoughts away the best I could. Attempting to solve an unanswerable problem would not only be a presumptuous waste of time, it would exacerbate my turmoil and perhaps drive me crazy in the process. Besides, if I wanted to avoid being apprehended by a police officer and carted back to the Tokyo Detention House, I had to get out of Dr. Kobayashi’s scrubs.
I had two options. Shoplift some new clothes, or pickpocket someone in the hopes they had money in their wallet, which seemed likely given Tokyo was a cash-dominant society due to its abundance of ATMs and low crime rate.
Back at Shinjuku station, I followed the yellow signs through the sprawling complex to reach the opposite side. Crossing a plaza, I entered Kabukicho, a shopping district jam-packed with neon-lit restaurants, izakayas, karaoke bars, pachinko parlors, and retail shops all stacked one on top of the other.
I found a spot near a row of ATMs and waited as inconspicuously as I could, which would have been much easier had I had a phone to fiddle with. Instead, I leaned against a wall with my hands folded behind my back, my eyes lowered for the most part.
Within minutes I spotted my target, a middle-aged man who had withdrawn money from one of the bank machines. I followed him for a block but could not work up the nerve to pluck his fat wallet free from the back pocket of his trousers. When he entered a movie theater, I gave up and returned to the ATMs.
I didn’t have to wait long for a second target. Another man, younger than the first, with an equally fat wallet bulging from his back pocket. I remained directly behind him as he weaved through the crowd, and just as I was about to attempt the old bump-and-grab he entered a gaming arcade.
I followed him inside.
The first floor was filled with people, photo booths, and brightly colored crane game machines. The man stopped before one of the latter and plunked some coins into it. Now or never, Gaston, I thought, and bumped gently into him from behind. Apologizing in Japanese, I patted him on the biceps with one hand and snatched his wallet with the other.
Glancing over his shoulder
, he appeared discombobulated at the sight of a foreigner and swiftly returned his attention to winning a Pikachu stuffed animal.
∆∆∆
As I hurried away from the arcade, I looked inside the wallet and found identification, loyalty cards, credit cards, receipts—and twenty thousand yen, or about two hundred dollars. Folding the notes in half, I stuck the loot in my breast pocket and dumped the wallet into a mailbox I passed, hoping it would find its way back to the owner, albeit a little lighter.
∆∆∆
A six-floor, gaudily designed Don Quijote chain discount store dominated a nearby intersection. A sign with the store’s iconic penguin mascot and the word WELCOME!! greeted me. Passing a pink pig humidifier spraying mist from its nostrils, I entered the labyrinth of cluttered aisles, where the idiom pile them high and sell them cheap was taken to the extreme, as the shelves were overflowing with everything and anything imaginable. Smartphone accessories, cosmetics, matcha snacks (including KitKat and Aero candy bars), high-end jewelry and accessories at slashed prices, electronics (from hot eyelash curlers to massage chairs), and home appliances (such as rice cookers and washing machines). There was even an aisle dedicated to toilet seats, most of which came with electronic bidets.
To add to the sensory overload, the store’s cartoonish theme tune “Miracle Shopping” was playing over speakers in perpetuity.
After nearly fifteen disorienting minutes, I found the men’s clothing section on one of the upper floors. I picked out socks, boxer briefs, a tee-shirt, black trousers, and a pair of oversized sunglasses. After trying on the shirt and trousers in a tiny change room, I returned to the first floor and paid for the purchases in cash.
A block away, in a McDonald’s restroom, I changed into my new duds, tossing the prison underwear and scrubs in the bin. Checking myself out in the mirror, I looked pretty darn good for an escaped prisoner—despite my black eye, which was now the color of a rotten prune.
I slipped on the sunglasses.
At the fast-food restaurant’s hectic front counter, I ordered a Big Mac combo with fries and a Coke, as well as two additional cheeseburgers. Gluttonous, but I was starving. I found a free window seat and ate the meal facing the street, people-watching as I thought about my next move, which involved gaining access to the internet. I was sure the McDonald’s offered free Wi-Fi. The problem was without a phone or computer, I had no way of connecting to it.
When I finished eating, I went hunting for a manga kissa, or internet café, which I knew to be everywhere in Tokyo, especially around train stations. Despite nearly everyone owning a smartphone with an internet connection, the cafés proliferated because they doubled as manga libraries, oases of calm in a non-stop concrete jungle.
A short time later I spotted a sign for a manga kissa on a higher floor of a multi-story building. Stepping off the elevator, I presented myself at the front desk, where an equine-faced, thin-hipped woman greeted me with a bow. Her fake-lashed brown eyes feigned spontaneous fascination each time I spoke in Japanese. Mostly I was asking about the payment packages. Initially I’d planned on getting an hour or two of internet only. But according to the laminated price sheet she showed me, there were twelve-hour packages available—and combined with the option of a private room, I realized I had just found low-budget accommodation for the night. I was also delighted to discover free showers on offer (though shampoo and a towel incurred a small charge), and samue—traditional old-man clothes—to relax in.
All told, everything set me back a little over two thousand yen—a bargain since any hotel room would be about five times that price.
