Free Tuvalu by Andrew O'Connor

than a bulky vending machine. It sat at the end of the International Floor corridor. Leading Harry to it, I explained the unit had a right to feel cheated. There were over six million vendors in Japan, which meant six million possible locales. Yet this old machine had been placed in a sort of vending machine purgatory. No one used it, but no one wanted to scrap it, either.
    â€˜Left to rot, it’s become somewhat confused,’ I said. ‘It rejects 1000 yen notes and can’t recognise the newer 500 yen coin. Often it gives out Diet Coke instead of CC Lemon, or Pokari Sweat instead of Aquarius. And that’s if it does anything at all, which normally it doesn’t. I should add, though, it’s been known to give out large amounts of loose change. So if you like to gamble, it beats those yakuza casinos in Shinjuku.’
    â€˜That’s it?’ he asked, laughing. ‘That’s your grand finale? There’s no temple or anything?’
    â€˜Welcome to Nakamura’s.’

    Harry suggested we celebrate my tour with a drink. I tried to include Phillip but he was absorbed in lacquering a new model—a small biplane—and wanted nothing to do with me. Probably he was still upset. He seemed to have taken my eating noodles with Mami as a slight, and I regretted sharing the detail.
    It was already dark out. Harry and I walked quickly to keep warm, arms folded. Since we had no idea where we wanted to go we quickly ended up in side streets which offered little hope of a salubrious bar. Most bars around here, I suspected, would include feminine company in the drink bill. I explained this to Harry and he listened with interest as a woman on an unadorned, single-gear bicycle, wearing a pleated skirt and conservative high heels, overtook us in the half-light. An intelligent-looking child wrapped in a red coat sat in the booster seat behind her. This child, eyes blank but seeing all, reminded me of a palace guard.
    â€˜And these bars are really everywhere?’ Harry asked.
    â€˜Snack bars? Yeah.’
    â€˜Are they brothels?’
    â€˜I don’t think so. I’ve told you pretty much all I know, sorry.’
    Harry looked frustrated by my haziness. He lined up a lidless plastic bottle, but when he tried to kick it his small foot and stumpy leg sailed harmlessly over top. He stumbled forward and the bottle rolled once, mockingly. Above us an old man taking in his washing paused to watch, so I took a short run and booted the bottle up the empty street, listening to the hollow rattle.
    â€˜That’s how you kick it!’ I yelled.
    â€˜Thanks,’ Harry called, running after it, then changing his mind and turning. ‘Hey,’ he called back, ‘since we can’t find a normal bar, let’s just go to one of those bars with women.’
    I shook my head. ‘No. They’re not my scene. Anyway, I can’t afford ichi man en for a bottle of cheap whisky.’
    Harry was confused by the number. ‘How much is that in US dollars?’
    â€˜About a hundred.’
    He shrugged as if this was no expense, and walked on ahead.
    A moment later, somewhere in a room high above me, a woman cried out, not in fear but happily, as if play-fighting or lovemaking. It stopped me dead. I wondered if I had even heard it—it was that kind of fleeting, otherworldly sound. At home people’s lives had been tucked away inside two-storey forts, but here they hung out over me, carried by coughs or small children crying, by silhouettes passing behind closed curtains—even by blaring TV sets. There were literally thousands of people surrounding me and I wanted to linger, to peer into one lit room after another. But the idea of skulking on the edge of other people’s happiness only exacerbated my loneliness. I thought of Mami’s hotel room, how appealing it was to look in on a life and how different to step inside.
    Irritated by the thought, I jogged to catch up to