Rez was moving in the direction of whatever lay beyond the tank.
“Come,” Yamazaki said, then lowered his voice. “Something exrraordinary. She is here. She dines with Rez. Rei Toei.”
The idoru. 24. Hotel Di In this tiny cab now with Masahiko and Gomi Boy, Masahiko up front, on what should’ve been the driver’s side, Gomi Boy beside her in the back. Gomi Boy had so many pockets in his fatigue pants, and so many things in them, that he had trouble getting comfortable. Chia had never been in a car this small, let alone a cab. Masahiko’s knees were folded up, almost against his chest. The driver had white cotton gloves and a hat like the hats cab drivers wore in 1940s movies. There were little covers made of starched white lace fixed to all the headrests with special clips.
She guessed it was such a small cab because Gomi Boy was going to be paying, cash money, and he made it clear he didn’t have a lot of that.
Somehow they had ascended out of the rain into this crazy, impressive, but old-fashioned-looking multilevel expressway, its steel bones ragged with bandages of Keviar, and were whipping past the middle floors of tall buildings–maybe that Shinjuku again, because there went that Tin Toy Building, she thought, glimpsed through a gap, but far away and from another direction-and here, gone so fast she was never sure she’d seen him, through one window like all the rest, was a naked man, crosslegged on an office desk, his mouth open as wide as possible, as if in a silent scream.
Then she began to notice other buildings, through sheets of rain, and these were illuminated to a degree excessive even by local stan
169 dards, like Nissan County attractions in a television ad, isolated theme-park elements thrusting up out of a strata of more featureless structures, unmarked and unlit. Each bright building with its towering sign: HOTEL KING MIDAS with its twinkling crown and scepter, FREEDOM SHOWER BANFE with blue-green mountains flanking a waterfall of golden light. At least six more in rapid succession, then Gomi Boy said something in Japanese. The drivers shiny black bill dipped in response.
They swung onto an off-ramp, slowing. From the ramp’s curve, in the Hat, ugly flare of sodium floods, she saw a rainy, nowhere intersection, no cars in sight, where pale coarse grass lay wet and dishevelled up a short steep slope. No place at all,like it could as easily have been on the outskirts of Seattle, the outskirts of anywhere, and the homesickness made her gasp.
Gomi Boy shot her a sidewise glance, engaged in the excavation of something from another of his pockets, this one apparently inside his pants. From somewhere well below the level of his crotch he fished up a wallet-sized fold of paper money, secured with a wide black elastic band. In the passing glare of another road light Chia saw him snap the elastic back and peel off three bills. Bigger than American money, and on one she made out the comfortingly familiar logo of a company whose name she’d known all her life. He tucked the three bills into the sleeve of his sweater and set about replacing the rest wherever it was he kept it.
‘There soon,” he said, withdrawing his hand and refastening his suspenders.
‘Where soon?”
They took a right and stopped, alL around them a strange white fairy glow, falling with the rain to oil-stained conctete neatly painted with two big white arrows, side by side, pointing in opposite directions. The one pointing in the direction they were headed indicated a square opening in a featureless, white-painted concrete wall. Five-inch-wide ribbons of shiny pink plastic hung from its upper edge to 170 William Gibson the concrete below, concealing whatever was behind and reminding Chia of streamers at a school dance. Gomi Boy gave the driver the three bills. He sat patiently, waiting for change.
Her legs cramping, Chia reached for the door handle, but Masahiko quickly reached across from the front, stopping her. “Driver must open,” he said. “If you open, mechanism breaks, very expensive.” The driver gave Gomi Boy change. Chia thought Gomi Boy would tip him, but he didn’t. The driver reached down and did something, out of sight, that made the door beside Chia open.