land and walk in gardens with your ancestors. Boooring. Mr Endo at school says you turn into soil. Father Kakimoto says it depends what you were like in this life – I’d get changed into an angel or a unicorn, but you’d come back as a maggot or toadstool.’
‘So what do you think?’
‘When you die they burn you, right?’
‘Right.’
‘So you turn into smoke, right?’
‘I guess.’
‘So you go there.’ Anju lets go of the tree and shoots the sun with both hands. ‘Up, up and away. I want to fly.’
A careworn buzzard rises on a thermal.
‘In an airplane?’
‘Who wants to fly in a pongy airplane?’
I suck my champagne bomb. ‘How do you know airplanes pong?’
Anju crunches her champagne bomb. ‘Airplanes must pong. All those people breathing the same air. Like the boys’ changing room in the rainy season, but a hundred times worse. No, I mean proper flying.’
‘Like with a jetpack?’
‘No such things as jetpacks.’
‘Zax Omega has a jetpack.’
Anju airs her recently acquired sigh. ‘No such thing as Zax Omega.’
‘Zax Omega opened the new building at the port!’
‘And did he arrive by jetpack?’
‘No,’ I admit, ‘by taxi. But you’re too heavy to fly.’
‘Sky Castle Laputa flies, and that’s made of rock.’
‘If I can’t have Zax Omega, no way are you having Sky Castle Laputa.’
‘Condors, then. Condors weigh more than me. They fly.’
‘Condors have wings. I don’t see any wings on you.’
‘Ghosts fly without wings.’
‘Ghosts are dead.’
Anju picks champagne bomb shrapnel from her teeth. She is in one of those moods when I have no idea what she is thinking. Leaf shadows hide my twin sister. Parts of Anju are too bright, parts of Anju are so dark she isn’t even here.
Jerking off usually sends me to sleep. Am I normal? I never heard of a nineteen-year-old insomniac. I am no war criminal, no poet or scientist, I’m not even lovelorn. Lustlorn, yes. Here I am, in a city of five million women, cruising into my sexual prime, when females should be posting themselves to me naked in padded envelopes, single as a leper. Let me see. Who is riding the caravan of love tonight? Zizzi Hikaru, wet-suited as per the lager ad; the glam-rock mother of Yuki Chiyo; the waitress from Jupiter Café; Insectoid-woman from Zax Omega and Red Plague Moon. Back to good old Zizzi, I guess. I ferret around for some tissues.
I ferret around for matches to light my post-coital Mild Seven, but end up having to use my gas stove. One throttled Godzilla, and I am wider awake than ever. Zizzi was disappointing tonight. No sense of timing. Is she getting too young for me? Fujifilm says 01:49. What now? Clean myself up? Practise my guitar? Write an answer to one of the two epoch-shifting letters I received this week? Which one? Let’s stick with the simpler: Akiko Kato’s reply to the letter I wrote after failing to see her. The single sheet of paper is still in the plastic bag in the freezebox with The Other. I put it on the shelf next to Anju but it kept laughing at me. It came . . . when was it? Tuesday. Buntaro read the envelope as he handed it to me. ‘Osugi and Bosugi, Legal. Chasing lawyer ladies? Be careful, lad, you could end up with injunctions slapped on where it hurts. Want to hear my lawyer joke? What’s the difference between a catfish and a lawyer? Guess – go on. No? One is a scaly, bottom-dwelling scum-sucker, and the other is a catfish.’ I tell him I’ve already heard it and dash up the videobox-stacked stairs to my capsule. I tell myself I am expecting a negative answer, but I wasn’t expecting that Akiko Kato’s ‘No’ would pack such a slap. I already know the letter by heart. Its greatest hits include: Disclosure of a client’s personal data constitutes a betrayal of trust which no responsible attorney could consider. Pretty final. Furthermore I feel obliged to refuse your request that I forward mail which my client has stated categorically he does not wish to receive. Not much room for doubt there. Not much room for a reply, either. Finally, in the event that legal proceedings are initiated to force data regarding your patrimony to be released, assisting your enquiries at this early stage represents a clear conflict of interest. I urge you not to pursue this matter, and trust that this letter clarifies our position. Perfectly. Plan A is dead on arrival.