Free Tokio Whip by Arturo Silva Page A

obviously has no real interest in the weakling. Dejected, our Stendahlian returns home only to discover that – distraught over the rumor , Michiko has suicided!
    And then Tsutomu takes that long walk east.
    ***
    project myself into you
    projector
    seed city
    bloom town
    looking at ads rather than you
    choosing a shirt in place of a word
    ***
    â€“ Oh it’s a nondescript area enough, I suppose, but I’m sure Roberta would have been charmed by it here.
    â€“ Well, tell her, next time you see her, do.
    â€“ Yes, I must.
    â€“ But if she’d seen Kagurazaka first, would she ever have found her Yanaka?
    â€“ Mmm, not likely.
    â€“ And, she’d have lived in so many times: the past, the Roppongi of the 50s; the present, the science students –
    â€“ The French students –
    â€“ The British English students.
    â€“ And the future: Yotsuya and all that that means just ahead –
    â€“ The Palace and Marunouchi, and all that they mean back over there.
    â€“ You think they’re part of the future? Let’s hope they’re a thing of the past!
    â€“ No, Kagurazaka would have been too much, not to her liking at all.
    â€“ But to yours, Cafferty? – who knew it when!
    â€“ I really must at least introduce her to it; she’d love the Meiji house, you know that saké restaurant where you get your own room.
    â€“ Doesn’t that Hakushu architect have his office in a Meiji building around here, too?
    â€“ Oh, right, we have to visit him some day.
    â€“ But look – what’s this?
    â€“ “Zonar” – a coffeeshop?
    â€“ “Zonar”?
    â€“ Sounds like a manga .
    â€“ How would it go? … “When the planet Zonar was threatened by aliens from the planet Nozar ...”
    â€“ Oh no – I’m sure Roberta would insist Zonar is a woman!
    â€“ “When Zonar’s lover Nozar revealed himself to be the interplanetary master criminal Rozan …”
    ***
    Ah, this city, Hiro “thinks,” a bit bigger maybe, but no different from home, or even Takasaki, same shops, bars, girls. More or less. But I gotta make it here. No more years in the provinces. Those flat-feeted women. No, here. And I will if it kills me. Ha!, the old samurai spirit.
    ***
    It was only nine o’clock and already Van Zandt was feeling the alcohol. The Chinese had iron rice bowls, and the Japanese iron stomachs. Though a strong drinker, his stomach had still not gotten the trick of mixing large quantities of whiskey, beer, saké , perhaps wine, and worse shochu . It’s that shochu that does it all the time, tips the tipsy scale, he thought coherently for the last time that night, as he grabbed an Ebisu beer. Fortunately, given his good physical condition, VZ would remain in a slightly-over-tipsy state most of the evening through, and still not return home till after two. The next morning he would recall that everyone had been so nice , it had been such a decent party, the conversation so level . What’s wrong with that?, he wondered to himself. Didn’t he deserve a nice time once in a while? After all, he could be well-behaved and polite when called upon to be so. His reputation for rowdiness was certainly ill-deserved, he defended himself to no one in particular. Yes, people were pleasant, some girls were really nice, what’s wrong with making light conversation? (Roberta’s party had started that way, he recalled; he remembered a good conversation with Kazuo about Shinohara’s Ukiyo-e Museum in Nagano, and the early houses.) Yes, Maybe he ought to try it a bit more, mingle in a politer society. He knew people, he could make his way. Wasn’t there an art to keeping conversation at a certain level, not low certainly, but not too rarefied either – light, tripping (was that British English?) – smooth ... small, white breasts, a young girl surprised at her behavior. Yes, there was another angle to