by a waiter carrying a flashlight. The chords of an electric guitar pounded off the walls and ceiling. The room smelled of smoke, cosmetics, and toilets. Low-slung sofas for two were set facing the same direction. Mitsuo sat and felt he was squatting in a hole. A waiter brought a small bottle of beer and a glass and left them on the table. Brilliant flashes of light shot forth from a mirror ball. At a seat far off he could see shoulders emerging from a deep-red dress. Shafts of light from the mirror ball darted into a man's neck like arrows. Mitsuo poured his beer into the glass and drank. It was lukewarm. Light shone in the bubbles of froth. The noise was deafening, to the point that the room almost seemed quiet. The woman in red appeared suddenly at Mitsuo's side and shouted into his ear, "Excuse me!"
He made room for her on the sofa. She clung to his neck, kissing him on the ear as she whispered, "Sorry it took me so long to get here. We don't have enough girls tonight." Mitsuo felt her slobber dribbling down his face. He stuck his hand through the sleeve of her dress. She raised her elbow to make it easier for him to touch her breasts. Leaning against him, she drank her beer as he stroked her pliant body. He gently pinched her nipples between his fingers, then moved his hand down past the wrinkles on her belly. As he attempted to get into her panties, she stood and said, 'I'll be right back." She brushed her lips against his cheek and vanished into the darkness.
For a long while, Mitsuo continued to sit by himself. He had polished off his beer some time before. When he lit a match, he saw scratches on the back of the sofa in front of him, and the rim of his glass shone orange. He puffed on a cigarette, but since he couldn't see the exhaled smoke it was as though he weren't smoking at all. He threw the butt on the floor, and the sparks bloomed like a flower. A waiter squatted down beside him. Mitsuo turned his head and heard him shout, "Are you planning to stay longer?"
Mitsuo slapped himself on the knees and stood. The waiter lit his way out of the room with the flashlight. Mitsuo spat on the floor. Even in the darkness he could tell that his guide had clenched his fist. The register sat as though at the bottom of a box. An old man punched calculator buttons in the light of a desk lamp. Mitsuo climbed the stairs, the sky a lustrous square visible above.
The tout saw him and said, "Thank you!" then laughed. "I'm sure you found our service top-rate. Our girls are well trained, you know."
"You're full of shit. I didn't get no woman, and all the beer you can drink' was one stinking half-sized bottle!"
"You're the one who's full of shit." The man sniffed Mitsuo's chest like a spaniel, pretending the scent of lingering perfume was so overpowering it had to be fanned away.
Meanwhile Koji bounded up through the exit and waved at Mitsuo. "Just as I thought, you waited for me. Ah, I'm glad I didn't stay longer, but it was hard getting away from that woman. She kept hanging on to me, saying, 'Just a little longer darling.' Gotta hand it to her, she works hard at her job. Well, I'll be sure to come here again."
He handed the tout a tip of five hundred yen and began strutting down the street. Mitsuo spat again. The neon reflected in his spittle made it look like a live worm that might wriggle away at any moment.
Though having drunk hardly any beer, Mitsuo felt himself in a stupor, and blazing with fire. A group of young people emerged from a bar and split their tab in the street. Mitsuo and Koji came to a river lined with stones on either bank. The water stank of rotting garbage. By day, one saw fat, colorful carp jostling each other in the water as they fed off the trash and animal remains. No doubt the fish tasted like mud. In spite of that, Mitsuo felt the urge to do some night-fishing. A row of tiny bars lined the riverside. The one at the end was named "Roman." Beyond lay housing.
Mitsuo stepped into the bar and was greeted in an odd voice by the proprietress, Chii. She stashed away her knitting, jamming it in a paper bag. When she realized it was Mitsuo, bewilderment crept across her face. Mitsuo took over her stool and motioned for the hesitant Koji to enter the bar. He felt Chii's warmth on the stool's wooden seat. He glanced at the knitting needles and gray yarn Chii had thrust into the paper bag and tossed into a corner. Taking a hot towel from her, he pressed it against his face, allowing it to linger there for some time.
Chii spoke in a husky, masculine voice. "I suppose you've come to fetch your father home?"
"Nope. Just came for a beer."
"Shall I have him come on down?"
"We've got nothing to talk about. If I saw his face I'd likely up and punch him." She bent beneath the counter and opened the refrigerator. The white light illuminated her face. She was forty-five, with heavy makeup hardly suiting her age. Her off-the-shoulder dress was designed to make her look younger, but the flabbiness of her shoulders gave her away. Mitsuo noticed a dime-sized vaccination scar on her upper arm. A cockroach rustled up a wall. Chii stood in front of Mitsuo, wiping a bottle of beer with a rag. Mitsuo clicked his tongue as he stared at her double chin.
"How's business?"
"Terrible. You need to drop in more often."
"What, and help my old man's squeeze? You're just like my mother. Lust makes things complicated."
Chii ignored him. "I only get a few stragglers off the street. I'm going broke. I should have kept my job at the bar instead of opening this place."
Damn right, Mitsuo thought. The money for everything in the bar, the glasses, the refrigerator, the stools, the telephone, even for the lease, all came straight from his family's bank account. It was their money, the money they'd gained from selling their land. After quitting his job at the candy factory, Mitsuo's father had gone stir crazy. He started to visit one particular bar almost every evening, a place he had come across one night while drinking at an end-of-the-year party with his buddies in the agricultural association. He would idle about all day, then call a taxi and go out at nine o'clock, strutting as though he were off to discuss a major corporate takeover. He refused to listen to his wife or Mitsuo. Sometimes he raged at Tomiko, telling her to leave him alone now that he had everything he'd worked all his life to achieve. Behind her back, he assured Mitsuo that Chii was a business genius, that anything invested with her would be returned ten, maybe twenty times over. He asserted he'd worked himself ragged into his old age and was entitled to enjoy life. He even argued that he was living vicariously for his father and grandfather, who'd worked themselves to death without ever knowing pleasure.
Koji broke in, "What are you knitting?"
Chii smiled and sipped her beer. "A sweater for him. I unraveled my cardigan to do it."
"We're hitting the hot season, you know."
"Maybe it'll make him want to be with me come winter."
Her voice grated on Mitsuo's nerves.
"This is a drag," Koji griped. "We came to town to have fun and we're just moping around." He stared at his fogged-up glass and fell silent.
Chii decided to put on some music. The tune she chose was a ditty popular five years earlier. Mitsuo drank in silence. The smell of sunflowers rose from his chest. Chii sliced a preserved cucumber and served the pieces to the men on a chipped plate. Everything she did seemed to be in slow motion.
Mitsuo jumped off his stool. "I'm going to see the old fart." He'd drunk only half his beer. Koji began to stand, but Mitsuo clapped a hand on his shoulder and said, "I'll be back in thirty minutes. Wait for me here."
He wandered the streets of the town. The leaves of a fig tree hung over the wall of a house, the roots stretching into the alley running in front of the house. Huge white flowers from a tree Mitsuo couldn't identify blossomed in the darkness. He passed a woman carrying a washbasin, no doubt on her way home from the
