Coin Locker Babies (12 page)

The winter he turned fourteen, the hotel was full of skiers, and Tatsuo and Emiko were still doing their routine for the dinner show. One evening, a young drunk leapt up on the stage while Emiko was in the middle of a handstand and started to pull off her leotard. When the emcee and one of the stagehands tried to get the man to leave, he began tossing chairs around the room. Some of his friends joined in, smashing plates, turning over tables, and yelling “She’s a Filipina, she’s
got
to be a stripper!” Emiko stood alone on the stage in her torn costume, crying her eyes out. At this point, the manager arrived on the scene, and Tatsuo overheard him mumble to himself “Absolutely hopeless.”

“What did you say?” asked Tatsuo.

“I said it looks absolutely hopeless,” the manager repeated, running to phone the police.

Tatsuo was bursting with excitement. Here it was when he least expected it: the longed-for situation. He ran to his room for the gun and was back outside the ballroom in almost no time, but when he kicked in the door and yelled “Get your hands up!”
the melee was already over and the staff had begun cleaning up the mess. By then, however, it was too late to dampen Tatsuo’s enthusiasm, and he ended up pulling the trigger anyway. Three times. One shot caught a maid in the shoulder as she was sweeping up a pile of broken glass.

Tatsuo, after being evaluated by a psychiatrist, was packed off to an institution for troubled youths. Two months later, at Emiko’s urging and with her help, he escaped, and the pair went to Tokyo. Tatsuo found work operating a lathe in a machine shop, but everything about the place reminded him of guns, and before long he was making his own. When he had four working models, he hit on the idea of selling three to buy ammunition, but almost as soon as he showed up with the homemade guns at a firearms store, he was arrested. He spent the next three years being shunted from the court system to a mental hospital and finally to a home for juvenile delinquents. His only visitor during this time was Emiko, who told him that his parents had gone back to the Philippines.

By the end of his time in there, he was determined, again with Emiko’s help, to turn over a new leaf. Still, he knew he couldn’t live without guns, so he decided to join the army. When he appeared at the recruiting office, however, the officers in charge found it hard not to laugh, saying that they’d never had the pleasure of reviewing a candidate who had not only failed to graduate from junior high school but came to them fresh from an institution.

Tatsuo and Emiko retired to an obscure section of Tokyo, where Emiko got work in a cabaret. Then, one night, she didn’t come home. Asking around, Tatsuo learned that she was working as an acrobat at a place called The Market in Toxitown, and that was when he decided to slip through the fence himself and do what he could to find her. He made guns he sold to gangsters to
support himself while he searched, and eventually he fell in with a fairy with a sweet voice who lived on the second floor of this old factory. “And that was Hashi,” Tatsuo said to end his story, as he painted the mercurochrome on Kiku’s cheek.

The hole made by the barbed wire took four days to heal; four days of listening to Tatsuo’s nonstop chatter every time Hashi went off to work. It started with his autobiography, moved on to Hashi’s job, then the history and specifications of every conceivable type of firearm, the lowdown on every character in the neighborhood, and so forth. Late in the evening, Hashi would put on his makeup and leave for The Market, not to return until almost dawn, if then; according to Tatsuo he was going to “singing lessons.” During the day he mostly slept, waking only when the sun was already low in the sky. Then he would make dinner for Kiku and Tatsuo, which, since Kiku had arrived, consisted of their old favorite, rice omelettes. The hotplate, Kiku gathered, like everything else electric in Toxitown, ran off power siphoned illegally from city power lines. As they picked at their meal, Kiku and Hashi talked almost exclusively about what they could remember of the old days at the orphanage.

It didn’t take much imagination for Kiku to figure out what Hashi did when he went off to The Market in drag. Remembering the lump-man at Blind Mice, he tried not to think about it. On the fourth evening, however, as Hashi sat down to put on his makeup, Kiku announced that he was going with him. “I’ve got some shopping to do,” he said.

So an hour later, accompanied by Tatsuo who thought he might have another look for Emiko, they left the factory. The narrow street was lined with tin-roofed shacks, and here and there were the remnants of a cinderblock building invariably marked
with red paint. Hashi warned Kiku not to touch the red-splashed walls or the earth itself. “That’s where the stuff that eats holes in your face is worst.” The eaves of the shacks were decked with strings of tiny Christmas lights that attracted swarms of insects. Groups of children played in the occasional empty lot, hopping about, kicking cans, trying to fly a kite, or catching lizards. One little girl stood clutching a rag doll next to the burning body of a dog, while nearby a group of boys pulled the tires from an abandoned car.

