Remote Control Page 9

  Six months later, he went to a shop that dealt in secondhand computer games and on a whim bought the one with the creepy fish. Perhaps it was a form of rehabilitation, a way of testing how much of the hole he'd been able to fill.

  At first, he was just going through the motions, tending the computer aquarium according to the instructions; but gradually he grew more intent on the game until, to his complete amazement, he was stopping people at work to tell them about the condition of his virtual fish. One evening at the end of the second week, the fish suddenly turned to look out at him.

  "Don't settle for too little," it gurgled.

  "You shit!" said Aoyagi, stabbing his finger at the screen. "That's what you told her. That's what fucked everything up." The fish ignored him and swam calmly away through glowing blue pixels. "But you know," Aoyagi muttered at its receding tail, "if Td given her the smaller half that day, she'd have been mad about that instead."

  The fish ignored him, but finally turned back with a withering look. "Did you say something?"

  Masaharu Aoyagi

  "Did you say something?" T he voice woke Aoyagi from a light sleep.

  "Sorry, did 1 doze off?" T here was a slight ache in his head as he shook himself awake. He realized he was in Morita's car, with the back of his seat dropped down.

  "You were talking in y(jur sleep, must have been dreaming," Morita said. T he engine was (jff, but his hands were grij)|)ing the wheel and he was staring intently through the windshield.

  Perhaps he was just groggy troiii his nap, but Aoyagi thought he lelt the car rocking. I le checked the clock on the dashboard: just belore noon. It harl been iKj more than a tew minutes since they'd Wtjiked Iroiii the east side ot the sta-tirjii, threaded their way down an alley, glanced at the roadblocks set u|) lor the parade, and lound their way to Morita's car, p.uked on this side stu'et.

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  They could see a little clot of motionless cars further down—drivers who had ignored the warnings about the street closures and now had nowhere to go—and a group of parade-goers who had stopped in the middle of a crosswalk, but otherwise the street was nearly deserted. Though it was noon on a weekday and this prime minister was news, the crowd seemed paltry compared to the crush for the Star Festival or a big fireworks display.

  As they had passed through the tunnel coming out of the station, Aoyagi had spotted a man in a red Panthers sweat shirt selling a magazine outside a game center. He went over and bought one, and the man bowed politely. It was something produced twice monthly for the homeless to sell on the streets.

  As they fell in step again, Morita glanced at the thin publication under his friend's arm. "Interesting?" he asked.

  "At ¥300, it'd better be," Aoyagi answered. The cover showed a picture of a well-known guitarist who fronted for a foreign rock band. "But the point is, the guy who sells it gets to keep most of the profit."

  "So the price is a donation?" There was more than a hint of disdain in his voice.

  "The price is his salary. I buy the magazine, his job is to sell it."

  "Sounds like charity to me." This was apparently a dirty word to Morita.

  "I don't think I'd last three days hawking magazines like that. Looks like hard work to me."

  "Except they don't have anything else to do," said Morita.

  "And what 'they' would that be?"

  "The homeless."

  "Which would you rather be? A homeless guy who works his ass off or a stiff in a suit who hangs out at a coffee shop reading manga?"

  "If it had to be one or the other, I guess I'd be the suit."

  "Me, too," Aoyagi confessed.

  "But did you notice?" Morita said, apparently still not ready to let the subject drop. "The guy selling the magazines was humming 'Help!' by the Beatles. The perfect soundtrack for begging."

  "I didn't notice," Aoyagi muttered.

  "Though I suppose he could get in trouble for using the tune without paying royalties."

  THE INCIDENT

  "A scary thought," said Aoyagi, though he doubted whether the Beatles worried about copyright infringement in a Japanese subway station.

  Outside the station they walked west along Minamimachi Avenue until they reached the side streets beyond Higashi Nibancho. There they found Morita's car next to a tiny park that occupied a corner lot. Aoyagi remembered that as soon as they'd climbed inside Morita had produced a plastic bottle of water from somewhere and offered him a drink. He had taken a sip, but after that there was a blank when he must have fallen asleep.

  "There must've been something in it," Aoyagi said, laughing and holding up the bottle as his head finally began to clear.

  "What would be in it?" Morita said without turning to look at him.

  "No, it's just that 1 fell asleep out of nowhere, like Td been drugged." It struck him as an odd thing to say but he couldn't help it.

  "You were," said Morita. "1 put a sedative in the water."

  "That's not even funny. Not your usual kind of joke at least."

  "Have any interesting dreams?" Morita turned to look at him at last.

  "Now that you mention it," said Aoyagi, feeling embarrassed, "1 dreamed about splitting up with Haruko."

  "The chocolate?"

  Aoyagi flinched visibly. "How do you know about that?"

  "How do you think?" Though the day was clear and bright, it was dark in the car, which was parked in the shade. "T here are several possibilities," he said. His face was expressionless, his voice low and flat as though reading from a legal document. "One," he said, holding up his index finger. "1 heard about it from Haruko herself."

  "When you ran into her? Why would she tell you that?"

  "T wo," said Morita, holding up another finger. "Kazu told me."

