about how tiny the apartments were here, and how houses in Britain all have central heating. Then their boyfriends turned up. Two bloody great U.S. marine gorillas. They looked down at us, unimpressed, and Koji and I decided it was time for another drink at the bar.
• • •
But yeah, it’s certainly different here. All through my junior high school days people hassled me about my parents. Finding parttime jobs was never easy, either: it was as tough as having Korean parents. People find out. It would have been easier to say they’d died in an accident, but I wasn’t going to lie for those knob-heads. Plus if you say someone’s dead, then it tempts fate to kill them off early. Gossip works telepathically in Tokyo. The city
is
vast, but there’s always someone who knows someone whom someone knows. Anonymity doesn’t muffle coincidence: it makes the coincidences more outlandish. That’s why I still think one of these days my father might wander into the shop.
So, from elementary school onwards I used to be in fights. I often lost, but that didn’t matter. Taro, Mama-san’s bouncer, always told me it’s better to fight and lose than not fight and suffer, because even if you fight and lose your spirit emerges intact. Taro taught me that people respect spirit, but even cowards don’t respect cowards. Taro also told me how to headbutt taller adversaries, how to knee in the balls, and how to dislocate a man’s hand, so that by high school nobody much bothered me. One time a gang of junior yakuza were waiting outside school for me, because I’d given one of their kid brothers a nosebleed. I still don’t know who tipped Mama-san off—Koji, most probably—but Mama-san sent Taro along that day to pick me up. He waited until they had formed a ring around me down an alley, and then he strolled along and scared seven shades of shit out of them. Now I think about it, Taro’s been more like a dad to me than anyone else.
A leathery man in a blood-red jacket came in, ignoring me. He found the Charles Mingus section and bought about two thirds of the stock, including the collectors’ items, peeling off ten-thousand yen notes like toilet paper. His eyeballs seemed to pulse to the bass rhythm. He left, carrying his purchases in a cardboard box that he assembled himself on the counter. He hadn’t asked for a discount, though I would have gladly given him one, and I was left with a wad of money. I phoned Takeshi to tell him the good news,and that it might be best if he came to pick the money up himself that night. I knew he had a cash-flow problem.
“Ah,” gasped Takeshi. “Baby! That’s the way. That is very, very, very good!”
There was hallucinogenic music on in the background that sounded like a migraine, and a woman being tortured by tickling.
Feeling I’d phoned at a bad time I said goodbye and hung up.
And still only eleven in the morning.
Koji was the class egghead at high school, which made him an outsider, too. He should have gone to a much better high school, but until he was fifteen his dad was always being transferred, so it was never that easy for him to keep up. Koji was also diabolically bad at sports. I swear, in three years I never saw him manage to hit a baseball once. There was one time when he took an almighty swing, the bat flew out of his hands and hurtled through the air like a missile, straight into Mr. Ikeda, our games master, who idolized Yukio Mishima even though I doubted he’d ever got through a whole book by anybody in his entire life.
I was doubled up laughing, so I didn’t realize nobody else was. That cost me school toilet-cleaning duty for the whole term, with Koji. That’s when I learned Koji loved the piano. I play the tenor saxophone. That’s how I got to know Koji. A winded games teacher and the foulest toilets in the Tokyo educational system.
One of our regulars, Mr. Fujimoto, came in during the lunch hour. The bell rang and a gust of air rustled papers all
• • •
But yeah, it’s certainly different here. All through my junior high school days people hassled me about my parents. Finding parttime jobs was never easy, either: it was as tough as having Korean parents. People find out. It would have been easier to say they’d died in an accident, but I wasn’t going to lie for those knob-heads. Plus if you say someone’s dead, then it tempts fate to kill them off early. Gossip works telepathically in Tokyo. The city
is
vast, but there’s always someone who knows someone whom someone knows. Anonymity doesn’t muffle coincidence: it makes the coincidences more outlandish. That’s why I still think one of these days my father might wander into the shop.
So, from elementary school onwards I used to be in fights. I often lost, but that didn’t matter. Taro, Mama-san’s bouncer, always told me it’s better to fight and lose than not fight and suffer, because even if you fight and lose your spirit emerges intact. Taro taught me that people respect spirit, but even cowards don’t respect cowards. Taro also told me how to headbutt taller adversaries, how to knee in the balls, and how to dislocate a man’s hand, so that by high school nobody much bothered me. One time a gang of junior yakuza were waiting outside school for me, because I’d given one of their kid brothers a nosebleed. I still don’t know who tipped Mama-san off—Koji, most probably—but Mama-san sent Taro along that day to pick me up. He waited until they had formed a ring around me down an alley, and then he strolled along and scared seven shades of shit out of them. Now I think about it, Taro’s been more like a dad to me than anyone else.
A leathery man in a blood-red jacket came in, ignoring me. He found the Charles Mingus section and bought about two thirds of the stock, including the collectors’ items, peeling off ten-thousand yen notes like toilet paper. His eyeballs seemed to pulse to the bass rhythm. He left, carrying his purchases in a cardboard box that he assembled himself on the counter. He hadn’t asked for a discount, though I would have gladly given him one, and I was left with a wad of money. I phoned Takeshi to tell him the good news,and that it might be best if he came to pick the money up himself that night. I knew he had a cash-flow problem.
“Ah,” gasped Takeshi. “Baby! That’s the way. That is very, very, very good!”
There was hallucinogenic music on in the background that sounded like a migraine, and a woman being tortured by tickling.
Feeling I’d phoned at a bad time I said goodbye and hung up.
And still only eleven in the morning.
Koji was the class egghead at high school, which made him an outsider, too. He should have gone to a much better high school, but until he was fifteen his dad was always being transferred, so it was never that easy for him to keep up. Koji was also diabolically bad at sports. I swear, in three years I never saw him manage to hit a baseball once. There was one time when he took an almighty swing, the bat flew out of his hands and hurtled through the air like a missile, straight into Mr. Ikeda, our games master, who idolized Yukio Mishima even though I doubted he’d ever got through a whole book by anybody in his entire life.
I was doubled up laughing, so I didn’t realize nobody else was. That cost me school toilet-cleaning duty for the whole term, with Koji. That’s when I learned Koji loved the piano. I play the tenor saxophone. That’s how I got to know Koji. A winded games teacher and the foulest toilets in the Tokyo educational system.
One of our regulars, Mr. Fujimoto, came in during the lunch hour. The bell rang and a gust of air rustled papers all
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