“Ryoshi!” She called me the strange name that she had chosen for me the day after we first met.
“What are you calling me?” I asked her, as she squeezed her brakes and almost flipped her bike.
“Ryoshi, listen first, please. There is a Japanese girl looking for you in the hotel lobby. I overheard her describing you when I was about to return the bike to the front desk. She said ‘Mayonaka,’ and the hotel clerk checked and said that there was no one registered under that name. She began describing you to the clerk.” Chiasa continued, but by that time I was racing up the hill to catch my wife before she jumped into a car and left. Chiasa crashed into me with her bike, pushing me forward before I was able to break my fall. “I said listen first,” Chiasa said through clenched teeth. “She is not your wife,” Chiasa chided.
“How do you know?” I asked, putting myself in order and walking uphill as she rode beside me explaining.
“I just know,” Chiasa said. “I told her to wait there, I was out here looking for you. I even rode up to the college.”
“Is she still there?” I asked doubtful and angry.
“Last time I looked. Just her and her dog, twins,” Chiasa said. I paused. Now I knew it was Himawari.
“She doesn’t speak English,” I told Chiasa.
“I’ll translate, but you and I gotta get our stories straight first. I told her that I don’t know you but I’ve seen you around the hotel. I told her that I was taking a course at the Red Cross next door.”
“Why say all that?” I checked.
“Because I read Akemi’s diary and I know what kind of girl she is and all about their friendship. I don’t want it to seem like you and I are staying together and then she mixes up the meaning of everything and misleads Akemi.” I looked at Chiasa. I understood. I appreciated her. I felt bad for making her feel like she had to run me down and crash her bike into me to make me hear her.
“You go in first. I’ll show up less than two minutes later. And the hotel clerk warned me that I should have you bring your passport down to the front desk since you are staying here under my name. I told him that you are not staying in my hotel room, that you were just studying at a local college and we were both studying for the Red Cross course.”
I laughed. Chiasa had quite a mind.
The Hyatt valet parkers watched closely as I approached Himawari. Obviously she had raised suspicion about me by asking around. As I heard the growl of her wolf, I motioned for her to come to me. She began walking over. I walked back toward the street curb outside the Hyatt so she would follow. She did. As she arrived, Chiasa rolled up and went into action, speaking Japanese. When Chiasa stopped talking, Himawari’s wolflike wild eyes moved around as though she was uncertain. Maybe she wasn’t buying whatever Chiasa had said. Her wolf wasn’t buying it either. He growled at me. With her curved nails she yanked his chain one swift time and he yielded. She wrapped the leash more tightly around her right palm and he sat.
“Mayonaka,” she said, and motioned me to follow her and the wolf. When she saw Chiasa flinch, she put her left hand up as if to say stop. “Sayonara” was all that came out of her cold lips.
Because Chiasa wanted us to pretend not to know each other, I followed Himawari, hoping that she would lead me to Akemi somehow.
Her wolf was wearing crocheted boots with a strip of brown leather inlaid on each. Now that I was walking behind her, I could see that Himawari was also wearing crocheted sandals with a hard sole and a brown leather strip running up the back of her calves. It was cooler now that the sun had set, yet I never understood dressing up a dog. Her wolf was well groomed. His coat of hair was fluffed and white and clean. It looked like they both had just come from the hairdresser.
In a dark alley we met up with her invisible crew, which had swelled from three to six. I was tight about it. This situation was growing too well known for ninja warfare.
The six girls bowed to me all at once.
“Konbanwa,” I offered the evening greeting. They giggled some. Himawari did not. “Namae?” I asked their names.
Lined up like dominoes, they responded one by one; “Kiiro,” “Ao,” “Midori,” “Shiro,” “Aka,” “Murasaki.”
I looked at each of ’em briefly, knowing they were set to make a fool out of a foreigner. I don’t speak Japanese, but I had studied my cards and understood clearly that they had given me the names of colors instead of their true selves. Yellow, blue, green, white, red, purple, they had said. But I wouldn’t blow their spot. All they knew was Mayonaka, so we were even.
