Grandpapa?’ slaps Half-sister. She nods at the kaiten journal, wrapped in its black cloth. ‘Because if so, it belongs to the Tsukiyamas.’
I look at this anti-Anju. If she had asked nicely, I would have agreed and handed it over. ‘This is my lunch box. I have to go to work.’ I walk out of Amadeus Tea Room without looking back taking the journal with me. Butler summons an escalator and bows as the doors close. I have the box to myself – the muzak is ‘On Top of the World’ by the Carpenters, a tune which makes my teeth throb, but I am too drained to hate anything now. I am stunned at the decision I just took. I watch the floor numbers descend. Do I mean it? My father never wants to meet me . . . So my search for him is . . . not valid? Finished? My meaning is cancelled? I guess, yes, I do mean it. ‘Ground floor,’ says the elevator. The doors open and a crowd of very busy people surge in. I have to fight my way out before the doors close and I get taken back to where I came from.
Seven
CARDS
Sachiko Sera, my third boss in four weeks, was not exaggerating: the Nero kitchen is hot as hell and a monkey could do my pizza-by-numbers job. The kitchen is a rat-run – it measures five paces by one, with a sort of cage at one end with lockers and chairs where the delivery bikers wait. Sachiko and Tomomi take the orders by telephone or from walk-in customers and pass the slips through the hatch from the front counter. I dress the crusts in the correct toppings by matching the pizza name to the giant chart that takes up an entire wall, coded with coloured icons for monkeys who never learned to read. So, for example, in the big circle marked ‘Chicago Gunfight’ are little pictures of tomato puree, minceballs, sausage, chilli, red and yellow peppers, cheese; Hawaii Honeymoon is tomato, pineapple, tuna, coconut; Neromaniac is pepperoni, sour cream, capers, olives and chariot prawns. Then you have the crust types: thick, crusty, herb, mozzarella-filled. The toppings live in a cave-sized fridge – each container lid has a picture of the contents. When dressed, you slide the pizzas into a two-lane gas-fired inferno. Rollers convey the pizzas through its molten innards at about ten centimetres per minute, although if the orders are piling up you can reach in with a pair of forceps and give the pizza a premature birth. ‘Timing is the trick,’ says Sachiko, tying back her hair. ‘Ideally, the pizza lands in its box – tape the order slip to the lid thusly – the same moment the biker lands from his last delivery.’ After half an hour, Sachiko leaves me to it. It is sort of fun, and the orders never stop, not even at 1 or 2 a. m, so unlike Ueno lost property or Shooting Star I never have much time to think. Our customers include students, card sharks, businessmen working through the night – Shinjuku is a nocturnal jungle. I drink litres of water, sweat litres of water, and never need to piss once. There is an extractor fan as loud as a ferry and a tinny radio that only picks up one local station trapped in the 1980s. There is a gunk-smattered world map to taunt the slaves of the inferno with thoughts of all the countries in the world – and their diversely tinted women – where we are not free to go. A clock lurches forward. Sachiko is how I imagined her on the telephone – loopy, organized, neurotic, stable. Tomomi is an evil hag who has been at Nero’s since Admiral Perry sailed into Old Edo Bay and has no intention of upsetting her cosy life by ever getting promoted. She chats with her friends on the phone, flirts with privileged bikers, selects arts courses she will never get around to applying for, and drops heavy hints about the affair she had with the owner of Nero’s x years ago and the damage she could inflict on his marriage if her pleasant equilibrium were ever threatened. Her voice could slice sheet steel, and her laugh is a loud glittery fake. The bikers come and go week by week, but tonight they are Onizuka and Doi. Onizuka has a lip spike, custard-yellow hair and wears a death’s-head biker’s jacket instead of the Nero Pizza