The road had been almost entirely stripped of asphalt, revealing a damp red clay that stuck to their shoes, and puddles covered with white foam that gave off a sour smell. Apparently, in this street, all the wooden buildings had been torn down and the scraps used to put up the makeshift shacks. Several of them seemed to be businesses: a grocer’s of some kind, a clothing shop, a liquor store. The night was hot and humid, and they sweated heavily as they walked. As they were passing a place lit from within by a pale, colored light, they could hear a woman moaning and shrieking all at once.

“This whole street is full of crazies,” Hashi said. “If somebody tries to talk to you, just ignore them.”

A crowd of people had collected at the end of the block, all pointing at the roof of a house across the street. One of them, a man with cloudy, yellowed eyes, was shouting, “It’s Superman! It’s Superman!”

Actually, it was a naked baby, perched precariously on the roof and crying at the top of its lungs.

“Fly!” shouted the man with the yellow eyes. “Fly, Banzai Boy!” The ladies of the street, all out for a look in nothing but their slips, were adding comments of their own.

“The sun’s gone down, you silly boy, you won’t get a tan at this
time of day!” yelled one. “Poor baby, oh you poor, poor baby!” cried another.

A fat woman in black underwear stuck her head out of a window near where the child was tottering about and bellowed: “It’s my baby!” She then tried to scoop him up in a bug net but, realizing it was a waste of time, turned on the crowd outside and with a “What are
you
staring at—this ain’t a freak show!” slammed the window shut.

“Did you see the mark on that baby’s butt?” It was the man with the yellow eyes again. “That’s the sign! He’s the one! The one who’s going to save the world. That baby could flap those ears and fly right out of here like a pink elephant. Whaddya think about
that
, young man? Whaddya think?” He had grabbed hold of Kiku’s shoulder and was shaking it as he spoke.

“Don’t pay any attention to him,” said Tatsuo, pulling him loose. Kiku had a sudden urge to run upstairs and beat up the woman in black underwear; and while he was at it, he wouldn’t have minded finding the father-and-child begging team he’d seen in Shinjuku and bashing their heads in, either. Yet it wasn’t exactly that he wanted to get back at parents for mistreating their children: he was just struck by how helpless children were, by the way they could only sit there and cry, even when they got locked away in a box, that there was nothing for them to do but thrash around a bit and wail. He’d once seen on television that a baby giraffe could stand up and run an hour after birth; things would be different if human babies could do the same. If I could have done that, I’d already have beaten the shit out of them all by now, he thought.

They had stopped again. Looking over at Kiku, Tatsuo winked and pointed toward a window where a purple light was hanging.

“If you can manage to keep quiet, this one should be in full
swing about now. What do you think, pole boy, want to have a peek?” Tatsuo brought over a large drum filled with rotting fish and signaled to Kiku to climb up on the rim. From this perch, Kiku could see through the window. The first thing that caught his eye was a large Buddhist altar on one wall festooned with little lavender-colored plaques bearing the names of somebody’s ancestors. Beneath the altar was an expanse of white that Kiku first took to be a mattress but gradually came to realize was a woman’s ass. The owner was so flabby that Kiku couldn’t make out where the buttocks ended and the thighs began, but somewhere in the middle, where the wrinkles all seemed to come together, a pale penis could be seen thrusting its way now and again up into the light. And no ordinary penis it was, either, but an enormous thing as thick as Kiku’s arm, though not particularly hard. As Kiku watched, the woman pulled free and rolled off the man. Lumbering over to a washbasin, she scooped up some ice cubes, popped them in her mouth and, like a blimp coming to earth, returned to settle on the owner of the limpish dick. She then began stroking and teasing and icing it down with her tongue, and Kiku was admiring the way her gold teeth glittered in the soft light when Tatsuo gave his trouser leg a tug as a sign that his time was up.

Quietly, Kiku hopped down from the drum.

“Well, how was it?” Tatsuo asked.

“She’s beautiful,” he whispered as Tatsuo clambered up and peered through the curtain.