“Mayonaka des,” I introduced myself.
Just then Murasaki said, “I speak English to Himawari-san.”
“Hai,” I agreed, but I could hear that she had no real command over English herself. Himawari spoke some Japanese. Murasaki translated.
“We friends Akemi. You know that, right?” she asked me.
“Hai.”
“Come please.” She turned and they all turned and walked to the nearby front door of a closed and darkened shop. Midori pulled a thin chain from inside her miniskirt and dangled it. She inserted the key into the shop door. When it opened, they all looked at me. Himawari was standing behind me—with her wolf. I didn’t know what they wanted. I thought of everything: were they trying to set me up on a B and E? Midori went inside but didn’t flip the lights on. The others followed her in and they all stood in a row.
“Please come,” Murasaki said. I turned and looked back at Himawari, the unpredictable ice princess, boss of the invisible doll crew. I motioned with my head that she should go inside. I already decided I wouldn’t enter if she didn’t. Midori came to stand in front of Murasaki. Since Midori held the keys to the place, I figure she was its owner or more likely the real owner’s daughter. Midori began speaking to Himawari. Himawari didn’t respond. She wrapped her leash around a metal pole planted in the ground beside the shop. She walked in as Midori held the door open. My heart was pounding. Maybe Akemi was inside. I entered. Midori locked the door behind me.
Through the dark I could see racks and racks of clear plastic cases. On closer look, they were each a tiny square filled with beads of every type and color. The line of girls walked to the back of the store. Eight people in a row shook the floor and the beads rattled. Murasaki was the first one to drop down a tight twisted iron spiral staircase into a basement. The seven of us behind her followed.
“Welcome,” Murasaki’s voice said in English, and the light raised up from dark to dim to bright. I was surrounded now by hundreds of tiny glass figurines carefully placed on three steel racks.
One by one each of them dropped down and sat on wooden cubes like crates, but they weren’t crates. The walls that surrounded us were all plastered with pictures of Japanese teens. My eyes searched and scanned. My mind merged. “The all-girls club in a secret location close to the high school” I recalled Chiasa saying.
“Akemi-san,” Murasaki said, pointing to a picture of an even younger Akemi arm in arm with a group of girls. I guessed on quick glance that those were the same girls that were sitting right here.
“Hai,” I acknowledged. Then she pointed to another photo of Akemi standing alone wearing some short shorts and a summer blouse.
Himawari was the only one still standing up beside me. She was on the bottom step as though she could and would prevent anyone from coming down or leaving the basement. I wanted all seven of them to sit right there where I could watch them all at once and quickly get to the bottom of what they were getting at.
Himawari spoke in Japanese. Murasaki spoke in Japanese. Midori got up and pulled a picture from the wall and handed it over to me. I looked. It was my wife in a mean-ass mink. The hood surrounded her entire face. She wore some bad-ass mink winter boots and amazing mink mittens. Yet it was the guy who was standing beside her leaning on the snowman that I knew they wanted me to see. When they saw my face change, they knew I saw. I looked up and then around the room. They were all silent.
Himawari said som
ething else in Japanese. Shiro plucked a picture from the wall behind where she was seated. Meanwhile, Midori lifted the one I held in my hands and posted it back in its same position. Shiro handed me the next photo. It was a group of girls on a beach with their knees in the sand and some boys standing behind them. Of course I saw my wife in her one-piece yellow bathing suit, also wearing a transparent lace blouse over it.
Ao handed me a third photo. The same guy was in it, and only Akemi. He wore a baseball uniform. She had a stylish outfit and was wearing what I was supposed to assume was his fitted. I had seen enough. I knew I was on stage and these girls were in it for my reactions. So I gave ’em nothing.
“So what’s up?” I asked, as they watched closely.
Himawari reached into her handbag and came out with another photo. Kiiro jumped up and retrieved it from her and handed it to me. It was the same guy who was photographed with Akemi. But this photo was Himawari and the guy in a loving embrace.
