The Typhoon Lover (6 page)

“You never talked about memorizing me before.”

I felt his body stiffen against me, slightly, although his voice remained as warm as ever. “I’m sorry, darling. It’s just that I have a rather melancholy feeling tonight.”

“I’m sorry. I thought it was good for you, too.” As I spoke, a chill settled across my skin, raising goose bumps. Could he have seen through my half-lies and figured out the truth about the creepy job I was going to perform?

Hugh took a deep breath and said, “I have a feeling that you might not—return to me.”

“But of course I’m coming back! I have a round-trip ticket, open return, but you can imagine what the museum would do if I just went over there and blew them off.”

“Right,” Hugh said absently.

I hadn’t understood his fear, obviously. “Do you mean—you have a fear that my plane’s going to crash?”

“No, no, no! I’m sorry to be such a fool about it.” Hugh slipped his hands over my buttocks, pressing me closer to him. “I suppose I’m anxious because this is new for me, being left behind. I don’t want to stop you from going.”

“I will come back to you,” I said firmly. “And you’d better believe that this was not the last time for us in bed or I’ll—have to put you through the drill again, right now.”

“Heaven help me,” Hugh said, sounding happier. “Give me a break, Rei. There are four more nights.”

Four more nights.

We used them all.

The situation at Dulles Airport was chaotic, with my navel ring setting off the metal detector. This, in turn, inspired a pat-down body search and the unpacking of my luggage. I was very glad that I hadn’t packed the Gorgonzola cheese that my aunt had wanted me to bring to her, because I could only imagine what the Japanese authorities would think when I arrived, eighteen hours later, smelling like it. Michael had cautioned me that an official passport was not a diplomatic passport; I was subject to search just like anyone else.

By the time I reached the departure gate, I found out that they’d given my business class seat to a salesman cashing in his frequent-flier upgrade. I started arguing with the flight attendant about the loss of my originally designated seat, not understanding that they’d put me in first class.

“Listen to me, Miss Shimura,” the flight attendant said, as slowly as if she were talking to a child. “You go two rows up front, you get the ice cream sundae. You get the champagne. You get any damn thing you want, practically, but you do not have the right to yell at me.”

I looked at her, a blond woman about ten years my senior, but made up to look twenty years younger.
Was this my future?
I thought bleakly as she waved dramatically at the first-class cabin where a few Japanese and American businessmen sat in solitary splendor. So, it was a perk; maybe because there was something special about my ticket, or maybe because I had come off like a cranky old lady.

As I settled in, the Japanese businessman who’d had a newspaper on the empty seat next to him looked disappointed to be losing the space.

How much did a seat like this cost? I wondered if there was some kind of State Department code in my passenger profile. The seat had been booked by an agency called S.A.T.O., which sounded Japanese, but turned out to have something to do with the government. Well, it was an agency I’d have to try to use again—if I had the chance.

I took a long, full sip of Veuve Cliquot and watched Virginia drop away below me. The sky was deep pink, darkening to purple. By the time we got to Tokyo, it would be eighteen hours later, and then, I was sure, the luxury would end—I would strap my suitcase onto the wheeled carry-on and hazard my way into Tokyo on a rush hour train. I’d be exhausted, but I’d be in the country I loved most. That was something to drink to any day.

I slept, surprising myself. When I awoke, the businessman was staring at me. He looked away quickly, then returned his gaze.

“Did you take a good rest?”

I nodded. I didn’t usually talk to people on planes, given the trouble talking had caused me in the past. This man—round-faced; sleepy-eyed; wearing an expensive, conservative business suit—didn’t seem like my cup of tea, especially since he reeked of whisky. I looked away, but still he persisted. “You sleep six hours, I think. We are only two hours from Tokyo, now.”

“Isn’t that nice,” I said in Japanese and opened my Meiwashima catalog.

His eyelashes fluttered. “You speak Japanese?”

Welcome to the land of lost identity, I said to myself. In the United States, if people didn’t think I was from Japan, it was because they knew for sure I was from China or Korea. To Americans, my identity was clearly Asian, never mind the half of me that was as WASP as Grand’s favorite tomato aspic. It was the same in Japan; even after I’d spoken, I was always pegged a foreigner.

“A little,” I replied, because I realized that now he really might not let me alone. I stuck my face back in the Meiwashima catalog, which of course was in Japanese, with only about ten percent of its written material comprehensible to me. My aim had been to study the catalog with a
kanji
dictionary at my side, decoding the information on the artworks that looked sufficiently superb to consider bidding on. But now I realized I’d have a helper hovering nearby who would wind up making me feel embarrassed about what I didn’t know.

