belief. Ever wondered if embryos get thirsty? They do! So they drink up the amniotic fluid, and then pee it out again! The same as being hooked up to a never-ending supply of Budweiser. Except amniotic fluid tastes better. Waiting to be born must be nine months of sheer bliss. Like a bar where you never have to pay the bill. Like the late sixties. And we never remember a thing.’
‘Buntaro, a friend is—’
‘Have you any idea how much pregnancy rearranges a woman’s internals? By the third trimester, the uterus is touching the breastbone. Placental mammals really have it tough. That’s why—’ A woman in the background at Shooting Star screams her lungs out. ‘Hang on, I’ll turn down the volume. Watching Rosemary’s Baby. Get a few pointers if Kodai turns out to be the son of Satan. A midwife at the hospital was saying—’
‘Buntaro!’
‘Is anything the matter?’
‘Really sorry, but I’m calling from a box and my card is about to die. A friend is coming to Shooting Star by taxi. He donated some blood, but they took too much and he needs a lie-down – please, when he gets there, would you show him up to my room? I’ll explain later. Please.’
‘And will his trousers needing pressing? Or how about a massage, or—’
The beeps go. Perfect. I hang up.
A platoon of boyfriends and girlfriends – not to mention the battalion of the bothered young families five years will transform the couples into – swill me down a shopping mall to a podium. Musicians perform something twiddly and ribboned. Mozart, maybe. By accident I find myself in the front row. A fat cellist, two thin violinists, a dumpy viola player and a girl playing a Yamaha grand piano. If dog owners grow to look like their pets, musicians turn into their instruments. Except pianists – how could a human resemble her piano? Complexity, maybe. Her hair covers her face – she bends over the keyboard, as if a god were whispering the tune. The pianist has one of those perfect necks – curves, smoothness, toughness, hollows, bumps, all just so. She is in a cream silk dress – sweat dapples mark her spine – and she plays barefoot. The music finishes and everyone claps. The string section bask in the applause – the pianist just turns around and gives a modest bow. Ai Imajo. It really is Ai Imajo. I look for a hiding place but I am walled in by handbags, pushchairs and melting ice creams. Ai Imajo looks right my way and a blush grenade goes off in my face. Then I realize she is looking but not seeing. She is still dazzled by the brightness of the music. Then she smiles at me – definitely – and mimes a head-butt. I manage a feeble wave before getting pushed back by penguins carrying tree-sized bouquets of flowers. A hippopotamus woman looped in beads makes the microphone scream with feedback. I wander off to find a shady corner of Xanadu where I can sit down. I don’t want to embarrass Ai Imajo in front of her music student friends.
Valhalla blots out the sun. When my hour is up, I slip through a gap in the perimeter fence and into its unfinished shadow. I can see three security guards smoking in the mouth of the main entrance, but sneaking up between rows of blocks, piping, coils of cable and drainage channels is easy. If I am being watched from Valhalla itself I am in trouble; I hope seeing Ai Imajo has used up today’s coincidence quota. I nearly trip over a coil of cable. It sidewinds into life and enters Valhalla through a ventilation duct. No place for a snake, Snake. Skirting the guards’ field of vision, I get to the foot of the pyramid, and begin looking for a way in. The construction is vast – it takes about five minute per side. I pass the hotel lobby entrance, and curse myself for not leaving it wedged open with something – I could probably have forced the inner shutter somehow. Twenty minutes later I am back to the main entrance and its three guards. I consider trying to pass myself off as a boilerman or something – I am still in my work overalls – but when I creep close enough to overhear them discussing the best way to cripple a man, I change my mind. I backtrack to the basement ramp that Frankenstein drove down earlier in the