“Shota Himawari boyfriend is now,” Muraski said. I knew she meant Shota and Himawari were hooked up. I thought for some seconds.
Akemi Nakamura, fourteen or fifteen years young, a drawing.
“Shota, the driver,” I said to Himawari, motioning my hands holding a make-believe steering wheel.
“Hai.” Himawari finally smiled. She said something in Japanese.
“Himawari will help you take Akemi away,” Murasaki translated. I figured Himawari thought I wasn’t understanding her point, ’cause she broke out of her ice princess stance and spoke these English words:
“Himawari love Shota. Shota love Akemi. Akemi love Mayonaka. Mayonaka love Akemi. Himawari hate Josna. Josna hate Himawari. Ichiro love Josna. Josna love Akemi.”
She stared at me with a cold stare, her wild eyes flashing the wolf glare. Her face was back to cold, and suddenly a wicked half smile came across her face like she could tell I finally got it.
“Today, tomorrow, yesterday—” Murasaki said.
Ao interrupted her and said, “Today …”
“Today Shota drive away with Akemi and Makoto,” Murasaki stated. “Shota not return,” she added.
None of this mattered if Akemi was on her way to meet me or if she was already at Josna’s. I could dash out and leave these girls to their gossip and girl worries, I thought to myself.
“Phone?” I asked. Midori lifted the phone from the floor behind the cube where she sat. I called Josna.
“Namaste,” she greeted anxiously.
“It’s Mayonaka. Is she there or on her way?” I asked Josna, speaking discreetly on purpose, with fourteen eyeballs burning a hole in my face.
“No, I’m not going to be able to have the par-tee,” Josna said oddly.
“Party?” I asked.
“Play along,” she said with a fake-sounding joyfulness. “I am packing now. The tough one sent for me.”
“Makoto.”
“No,” she denied.
“Nakamura.”
“Ha,” she confirmed.
“Someone is standing over you right now?” I asked her.
“Ha,” she confirmed.
“Where is Akemi?”
“Was coming to par-tee but it’s all been canceled,” she answered strangely. I tried to read between the lines. “I’m packing now.”
“Where are you going?” I asked her.
“I am sorry, I didn’t mean to cancel,” she dodged. Obviously she could not say the name of the location without giving it all way.
“Is Akemi going with you?” I asked hurriedly.
“Already there,” she revealed.
“Where?”
“Tough one’s parent, I think it might be cold.”
“Is it a place here in Japan?” I asked.
“Ha,” she said, then hurriedly added, “Sure, you can still come here if you please. I won’t be here though,” she said. Which I took as her asking me to go there, although I didn’t know why or what for.
“Where are you going?” I asked Josna.
I heard a speck of her voice and then a click off. She had been talking. Someone else disconnected the call, I believed. I stood thinking. Maybe the man standing over her was a Japanese who didn’t speak English. Or maybe he spoke some but not enough to sift through her strange babble. Maybe there was more than one man standing watch over her and listening. She wouldn’t and didn’t say my name or Akemi’s name during the brief exchange. And she wouldn’t speak the name of her destination.
Himawari’s glare was growing more wolfish. The thought battle had thickened to a degree where I needed to move, think, speak, and step swiftly. Realistically, I didn’t have the answers. Yet I was certain of one thing. Himawari would become a problem. She wasn’t on my side or Akemi’s side. She wasn’t a soldier or a ninja like Chiasa. She had now broadened the scenario to a three-front war. She had also entered as a wild card because she knew all the players. She could start running her mouth, sounding alarms, standing witness against everyone, and protecting only her interests. And she brought along her invisible army, six girls who were clearly not on the level of Himawari or Josna and definitely not Akemi. Any one of them trying to come up and gain visibility might easily use this situation to cast themselves in a larger role, I thought.
“Have you spoken to Akemi?” I broke my silence and asked Himawari, after I handed Midori back her phone. Murasaki translated my question to her.
“Just yesterday,” Himawari said. Murasaki translated.
“What did Akemi tell you?” I asked. Murasaki translated.
