mug. He does his homework, and gets an unregistered gun with a silencer, surgical gloves. One evening, while the orchestra are performing Beethoven’s Fifth, he breaks into the cymbalist’s apartment – he lives alone with his pet crystals. What he finds backs up his wife’s story. Internet porn print-outs, S&M gear, manacles hanging from the ceiling, a seriously worn and torn inflatable Marilyn Monroe. He hides under the bed. After midnight the cymbalist gets back, listens to his answering machine, has a shower, and gets into bed. My friend has a sense of the dramatic. “Even a monster should check under his mattress.” Bangabangabanga!’
‘Quite a story.’
‘Not over yet. My damn lighter isn’t working. One moment . . .’ Daimon leans over to Coffee, who is already opening her designer handbag. ‘I’m terribly sorry to trouble you – thanks so much.’ She even lights it for him, and then one for me. I nod shyly. ‘Revenge is the purest medicine. You probably remember the local rags – “Who Banged the Cymbal?” – but a successful murder is only a question of planning, and the police have no clues. His wife recovers in a matter of days. She starts teaching at her school for the blind again. Chucks out the video games. And come spring, when the Saito Kinen Orchestra go to Yokohama, this time she insists that they buy front-row tickets. Like before, but happier. He can live with his conscience – he only dispensed the same natural justice as the state would have done if it had sharper cops. They get dressed up, have the candlelit dinner somewhere high up, and take their seats in the front row. The string section start in – and she freezes. Her eyes are ice. Her breathing changes. He thinks she’s having some sort of attack, and manages to get her out into the lobby. “What?” he asks. “The second cellist! It’s him! The man who raped me!” “What ? How about the cymbal clasher I killed last year?” She shakes her head like he’s crazy. “What are you talking about? The second cellist is the rapist, I swear on my ancestor’s grave, and if you don’t avenge my honour I’ll electrocute myself.’
‘Unbelievable!’ gasps Coffee. ‘Like, what did he do next?’
Daimon rotates, Coffee crosses her legs, and we become a foursome. ‘Went to the cops. Confessed to the cymbal player’s murder. By the time he was brought to trial, his wife had accused nine different men of raping her, including the minister for fish.’
Velvet is aghast. ‘Did all that really happen?’
‘I swear’ – Daimon blows a wobbly smoke ring – ‘every word is true.’
When I get back to the table after placing my order with Santa, Daimon’s arm is around Coffee’s chair. ‘Like, aha’ – Coffee pokes out her tongue between her white lips – ‘Santa’s little helper.’ Her face is marshmallowed with cosmetics. Velvet swivels towards me. Her tights whisper and Godzilla wakes up. ‘Yuzu-kun tells me you’re in the music biz.’ I smell her perfume, moistened and salted with sweat. ‘I’m modelling at the moment, doing a series of shoots for Tokyo’s biggest chain of body correction clinics.’ She leans towards me, her Lark Slim awaiting a flame, and Godzilla rears his fearsome head. Daimon spins his lighter across the table. Velvet’s face glows. A whole evening without thinking of Anju, until now.
Velvet wraps her arms around my chest as we lean into the first corner, less than a second behind Daimon’s Suzuki 950. My Yamaha 1000 bucks and growls down a gear. The sun-buckled stadium, the golden trumpets, the giant Bridgestone airship: the touch of Velvet’s hands makes it hard to concentrate. Daimon clips a row of dancing police cones, and above the din I hear Coffee puppy-squeal. ‘C’mon!’ Velvet whispers in my ear, just for me, and her whisper is a ghost writhing naked in the curves of my inner ear. I feel as hard and full as the Yamaha fuel tank. Coffee whoops. ‘Better than the real thing! Giddyup!’ Daimon leans into the chicane. ‘Realer than the real thing,’ I hear him murmur. I follow his driveline, and down the long straight I nearly pass him, but Coffee watches my screen and tells Daimon when to block me – ‘Gotcha!’ she laughs. I skid through a patch of oil, at 180 kph – Velvet’s fingers dig into me, the rear wheel overtakes the front, but I keep my bike on the road. We scissor through the zoo – I