Second Skin (24 page)

‘I don’t
want
to trust him.’

‘Yes. You’ve made that eminently clear.’

Nicholas was aware that a gulf had formed between them, as if they were at odds over a key issue, and this was something for which he was totally unprepared.

‘Nangi-san, if I have –’ He turned his head, abruptly aware of Kisoko standing in the doorway, observing them. When she saw Nicholas’s head turn, she came into the room, gliding as if with no movement or effort.

Nangi had averted his head again. ‘I wish you hadn’t come.’

Kisoko stood staring down at the tea service for a moment before looking to Nicholas. She smiled sweetly, and Nicholas had a brief glimpse of the sensual woman she had once been. Then she put the tray down on the art nouveau iron and lacquer coffee table. Out of her pocket she took a small vial, shook out a pill. This she put carefully and tenderly under Nangi’s tongue.

Nangi sighed, his good eye going out of focus for a moment.

‘Nangi-san,’ Nicholas insisted gently, ‘we have to talk. I need your advice regarding the Denwa partnership.’

Nangi spread his hands. ‘As always, anything I can do, I will.’

‘Now don’t tire him out, Linnear-san,’ Kisoko said softly as she served them green tea.

Nicholas sipped the pale, bitter brew, then put the tiny cup down. ‘Nangi-san, you tell me that I must trust Tōrin-san, but how can I when he helped put this partnership together? You and I have had many offers of partnership in the past and we have refused them all. Neither of us have wanted to be responsible – or answerable – to outside people. For this reason, the Denwa partnership makes me profoundly uneasy. We have gone too far out on a limb. We are so financially strapped that even the smallest miscalculation will end in disaster.’

‘You don’t understand,’ Nangi said. ‘The CyberNet
is
the future. We had to put it on-line in Japan before anyone else managed similar technology.’

‘But don’t you see what you have done?’ Nicholas cried. ‘You’ve gambled everything on one roll of the dice. And if we stumble now, it will be the Denwa Partners who gather up the pieces. Everything we have worked for will have come to nothing.’

‘This isn’t about Denwa, or the CyberNet, is it, Nicholas-san? It’s about Tōrin-san. You don’t like to see him in a position of such responsibility.’

‘It’s true he’s very young to be a vice president, but that isn’t without precedent,’ Nicholas said, carefully feeling his way among the minefield of new and unknown relationships. How close had Tōrin bonded with Nangi while Nicholas had been away? It seemed like years rather than fifteen months. ‘Please try to see it from my point of view. When I left for Venice to fulfill my obligation to the Kaisho, I had not even met Kanda Tōrin. Now, a year and a half later, I return to find he’s not only overseeing our most important project but has helped you structure a deal with outside partners – which
is
a precedent for Sato.’

Nangi nodded, but his good eye had slipped half-closed and Nicholas could see he was tiring. Kisoko flashed him a warning glance.

Nangi said, ‘I quite understand your apprehension, but the world turns, Nicholas-san, with or without you.’ He gave a wan smile as he shifted in the sofa. ‘This is not meant as a rebuke, merely as a statement of fact. Another fact: I needed you here, but I know you are a man of honor and your father’s
giri
had become yours. I know you are racked with guilt, but that is wasted emotion. I would have done the same had I been you. Honor above all else, Nicholas-san. This is what marks us, sets us apart, defines the nature of our existence.’ His hand began to tremble and Kisoko took the teacup from him.

His blind eye with its fixed stare seemed to give off an air of defiance and empathy. ‘The fact remains
you were not here
and I could not do this deal alone. I needed someone younger, with good instincts, a fresh perspective, who knew the playing field and could look into the future as you do. Someone who would not look back, who was not afraid to act – to dare to be the future. I found that in Kanda Tōrin.

‘His dossier had crossed my desk some time ago and I had been keeping an eye on him ever since. His quarterly evaluations had been nothing short of spectacular, so I reached into the resources of our company and pulled him up into the executive suite. Since then, he’s risen to every challenge I’ve set before him.’

