ack at the Shibuya apartment, I went through my mail and messages. Nothing, of course, but petty work-related matters. How's that piece for the next issue coming along? Where the hell did you disappear to? Can you take on this new project? I returned nobody's call. Faster, simpler to get on with the work at hand.

But first, a phone call to Makimura. Friday picked up and promptly turned me over to the big man. I gave him a brief rundown of the trip, saying that Hawaii seemed to be a good breather for Yuki.

"Good," he said. "Many thanks for everything. I'll give Ame a call tomorrow. Did the money hold out, by the way?"

"With lots to spare."

"Well, go ahead and use it up. It's yours."

"I can't do that," I said. "Oh yes, I've been meaning to ask you about your little present."

"Oh, that," he said, making light of it.

"How did you arrange that?"

"Through channels. I trust you didn't stay up all night playing cards, eh?"

"No, I don't mean that. I want to know how you could buy me a woman in Honolulu all the way from Tokyo. I'm just curious how something like that is done."

Makimura was quiet, sizing up the extent of my curiosity. "Well," he began, "it's like international flower delivery. I call the organization in Tokyo and tell them I want a girl sent to you, at such-and-such a place, at such-and-such a time. Then Tokyo contacts its affiliated Honolulu organization and they send the girl. I pay Tokyo. Tokyo takes a commission and wires the rest to Honolulu. Honolulu takes its commission and what's left goes to the girl. Convenient, eh? All kinds of systems in the modern world."

"Sure seems that way," I said. International flower delivery.

"Very convenient. It costs you, but you save on time and energy. I think they call it worldwide sex-o-grams. They're safe, too. No run-ins with violent pimps. Plus you can write it off as expenses."

"That so?" I said, nodding to myself. "I guess you couldn't give me the number to this organization?"

"Sorry, no go. It's absolutely confidential. Members only, very exclusive. You need glamour and money and social standing. You'd never pass. I mean, forget it. Listen, I'm already talking too much. I told you this much out of the kindness of my heart."

I thanked him for it.

"Well, was she good?" he asked.

"Yes, quite good," I admitted.

"Glad to hear it. I asked them to send you the best. What was her name?"

"June."

"June, eh? Was she white?"

"No, Southeast Asian."

"I'll have to check her out next time," he said.

There wasn't much more to say, so I thanked him again and hung up.

Next, I rang Gotanda and got his answering machine. I left a message saying I was back and would appreciate a call. By then it was already getting late in the day, so I hopped in the Subaru and drove to Aoyama to do some shopping before the stores closed. More pedigreed vegetables, the lat- est shipment fresh from Kinokuniya's own pedigreed vegetable farms. Somewhere in the remote mountains of Nagano, pristine acres surrounded by barbed wire. Watch-tower, guards with machine guns. A prison camp like in The Great Escape. Rows of lettuce and celery whipped into shape through unimaginably grueling supravegetable training. What a way to get your fiber.

No message from Gotanda when I got back.

The following morning, after a quick breakfast at Dunkin' Donuts, I headed to the library and combed through the last month's newspapers. Checking if there'd been a breakthrough in the investigation of Mei's death. I read the Asahi and Mainichi and Yomiuri with extreme care, but found only election results and a statement by Revchenko and a big piece on delinquency in the schools and how for reasons of "musical impropriety" the White House had canceled a command performance by the Beach Boys. Anyway, not one line about the case.

I then read through back issues of various weekly magazines. And there it was: "Naked Beauty Found Strangled in Akasaka Hotel." A sensationalized, one-page article on Mei. Instead of a photograph, there was a sketch of the corpse by a specialist in criminal art. Next best thing if you didn't have the bloody photo itself. True, the sketch did look like Mei, but then I knew who it was supposed to be. Could anyone else have recognized her? No, Mei had been warm and animated. Full of hopes, full of illusions. She'd been gentle and smooth, fantastic, shoveling her sensual snow. It was the reason we could connect so well, could share those illusions. Cuck-koo. She was all innocence.

