Chapter One:
A dull flash lit up the city streets – a strobe of light passing over every surface like the piercing illumination of a flat-bed scanner from the nineties. Behind him, in the reflection of the window, the phone began to ring. The sound filled the studio apartment with the chiptunes madness that came pre-installed on modern mobile phones. On the bed, the dark girl stirred to cover her ears. Robert checked the analogue clock he had mounted on the wall – mentally flipping the reflection in order to discern the time: 4:40am. The sun wouldn’t be far off.
He didn’t move.
The phone continued to ring until the girl eventually threw her pillow in its general direction, knocking it from the small bedside table. It hit the carpeted floor with a dull thud and went silent.
Robert rarely answered his phone. More often than not people would contact him through e-mail instead because he preferred the extra degree of division that written communication enabled. His dealer knew not to call – especially at five in the morning – and most of his friends would be fast asleep. If one of them was in danger they should know not to rely on him in their time of need.
Rain left streaks down the window and he watched them with the interest afforded to those suffering insomnia. A light began to blink on the edge of the glass – someone was trying to video-call him using his home address. He ignored it for a moment, watching the teal circle of pixels appear and disappear with heartbeat-like regularity. As he watched, wondering with disembodied absence whether he would take the call, the phone on the floor started to ring again.
The girl on the bed groaned and complained about the noise. When he didn’t respond, she opened her eyes sleepily and felt around in the bed for him. She called him Nicholas – the name of the boyfriend that she was desperate to cheat on. When she noticed him by the window she grew self-conscious, pulling the sheet around her. He was amused by her reaction after their antics together in bed, but he was not surprised. The sound of the electronic music filled the room with a kind of urgency freighted in from old synthesisers of the last century. Robert glanced at his empty glass, unconcerned by the blinking light on the window or the persistent noise from the floor.
“You’d best get going.”
***
Robert answered the video-call after the girl hurriedly fled his apartment. She had hastily dressed, her legs awkwardly navigating the heels she’d worn the night before, and when she turned to look at him one last time he had bowed graciously, Japanese-style and bid her farewell. While she dressed herself, he had taken the time to don a freshly pressed Kimono that hung in the wardrobe beside the door to the bathroom. The ornamental robes were one of the many things about the country that had immediately captured his imagination. It didn’t matter how out-of-place he looked in one, there was something about it that made him feel kingly, which acted as a welcome distraction from the thoughts of how pathetic he had become.
Back at the window, with the early morning sun creeping through Tokyo’s waking streets, Robert answered the call, a fresh glass of whiskey dangling lazily from his fingers.
A square with rounded corners formed in sharp relief on the window. Chaff watched the shape frost over, blocking the trickles of rain, and a Japanese man in a finely tailored suit adorned with a thin leather rope tie resolved into focus. Around the head and shoulders of the figure, Robert could still make out the faint neon of the city streets in diffused bokeh.
“Mr. Chaff?” The head spoke with a subtle American accent, his features barely shifting as he asked the question.
Robert didn’t know the man, and had little interest in getting to know him. Something about the pristine lines of his navy suit and his perfectly manicured hair screamed ‘corporate’ and caused a metallic taste to rise in the back of his throat.
“I don’t sell privately. Talk to my dealer. Number’s on the web.”
He ended the call before the impeccable man could respond, and promptly downed his fresh drink to wash away the flavour in his throat. The bottle by the window gleamed in the rapidly shifting light – it was nearly empty. Chaff had used to drink only high quality whiskey – hundred dollar bottles designed for the average man’s ‘special occasion’. But in the two years since his exhibition had been shelved by the Mori Art Museum for a travelling show of Andy Worhol’s work, the money had largely dried up. His dealer had kept the museum honest, but the delay had sent Chaff into a spell of existential depression. In the darkness with the demons, he had been forced to branch into the cheap browns that rarely tasted as good as they looked, and often took as much as they gave to his already spotty social functionality.
Emptying the bottle into the glass, Chaff twisted the lid shut and dropped it unceremoniously onto the floor where he would undoubtedly trip on it later. The window was blinking at him again. He hadn’t been paying attention and he realised, with a slow movement of his eyes that the phone was ringing again as well. Reaching to press the blinking light, Chaff spilt several drops of liquor on his dangling kimono sleeve.
“Fuck!” The hiss popped from his lips, unbidden as the slick man greeted him again, his face unchanged – not even a hint of frustration in his eyes. Robert looked up at him, feeling his drunken self-loathing redirect at the sharp-faced intruder.
“Listen, Guy,” he started, shaking his arm as though he might dry the wet patch with a single movement. “I don’t know what you want but I’m busy.”
“Mr. Chaff, it is five in the morning and you are onto your third drink? Or is it the fourth? And you have had so little sleep, only a few hours. Last night you consumed twelve drinks. I don’t think that you are in the right state of mind to converse rationally, but I have been tasked with talking to you anyway. My name is Shin Takami, and I call regarding a matter of some urgency.”
The man smiled grimly, faint creases appearing on his blemish free skin.
Robert looked at him for a long time without speaking. He hoped that his expression would be enough to encourage the man to reconsider having the conversation at all. As the silence stretched, Robert realised that his expression wasn’t working. He dropped heavily onto the edge of the bed and cocked an eyebrow.
“And…? What do you want, Slick?”
“I represent a very wealthy man who wishes to employ you for a very specific jo–”
“I don’t do contract work, Joe. I don’t do it!”
“Mr. Chaff, you will not be asked to produce a piece of artistry. My employer requires your status. I understand that you are in somewhat of a financial crisis.”
“And?”
“My employer wishes to compensate you to the sum of five million United States dollars, in addition to which you will receive ownership of the loft apartment we have bought and furnished in your name in central Roppongi.”
Robert was silent for a long time. The words took most of that time to form themselves into discernible sounds and recognisable symbols, and yet for several seconds, even once he was certain that the man had said what he thought the man had said, he didn’t believe it. Without thinking he slowly placed his glass on the floor beside the bed and rubbed his palms against his face. The process served two purposes – to assure him that the man on the screen was really there, and to check that he was actually awake.
“If your employer isn’t interested in my work, why not pick any old sod with a bit of a name?”
“Because you are the only ‘old sod’ that can achieve what my employer requires, Mr. Chaff. Do I take it that you are interested in the job?”
Robert waited for several more seconds before answering. His mind wasn’t operating as clearly as he needed it to be, but he had no one to blame for that other than himself. For years he had prided himself on his ability to see through the façades that other people erected. Looking at Shin Takami, after little sleep and more than his share of alcohol, he had no idea what to think. He saw a man that was at least pretending to be very patient with him. Someone who was unafraid to admit, in a business deal nonetheless, that regardless of how the negotiations went, he needed Robert specifically. His Gallerist would have mocked the man for being so transparent. She would never have placed all of her cards on the table so openly. She was tenacious and sly. She knew when to pander and when to push, and she knew Robert like no one else on the planet. The man on the screen knew nothing about him. But the idea that he was willing to pay such a high price for his ‘status’ made Robert feel like a casino patron, assured of his next win. The fact that he didn’t have to produce any art was a godsend he thought, glancing around at the blank canvasses in the apartment.
He squinted up at the man’s implacable face.
“I’m listening.”