  "And how w(juld Kazu know?"

  "Three. You mentioned it while you were talking in your sleep just now."

  "1 did?" Aoyagi stammered.

  "four," said .Morita. "The forest told me." As he said this, he gave a deep sigh, for some reason, Aoyagi was remindetl ol the way Ikuuko had sighed as lie handed her hall the fateful chocolate bar and then he realized what the two things fiad in common. T hen, as now, he had the cpieasy feeling that

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  lie was about to hear something important and very unpleasant. "Actually, it wasn't the forest," Morita continued, looking as though he might start laughing at any moment. "You probably never believed that crap about seeing the future anyway."

  "1 wouldn't say that," said Aoyagi. "You got quite a few predictions right, didn't you?"

  "1 did?"

  "Sure. You remember the data processing class, in our freshman year? You knew exactly what was going to be on the final exam."

  "The guy who taught it reused his old exams in a three-year cycle. 1 just figured out the schedule and borrowed an old one."

  Aoyagi wasn't sure where these confessions were leading, but something about the tone of them worried him. "And when 1 asked you if Haruko would go out with me, you were certain she would."

  "That wasn't hard. When somebody asks you a question like that, you just say what you know he wants to hear. Maybe I should have told you not to bother, that it wasn't going to work out in the end."

  "Then what about the Friends of Fast Food? You always knew ahead of time what they were going to introduce on the menu. You'd say mango desserts were coming up that summer, or sesame buns would be in favor that fall—and you were almost always right."

  "A business like fast food is always two steps behind the rest of the world. The TV had been full of stories about how good sesame is for you. All 1 did was figure out that the burger joints would catch on eventually and stick it on their buns, and voila, a prediction. If you make enough of them, some come true."

  "But when we went to the beach and the parking lots were all full, you'd say 'Go that way,' and we'd always find a spot. I thought you could actually see where the empty spaces were." He remembered Morita murmuring that t
he information was coming to him "from the forest."

  "I just pointed us up the narrowest, least likely streets. Inconvenient spots are always the last to fill up, so it was a matter of probabilities. When it was really crowded, it didn't work, as far as I remember."

  Aoyagi looked over at his friend. "What are you telling me?" Why was he insisting now that it was bullshit?

  "You remember when I mentioned Haruko's husband? You said some-

  THE INCIDENT

  thing about a chocolate bar. You probably didn't even realize you said it out loud, but 1 knew it must have been important, something that happened between the two of you. And that's the key to my parlor trick."

  "Trick?" Aoyagi echoed, feeling somehow drained all of a sudden. "But how did you show up on the train?" he said more quietly. "How did you know I would happen to get mixed up with that woman? Didn't you say that was the forest?"

  Morita had been gripping the wheel as they talked. He let go now and turned toward him, looking troubled.

  "Listen," he said, glancing at his watch. His eyes were wide and bloodshot. "There isn't much time, so I'll have to keep this short."

  "I'm lost."

  "You got mixed up with that woman, but it didn't just 'happen.' You were set up."

  "Set up? By who? The guy who forced me out of my job?"

  "1 guess we could start there," said Morita. "It's all connected. They wanted to ruin your reputation, make it impossible for you to stay at your job. So the calls started, first to you, then to your boss. Then they set you up on the train to try to make it look like you were some kind of pervert."

  "They'? Who are you talking about?"

  "The people who ordered me to help them, to fuck up your job and your life," Morita said, speaking with more urgency now.

  "Ordered you? Who ordered you?" He could tell that there was no hint of humor left in Morita's voice, and he was suddenly frightened. His hand fumbled for his seatbelt. Seeing what he was doing, Morita reached down to stop him.

  "Don't," he murmured.

  "What?"

  "Just listen. They've been drawing you in, and they're about to spring the traj)."

  "Morita? What are you talking about?"

  "l.et's see if 1 can make it simj)ler. 1 haven't told you that I've got a family, a wile and a son."

  "just like that? When tlid this ha|)j)en?"

  "Soon alter graduation. My boy's already in elementary school. Hard to believe, isn't it."

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  "I'll go further than that. 1 don't believe you."

  "But it's true. As soon as I got to Tokyo, the woman I was seeing got pregnant and we got married. But she had this hobby—more of an addiction really. She went out every day to play pachinko, even took the baby with her. Of course she lost, and she started borrowing to keep playing." Morita was speaking quickly, hurrying through his story. "Strange, isn't it? Pachinko's supposed to be fun, but you can get in trouble fast. She never said a word to me until it was too late, until she was up to her neck in debt. I didn't even believe her at first, when she came to tell me."

  "Look," Aoyagi interrupted, "I'm sorry, but I'm still not following you."

  "I was doing everything I could to pay back what she owed, and then not long ago I had a strange call. They said they'd cancel her debts if I helped them out on a little project." He glanced down at his watch again.

  "What project?"

  "They told me I had to help you get away from somebody who was going to accuse you of something, and then make sure you were in a certain place at a certain time."

  "What kind of 'project' is that?" he said, looking around the car, then seeing the bottle of water.

