Pattern Recognition

Parkaboy's faith, that Taki has enough English to handle the transaction, may be unfounded.

And here she is, halfway around the world, trying to swap a piece of custom-made pornography for a number that might mean nothing at all.

He sits there, mouth-breathing, and Cayce is wishing she were anywhere else, anywhere at all.

He's in his mid-twenties, she guesses, and slightly overweight. He has a short, nondescript haircut that manages to stick up at several odd angles. Cheap-looking black-framed glasses. His blue button-down shirt and colorless checked sport coat look as though they've been laundered but never ironed.

He isn't, as Parkaboy has indicated, the best-looking guy she's recently had a drink with. Though that, come to think of it, would be Bi-gend. She winces.

"I do?" Responding perhaps to the wince.

"Your job?"

The barman places her beer on the table.

"Game," Taki manages. "I design game. For mobile phone."

She smiles, she hopes encouragingly, and sips her Asahi Lite. She's feeling more guilty by the minute. Taki—she hasn't gotten his last name and probably never will—has big dark semicircles of anxiety sweat under the arms of his button-down shirt. His lips are wet and probably tend to spray slightly when he speaks. If he were any more agonized to be here, he'd probably just curl up and die.

She wishes she hadn't had all this fabulous fa

"That's interesting," she lies. "Keiko told me you know a lot, about computers and things."

Now it's his turn to wince, as if struck, and knocks back the remainder of his beer. "Things? Keiko? Says?"

"Yes. Do you know 'the footage'?"

"Web movie." He looks even more desperate now. The heavy glasses, lubricated with perspiration, slide inexorably down his nose. She resists an urge to reach over and push them back up.

"You… know Keiko?" He winces again, getting it out.

She feels like applauding. "Yes! She's wonderful! She asked me to bring you something." She's suddenly experiencing full-on London-Tokyo soul-displacement, less a wave than the implosion of an entire universe. She imagines climbing over the bar, past the barman with his pockmarked, oddly convex face, and down behind it, where she might curl up behind a scrim of bottles and attain a state of absolute stasis, for weeks perhaps.

Taki fumbles in his sport coat's side pocket, coming up with a crumpled pack of Casters. Offers her one.

"No, thank you."

"Keiko sends?" He puts a Caster between his lips and leaves it there, unlit.

"A photograph." She's glad she can't see her own smile; it must be ghastly.

"Give me Keiko photo!" The Caster, having been plucked from his mouth for this, is returned. It trembles.

"Taki, Keiko tells me that you've discovered something. A number. Hidden in the footage. Is this true?"

His eyes narrow. Not a wince but suspicion, or so she reads it. "You are footage lady?"

"Yes."

"Keiko like footage?"

Now she's into improv, as she can't remember what Parkaboy and Musashi have been telling him.

"Keiko is very kind. Very kind to me. She likes to help me with my hobby."

"You like Keiko very much?"

"Yes!" Nodding and smiling.

"You like… A

Cayce starts to open her mouth but nothing comes out.

"My sister like A

Then Taki smiles, for the first time, and removes the Caster. "Keiko modern girl." He nods. "Body-con!"

"Yes! Very! Very modern." Body-con, she knows, means body-conscious: Japanese for buff.

The Caster, its tan faux-cork filter glittering wetly, goes back between his lips. He roots through his pockets in turn, produces a Hello Kitty! lighter, and lights his cigarette. Not a plastic disposable but a chromed Zippo, or clone thereof. Cayce feels as though the lighter has followed her here from Kiddyland, a spy for the Hello Kitty! group mind. She smells benzene. He puts it away. "Number… very hard."

"Keiko told me that you were very clever, to find the number."

He nods. Seems pleased perhaps. Smokes. Taps ash into an Asahi ashtray. There's a small, cheap-looking television behind the bar, just at the periphery of Cayce's vision. It's made of transparent plastic and shaped something like a football helmet. On its six-inch screen she sees a screaming human face attempting to thrust itself through a sheet of very thin latex, then a quick clip of the South Tower collapsing, then four green melons, perfectly round, rolling along on a flat white surface.

"Keiko told me that you would give me the number." Forcing the smile again. "Keiko says you are very kind."

Taki's face darkens. She hopes it's a deeper level of embarrassment kicking in, or something to do with that specific alcohol-processing enzyme the Japanese lack, and not anger. He suddenly whips a Palm from his inside jacket pocket and pokes its infrared slit at her.

He wants to beam her the number.

"I don't have one," she tells him.

He frowns, fumbles out a fat, retro-looking pen. She's ready for this, slipping him the napkin she'd drawn her Roppongi map on. He frowns, scrolls on his Palm, then copies a number on the edge of the folded napkin.

She watches as he copies three groups of four numbers each, the pen's felt tip blurring in the coarse weave of the paper. Upside down: 8304 6805 2235. Like a FedEx waybill number.

She takes it as he closes his pen.

She quickly reaches down into the Luggage Label bag, which she's surreptitiously unzipped against just this eventuality, and comes up with the envelope containing the Judy image. "She wants you to have this," she tells him.

She's afraid he'll tear it, as he fumbles the envelope open. His hands are trembling. But then he gets it out, has a look, and she sees his eyes are wet with tears.

She can't handle this at all.

"Excuse me, Taki," gesturing in what she hopes will be the direction of the toilet, "I'll be right back." She leaves her Rickson's and the laptop bag hanging on her chair and gets up. She still has the napkin in her hand. Sign language with the barman gets her down a tiny hallway and into the least salubrious Japanese toilet she's seen in a while, one of those concrete hole-in-the-floor jobs from the old days. It reeks of disinfectant and, she supposes, urine, but it has a door she can get between herself and Taki.

She takes a deep breath, regrets it, and looks at the number on the napkin. The ink is spreading into the weave and there's a chance it will soon be illegible. But then she sees a blue plastic pen, left atop some kind of wall-mounted hand dryer. When she picks it up it leaves a shiny chrome print in a layer of gritty dust. She tests it on the yellowed, graffiti-free wall, getting a thin line of blue.

She copies the number on the palm of her left hand, puts the pen back on the dryer, wads the napkin up, and tosses it into the depression in the center of the floor. Then, since she's there, she decides to pee. It won't be the first time she's used one of these, but it could quite happily be the last.

He's gone, when she returns to the table, two crumpled pieces of paper money beside the empty beer bottle, her half-empty glass, the ashtray, and the torn envelope. She looks over at the barman, who scarcely seems to register her presence at all.