Missing in Tokyo by Graham Marks

Author:Graham Marks [Marks, Graham]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2006-02-06T13:00:00+00:00

21

Flavorous and delicious communication

The woman, this goth/vampire bar manager-cum-Head Girl who said she was called Miki, hadn’t got a lot of other information to give Adam; also, as they talked, customers began arriving in ones and twos and as they did so girls started appearing from the back of the club to join them at their chosen table or booth.

The girls, all of them European, most of them blonde like Charlie, were in some kind of cliché costume: nurse, schoolgirl, punk geisha – a lot of make-up, not a huge amount of clothes. Adam found himself wondering what Alice and Charlie had dressed up as and then realised he really did not want to know that kind of detail. It was becoming obvious, too, that Miki felt she’d done her bit and it was time for him to leave the premises. He was taking up space better used by a paying customer.

‘What d’you think happened to Charlie if she didn’t go off with a customer?’ Adam got off the stool and put his empty bottle on the bar.

‘I never said she didn’t go off with a customer.’ Miki took the bottle. ‘I just said she didn’t leave here with one. Big difference.’

‘Did you ever meet Alice’s boyfriend?’

‘Steve? Yeah, he’d come by most nights, to pick ’em up. Why?’

‘You’ve not seen him since either?’

‘Look, guy, they all three of them dropped off the radar at around the same time. For all I know they just decided to go on their merry way and forgot to tell anyone. Working here is not what you call a career move, know what I mean?’

‘So what’s Alice still doing round here?’

‘I think you’ve made the tragic error of mistaking me for someone who gives a shit.’ Miki said something in Japanese to a waitress who’d just joined her behind the bar, then looked back at Adam, a blank expression on her deathly pale face.

‘Well, thanks for your time …’ Adam waved as he moved towards the door.

‘Aren’t you forgetting something, guy?’

‘What?’

‘Your bar tab. ¥1,000 please, plus entrance fee.’

Outside on the street Adam looked up at the Bar Belle’s sign. ¥1,000 for a bottle of beer? What a rip-off place! As he stood by the door, figuring out what to do next, three Japanese men in business suits walked past him and went up the stairs. They looked exactly like all the people already up there in the club, paying through the nose to sit with girls in ‘sexy’ fancy dress. But did the fact that no one was forcing anyone to go there make it less of a con? Did he care?

As he walked off, even more determined now to go to the Gaspanic and forget about everything for just an hour or so, he thought what he should do was come back later, much later when the girls were leaving. Maybe one of them would be able to tell him more than Miki seemed to want to. He’d seen on a sign by the entrance that the club closed at 3.

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