she takes sedatives, they get dressed up, have a candlelit dinner somewhere high up, and take their seats in the front row. The trumpet starts. You know . . .’ Daimon hums the opening bars. ‘And she freezes. Her eyes are ice. Her fingernails sink into his thigh until they draw blood. She starts trembling. Forget the embarrassment, he has to get her out of there before she gets hysterical. Out in the foyer she tells him. The cymbal clasher – in the orchestra – she swears on her ancestor’s tomb that he was the man who raped her.’
I notice that Coffee and Velvet are tuned in.
‘I know what you’re thinking. Why not go to the cops? Nine cases out of ten, the judge tells the woman she was asking for it by wearing her skirt too high, and the rapist gets away with signing an apology form. She tells him that unless he avenges her honour she’ll throw herself from the top of the Tokyo Hilton. Now. You met him. He’s no mug. He does his homework, and gets an unregistered gun with a silencer, surgical gloves. One evening, while the orchestra are performing Beethoven’s Fifth, he breaks into the cymbalist’s apartment – he lives alone with his pet crystals. What he finds backs up his wife’s story. Internet porn print-outs, S&M gear, manacles hanging from the ceiling, a seriously worn and torn inflatable Marilyn Monroe. He hides under the bed. After midnight the cymbalist gets back, listens to his answering machine, has a shower, and gets into bed. My friend has a sense of the dramatic. “Even a monster should check under his mattress.” Bangabangabanga!’
‘Quite a story.’
‘Not over yet. My damn lighter isn’t working. One moment . . .’ Daimon leans over to Coffee, who is already opening her designer handbag. ‘I’m terribly sorry to trouble you – thanks so much.’ She even lights it for him, and then one for me. I nod shyly. ‘Revenge is the purest medicine. You probably remember the local rags – “Who Banged the Cymbal?” – but a successful murder is only a question of planning, and the police have no clues. His wife recovers in a matter of days. She starts teaching at her school for the blind again. Chucks out the video games. And come spring, when the Saito Kinen Orchestra go to Yokohama, this time she insists that they buy front-row tickets. Like before, but happier. He can live with his conscience – he only dispensed the same natural justice as the state would have done if it had sharper cops. They get dressed up, have the candlelit dinner somewhere high up, and take their seats in the front row. The string section start in – and she freezes. Her eyes are ice. Her breathing changes. He thinks she’s having some sort of attack, and manages to get her out into the lobby. “What?” he asks. “The second cellist! It’s him! The man who raped me!” “What ? How about the cymbal clasher I killed last year?” She shakes her head like he’s crazy. “What are you talking about? The second cellist is the rapist, I swear on my ancestor’s grave, and if you don’t avenge my honour I’ll electrocute myself.’
‘Unbelievable!’ gasps Coffee. ‘Like, what did he do next?’
Daimon rotates, Coffee crosses her legs, and we become a foursome. ‘Went to the cops. Confessed to the cymbal player’s murder. By the time he was brought to trial, his wife had accused nine different men of raping her, including the minister for fish.’
Velvet is aghast. ‘Did all that really happen?’
‘I swear’ – Daimon blows a wobbly smoke ring – ‘every word is true.’
When I get back to the table after placing my order with Santa, Daimon’s arm is around Coffee’s chair. ‘Like, aha’ – Coffee pokes out her tongue between her white lips – ‘Santa’s little helper.’ Her face is marshmallowed with cosmetics. Velvet swivels towards me. Her tights whisper and Godzilla wakes up. ‘Yuzu-kun tells me you’re in the music biz.’ I smell her perfume, moistened and salted with sweat. ‘I’m modelling at the moment, doing a series of shoots for Tokyo’s biggest chain of body correction clinics.’ She leans towards me, her Lark Slim awaiting a flame, and Godzilla rears his fearsome head. Daimon spins his lighter across the table. Velvet’s face glows. A whole evening without thinking of Anju, until now.
Velvet wraps her arms around my chest as we lean into the first corner, less than a