Piercing (7 page)

8

KAWASHIMA LOOKED AT HIS wristwatch for about the twentieth time, checking it against the digital clock embedded in the side-table, but it was still only two minutes past six. No reason to expect a woman in that line of business to be punctual, of course. She was coming by taxi, and an unexpected traffic jam could easily eat up half an hour. Even the masseuse he’d called the other night had been almost forty minutes late, after all. He kept telling himself things like this, but it wasn’t doing much good.

He had turned off the heat a while ago, and the room was cooler now, but his hands were still perspiring. The brand new black leather gloves looked slightly ridiculous with sweat soaking through the palms. He decided to review his notes, to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything vital.

So far everything had gone like clockwork. He’d taken a hotel bus from the west exit of Shinjuku Station and arrived at the entrance to the Keio Plaza right on schedule, at two-fifty-five. It was Friday afternoon and an auspicious day according to the lunar calendar, which made for a lot of weddings. The lobby swarmed with reception guests, and since the hotel was also hosting a gathering of Shinjuku-ward accountants and a conference for computer manufacturers, the counters at the front desk were swamped. Kawashima scarcely drew a glance from the beleaguered and somewhat grumpy desk clerk, and none of the bellboys got anywhere near him. He scoured the crowd in the lobby but saw no one he knew.

The room, on the twenty-ninth floor, looked out on the Tocho - the soaring new Municipal Government Office complex. The ice pick and knife and change of clothes were in paper sacks inside the overnight bag he’d bought at a shop in Haneda Airport - a dark brown synthetic leather bag like you might find anywhere. He’d changed into the cheap new suit and donned the glasses inside a stall in the airport restroom, and had managed to find a discarded sports daily from the Kansai district. Because of the crush in the lobby, he’d exchanged only a few words with the clerk when checking in, and though he’d used a Kansai accent, it was unlikely the clerk would even remember that. Whether to proceed with the misdirection scheme by leaving the sports daily in the room was something he could decide later on, after it was all over.

Reviewing the notes helped calm him somewhat. He looked out at the Tocho, with its hundreds of lighted windows. On the street below was a tour bus from which family groups had spilled out to take photos and videos with the futuristic building as backdrop. From beyond the glass came a sound like a brewing storm. The winter solstice was near, and it was shockingly cold out there, but these tourists from the hinterlands didn’t seem to mind. He could see their scattered camera flashes, like the last bursts of life from the firework sparklers of his childhood. Since getting together with Yoko the sensation hadn’t been quite as pronounced, but even now, whenever he saw families together, a cold little wave seemed to ripple through him. This wave was now lapping against his memory banks, uncovering an image from the past. Mother smiling as she poses the beloved little one for photos in front of the house. It’s a sunny day, but she’s using a flash. The beloved one waving me over to pose with him. I shake my head, and now Mother’s smile vanishes. Holding the camera in both hands, she turns to stare at me with empty eyes.
Get angry
, I’m thinking.
Hurry up and hit me
. She just stands there with that stony expression.
Come on
, do
it
. Staring right through me, as if I were a piece of furniture or a rock or bug rather than a human being.

To sweep this image from his mind, Kawashima tried to conjure up the firm white abdomen of the young woman who was presumably making her way to his room. On the phone, the man at the S&M club had said she was petite and fair-skinned and a bit shy. This man’s voice and way of speaking had been very much like that of the man at the massage service. As if he were sitting at someone’s deathbed. If a voice like that were to tell you there was nothing to worry about, Kawashima thought, you’d almost certainly begin to panic. He looked at his watch. More than twenty minutes past six. He thought of Yoko but knew he couldn’t phone her, because the hotel computer would record all his calls. Best to forget about Yoko anyway, until the ritual was over. The person staying in this room wasn’t Kawashima Masayuki, but Yokoyama Toru. As he repeated this made-up name beneath his breath, he almost began to believe that that was who he really was - a different person, with a different history.

