Tuvalu by Andrew O'Connor Page B

move into a place like this. After that you have to make it your own or you feel like you’re living in a display home.’
    â€˜It’s not something I’ve ever had to think about.’
    I lay back on the bed, tired. Mami lay beside me, curling in. I realised she was now wearing a navy-blue slip but had not noticed her changing. The silk was slippery and cool beneath my palm, like melting ice.
    â€˜You turned on a lot of lamps,’ she said softly, half biting, half sucking at her bottom lip.
    â€˜They’re good lamps. You were right to keep them.’
    â€˜Thank you.’
    She looked beautiful close up. Her nose was small but at this distance somewhat wide and her mouth was long. She was incredibly thin—too thin. But it all fitted. Everything matched up. Looking at Mami, her various shapes, I felt a small but pleasant ache inside me, as if fighting off orgasm.
    Soon she was asleep. I stared at her for as long as I dared, then looked away. I was worried she might wake to find me interested in regions I had no claim to. I scanned the room. The bar was untouched, which struck me as odd. All the bottles were full. I wondered if the hotel staff topped them up, if they cleaned the place whenever Mami drifted out to do whatever it was she did.
    But what puzzled me most was the cluttered nature of the room. There was a large flat-screen TV with a DVD player (though only one DVD, Roman Holiday ), the bar, seven or eight couches, a desk, a walk-in closet, an en suite and an antique dining table. In addition to this, scattered across the floor were countless Vogue magazines. Not just American Vogue , but the British, French and Spanish editions too, some open, others upside down, pages splayed.
    I wriggled free and rolled off the bed. I entered the en suite—which was about twice the size of my hostel room— and urinated as quietly as possible. Then I sat down inside the deep, dry spa and extended my arms without touching either side. When I tired of this I climbed back out and crossed to the sink, where large mirrors on opposing walls placed me at the head of an army of clones. Since I did not have a toothbrush I squeezed toothpaste onto my finger, wiped my teeth as best I could, cupped water in my hands, slurped, rinsed and spat.
    With this done I returned to the room in which Mami was sleeping. I crept close to her, eyes near her lips. She showed no sign of waking so I decided to explore further. I entered a hallway, conscious of the sound of my socks over the carpet.
    One door led into a dining room, another a conference room, neither of which appeared to have been altered by Mami. I opened the third and last door at the end of the hallway and entered a Japanese-style room. This room had tatami matting and was divided at its middle by open, paper-thin sliding doors. I had a vague sense of stepping back in time until I noticed a collection of photographs. They were all in identical black frames and were of naked Japanese women. Many of the women were bound with coarse, heavily knotted rope and one was suspended from a barren tree. I circled the room a few times, taking in each photograph. Then I lay in front of the window and stared over the city below.
    All of Tokyo was strikingly uniform. It had replicated itself the way cells do: identically save for minimal error, the genesis of evolution. The buildings were square and squat, and atop the very tallest large red bulbs pulsed silently, warning off aircraft. I thought of the view from Mami’s front room by day. Saturated with morning sun, Tokyo had looked like a demolition site. The sharp, square buildings—all white, grey or brown—had taken on the look of scattered bricks. The only exception had been the Imperial Palace, a napkin of green at the centre. From such a height it had been easy to identify the grey roofs shrouded in lush canopies, the beautiful white walls beneath and the various glinting moats. It had intrigued me