let the ship down?’ The kitchen staff chant back in one air-punching chorus. ‘To the sharks! To the sharks! To the sharks!’ I seriously consider giving myself up to Mr Sumo, after all. ‘Follow me, mousseboy. Master will conduct his inspection.’ I am hustled between shining counters and racks of pans, past a rack of punch-cards. A door. Please let there be a door. ‘This is where you check in, if Master forgives your disgraceful start.’ Mr Sumo must be at the bolted door by now. All these knives worry me. A boy with a sunken nose scrubs floor tiles with a toothbrush – the chef deals him a powerful kick for no apparent reason. We come to a poky office full of the chug, grind and kiss of a knife-sharpening lathe. On the far side is an open door – steps lead up to a yard of rubbish bags. The chef raps on the door frame, and shouts. ‘The new mousseboy has reported for active duty, Master.’ The lathe dies.
‘Finalemente.’ Master does not turn around. ‘Show the scoundrel in.’ His voice is far too high for his bulk. The head chef stands aside and prods me forward. Master turns around. He is wearing a blowtorcher’s mask that reveals a petite mouth. He holds a cleaver sharp enough to castrate a bull. ‘Leave us, Head Chef Bonki. Hang the sign on the door.’ The office door clicks shut. Master tests the blade on his tongue. ‘Why prolong your little deception?’
‘Sir?’
‘You are not the mousseboy who served me so amply at Jeremiah the Bullfrog’s, are you?’
Lie, quick! ‘Uh, true. I’m his brother. He got sick. But he didn’t want to let down the crew, so he sent me instead.’ Not bad.
‘How supremely sacrificial.’ Master advances. Not good.
The door touches my back. ‘My pleasure,’ I say. Do I hear banging?
‘My pleasure. Mine, I tell you. Touch it. Mousse is springy.’
I see my face in the black glass of his mask wondering what the mousseboy is supposed to do exactly. ‘You are the best in the business, Master.’ Sudden commotion is loose in the kitchen. No way around him to the yard door. Master pants. I smell liver pâté on his breath. ‘Tweak it. Mousse is delicate. Slice it. Oh yes. Mousse is soft. So soft. Sniff it. Mousse will yield. Oh yes. Mousse will yield.’ Four fat fingers swim towards my face.
A shout. ‘Oy!’
‘Irksome. Irksome.’ Master lifts up a tiny curtain next to my head that covers a peep-hole. His mouth stiffens. He picks up his cleaver, knocks me aside, flings the door open, and barges through. ‘Whorehouse vermin!’ he screams. ‘You have been warned!’ I glimpse Mr Sumo throwing assistant chefs over counters. ‘You have been warned!’ shouts Master. ‘You have been warned what happens to pimps from the dark side who bring herpes and syphilis on to my spotless ship!’ He hurls his cleaver. No point hanging around to examine the damage – I am out through the door, running up the steps, leaping over the plastic garbage bags, scattering through the crows, sprinting across the back yard, down a side street, and I don’t stop zigzagging and checking behind me until seven-thirty.
At seven-forty I suddenly know where I am. Omekaido Avenue. That zirconium skyscraper is PanOpticon. I walk a little farther towards Shinjuku and get to the intersection with Kita Street. Jupiter Café. The morning is already shallow-frying. I check my money. If walk back to Ueno, I can afford my submarine back to Kita Senju and buy a light breakfast. So light it would blow away if I sneezed.
Jupiter Café is air-conned soggy cool. I buy coffee and a pineapple muffin, sit at my window seat and examine my ghostly reflection in the window: a twenty-year-old Eiji Miyake, hair matted with sweat, smelling of dope and shrimpish sex, and sporting – I see to my horror – a lovebite the size of Africa over my Adam’s apple. My complexion has completed its metamorphosis from Kyushu tan to drone-paste. The waitress with the most perfect neck isn’t working this morning – if she saw me in this condition, I would give a howl, age nine centuries and desiccate into a mound of dandruff and fingernails. The only other customer is a woman studying a fashion magazine with a toolbox of make-up. I vow never to mentally stroke another woman again, ever. I savour my pineapple muffin and watch the media screen on the NHK building. Missile launchers recoil, cities