Women On the Other Shore (28 page)

"Oof, I really can't believe how wiped out I am," Junko Iwabuchi moaned again, clinging to a hand strap with both hands as the train sped toward Shinjuku. She'd been grumbling nearly nonstop since she and Sayoko started back to the office.

"Doesn't this have to be, like, breach of contract or something?

I mean, I thought I was signing up for a desk job. How come all of a sudden I'm a cleaning lady? We at least deserve to have a car, don't you think? Sometimes Takeshi drives you, right? Why does it always have to be the train when it's my turn? It's not fair."

Sayoko nodded vaguely as she listened, glancing up at the luggage rack now and then to make sure the bag containing her cleaning bucket was staying put.

"And what's with the old lady sending us out to do her shopping?

Sacks of rice and potting soil and all that other heavy stuff. Since when is that on our list of services? We're not a handyman agency."

In October, almost as if Sayoko's first two successes had primed the pump, cleaning orders started coming in one after the other. The size of the job determined the size of the crew: for studio units, or when only the kitchen and other areas with plumbing needed attention, Sayoko could usually handle the job by herself, but for whole apartments with two or more bedrooms she needed at least one pair of helping hands, and sometimes two. The sudden influx of work meant that things were no longer quite as organized as at first, and they sometimes found themselves scrambling hectically from one job to another, but they'd come through so far without any serious 216

complaints or slipups, and the operation seemed to be getting safely off the ground.

For Sayoko, the worst days were those like today, when she had to team up with Junko. Besides her constant griping, she was an indifferent worker. More than once Sayoko had had to frantically redo an area Junko had supposedly finished. The woman also made no effort to hide her feelings when they found rooms in particularly bad shape. Sayoko now understood all too well why Noriko Nakazato had been such a stickler about client relations.

Transferring in Shinjuku, they got off at Okubo and found Takeshi Kihara waiting for them at the ticket gate. Junko had apparently been expecting him. She waved and swerved off in his direction.

"Hey, Chief!" she said, turning to Sayoko with a bright smile.

"Want to stop at Jonathan's? It's been a tough day. Let's treat ourselves to something sweet." She seemed like a totally different person from the woman who couldn't stop grumbling on the train.

Shown to a booth by the window, Takeshi ordered coffee and Junko tea and cake. Sliding in across from them, Sayoko asked for cafe au lait. As soon as she got settled, Junko began repeating her litany of complaints for Takeshi to hear. Sayoko stole a glance at him periodically as he listened.

"Well, maybe it's because we're shorthanded," he finally observed in a measured tone, "but there's no question that things aren't running very efficiently right now. I guess Miss Narahashi assumed we wouldn't actually get all that much work, but now that it's pouring in, I'd say it's time to draw a clear line between the cleaning crew and the travel business. I mean, if we go on letting the travel side shrink while we're putting out fires on the cleaning side, Platinum Planet's going to wind up as nothing but a housecleaning service."

Junko agreed vocally with each point as he spoke. It was still before five, but the earlier sunset at this time of year already gave an orange cast to the world outside the window.

Sayoko did not know, nor did she care, whether Takeshi had in fact gone down to Atami that day—or what had transpired between him and Aoi if he did. Back at work on Monday, Aoi had treated Sayoko in exactly the same way as usual, as though nothing had changed. If Sayoko finished a job early, she suggested they have tea.

She invited Sayoko to the monthly networking parties and showed no particular displeasure when she said she couldn't make it.

Sayoko, for her part, now drew a very conscious line between herself and Aoi. Before Atami, she had wanted to be closer to her, but since that trip, she'd come to believe that what constituted closeness for Aoi was something like high school girlfriends going to the bathroom together—a relationship unlikely to survive if either of them even once declined to tag along because she didn't need to go.

Sayoko glanced at Takeshi from time to time as he continued his smug commentary. After trying to draw her out in the car on the way to Akari's school, had he come here today to do much the same with Junko?

"If you ask me, Miss Narahashi is way too full of easy talk," Junko said between bites of cake. "If we're in a slump, shouldn't we be jumping at opportunities like that tourist promotion thing? But no, the motivators aren't there, she says. Sure beats me how she finds so much motivation in housekeeping but not in domestic tourism—

especially considering she's so queasy about cockroaches she won't even deign to visit us on the job."

