Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (9 page)

Crossing a short stone bridge over the last canal brings us to the precinct of her housing block. A nexus of passageways, like medieval battlements, entrenches the cramped grounds between one building and the next.

The hour approaches midnight. All but a few windows are dark. She takes me by the hand and leads me through this maze as if trying to evade predatory eyes. She stops in front of one building and bids me good-night.

"Good-night," I say.

Whereupon I climb the slope of the Western Hill alone and return to my own lodgings.

Skull, Lauren Bacall, Library

Outside it was dark, it was drizzling, and the streets were filled with people going home from work. It took forever to catch a cab.

Even under usual circumstances I have a hard time catching cabs. By which I should explain that in order to avoid potentially dangerous situations, I make a point of not taking the first two empty cabs that come my way. The Semiotecs had fake taxis, and you sometimes heard about them swooping off with a Calcutec who'd just finished a job. Of course, these might have been rumors, since I don't know anyone it actually happened to.

Still, you can't be too careful.

That's why I always take the subway or bus. But this time I was so tired and drowsy that I couldn't face the prospect of cramming into a rush-hour train. I decided to take a taxi, even if it took longer. Once in the cab, I nearly dozed off several times and panicked to false alert. As soon as I got home to my own bed, I could sleep to my heart's content. A cab was no place to sleep.

To keep myself awake, I concentrated on the baseball game being broadcast on the cab radio. I don't follow baseball, so for convenience sake I rooted for the team currently at bat and against the team in the field. My team was behind, 3-1. It was two outs with a man on second base when there was a hit, but the runner stumbled between second and third, ending the side without a run. The sportscaster called it rotten playing, and even I thought so too. Sure, anyone can take a spill, but you don't stumble between second and third in the middle of a baseball game. This blunder apparently so fazed my team's pitcher that he threw the opponent's lead-off batter an easy ball down the middle, which the guy walloped into the left-field bleachers for a home run.

When the taxi reached my apartment, the score was 4-1. I paid the fare, collected my hatbox and foggy brain, and got out. The drizzle had almost stopped.

There wasn't a speck of mail in the mailbox. Nor any message on the answering machine.

No one had any business with me, it seemed. Fine. I had no business with anyone else either. I took some ice out of the freezer, poured myself a large quantity of whiskey, and added a splash of soda. Then I got undressed and, crawling under the covers, sat up in bed and sipped my drink. I felt like I was going to fade out any second, but I had to allow myself this luxury. A ritual interlude I like so much between the time I get into bed and the time I fall asleep. Having a drink in bed while listening to music and reading a book.

As precious to me as a beautiful sunset or good clean air.

I'd finished half my whiskey when the telephone rang. The telephone was perched on a round table two meters away from the foot of the bed. I wasn't about to leave my nice warm bed and walk all the way over to it, so I simply watched the thing ring. Thirteen rings, fourteen rings, what did I care? If this had been a cartoon, the telephone would be vibrating midair, but of course that wasn't happening. The telephone remained humbly on the table ringing on and on. I drank my whiskey and just looked at it.

Next to the telephone were my wallet and knife—and that gift hatbox. It occurred to me that I should open it. Maybe it was something perishable that I should put in the refrigerator, something living, or even something "urgent". But I was too tired. Besides, if any of the above had been the giver's intention, you would think he'd have told me about it. When the telephone stopped ringing, I bottomed-up my whiskey, turned off the bedside light, and shut my eyes. A huge black net of sleep that had been poised in ambush fell over me. As I drifted off, I thought, do you really expect me to know what's going on?

When at last I awoke, it was half light out. The clock read six-fifteen, but I couldn't tell whether it was morning or evening. I pulled on a pair of slacks and leaned out my door to check the neighbor's doormat. The morning edition was lying there, which led me to conclude it was morning. Subscribing to a paper comes in handy at times like this. Maybe I ought to.

So I'd slept ten hours. My body still craved rest. With nothing particular that required my attention for the day, I could happily have gone back to bed. But on second thought, I got up. Rise and shine with the sun, I always say. I took a shower, scrubbing my body well, and shaved. I did my usual twenty-five minutes of calisthenics, I threw together breakfast.