There was silence for some time. Like a tableau or an image stuck in time, the three of them ceased to move. It seemed to Nicholas that his breathing, even the beat of his heart, had been suspended, and he experienced an abrupt sense of discontinuity, or tearing free of time, and he thought.
No, no! Not now!
But the Kshira was rising, ripping through his consciousness like high winds scattering gauzy clouds, and he was falling, falling... seeing, as one does in a dream, his own body, along with theirs, like husks of corn in a field, ready for the reaper’s rapacious blade. He experienced then the ascendancy of Kshira, and though it was momentary, it was like an iris opening onto the portal of death, and every dark thing that lay beyond. Deep inside himself he began to scream...

Nangi was drifting off to sleep. Kisoko sat still as a statue, as if waiting for some unheard signal. Eventually, she stirred. ‘I’ll see you out,’ she said.

Nicholas stood on trembling legs. He breathed silently, trying to center himself, then followed Kisoko to the front door. There, she turned to face him.

‘Nangi-san has told you about us, though he has kept me secret from everyone else.’

This was true. Last year, Nangi had told him a bit about his relationship with Kisoko. They had met eleven years ago and had had a torrid, though ultimately tragic, affair. Nangi had never forgotten her, and when they had met again, it seemed it was, at last, their time.

Nicholas understood her meaning. ‘I will not speak of you, even to Tōrin-san.’

She bowed her head in thanks. When she looked up, she said, ‘Don’t think ill of him. This was hard, having you come here. He had no wish for you to see him like this, weak and ill.’

‘But I had a meeting with him yesterday in his car.’

‘Yes. But he was prepared for you then, dressed as he has always dressed, buttressed by drugs, and I will bet the interview was brief.’

‘It was.’

She nodded and smiled. ‘It is his way, Nicholas-san, do not be downcast. He loves you like a son. Indeed, he thinks of you as his own flesh and blood. Which is why he is ashamed for you to see him old and helpless.’

‘I had to come.’

‘Of course you did,’ she said kindly. ‘I appreciate it, and believe me, beneath his shame, he does as well.’ She looked into his sad eyes. ‘Six months ago, you were not here when he had his heart attack.’

He nodded. ‘That has never been out of my mind. I cannot forgive myself –’

‘I forgive you,’ Kisoko said unexpectedly. ‘As for Nangi-san, he sees nothing to forgive you for.’ She took a step closer to him. ‘My point was not to make you feel guilty, but to make the confession he could not bring himself to make. The truth is his heart attack was more serious than anyone – even Tōrin-san – knows. Now, don’t worry. He will recover without any permanent impairment, the doctors have assured us. But it will take time.’

Her voice was reduced to a whisper. ‘This is what I must ask of you, Nicholas-san, though I know it is rude and presumes too much on a relationship that has just begun. But, after all, I did know your parents and I was very fond of them.’

‘I will do what I can, Kisoko-san.’

She nodded with a sense of relief. Oddly, at that moment, he felt as if she were about to touch him. But that was, of course, nonsense. Such a breach of etiquette in a woman of her age was unthinkable.

The moment passed, and she smiled up at him. ‘You remind me so much of your father. So strong of will, so handsome.’ She put her long-fingered hand on the door, opened it so that a dank breeze blew across their faces and entered the house. ‘Do whatever you have to do, but give him the time he needs to recuperate fully. If this means working with Tōrin-san, I beg you to do it.’

A gust of wind brought a spray of rain onto the front steps, and a foghorn lowed mournfully out along the river.

Nicholas nodded. ‘I appreciate your candor, Kisoko-san.’

She smiled. ‘How could I be otherwise? You are dear to the two most important men in my life.’ She gazed into his eyes, and once again he had a flash of the magnificent woman she had been decades ago. ‘You are my brother’s angel. Isn’t that how Westerners would say it?’

He nodded again. ‘I will do what has to be done, Kisoko-san.’

She gave him a curiously informal bow. ‘I know you will and I am grateful.’ Again he had the curious sensation that she wanted to reach out and enfold him in her arms.

‘Godspeed,’ she whispered after him into the wind.

Nicholas caught Honniko as she was coming down the staircase to Pull Marine.

‘Isn’t this your day off?’ He was perched on his Kawasaki.

Honniko paused halfway down the stairs, then laughed, continuing her descent. ‘It is, but how did you know that?’

Nicholas shrugged. ‘I asked Jōchi, the other maître d’ at the restaurant.’

She came across the crowded Roppongi sidewalk. She was wearing a cool blue-green linen skirt and a crisp pearl-gray blouse beneath a black-and-green-striped bolero jacket. Her small feet were in black flats, and a thin gold chain was wrapped around her throat. ‘That doesn’t explain how you knew where to find me.’

