my baseball cap. This is the worst unbirthday present I could receive. That cap was a present from Anju. I think back – I had it in the games centre just now. I leave, and backtrack through the currents of pleasure seekers.
Zax Omega and Red Plague Moon is still plying for trade, but my baseball cap has gone. I search the rows of students pummelling the offspring of Street Fighter, a crowd of kids gathered around 2084; the booths of girls digitalizing their faces with those of the famous; the alleys of salarymen playing mah-jong with video stripstresses. Weird. All these people like my mother paying counsellors and clinics to reattach them to reality: all these people like me paying Sony and Sega to reattach us to unreality. I identify the jowly supervisor by the way he jangles his keys. I have to yell into his ear. I smell the wax. ‘Anyone handed in a cap?’
‘Wha’?’
‘I left a baseball cap here, thirty minutes ago.’
‘Why?’
‘I forgot it!’
Please wait – transaction being processed. ‘You forgot why you left it?’
‘Never mind.’
I remember my spectator. In the upstairs pool room, he said. I find the back stairs and go up. The sudden quietness and gloom are subaquatic. Three rows by six of ocean-blue tables. I see him on the far side, playing alone, and on his head is my baseball cap. His ponytail is fed through the strap-gap. He pockets a ball, looks up, and gestures me over. ‘I figured you’d be back. That’s why I didn’t chase you. Want to win it off my head?’
‘I’d rather you just took it off your head.’
‘Where’s the fun in that?’
‘There isn’t any. But it is my cap.’
He sizes me up. ‘True.’ He presents my cap with a courtier flourish. ‘No offence meant. I’m not really myself tonight.’
‘No worries. Thanks for rescuing my cap.’
He smiles an honest smile. ‘You’re welcome.’
My move. ‘So, uh, how late is she now?’
‘When does “late” become “stood up”?’
‘I dunno. Ninety minutes?’
‘Then the bitch has well and truly stood me up. And I had to pay for this table until ten.’ He gestures with his cue. ‘Play a few frames, if you’re not busy.’
‘I’m unbusy. But I’m too broke to bet.’
‘Can you afford one cigarette per game?’
I am sort of flattered that he takes me seriously enough to offer me a game of pool. All I have had in the way of company since I got to Tokyo has been Cat, Cockroach and Suga. ‘Okay.’
Yuzu Daimon is a final-year law student, a native of Tokyo, and the finest pool player I have ever met. He is brilliant, truly. I watched The Hustler last week. Daimon could whip the Paul Newman character into coffee froth. He lets me win a couple of frames out of politeness, but by ten o’clock he’s mopped up seven more in U-turn-spinning, jump-shotting, unerring style. We hand in the cues and sit down to smoke our winnings. My plastic lighter is buggered: a flame flicks from Daimon’s thumb. It is a beautiful object. ‘Platinum,’ says Daimon.
‘Must be worth a fortune.’
‘It was my twentieth birthday present. You should practise more.’ Daimon nods at the table. ‘You have a good eye.’
‘You sound like my sports teacher at high school.’
‘Oh, please. Say, Miyake, I’ve decided Saturday owes me compensation for being stood up. What say we go to a bar and find a pair of girls.’
‘Uh, thanks. I’d better pass.’
‘Your girlfriend will never find out. Tokyo’s too big.’
‘No, it’s nothing that—’
‘So you don’t have a woman waiting anywhere?’
‘Not a non-imaginary one, no, but—’
‘You’re trying to tell me you’re gay?’
‘Not as far as I know, no, but—’
‘Then you took a vow of celibacy? You’re a member of a cult?’
I show him the contents of my wallet.
‘So? I’m offering to foot the bill.’
‘I can’t scav off you. You already paid for the table.’
‘You won’t be scavving off me. I told you, I’m going to be a lawyer. Lawyers never spend their own money. My father has a hospitality account of a quarter of a million yen to get through, or his department will face a budgetary reassessment. So you see, by refusing you put our family in a difficult position.’
That’s quite a lot of money. ‘Every year?’
Daimon sees I am serious, and laughs. ‘Every month, dolt!’
‘Scavving off your father is even worse than scavving off you.’
‘Look, Miyake, I’m only talking about a couple of beers. Five at most. I’m not trying to buy your soul. C’mon. When’s your birthday?’