“Ara, Meiwashima. That’s a fancy sale,” he said. “But everything is—old! Do you like old Japanese things?”

“A little,” I repeated, but this time in English—increasing my distance. “Excuse me, please. I would like to get up for a minute.”

He got up with a creak and let me past, but when I came back from the spotless first-class lavatory, he made me step over his legs. I knew the trick—a chance to fully evaluate, and perhaps bump into, a woman’s nether parts—so I made a point of going in face forward, and turning around in my seat.

“Can you read those
kanji
? Most foreigners cannot read,” he said when I picked up the catalog again.

“The truth is, not very much. I may just put it away and sleep some more.”

I slapped my CD player headphones on my ears and turned on my Rilo Kiley CD. Then I closed my eyes and listened to “Portions for Foxes” over and over until I fell asleep. When I finally opened my eyes again, the music was over and a bell was dinging overhead. The Japanese businessman and the nine other male passengers in first class were rising up into the aisle, collecting briefcases from overhead. I looked out the window into the grayness of Tokyo. It was late afternoon, the same time as when I’d left, but it was a new day.

Everywhere, the customs lines were long, except for the one that I was going to—an almost empty channel reserved for diplomats, or people like me who were lucky enough to have passports with a visa inside detailing an attachment to the American Embassy in Tokyo.

The man standing ahead of me in the diplomatic line was finishing up, so now my thoughts turned from global politics to anxiety. What if, somehow, the cover didn’t work? I wasn’t a diplomat. It was implausible that a museum employee would be in the line with a diplomatic passport. I’d be found out and humiliated by the customs officer, perhaps taken to a private room for interrogation by the National Police…my old friends, the ones who would remember my name.

I was thinking about the dark blue handcuffs I’d worn during my deportation a little over a year before, so I almost didn’t notice the customs agent waving me forward. I tripped slightly and caught myself on the edge of the carry-on. Great. I looked like a diplomatic klutz.

The customs agent asked me in English for the passport. He opened the page to the picture, looked at it, then looked at me.

He turned the page. “American Embassy,” he said, nodding to himself.

“
Hai
,” I said in Japanese. I figured that if I spoke simple Japanese badly, it might eliminate a more complicated discussion.

I smiled at him, hoping that this might be the end of it, but he turned to the computer and typed in something, and my stomach started churning.

The agent returned his gaze to me and asked where I’d be staying.

I glumly gave the name of the Grand Hyatt in Roppongi Hills. I’d argued for a Japanese
ryokan
, but Michael said the government insisted on using American businesses as much as possible.

My passport was stamped, and I was waved through. Free, in the land I loved, and the job was about to begin.

I’d expected to take a train, but it turned out that right outside the customs exit, there was an American with a shaved head and a sign with my entire name spelled correctly. I went to him reluctantly, thinking if they wanted me to travel incognito, having an American soldier meet me wasn’t the way to go. The businessman who’d sat next to me, in fact, emerged just as the soldier-chauffeur was taking my carry-on, and looked at me reproachfully, as if he’d expected the two of us to share a limo into town together.

I fluttered my fingers at him and went off with my escort to a distinctly unglamorous van, which was already half-full with other government-sponsored arrivals: two military families with young children. I made funny faces at their babies as we rode away from Chiba prefecture and toward Kanto, where Tokyo waited. Outside, the sky was even grayer than I’d remembered; it looked as if rain clouds were hovering. Hugh had reminded me to check the weather reports before packing, but I’d forgotten. As a result I had no umbrella or raincoat, just a 1970s tweed coat that was hardly waterproof.

Shopping for waterproof gear would be easy, I decided as we pulled up to my hotel two hours later. The Grand Hyatt was a glass-and-steel tower located on the corner of a street of designer boutiques that never existed in my previous Tokyo life. This was Roppongi Hills, an area that city planners had experimented with greatly, as evidenced by a curvy pink chair set out on the street as an example of modern art. I gaped at teenagers in blue jeans lounging on it, and then, a moment later, a cluster of young women dressed in short, frilly gingham-check dresses, frilled bonnets, and black patent Mary Janes, taking photos of each other.

What was this, the land of Cabbage Patch dolls?

The Roppongi I remembered was the stomping ground of girls in eighteen-inch platform sandals. I used to feel like a baby because I couldn’t handle those shoes—but now I realized that being a baby was cool. I jumped off the bus and tried to give the soldier a tip for hefting my luggage to the hotel door, but he politely refused.

“That’s okay, ma’am. Have a good stay.”

