a fire? Trigger alarms and sprinklers? I follow the fire alarms to the end of the corridor, just so I feel I’m doing something. ‘In the event of fire, smoke alarms will automatically unlock this door.’ Uncle Tarmac says love hotels are designed to stop people doing runners – the elevator always takes you straight to reception. What else do people do in movies? ‘Out the back way,’ they hiss. Where is this ‘back way’? I try the other end of the corridor. ‘Emergency stairs. No way out.’ Back ways are through kitchens. I dimly remember Daimon, may his bollocks fester, telling me there was a kitchen. Hotel kitchens are in the basement. I slip through the door and start down the stairs. Stupidly, I look over the handrail. The distant floor is the size of a stamp. The Aoyama escape route. I go as fast and quietly as I can. What will I say if they catch me here? That I get claustrophobic in lifts. Shut up. I get down to the ground floor. A large glass door opens into reception. A huge male receptionist is standing there. An ex-sumo wrestler, waiting for me. The stairs continue down one more floor. I can beg for mercy, or up the stakes and continue down. The receptionist narrows his eyes, running his finger down a ledger. Him and mercy do not sleep in the same bed. I slip by the glass door – a statue of Atlas and the globe blocks his line of sight – and creep down the stairs to a door marked STAFF ONLY. Please let it be open. It doesn’t open. I barge it. It judders open. Thank you. Beyond is a stuffy corridor of pipes and fuse boxes. At the end mops are stacked against another door. I turn the handle and push. Nothing doing. I barge it. The door is locked. Worse still I hear the glass door opening one floor above – and I didn’t close the staff only door behind me. ‘Hey? Anyone there?’ Mr Sumo. Doom pisses hot dread on my head. What can I do? Desperate, I knock on the locked door. I hear Mr Sumo’s shoes on the steps. I knock again. And suddenly a bolt slides, the door is yanked open and a chef is glaring at me – behind him a striplit kitchen chops and bubbles. ‘You,’ he snarls, ‘had better’ – his eyes belong to Satan – ‘be the new mousseboy.’
Huh?
‘Tell me you’re the new mousseboy!’
Mr Sumo is nearly here.
‘Yes, I’m the new mousseboy.’
‘Get in here!’ He pulls me through, slams the door behind meand, giving me my first lucky break of the morning, bolts it shut. Head Chef Bonki is sewn into his hat. ‘What the hell are you doing turning up for your first morning forty-five minutes late, looking like a vagabond? Take off that baseball cap in my kitchen!’ Behind him, junior chefs and kitchen hands watch the human sacrifice. I take off my cap and bow. ‘I’m very sorry.’ Cream, steam, mutton and gas. I see no windows and no doors. How do I get out of here? Head Chef Bonki snarls. ‘Master is disappointed. And when Master is disappointed, we are disappointed. We run a very – tight – ship!’ He suddenly yells at the top of his voice and blasts what are left of my nerves away. ‘And what do we do to members of the crew who let the ship down?’ The kitchen staff chant back in one air-punching chorus. ‘To the sharks! To the sharks! To the sharks!’ I seriously consider giving myself up to Mr Sumo, after all. ‘Follow me, mousseboy. Master will conduct his inspection.’ I am hustled between shining counters and racks of pans, past a rack of punch-cards. A door. Please let there be a door. ‘This is where you check in, if Master forgives your disgraceful start.’ Mr Sumo must be at the bolted door by now. All these knives worry me. A boy with a sunken nose scrubs floor tiles with a toothbrush – the chef deals him a powerful kick for no apparent reason. We come to a poky office full of the chug, grind and kiss of a knife-sharpening lathe. On the far side is an open door – steps lead up to a yard of rubbish bags. The chef raps on the door frame, and shouts. ‘The new mousseboy has reported for active duty, Master.’ The lathe dies.