Number9Dream Read Online Free Page A

noise of sympathy. Those ferns look too perfect to be real. Too lush and feathery. Nothing prospers in Tokyo but pigeons, crows, rats, roaches and lawyers. I sugarize my coffee, rest my teaspoon on the meniscus, and sloooooowly dribble the cream on to the bowl of the spoon. Pangaea rotates, floating unruptured before splitting into subcontinents. Playing with coffee is the only pleasure I can afford in Tokyo. The first three months’ rent on my capsule wiped out all the money I saved working for Uncle Orange and Uncle Pachinko, leaving me with a chicken-and-egg problem: if I don’t work, I can’t stay in Tokyo and look for my father; but if I work, when do I look for my father? Work . A slag-heap word that blots out the sun. My two saleable talents are picking oranges and my guitar. I must be five hundred kilometres from the nearest orange tree, and I have never, ever played my guitar for anyone. Now I understand what fuels dronehood. This: you work or you drown. Tokyo turns you into a bank account balance with a carcass in tow. The size of this single number dictates where the carcass may live, what it drives, how it dresses, who it sucks up to, who it may date and marry, whether it cleans itself in a gutter or a jacuzzi. If my landlord, the honourable Buntaro Ogiso, stiffs me, I have no safety net. He doesn’t seem to be a con man, but con men never do. When I meet my father – at most a couple of weeks away – I want to prove I am standing on my own two feet, and that I am not looking for handouts. Dowager heaves out a drama-queen sigh. ‘You mean to tell me this is the very last box of coffee filters?’
    The waitress with the perfect neck nods.
    Donkey joins in. ‘The very last?’
    ‘The very, very last,’ my waitress confirms.
    Dowager shakes her head at heaven. ‘How can this be?’
    Donkey manoeuvres. ‘I sent a purchase order off on Thursday.’
    The waitress with the perfect neck shrugs. ‘Deliveries take three days.’
    ‘I hope,’ warns Dowager, ‘you aren’t blaming Eriko-san for this crisis?’
    ‘And I hope you aren’t blaming me for pointing out that we are going to run out of filters by five o’clock. I just thought I should say something.’ Stalemate. ‘Why don’t I take some petty cash and go and buy some more?’
    Dowager glowers. ‘I am the shift supervisor. I make that sort of decision.’
    ‘I can’t go,’ whines Donkey. ‘I had my hair permed this morning, see, and it’s going to bucket down any minute.’
    Dowager turns back to the waitress with the perfect neck. ‘I want you to go and buy a box of filters.’ She pings the till open and removes a five-thousand-yen note. ‘Keep the receipt, and bring back the exact change. The receipt is crucial, or you’ll wreck my bookkeeping.’
    The waitress with the perfect neck removes her rubber gloves and apron, takes an umbrella, and leaves without a word.
    Dowager narrows her eyes. ‘That missy has an attitude problem.’
    ‘Rubber gloves indeed!’ Donkey tuts. ‘As if she’s a handcream model.’
    ‘Students today are just too coddled. What is it she studies, anyway?’
    ‘Snobology.’
    ‘She thinks she lives above the clouds.’
    I watch her wait at the lights to cross Omekaido Avenue. This Tokyo weather is extraplanetary. Still oven-hot, but a dark roof of cloud, ready to buckle under the weight of rain, at any moment. The pedestrians waiting on the island in the middle of Kita Street sense it. The two young women taking in the sandwich board outside Nero’s Pizza Emporium sense it. The battalion of the elderly sense it. Hemlock, nightingales, E-minor – thunnnnnnnnnder! Bellyflopping thunnnnnnnnnder, twanging a loose bass. Anju loved thunder, our birthday, treetops, the sea and me. Her goblin grin flashed when it thundered. Raindrops are heard – shhhhhhhhh – before raindrops are seen – shhhhhhhhh – quivering ghost-leaves – dappling the pavements, smacking car roofs, drumming tarpaulins. My waitress