Once I’d entered the insulated, expensive world of the Grand Hyatt, I saw no more young women posing as children. Half the people in the ultramodern limestone lobby appeared to be stylish Japanese. The rest looked like foreign businesspeople on expense accounts. The desk clerks, all Japanese and gorgeous, spoke perfect English with the foreigners, so I was privately thrilled when I came up and was immediately addressed in Japanese. It had been so long since this had happened that I wanted to cry. And, I reminded myself, it was going to keep happening every day, as long as I was here to work on the mission.

I was eager to see my room, which, when the bellman took me up, proved as starkly modern as the lobby. The room had a king-size bed—a radical departure from the usual twin beds in Westernstyle hotel rooms in Japan. The bed was a low mahogany wood platform covered with a crisp white sheet. There was an asymmetrical desk of the same wood, topped by a small, flat-screen TV. The bathroom was luxurious marble, with everything you could want: electric toilet seat with built-in bidet and yet another flat-screen television. I peeled my eyes away from the tub to the bellman, who was still in the bedroom, demonstrating how to use a remote control by the bed to raise and lower two different screens over the huge windows.

I supposed Michael Hendricks would have wanted me to have both shades drawn down all the time, but at the moment I couldn’t bring myself to block out Tokyo. I was so excited to be back in town. The moment I was alone, I dropped my coat and headed for the telephone with a blinking message light.

The voice mail was from Mr. Watanabe, who wanted me to call him immediately upon arrival. He’d left a number with a Tokyo area code. There was a second call from Hugh, asking me to let him know when I got in.

So Mr. Watanabe was in the city along with me. That was good, I decided as I started to dial. Of all the people I’d met at the meeting, he seemed the most palatable.

“Was Shimura-san’s travel comfortable? Are you safely arrived?” he asked after I’d given my name. There had been no secretary answering the phone; this meant, probably, that he was at home. I heard the sound of someone, probably a child, playing “Chopsticks” in the background.

“Yes, thank you very much, Watanabe-sensei,” I answered, using the extreme honorific rather than the more prosaic
san
. Mr. Watanabe wasn’t technically a teacher, but he was such a senior diplomat that calling him
sensei
was in perfect order. I wanted to butter him up, because I expected to call on him for advice in the next week.

I continued, “I didn’t expect you to be here in Tokyo, too.”

“Well, my wife and daughters live here, so when I return here on government business, I enjoy a chance to see them.” He paused. “Just as I’m sure you will enjoy the chance to see your relatives.”

“Oh, yes.” I hadn’t thought of calling Aunt Norie and Uncle Hiroshi and my cousin Tom tonight because I’d been so eager to get in touch with my friends Richard and Simone, and whoever else they could dredge up after they were done with their evening shifts as English and French teachers.

“Have you seen the auction catalog yet?”

“I studied it on the plane.” I paused, because I was unable to come up with more.

“
Ah, so desu ka
. I’m actually telephoning about the sale. My assistant stopped by the gallery yesterday and learned that Flowers-san already expressed interest.”

I understood the code word for Takeo, but not the rest of what Mr. Watanabe was trying to say. “Has he registered as a buyer?”

“Yes, that’s the case. He may not be there, though. I hear he sometimes bids by telephone.”

That made sense. Takeo was such a hermit that he’d much rather lounge around his house in Hayama with a pizza than dress up and make pleasantries with the important buyers in the Tokyo art scene.

“I’ll do my best to find out what he’s interested in,” I said. “One of the auction assistants is bound to know.”

“I will be at the auction, although of course we must not acknowledge each other’s presence. We can meet outside later on.”

“Of course,” I agreed.

“I do suggest that you arrive a little early to the auction, although of course you’ll be very tired on your first full day here. Will you ask the hotel to book you a wake-up call that gives you plenty of time to get there by four?”

“I don’t usually nap on the first day. I’ve made this transition many times, Watanabe-sensei. I’ll show up early and do my best.” The fact was that I had a lot of things planned for the next day—things like picking up the new Eastern Youth compact disc for Hugh, and shopping for bras for myself in the only country where A-cups ruled. But that was too much information for Mr. Watanabe.

After we’d wished each other a good evening, I hung up the phone and pondered my little telephone-address book. I thought I’d want to go out for drinks, but I was beat.

I telephoned Richard’s cell phone and left a message that I wanted to meet him the next day, after I’d rested. Then I swallowed a Melatonin along with two glasses of tap water. I ran a bath and sank into it with the antiques catalog held carefully aloft. I would use my last hour to try to guess what had caught Takeo’s discerning eye—and how I could do the same kind of thing myself.