Midnight and the Meaning of Love (53 page)

“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 something 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 anime 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.

“Allah,” I said, whispering. I drank. She drank. We drank.

“I found the fortress where your hundred-thousand-yen shoe princess lives. It really is a secure location. There are four buildings on the property. I only knew that because I rode above the area in a cable car. When I was on the ground on my bike, the wall that surrounded her place was too high for me to look over or see into. I rode around the perimeter three times and counted five entrances. There are cameras on the main entrance and the rear entrance. Mayu, Akemi’s house manager, used a side entrance, slid in a key card and tapped in an additional code. So there are three gated doors that have that system, separate from the main and rear entrance.” She inhaled and tried to continue. I interrupted her.

“Good work. Thank you, but it doesn’t matter. Things have been changing rapidly all day,” I let her know.

It took ten minutes for us to pack and check out of the Hyatt Hotel. We taxied to Kyoto station and threw our belongings into two lockers. We ate light as we moved, jumping on the train toward the Kyoto Seika University. On the the express I filled Chiasa in with every detail that I thought was strategic to our mission.

“If you’d allowed me to read to you from Akemi’s diary, I would’ve warned you about Himawari. She is someone who was friends with Akemi from childhood only because of their fathers’ relationship over the years. Even though Himawari is from a rich family also, she envies Akemi-san,” Chiasa said softly, as our train raced. “It’s not the fact that Akemi is the shoe princess that she envies, or her cars or home or clothes. She envies Akemi’s emotions and the effect that Akemi’s emotions have on everyone they both know.”

I didn’t say nothing, although I felt in that moment my like for Chiasa deepen. I appreciated that she seemed to genuinely like my wife without ever having met her or chilled with her. I liked that she tried to understand Akemi through the diary and to protect and defend her. I liked that she put all of that in front of her own feelings. That was dope to me.

At 7:50 p.m. the lights were off on all but two of the factory floors. The warehouse was darkened. We walked on the side of the road with the woods and no sidewalk, in silence. I could see that Josna’s studio, half a block down, was also shrouded in darkness. Both Chiasa and I had become part of the night, both blacked out, black T-shirts and black cargo pants, me in my black 1s and her in soft rubber-soled Japanese slip-ons that had a section for three toes and one section for the other two on each foot. Her long, thick hair was pinned tightly in the back. She slid her
zukin
on, the black ninja face mask. If I had not been so tight and if I didn’t have to concentrate so hard to decipher my surroundings and the language and people and to discipline my every movement, I might have noticed and looked very closely at Chiasa and how beautiful and clever and talented a masked martial artist she was. However, when she and I are together, it means there is work that must be done, as it should be.