Fortunato knelt in the gravel and bowed low. Domo arigatb, o sensei. Arigato meant "thank you," but literally it meant "it hurts." Fortunato felt the truth inside the words. If he hadn't believed Dogen, it wouldn't have hurt so much. He looked up and saw the old gardener staring at him in abject fear, but at the same time making a series of short, nervous bows from the waist so as not to seem rude. Fortunato smiled at him and bowed low again. "Don't worry," he said in Japanese. He stood up and gave the old man back his rake. "Just another crazy gaijin."
His stomach hurt again. It wasn't the bento, he knew. It was the stress inside his own mind, eating his body up from within.
He was back on Harumi-Dori, heading toward the Ginza corner. He'd been wandering for hours, while the sun had set and the night had flowered around him. The city seemed like an electronic forest. The long vertical signs crowded each other down the entire length of the street, flashing ideograms and English characters in blazing neon. The streets were crowded with Japanese in jogging outfits or jeans and sport shirts. Packed in with the regular citizens were the sararimen in plain gray suits.
Fortunato stopped to lean against one of the graceful f-shaped streetlights. Here it is, he thought, in all its glory. There was no more worldly a place on the planet, no place more obsessed with money, gadgets, drinking, and sex. And a few hours away were wooden temples in pine forests where men sat on their heels and tried to turn their minds into rivers or dust or starlight.
Make up your mind, he told himself. You have to make up your mind.
"Gaijin-san! You like girl? Pretty girl?"
Fortunato turned around. It was a tout for a Pinku Saron, a unique Japanese institution where the customer paid by the hour for a bottomless saki cup and a topless jo-san. She would sit passively in his lap while he fondled her breasts and drank himself into a state where he was prepared to go home to his w*. It was, Fortunato decided, an omen.
He paid three thousand yen for half an hour and walked into a darkened hallway. A soft hand took his and led him downstairs into a completely dark room filled with tables and other couples. Fortunato heard business being discussed all around him. His hostess led him to one end of the room and sat him with his legs pinned under a low table, his back supported by a legless wooden chair. Then she gracefully moved into his lap. He heard her kimono rustle as she opened it to free her breasts.
The woman was tiny and smelled of face powder, sandalwood soap, and, faintly, of sweat. Fortunato reached up with both hands and touched her face, his fingers tracing the lines of her jaw. She paid no attention. "Saki?" she asked.
"No," Fortunato said. "I-ie, domo. " His fingers followed the muscles of her neck down to her shoulders, out to the edges of her kimono, then down. His fingertips brushed lightly over her small, delicate breasts, the tiny nipples hardening at his touch. The woman giggled nervously, raising one hand to cover her mouth. Fortunato laid his head between her breasts and inhaled the aroma of her skin. It was the smell of the world. It was time either to turn away or surrender, and he had backed himself into a corner, left himself without the strength to resist.
He gently pulled her face down and kissed her. Her lips were tight, nervous. She giggled again. In Japan they called kissing suppun, the exotic practice. Only teenagers and foreigners did it. Fortunato kissed her again, feeling himself stiffening, and the electricity went through him and into the woman. She stopped giggling and began to tremble. Fortunato was shaking too. He could feel the serpent, Kundalini, begin to wake up. It moved around in his groin and began to uncoil through his spine. Slowly, as if she didn't understand what she was doing or why, the woman touched him with her little hands, putting them behind his neck. Her tongue touched him lightly on his lips and chin and eyelids. Fortunato untied her kimono and opened it up. He lifted her easily by the waist and sat her on the edge of the table, putting her legs over his shoulders, bending to open her up with his tongue. She tasted spicy, exotic, and in seconds she had come alive under him, hot and wet, her hips moving involuntarily.
She pushed his head away and leaned forward, working at his trousers. Fortunato kissed her shoulders and neck. She moaned softly. There didn't seem to be anyone else in the hot, crowded room, no one else in the world. It was happening, Fortunato thought. Already he could see a little in the darkness, see her plain, square face, the lines beginning to show under her eyes, seeing how her looks had consigned her to the darkness of the Pinku Saron, wanting her even more for the desire he could see hidden inside her. He lowered her onto him. She gasped as he went into her, her fingers digging into his shoulders, and his eyes rolled back in his head.
Yes, he thought. Yes, yes, yes. The world. I surrender. The power rose inside him like molten lava.
It was a little after ten when he walked into the Berni Inn. The waitress, the one who'd told him her name was Megan, was just coming out of the kitchen. She stopped dead when she saw Fortunato. The waitress behind her nearly ran into her with a tray of meat pies.
She stared at his forehead. Fortunato didn't have to see himself to know that his forehead had swollen again, bulging with the power of his rasa. He walked across the room to her. "Go away," she said. "I don't want to talk to you."
"The club," Fortunato said "The one with the sign of the duck. You know where it is."
"No. I never-"
"Tell me where it is," he ordered.
All expression left her face. "Across Roppongi. Right at the police box, down two blocks, then left half a block. The bar in front is called Takahashi's."
"And the place in back? What's it called?"
"It hasn't got a name. It's a yak hangout. It's not the Yamaguchi-gumi, none of the big gangs. Just this one little clan."
"Then why are you so afraid of them?"
"They've got a ninja, a shadow-fighter. He's one of those what-you-call-thems. An ace." She looked at Fortunato's forehead. "Like you, then, isn't he? They say he's killed hundreds. Nobody's ever seen him. He could be in this room right now. If not now, then he will be later. He'll kill me for having told you this."
"You don't understand," Fortunato said. "They want to see me. I've got just the thing they want."
It was the way Hiram had described it. The hallway was raw gray plaster and the door at the end of it was padded in turquoise Naugahyde with big brass nailheads. Inside, one of the hostesses came up to take Fortunato's jacket. "No," he said in Japanese. "I want to see the oyabun. It's important." She was still a little stunned just by the way he looked. His rudeness was more than she could deal with. "W-w-wakarimasen," she stammered.
"Yes, you do. You understand me perfectly well. Go tell your boss I have, to speak to him. Now."
He waited next to the doorway. The room was long and narrow, with a low ceiling and mirrored tiles on the. left-hand wall, above a row of booths. There was a bar along the other wall, with chrome stools like an American soda fountain. Most of the men were Koreans, in cheap polyester suits and wide ties. The edges of tattoos showed around their collars and cuffs. Whenever they looked at him, Fortunato stared back and they turned away.
It was eleven o'clock. Even with the power moving through him, Fortunato was a little nervous. He was a foreigner, out of his depth, in the middle of the enemy's stronghold. I'm not here for trouble, he reminded himself. I'm here to pay Hiram's debt and get out.
And then, he thought, everything will be okay. It was not even midnight Wednesday, and Hiram's business was nearly settled. Friday the 747 would be off for Korea and then the Soviet Union, taking Hiram and Peregrine with it. And then he would be on his own, able to think about what came next. Or maybe he should get on the plane himself, go back to New York. Peregrine said they had no future together, but maybe that wasn't true.