Salmonella men on Planet Porno: stories - By Yasutaka Tsutsui Page 0,9

checked me out in the rear-view mirror. “Have we met somewhere, sir?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“Well then, I don’t know you, do I.”

There was a pause. “You’re not one of them celebrities, are you sir?” he asked at length.

“No. Just an office worker.”

“You been on telly?”

“No. Never.”

The cabbie smiled wryly. “Then I’m not going to know you, am I sir.”

“No,” I replied. “I suppose not.”

I thought back over the radio news I’d just heard. The announcer knew that I was in a taxi heading for central Tokyo. That meant someone must be following me. They must be watching my every move. I turned and looked through the rear window. The road was full of cars – it was impossible to know which of them was following us. Come to think of it, they all looked pretty suspicious now.

“I think someone’s following us,” I said to the cabbie. “Can you shake them off?”

“That’s a lot to ask, sir, if you don’t mind me saying so,” he said with a grimace. “Unless you know which car it is. Anyway, you’d have a job shaking anyone off in this traffic.”

“I think it’s that black Nissan. Look! It’s got a newspaper company flag on it!”

“Well, all right sir, if you insist. Though, personally, I just think you’re being paranoid, sir.”

“I’m perfectly sane,” I countered hastily. “Don’t go taking me to the madhouse, will you!”

The taxi meandered and roamed aimlessly for a while, as if driven by a sleepwalker, before finally arriving in Ginza 2nd Street.

“Well, I lost the black Nissan at least,” the cabbie said with a broad smile. “That must be worth something!”

I reluctantly added five hundred yen to the fare on the meter.

On entering the office of our client in Ginza 2nd Street, I was greeted with uncommon courtesy by a female receptionist whose face I recognized. She led me to a special reception lounge for particularly valued guests. Normally, I’d be called to the duty clerk’s desk, and would stand there talking while he remained seated.

I sat myself on a sofa in the spacious lounge and was fidgeting in some discomfort when, to my surprise, the Department Director walked in with his assistant. They both started greeting me with particular formality.

“Suzuki is always most glad of your kind assistance,” said the Department Director, bowing deeply. Suzuki was the duty clerk who usually saw me.

As I sat there bewildered, the Department Director and his assistant, far from discussing the business at hand, started to heap sycophantic praise on me. They admired my tie, flattered my dress sense, and even started extolling my good looks. In my embarrassment, I hurriedly handed over the documents I’d been given by the Chief Clerk, passed on his message and quickly took my leave.

As I left the building, I noticed the same taxi still waiting there by the pavement.

The young cabbie thrust his head through the side window. “Sir,” he called.

“Still here, are you?” I said. “Well, that’s perfect. Take me back to Shinjuku, will you.”

I was just settling into the rear seat when the cabbie thrust a five-hundred-yen note towards me. “You can have this back, sir,” he said. “You’ve got to be joking!”

“Is something the matter?”

“I switched the radio back on, didn’t I. And they were talking about you, weren’t they. They said you’d been carried off by a rogue taxi driver, who’d deliberately taken you out of your way and squeezed five hundred yen out of you for it! They even mentioned my name!”

Now I understood why I’d been treated so courteously at the client’s office.

“I told you, didn’t I? We were being followed!”

“Whatever. You can have your five hundred yen back.”

“Go on. You keep it.”

“No way! Have it back!”

“Well… All right. If that’s the way you feel. Anyway, will you take me to Shinjuku now?”

“How could I say no? Next thing they’d say I refused a fare!”

And with that he started off towards Shinjuku.

I was gradually realizing that the plot to drive me out of my mind was unimaginably massive in scale. Apart from anything else, my enemy appeared to have bought off the mass media. Who on earth could it be? And what was his motive? Why would anyone want to do something like this?

All I could do was to follow the flow for now. It would be virtually impossible to uncover the mastermind at the bottom of it. Even if I caught one of my pursuers, he would just be small fry. He wouldn’t know who the mastermind was. That was