Authors: Sujata Massey
“What do you mean, not let me come back? I’m twenty-seven years old!”
The door chimed, as if to punctuate my rage. I went to open it and found Winnie Clancy standing in a powder blue leotard with matching headband and tights.
“Oh dear, your flat is in a jumble. You’ll need to get sorted—”
Without saying a word, I fled.
The glass-enclosed telephone booth halfway down the block was well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit when I squeezed myself in and punched in Mr. Ishida’s telephone number.
“You said the
tansu
is still there?” Mr. Ishida asked. “Obviously it was not my friend who did the burglary. Stop whispering like a ghost and come to my shop. I will help you locate an apartment in a safe neighborhood.”
“I don’t have time today,” I said, and apologized for having to end the call. I dialed the Mihoris next, hoping I’d get through to Akemi. Unluckily, my call was answered by Miss Tanaka, the household retainer. Trying to cover up my disappointment, I said, “It’s Rei Shimura. I’m so glad you’re home, Miss Tanaka. Yesterday morning I tried calling.”
“We spent all day Sunday at the temple. I thought you knew the family worships there.” Her tone was slightly starchy.
“How is Akemi-san? I called to speak to her, if she’s well enough.”
“Of course she’s healthy! At the moment, though, she is practicing in the
dojo.
May I ask her to return the call?”
“Actually, my phone is out of order and I’m calling from the street—”
“Is that so? I will interrupt her practice, then.”
“If it’s not too much trouble,” I said, sensing Miss Tanaka’s displeasure.
“It’s no trouble.” She dropped the receiver with a loud bang and shuffled off while I scrambled to stuff yen into the complaining telephone. Too bad I’d given back Mohsen’s phone card.
“Rei? Are you still there?” Akemi came to the phone, sounding breathless.
“I’m sorry I interrupted your practice,” I apologized.
“It’s okay. I’m sorry I was so crazy the other night. I don’t remember half of what happened, but my mother says I was an embarrassment.” She was speaking English.
“It wasn’t your fault. In fact, Hugh’s lawyer should have telephoned your family with an, uh, apology.” I had to broach it sooner or later.
“I’m okay now and back on my regular regimen. When are you coming to see me?”
“I don’t know. Things are pretty tense around here.” I leaned against the glass door, then sprang back from the burning heat.
“That’s why you need to run,” she said with a hint of impatience. “I’ll be done with practice soon. We could run after that.”
“I’m not fit to do that. I took something that’s left me in a fog.”
“Are you well enough to meet for dinner?”
“Do you want to ask your mother first?” I winced, thinking how much it sounded as if we were two ten-year-olds arranging a play date.
“I think that would be . . . awkward,” Akemi said. “In fact, let’s not even meet in Kamakura. I don’t have the time to come all the way to Tokyo. Can we meet somewhere in the middle?”
“Yokohama? I could be there by, say, six-thirty.”
“Excellent. I’ll meet you at Yurindo Books inside Lumine at Yokohama Station. And don’t tell your boyfriend.” Akemi hung up before I could ask anything else.
The Toyoko express to Yokohama had a big problem: broken air-conditioning. The windows were propped open, but the heat from the hundred-plus packed bodies made the car I rode in unbearable. Pinstriped businessmen and nylon-clad matrons waved themselves with traditional paddle-style fans, while those younger and less prepared pressed cold soft-drink cans to their foreheads. I stared at advertisement for an Alaska tour, only $ 1,600 for five days on a glacier. The prospect of being both cold and away from all my fears was suddenly alluring; too bad my bank account was so piddling. A year ago, when I’d been teaching English for a salary, I could have done it.
Entering Yokohama Station’s icy air-conditioning was bliss. I went through the Lumine mini-mall to Yurindo Books, and, not seeing Akemi, wandered into the foreign-books section. I was paging through some English mysteries, noting that the NyQuil had made me unable to read small print, when Akemi tapped me on the shoulder.
“Great weather,” she said with not a trace of irony. “I love summer evenings. Shall we walk to Chinatown?”
It was such a short train ride to Yokohama’s Chinese neighborhood that I would never have chosen to walk, but I nodded and followed my athletic friend out into the humidity.
“Your eyes look terrible, all sleepy and vague. Did you eat one of those small chocolate cakes that Angus prepared?” Akemi asked as we began walking toward the river.