She paused and started waving her arm at the window. Turning to look in that direction, Sayoko saw Misao Sekine hurrying toward the door of the restaurant at a half-run.

Moments later, Misao slid into the booth beside Sayoko. "Can you believe it?" she moaned, still trying to catch her breath. "First I had to chase down CDs by Morning Musume and Ayu and SMAP and Arashi, and then it was DVDs of
Terminator 3
and
Charlie's Angels

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and the N H K m o r n i n g drama. I mean, good grief! What does any of that have to do with work?"

She flipped quickly t h r o u g h t h e menu and ordered a soda float.

"For the Japanese staff at Garden Group, right? You got the honors?" Junko said sarcastically. "Really! If she wants to play at being friends, she should buy her own gifts."

Sayoko looked back at Misao, still not quite sure what this was all about.

"She's big on goodwill, and on a little bit of kindness going a long way, but I'm sorry, sometimes she just goes too far. I mean, we're running a business here, not a charity." Misao paused and leaned low over the table before continuing in a hushed voice. "She's at the Cultural Center in Shibuya today."

"Another one of her lectures?" Junko said. "Isn't that just peachy.

What can she possibly have to offer anyway? Seriously. Everything she does is a complete mishmash."

It had taken Sayoko a while to realize they were talking about Aoi.

"Actually," Takeshi broke in, "I've always thought she has a certain kind of charisma, so giving lectures and talks is probably right up her alley. And besides that, her speaking fees go straight into company coffers. Without t h e m , t h e current squeeze would be even worse."

Almost as if he'd flipped a switch, Takeshi's defense of Aoi brought a fresh outpouring of invective from Junko and Misao, both heaping abuse on their boss's leadership style. Sayoko could scarcely believe her ears. She'd long been aware of Junko's disgruntlement, but Misao's low opinion of her came as a complete surprise, especially since she'd always seemed so friendly with Aoi. Even more shocking was the vehemence of their attack, which went well beyond mere grumbling and criticism. Sayoko listened in continual astonishment as the Aoi-bashing flew back and forth across the table, her cafe au lait getting cold.

Between the lines, she gathered that the sudden launching of the 219

housecleaning operation had served to ignite smoldering dissatisfac-tions among the staff. The problem was that Aoi had all the business savvy of a bulldozer, plowing ahead without any clear plan, just pushing whatever came up that day from one side to the other. With a bizarre sense of personal virtue, she acted as if moneymaking were a dirty word, like some youthful idealist. She had no appreciation of the responsibility she bore for her employees and tried too hard to be buddy-buddy with them....

Sayoko's eyes drifted toward the greengrocer across the street as the exchange continued. She was aware that Aoi had recently begun accepting engagements to speak about her experiences as a woman entrepreneur. Once upon a time Sayoko would have dismissed her colleagues' venom as nothing but envy for their boss's newfound recognition, and she would have quickly excused herself. But today she remained glued to her seat, nursing along her now completely cold coffee with tiny little sips, wanting to hear more.

Soon she began to notice a pattern in Takeshi's interjections.

The two women would disparage Aoi's leadership, and he would come back with something positive to say about her. This invariably prompted the women to slam her even harder, escalating eventually to nasty personal slurs that no one could ever claim were funny.

When temperatures rose to that level, Takeshi would step in again with a calming word or two and deftly steer the conversation back to company issues, drawing from the women some entirely new string of complaints about the situation at work. It was hard to tell whether he did this consciously or unconsciously, but one thing seemed clear: this man had a special flair for getting people to put aside any qualms or circumspection and willingly spill their guts.

"You've been awfully quiet, Chief. You must be wondering what kind of disaster-in-progress you've walked into. I mean, Platinum Planet is so different from other places. It's hardly like a real business even."

"But Chief's got it easy. Even if the whole operation implodes, even if the housecleaning runs into trouble and comes to a standstill, she's got somewhere else to go. She has a home to look after, and a husband to take care of her."

"Run into trouble?" Sayoko said, forcing a smile. "That's what we're working so hard to avoid."

