Free Coin Locker Babies by Ryu Murakami Page A

illegal dumping, shoddy construction practices, or even some peculiar natural chemicalreaction triggered by the high ground temperature. At any rate, whatever the cause, this particular waste could not be cleaned up by any normal means: it wasn’t water soluble, it was impervious to heat treatment, and even those microorganisms developed especially for eating waste were useless. In the end, the Public Health Department came up with large subsidies to have the residents relocated, and the area was sealed off. The ground was covered with cement, the perimeter ringed with barbed wire, and sentry boxes were set up.
    There were two theories as to why the place came to be known as Toxitown: one was simply because it was a health hazard, the other because the sealed area became a hotbed of crime, particularly drug traffic. The criminal element found its way in and out of Toxitown in spite of the guards who patrolled the perimeter in protective suits. The guards, toting flamethrowers, were there to prevent anyone from entering, but even more to stop vandals from removing anything. Since the houses and their contents had been abandoned once the pollution was discovered, the authorities were afraid the area would be particularly tempting to looters, and they put out the word that the guards would incinerate not only contaminated property but anyone carrying it. The warning, however, didn’t have much effect on traffic in and out of Toxitown, since the people it was meant to scare off were interested in the new territory precisely because it was the one place in Tokyo where police jurisdiction didn’t extend. And once the area had been colonized by gangsters and hoods, other types began to collect there too; drifters and vagrants, the deinstitutionalized mentally ill, low-class whores, male prostitutes, wanted criminals, degenerates, cripples, and runaways all took up residence in Toxitown, and an odd sort of society began to form. In the end, apparently, even the police preferred to lookthe other way thanks to an unexpected side effect of so many marginal types gathering in one spot: the crime rate, particularly for sexual offenses, began to fall sharply in other parts of the city. Everybody, in fact, was unofficially satisfied with the situation, except for one small detail: the barbed-wire compound lay directly adjacent to and in the shadow of the cluster of new skyscrapers in West Shinjuku, as if the crown of the Tokyo skyline rose above a cesspool.
    “It’s just common sense,” the driver was saying. “Just use your common sense—that’s what I always say. And all these folks who don’t
have
any common sense, well you might as well take them out and shoot the lot of them. Look at this traffic jam, for instance: if every fool in Tokyo wants to go the same place at the same time, well,
of course
it’s going to end up like this. What we need is somebody to come up with some alternatives, something creative. There must be all sorts of other ways to do this—flying cars, or underground highways, or something… And this goddamn rain doesn’t help either…
    “Waaaait a minute! Wait just one fucking minute! Hey… miss… it’s you, isn’t it?—yes, that’s it! You’re in that TV commercial, the one where the shampoo gets in your eyes, they turn red, and you turn into a rabbit. Shit! If that don’t beat all. A model!”
    The rain was falling a little harder as Toxitown came into view on the left. The pale light bathing the guardpost and armored cars illuminated a sign: “Toxic Waste Area, Keep Out!” The whole scene shimmered, as if great strips of light on the skyscrapers had peeled away and settled onto the barbed-wire fortress. The driver, realizing he had a celebrity in his cab, got even chattier.
    “You know who you remind me of? That old Hollywood actress who used to do those underwater scenes where she winkedat the camera. You’ve got the same big, beautiful eyes…” And then: “Whoa! What’s today?