  "I didn't understand myself. First, they told me to find you on the Senseki Line and if you were in trouble, to tell you to run. It seemed weird, but if it was really going to help you, I didn't see any problem with it. At least that's what I told myself."

  "But you really did help me."

  "No, I didn't," Morita said, his voice beginning to crack. "They didn't want you arrested. They just wanted you to be seen with that woman accusing you of molesting her."

  "But who are 'they'? Seen by who?"

  "By the other people on the platform. So that later, when you were accused of ariother crime, it would seem more plausible because those people would speak up and say they'd seen you bothering that woman."

  "Another crime?" Aoyagi croaked. "What other crime?"

  "I didn't know myself," said Morita. "They just told me to get you in this car and keep you knocked out till twelve-thirty. And they gave me this bottle to do it."

  THE INCIDENT

  Aoyagi looked from the bottle to the clock on the dashboard, just noon. "And once they had me asleep, what were they going to do?"

  "1 didn't know. 1 knew it wasn't right, but 1 tried not to think about it. Those loans had made me crazy, and 1 thought if 1 just did what they told me, the problem would go away. That's all. But as we were walking here from the station, 1 began to see that something really bad was going to happen, something 1 could never make right. And seeing you after all this time, and realizing you were exactly the same guy ..."

  "1 don't know what you're trying to tell me, but 1 think Td better find out real soon," said .Aoyagi.

  "Then listen!" Morita nearly screamed, turning to fix his eyes on him.

  "To what? What are you saying?"

  "That T’e just realized what's going to happen. You saw all those people on our way here? They've come for the parade, to see Kaneda. And d'you remember what we used to talk about sitting around after class?"

  "Yeah—all kinds of stuff." The meetings of the Friends of Fast Food had involved staking out seats in some restaurant and shooting the bull for hours on end. It was usually just the four of them—Aoyagi, Morita, Haruko, and Kazu—but they had talked about anything and everything. From the totally banal—girls in other departments, new movies, what they'd buy if they won the lottery—to subjects worthy of a student debating society, "the right to collective self-defense and the peace article in the constitution" and the like. T hey always sat at the back of the restaurant and they always took their time, letting the conversation run its natural course. T he very length of the sessions had seemed to give them weight. Aoyagi could still see them—Haruko, Kazu, and the two of them—huddled around the table.

  "But, remember all the time we spent talking about the Beatles, and the Kennedy assassinati(jn? We all liked the Beatles, but Kazu was the one into the Kennedy thing, at least at first."

  "Now that y()u mention it." Kazu had been unusually insistent. Me w
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  they knew what would happen to him after he was arrested. It seemed to infuriate him. When the others asked him who ''they" were, he had scowled. "The ones with all the power, the bosses," he'd said.

  "After the Kennedy assassination," Morita continued now, "there were reports that Oswald had been a CIA informant."

  "I remember reading that."

  "And before the assassination he had been handing out flyers for the Communist Party in some little town. He did it because the CIA ordered him

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  to, apparently because they wanted to give the impression that he was some sort of activist."

  "That was the theory."

  "Well, I think they had that woman accuse you of molesting her for similar reasons. I had a hunch what was going on, before, but I refused to let myself think about it."

  "You're going to have to spell it out. I'm still not with you."

  "I think the whole thing with the woman was just background, setting you up for the main event."


  "Main event?"

  "Has anything else strange happeried to you recently? Other than losing your job?" Morita asked. His tone was now more frantic, and Aoyagi could feel panic growing in himself as well. His mind ran over the events of the past few months. His driver's license turning up in Matsushima was definitely odd. Then Koume Inohara's face popped into his head. "It wasn't exactly strange, but I did meet a girl at the unemployment office when I was picking up my check."

  "What kind of girl?" In the old days, Morita would have whistled at this kind of admission and demanded details. Now he just stared hard at him.

  "Just a girl. A few years younger than me."

  "Did she come on to you?"

  "Not exactly. We were sitting next to each other at the computers where you can search for job vacancies."

  "Are you dating?"

  "We're friends," Aoyagi said, shrugging. It was the truth.

  "Sounds fishy to me."

  "No, we're really just friends," Aoyagi insisted, though he realized that he probably hoped the relationship would develop into something more.

  THE INCIDENT

  "I'm not talking about your relationship," said Morita. "I mean the girl herself."

  "What's fishy about meeting a girl?"

  "Then why did you mention her? Your enemies now may be the people who look least like the bad guys, me included."

  "Well, you look a lot like a bad guy at this point."

  Morita closed his eyes and rubbed his hand over his face, taking a moment to collect himself. "You're right," he said as he opened his eyes. "I'm probably overreacting. But you've got to be careful. Don't trust anyone. Otherwise, you'll end up like Oswald."

  Aoyagi glanced down at his watch, not sure what to say to this. "Still ten minutes to go," he said, almost giggling. "Good thing I'm not still asleep."

  "They'll probably kill him during the parade," Morita said.

  "Is that supposed to be funny?"

  "It's what I figured out. When I saw you drop off after drinking from that bottle, 1 finally realized what was going to happen. I actually got out and looked under the car."