Jon Grimwood - End of the World Blues

A sign on the alley wall announced Pirate Mary’s—Tokyo’s Best Irish Bar and pointed to a building that wasn’t there.

Vomit soured Kit’s throat.

It wasn’t the sight of the blackened ruins nor the fact Yoshi had died here. A fact made infinitely more real by being there. It was the smell. The stink of charcoal and death. Yoshi’s body was gone, but other things had died here, rats or birds, mice and other rodents. He could smell the corruption, that unmistakable, utterly cloying signature of dead flesh.

“Fuck,” said Kit, swallowing sourness.

“You okay?” No Neck shook his head. “Shit, sorry…Of course you’re not okay.”

“It’s the smell,” said Kit, spitting.

No Neck looked at him. “What smell?” he asked.

A thick-set man in a hard hat tried to wave Kit away as he approached two Brazilians busy loading chunks of concrete into a fresh Dumpster. “Please stay back,” he said. “We’re working.”

“Yeah?” said No Neck. “Well we’re…”

Kit stepped between them. “This was my bar,” he said. “My wife died here.”

Whatever the foreman saw in Kit’s eyes was enough for him to order the Brazilians to stop working. “We’re going to take a break,” he said. “We’ll be back in ten minutes…” Left unspoken was the fact this was all the time Kit would get.

“I thought you owned this place,” said No Neck, as he watched the crew head uphill towards Roppongi’s main drag.

“Yeah,” said Kit.

“So you’ve just sold it, right?”

Kit shook his head. “I know nothing about this,” he said. He looked around at the scattered rubble, the half-filled Dumpster and a silent pneumatic drill. “No one’s mentioned this at all.”

At 5.30 am a man in the next capsule coughed himself awake, flicked down the video screen in his roof, and began to drum his nails as he waited for the news.

Japan’s biggest fraud trial collapses, CEO Osamu Nakamura too ill to give evidence. File closes on Kitagawa family suicide. Washington, London, Moscow ramp up their war on narco-terrorism.

And then Kit heard Yoshi’s name.

At Christie’s in New York an example of work by Ms. Yoshi Tanaka sells for an unprecedented sum…

Ten minutes later the same man began to shave with a loud and erratic razor. About half an hour after this, a woman on the female-only floor farted loudly and spent the next five minutes chuckling to herself.

By 7.30 am, the sole guest at Executive Start Capsule Hotel was Kit, and he’d been awake all night, trying to work out why Yuko wouldn’t take his calls. So he rolled up the blind covering his glass door and scrambled out, maneuvering himself over the lip; the capsules stacked two deep along a corridor and he’d chosen an upper one.

Of course, Kit could have taken a room at the Tokyo Hilton, on the far side of Shinjuku station, about half a mile west of where he was. He still had Mr. Oniji’s money, mostly untouched. But in his own way Kit was saying goodbye to a city that had been saying goodbye to itself for as long as he could remember. A trial separation from Tokyo felt as lonely as leaving a lover.

It was only as he sweated out last night’s beer in a communal sauna that Kit realised he’d obviously taken Mr. Oniji’s advice to heart. Until then, he’d have said he had no intention of going anywhere. Kit was still wondering about that as he showered. And then, when he’d put it off for as long as possible, he shaved carefully, dressed, and checked himself in the mirror.

Hollow eyes stared back. Other than that, he’d do.

The sub-manager at Kyoto Credit Bank was apologetic. Ms. Tanaka’s sister and brother-in-law had closed her account a week earlier and emptied the strong box Ms. Tanaka had been renting. The joint account Mr. Nouveau held with Ms. Tanaka still existed. Unfortunately, under Japanese law, it was now frozen until a certificate of probate was filed at the ward office. He believed from what Ms. Tanaka’s brother-in-law said that this would be very soon.

On his way to the door, not just of his office but the bank itself, the sub-manager added his profound regret at the incalculable loss of an Important Intangible Cultural Property and so much of her work. When Kit told him that most of Yoshi’s recent pieces were on tour in New York, the man looked almost relieved.

“A tragic loss never the less.”

Nodding, Kit shook hands, bowed briefly, and cut across the road, headed for No Neck’s waiting Speedmaster. It was either that or kick the shit out of KCB’s sub-manager.

“Okay,” said No Neck, after Kit told him what had happened. “Next stop, her lawyers.”

The woman behind the desk at Yamanoto & Co was so embarrassed at Kit’s arrival that she sat frozen at her desk, repeating Yoshi’s name to herself, while she fretted about what to do next. She was still glitching when a young woman in a dark suit stopped to listen, overheard Yoshi’s name, and introduced herself.

“Suzuki,” she said, offering her hand. “Ako Suzuki. Mr. Togo’s senior assistant.”

“Suzuki-san…”

“Perhaps,” said the young woman, “it might be best if we used Mr. Togo’s office?” She gestured to a cherry-wood door behind her.

“I’ll see you outside,” said No Neck.

Having turned down the offer of both tea and coffee, Kit accepted a glass of water, because turning this down would only have produced the offer of fruit juice or something else. When his water finally arrived, brought by the receptionist, it came in a glass, with ice and a slice of lemon, and Kit and Ms. Suzuki had just agreed it was a pity Mr. Togo was not here himself, that the spring blossom around Inokashira Pond had been spectacular, and the weather was surprisingly humid, even for June.

Only when Kit had sipped from his glass did Mr. Togo’s assistant put both her hands on the table and bow, very slightly. “We are sorry,” she said, “for your loss.” The language Ms. Suzuki used was so formal that Kit barely understood what she said. He waited for her to add something about Yoshi’s work or the fact Ms. Tanaka was the best potter of her generation. Instead she just reached across the desk for a desk diary.

“Mr. Togo had the meeting on Tuesday with Mr. Tamagusuku,” she said, flicking back a couple of pages. “Ms. Tanaka’s brother-in-law said he would update you on what was said. I imagine he’s been in touch?”

Kit shook his head.

“Ahh…” Ms. Suzuki considered the diary in front of her very carefully. As if it might explain why. “That is unfortunate.”

She shuffled a few pages and then shuffled back again, got up and went to a filing cabinet, only to turn round and come back again. Although young, Ms. Suzuki did not look like the kind of woman who got flustered.

“There was a will,” she said. “We gave it to Mr. Tamagusuku.” Of course there was. Of course they did.

Artists in the West were meant to be untidy and driven by inner demons. Yoshi had demons, all right. Only she’d probably kept their details filed in the order in which they first appeared.

“You had more than one copy,” Kit stated.

Ms. Suzuki stared at him.

“I know Yoshi,” said Kit. “She’d have asked Mr. Togo to notarise two copies, then she’d have filed another with her bank, kept a spare at home, and for all I know, given a final copy to Yuko…”

He caught Ms. Suzuki’s glance and thought about what he’d said.

“Okay, maybe not that last one,” admitted Kit, because then Yuko’s husband wouldn’t have been in such a hurry to collect the original.

“Forgive me for asking,” she said. “How long were…” Ms. Suzuki caught herself. “How long did you and Yoshi live together?”