Fiction: Killing Time

It's weird how a dream can leave you almost right away, even one that you're excited about when you first wake up, or it can stay with you for hours, days even. It shades your whole existence, like seeing a movie in the middle of a work day. You go about whatever you're supposed to do after the matinee but it's all viewed through a kind of filter.

It's a miracle I had a dream at all, what with the jet lag and the fitful sleep. No matter what I try to do before catching a flight to Tokyo, staying up all night and partying, getting a lot of sleep, taking a melatonin, whatever, the jet lag is always killer on arrival and a piece of cake on the way back. Usually I don't even dream. But not this time.

I get off the subway at Meiji-jingumei station and walk the block to Takeshita-dori, the pedestrian artery through Harajuku. It's 3 pm, just after school, and the street is jammed with school kids in uniforms, all sailor suits, naval jackets and oversized socks. Although I'm almost twice these kids' age, I love coming here. The energy is exhilarating, like plunging down the first drop on a rollercoaster. I'm sure they don't see it like that. For them it's probably like I remember the teenage years being: occasionally confusing, painful.

I leave the confines of Takeshita-dori and work my way into Omotesando, stopping at a Lawson's convenient store for a can of Asahi beer. I sit on the winding metal bar that doubles as a bench along the main thoroughfare and sip my beer, watching the high school- and college-age kids walk by.

A flash of red lightening.

I'm at the house where I grew up. A good third of my dreams take place here. That's down from half only a few years ago. I take that as a sign of growing up. I'm in the back yard, talking to some people I don't recognize from waking life, although I obviously know them in the dream. We're anxious. I glance at the sky; there's a storm on the way.

I take a sip of beer and watch a particularly cute girl walk by. I consider giving her a flyer for tonight's gig but decide against it. It's such an obvious move, and anyway, my Japanese is only good enough to be cute. When it's time for a real conversation it has to move into the realm of English. Once I sat down at a table with two girls after a gig and tried to impress them with my Japanese. I sounded like a five-year old, my Japanese friend, who had been standing nearby, remarked later. Who wants to sleep with a five-year old?

A commotion breaks out, we're trying to get back in the house. Panic. The sky is becoming more dark. It begins to undulate like in "Poltergeist." The effect of glue in water. I suppose it makes sense that the special effects of my dreams are directly influenced by the movies I've seen, but really, in the infinite possibilities of my mind, why does it have to be glue in water? It's terrifying. Something is happening.

Distended columns drip down from the cloud ceiling, which has now covered the entire horizon. I watch one in the distance and then notice there's one much closer to me. This is the immediate threat. They're like inverted, slow-motion drops. I sense there's a purpose to this, some malevolence. And then the lightening starts.

Finished with my beer, I stand up. There are four garbage cans in front of the convenient store. One marked paper trash, one marked for plastic, one for food waste and one for cans and glass bottles. I throw my can in the paper bin. Whatever. A Lawson's employee sees me and then shrugs his shoulders, assuming I can't read the Japanese. But I can. I can read that much.

I go back inside and buy another, and a packet of rice crackers. I take my seat back on the railing. Three college kids have settled down nearby, drinking canned coffee and talking loudly. I know they're college age because they're not wearing school uniforms. Japanese people wear uniforms from the moment they start school until they graduate high school, and then again when they enter the work force. The four years of college are all they get for creative fashion freedom. And they go nuts. Especially the women. It's like they've decided they're going to catch up for all they've missed, and they wear a month's worth of clothing in layers every day, until they enter the workforce, put on the requisite office lady outfit, and file away their twenties. God bless them, I think, as I crack open the beer.

I'm getting a little bored with Omotesando by the time I've finished my beer and, I have to admit, a little groggy. I make one last trip into the Lawson's before I go, this time for a genki drink. The three people behind the counter eye me suspiciously as I wander around the store, slightly buzzed. Why does every Japanese business need so many employees? Three to do the work of one. And they're all young. A hipster in a fedora and three different kinds of sweat bands rings up my drink. When he says the requisite "Gozaimashita," I reply, "Douitashimashite," which freaks him out a little. No one ever says, "You're welcome," when he says, "Thank you." They don't even hear him saying it. People say "thank you" to you in Japan a hundred times a day.

I unscrew the top of the genki drink and down it in one go. It's packed with caffeine and vitamins, plus nicotine. You've got to hand it to the Japanese. They sell soda with nicotine in it. The chemicals move right in and shove the beer buzz aside, saying, take a walk to Shibuya. So that's what I do.

Red lightening flashes down from the inverted drops, determined to cover the surface of the earth like a statically charged mesh blanket. I try to run but the bolts knock me flat. I'm prone on the ground, kicking and bucking through the surge of red electricity. Somewhere above the cloud cover, an unseen intelligence. I'm saturated with electricity, enveloped in a lattice of criss-crossing bolts. I can feel it, the current kicking through me; changing me. It's changing the sleeping me. The real sleeping me. How do I know this?