“No, I took NyQuil. An over-the-counter medicine for sleeping.” I was surprised at her ease in talking about her collapse; what exactly had her mother told her?
“I thought you’d want to eat a big dinner, because when I woke up after the drugs, I was starving. I made the car stop at Family Mart so I could buy snacks. I would have enjoyed more of those chocolate cakes, but Angus had taken them away.”
“So you know?” I didn’t know whether to be horrified or relieved.
“Of course! Angus explained them to me, and I ate out of curiosity. I’m interested in drugs. I’ve taken steroids, you know.”
“I didn’t. Surely not at the Olympics—”
“Yes. Unfortunately, my stupid coach had me on the wrong kind, the ones that show up in testing.”
I looked around nervously, but none of the masses appeared much interested in an English conversation going on between two sweaty young women.
“There was an agreement. I was allowed to compete on condition that I lost my matches. If I didn’t, they would have told the judo committee about the drugs.”
“How many people know this?” I was appalled at the easy way Akemi was telling her story.
“My former coach, the doctor, and my parents, who thought it more face-saving for me to perform and lose than to be thrown out for cheating.”
So you never tried at all?” Somehow this made me angry. I’d watched the Seoul Olympics largely to root for the Japanese athletes and had been heartbroken when she’d been defeated so easily.
“I rolled over and played dead for the Koreans and Chinese,” Akemi said in a voice that seemed to come from somewhere outside of her. “No one could understand the breakdown of the top-ranked middleweight woman. It got easier with time. I fell
so
stupidly in the second match, I had a genuinely sprained shoulder to add to my pain.”
“And you never made a comeback,” I said, thinking about what had happened in the Pan-Asian Games and other matches over the following years.
“I left my coach, of course, and went completely off all the pills and vitamin supplements, trusting nothing. I tried to get my strength entirely from food and became a macrobiotic vegetarian.” She made a wry face at me. “Something was lost. I became weak . . . the fighting spirit inside me was gone.”
“Adzuki beans can give you only so much energy,” I said, hoping to make her laugh. She didn’t. An hour after we had started walking, we passed under the gaudy red gate leading into Chinatown. Rich smells of steaming pork buns and barbecued chicken began curling into my nose. I wondered if we would be able to find vegetarian food.
“So you can see why I tried the hashish?” Akemi fixed me with her tough gaze.
“Not exactly.”
“I gave my youth to judo. In my teens and twenties, I was just a workout girl bulked up on drugs and exercise. I had no friends. I didn’t even know which bands were in the top ten!” She laughed shortly. “Angus is an interesting boy. We ate the chocolate cakes together and I told him so much. It was a mind-opening experience.”
“You fainted,” I reminded her. “You had too much—”
“It was stupid for me to do something like that with my mother around. Now she’s going through some kind of crisis, deciding whether to take the money your boyfriend’s lawyer sent us.”
“It looks bad, doesn’t it? Like we’re trying to buy you off.”
“The river washes everything away. Things are forgiven. My mother will not contact the police. She is not even around to worry about me because she’s gone to Kyoto for a tea ceremony convention.” Akemi steered me into the doorway of a small, homey place where a Chinese woman owner greeted her like an old friend. We sat down, but I was unable to concentrate on the menu.
“Why did you ask me to keep this dinner secret from Hugh?” I asked.
“He doesn’t trust me. He’ll be upset.”
“What gives you that idea?” I asked, my stomach doing a funny skip when Akemi laid her hand over mine. She laughed at my obvious nervousness.
“What do you think? At your party, he introduced me to women but no men. He thinks I like girls, doesn’t he?”
With mighty concentration, I forced my hand to lie still under her caressing fingers. “Do you?”
“I told you already that I enjoy men. In limited doses, which is something you should consider.” She freed my hand. “You should leave Hugh. Angus said the two of you have been fighting.”
So Angus had been listening in. I said, “When you live in close quarters, a little misery is part of the package.”
“It is a shame to live in such a way when you’re not even thirty.”
“Spring roll for an appetizer?” the restaurant owner cut in as I began casting about for a defense.
“Two, with hot mustard on the side,” Akemi said without consulting me. “And for the main course, what are your noodle specials? We both need to carbo-load.”
It wasn’t until the lychee pudding arrived that I had calmed down enough to tell Akemi about the apartment break-in.
