not centre-stage.’
‘Are you going to tell me why you ended up here?’
‘I fell in love with the girl Morino fell in love with.’
‘Miriam.’
Daimon’s mask slips and for the first time ever I see his real face. The door bangs open and Lizard appears. ‘Arewe comfortable, ladies?’ He flicks open his knife, spins it, catches it and points it at Daimon. ‘You first.’ Daimon slides off the washbasin counter, still looking at me, puzzled. Lizard smacks his lips. ‘The time has come to kiss yer oh-so-charming face goodbye, Daimon.’ Daimon smiles in return. ‘Is your dress sense a charity fund-raiser or do you actually believe you look cool?’ Lizard smiles back. ‘Cute.’ As Daimon passes, Lizard whacks Daimon in the windpipe, grabs the back of his head and slams it into the metal door. ‘I get such a hard-on from casual violence,’ says Lizard. ‘Say something cute again.’ Daimon picks himself up, bloody-nosed, and stumbles into the corridor. The door is relocked.
Either I am losing my mind or the bathroom walls are bending inwards. Time bends too. My watch is dead so I have no idea how long I have been in here. Cockroach navigates the floor. I cup my hands and drink some water. I play a game I often play to console myself: searching for Anju in my reflection. I often catch sight of her around my eyes. I try this game: concentrate on my mother’s face; subtract that face from my own; the remainder should be my father. Could my father be Ryutaro Morino or Jun Nagasaki? Daimon implied Morino brought us here. But he also implied Morino is washed up. Too washed up to own a fleet of Cadillacs. I suck a champagne bomb. My throat is sore. Mrs Sasaki will have decided Aoyama was right about me – I am an unreliable dropout. Cockroach reappears. I suck my last champagne bomb. Lizard watches me from the mirror – I jump. ‘Here comes the moment you have been waiting for, Miyake. Father will see you now.’
Valhalla is one enormous leisure hotel. When it is completed it will be the plushest in Tokyo. Sugar chandeliers, milky carpets, cream walls, silver fittings. Air-cons are not installed, so the passageways are at the mercy of the sun, and under all this glass I am squeaking with sweat in thirty seconds. Thick smells of carpet underlay and fresh paint. On the far side of the building-site perimeter fence I see the vast dome of Xanadu, courtyards and even a fake river and fake caverns. The windows rob the world outside of all colour. Everything is in wartime newsreel tones. The air is as dry as a desert. Lizard knocks on room 333. ‘Father, I got Miyake with me.’
I understand my stupendous mistake. ‘Father’ does not mean ‘my father’: ‘father’ means ‘Yakuza father’. I would laugh if the afternoon were not now so dangerous. A voice rasps out a moment later. ‘Enter!’ The door is unlocked from inside. Eight people sit around a conference table in a spotless meeting room. At the head sits a man in his fifties. ‘Sit the infant down.’ His voice is as thirsty as sandpaper. Cavernous eye sockets, plump lips, mottled and flaky skin – the sort used on young actors playing old roles – and a wart in the corner of his eye bigger than a strayed nipple. My way-toolate fear was quite correct. If this troll is my father, I am Miffy the Bunny. I take the defendant’s chair. I am being prosecuted by a group of dangerous strangers, and I don’t even know what the charge is. ‘So,’ the man says. ‘This is Eiji Miyake.’
‘Yes. Who are you?’
Death gives me a choice. A point-blank bullet through the brain or a thirty-metre fall. Frankenstein and the stage manager of this black farce are placing bets as to which I will choose right now. Beyond hope is beyond panic. Here comes the Mongolian, strolling up the unfinished bridge. My right eye is so swollen the night swims. Yes, of course I am afraid, and frustrated that my stupid life is ending so soon. But mostly I feel the weight of the nightmare, stopping me waking. I am cattle in a cage, waiting for the bolt through my skull. Why gibber? Why beg? Why try to run when the only escape is a drop through blackness? If my head survived the fall, the rest of my body would not. The Mongolian spits, and folds a fresh strip