“Akemi say she loves Mayonaka. She marry Mayonaka. She don’t love Shota. Shota is always like brother to her,” Himawari replied through Murasaki.
“Akemi show me …” Himawari gestured, moving one of her hands over the other and making a circle around her marriage finger.
“Her wedding ring?” I asked.
“Hai!” Himawari said. Then she made a circle around her wrist.
“Bangles,” I said. The girls showed some confusion.
“Bracelets,” I said. Muraski translated.
“Hai,” Himawari agreed. Then she moved her hand, with long slim fingers and curved and pretty painted nails across her neck and slid her finger down between her breasts. Then she brought her hands down and rested them between her legs pressing in on the cloth of her already short dress. She stared me dead in the eyes.
“I want,” she said.
It was as though she had tapped me in a game of freeze tag. The ice princess had frozen me. I knew she was saying she wanted passion marks pressed on her body, same as I had loved them onto my wife in those exact places. A wave of heat shot through me. Then I was unfrozen.
“Shota-san …” is all I answered. Her man needed to take care of that. Her invisible crew was out of the loop and looking around at one another. Himawari spoke Japanese again to Murasaki. Murasaki translated.
“Akemi said she will go to New York in two weeks. She will stay living there. But Himawari don’t believe because Akemi left with Shota. Shota says he will be away for ten days.”
“Where did Shota go?” I asked.
“Naisho,” Himawari said. I knew that word. It meant “secret.”
“Shota said it was a secret,” Murasaki clarified. “Himawari is angry,” she added.
“Why?” I asked, going for as much info as I could get.
“Because Shota say he will not call Himawari before he comes back,” Murasaki explained. “And Himawari doesn’t know where he’s gone.”
After a long pause I said, “I’m leaving Kyoto tonight on the Shinkansen. I’ll fly back to New York tomorrow morning. In two weeks, Akemi and I will be together.” A few of the invisible ones gasped. The others gasped after Murasaki’s translation of my words was completed.
“Himawari-san,” I said to the ice princess. “My Akemi does not love Shota. You should not worry.”
When Murasaki translated my words, Himawari the ice princess began screaming wildly in Japanese. Her pretty face turned an
ime twisted and evil. She pushed over the metal rack beside her, and all the glass figurines went crashing and smashing into pieces on the floor. Himawari had just proven what I already knew. She was a loose cannon, uncool, a liability. I’m sure Shota didn’t know that his girl who loved him, whom he didn’t love, was the same one who would easily get his ass set up and clap clap.
Five girls scrambled like servants to clean up the tiny pieces of smashed glass as Midori confronted Himawari. I stepped over the glass and brushed by Himawari up the twisted stairs I walked through the narrow aisle that ran down the fragile and delicate shop of beads and glass toward the door before I remembered it was locked. I turned around and dropped back down halfway.
“Midori, let me out,” I said with force. But Midori’s arm was twisted behind her back as Himawari held it there. Murasaki unclipped the key chain out of Midori’s pocket and walked up to let me out.
As I exited, Murasaki said, “Himawari is good. She loves Shota. Shota loves Akemi. When Akemi was gone, it was good for Himawari and Shota. Please forgive us, and have a safe trip home from Japan.” She bowed.
As I moved beyond the shop, I saw Chiasa squatted down beside the wolf, feeding him something and stroking his fur.
“We made friends,” Chiasa said, smiling.
“C’mon, change of plans. We gotta go.” I talked to her as I walked. Fucking wolf, I thought to myself. He growls at the men and purrs like a pussy for the pretty girls.
“Where were you all day?” I asked Chiasa.
“I went to Osaka. Why, did you miss me?” she said playfully.
“No, I just plan to make a deduction from your pay. Soldier MIA,” I said jokingly. I was trying to soothe my own fury at the same time.
“Soldier on point,” she challenged. She reached for her canteen and asked, “Please, can we drink first?”
“Sorry, your throat must be burning,” I said, because of the fast.
“I waited,” she said, lifting the deep-blue leather pouch from around her shoulder. She unscrewed the top of her water-filled canteen to offer me the first drink.