Tokio Whip Read Online Free PDF Page B

who is accompanied by a Russian friend Yuri (recall, this is during the Cold War). And here again we have prophecy in that Davis seems to be keenly aware of what would become that other – and far more valuable – Japanese “miracle,” its great architectural achievements of the 1960s and 1970s. Davis is, as it also happens, an Olympic athlete. Rutland takes a liking to the young man. He writes, “He reminded me of myself quite a few years ago, only I was much taller.” Moreover, they have something else in common: Davis, having arrived early in order to look at the city’s architecture, is without a room.
    Accordingly, Rutland rents half of his apartment to Davis, unbeknownst to Miss Easton (who, incidentally, had an inclination to end sentences with prepositions, for example: “you don’t have half to sublet a half of”). She is also a bit nervous over sharing her rooms with two men, who soon discover that she is engaged to no one less than the proper Julius D. Haversack – the smug, officious and obnoxious Second Secretary who’d earlier offended Rutland.
    Rutland obviously sees Miss Easton as being rather repressed (that tight schedule) – and that she will only become moreso if she goes ahead with her plans for marriage to Mr. Haversack. He also sees what she cannot: her own real, and physical, attraction to Davis. (At their first breakfast together, Davis stares intently at her. Taken aback and uncomfortable, she asks, “What are you gawking at?” His answer is simple, American: “You. You look nice.” Flustered, she can only respond with a weak, “Oh.”) And so he decides to play matchmaker.
    However, things go wrong when the two men return home drunk one evening and, like two nasty schoolboys, they spot Miss Easton’s diary and Rutland begins to read it, while also speculating on her sexual experience. She overhears them; hurt and offended, she asks them to leave the next morning. The next afternoon, Miss Easton returns home to find Rutland already gone and Davis packing. He hands her a present from Rutland – a prototype of a new moving-image viewing device. It is accompanied by a note from Rutland, explaining that the fault is entirely his, and that Steve had nothing to do with the nastiness. “How do I know he wrote it?” “You don’t,” Steve answers. “Well, if he wrote it, how do I know it’s the truth?” Davis’s elegant answer: “You don’t – only it’s the truth.” She is genuinely touched, and knowing that without a room – the Olympic Village hasn’t opened yet – Davis might very well be sleeping in Shinjuku Gyoen – she offers him his old room for the night.
    He gladly accepts, and goes so far as to ask her out that evening. “But what about Mr. Haversack?,” she faithfully wonders. On their way home, he makes affectionate overtures, a caress here, a stolen kiss there. She wonders about the women in his life: “Who was next?” “Jane Alice Peters.” “What was wrong with her?” Nothing, except ...” “Except what?” “She wanted to get married.” “Well, what happened?” “She got married.” Meanwhile, unbeknownst to either of them, Rutland has reintroduced himself to Haversack, and is pretending great interest in his Japan memoirs. Haversack takes the bait. Meanwhile how- and moreover, the ever-vigilant KGB have seen Yuri and Steve with their small tape recorder and cameras; the agent Dimitri takes Yuri, and informs the Japanese police, and suddenly Steve and Miss Easton – as his landlady – are up before a judge. Some phonecalls are made, and Rutland, accompanied by Haversack (rambling on – “I would think it devastatingly paradoxical if I opened chapter five with my arrival in Japan!”) – who discovers that his fiancée has a handsome roommate –