Jon Grimwood - End of the World Blues

“Kit…”

He hadn’t expected Neku to know his name.

“Leave,” he told her. “Before we call the police.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Try me,” said Kit. What else could he say? Yoshi was within listening distance.

“Yeah,” said the girl. “Ain’t that the truth…”

When Kit got back after locking the door to the alley where the bins were kept, and the door at the top of the stairs, which let customers into Pirate Mary’s, he found the dishwasher rumbling and Yoshi nowhere in sight. So he checked the window locks, wiped down the counter one final time, and began to type out a note advertising No Neck’s job, since this looked like the price Yoshi intended to extract for making peace.

“You okay?” he asked, having tracked Yoshi down to the bathroom. A question too stupid to merit an answer.

“Tomorrow,” she said, “we’ll talk tomorrow.”

Kit shut the bathroom door on his way out. He shut it softly, climbed the stairs to the next level, and walked out onto the balcony, to watch Tokyo’s lights twinkle like a mat of stars around him. He no longer felt drunk, he no longer felt afraid. Kit was coming to accept that he no longer felt anything very much at all.

The bath was large enough for two adults to sit upright, and so deep when filled that the level would reach their necks. Made from cast iron, it had been dragged to the third floor years earlier and sunk so far through the floor that it protruded into the area below, which was the bar these days. Above the bath was a shower that took water from a rain tank on the roof. The spray was warm in summer and cold in winter, which was the way Yoshi liked it.

The house had belonged to a grandfather on her mother’s side, and when Kit put up the money it had been to buy the wreck of a building from Yoshi’s cousin, the old man’s heir. The price had still been low enough to make the rest of Yoshi’s family mutter.

It was her grandfather who originally dragged the metal bath to the third floor, before the walls had even been put in place. The bath was destined for the top floor, but her grandfather settled on the floor below, having decided that getting it that far was a miracle.

Such a bath would never now get planning permission. Partly this was because its weight made the cast-iron bath unsuitable for a wooden-framed house and partly because electric cabling ran close to one side. But mostly it was because the bath was heated by a gas burner bolted directly to its rim.

Naked flame played on metal and this heated the water. The only time Yoshi slipped as a child she had burned herself so badly the scar on her hip was still there, although growing had shrunk it to the size of a flower.

As always, Yoshi showered before taking a bath. Her other grandfather had squatted naked at an outside tap and rinsed himself with a cloth, but most of the old man’s children and grandchildren had grown up with showers. Kit was the first person Yoshi met who actually washed in the bath and he stopped the moment he understood how much this upset her.

She was no fool. Yoshi knew Kit didn’t love her. At least, not any longer. He was fond of her and put up with her moods and bound her tightly when she demanded it, but that wasn’t love. He admired her work, the way she had of throwing pots so fine they looked too fragile to exist. And he admired her body, which was lean and spare and his whenever he wanted. But he didn’t love her. Which was fine, because she’d always been honest about not loving him.

Discarding her dressing gown once the water was hot, Yoshi sank beneath its surface, letting the heat make her sleepy. And as she sat, with the water up to her neck, barely half awake and trying not to get the pages of her paperback wet, the frivolous flickering of a billion stars fought the city’s sodium glare for the right to the night sky beyond her window. Silent backdrop to the street noise of Roppongi.

Drunken tourists leaving a club. A motorbike at the lights, something large. The dying howl of a cop car and an amplified order to behave properly . A woman in a house opposite having sex, more noisily than was strictly necessary. Yoshi knew her city and its sounds. Kit might insist he belonged here. So he’d told her, right at the beginning, the summer he arrived at Narita with one suit, three battered Murakami paperbacks, and a Berlitz phrase book. She’d been right not to believe him.

She heard a cat first, then a bin going over.

“Kit…?”

Yoshi listened in vain for his answer.

“You want to check that?”

The cat was expected, round here there was always a cat; but the bin was heavy, too large she’d have thought to be knocked over by an animal that small. Sighing, Yoshi climbed out of the bath and reached for her dressing gown, without bothering to dry herself first. She shuffled on some slippers and climbed the single flight of stairs to their bedroom to fetch her husband.

The sheet was thrown back and his yukata was missing from its hook on the door. Since it was hardly worth going back in her bath, Yoshi collected her book of poems, relit the gas to heat the water for Kit, and returned to the bedroom, climbing wearily into bed.

Outside, a car started up and a cat yowled, wooden walls creaked, as they often did, and a metallic clang at ground level told Yoshi that Kit had opened the grill which covered Pirate Mary’s rear door. She fell asleep to thoughts of Yuko, her sister’s new baby, and how she’d telephone in the morning to apologise.

Kit wore a jacket over his yukata, though he’d forgotten to put on shoes. The baseball bat in his hand came from a stall in Asakusa and was so old it had a facsimile of Babe Ruth’s signature, the words 1948 Memorial Edition and Produced in Occupied Japan stamped into the handle.

Flicking on the overhead lights, Kit said, “I know you’re in here.”

Halogen strips stuttered into life overhead, revealing three microwaves, a Zanussi deep fat fryer, an industrial-size dishwasher, and a butcher’s block that had been there when he and Yoshi bought the building.

Other than this his kitchen was empty.

Bat in hand, Kit returned to the bar, realising too late that he’d just provided a perfect target for anybody now hidden behind the door.

“I’m armed,” he added.

Kit recognised the snort before he saw the girl. She was over by a window, wrapped in the folds of her cloak. It would have made more sense to Kit to discard the thing before she broke in, but then he wasn’t fifteen or a cos-play-zoku and who knew what rules they worked to?

“Found it,” she said, holding up her knife. “That’s all I wanted.” Neku did something clever with her fingers and the blade disappeared, only to pop back into being when she reversed the movement.

“See,” she said. “Not hard.”

Another twist of the wrist and it was gone again.

“I’m leaving now.”

Kit nodded.

“I won’t be back.”

“That works for me,” he said.

“Okay, I’m off…” Neku hesitated on the edge of leaving. “Can I ask you something?”

“You can ask…”

“How did you know I was down here?”

“That bin lid,” Kit said. “You shouldn’t have knocked it over.”

Neku looked puzzled. “I haven’t been near the bins,” she said, before shifting to her next question. “And why did you buy me coffee?”

“You looked cold,” said Kit.

She sighed. “You know,” said Neku, “I’m not sure I’m ever going to understand this world.”

“I’ll see you out,” he said.

Stepping onto cinder block, Neku flicked open her cloak and twisted one hand, summoning the knife she’d taken from the bar. A flick of her other wrist and she had the second knife. With a twirl, she cut one blade through the air and then cut again with the other, folding them out of sight with a simple twist of her fingers.