When we got near the raised banks of the Nogawa, Gucci suddenly ducked his pudgy little self down behind somebody’s garden wall and peeked out, as though studying the river. The stream stretched off in either direction. It was lined with bushes that seemed to be concealing boys who were crouching here and there. I could barely see them, just silhouettes, but I could tell that something dark was moving down there in the shadows. I guess I assumed it was boys, since we were in the middle of Armageddon, but it might have been some other low, repulsive life-form. Then I saw beams of light flickering in the gloom. Flashlights. So it was boys—not monsters—out to make the most of the chaos. But then again, I guess “monsters” wasn’t far off. They were fighting down there in the bushes, but they were doing it in dead silence. No shouting or screaming, no sound at all, even though I was just above them. But the silence didn’t make it any less scary. I could tell someone was being beaten to a pulp down there in the dark. Which was probably what would happen to us, Gucci and me, if they caught us here. I mean, why not? To begin with, I was a girl—fair game in any Armageddon—and one who’d been singled out on the Voice of Heaven for special treatment, and to top it all off, my father had somehow become goofy TV personality Yuzo Gucci. At this point I noticed that Gucci himself was waving to me, and then he finally came out from behind the wall and into the street that ran along the raised bank of the river.
The boys were just below us in the bushes. Flashlight beams scudded along the bank, grazing Gucci as he made his way along the road. It seemed pretty risky to me, but Gucci was on the move, so I had no choice but to follow. Crouching down, we hurried along as fast as we could, and the “Gods” and “Angels” seemed to take no notice of us. They were probably too occupied with the damage they were doing down in the bushes. But the flashlights continued to sweep back and forth across our path, darting along the road and jutting up at the sky. At last we turned off, leaving the river and angling down in the direction of the main road. There wasn’t a car to be seen on the street. Everybody must be holed up at home, afraid to go out. Duh. Yet here I was wandering around with Yuzo Gucci, looking for his car. What the FUCK was I thinking? We finally came to the main road, and there we could see a single car, parked at the curb, lights on, engine running. And somebody sitting in the driver’s seat, looking this way. More surprises: even from this distance I could see it was none other than famous has-been guitarist Fuyuki Moto. He must have escaped from the same nightmare talk show that had sent me Gucci. Fucking Fuyuki Moto was sitting behind the wheel of Gucci’s car, waiting for us with a worried look on his face. The same car I’d heard scattering people like bowling pins? Maybe Moto had been the driver? Maybe it was his car? Anyway, as soon as he came into view, Gucci straightened up and made a dash for the car. I followed. He hopped in the passenger’s seat and I tried to get in back, but I suddenly realized it was pretty crowded back there—packed, in fact, with the entire cast of Your Hit Parade. What the FUCK? The show had been canceled long ago, so what was the whole crowd doing hanging out in the back of this car? Well, for one thing they were making it really hard for me to get in. I told the nearest has-been to move over, but when I looked, the has-been turned out to be the now-and-future Governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara, everybody’s favorite crazy right-wing pol. It occurred to me to wonder what the hell the fucking governor was doing in here with the city going to hell out there. But one thing was for sure, he wasn’t moving over much. “Sorry, full up,” he snapped. “Try some other car.” To tell the truth, it hurt a little to be dissed like that by the governor, maybe even more because he was dressed up like a factory worker or something. And there wasn’t much point in telling him there wasn’t another car. Even after Gucci asked him real nicely to make room for me, he wouldn’t budge. “If she can’t get in, she can’t get in,” he chanted. “What will ‘can’t’ mean if she does in the end?” someone else asked. And then celebrity warfare broke out. “Then why don’t you get out?” shouted Emily Henmi, yet another Your Hit Parade regular, pushing the governor from behind. Ishihara shouted and squirmed, but in the end Emily managed to pry him loose from the seat and shove him out the door. “Hop in, Aiko,” she said, beckoning to me, and I did just that. “What’s the world coming to?” Ishihara shouted, and then he wandered over to the railing of a nearby bridge. Staring down into the dark, he shouted again at the boys in the bushes. “And you assholes, what the FUCK are you doing down there?” He was getting more and more worked up, as only the governor can, and before we knew it he had run around the guard rail and disappeared down the bank into the dark. Oh boy. Take care, Mr. Governor. I was a little