The woman handed me a basket containing my room key, shower amenities, rolled towel, and folded samue. She led me down a wood-paneled hallway. Her mass of amber-dyed hair swished past her shoulder blades with each pigeon-toed step she took. Her stovepipe jeans hung low enough below the smooth knobs of her hipbones to make a plumber proud.
I entered a changing area, hung my recently purchased clothes on hangers, and stepped into one of three available shower stalls. The steaming water not only cleansed my skin but relaxed my knotted muscles and troubled mind. I remained beneath the spray for a good fifteen minutes before reluctantly shutting off the faucets. Once dry, I changed into the old-man clothes and went looking for my private room, finding it at the end of a hall littered with slippers. I followed etiquette and left my slippers in front of the door to my budget abode, which featured a reclining chair, a wood desk with a burgundy leather blotter, a computer and monitor, and a Blu-Ray player. A lamp with a lozenge-shaped shade stood in one corner, a sink in another. A rattan fan wobbled and creaked overhead.
Setting the basket containing my belongings on the floor, I sat in the chair and powered on the computer. As I waited for the machine to boot up, I became antsy and stressed all over again. By the time I accessed the web browser, I was borderline nauseous.
This was due to a desperate kind of hope, which right then felt like the worst kind of hope, because a part of me knew it was really wishful thinking. And when my search for “Taured” didn’t bring up the country in which I was born, but rather a character in the MMORPG World of Warcraft, I slammed my fist into the keyboard, causing it to bleep in alarm.
I performed several more searches for “Taured,” combining the country name with different keywords. Yet as I’d feared and expected, I uncovered nothing relevant.
Taured did not exist.
Not in this world, at any rate.
∆∆∆
Andorra, however, did exist, I told myself determinedly, and I started researching everything I could about it.
∆∆∆
According to several websites, Neolithic humans had first settled the small landlocked region on the Iberian Peninsula that would become Andorra during the Ice Age. Over the centuries it came under the influence of the Romans, who spread their laws and culture to the scattering of inhabitants, and the Visigoths, who spread Christianity. When the Muslim Empire annexed much of the peninsula, ousting the ruling Visigoths, a man named Mark Almugaber led an army against them, fighting on the side of Charlemagne and the Franks. As a sign of his gratitude, Charlemagne proclaimed the region an independent nation, naming it for the first time “Andorra,” in reference to the Biblical Canaanite valley of Andor. Two centuries later the marriage of the Spanish overlord of Andorra and a French count led to both Spain and France laying claim to the principality. Eventually the conflict was resolved by an agreement that stated Andorra’s sovereignty would be apportioned by both countries—and this “co-prince” arrangement continued to this day.
Why was any of this significant?
Because the history I’d learned in school about Taured also began with Charlemagne, only the army who helped him keep the invading Moors at bay was led not by Mark Almugaber but Louis Taured—the man after whom Charlemagne not only named the region but also made its overlord. There was never any matter of royal marriages or bickering heirs or proprietary claims of competing foreign powers to muddy the waters of who was the legitimate ruler of the principality.
Taured, since its founding, was, and always had been, under France’s control.
Slumping back in my chair, I thought about the so-called butterfly effect in which minor changes in a complex system are believed to have consequential effects. And I found myself believing this phenomenon to be real, for all it took was one man (Almugaber) instead of another (Taured), spearheading an important battle, to change the name and direction of a country—my country—forever.
I tried to be excited about this revelation. I should have been excited about this revelation, as it offered an explanation as to how and why two different countries occupied the same physical location, albeit in different dimensions, on the world map.
Much to my dismay, however, I found myself decidedly not excited but blackly depressed, because it didn’t change the fact—rather, it only seemed to confirm the fact—that I was trapped in an alien universe with no way of getting home.
Chapter 24
My mother, Claire, is a silver-haired, shiny-eyed woman with a kind heart and a forgiving nature. Retired now, she’d spent most of her life as a truck-stop cashier. Setting gas pumps, weighing incoming rigs, and selling scratch-off tickets was not a glamorous job by any means, but she’d never complained. She woke up every morning at the crack of dawn, made my father and brothers and myself a warm breakfast, dressed in her uniform (which she took pride in keeping meticulously starched and laundered), and drove twenty kilometers to the truck stop at the base of the Pyrenees mountains. She’d worked there for more than twenty-five years, beginning when my younger brother, Arthur, started elementary school.
My father Victor was a large yet deceptively quick man with a pockmarked face and predatory eyes. He’d been everything my mother was not: introverted, foul-tempered, prone to violent outbursts, both verbally and physically. In other words, one unpleasant son of a bitch. In fact, he used to scare my brothers and myself senseless when he was in one of his Bad Moods, which often manifested on nights he missed dinner and came home smelling of the bar.
Victor Green never stumbled or slurred when inebriated. He was just more bellicose and violent than usual. These were the times he’d hit my brothers or me—if he could find us or catch us. Arthur and I would usually hide away in the room we shared until he passed out on the sofa with the TV playing. Our oldest brother, Paul, would foolishly confront Victor, especially if the bastard turned his ire on our mother. Over the years the rewards for his gallantry had included a broken collar bone, a shattered forearm, two dislocated shoulders from being thrown around like a ragdoll, and countless cuts and bruises he did his best to cover up the next day when he went to school.