The refrigerator was all but plundered of its contents. Time to restock. I sat down with my orange juice and wrote out a shopping list. It filled up one page and spilled over onto a second.

I dumped my dirty clothes into the washing machine and was busily brushing off my tennis shoes at the sink when I remembered the old man's mystery present. Dropping the shoes, I washed my hands and went to get the hatbox. Light as ever for its bulk—a nasty lightness somehow. Lighter than it had any need to be.

Something put me on edge. Call it occupational intuition. I did a quick scan of the room.

It was unnervingly quiet. Almost sound-removed. But my test cough did sound like a cough. And when I flicked open my spring-action knife and whacked the handle on the table, the noise was right. Having experienced sound-removal, I had gotten suspicious. I opened a window onto the balcony. I could hear cars and birds. What a relief. Evolution or no evolution, a world ought to have sound. /

I cut the tape, careful not to damage the contents of the box. On top was crumpled newspaper. I spread open a few sheets—the
Mainichi Shimbun
, three weeks old, no news of note. I crumpled the pages up again and tossed them away. There must have been two weeks' worth of wadded newspapers in the box, all of them
Mainichi
. With the newspapers out of the way, I now found a layer of those—polyethylene? styrofoam?—those pinkie-sized wormoids they use for packing. I scooped them up and into the garbage they went. This was getting to be one chore of a present. With half the plastic cheez puffs out of the way, there surfaced an item wrapped in more newspaper.

I didn't like the look of it. I went into the kitchen and returned with a can of Coke. I sat on the edge of the bed and drank the whole thing. I trimmed a fingernail. A black-breasted bird appeared on the balcony and hopped around on the deck table, pecking spryly at some crumbs. A peaceful morning scene.

Eventually, I turned my attention back to the newspaper-wrapped object and gently removed it from the box. The newspaper was wound with further orbits of tape, looking very much like a piece of contemporary art. An elongated watermelon in shape, though again, with hardly any weight to it. I cleared the table and undid the tape and newspaper.

It was an animal skull.

Great, I thought, just great. Did the old duffer really imag-ine I'd be overjoyed to receive this? He had to have a screw loose, giving a skull for a present.

The skull was similar to a horse's in shape, but considerably smaller. From my limited knowledge of biology, I deduced that the skull had been attached to the shoulders of a narrow-faced, hoofed, herbivorous, and not overly large species of mammal. Let's see now. I checked my mental catalogue of animals matching that description. Deer, goat, sheep, donkey, antelope… I couldn't remember any others.

I placed the skull on top of the TV. Very stylish. If I were Ernest Hemingway, I'd have put it over the mantle, next to the moose head. But my apartment, of course, had no fireplace. No fireplace and no sideboard, not even a coat closet. So on top of the TV it was.

I dumped the rest of the packing material into the trash. There at the bottom of the box was a long object rolled up in newspaper. Unwrapping it, I found a pair of stainless-steel fire tongs exactly like the ones the old man had used on his skull collection. I was reminded of the ivory baton of a Berlin Philharmonic conductor.

"All right, all right, I'll play along," I said out loud. I went over to the skull on the TV and tapped it on the forehead. Out came a
mo-oan
like the nasal whine of a large dog. Not the hard clunk that I expected. Odd, yes, but nothing to get upset about. If that whiny moan was the noise it made, who was I to argue?

Tapping the skull got old quick. I sat down and dialed the System to check my schedule.

My rep answered and told me he'd penciled in a job four days hence, was that okay? No problem, I told him. I thought about verifying the shuffling clearance, but decided not to.

It would have entailed a lot of extra talk. The papers were all in order, the remuneration already squared away. Besides, the old man said he'd avoided going through agents to keep things secret. Better not complicate matters.

Added to which, I was none too enthused with my rep. Tall, trim, thirtyish, the type who thinks he's on top of every-thing. I try my best to avoid talking with guys like that any more than I have to.