"Actually, that's missing the point," Takeshi broke in, his tone unusually serious. "It's not what you do to avoid running into trouble, it's how you're going to deal with it when it comes. And the problem is, especially for the housecleaning side, there's absolutely no plan. Basically, if you have to ditch at the last minute because of some emergency, then one of the other girls has to drop what she's doing in her usual job and fill in for you. Miss Narahashi says she knows you're in a different category from the rest of us. Nobody else has any children, so until now, if something drastic happened, everybody could stay on at the office however long it took to clear things up. That doesn't work for you 'cause you have to leave at a certain time, plus you never know when your little girl might come down with a fever or something. So the boss knows she needs a backup plan. At least that's what she says. But—"

"I've never once had to 'ditch,' as you put it," Sayoko interrupted.

She'd tried to say it with a smile but could feel the tension in her cheeks.
I'm in a different category? A backup plan for when I have to
ditch?
Why did she even have to listen to this kind of thing?

"Not so far, no. I'm talking about what could happen down the line. But ultimately, as you know, she'll say something like that and then go dashing off to your daughter's Field Day on a whim. That's the way she is. Of course, that was on a Saturday, but there's no telling when she might take off on a regular weekday, too."

Sayoko's eyes shifted away toward the window. It left a bad taste in her mouth to learn that Aoi had discussed Akari's Field Day with Takeshi when they met in Atami.

"What's this about your daughter's Field Day?"

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"I basically think she doesn't have enough faith in us."

The two women spoke at the same time.

"It's not that she doesn't have enough faith. It's that she has too much," Takeshi said, again taking Aoi's side.

Sayoko didn't really want to talk about Akari's Field Day, so she casually changed the subject. "I'd forgotten about this, Junko, but a while back you mentioned Miss Narahashi had been in the papers for something. What was that about?"

There was a palpable change in the air at the table. Misao and Junko exchanged looks with tight little smiles.

"Oh, it wasn't that big a deal, really," Junko said as if trying to brush her off.

"Did you get asked too, Chief?" Misao said. "Did she invite you on a trip, or back to her place maybe?"

"Huh?"

"She has a predilection for that sort of thing."

"Careful now. That's not a very nice word to use," Misao said.

"Not that we're knocking her, but basically, she likes to hang out with women."

"You're both blowing things way out of proportion," Takeshi elbowed in. He turned to Sayoko. "She's just got a slightly different sense of boundaries, that's all. She may come across as the eternal optimist, but she actually has a bit of a dark past."

His gaze seemed to say that he knew what he was talking about.

Sayoko absently let her eyes drift down to his mouth as she waited for him to continue.

While the others carried on with their conversation, Sayoko excused herself and went back to the office. Yuki Yamaguchi was on the phone with someone in the staff office, and Aoi was going over some documents in the tatami room. Sayoko sat down at the dining table and opened her work diary.

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Aoi noticed her starting her report. "Welcome back, Chief," she said cheerfully. "There're some cream puffs in the fridge."

Sayoko nodded in acknowledgment but said nothing and kept at her writing. When she was done, she gathered her things together and got to her feet.

"See you tomorrow."

As she moved toward the door, Aoi came hurrying after her. "Did you notice that new ramen shop on the way to the station?"

"Sorry, but I'm in kind of a rush. Bye." Cutting her short, she made a quick bow and left, scuttling down the stairs as if fleeing from something.

The sun had gone down and half the sky had turned a pale shade of indigo when Sayoko emerged onto the street. She quickened her steps, running all the way to the station building, through the ticket gate, and up the stairs onto the platform. With perfect timing, a train pulled in, so she stepped aboard and stood holding onto a hand strap, heaving hard to catch her breath.

The story Takeshi had launched into with such apparent relish immediately rang a bell with her; in fact, she recalled the details quite clearly. This wasn't to say it had blown up into a huge scandal or triggered widespread cultural repercussions. The Morinaga candy-poisoning incident that took place around the same time created a much greater stir, as did the murder of an Osaka youth by classmates who decided they'd had enough of his bullying. The attempted double-suicide of two high school girls in Yokohama had filled the pages of the weekly magazines and tell-all tabloids only briefly before being forgotten by most people.