They were passing the opening the car had disappeared into. She 140 William Gibson looked in and saw chat it was a kind of gas station. “Where is it?” she asked.
“Wet Leaves Fortune,” he said, pointing up.
Tall and narrow, square signs jutting out at the corners of each floor. It looked like almost all the others, but she thought Eddie’s had been bigger. “How do we get up there?”
He led her into a kind of lobby, a ground-floor arcade lined with tiny stall-like shops. Too many lights, mirrors, things for sale, all blurring together. Into a cramped elevator that smelled of stale smoke. He said something in Japanese and the door closed. The elevator sang them a little song to tinkling music. Masahiko looked irritated.
At the ninth floor the door opened on a dust-covered man with a black headband sagging over his eyes. He looked at Chia. “If you’re the one from the magazine,” he said, “you’re three days early.” He pulled the headband off and wiped his face with it. Chia wasn’t sure if he was Japanese or not, or what age he might be. His eyes were brown, spectacularly bloodshot under deep brows, and his black hair, pulled straight back and secured by the band, was streaked with gray.
Behind him there was a constant banging and confusion, men yelling in Japanese. Someone pushing a high-sided orange plastic cart crammed with folded, plaster-flecked cables, shards of plastic painted with gold gilt and Chinese red. Part of a suspended ceiling let go with a twanging of wires, crashed to the floor. More cries.
“I’m looking for Monkey Boxing,” Chia said.
“Darling,” the man said, “you’re a bit late.” He wore a black paper coverall, its sleeves torn off at the elbows, revealing arms tracked with blobby blue lines and circles, some kind of faux-primitive decoration. He wiped his eyes and squinted at her. “You aren’t from the magazine in London?”
“No,” Chia said.
“No,” he agreed. “You seem a bit young even for them.” “This is Monkey Boxing?” o 2 141 L Another section of ceiling came down. The dusty man squinted at her. “Where did you say you were from?”
“Seattle.”
“You heard about Monkey Boxing in Seattle?”
“Yes
He smiled wanly. “That’s fin: heard about it in Seattle You’re on the club scene yourself, dear?’
“I’m Chia McKenzie-”
“Jun. I’m called Jun, dear. Owner, designer, DJ. But you’re too late. Sorry. All that’s left of Monkey Boxing’s going out in these gomi-carts. Landfill now. Like every other broken dream. Had a lovely run while it lasted, better part of three months. You heard about our Shaolin Temple theme? That whole warrior-monk thing?” He sighed extravagantly. “It was heaven. Every instant of it. The Okinawan bartenders shaved their heads, after the first three nights, and started to wear the orange robes. I surpassed myself, in the booth. It was a vision, you understand? But that’s the nature of the floating world, isn’t it? ‘We are in the water trade, after all, and one tries to be philosophical. But who is your friend here? 1 like his hair.
“Masahiko Mimura,” Chia said.
“I 1~ke that black-clad boho butch bedsit thing,” the man said. “Mishima and Dietrich on the same halfshell, if it’s done right.”
Masahiko frowned.
“If Monkey Boxing is gone,” Chia said, “what will you do now?”
Jun retied his headband. He looked less pleased. “Another club, but I won’t be designing. They’ll say I’ve sold out. Suppose I have. I’ll still be managing the space, very nice salary and an apartment along with it, but the concept ..” He shrugged.
“Were you here the night Rez told them he wanted to marry the idoru?”
His brow creased, behind the headband. “I had to sign agreements,” he said, “You aren’t from the magazine?”
“No.”
“If he hadn’t come in that night, I suppose we might still be up
142 William Gibson and running. And really he wasn’t the sort of thing we’d cried to be about. We’d had Maria Paz, just after she’d split up with her boyfriend, the public relations monster, and the press were thick as flies. She’s huge here, did you know that? And we’d had Blue Ahmed from Chrome Koran and the press scarcely noticed. Rez and his friends, though, press was not a problem. Sent in this big minder who looked as though he’d been using his face as a chopping block. Came up to me and said Rez had heard about the place and was about to drop in with a few friends, and could we arrange a table with a bit of privacy. . . . Well, really, I had to think: Rez who? Then it clicked, of course, and I said fine, absolutely, and we put three tables together in the back, and even borrowed a purple cordon from the gumi boys in the hostess place upstairs.”