I finished my business and hung up, then went into the living room and relaxed on the sofa with a beer to watch a video of Humphrey Bogart's
Key Largo
. I love Lauren Bacall in
Key Largo
. Of course, I love Bacall in
The Big Sleep
too, but in
Key Largo
she's practically allegorical.

Watching the TV screen, my eyes just naturally drifted up to the animal skull resting on top. Which robbed me of my usual concentration. I stopped the video where the hurricane hits, promising myself to see the rest later, and kicked back with the beer, gazing blankly at the item atop the TV. I got the sneaking suspicion that
Vd
seen the skull before. But where? And how? I pulled a T-shirt out of a drawer and threw it over the skull so I could finish watching
Key Largo
. Finally, I could concentrate on Lauren Bacall.

At eleven o'clock, I left the apartment, headed for the supermarket near the station, stopping next at the liquor store for some red wine, soda water, and orange juice. At the cleaners I claimed a jacket and two shirts; at the stationery shop I purchased a pen, envelopes, and letter paper; at the hardware store, the finest-grain whetstone in the place.

Then to the bookshop for two magazines, the electrical goods store for light bulbs and cassette tapes, the photo store for a pack of Polaroid film. Last, it was the record shop, where I picked out a few disks. By now, the whole back seat of my tiny coupe was taken up with shopping bags. I must be a born shopper. Every time I go to town, I come back, like a squirrel in November, with mounds of little things.

Even the car I drove was purely for shopping. I only bought it because I was already buying too much stuff to carry home by myself. I was lugging a shopping bag when I happened to pass a used-car dealer and went in and saw all the different cars they had.

Now I'm not particulary crazy about cars, nor do I know much about them. So I said simply: "I want a car, any make, nothing fancy, nothing big."

The middle-aged salesman started to pull out a catalog, but I didn't want to look at any catalog. I only wanted a car for shopping, I told the guy, pure and simple. It didn't need go fast for the highway, didn't need to look smart for dates. No family outings either. I had no use for a high-performance engine or air-conditioning. No car stereo, no sun roof, no super radials. All I wanted was a decent compact that cornered well, didn't belch exhaust, wasn't too noisy, and wouldn't break down on me. And if it came in dark blue, so much the better.

The car the guy showed me was yellow. I didn't think much of the color, but otherwise it was just what I described. And because it was an old model, the price was right.

"This is how cars were meant to be," said the salesman. "If you really want to know, I think people are nuts."

No argument from me.

That's how I came to own my shopping car.

I wound up my purchases and pulled into my convenient neighborhood fast-food restaurant. I ordered shrimp salad, onion rings, and a beer. The shrimp were straight out of the freezer, the onion rings soggy. Looking around the place, though, I failed to spot a single customer banging on a tray or complaining to a waitress. So I shut up and finished my food. Expect nothing, get nothing.

From the restaurant window I could see the expressway, with cars of all makes, colors, and styles barrelling along. I remembered the jolly old man and his chubby granddaughter. No matter how much I liked them, I couldn't help thinking they had to be living in the outer limits. That inane elevator, the open pit in the back of a closet, INKlings, and sound removal—I wouldn't believe it in a novel. And then, they give me an animal skull as a memento.

Waiting for my after-meal coffee, I thought about the chubby girl. I thought about her square earrings and pink suit and pink high heels. I thought about her body, her calves and the flesh around her neck and the build of her face and… well, things like that. I could recall each detail with alarming clarity, yet the composite was indistinct. Curious.

Maybe it was because I hadn't slept with an overweight woman in a while that I just couldn't picture a heavyset woman in the altogether.

The last time I'd slept with a fat female was the year of the Japanese Red Army shoot-out in Karuizawa. The woman had extraordinary thighs and hips. She was a bank teller who had always exchanged pleasantries with me over the counter. I knew her from the midriff up. We became friendly, went out for a drink once, andWled up sleeping together. Not until we were in bed did I notice that the lower half of her body was so demographically disproportionate. It was because she played table tennis all through school, she had me know, though I didn't quite grasp the causal relationship. I didn't know table tennis led to below-the-belt corporeality.