Tokyo Heist (21 page)

Your pal.
Was that simply to say we made up, we’re friends again? Or did he mean “Your pal, and not your anything else, not ever, don’t even think about it”? And why didn’t he say a thing about the fight we had? He’s acting like it never happened. Like we didn’t hurt each other’s feelings. That’s not right. That’s a sloppy coat of primer. We can’t repair our friendship or do anything else unless we acknowledge this fight. But I’m not brave enough to do it, either.

“Everything okay?” Reika asks.

I shrug and pass back the phone. “He’s alive.”

Reika unwraps a package of squid chips. “I wish you two would just get together. The two of you are like in episode seventy-eight of a manga series with no climax.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s so obvious you’re into him. And vice versa.”

“How do you know?”

“You guys just have this crazy vibe,” she says through a mouthful of squid chips. “You’re always laughing together and talking about creative stuff. Coming up with little stories.”

I shake my head. “You’re wrong. He’s into Mardi Cooper.”

“And? Did something happen between them?” Reika looks at me expectantly. When I don’t answer—it’s still too painful—she puts a hand on my arm. “Hey. You’re supposed to be able to tell your friends about boy troubles, right? I know a few things about guys. Maybe I can help. And if I can’t help, at least I can listen.”

I take a deep breath. And I tell her what happened between us before I left Seattle. It feels good to tell someone about our fight and how I feel about Mardi and him. It’s like I’ve been carrying around that ugly rock for so long. Finally, I can set it down. I can rest.

Reika licks salt off her fingers. “This is a textbook case. Here’s the deal. Edge answered the siren’s song because he got frustrated trying to figure you out. Mardi made herself available, and he went for it. Typical guy stuff. But his heart’s not in it. It’s you he likes.”

“What do you mean, he got frustrated trying to figure me out?”

“Trying to read your signals. Or lack thereof. Maybe he couldn’t find a door to your heart. You’re been playing it too cool. He thought you weren’t interested.”

“But I was interested. I just didn’t want to scare him off or wreck the friendship.”

“Violet.” Reika smiles. “If you don’t even try to tell Edge how you feel, you’ll never know if he feels the same way. You’ll just spend the rest of your lives circling each other. Missing each other. You’ll die alone.”

“It’s too late to tell him anything. Mardi’s already got her claws in him.”

“She doesn’t have superpowers. He’s not going to change for her. Believe me, as soon as this business with the painting is over, this is your next mission. Operation ‘Get Edge Back.’”

“Yeah. Sure. Can we change the subject now? It’s starting to depress me.”

“Oh, guys can depress the hell out of you. Believe me, I know. Squid chip?” She reads from the package. “‘It’s plentiful tasty will deright and surprise.’” She shakes the bag at me.

“Thanks.” I take a few chips. “Mm. Plentiful tastiness.”

“So tell me about this supersecret graphic novel you’ve been working on.”

“Uh, it’s kind of a fantasy plus mystery.” I stammer through the basic premise, but she doesn’t shoot it down. She smiles encouragingly. The next thing I know, she’s convinced me to let her see my sketchbook. I cringe as she turns page after page and doesn’t say anything.

“It’s so good!” she exclaims, beaming when she reaches the end of my story so far. “I’d totally buy this in a store! Here’s my favorite scene.” She flips to the page where KG hides in the woodblock print.

“Really? You think that works? I wasn’t sure. . . .”

We lose ourselves in my fictional dangers for the next hundred miles or so, brainstorming ideas for how KG can bring the Cormorant down and recover the
Sunrise Bridge
painting. New characters and scenarios take shape. I start to see how
Kimono Girl
could be good. Like, contest-entry good. I think of that flyer Jerry sent me. Maybe after this whole van Gogh business is over, my next mission can be entering that teen manga contest.

* * *

WHEN REIKA EVENTUALLY nods off, I open my sketchbook. Before I know it, my pen is flying across the paper, sketching the next scene in
Kimono Girl
.

Kimono Girl emerges from the woodblock print she’s hiding in and lands in the Cormorant’s office. She inspects the painting on the drying rack. It’s a still life, a fruit bowl and flower vase painted in acrylics. “I’ve got to go in,” she mutters, crossing her kimono right over left. She flies into the canvas.

