David Mitchell: What You Do Not Know You Want

Werewolf was all sympathy when I complained about my nightmareprone neighbor. “The Holiday Inn’s the eighty-floor fucker out by the lagoon. They insulate the walls there. Four hundred bucks a night. You’d like it. You’d sleep like a baby.” Little wonder your wife checked out early, I very nearly told him. I walked to Shore Bird Beach Broiler for the breakfast buffet and the view of bikinis in the sun. Options re: Yukio Mishima’s knife had dwindled to a pretty pathetic clutch. The police had not contacted me. In the Hawaii Times I saw that my personal ad—“Nozomu, contact me about Vulture”—had been misprinted as “Nozomi, contact me about vultures.” Jesus Vegetable Christ. I caught a bus to Honolulu Center and spent the day making inquiries at various lost-property offices in museums, malls and the bus station, wherever I could think of; consulted the owners of antique shops; considered engaging a private detective, for ten seconds, before I realized how stupid I’d sound. Real-life Maltese Falcon quests are wastes of time. You do not find a lost object in a city unless you know exactly where to locate it, in which case it isn’t really lost. The place itself got to me. Nightingale may love it here, models are paid to love Hawaii, but I wouldn’t be sorry if Oahu sinks under a tsunami and soon. Palm trees are tarantula ugly. Honolulu is concrete ugly. Waikiki is glitzy ugly. Jetloads of Westerners microwaving themselves are pink ugly. Ala Moana Center, a monstrous cuboid vagina for Japanese tourists to ejaculate yen during seven-day orgies of spending, is unthinkably ugly. Mildewed side streets where syringes roll in weedy doorways of the Polynesian poor are just ugly, but fat vacationers paying fat prices for fat fat in fat seats in fat diners by fat parking lots of fat cars by fat freeways are ugly ugly ugly ugly. Wipe them out or wipe me out.

Nightingale called most evenings at nine. Matrimony, dear Vulture, is a political act. Don’t look at me that way. Nightingale is attracted to my assets-depleted by the purchase of Yukio Mishima’s knifeand I am aroused by hers. You Asians have always been pragmatic about this. Romantic marriage is a European fantasy, and Jesus Legal-aid Christ, we have the divorce rates to prove it. Fidelity is the smuggest elf of the love fantasy, so every evening by ten I was in Runaway Horses trying to get laid without lowering my standards too drastically. In L.A. Nightingale was shining up that Czech photographer’s zoom lens, doubtless. Why should I mind as long as she is as discreet as I am? Marriage is a public act; sex is a private one. What I mind is that my forget-me-not eyes are not what they were. What I minded was Wei’s mockery when I returned alone. What I minded is that Bar Wardrobe was locked by the time I scaled its stairs. Here’s another Big Thought, one that most men do not know they know, although Mishima says it without spelling it out: Sex is not, as cliché claims, a little death—sex is man’s ‘ fuck you!’ to death. When we are inside another body, death is not inside ours. Hence the absence of sex drives men to folly, lunacy or even worse.

Friday morning exposed a chink in my week’s armored bad luck. Werewolf was perched on a hillock of angling equipment in reception, threading a fishing line. “Off fishing?” I asked, just as a galaxy-class SUV pulled up outside. Werewolf muttered, “No, it’s my line—dancing morning,” and left Wei at reception. Opportunity stuck its thumb up my ass. From a call box I got hold of Dwight Silverwind, telling him the hour of repayment was at hand, then sidled back to Hotel Aloha to watch where Wei put the key. When the call came her face went from complacency to worry in twenty seconds. Dwight can still work his magic, the fraudulent old prick. Pive minutes later Wei went rushing out, carrying a document wallet and leaving reception guarded by Barney the dinosaur whose Back at… toy clock promised me a whole hour. One retrieved key and one deep metaphorical breath later I was in the back office, stashed with clutter from more prosperous days for Hotel Aloha. Trespasser, fretted Fear, trespasser. trespasser. Strung beads clatted as I passed into a lounge and kitchenette maintained with the minimum effort. The furnishings were bargain bin circa 1975. Fire escapes zigzagged the walls of the inner concrete courtyard. This rectangle of concrete must be where you fell. Here. Right here. Someone stepped over my grave. On the wall, a framed photograph held a poodle-cuddling woman in long-faded Hawaiian sunshine, perhaps at Lahaina. Mrs. Werewolf, deceased, I presume. No evidence of children, past or present. The bedroom housed an unmade bed and a dressing table hidden under bales of Angler’s Weekly and Playboy . Well, Vulture, I searched in a cupboard of hammers, saws, chisels, power tools and screws in labeled boxes but no s eppuku dagger or flute case; a bestiary of purple teddies, lime rabbits and lovey-eyed dalmatians; an empty fish tank, under mattresses, between folded towels, amid dead shoes and albums of fishing trips, inside an umbrella stand and casserole dishes. Hurrry, nagged Fear, hurry, harry. Possible footsteps from reception kept worrying me. How long had Wei been gone.’ How long before she smelled wild goose? Should I take every key I could find and search the entire hotel? Oh, impossible, a squad of spies would need a week. Then the reception bell chimed and a wheezy voice called through, “Frank? You at home?” I froze. The outer office door creaked. Dildo! shrieked Fear, You left it ajar!

“Frankie!”

I crouched down looking for a hiding place. “What you doing to yourself in there’ It’ll make you go blind. Ain’t that why you bought Miss Slitty?” I scuttled under the table and beseeched the god of farce to do me this one favor but banged my head on a leg. “Frankie?” I heard heavy breathing. I saw his legs lumber by, close enough to touch. A bottle was opened, a glass filled. A magazine opened. A chuckle. “Thanks, Frankie, don’t mind if I do.” If he sat down now, he’d have a clear sight of me crouching here. My knee was killing me. Sixty seconds scraped by. Sixty more passed by before I suspected he might have gone.

Wei was in a royal bitch of a mood when I got back from lunch. “Those Immigration fatheads! Just after you left this morning, I get a call saying there’s an inconsistency has been found with my green card extension, so present yourself immediately and ask for Oily Schmidt. No, no, it won’t wait, immediately means now, so off I run and guess what happens when after fifty goddamn minutes my number finally flashes up’ There is no Schmidt in Immigration! A Sampson, a Silvestri, a Stein, but no Schmidt. No one knows a thing about why I had to go there! Fatheads!” American bureaucracy for you, I sympathized, then steered the subject to the nocturnal disturbances on the fourth floor. Wei just frowned. “What shouting? I sleep like a baby in this place.” Then what about her trip to the Coke machine the other night? Wei just gave me an Are you crazy? look. “I sleep like a baby in this place.”

Nightingale called to check exactly when my plane got back to Yerbas Buenas, and to ask what I’d like for my welcome-back dinner. For an eternity of three or five seconds I contemplated telling her to marry someone who loves her back. “Peppered steak.” I came to my senses, realizing there are several reasons why this information might be useful, one of whom might be Czech. “Your mozzarella salad, and you, my angel.” Jesus Gold-digging Christ, I thought to myself climbing into the shower, what a catch I am. Brutal truth was, if Yukio Mishima’s dagger failed to materialize, I have nowhere to fall but Nightingale’s money. If she knew that, she’d call the wedding off. “I don’t do cheap,” she says. I can’t afford to see her go. I don’t do cheap, either. Fears of financial insecurity wrecked my shower. But What I saw on the bathroom mirror as I climbed out, finger-written in letters not yet steamed over, turned my warm skin cold: