Read In the Miso Soup for Free Online

about it. I didn’t need Jun to tell me I was being paranoid. The coincidence of seeing the very spot where the schoolgirl’s corpse had been dumped, immediately after passing that ghostly rent-a-car place, must have made my nerves short out in some way. At least that’s how I decided to look at it.
    “He wants to go to a peep show,” I told Satoshi. “Heard about any good ones lately?”
    “Hey, man, they’re all the same,” Satoshi laughed, then added, after glancing back at Frank: “Times are tough all around.” Translation: That’s one sorry-looking excuse for a customer you’re dragging around, man.
    The nearest peep show was on the sixth floor of the building right in front of us.
    “No, Kenji.” Frank shook his head. “I need you to come in with me.”
    I’d led him up to the entrance to the club and told him I’d wait outside to save him money, but Frank insisted on buying admission for two: ¥5000. The show had just begun, so we had to sit on a small sofa next to the reception counter and wait. They don’t let you walk in during a show, but the shows only last about ten minutes. On the wall was a collection of photos from when the club had been featured on a late-night TV program. The pictures were pretty old: the colors were faded, and the celebrity reporter’s autograph was disappearing.
    “Did your girlfriend understand about you working late?” Frank asked me.
    He was looking at a sign on the wall that said, in both Japanese and English: THIS IS A TOP QUALITY PEEP SHOW THAT WAS SHOWN ON TELEVISION .
    “Sure. No problem.”
    “That’s good. So what’s the system in this place?”
    Music from the show filtered out to where we sat. I didn’t know the title, but it was a Diana Ross song. I explained. Most shows last three or four songs. A girl comes out and takes off her clothes, and meanwhile, as the show is starting, a different woman comes to your booth and asks if you want the “special service.”
    Frank said: “Special service?”
    “Hand job. Which will cost an extra ¥3000.”
    This got a definite rise out of Frank.
    “Hand job,” he murmured and peered off into the distance, or the distant past. I’d never heard anyone say the words with such feeling before. You don’t have to get one if you don’t want one, I told him.
    “Since you’re aiming to get laid tonight, you may not want a hand job first.”
    “Oh, that’s all right,” Frank said and looked at me. “My sex drive is pretty strong. In fact, I’m a sexual superman.”
    Sexual superman. Those were his exact words.
    “In that case, when the woman comes to the booth and asks you something, all you need to do is say ‘Yes.’ ”
    “All right, then,” Frank said, “I will. I can’t wait.”
    For someone who couldn’t wait he looked awfully bored. He sighed and picked up a weekly magazine next to the sofa. On the first page of color photos was a picture of Hideo Nomo in his Los Angeles Dodgers uniform. The short text was about the contract for Nomo’s second season not having been signed yet. Frank tapped the picture with his forefinger and said:
    “So baseball’s pretty big in Japan too, I guess?”
    At first I thought he was making a joke. There’s no such thing as an American who comes to Japan on business and doesn’t know who Nomo is. Not even one in a thousand. Among Americans he’s surely the most famous Japanese alive, and right now small talk about Nomo is probably the best way to break the ice and get negotiations off to a smooth start. And yet Frank was looking at a picture of Nomo and assuming he played in Japan. Was it even possible that a man who imported Toyota auto parts wouldn’t know who Nomo was?
    “This man pitches for the Los Angeles Dodgers,” I said.
    Frank peered at the photo dubiously.
    “You’re right, he’s wearing a Dodgers uniform.”
    “It’s Nomo. He’s famous. Last year he pitched a no-hit, no-run game.”
    Maybe Frank didn’t know anything at all about