He’d just begun to consider phoning the S&M club when the door chime sounded. On his way to the door, Kawashima stopped at the thermostat to turn on the heat. The room needed to be warm enough for her to be comfortable taking off all her clothes. He removed and pocketed his gloves and took out a handkerchief to palm in his right hand.

9

It seems like forever since I’ve been to one of the big hotels, Sanada Chiaki was thinking as she gazed up at the cluster of highrises in West Shinjuku. S&M hotels, with their floors dotted with hardened globs of candlewax, tended to take all the romance out of things. For tonight’s client, whom the manager had described as a gentleman, she was wearing her Junko Shimada one-piece mini with black stockings and a beige cashmere coat, and she’d taken extra pains with her make-up. In order not to be late, she’d boarded a taxi in front of her building in Shin-Okubo at twenty to six. Traffic was a little congested on the big overpass, but she’d still arrived at the entrance to the Keio Plaza with five minutes to spare.

People were queued up outside the entrance waiting for taxis, and luckily the doorman was busy herding them into their rides and didn’t approach her. It always made Chiaki nervous when some big doorman with braid on his shoulders came up and said, ‘Welcome to the Such-and-such Hotel, may I take your bag?’ She’d removed the batteries from the vibrator, and all her toys were in separate opaque vinyl pouches in case anyone saw inside her bag, but still. There was something about the way doormen looked at you.

The lobby was packed with people emerging from a big wedding reception. They were dressed in formal suits and gowns and kimonos and holding gift bags embossed with the name of the hotel, and their voices reverberated off the ceiling and walls so loudly that Chiaki couldn’t even hear her own footsteps. She headed towards the public telephones to call her office, having decided that if the client was a first-timer, as the manager had said, he might be put off by her making that call right in front of him. ‘I’ve arrived at the gentleman’s room’ - it just sounded so cold and mercenary.

All four of the green pay phones were in use. As she approached them, she got out her wallet and extracted a telephone card - the one with the cartoon bunny. She stopped a short distance from the bank of phones and was trying to guess which of the four people would finish first, when she noticed the man on the second phone from the right leering at her. He was in his late thirties or early forties, wearing an overcoat with prominent stains, and he was looking her up and down and grinning. But no sooner had she noticed him than, without warning, he began yelling into the mouthpiece, so loudly that the people on either side of him flinched and turned to look. ‘Just shut up and take care of it, bitch!’ he shouted and slammed the receiver down as if he meant to break it.

Chiaki stood there thunderstruck, petrified by the instantaneous transformation from leering grin to violent, red-faced rage. When the man spun on his heel and marched towards her, it was only by tensing every muscle in her body that she managed not to scream. She didn’t notice that the telephone card had slipped from her fingers until the man bent down before her to pick it up. As he stooped, she turned and staggered away, her body stiff with tension.

It’s no one I know, I’ve never met or even seen him before, there’s nothing to worry about, she told herself, suppressing the urge to run. Where to go? She no longer knew which hotel this was or even why she was here. After twenty-one steps she stopped to look back. She was surrounded by people in suits and gowns and had to stand on tiptoe to scan the room for the man in the overcoat. Not seeing him anywhere, she began to breathe again and ploughed ahead in search of a restroom. She wanted to be alone, somewhere her pounding heart would have a chance to settle down.

In the restroom she entered a cubicle and sat on the closed lid of the toilet seat, still wearing her coat. She didn’t understand what was happening. Again and again she reminded herself that she didn’t know the man in the overcoat, had never met him. But his outburst had brought her to the verge of remembering something. It was as if all the little clumps of dormant memories stashed in various parts of her body had wriggled to life at once.

Her pulse wouldn’t slow down. She stood up and shed the cashmere coat, hanging it from a hook on the stall door. She closed her eyes and tried to chase away the image of the man on the phone by touching her dress where it covered the nipple ring. The material of the Junko Shimada was too thick for her to catch the ring between her thumb and finger, but she managed to confirm the hard, metallic feel of it, a faint reminder of the pain she’d felt the night she did the piercing.
Help me
, Chiaki whimpered, stroking the outline of the ring. This was what always happened when she lost her sex drive for any length of time: something would jog those sleeping memories and set off a terrifying sequence of events. Still stroking the ring, she thought:
I want to be somewhere else
. And in the instant of thinking this, she remembered where she was.

