She uses the remote as demonstrated, drapes drawing quietly aside to reveal a remarkably virtual-looking skyline, a floating jumble of electric Lego, studded with odd shapes you somehow wouldn't see elsewhere, as if you'd need special Tokyo add-ons to build this at home. Logos of corporations she doesn't even recognize: a strange luxury, and in itself almost worth the trip. She remembers this now from previous visits, and also the way certain labels are mysteriously recontextualized here: Whole seas of Burberry plaid have no effect on her, nor Mont Blanc nor even Gucci. Maybe this time it will even have started to work for Prada.
She thumbs the drapes closed and sets about the unpacking and hanging up and putting away of CPUs. When she's finished, there is no sign that the room is occupied, save for her black East German envelope and the black iBook bag, both resting now on the ecru expanse of the enormous bed.
She examines the instructions for the room's Internet connection, gets out the iBook and goes to hotmail.
Parkaboy, with two attachments. /
She'd e-mailed him from Damien's telling him she was on her way here, but not under whose auspices. Parkaboy is one of the few F:F:Fers who she's certain would know exactly who Bigend is and what Blue Ant is about.
She'd asked him for his and Musashi's best advice on how to go about contacting Taki and obtaining the mystery number. This will al-most certainly be that.
It's titled KEIKO. She opens it.
How'd you manage Tokyo? But never mind, because the 'Sash and I have been burning the midnight oil for you in the meantime. Well, mostly the 'Sash, cuz he's the one had to find us a Keiko. Cept she's not a Keiko but a Judy…
Cayce opens the first attachment.
"Parkaboy, you are outrageous."
A multilayered confection, message within message, and all of it targeting Taki, or Taki as Parkaboy and Mushashi imagine him.
Keiko/Judy is simultaneously pubescent and aggressively womanly, her shapely yet slender legs spilling out of a tiny tartan schoolgirl kilt, to vanish, mid-calf, into shoved-down, bunched-up cotton kneesocks of an unusually heavy knit. Cayce's cool-module, wherever it resides, has always proven remarkably good at registering the salient parameters of sexual fetishes she's never encountered before, and doesn't in the least respond to. She just knows now that these Big Sox are one of those, and probably culture-specific. There will be
Keiko/Judy has pigtails, huge dark eyes, free-sized sweatshirt making her breasts a mystery, and something so determinedly carnal in her expression that Cayce finds it unnerving. Bigend would recognize the image-toggle instantly, childlike innocence and hardboiled come-on alternating at some frequency beyond perception.
She goes back to Parkaboy's e-mail.
Judy Tsuzuki, five-foot-eleven and about as Japanese as you are, aside from the DNA. Texas. Twenty-seven. Bartender in this place down the street from Musashi's. What we did to up the wattage for Taki, aiming to maximize libidinal disturbance, we shot this long tall Judy then reduced her by at least a third, in Photoshop. Cut'n'pasted her into Musashi's kid sister's dorm room at Cal. Darryl did the costuming himself, and then we decided to try enlarging her eyes a few clicks. That made all the difference. Judy's epicanthic folds are long gone, the way of the modest bust nature intended for her (actually we've got her wrapped up in an Ace bandage for the shot, but nothing too tight) and the resulting big round eyes are pure Anime Magic. This is the girl Taki's been looking for all his life, even though nature's never made one, and he'll know that as soon as he lays eyes on this image. The other attachment…
She opens it. Something in felt-penned kanji, with multiple exclamation marks.
That's Keiko's inscription. You'll need to get someone Japanese, preferably young and female, to write this on the printout for you. I'll spare you the translation. As to hooking you up with Taki, I have been working on that while Musashi did the glamour photography. It's coming along but I haven't wanted to move too quickly as our boy seems a little erratic. Keiko has just sent him word that a friend of hers will be arriving in Tokyo and has a surprise for him. Will get back to you when I have his response. Are you there on business? I hear they actually eat raw fish.
She stands up, walks backward until her thighs bump the edge of the bed, throws up her arms, and falls back in snow-angel fashion, staring up at the white ceiling.
Why has she come here? Is there now some new and permanently non-undoable snarl in her trailing soul-tether?