‘He also told me you’d be coming in for an hour or so today for the staff meeting.’

‘Jōchi said that?’

‘I told him I was in love. I guess he took pity on me.’

‘Better him than me.’

She put on a pair of dark glasses. The sun was beginning to break through a widening rift in the misty clouds, but Nicholas wasn’t at all sure this was her motivation. In tone as well as physical proximity she was keeping her distance.

‘Ouch. I’m not all that bad.’

Honniko scrunched up her face. ‘You want something. Trouble is, I can’t figure out what.’

‘I already told you. I’m trying to find Nguyen Van Truc.’

‘Oh, yeah. He owes you money.’

‘That’s right.’

She took one step toward him. ‘You’re a liar.’

‘I’m not lying.’

She leaned forward. ‘And I can’t be intimidated.’

‘I never said you could. Take off those glasses, why don’t you.’

‘Even by a handsome man on a dashing black motorcycle,’ she added with a perfectly straight face.

He smiled. ‘Now that you’ve drawn the line in the sand and stepped across it, the least I can do is take you to lunch.’

Honniko thought a moment. ‘Or I could take
you.’

‘There’s that line again,’ Nicholas said, patting the back of the Kawasaki. ‘We’ll eat and then do whatever you say, does that suit you?’

By way of reply, Honniko swung aboard, clasping him tightly around the waist. He could feel the press of her breasts against his back.

She did take off the sunglasses, but only after they were seated in the restaurant, a small café called Third Stone From the Sun, after the Jimi Hendrix song, he supposed. It was on the terraced third floor of the Gorgon Building, just down the street from ‘Little Beverly Hills,’ where one could eat at the Hard Rock Café or Spago’s.

Nicholas liked this place because it was an unpretentious island in a sea of self-conscious French and Chinese restaurants and because it overlooked the Gorgon Building’s glass-walled wedding hall, where outlandishly hip Western-style weddings were always in progress. Today, a Japanese couple improbably dressed as Elvis and Priscilla Presley were in the midst of their nuptials. These recessionary days, the lavish excesses of Las Vegas-style bad taste had been replaced by the curious Japanese propensity to maladroitly appropriate icons of American pop culture. When the loudspeaker system gushed forth the King’s red-hot rendition of ‘Burning Love’ as the couple walked down the aisle, Honniko burst into laughter.

‘So it seems you have a sense of humor after all,’ Nicholas said.

‘Jesus,’ she sputtered, wiping her eyes, ‘did you know about this place?’

He nodded, laughing. ‘I figured with someone who works all night in a top restaurant the show would be more important than the food.’

Her dark, almond eyes regarded him with great care. ‘That was thoughtful.’ Then, as if the small compliment had been some kind of gaffe, she snatched up the menu, buried her head in it. With her blond hair and oriental eyes, she provided a mix as potent as a double sake martini.

After a moment, she noticed that he wasn’t reading his menu. ‘Aren’t you hungry? Or is the food here that bad?’

‘You order for me. I’m sure I’ll like whatever it is.’

Honniko put down her menu. ‘You are the most self-assured man I have ever met. How do you do it?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Look at the world. There’s no stability anywhere. I used to think, well, that’s one thing Japan has: stability. But look what’s happened in the last four years. We’re plunged into an endless recession, bankruptcies are at an all-time high, our major banks are going under, the strong yen is killing us, our real estate is next to worthless, there’s massive unemployment for the first time in memory, the ruling party gets bounced out of power, people are more concerned with the price of rice than with how government is failing, and now we have resurrected on our doorstep the specter of another nuclear attack.’

Across the terrace, Elvis and Priscilla had come out into the pallid sunlight, surrounded by their joyous guests. ‘Burning Love’ had been replaced by ‘I Want You, I Need You, I Love You.’ Someone had dragged out a microphone, which the groom had good-naturedly grabbed. He swung his hips, lip-synching the lyrics. Priscilla clasped her hands and rolled her eyes. The guests applauded.

Honniko was applauding, too. ‘That’s why I admire anyone with such self-assurance. It speaks of a strong philosophy of life.’ She turned her eyes on him. ‘It reassures me there’s still a North Star up there in the sky to be guided by.’

‘Like the samurai daimyo – the warlords who used to live here in Roppongi.’