Santa Claus works behind the bar, Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer emerges from the toilets holding a mop, and elves in floppy hats wait on the tables. I watch snowflakes dance on the ceiling, smoking a Marlboro lit by the Virgin Mary. Yuzu Daimon drums along to psychedelic Christmas carols. ‘It’s called the Merry Christmas Bar.’
‘But it’s September ninth.’
‘It’s December twenty-fifth every night, in here. It is what we call a chick magnet.’
‘I might be being naïve, but could your girlfriend have just been held up?’
‘You are being whatever lies beyond naïve. What decade is this Yakushima place trapped in? The bitch stood me up. I know it. We had an arrangement. If she wanted to be there, she would have been, and I am now as single as a newborn babe, and she is jet-trash to me. Jet-trash. And don’t turn around right now, but I believe our feminine solace has just arrived. Over in the nook between the fireplace and the tree. The one in the coffee leather, the other in the cherry velvet.’
‘They look like models.’
‘Model whats?’
‘They wouldn’t look at me twice. Once.’
‘I said I’ll buy your drinks, not massage your ego.’
‘I mean it.’
‘Crap.’
‘Look at how I’m dressed.’
‘We’ll say you work as a roadie.’
‘I’m not even smart enough to be a roadie.’
‘We’ll say you work as a roadie for Metallica.’
‘But we’ve never met them.’
Daimon buries his face in his hands and chuckles. ‘Ah, Miyake, Miyake. What do you think bars are for? Do you think all these people enjoy paying exorbitant prices for pissy cocktails? Finish your beer. We need whisky to penetrate the enemy interior. No more buts! Look at the one in velvet. Imagine yourself untying the cords of that bodice thing she’s wearing with your front teeth. A simple yes or no will do: do you want her?’
‘Who wouldn’t? But—’
‘Santa! Santa! Two double Kilmagoons! On the rocks!’
‘So, after the rape,’ Daimon says in a loud voice as we take the adjacent table, ‘their world is bulldozed. Razed. She stops eating. She rips out the telephone. The only thing she shows any interest in is her dead son’s video games. When my friend leaves home for work in the mornings she is already there, hunched over the pistol, wasting men on the sixteen-inch Sony. When he gets back, she hasn’t moved a muscle. Kitchen pots still on the table – she doesn’t care. Bangabangabang! Reload. Back in the real world, the police drop the case – sexual assault during a night on the bare mountain? Forget it. Most men just can’t begin to understand what an experience like that . . . I despair of our sex, sometimes, Miyake. So. Nine months pass this way. She doesn’t leave the house once. Not a single time. He is going frantic with worry – you remember what a mess he was when you got back from your Beatles reunion gig. Finally he asks a psychiatrist for advice. Somehow, the shrink concludes, she has to be reintegrated into society or risk sinking into a state of self-willed autism. Now, they originally met in their university orchestra – she was a xylophonist, he was a trombonist. So he buys two tickets for Pictures at an Exhibition, and day by day erodes her resistance until she agrees to come. Cigarette?’
I could swear there was an ashtray when we sat down.
‘Excuse me?’ Daimon leans over to Coffee. ‘May I?’
‘Sure.’
‘Thanks so much. The night of the concert, she takes sedatives, they get dressed up, have a candlelit dinner somewhere high up, and take their seats in the front row. The trumpet starts. You know . . .’ Daimon hums the opening bars. ‘And she freezes. Her eyes are ice. Her fingernails sink into his thigh until they draw blood. She starts trembling. Forget the embarrassment, he has to get her out of there before she gets hysterical. Out in the foyer she tells him. The cymbal clasher – in the orchestra – she swears on her ancestor’s tomb that he was the man who raped her.’
I notice that Coffee and Velvet are tuned in.
‘I know what you’re thinking. Why not go to the cops? Nine cases out of ten, the judge tells the woman she was asking for it by wearing her skirt too high, and the rapist gets away with signing an apology form. She tells him that unless he avenges her honour she’ll throw herself from the top of the Tokyo Hilton. Now. You met him. He’s no