“Whaaaat?!” Tatsuo squealed, his voice rising in volume. “You liar! Beautiful? She’s a pig!” As he turned toward Kiku, he lost his footing on the rim and slipped down among the fish, toppling the drum and sending a wave of half-decayed things into the street. In a moment, a cloud of flies had gathered, and before he could
get clear, the woman, her head draped in a cotton scarf and her body wrapped in a towel, leaned out the window.

“Excuuuuuse me! Young man! Who exactly were you calling a pig? Not me by any chance?” She lit a cigarette and glared at him, flapping her hand to keep the flies away. “If you were referring to me, I assure you you’re mistaken. I don’t much appreciate rude jokes, dear boy. You see, I used to be in the movies, in Hong Kong; made almost fifty pictures. I may be getting a bit loose around the edges, but I’m not finished yet. Oh no. You
betcha
I’m not finished… and I swear I’ll murder the motherfucker who calls me a pig!” Her voice had risen to a howl.

At this point Kiku and company thought they should withdraw, but when they turned to go, another woman blocked their path, brandishing a kitchen knife.

“Was it you guys turned over the goldfish bowl? Didn’t you know? If you turn over the bowl, the fish die. Guess you’ll have to clean it up.” Meanwhile, the woman in the window was offering to inject Tatsuo’s prick with a shot of silicon, an offer that made him giggle nervously.

“What’s so funny, punk? Sounds like you’re just itching for that shot,” the fat woman screamed, shaking her hair into a wild bush and finishing with a tearful “Baaaastard!”

By this time, the neighbors were peering out of their shacks.

“Why the fuck do I have to take this from these bastards?” she continued. “Where does a punk like this get off calling me a pig?”

“Can’t blame a guy for telling the truth,” laughed one of the spectators just loudly enough to be heard from her window. For his trouble, the woman threw an empty bottle at him, breaking the pane of glass next to his head.

“Shit, lady, what the hell do you think you’re doing? It’s bad enough without having to watch the sows wallow in their sty.”
While improvising other insults, he knocked the rest of the pane out of the window and jumped down into the street. The man, who was about three times the size of Tatsuo, may in fact have had a neck but his shoulders were too knotted with muscle for it to be visible. He wore nothing but boxer shorts and a T-shirt, which he peeled off and began to twirl around his head.

“Laaaaadies and gentlemen! In the red corner, at two hundred and ninety-nine pounds, Ortega Saito!” he bellowed as he danced in a little circle. When he’d finished his introduction, he carefully set the drum the right way up, then asked his audience, “Now which of you assholes is to blame for this?”

“Him! HIM!” cried the fat lady, pointing at Tatsuo. “He killed the goldfish, and he called me—me, the most famous cunt in Hong Kong—a PIG! It’s all his fault!” The words had scarcely left her mouth when Tatsuo felt himself being lifted off the ground by a fistful of his hair.

“They say,” he heard the neckless wrestler tell him in a friendly voice, “that pulling the hair smooths the face and relieves depression. Did you know that?” Tatsuo, mute with pain and fear, said nothing. “I’m asking how you like the massage, buddy. Say something,” the man shouted in his ear. Kiku chose this moment to aim a kick at the wrestler’s belly, but succeeded only in numbing his own leg; the man hardly flinched. Seconds later, an arm lashed out and knocked Kiku back head over heels into the gutter, where he came to rest with a thud and lay still for a while.

“You’re that Filipino kid, aren’t you?” the wrestler asked Tatsuo. “I had a tag-team partner once, a guy from the Philippines. He was another wimp, too, like you. Used to spray his balls with cologne before every match, but they stank anyway… And you know,” he added, yanking Tatsuo a little higher, “the thing is, I just replaced the glass in that window day
before yesterday. Now I take it you were peeping in the lady’s room, that it? Well, as punishment, what we’re going to do is rip an ear off here.” He grabbed his ear and began to pull. Tatsuo let out a piercing scream.

“Please, mister!” This came from Hashi. “I’ll pay for the window; just let him go.”

“Oh, it’s you, the fairy. You want me to let your friend go? OK. Then you’ll have to entertain us—do one of those tricks you fairies do, whistle with your asshole or something.” Tatsuo was still wailing, and his legs twitched uncontrollably. There was blood where his earlobe was beginning to peel away from his head. “Or better still,” said the wrestler again, “how ’bout having the Filipino kid tell us what he saw in the lady’s boudoir. Go on, kid, tell us a story.”