What You Do Not Know You Want Page 0,7

Who," Grace filled in the blank, "is Runaway Barman now. Is hilarious joke, yes?" Hilarious, yes.

"Death isn't some faraway land, okay, at the end of time," Grace insisted several bottles later. I had no inkling how we got onto the subject. "Death is the white lines down the highway, okay, in your cutlery drawer, okay, in bottles in bathroom cabinets, inside cells of your body. Death, hey, we're made of the stuff. Death is the pond; we the living are the fish. So to answer your question, yes, of course, the dead are everywhere, and yes, they watch us. Like TV. When we interest them." Women love being asked if they are clairvoyant, so I did so. "Men uluuy.r ask that," frowned Grace, "but intuition is just seeing and listening, is not being blind because it does not agree with culture or fashion or desires. Intuition is not mystical." Believing that the dead swarm around the living sounded pretty mystical to me, I suggested, if not morbid. "Buying and selling suicide weapons of your Japanese writer is not morbid?" Yes, Vulture, loose lips sink ships, but I haven't wanted a woman as much as I wanted Grace since you-know-when. "Such a knife will only attract devil's eye, no? Is obvious!" I said, Would she consider continuing our discussion in a less public venue? "Okay, sure, I consider." But when I got back from the bathroom, Jesus Mary Poppins Christ, her bar stool was straining under a German as big as a grizzly. Gone, shrugged Shingo. Sorry. I ordered a last beer to show those smirking Australians but dealt the bur a series of vicious toe pokes and hoped that Grace intuited each one.

Wei was drawing her self-portrait from a mirror and munching coffee-crusted macadamia nuts. "No, you can't have the picture," she said, handing me a piece of paper with a string of digits on it. "A woman called. Five minutes ago." The number was unfamiliar. "Not your Nightingale who sings every evening," Wei said, making me wonder if she listened in, "another." Hadn't the caller left a name? Wei shook her head. "Didn't you ask what she wanted?" Wei snorted like a sly pony and for one second I wanted to crack all her bony bones like biscuits in bags and see her sly smile then. Back outside, I tapped in the mystery number. Grace answered. She'd made me look pretty stupid in Runaway Horses, I told her. "You recover okay. Listen, I made one-two phone calls. If you still want that knife, I know someone can maybe help." Of course I still wanted that knife. Grace was coming to Hotel Aloha now. Through the glass, Wei watched me, fingers twizzling her braided hairband. I knew that look. Female jealousy is rich cream.

"Quicker to walk than to find cab." Grace led me at a brisk clip down poorly lit backstreets. She swatted away my requests for information, saying only that I was free to turn back anytime I wanted. None of the weak stars were familiar from my childhood astronomy. Was I being led into a trap like that time in Cambodia' Perhaps, perhaps. Through a doorway half-blocked with rusting junk we climbed five concrete flights, lit by lamps swarming with black moths. No view but other housing blocks and washing strung across balconies. Grace stopped before a nameless door. Monkeywrench marks scarred the frame. To my astonishment she kissed me on the lips. Not erotically, not brashly, not shyly. Surely not pityingly? "What was that for?" Grace pressed the bell and ran back down the stairwell. Jesus Bodysnatched Christ-but before I could call out, a Japanese guy had stepped through into the milked moonlight, uttering my name, with your crucifix-it had to be, there's only one-on his hairless torso. Was I in room 404, dreaming this, or stuck in one of Dwight's fag-queen home movies? Certainly the youth was coffee-advert handsome, ponytailed, judo trousers, but he was stitched and patched from a very recent, pretty serious beating. "So you're here." His English was as American as it was Japanese. "Shingo told me you'd been into Runaway Horses. I, like… meant to call you"-he gingerly indicated his bruises-"but my creditors, like… changed the terms of repayment." His name came to me and I said it: Nozomu. Nozomu asked how I'd found him. Police sirens wailed from the dark mass under Diamond Head. Grace showed me here, I answered, gesturing at the stairwell, but even her footsteps had vanished. Nozomu