The GoldenCity

Back in the cubicle he removed the gun from his waistband and placed it in the shoulder bag. Within the gray space of the café, his visual memory of the three dead men began to lose its power. Hollis decided that the café was part of the Vast Machine, but also a temporarily refuge from its power. In the past, people fled from the authorities to the forest or to a church, but even these places were beginning to install surveillance cameras. At the Gran Café, the customers could lose themselves in various fantasies or pretend to be different people on the Internet. You were truly yourself-and nothing-at the same time. All this revealed the power of the Vast Machine: even your sanctuary was a controlled commercial enterprise.

***

Although there was no lock on the cubicle door, Hollis surrendered to his exhaustion and slept. When he opened his eyes, it was ten o’clock in the morning, but the café’s artificial environment was unchanged. The main room was still cool and quiet, the customers suspended within its perpetual twilight.

Sharks glided through a turquoise sea created by the computer’s screen saver. The cubicle’s TV set was still switched on, but the sound could only be heard with a pair of earphones. Hollis watched as a perky young woman presented the news. Snow was falling on the northern coast of Honsh_ island. There was a car bomb explosion in the Middle East and a coup in an African country. Looking like animatronic figures at an amusement park, the American President and the Japanese Prime Minister shook hands.

The image on the monitor changed and Hollis saw black-and-white photographs of himself running down the third floor hallway of the love hotel. The news program cut to shots of ambulances carrying the dead bodies away from the hotel while reporters and TV cameramen stood behind a police barrier. A multiple killing like this was unusual in Japan, and it was getting a great deal of media attention. A blurred close-up of his face appeared on the monitor as a phone number flashed on the screen.

Hollis stood up on the chair and peered over the top of his cubicle. The pierced woman who had welcomed him to the café had vanished, replaced by a young Japanese man with bleached hair. Hollis put on his sunglasses, slipped out the café and headed for the subway. He felt as if all the surveillance cameras in the city were photographing his passage down the sidewalk.

Kotani had mentioned that one of his former students, a man named Hoshi Hirano, might be dancing in Yoyogi-kõen, the enormous public park in East Tokyo. Hollis got off the subway at Harajuku Station and took the pedestrian bridge across the tracks. It was getting colder, and flakes of snow began to drift down from the gray sky. Near the entrance to the park, he encountered some of the zokus-the tribes that filled the park every Sunday afternoon.

There was a group of teenage girls dressed in black with white face paint and a line of fake blood dribbling from one corner of their lips. The snowflakes swirled around them, clinging to their teased hair. This zoku gathered near the end of the bridge, ignoring the girls who wore pink satin skirts with petticoats, white knee socks and a white lace doily tied to their heads with a bow.

Hollis entered the park looking for a rock-and-roll group. Every few hundred yards, he encountered a new tribe gathering at a prearranged meeting place. There was a zoku of young men on skateboards and another group riding trick bicycles. One zoku was comprised of teenagers who had smudged soot on their mouths and eyes as if they were wandering zombies.

Loud music came from the southern edge of the park. A black van with huge speakers mounted on the top was playing military marching music, guarded by a group of nationalists wearing dark green paramilitary uniforms. These fierce young men stood at parade rest with their hands held behind their backs. They watched as their leader-an older man with a shaved head-screamed insults and shook his fist at eight men dancing in unison to “Rock Around the Clock.”

The dancers were dressed like the 1950’s Elvis-the rockabilly Elvis, the Elvis of rebellion and dream. Each of the dancers wore motorcycle boots, tight black jeans and motorcycle jackets with silver studs and chains. But the most elaborate part of their costume was their hair; it was greased and brushed up high from their foreheads into an elaborate pompadour. The leader of the group was only five feet tall, but the boots and the hair and the padded shoulders of his jacket made him appear larger.