This lousy sketch made it cheap and dirty. I shook my head. I shut my eyes and sighed slowly. Yet that line drawing, better than any morgue photograph, hammered home the fact that Mei was dead. Extremely, irrevocably dead. She was gone. Her life had been sucked away into black nothingness.

The article fit the drawing. A young woman believed to be in her early twenties was discovered strangled to death with a stocking in a luxury Akasaka hotel. Completely naked, without identification, an assumed name, et cetera, et cetera. Nothing new to me, except for a one detail: Police were running down probable links to a prostitution ring, an organization that dispatched call girls to first-class hotels.

I returned the magazines to the racks and sat thinking. How had the police been able to narrow their leads to the prostitution ring? Had some hard evidence turned up? Not that I was about to call those two cops to find out.

I left the library and ate a quick lunch nearby, then went for a walk, waiting for a brilliant notion to pop into my head. No such luck. I walked to Meiji Shrine, stretched out on the grass and looked up at the sky.

I thought about the call girl organization. Worldwide sex-o-grams. Place your order in Tokyo and your girl is waiting in Honolulu. Systematic, efficient, sophisticated. No muss, no fuss. Very businesslike. Just went to prove, once you've got an illusion going, it can function on the market like any other product. Advanced capitalism churning out goods for every conceivable niche. Illusion, that was the key word here. Whether prostitution or discrimination or personal attacks or displaced sex drive, give it a pretty name, a pretty package, and you could sell it. Before too long they'll have a call girl catalog order service at the Seibu department store. You can rely on us.

I looked up at the sky and thought about sex.

I wanted to sleep with Yumiyoshi. It wasn't out of the question. Just get one foot in her door, so to speak, and tell her, "You have to sleep with me. You should sleep with me." Then I undress her, gently, like untying the ribbon on a present. First her coat, then her glasses, then her sweater. Her clothes off, she'd turn into Mei. Cuck-koo, she says. "Like my body?"

But before I can answer, the night is gone. Kiki is beside me, Gotanda's graceful fingers playing over her back. The door opens. Enter Yuki. She sees me making love with Kiki. It's me this time, not Gotanda. Only the fingers are his.

"I can't believe this," says Yuki. "I really can't believe this."

"It's not like that," I say.

"What was that all about?" says Kiki for the umpteenth time.

It's not like that, I insist. The one I want to sleep with is Yumiyoshi. I just got my signals crossed.

First thing, I have to untangle the connections. Otherwise, I come away empty-handed. Or with someone else's hands. Or even a missing hand.

Leaving the grounds of Meiji Shrine, I went into a back-street cafe in Harajuku and had a good strong cup of coffee. Then I walked leisurely home.

In the evening Gotanda rang.

"Sorry, I don't have much time now," he spoke on the fly. "Can I see you tonight around eight or nine?"

"Don't see why not."

"Good, let's have dinner. I'll come pick you up."

While I waited, I put away my suitcase, then went over the receipts from the trip, methodically separating Makimura's charges from my own. Half the meals and the car rental go to him, along with Yuki's personal purchases — surfboard, blaster, swimsuit,?I itemized our expenses and slipped the calculations into an envelope together with the leftover travelers cheques, ready to be cashed at the bank and returned to Makimura. I always keep on top of these business details. But not because I like them. I just hate sloppiness in money matters.

After finishing with the accounting, I mixed up some baby whitefish with boiled spinach to go with a bottle of Kirin black label. Then I reread a Haruo Sato short story from years ago. It was a lovely uneventful spring evening. The sky grew darker, painted blue on blue, one stroke at a time, into deeper and deeper shades of night. When I tired of reading, I put on the Stern-Rose-Istomin Trio playing Schubert's Opus 100, a piece I always reserve for spring. It breathed with the lush sadness of the night. Where off in the depths of gloom drifted six white skeletons. Life was sinking into an abyss, bones hard as memories positioned before me.