What You Do Not Know You Want

A second breaker tumbled my puny ass farther up the sucking beach. Jesus Half-dead Christ, a gallon of Pacific or more I barfed up, then crawled to the high-water mark and lay prostrate and eyed the murderous surf. Funny, none of the other copper-skinned surfers had even noticed I'd almost died. A geriatric jogger passed at slower-than-walking speed, grinning at me without teeth or sanity. Finally I heaved myself over to my gear, then waited for the bus back to Waikiki. Another fundamental rule: Don't be caught on American soil without a car. My second reason for telling you all this is to explain the eat-now-for-tomorrow-we-die frame of mind of this week. If my cruelty to others is casual, I only follow the world's lead. And look, I'm paying for it now, aren't I? Oh, it's a fucking butcher's shop down here.

Nightingale called me from L.A., where she's spent the week modeling for a chain of cosmetic surgeons to check for the nth time about Not Having u Veil. Sure, honey, I crooned, veils are too Barbie doll. Nightingale went stony on me, so I agreed with whatever guff the bounteous moo spouted next, so of course that added condescension to my list of sins against womankind. Premenstrual sadism, I hope. The shinier the apples of attraction, Vulture, the wormier their maggots of repulsion. Afterward, I shaved, aftershaved with a Hugo Boss scent-an expensive mistake-put on my Paul Smith suit, waxed my hair and was leaving when I saw these words doodled on the phone pad:

long live the emperor i don't think they even heard me

You will recognize Yukio Mishima's final words, but I needed a minute to trace them to their source. That my unconscious mind had not only digested his last utterance whole, but excreted it during an earwigging from Nightingale is further proof that our brains are dark globes lit by very distant stars.

Werewolf acted pissed that I'd assumed he'd know of Runaway Horses. "Bars spring up and die like weeds around here," he said. "Find it in a phone book." I asked him for a phone book. "Ain't got one. So sorry." All hail the service economy. Were his cracked eyeballs the last ones to see you? I was tempted to pluck them out to look for you, nickel-sized and inverted, impressed there. On Olohana Street I paid a Tin Man mime artist a dollar to direct me up to the intersection with Kunhio Avenue and down a flight of steps. Runaway Horses might have been any gaijin-friendly basement bar in Tokyo with a clientele three-quarters Japanese, one-quarter Western. I asked the barman if he had Sapporo beer. "Sure I do," he replied, opening one for me. I said, "Nozomu-san, I'm Vulture's associate." My clever opener shot my foot off. "That settles it!" growled the barman, "I'm changing the name tomorrow, new sign, everything, and screw `Runaway Horses, Established 1998.' I am not Nozomu Eno. I am Shingo Ogawa, okay? I own this bar now. Eno skipped town a week ago. Yes, gambling debts. No, I don't know what stone he's hiding under. No, I'm not his friend, I don't know his friends, and no, his debts are nothing to do with me." The man went on in this vein at length, but I'd glazed over. That your last known lover disappears at the same time that this singular artifact vanishes into thin air pointed to an obvious conclusion. I persuaded Shingo Ogawa-just-to write down my details, in case Nozomu showed up. Then, casually, I mentioned an ivory-handled ornamental bread knife left here by another friend. Shingo Ogawa clenched his jaw. "Nothing like that here," he said, but I got a list of other Japanese bars you might have hung out at. One, I recognized from your last e-mail.