Passing by a park, I watch a crow dive on a trio of salarymen. They raise their briefcases like shields above their heads, running from the shrieking menace. I'm terrified of birds but can't help laughing at them. I should have shielded myself from the red lightening like they did the crows. But I had no shield, not in my dream, not now. I become annoyed with their terror, and stop watching, focusing my attention on the group of school girls walking ahead of me. Some of them have their skirts rolled up high, exposing lots of leg. After a few minutes of staring I feel ashamed and duck into the next convenient store I pass to buy another beer.

It hurts. The red lightening. But it doesn't kill me. It was supposed to kill me, supposed to kill everybody. I don't know if everyone else died. But I didn't. I survived.

I sit on a bench, a proper bench, and watch the cars and motorcycles drive by. There are a lot of motorcycles in Tokyo. Actually, there are a lot of scooters made up to look like motorcycles in Tokyo. Kicked back with lots of plastic, beefed up. The pose is made complete by leather jacket, cool helmet and a big pipe on the exhaust to exaggerate and amplify the noise. I take a huge swig and stretch out, lying my head back to look up at the sky. Tokyo sky is a vague wash, the color of watered-down beer, faded paint and smoke mingling on the walls of an empty office. I'm taken back to the dream. It's changed now.

The walls of the room reveal the cheapness of the place. Hastily painted drywall. An industrial park of the barest kind, for fly-by-night establishments and businesses with no hope of surviving the fiscal year. File cabinets are stacked against the back wall, half open, all empty. Outside, through the window, I can see featureless wetlands stretching on until they meet the bay. Weren't there supposed to be more buildings out here? I distinctly remember more buildings, riding my bike through here. I try to look across to the other side of the bay. The distance is hazy. I'm with a girl.

I drain the can, walk back to the convenient store and throw it in the bin marked "food." A girl sees me and giggles. "Nani?" I ask her. "What?" She's visibly surprised, because I'm speaking to her, speaking in Japanese. "Simasen," she murmurs. "Sorry."

"Ii yo," I reply. "Daijoubu." I smile. "It's nothing."

She returns the smile. Her teeth are slightly crooked. Cute.

"Kawaii, ne," I say. "You're cute." It's the beer talking. That, and the confidence one gets from being alone in a foreign country.

"Ne?" she asks, laughing embarrassedly. "Really?"

"Honto da. Namae desuka?" I flash my best smile. "Really. What's your name?"

"Yuki." She looks down as she says it. She was caught off guard. Japanese men aren't nearly so forward. Or rarely so forward. They can be though. Just like any man. I've seen it. One night in Shinjuku I watched a guy hit on 10 different women in a bar in the course of the evening. He left with the tenth. Same as anywhere.

"Yuki-chan, hajimemashite." I make sure to meet her eyes. "Nice to meet you." I use the familiar, "chan." It's disarming, to hear a foreigner use this word, yet endearing, like being referred to by a childhood nickname. Where am I going with this?

The skies are still cloudy and dark but there's no trace of lightening. The girl is blonde and petite, cute but not beautiful. It seems natural that I'm there with her, the most natural thing in the world. She lays out a mat on the floor of the office, between two desks. I look at the mat and realize how tired I am. She spreads out a thick blanket for the two of us and we get down on the floor together.

I can feel her warmth next to me. We're fully clothed. I kiss her lips. "We have to leave tomorrow," she whispers.

"Where are we going?" I ask. "Tomorrow?" I don't want to go anywhere. I want to stay here, with her.

She rolls over, doesn't answer. Everything begins to shift. I don't want it to shift. I want to hold her longer. It feels good to hold her, there under that warm blanket, on the floor between the desks in that office on the edge of the bay.

Yuki looks down at the flyer I've handed her. "Konban," I assure her. "Tonight." She smiles but I can't tell if it's a genuine smile, or a polite smile. There's no way of knowing, really. There's no way of ever knowing in Japan.

Her phone rings. I watch her answer. She says a lot of things beyond my comprehension. Occasionally she looks at the flyer and then glances up at me, and I smile. She laughs a few times. I laugh too, although I have no idea what I'm laughing at. This seems to make her laugh more. Finally she gets off the phone. I'm ready.

"Konban wa Yuki-chan ga aitai ne," I say, playfully but forcefully, as I had practiced it in my head while she talked on the phone. "I'd like to see you tonight."

She looks down evasively at the flyer. "Ano… Chotto ne." A half smile.

"OK," I say, in English. I know well enough what "chotto" means. Literally, it translates as, "little," but the colloquial meaning is, "I'm a little tired." It's the all-purpose excuse.

I'm a little tired as well, I realize. I watch her walk down the street. She's already on the phone again, telling whomever's on the other end about the foreigner who just hit on her. The funny thing is, I might see her at the show tonight. It's happened before.

I have a coffee at the Hachiko Starbucks, across the street from Shibuya station, and then head back to the hotel for a nap before the gig. On the way back, on the train, I try to read the advertisements lining the walls but my dream keeps getting in the way. Red lightening and the blonde girl, our kiss in the office on mats on the floor. Why is this so fresh in my mind, when I can't even remember what I did yesterday? It's no surprise though. It's not like the world ended yesterday.