“She doesn’t have responsibility for me,” I protested. “I’ve been living on my own in Tokyo ever since I arrived.”
“That’s the problem. As the man of our family, I want to ask you to move in with us for reasons of safety. They tried to break your friend’s legs. He’s a big man, very strong, and he fought back. Imagine what they could do to you. And your boy roommate, he is very small…”
Hugh stirred, and I came closer to the bed, put my hand over his. His grip was tight, although his green-gold gaze was unfocused.
“You’re going to be fine, Hugh,” I whispered. It was an effort to keep from swooping down on his lips.
“Do we know each other?” Hugh murmured.
“He’s got three different drugs in him, Rei,” Tom said. “It probably wasn’t a good idea to have you see him.”
“Rei,” Hugh said, as if trying out the sound of the word. “Reizko. It means fridge.” I waited for more but my lover cut himself off with a giant yawn. Asleep again. I looked at Tom helplessly and let him lead me out.
27
Aunt Norie made no mention of how strange it was I’d come visiting at midnight. Showing me to the small bed crowded with stuffed animals in my absent cousin Chika’s room, she was full of gentle suggestions: a simple dinner of miso soup, rice, and pickled vegetables, a soak in the bath afterward. She was impressed that I’d brought my own toiletries and nightgown. How perfect, what a nice visit it would be!
Not even my own mother treated me this lavishly, I thought while watching my aunt move rapidly around her small kitchen, serving the Zen diet to me and a larger meal to Tom. When I rolled into bed an hour later, Aunt Norie tucked plush bath towels around me for extra warmth, her own version of Smother love. She must be missing Chika, who was away at Kyoto University. I began wondering how long Aunt Norie expected to keep me.
Tom didn’t have to go to work until mid-afternoon, but rose early to jog and then eat breakfast with me. Aunt Norie grilled us each a small mackerel accompanied by more miso soup, rice, and natto, the pungent, fermented soybeans that Tom had adopted as the cornerstone of his new diet.
“I’m getting better, don’t you think?” Tom pinched a corner of his waist, which I found ridiculous. Tom didn’t need to be thin to get a wife or anything else he desired. When I told him what a big attraction he was at his workplace, he laughed.
“That’s what I don’t like—the word ‘big’. Why not ‘slim’? Dr. Tsutomu Shimura, slim attraction at Saint Luke’s?”
Aunt Norie was smiling at our jokes as she brought in the morning paper. Then she looked at the front page and stopped.
“Don’t worry. If it’s Japanese, I can’t read much,” I reassured her.
“Give it to me, please. Rei should know what’s being said about her,” Tom said. He translated two stories. The first was an interview with Captain Okuhara about the lack of progress in the ongoing murder investigation. The shorter feature was all about me, illustrated with a sketch my ex-boyfriend Shin Hatsuda had drawn about a year ago. Wearing a half-open yukata and combing my short, wet hair, this image of me was blatantly inspired by a wood-block print by the early twentieth-century illustrator Hashiguchi Goy. I wondered if the paper had paid Shin for the picture or the mean-spirited comments about how I had been a nice girl at first but turned out to be extremely bossy.
“Can we watch the news?” I picked up the TV remote control.
“Do as you like!” Aunt Norie was hanging out laundry on the sun porch and beat each piece extra-vigorously as if to show her disapproval. The frown on her face deepened as News to You opened with sinister, drum-heavy pop music.
Mr. Nanda, the man who had left a message on my answering machine, reported that Rei Shimura, a Nichiyu Kitchenware employee, would likely be a witness for the defense should Glendinning be arrested again. Over footage of me looking horribly panicked outside Roppongi Hills, the reporter went on to say that the Japanese-American party girl had enjoyed drinks with Hugh and another foreign man at Club Marimba two nights ago.
On the public television channel, a more serious story described the apparent disappearance of Hugh Glendinning about which Tokyo police refused to comment.
“The police know he’s at Saint Luke’s. I called them,” Tom said.
“How kind of you.” I rolled my eyes.
“I had to! It’s dangerous to have such a patient. In fact”—he looked suddenly inspired—“Rei, if you’re going to be some kind of witness, maybe you can receive twenty-four-hour police protection for yourself.”