She climbed out into the rain, dragging her bag after her, and looked up at the source of the white glow: a building like a wedding cake, HOTEL DI spelled out in white neon script edged with clear twinkling bulbs. Masahiko beside her now, urging her toward the pink ribbons. She heard the cab pull away behind her. “Come.” Gomi Boy with the plaid bag, ducking through the wet ribbons.
Into an almost empty parking area, two small cars, one gray, one dark green, their license plates concealed by rectangles of smooth black plastic. A glass door sliding aside as Gomi Boy approached.
A disembodied voice said something in Japanese. Gomi Boy answered. “Give him your card,” Masahiko said. Chia took out the card and handed it to Gomi Boy, who seemed to be asking the voice a series of questions. Chia looked around. Pale blues, pink, light gray. A very small space that managed to suggest a hotel lobby without actually offering a place to sit down. Pictures cycling past on wallscreens: interiors of very strange-looking rooms. The voice answering Gomi Boy’s questions.
“He asks for a room with optimal porting capacity,” Masahiko said quietly.
Gomi Boy and the voice seemed to reach agreement. He slotted Chia’s card above something that looked like a small pink water fountain. The voice thanked him. A narrow hatch opened and a key slid down into the pink bowl. Gorni Boy picked it up and handed it to Masahiko. Chia’s card emerged from the slot; Gomi Boy pulled it
171 out and passed it to Chia. He handed Masahiko the plaid bag, turned, and walked out, the glass door hissing open for him.
“He isn’t coming with us?”
“Only two people allowed in room. He is busy elsewhere. Come.” Masahiko pointed toward an elevator that opened as they approached.
“What kind of hotel did you say this is?” Chia got into the elevator. He stepped in behind her and the door closed.
He cleared his throat. “Love hotel,” he said.
“What’s that?” Going up.
“Private rooms. For sex. Pay by the hour.”
“Oh,” Chia said, as though that explained everything. The elevator stopped and the door opened. He got out and she followed him along a narrow corridor lit with ankle-high light-strips. He stopped in front of a door and inserted the key they’d been given. As he opened the door, lights came on inside.
“Have you been to one of these before?” she asked, and felt herself blush. She hadn’t meant it that way.
“No,” he said. He closed the door behind her and examined the locks. He pushed two buttons. “But people who come here sometimes wish to port. There is a reposting service that makes it very hard to trace. Also for phoning, very secure.”
Chia was looking at the round pink frirry bed. It seemed to be upholstered in what they made stuffed animals out oil The wall-to-wall was shaggy and white as snow, the combination reminding her of a particularly nasty-looking sugar snack called a Ring-Ding.
Velcro made that ripping sound. She turned to see Masahiko removing his nylon gaiters. He took off his black workshoes (the toe was out, in one of his thin gray socks) and slid his feet into white paper sandals. Chia looked down at her own wet shoes on the white shag and decided she’d better do the same. “Why does this place look the way it does?” she asked, kneeling to undo her laces.
Masahiko shrugged. Chia noticed that the quilted International 172 William Gibson Biohazard symbol on the plaid bag was almost exactly the color of the fur on the bed.
Spotting what was obviously the bathroom through an open door, she carried her own bag in there and closed the door behind her. The walls were upholstered with something black and shiny, and the floor was checkered with black and white tiles. Complicated mood-lighting came on and she was surrounded by ambient birdsong. This bathroom was nearly as big as the bedroom, with a bath like a miniature black swimming pool and something else that Chia only gradually recognized as a toilet. Remembering the one back in Eddie’s office, she put her bag down and approached the thing with extreme caution. It was black, and chrome, and had arms and a back, sort of like a chair at the stylist’s. There was a display cycling, on a little screen beside it, with fragments of English embedded in the Japanese. Chia watched as “(A) Pleasure” and “(B) Super Pleasure” slid past. “Uh-uh,” she said.