I had promised to call, but was so exhausted and depressed when I’d finally gotten in that I couldn’t bring myself to do it. “Sumimasen. Sorry. I came in so late, I didn’t want to wake you with a phone call.”
“We’re leaving today, so I had to call you. Things here are…strange. Mr. Yamamoto got lost.”
“What do you mean?” I stared out the window into the grayness of my neighborhood. I couldn’t imagine a tourist getting lost in tiny Shiroyama, where every corner had a sign directing you to this or that temple.
“There was a skiing accident, they think. Yamamoto-san vanished yesterday morning. Hugh-san searched many hours at the ski park. Then it started snowing heavily, which made vision impossible.”
It was terrible to think of Mr. Yamamoto’s body buried by mounds of snow. I’d been mad at him for gossiping about me, but now I remembered the humor and compassion he’d shown at New Year’s Eve dinner. He was a young man full of energy and dreams that were probably over.
“I have another thing to mention. We still have your antique box. Taro hasn’t finished reading the newspaper lining, but he’s sure he can date it,” Yuki said earnestly.
“That really doesn’t matter anymore…How can you think about it now?” I was amazed at her digression, given the seriousness of Yamamoto’s disappearance.
“We will return it, I promise. It was so irresponsible, you must think we are thieves!”
“Please take as long as you like. I have no real use for it.” I liked Yuki, but I hadn’t really thought we’d see each other again. Making friends while traveling was one thing, keeping them was another. Now she was chattering on, making me open my calendar and set up a coffee date for the following Sunday.
“Very good, we will take care of your box. And Rei-san, maybe it is better that you left. Because of how Hugh-san behaves now.”
“Oh?” I tried to sound uninterested.
“When he came in yesterday he was very angry, especially when Taro mentioned you were gone. Such a frightening personality! No, you would not like him anymore.”
“What’s going on, sugarplum?” Richard pounced when I got off.
“Don’t you read the papers?” I would have thought he’d kept abreast of the fact that I’d landed smack-dab in the middle of a scandal.
“Only for Ann Landers and the Canadian hockey scores. You know that.”
I handed him the Japan Times January 3rd edition with a front page photograph of Hugh Glendinning and the Nakamuras snapped at a cherry blossom viewing festival last spring. Setsuko, wearing a stunning gold-embroidered kimono, stared straight into the camera’s eye with the slightest hint of a smile; her husband looked appropriately sober. Hugh was laughing at something off-camera.
Richard read the story, then went back to the picture on the front. “This gaijin was involved? He looks yummy.”
“He was,” I said without thinking.
Richard yelped. “Asian girl goes on sex holiday! Tell me or else.” He brandished my dull vegetable knife.
I gave in quickly, as we both knew I would. Partly because Richard was a good amateur therapist, given his years reading Landers; also because he was my best friend, probably the only person willing to share the rent on a tin-roofed hovel miles from the plush neighborhoods where most foreigners congregated.
“That’s a lot more interesting than what was in the paper,” he said when I was through. And then, irrelevantly, “So, how does this affect your feelings for Shin?”
“Shin Hatsuda?” I had almost forgotten about the last heartbreaker in my life. “There’s nothing I feel for him. Not an ounce of emotion.”
“Then why has there been nobody since? You should trust again, realize not all boys are going to paint third-rate nudes with your face on them.”
“Now Shin seems so young, so fledgling.” I paused. “No offense.”
“Hey, I’m glad I’m under twenty five, and I wouldn’t recommend anyone over thirty. They’ve got expense accounts but none of the crucial drives.” Richard waved his coffee cup at me, sloshing a bit of the dark brown liquid over the art deco ice cream parlor table we’d carried home from the ‘logo shrine sale a year ago.
“Our drives were equal. It was a shame.” I said glumly, wiping up the spill.
I’d picked the wrong words; they set Richard off on his favorite Lemonheads song, the one that misappropriated my name.
Hugh Glendinning’s name would be engraved on my lower body for the rest of the year, if not the rest of my life. As Richard quieted down, I tried to explain how depressing that was. “The problem is he paid attention to me for the wrong reason, to get something—”