Second Skin Read Free

you knew the right people, and Mick knew them all. Having asked the Japanese trade legate about her, he had set about separating her from the pack with the obsessive single-mindedness of an Australian Border collie. Her husband, a ruddy-faced, blond-haired Aryan businessman from Köln, arrogant and tormented, who fancied he knew all about Southeast Asia, was interested only in making deals. Mick had had the impression that if he had taken Giai there and then on the Persian carpet, Rodney Kurtz would not have blinked an eye. As it was, they did it in the powder room with a crystal bowl of heart-shaped soaps crashing to the marble floor as she came.
    ‘Later,’ he said. ‘Not now.’
    He held out one hand and she took it, rising. As they crossed the floor, he waved to Honniko, the blonde in the gold bustier. The chanteuse had finished her set, otherwise he would have saluted her as well.
    ‘Where are we going?’
    ‘Home,’ he said. ‘To Hoan Kiem.’
    She pulled up, looking at him quizzically. ‘My villa? I haven’t been there all day.’
    He knew what she meant. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, shepherding her along, ‘he’s not there anymore.’ He smiled. ‘And whatever blood was spilled has been cleaned up.’
    ‘Where is he, exactly?’
    ‘Nowhere you want to know about,’ he said as they swung out the door into the riotous Roppongi night. Immediately, they were hip-deep in tourists and tripped-out teenagers. Just looking at them could give you a nosebleed, Mick thought. Tattooed heads, branded hands, and metal impedimenta pierced through noses, eyelids, tongues, lips, and nipples were the stuff of nightmares. The breakdown of society was everywhere evident. The hardworking races endure leisure only with great difficulty, Friedrich Nietzsche had said. Which was why, Mick supposed, he admired the Japanese. But look at them now! Lolling around, disfigured, grotesque as sideshow freaks.
    The rain-washed street seethed with the peculiar hormonal vibrancy of youth. Crowds of people thronged the sidewalks, pushing off into the traffic-clogged streets, A permanent pall of diesel fumes hung in the air, giving the neon colors a lurid hue. In windows were displayed the cream of this year’s crop of designer clothes, some of which, Mick judged, were not meant for the human form.
    They picked up a cruising taxi on Roppongi-dōri, took it to Giai’s villa in the Asakusa temple district. Hoan Kiem – Returned Sword – was a beautifully conical concrete and wood structure, more spacious than most Tokyo residences. Its cool, crisp interior was filled with dark-stained rattan in the grand Saigon manner, giving rise to the speculation that both Kurtzes were ultimately more at home there than in Tokyo. The rooms were illuminated at night by brass lamps and during the day by bars of sunlight filtering in through the wide jalousied windows. Through them, one had a spectacular view across the river to the futuristic Flamme d’Or, the Philippe Starke-designed building of black glass, a kind of tetrahedron on acid, surmounted by a vaguely flamelike shape derisively christened by Tokyoites ‘the Golden Turd.’
    Giai hesitated as she unlocked the door and Mick swung it open.
    ‘I told you he isn’t here,’ Mick said, stepping past her and, grasping her hand, pulling her over the threshold. ‘Here, I’ll show you where it happened.’
    ‘No!’ she cried, and almost succeeded in pulling her hand from his fierce grip.
    He stood in the center of what had been, until just after midnight this morning, Rodney Kurtz’s domain, smiling slyly at Giai. He raised his arms in an expansive gesture. ‘This is what you wanted, isn’t it?’
    Giai glared at him darkly. ‘Bastard. Yes.’
    He went to the mirrored bar, took down a pair of cut-glass snifters. ‘It isn’t me who’s the bastard, darling.’ He poured generous measures of Napoleon brandy, turned around, and handed her one. ‘It was your husband, Rodney. Remember?’ He