“Something’s wrong!” she cries out. The fruit doesn’t hold together well. It’s sticky. It smells. Whenever she enters a work of art she feels a falling sensation until she gains some footing in the composition, gets her bearings again. But with this one, she keeps falling, in a sticky swirl of colors. She’s drowning. She can’t grab on to anything to anchor herself. Grapes pop. A banana squishes. She grabs a flower stem but it snaps apart. She falls farther.

And then lands. Hard. She blinks and opens her eyes. She’s on a bridge, and a river runs beneath it. The colors are so bright they almost hurt. Sunrise pinks and oranges streak the sky, so thick it seems like she could reach up and climb the clouds.

She brushes her hand over the railing of the bridge and looks down into the water. The water is teal, choppy, moving fast. And she suddenly knows where she is. Only van Gogh uses such thick paint, such swirls in the sky and water. And the light. It’s incredible. An eternal sunset that almost hurts her eyes. She’s standing in the stolen painting
Sunrise Bridge
. In the ultimate cover-up: a painting over a painting.

* * *

I STARE AT what I’ve just drawn in the final panel. I think about Tomonori’s sketches. A man—probably Tomonori himself—put a painting behind a painting, on an easel. I’d assumed that meant he slipped the painting behind another frame.

In the back of my sketchbook are the photo-booth strips from Asakusa, the pictures of Reika and me studying the journal pages. I didn’t notice when we took the photo strips out of the machine, but now I see one picture has a nice clear shot of the page with the woman in a kimono. I zoom in on that and look hard at the last embedded kimono drawing. It’s the one of a man, probably Tomonori, approaching the door of a building, carrying a flat package and a long stick. I notice a detail on top of the stick that I hadn’t seen before. The stick is really a giant paintbrush. I shiver. Maybe Tomonori painted directly over the canvas to hide it!

I wonder how it would it feel to paint over a van Gogh. I’m not sure I could even put my fingers on a van Gogh canvas, let alone a paintbrush. Could Tomonori? Was he that desperate to get the canvas out of sight?

I think about this possibility until chimes ring and Kyoto Station is announced. I see we’re on the outskirts of Kyoto, gray buildings looming ahead. I chug some Pocari Sweat from my backpack and notice my Sens
o
-ji fortune in my backpack pocket as I’m replacing the bottle.

I unfold the fortune, thinking I’ll read it again for good luck.

I drop it like it’s on fire. This is not the fortune I saved.

It’s a paper cut to the same size and folded the same way. But on this one, there’s just one sentence, handwritten in block letters.

IN JAPAN, WE HAVE SAYING. “NAIL THAT STANDS UP GETS POUNDED DOWN.” I STRONGLY URGE YOU FOLLOW ANY RULES GIVEN. DO NOT BE NAIL STANDING UP.

2

6

A
rashiyama is only forty-five minutes from Kyoto by local train. But it feels remote and sleepy, steeped in humidity. It’s a different humidity than in Tokyo. There’s a freshness in the air, and a scent of grass and water, that makes me think of the dark green
matcha
we once drank at Kenji and Mitsue’s house. The town itself is surrounded by lush, tree-covered hills—the same hills Hiroshige and van Gogh put in their art. Shop owners take their time unlocking doors, washing down walkways. Couples go out for morning strolls. Men in pointed hats pull rickshaws. I can smell breakfasts cooking: salty, pungent smells of rice and miso, seaweed and salty plums and pickles, staples of the savory Japanese breakfast. Nobody’s in a hurry. Nobody but us.

Hideki leads us at a brisk pace down to the Katsura-gawa, a wide, green river that seems as unhurried as the town. At a boat launch, an old man hobbles over to us, and Kenji speaks to him in Japanese.

“That’s going to hold all of us and our stuff?” I ask, eyeing a long, wooden boat with a canopy. It looks just like one of Tomonori’s embedded pictures. I’m sure it’s a part of his story.

“The
ryokan
sends this private boat for guests,” Mitsue assures us. “They are accustomed to carrying luggage.”

The floor is lined with
tatami
mats. We all remove our shoes, just like we would inside a Japanese home, and sit along the sides. Then our unlikely captain propels the boat with a long pole and surprising strength.

On the boat, while the adults talk or gaze at the scenery, I finally have a chance to show Reika that creepy note. I pass it to her. “Did you write this as a joke? On the train?”

