"Someone left in a hurry," she says. "Or maybe they just never came back."
"You think about that? People who disappear?"
"All the time." She lowers the camera and looks at me. "We disappeared. Dom and Roxy vanished and no one's ever finding them."
"Because they don't exist anymore."
"Exactly." She steps closer, her hand finding mine. "We're ghosts who became real by becoming someone else."
"And now the law just confirmed it. Officially gave up."
"We won, Dom. We actually won."
"One more location," I say against her mouth. "Then we celebrate properly."
The apartment building is three blocks away, a narrow structure wedged between a closed restaurant and a karaoke bar that's seen better days. The ground floor is boarded up, but the upper floors are accessible through a rusted fire escape. We climb in silence, our footsteps echoing on metal grating.
Inside, the apartments are small, claustrophobic. Tatami mats rotting on the floors. Possessions left behind, things like a child's toy, a teapot, photographs in frames covered with dust and mold.
Roxy photographs it all. The way the end of times transforms the intimate into the universal. The proof that people lived here, loved here, left pieces of themselves behind when they left.
"This is going in the next portfolio," she says, reviewing the shots on her camera screen. "Not for the opening tomorrow, but for six months from now. A year. However long it takes."
"Building the archive."
"Exactly. We have time now. All the time in the world."
Wind whistles through broken windows, carrying the smell of rain and exhaust and the city's endless motion. I love it here, where we go completely unnoticed. Two more people in Tokyo's shadows, documenting what everyone else ignores.
The ultimate proof that our model works.
We drive back to the Shibuya apartment with the new photographs stored safely in Roxy's camera. Twenty-three shots of Tokyo's hidden parts. The love hotel, the apartment building, the evidence of lives lived and abandoned. Perfect additions to the archive. Proof that we're exactly who we've always been.
Tomorrow we'll stand in Gallery Komyo and listen to people theorize about the mysterious artist, and no one will know we're right there.
Invisible but present and totally free.
The opening at Gallery Komyo is the biggest yet. The space is in Roppongi, all minimalist design and perfect lighting. Roxy's work, all twenty-eight pieces from the original portfolio plus three new additions hang on white walls like sacred objects.
Which, in a way, they are. The prices have climbed again. What sold for four thousand in Brooklyn now goes for fifteen to twenty-five thousand in Tokyo. The crime scene polaroids, the environmental prints, the sketches of human grief, all of it commanding prices that would have seemed impossible a year ago.
But the mystery has made it valuable.
RB, the ghost artist who refuses to appear, who communicates only through anonymous email, who attendsopenings as an observer while collectors and critics try to solve the puzzle of their identity.
We arrive at 7pm, an hour after doors open. Roxy's dressed in dark jeans, a simple black sweater and boots. Her hair is down and she has some light make-up on. She blends in well. I'm again in black jeans, a dark gray henley, and my usual trusted boots. I stand out because of my height and stark features. A few women look at me, but I avoid eye contact, not wanting the wrath of Roxy ruining the evening.
We slip into the gallery through the crowd of collectors, critics, and art world regulars. Japanese mixed with English, the conversations animated and intense. My hand finds Roxy's waist immediately. She leans into me, her fingers lacing with mine.
No one looks at us twice as Roxy's work dominates the space. People move through the space, studying each piece with the kind of reverence usually reserved for museums. I watch their faces, their reactions, while keeping Roxy close against my side.
A Japanese collector in his sixties stops in front of one of the crime scene polaroids. He speaks to his companion in rapid Japanese, then switches to English.
"Who is this artist? RB?"
"No one knows, any information is just rumors, but does it matter? The work is very impactful."
A Western critic I recognize from the Berlin opening stands in front of the environmental series. She's speaking to a Japanese gallery owner, her voice carrying across the space.
