Anesthesia - Chapter 3
It's an hour past midnight when I open my eyes.
I've slept, but only briefly. The sound of footsteps in the hallway is very loud in the place, back here in the traditional rooms where the walls are made of paper. The idea, I believe, is that if one drinks enough, one will stop hearing it.
But I've drunk only sparingly. Alcohol doesn't sit well on a stomach full of pills.
They didn't have Oxycoton back when Kokakurou was built. They didn't even have Ibuprofen. The world has moved on since then, as it inevitably must.
The girl I was with is gone now.
Her name was Murasaki. I remember, not because I felt any affection for her, not even because it was so obviously a pseudonym as whores do not have names with such character, but only because I was taught early on that names could be powerful weapons in the right hands.
She was here before I closed my eyes, because that's what the girls here do. They wait for you to sleep.
It's meant as a consideration, but it only makes things painful.
The muscles in the small of my back ache from making love… No. From fucking. From pounding her through the futon while she clawed at my back and stifled little cries against my shoulder. I wanted it over quick, and so I closed my eyes and thought about money and fast cars and how damn good my hair must have looked, which did the trick, so to speak.
She even took the condom with her when she left. I had dropped into the ashtray beside the futon afterwards, and I remember liking the way it ruined the quaint charm of this place.
Murasaki told me she was clean; I didn't need to wear one.
I told her I didn't trust her. I told her she had already lied to me about her name and about her age, and so why wouldn't she lie about her rotten cunt, too.
But I think what I really meant to tell her was that I like the feeling of rubber.
I think, if I could have, I would have put on latex gloves before pawing her perfect breasts.
My clothes are folded neatly on a low table, and I shake them out and pull them on again. Suit, shirt, tie, vest, trench coat… I'm overdressed for a cigarette break, but it makes me the same inky black as Kokakurou's gardens at night.
I put on my watch, my cufflinks… but I hesitate before I reach for the wedding ring. Against the dark tabletop, it makes a perfect little circle of platinum. A zero, a cipher. Empty and without meaning.
When I slide back the panel and step into the hall, it's at the same moment that Kurauchi is leaving the room beside mine. He's left his suit coat somewhere in the shadows of his room, and his tie is loose at the throat. I must have woken him from a very sound sleep.
"It's all right." I pat the coat pocket over my heart. "I just want a cigarette."
"I'll come with you."
"You don't smoke."
"Yes, but…" His expression does something I can't quite make out in the darkness. "For company."
"Protection, you mean?"
"No." He shakes his head, only once. "Hirose…"
"It's unnecessary." I turn on my heels. "Go back to bed."
The night air isn't so cold that it stings, nor is the wind so strong that it blows out my match before I can touch it to the end of my cigarette. The gardens here always smell as if it's just rained, and I wonder if Mr. Mibu planned it that way. I must admit he is clever, that man.
And what, then, am I to make of the sound of slow footsteps on the dirt path? What indeed, when it's long past the time when the last patron should have retired to his room and I should have these gardens to myself?
I turn, and the footsteps grind to a halt.
"Nanjo-san?" says a voice so unpleasantly familiar that I bite down on my cigarette, almost hard enough to shear the filter off.
It's not until he laughs that I finish the job. The cigarette slips away, spiraling to the ground less like a shooting star and more like a 747 with three engines in flames. It winks at me once, there amidst the stones of the path, and then I grind it out beneath my foot.
"What a surprise, meeting you here," he says in the voice vipers use to lure their prey to them. But I have no intention of being eaten alive. "Are you enjoying the accommodations?"
I know I ought to leave, but I've already made the mistake of meeting that slate gray eye – the only one he lets me see through his hair – and I'm frozen to the spot. The chill in his gaze has turned my blood to ice.
Hypnosis is my first thought. My next is, Don't be stupid, Hirose.
"Boring," I say. "I find them insufferably boring."
"Oh?" A silver eyebrow twitches. "Then why are you here?"
"Because it is expected of me."
"The burden of wealth, I see." He makes two cigarettes appear in his right hand, keeps one for himself and offers the other to me. To my annoyance, I can smell the faint spice of his aftershave when I pluck the cigarette from between his fingers.
"Muraki. You need to leave."
It's a ridiculous thing to say, because he's already swaying closer so he can hold a silver lighter to the tip of my cigarette. The hem of his coat brushes fleetingly against my ankle, and the flame casts a photonegative of shadows over his face.
"Do I?" he says. "My apologies."
