what appears to be a cinema, and turns around to make sure she isn’t being followed – I increase my stride, as if in a tearing hurry. I avoid her eyes and swivel my baseball cap as I pass to hide my face. When I double back, Akiko Kato has vanished into the Ganymede Cinema. The place has seen much better days. Today’s presentation is a movie called PanOpticon. The poster – a row of screaming Russian dolls – tells me nothing about the movie. I hesitate. I want a cigarette, but I left my packet at Jupiter Café, so I make do with a champagne candy. The film starts in under ten minutes. I go in, at first pulling the door instead of pushing. The deserted lobby swarms with psychedelic carpet. I don’t notice the step, trip and nearly twist my ankle. All is tatty glitz and putty-odoured. A sorry chandelier glows brownly. A woman in the ticket box puts down her needlepoint embroidery with obvious annoyance. ‘Yes?’
‘Is this the, uh, cinema?’
‘No. This is the Battleship Yamato.’
‘I’m a customer.’
‘How pleasant for you.’
‘Uh. The film? What is it, uh, about?’
She feeds a thread through a needle’s eye. ‘Do you see a sign on my desk that reads “Plot Synopses Sold Here”?’
‘I only—’
She sighs, as if dealing with a moron. ‘Do you, or do you not, see a sign on my desk that reads “Plot Synopses Sold Here”?’
‘No.’
‘And why, pray tell, do you suppose no such sign exists?’
I would shoot her but I left my Walther PK in my last fantasy. I would walk out but I know Akiko Kato is somewhere in this building. ‘One ticket, please.’
‘One thousand yen.’
There goes my budget for the day. She gives me a raffle ticket. Lumps of plaster lie here and there. By rights this place should have gone out of business decades ago. She returns to her embroidery, leaving me to the tender mercies of a sign reading SCREEN THIS WAY – THE MANAGEMENT ARE NOT LIABLE FOR ACCIDENTS ON THE STAIRWELL . The steep stairs descend at right angles. Posters of films line the glossed walls. I don’t recognize a single one. Each flight of stairs I expect to be the last, but it never is. In the event of fire, the audience is kindly requested to blacken quietly. Is it getting warmer? Suddenly I have got to the bottom. I smell bitter almonds. A woman with the shaven, bruised skull of a chemotherapy patient blocks my way. When I meet her eyes I see that her sockets are perfect voids. I clear my throat. She doesn’t move. I try to squeeze past her, but her hand shoots out. Her fore and middle fingers and her ring and little fingers have fused into trotters. I try not to look. She takes my ticket and shreds it. ‘Popcorn?’
‘I’ll give it a miss, thank you.’
‘Don’t you like popcorn?’
‘I, uh, don’t feel strongly about popcorn.’
She weighs my statement. ‘So you refuse to admit you dislike popcorn.’
‘Popcorn isn’t something I like or dislike.’
‘Why do you play these games with me?’
‘I’m not playing games. I just had a big lunch. I don’t want to eat anything.’
‘I hate it when you lie.’
‘You must be mistaking me for somebody else.’
She shakes her head. ‘Mistakes never make it this far down.’
‘Okay, okay, I’ll buy some popcorn.’
‘Impossible. There is none.’
I’m missing something. ‘Then why did you offer to sell me some?’
‘Look back. I never did. Do you want to see the film or not?’
‘Yes.’ This is getting irritating. ‘I want to see the film.’
‘Then why are you wasting my time?’ She holds open the curtain. The steeply sloping cinema has a population of exactly three. In the front row I recognize Akiko Kato. A man is next to her. Down the far aisle a third man is in a wheelchair, apparently dead: his neck is bent back brokenly, his jaw gapes, his head is unhinged, and he is quite motionless. I follow his gaze to the night sky painted on the roof of the cinema. I creep down the centre aisle, hoping I can get close enough to the couple to eavesdrop. A loud bang goes off in the projectionist’s room and I hunker down to hide. A shotgun, or an inexpertly opened bag of potato chips. Neither Akiko Kato nor her companion turn around – I creep down to within a couple of rows behind them. The lights fall and the curtain rises on a rectangle of flickering light. An