Number9Dream Read Online Free PDF

spoken than the downpour turns itself off. The pregnant women laugh. I think about their babies. During those nine pouched-up months, what do babies imagine? Gills, swamps, battlefields? To people in wombs, what is imagined and what is real must be one and the same. Outside, pedestrians peer upwards suspiciously, testing the rain with the flats of their hands. Umbrellas close. Theatre-backdrop clouds unscroll. Jupiter Café’s doors grind open and my waitress comes back, swinging a bag. ‘Took your time,’ grumbles Dowager. My waitress puts the box of filters on the counter. ‘Queues in the supermarket. It took for ever.’ ‘Did you hear the thunder?’ asks Donkey, and I suspect that she is not such a bad person, just a weak one under the influence of Dowager. ‘Of course she heard it!’ snorts Dowager. ‘My Aunt Otane heard that thunder, and she’s been dead for nine years.’ My money says Dowager tampered with the will and shoved Aunt Otane down the stairs. ‘Receipt and change, if you please. I am known by head office as an exemplary bookkeeper, and I intend to keep my reputation untarnished.’ My waitress gives her the receipt and a pile of coins. Indifference is a powerful weapon in her hands. The clock says two-thirty. I draw pentagrams in my ashtray with a toothpick. The thought occurs to me that I should at least check that Akiko Kato is in the PanOpticon before I go up to her office – if I barge past her secretary only to find a ‘Back Thursday’ Post-It sticker on her computer screen I will look a total fool. I carry Ms Kato’s name card in my wallet. I borrowed it from my grandmother’s fireproof box when I was eleven, intending to study voodoo and use it as a totem. AKIKO KATO . ATTORNEY. OSUGI & BOSUGI. This Shinjuku address and telephone number. My heartbeat is already quickening. I make a deal with myself – one iced coffee, one last Carlton, then I call. I wait until my waitress is at the counter and go up to receive my coffee and her blessings. ‘Glasses!’ calls Dowager so sharply I mistakenly believe she’s talking to me. Donkey comes to the counter and my girl goes back to the sink. I’m in danger of ODing on caffeine, but I’ll look stupid if I change my mind now. ‘One iced coffee, please.’ I wait until Lao Tzu gets rekilled by the bioborgs and swap a Carlton for another match. I try to bisect an almond flake, but it wedges itself up my fingernail.

    ‘Good afternoon. Osugi and Bosugi.’
    I try to inject a shot of authority into my voice. ‘Ye-es—’ My voice squeaks as though my balls are still in puberty freefall. I blush, fake a cough, and restart five octaves down. ‘Is Akiko Kato working today, please?’
    ‘Do you want to speak with her?’
    ‘No. I want to know if . . . yes. Yes, please.’
    ‘Yes what, sir?’
    ‘Could you please put me through to Ms Akiko Kato. Please.’
    ‘And may I ask who’s calling, sir?’
    ‘Is she, uh, in the office, then?’
    ‘May I ask who’s calling, sir?’
    ‘This is a’ – disaster – ‘confidential call.’
    ‘You can count on the utmost confidence, sir, but I must ask who is calling.’
    ‘My name, uh, is Taro Tanaka.’ The duddest of dud names. Idiot.
    ‘Mr Taro Tanaka. I see. May I ask what your call is concerning?’
    ‘Certain legal, uh, matters.’
    ‘You can’t be any more specific, Mr Tanaka?’
    ‘Uh. No. Actually.’
    A slow sigh. ‘Ms Kato is in a meeting with the senior partners at the moment, so I can’t ask her to speak with you right now. But if I could ask for your number and company, and some outline of your business, I could ask her to return your call later today.’
    ‘Naturally.’
    ‘So, your company, Mr Tanaka?’
    ‘Uh . . .’
    ‘Mr Tanaka?’
    I drown and hang up.

    A D-minus for style. But now I know that Akiko Kato lurks in her web. I count twenty-seven floors up the PanOpticon before touching cloud. I blow smoke at you, Akiko Kato. You have less than thirty minutes to