Philip Nutman: Cities of Night

It was the afternoon of the day of my death, and I was in bed with my Japanese concubine when Haiyan, my housekeeper, announced that the archbishop had come to see me.

“Take him to the bar and get him a drink,” I quavered in Mandarin, trying not to laugh because Paul Pope was no more an archbishop than I was a Sufi. Prescient I may often be, but I had not foreseen the arrival of the Pope of Perversity on this most auspicious of days; not only was it the day of my death, but I knew with terrible clarity, that it was the day of The Big One: California was about submerge like Atlantis, and Nevada was about to become beachfront property.

I may have retired fifteen years ago from the professions of novelist and screenwriter; nevertheless you will be constrained to consider, if you know my work at all and take the trouble now to reread that first sentence, that I have lost none of my old cunning in the contrivance of what is known as an arresting opening. But there is really nothing fake about it. Reality often plays into the hands of art. That I had celebrated my ninety third birthday two months earlier was a fact; the living room was still festooned with old-fashioned birthday cards. That Paul had come, albeit unexpectedly, to visit was a fact. But only I knew what the rest of the day had in store for the pestilent millions who swarmed over the West Coast like red ants picking clean a carcass.

I caressed Tomomi’s beautiful buttocks beneath the 310-count cotton sheets. Sighing, she positioned her head on my shoulder. She was twenty seven. I did not deserve a beautiful young blossom beside me. We had never exchanged carnal knowledge, but we had shared an intimacy known only to true lovers. She understood that even at my still tumescent antiquarian age that Eros had flown the coop when my beloved Tess passed away seven years previously. Tomo knew I had been faithful to my last wife, the greatest lover of my life, the only woman who had truly embraced my soul. My faithful Tomo saw the shadows and the pain surround me every day. She knew how much I desired paying the Ferryman to cross the river to be reunited with the Angel God had sent me when I tried to kill myself.

But that was then, and this was now. Tess was gone, and I needed to get my lazy arse out of bed.

“I wish you would come with me,” Tomo whispered.

“I’m too old to spend nearly a dozen hours on a plane to Paris, and it’s time you visited your parents. It has been six months,” I wheezed, reaching for my inhaler. Tomo took the tube from my shaking hand and inserted the mouthpiece lovingly between my lips. Although both her parents were from Tokyo, Tomo’s family lived in France, her father being part of the Japanese Trade Commission. I was glad they were there because the seismic shift which would destroy the West Coast would send shock waves across the Pacific and trigger severe quakes in Japan. I inhaled, feeling my lungs open like sun-kissed flowers. Tomo snuggled against me. I lay a hand on her back, stroking her spine. I had outlived three wives, and here I was on my deathbed cuddling with a girl young enough to be my great-great granddaughter. It had been an interesting life, but I was now tired of it.

“Go,” I said, kissing the top of her head. “Give yourself plenty of time to get to the airport.” I playfully slapped her bum. Tomo kissed my cheek and swung out of bed, unaware this would be the last time I saw her lithe, naked body and marvelled in her physical perfection. And perfection in my old, tired eyes she was: her form and contours were precisely proportioned to her five-three height; her weight a tad too skinny for my personal taste, but a wonderful reflection on Japanese genetics nevertheless. As I grew older and more emaciated, I discovered I wanted more to hold onto in a woman. But she was Tomo, and she had given herself totally to me — secretary, confidant, majordomo, nurse — platonic lover, because she knew how I hated sleeping alone.

I slid from the bed naked, sallow, emaciated… old. I still worked out a little every day and practised T’ai Chi and Qui Gong, but age had ravaged my muscles no matter how healthy I ate or exercised or meditated and focused on staying young at heart. That wasn’t difficult with a carefree sprite such as Tomo as my constant companion. Young in mind was tougher; I simply could not relate to the average twenty-something and the ice-sheet thin facileness of their preoccupations. It wasn’t just age telling me this; I had seen in my forties, when Obama took office, a sea change in the generation twenty years younger than me. Generations X and Y-me? had been eclipsed by generations Why Not? and Yes We Can. And then, life being an endless cycle, the hopes, idealism, commitment of those generations were replaced by the apathy and ennui of their offspring, who embraced the most mindless, empty aspects of life. I was too tired for this shit, and standing exposed before a God I didn’t believe existed, merely my own pathetic, drained visage reflecting back at me in a mirror (which, after all, is nothing more than a negative space in a frame), I craved the caress of death.

Then Tomo pinched my sagging right ass cheek, and I couldn’t help laugh.

“Don’t you have something better to do?”

She kissed my stubbled, gray chin. “Yes, take care of you. I won’t see you for two weeks, Hurst-san. A lot can happen in fourteen days.”

She had no idea.

“Some Banchai tea would be nice.”

“As you wish,” she replied, helping me slip into a purple kimono. Then she was gone: as silent as a geisha, as nimble as a field mouse.

I closed my eyes. Why, on this of all days, had Paul come to visit? We had been colleagues once, many decades ago, who, like moths, had transmuted into butterflies and, although we had flown off in different directions, had ultimately became friends. Yet like many friendships birthed by the cunt of commerce, our bond had ultimately soured, tainted by the virus of ego and greed and need — well, at least as far as he was concerned. My ego was the inverse of my penis: small and un-needing of worship. When I had been making a meagre thirty thousand pounds a year as a provincial journalist in England, I had been happy. And as for my needs, I had always met them face to face, hand to hand. I had never lacked a girlfriend nor a roof over my head. Food on the table? I had always eaten. And back in the day when I’d loved the Nectar of the Gods, there had been Guinness, Irish single malt, and good wine aplenty. Perhaps because I had, to invoke that hoary old Campbellian quote, followed my bliss — writing — the money and Uncle Tom Cobley and all which came with it had always followed. I had never wanted, nor had I needed. Perhaps because want and need cancelled each other out, that’s why my wants were met by my needs and vice versa. In my mind, I began to hum a favourite old Stones song: “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” (“But Sometimes You Get What You Need”).