It’s the Keio Plaza Hotel, and a gentleman is waiting for me on the twenty-ninth floor.

She looked at her watch. It was almost six-twenty. Maybe, she thought, the young gentleman would help get her sex drive going again, and all the little memories would go back to sleep.

10

‘I’M AYA,’ THE GIRL said when Kawashima opened the door. He noticed that she turned her head to look down the corridor before stepping inside.

‘Hello.’ Using his handkerchief, he shut the door and set the chain lock. He’d already hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the outer knob. The girl apologised for being late and asked in the same breath if she could use the phone.

Chiaki sized up the room as she called the office to report her arrival. It was a twin, but surprisingly spacious. Wearing a cheap suit like that but staying in an expensive room like this, she thought - weird. But his face was all right; in fact he was more or less her type, really. Not fat, and not a slob. Why was he holding that stupid handkerchief, though?

‘May I ask for something to drink?’ she said after hanging up.

Kawashima found it unsettling that the girl kept looking back at the door. He used the handkerchief to open the minibar and remove a slim can of Cola, his mind racing with anxious thoughts. What if someone was waiting outside for her? Or if a security guard had stopped her and asked a lot of questions?

He nodded towards the door as he handed her the Cola and said: ‘Is anything wrong?’

‘Wrong?’ Chiaki said, thinking: Why don’t you mind your own business, Mister? She took a long drink, draining half of the slender can.

‘You seem to be watching the door,’ he said. ‘Did something happen out there?’

She was certainly petite enough, and her skin could scarcely have been whiter.

‘No. Just . . .’ Chiaki didn’t want to risk remembering the man in the overcoat, so she decided to make something up. ‘I went to the restroom? Downstairs? And there were these two ladies talking to each other in sign language, and I’ve always thought sign language was really pretty to watch, so I was watching them, and after that we were in the elevator together, too, and they were still talking, I mean signing. It makes a big impression on you, though, don’t you think, when you see people talking without their voices? So, I don’t know, I guess I was thinking about them still out there, you know, chatting away without saying anything?’

She was proud of herself for coming up with this lie on the spur of the moment. It was based on a real incident, too. Eighteen days ago she really had watched two women communicating in sign language, at her local supermarket, and it really had made a big impression on her. The supermarket had been crowded and noisy, but a peaceful bubble of silence seemed to surround the two women. A beautiful lie, she thought - maybe even too good for a man in a cheap suit and shoes to match.

‘Sign language, eh?’ Kawashima muttered. He looked the girl over, wondering why she’d invent such a ridiculous story.

She was well-groomed, at least, with nice hair and decent taste in clothing. Petite but well-proportioned. Small face, symmetrical features. Softly spoken and courteous enough. But her eyes were restless, and a little glassy. Near-sighted, maybe? It wasn’t that she avoided his gaze exactly, but that her eyes didn’t seem to stay focused on anything. As if they were disconnected from her consciousness. She might have been sitting in a room by herself, talking to a chair.

She’s scared, Kawashima suddenly realised. But what was she afraid of? And why did she need to lie? In any case, it would be best to get her immobilised as quickly as possible.

‘I’ve never tried S&M before,’ he said, ‘so I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do exactly, but . . . I can ask you to take off your clothes and let me tie you up, right?’

Chiaki had been relieved that his face seemed all right, but now her guard went up. For all she knew he might turn out to be the worst possible sort. What if, far from stimulating her libido, he ended up waking those memories, like the man in the overcoat? The thought frightened her. And what was with that handkerchief? He seemed manly enough otherwise - why was he holding a hanky like some old lady at a funeral?

‘It helps if we sit and talk awhile first,’ she said. ‘To break the ice? And find out, you know, what we both like and everything?’

‘Fine. What shall we talk about?’