“So you think the criminals came because of the
tansu
? Even though it wasn’t stolen?”
“It’s a sense that I have, although Lieutenant Hata said that the break-in could have been a personal attack. A warning to me, Hugh, or Angus, whose friends seemed pretty unsavory—did you notice them?”
“A bunch of idiots, those kids. I’d like to see them thrown into a Zen monastery for a few weeks’ training,” Akemi snorted. “You should move out of the apartment. If you don’t go to your cousin’s, maybe I could help you.”
“No!” I said a little too loudly. “I mean, no, thank you. If someone’s after Hugh, I can’t leave him alone.”
“But you told him you
wanted
to live with your cousin.”
“I didn’t really mean it. That’s just the way I tend to fight.” Akemi looked at me uncomprehendingly, so I pressed on. “I want to be with Hugh. This thing with Angus—if I can just get through it, take a Zen attitude toward his unending visit—”
“Zen’s relaxing, but it can’t save your life.” Akemi licked the last of the lychee pudding off her spoon. “Come to the
dojo
and I’ll teach you a few self-defense moves. Seriously.”
“I shouldn’t go to Kamakura anymore.”
“But my mother’s in Kyoto. And don’t worry about Miss Tanaka.”
If that were the case, I couldn’t understand why Akemi had spoken to me in English over the telephone. And why couldn’t I have come to Kamakura for the evening? She didn’t trust Miss Tanaka.
I rode the Toyoko train back to Tokyo, changing at Shibuya for the Hibiya subway line home. I emerged in Roppongi just after midnight, walking through hundreds of young and happy drunks. Then the streets were quiet, and I walked faster, thinking about the apartment burglar who hadn’t been caught. If I were the target, the intruder might not stop with the burglary. He could be watching me come down the street and have something else in mind.
I half ran into the apartment building, and as the elevator took me up I felt myself yearning to go faster; now that we’d been robbed, being alone anywhere in the building gave me the willies.
Opening the apartment door, I stopped dead. A hurricane had swept the apartment again—this time, it was one of order. Winnie Clancy must have gone on a cleaning rampage. Every piece of paper or book had been returned to its place, and the horrifying centerpiece was the sofa already made up for me with pillow and sheets. Had she done that? Would Hugh have announced to her that we had stopped sleeping together?
I picked up my pillow and tiptoed through the darkness to the bedroom, where Hugh was tossing in his sleep. He was feeling as unhappy as I, probably. I went to his side of the bed and crouched down, lifting the sheet away to study him in the room’s half-light. Even with his eyes closed he was handsome, but there was a tightness in the sleeping face that bothered me. If only I could erase the lines of tension.
As I lowered my face to kiss him, he jolted upward, moving his arm in a fast arc. A fist slammed against my cheekbone. I fell backward from the bed, landing on the steel rowing machine.
“I’ll kill you, damn it!”
I pressed my hands against my cheekbone to dull the pain spreading across my face. Hugh grabbed my hands away, strapping my arms under his. Within seconds I was pinned to the floor. I hadn’t known he was so strong, so violent. I whimpered slightly, hating myself for it.
“What in hell?” One arm lifted off me, and I sensed him groping for the bedside light. “Rei, I thought—”
“That I was a burglar?” I whispered.
“Yeah, I thought someone had come back. It was part of a dream, I guess, and I woke up and felt someone inches from my face. I panicked.”
“I’m inches from your face every night. I mean, I used to be.” The tears were coming fast now, and Hugh wiped them away with his finger.
“Let me look at your face. Oh, God. I didn’t expect you to come in—didn’t you see I fixed the sofa for you?”
“So it’s my fault this happened?”
“No. It’s mine alone. To have hit you . . .”
I understood what had happened. Deep down, his anger must have grown so exponentially that his subconscious wanted to punch the lights out of me. The organized, conscious Hugh never would have; but at night, in a dreamlike state, things like this could happen. What would my psychiatrist father say? I wondered, before realizing I could never tell him what had happened. My boyfriend had hit me. A terrible boundary had been crossed.
“I’m getting an ice pack.” Hugh stood up and pulled on his robe before heading out the door. Dimly I heard Angus in the hall; Hugh said something that sent him back to bed. Good—I didn’t want him seeing me freshly battered.