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ink out the stars, one by one.

Tokyo

    Spring was late on this rainy morning, and so was I. The commuters streamed to work with their collars and umbrellas up. The cherry trees lining the backstreet were still winter trees, craggy, pocked, and dripping. I fished around for my keys, rattled up the shutters, and opened the shop.
    I looked through the post while the water was boiling. Some mail orders – good. Bills, bills – bad. A couple of enquiries from a regular customer in Nagano about rare discs that I’d never heard of. Bumf. An entirely ordinary morning. Time for oolong tea. I put on a very rare Miles Davis recording that Takeshi had discovered in a box of mixed-quality discs which he’d picked up at an auction last month out in Shinagawa.
    It was a gem. You never entered my mind was blissful and forlorn. Some faultless mute-work, the trumpet filtered down to a single ray of sound. The brassy sun lost behind the clouds.

    The first customer of the week was a foreigner, either American or European or Australian, you can never tell because they all look the same. A lanky, zitty foreigner. He was a real collector, though, not just a browser. He had that manic glint in his eyes, and his fingers were adept at flicking through metres of discs at high speed, like a bank teller counting notes. He bought a virgin copy of ‘Stormy Sunday’ by Kenny Burrell, and ‘Flight to Denmark’ by Duke Jordan, recorded in 1973. He had a cool T-shirt, too. A bat flying around a skyscraper, leaving a trail of stars. I asked him where he was from. He said thank you very much. Westerners can’t learn Japanese.

    Takeshi phoned a bit later.
    ‘Satoru! Have a good day off yesterday?’
    ‘Pretty quiet. Sax lesson in the afternoon. Hung around with Koji for a bit afterwards. Helped Taro with the delivery from the brewery.’
    ‘Any vast cheques for me in the post?’
    ‘Sorry, nothing that vast. Some nice bills, though. How was your weekend?’
    This was what he had been waiting for. ‘Funny you ask me that! I met this gorgeous creature of the night last Friday at a club in Roppongi.’ I could almost hear his saliva glands juicing. ‘Get this. Twenty-five,’ which for Takeshi is the perfect age, making him ten years her senior. ‘Engaged,’ which for Takeshi adds the thrill of adultery while subtracting any responsibility. ‘Only shag women who have more to lose than you do’ was a motto of his. ‘Clubbed until four in the morning. Woke up Saturday afternoon, with my clothes on back-to-front, in a hotel somewhere in Chiyoda ward. No idea how I got there. She came out of the shower, naked, brown and dripping, and damn if she wasn’t still gasping for it!’
    ‘It must have been heaven. Are you seeing her again?’
    ‘Of course we’re seeing each other again. This is love at first sight! We’re having dinner tonight at a French restaurant in Ichigaya,’ meaning they were having each other in an Ichigaya love hotel. ‘Seriously, you should see her arse! Two overripe nectarines squeezed together in paper bag. One prod and they explode! Juice everywhere!’
    Rather more than I needed to know. ‘She’s engaged, you say?’
    ‘Yeah. To a Fujitsu photocopier ink cartridge research and development division salaryman who knew the go-between who knew her father’s section head.’
    ‘Some guys get all the luck.’
    ‘Ah, it’s okay. What the eyes don’t see, eh? She’ll make a good little wifey, I’m sure. She’s after a few nights of lust and sin before she becomes a housewife forever.’
    She sounded a right slapper to me. Takeshi seemed to have forgotten that only two weeks ago he’d been trying to get back with his estranged wife.
    The rain carried on falling, keeping customers away. The rain fell softly, then heavily, then softly. Static hisses on telephone lines. Jimmy Cobb’s percussion on ‘Blue in Green’.
    Takeshi was still on the telephone. It seemed to be my turn to say something.
    ‘What’s she like?