Mona Lisa Overdrive

14 - Toys

"Here's a lovely thing," Petal said, touching a rosewood cube the size of Kumiko's head. "Battle of Britain." Light shimmered above it, and when Kumiko leaned forward she saw that tiny aircraft looped and dived in slow motion above a gray Petrie smear of London. "They worked it up from war films," he said, "gunsight cameras." She peered in at almost microscopic flashes of antiaircraft fire from the Thames estuary. "Did it for the Centenary."

They were in Swain's billiard room, ground-floor rear, number 16. There was a faint mustiness, an echo of pub smell. The overall tidiness of Swain's establishment was tempered here by genteel dilapidation: there were armchairs covered in scuffed leather, pieces of heavy dark furniture, the dull green field of the billiard table ... The black steel racks stacked with entertainment gear had caused Petal to bring her here, before tea, shuffling along in his seam-sprung moleskin slippers, to demonstrate available toys.

"Which war was this?"

"Last but one," he said, moving on to a similar but larger unit that offered holograms of two Thai boxing girls. One's callused sole smacked against the other's lean brown belly, tensed to take the blow. He touched a stud and the projections vanished.

Kumiko glanced back at the Battle of Britain and its burning gnats.

"All sorts of sporting fiche," Petal said, opening a fitted pig-skin case that held hundreds of the recordings.

He demonstrated half-a-dozen other pieces of equipment, then scratched his stubbled head while he searched for a Japanese video news channel. He found it, finally, but couldn't cut out the automatic translation program. He watched with her as a cadre of Ono-Sendai executive trainees effaced themselves in a tearful graduation ceremony. "What's all that then?" he asked.

"They are demonstrating loyalty to their zaibatsu. "

"Right," he said. He gave the video unit a swipe with his feather duster. "Tea time soon." He left the room. Kumiko shut off the audio. Sally Shears had been absent at breakfast, as had Swain.

Moss-green curtains concealed another set of tall windows opening onto the same garden. She looked out at a sundial sheathed in snow, then let the curtain fall back. (The silent wallscreen flashed Tokyo accident images, foil-clad medics sawing limp victims from a tangle of impacted steel.) A top-heavy Victorian cabinet stood against the far wall on carved feet resembling pineapples. The keyhole, trimmed with an inlaid diamond of yellowed ivory, was empty, and when she tried the doors, they opened, exhaling a chemical odor of ancient polish. She stared at the black and white mandala at the rear of the cabinet until it became what it was, a dartboard. The glossy wood behind it was pocked and pricked; some players had missed the board entirely, she decided. The lower half of the cabinet offered a number of drawers, each with a small brass pull and miniature, ivory-trimmed keyhole. She knelt in front of these, glanced back toward the doorway (wallscreen showing the lips of a Shinjuku cabaret singer) and drew the upper right drawer out as quietly as possible. It was filled with darts, loose and in leather wallets. She closed the drawer and opened the one to its left. A dead moth and a rusted screw. There was a single wide drawer below the first two; it stuck as she opened it, and made a sound. She looked back again (stock footage of Fuji Electric's logo illuminating Tokyo Bay) but there was no sign of Petal.

She spent several minutes leafing through a pornographic magazine, with Japanese text, which seemed to have mainly to do with the art of knots. Under this was a dusty-looking jacket made of black waxed cotton, and a gray plastic case with WALTHER molded across its lid in raised letters. The pistol itself was cold and heavy; she could see her face in the blue metal when she lifted it from its fitted bed of foam. She'd never handled a gun before. The gray plastic grips seemed enormous. She put it back into the case and scanned the Japanese section in a folder of multilingual instructions. It was an air gun; you pumped the lever below the barrel. It fired very small pellets of lead. Another toy. She replaced the contents of the drawer and closed it.

The remaining drawers were empty. She closed the cabinet door and returned to the Battle of Britain.

"No," Petal said, "sorry, but it won't do."

He was spreading Devon cream on a crumpet, the heavy Victorian butterknife like a child's toy in his thick fingers. "Try the cream," he said, lowering his massive head and regarding her blandly over the tops of his glasses.

Kumiko wiped a shred of marmalade from her upper lip with a linen napkin. "Do you imagine I'll try to run away?"

"Run away? Are you considering that, running away?" He ate his crumpet, chewing stolidly, and glanced out into the garden, where fresh snow was falling.

"No," she said. "I have no intention of running away."

"Good," he said, and took another bite.

"Am I in danger, in the street?"

"Lord no," he said, with a sort of determined cheeriness, "you're safe as houses."

"I want to go out."

"No."

"But I go out with Sally."

"Yes," he said, "and she's a nasty piece of work, your Sally."

"I don't know this idiom."

"No going out alone. That's in our brief with your father, understand? You're fine out with Sally, but she isn't here. Nobody's liable to give you bother in any case, but why take chances? Now I'd be happy, you see, delighted to take you out, only I'm on duty here in case Swain has callers. So I can't. It's a shame, really it is." He looked so genuinely unhappy that she considered relenting. "Toast you another?" he asked, gesturing toward her plate.

"No, thank you." She put down her napkin. "It was very good," she added.

"Next time you should try the cream," he said. "Couldn't get it after the war. Rain blew in from Germany and the cows weren't right."

"Is Swain here now, Petal?"

"No."

"I never see him."

"Out and about. Business. There's cycles to it. Soon enough they'll all be calling here, and he'll be holding court again."

"Who, Petal?"

"Business types, you'd say."

"Kuromaku," she said.

"Sorry?"

"Nothing," she said.

She spent the afternoon alone in the billiard room, curled in a leather armchair, watching snow fall in the garden and the sundial become a featureless white upright. She pictured her mother there, wrapped in dark furs, alone in the garden as the snow fell, a princess-ballerina who drowned herself in the night waters of Sumida.

She stood up, chilled, and went around the billiard table to the marble hearth, where gasflame hissed softly beneath coals that could never be consumed.