“Hey bro, you OK? What have you been up to? You still got your job as the doctor’s mascot?”
John had become of the people who passed through Mark’s place. We’d lost track of each other a bit since landing on Planet Palace.
I’d fallen in with the nocturnal hippie half because, well, here despite all that fat yuppie from London stuff I was more like them. Someone had got me a bit of work teaching English – I was English, a writer. What could go wrong? – but it was nothing much. Well paid if you just looked at how much I got for it, but rubbish pay if you saw how long it lasted. Money in Tokyo didn’t last. It was like juggling water. You’ve got loads in your hands and then you look and… there’s nothing there.
John wanted to make money. And if you wanted to make money, Tokyo was the place to do it. Tokyo was all about money. It was the strangest blend of brash and flash and old school and respectful. The sort of place where, before and after nicking your wallet, people would bow.
In Tokyo, everything shines. The cars, all clean and shiny reflect against the shop windows which are all clean and bright and they both throw back the reflection of the garish neon which exists in even the sidest of side streets so that everything reflects on everything else and into everything else. It creates a mirror everywhere. You look at something and it’s brightly lit and clean and sharp and moving and what can you really see? Nothing but the reflection of the thing you’re looking at. There’s a word in the floor cleaning game. Vetrification. You know those floors made of marble slab tiles that are impossibly shiny and sparkly? That’s cos of vetrification. It’s the process of cleaning where you don’t so much clean as plane off the very top layer of the surface, you just very carefully rub the surface layer away. That’s what it feels like in Tokyo. The surface layer constantly and without you even noticing it, being rubbed away so it’s all clean with all the rough edges and imperfections smoothed out.
We were in the kitchen, a typically cartoon version of a student house kitchen. Mouldy plates, bottles of milk with names written on them, and empties. Lots of empties. Anything useful or valuable – coffee, bread, food – people kept in their room.
I was there looking for someone to talk to. Entertainment. John was there looking for me.
“Come on, mate. Let’s go out. I’ve had it here. Come on, let’s grab a bit of sushi, have a drink and see what happens. It’s on me”.
Out into the warm Tokyo evening air. It was good to get out. Staying in the Palace was a seduction. It was safe and cosy and calm. It had its own rules, its own laws, it’s own language, its own ecosystem. It was in Tokyo but not really there at all. Really, it could have been anywhere. Stepping out into Tokyo, well there was nowhere else like this. People everywhere and I mean everywhere but it wasn’t crowded. There was no sense of anyone being in your way or you not being able to get somewhere because there were too many bodies in the way. Somehow they’d managed to perfect the idea of personal space so that everyone’s sense of spatial awareness so finely honed that – instinctively – people moved in and out of each other’s slipstream. Like those mad films you see of huge schools of fish.
“You know how much I made today?” said John as we watched the sushi wend its way round the conveyor belt. “It’s mad, this lark. Money for old rope. And when we’re not making money, we’re being taken out for dinner by people who want us to make money for them.”
John wanted to make some money and John was making money. When I got a bit of work teaching, he got a bit of work with a company of management consultants. No, no idea either. Mostly he was off working normal daytime hours and mostly I… wasn’t. Sometimes I’d see him in Mark’s room and very occasionally – increasingly very occasionally – we’d hook up for some sushi and a drink.
“Mate, good for you for making it work,” I said to him as the sushi passed by. “It’s funny how things work out, isn’t it?”
“But what do you do?”
“You know what I do? I play being English. They love the English thing. You don’t have to do anything particularly, but if you play up the English thing, they’ll buy anything. I speak in a posh English public school accent, tell them what they want to hear in a way that they’ll believe and…. I exude an air of confidence. Dress the part, sound the part and… kerrr-ching.”
“It’s not quite what I had in mind when I left the old country, working for some management consultants, but that’s a good thing, no? Never do,” he said, another piece of nigiri disappearing, “the expected.”
More salmon sashimi rolled past. I grabbed a small plate. If you look the part and sound the part you can fool anyone. I thought back to another conversation.
“You think all pirates go around saying shiver my timbers and talking about pieces of fucking eight? You gotta learn to look behind the surface, behind the eyes. You’ll see. Sometimes the ones who look the straightest, they’re the biggest fucking freaks of all.”
“So what are you saying?” I said. “You’re playing a role so that you can get what you want without people suspecting you’re playing that role? You pull the wool over people’s eyes by showing them the thing they want to see but actually doing something else.”
“Wow, slow down mate. I think you’re taking this is a bit seriously, no? I’m not that calculated. It’s just a bit of a game, just having a bit of laugh and making a few quid while we’re doing it.”
“Like a magician?”
“Yeah, it’s not like anyone’s doing anything wrong not like we’re bad people doing bad things. It’s just giving people something they feel comfortable with. Listen, if back home you were going to see the bank manager, you’d wear suit, wouldn’t you? Course. Same thing then, innit.”
“If you wanna be a bank robber, would you wear a t-shirt that says “bank robber”?
“It’s just a bit of smoke and mirrors. Just playing a game. And if they can’t see past the English accent, then that’s their lookout.”