His words send clouds of smoke into the night air. "It came as quite a relief to hear that your brother has made a recovery. I did say it would take a miracle, didn't I?"
"I never believed you. Koji is stronger than you can imagine."
"Or perhaps he is just luckier?" Muraki sighs.
"No. He's most certainly not lucky at all."
"A shame," Muraki says, looking up at the moon. "A shame about your father, as well. He has finally passed on."
"He was never very lucky, either."
Muraki just shrugs. "The king is dead. Long live the king."
A silence then, one long enough for me to realize that if he kisses me again right now, his mouth will taste pleasantly of tobacco and toothpaste. My own will only taste of the whore I've just used.
If he kisses me again, in this garden that always smells of fresh rain, under this moon so heavy on the horizon that it looks like a plaster model, I will most likely let him. If he comes toward me, dressed in white like a wraith, I'll let him tangle his hands in my hair to pull me down. I'll let him push himself against me, so close that I can feel the muscles in his stomach winding tight with arousal.
And after he kisses me… Well, I haven't thought that far ahead.
"Shall I be honest with you?" he asks abruptly.
Though I very much doubt that he will be, and perhaps that he even can be, I nod. "I think I would like that very much, Doctor."
"Hospital work does not suit me," he says as he steps closer, letting his cigarette fall behind him like the lives he undoubtedly leaves broken in his wake. "I need a more specialized sort of employment."
"What do you expect me to do about that?" I hold my ground as he comes to me, and I'm not sure why. I know already that he doesn't bluff.
"If I am not mistaken, Nanjo-san, you are in need of someone who can keep secrets." He smiles without showing any teeth. "And I am quite skilled at that. My work at present will soon begin to tire me."
I know he's already tired, for I've noticed the dark circles under his eyes from too many sleepless nights. He tries to cover them with makeup, like a woman would, and in a few years, he'll be using the same stuff to cover the faint scars left by a facelift. But sensuality is just another weapon to him, another gun in his arsenal. And while his intellect is sharp as a scalpel, his beauty he wields like a blunt object. He uses it to make cracks in the surface. Only after that can he use his finer tools to widen the gaps.
"Am I to understand that you're asking for a job?" I blow a breath of smoke in his direction, and for a few seconds it serves as a shield.
"I assure you, I am skilled in many things. Not just being discreet."
There's a very slight chance that he's not lying. I know he has shown discretion so far, because I have not had to dispel any nasty rumors that, three months ago, this man knelt between my legs and his mouth soaked all the resistance out of me.
"Your credentials speak well for you," I say. "You graduated first in your class from Shion University."
He smiles, flattered and embarrassed. "You looked me up."
"I did."
"Just as well." And his smile does not waver. "I looked you up as well."
I'm not particularly worried about that. The worst he could have found about me would be things he already knows.
"Perhaps," he says. "This means we can come to an understanding."
The smokescreen between us is gone, and I have forgotten to conjure another. He steps forward again, so close that, when he speaks, I can feel the heat of each word on my throat.
"Perhaps it does," I say.
And, like the cigarettes before, a business card appears suddenly in his hand. He reaches up, taps the corner once against my lips, and follows it with a kiss. The kind of searing, wet kiss that I've been expecting all night. Expecting, back in my room while Murasaki's nails carved eight crescent moons into the backs of my shoulders; expecting, even while I knelt on the tatami, sipping bitter tea and listening to Takatori and Kawabata talk politics.
His lips leave mine, and I feel my body wind up, tensing in anticipation of his touch.
But his graceful pickpocket fingers only slip the card into the inside pocket of my coat. He must feel the little bottle of pills there, yet he doesn't seem to care.
It's strange, but I don't seem to care either.
"My cell phone number is on there," he whispers. It's odd, to hear him conduct business as though it's pillow talk. "Call me any time this week."
He steps back, turning away, and I take the card out and look at it. Numbly, I realize that the words – 'Muraki Kazutaka', in a sweeping black script - have a meaning. Something more than a turned back and a coat that sounds like the beating of white wings, growing distant as he walks away.
"Muraki…"
He glances back, and that cool smile has returned. "Yes? Was there something else you wanted?"
I take a deep breath, and when I exhale it scatters the last of his kiss from my lips like ashes. "Is this a Tokyo number?"
For a moment, his smile wavers, and when it returns there's something different about it. It's shakier, as though I've found something faulty in the foundation. "Yes. How forgetful of me. I should have written it down."
He turns away again, and I don't know if he looks back, because I don't watch him leave.