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live with Eiji Miyake as nothing but a foggy memory from a foggy mountain island off the southern foot of Kyushu. Do you ever daydream about meeting me? Or am I just a name on certain documents? The icebergs in my coffee fuse and chink. I pour in the juglets of syrup and cream and watch the liquids swirl and bleed. The pregnant women are comparing baby magazines. My girl is going from table to table emptying ashtrays into a bucket. Come this way, empty mine . She doesn’t. Dowager is on the telephone, all smiles. A man crossing Kita Street catches my attention: I swear I saw this same man cross this same street a minute ago. I focus on him, tracking his progress among the puddle-hopping masses. He crosses over, then waits for the man to turn green. He crosses over Omekaido Avenue, waits for the man to turn green. Then he crosses back over Kita Street. He waits, and crosses back over Omekaido Avenue. I watch him complete one, two, three circuits. A private detective, a bioborg, a lunatic? The sun will rub through the cloud cover any minute now. I prod my straw down through the ice, and suck. My bladder will no longer be ignored. I get up, walk to the toilet door, turn the handle – locked. I scratch the back of my head and go back to my seat, embarrassed. When the occupant leaves – an office lady – I avert my gaze so she doesn’t suspect me of rattling her toilet knob, and so lose my turn to a demure high-school girl in uniform, who emerges fifteen minutes later as a boob-banded, candy-striped, miniskirted wet dream. I get up, but this time a mother and her little kid dash in ahead of me. ‘Emergency!’ giggles the mother at me, and I smile understandingly. Am I in one of those dreams where the closer you get the farther away you are? ‘Look,’ shrieks my bladder, ‘get your act together, and soon, or I won’t be held responsible!’ I stand by the door and try to think of sand dunes. Another of Tokyo’s vicious circles – to use a toilet you have to buy a drink that fills your bladder. On Yakushima I just find a tree to piss behind. Finally the mother and kid come out and I get to go in. I hold my breath and fight the lock shut. I lift the lid and piss three coffees. I run out of breath and have to breathe in – not too smelly, considering. Urine, margarine, chemical lavender. I think better of wiping the rim. A sink, a mirror, an empty soap canister. I squeeze a couple of blackheads, and try on my reflection from various angles: I, Eiji Miyake, Tokyoite. Do I fool anybody, or is every laugh, meeow and muffled stare directed at me, as I suspect? A good acne day. Is my Kyushu tan pasting over already? My reflection plays the staring game. It wins and I look away first. I start work on a volcanic chain of blackheads. Somebody on the outside knocks and turns the toilet handle. I ruffle back my gelled hair, and fumble the door open.

    It is Lao Tzu. I mutter an apology for making him wait, and decide to attack the PanOpticon without further delay. Then, cutting across the foreground, strides Akiko Kato. In the flesh, right here, right now, only five millimetres of glass and a metre of air, max, between us. My wished-for coincidence has come about just as I have given up hope. In slo-mo she turns her head, looks straight at me, and carries on walking. Temporary disbelief catches me off balance. Akiko Kato strides to the intersection where the men turn green on her approach. In my fantasy she hadn’t aged; in reality she has, but my memory is surprisingly accurate. Lidded cunning, aquiline nose, wintry beauty. Go ! I wait for the doors to grind open, run out, and—
    Baseball cap, you idiot!
    I dart back into Jupiter Café, get my cap, and race over to the crossing, where the green men are already flashing. After two hours in air-con I can feel my skin crackle and pop in the afternoon heat. Akiko Kato has already reached the far shore – I risk it and run, leaping over the stripes and puddles. The donorcycles rev