“No!”

“Someone took out my Sens
o
-ji Temple fortune and replaced it with this.”

“I bet it was Yoshi. Probably just after he got fired. Ugh. Throw it out.”

I wad it up to the size of a pea and drop it into the water. Noticing this, the captain glares. Whoops, I forgot how much littering is frowned on here.

As we glide down the Katsura-gawa, I notice a long, wooden bridge before us. Its gentle arc looks familiar. “Is that the real Moon Crossing Bridge?” I ask Kenji.

Kenji nods almost curtly, his mind apparently far away.

“Yes. In Japanese, the name is Togetsuky
o
Bridge,” Mitsue replies. “It is—”

Hideki interrupts her in Japanese.

Mitsue looks startled, then nods. “Hideki would like me to explain to the three of you how a
ryokan
works. There are a few procedures and rules to be aware of.”

I look at him, his legs stretched out, his arm slung over the side of the boat. His posture is relaxed, but he looks upriver as if his burning gaze could power the boat faster. I can imagine how keyed up he must feel as he approaches a place his dad once visited, a place where his dad might have stashed an incredibly valuable painting.

“When we arrive, we will be greeted by the
okami-san
, the manager of the inn,” Mitsue explains. “She will show us to our rooms and give us
yukata
to wear. Special summer kimonos.”

“Men, too?” my dad asks.

“Oh, yes,” says Mitsue. “It is traditional for both men and women to wear
yukata
on the grounds, to promote relaxation. And before dinner, it is customary to visit the
onsen
—the spa and hot springs—and bathe. You will also wear your
yukata
to dinner.”

Reika and I glance at each other, smirking. I can’t help smiling at the thought of my scruffy dad wearing some flowery robe.

“Most important, Hideki says you must remain on the inn property at all times,” Mitsue adds. “We can’t risk anyone following you and finding us at the
ryokan
. We cannot attract attention from other guests. You must look like you are happy tourists and not publicly discuss our true purpose in coming here.”

“I’m a good actress. I can play happy tourist,” Reika says, twirling a lock of hair and smiling at Hideki. But Hideki is still staring upriver, his face composed except for a vein pulsing at his temple and a twitch in his jaw as if he is grinding his teeth.

After a bend in the river, our geriatric captain pulls up to a small dock. We all get out, collect our bags, and walk a long gravel path through an elegant, landscaped garden. Blue and violet hydrangeas bloom everywhere.

My dad eyes them hungrily. “I can’t wait to paint here,” he says. “Mitsue told me that this inn has attracted many artists to it over the years. I can see why.”

“Aren’t you worried?” I ask.

“Worried?”

“This isn’t a vacation. If the Yamadas can’t find the painting, your life’s in danger!”

“But this is a painter’s dream.”

“You mean you’re really not freaked out by all this?”

“No.” He shrugs and smiles wryly. “I feel like this is the real Japan. The one I wanted to see. I feel like for the first time since we’ve gotten here, I can really relax. Isn’t that strange?”

“I guess.” I must be doing the freaking out for him. Especially since I got that replacement fortune. It’s beautiful here, but we haven’t found the painting yet, and I’m still looking over my shoulder for Yoshi, for those
yakuza
from Seattle, for anyone suspicious.

We arrive at the main entrance to the inn. The
ryokan
is a sprawling, wooden building, old but in good repair, with heavy, dark beams and curved shingles on the roof. It’s dark inside. The door looks similar to the one from Tomonori’s picture.

Kenji goes to the door and calls out something in Japanese.

A woman’s voice calls back.

Then a woman comes to the door. Her face is etched with fine lines, her black hair streaked with silver threads, but there’s something beautiful about her. She wears a type of kimono I haven’t seen before: deep blue, with a transparent outer layer. With mincing steps, she comes out to a wooden porch, bows, and says something in Japanese. Her words sound warm, but her face is stone.

“The
okami-san
is greeting us,” Mitsue explains.

The
okami-san
studies Kenji and Hideki. Her face, while still beautiful, looks hardened and suspicious. Slowly, she bows, bending from the waist. She says something in Japanese to all of us, and Reika jabs me in the arm.

“Ow! What?” I rub my arm.

“She just welcomed us to the inn,” she whispers as we bend down to exchange our shoes for rubber slippers on a rack.