The Salaryman's Wife (27 page)

“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. “Reiz
ko. 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.

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.”

“I’m very safe now that I’m in the public eye. With cameras following me, who would possibly have a chance to harm me?”

“I think the best thing is to stay home with my
mother. No gangster would look for you in a suburban family home.”

“I’ve got to get back to the hospital and Nichiyu.” My shock had passed, and I was finding the suburbs less than charming. At five in the morning I’d been awakened by screaming blackbirds, a sound more frightening than anything I’d ever heard in north Tokyo.

“Teaching should be the last thing on your mind, and if your employer has any compassion, he will understand your need for a leave of absence,” Tom insisted. My cousin, protected in his medical ivory tower, knew very little about the contract worker’s life. A leave of absence for me would mean a loss of salary. I wouldn’t be able to keep up my share of the apartment, and Richard would find a new roommate.

My worries multiplied as I picked up an assortment of English language dailies at the train station. The
Japan Times
ran a photograph of me taken at a Nichiyu holiday party with a beer in hand. Courtesy of some student, no doubt. I prayed the panties picture wouldn’t make it into print. The
Japan Times
journalist described me as refusing to comment, which made me look really guilty. I would have stayed away from Roppongi Hills if I knew I would have to do anything with Hugh’s defense. Why hadn’t Hugh thought about that? Then the ugly thought came to me that perhaps he had slept with me expressly for that reason—because, once firmly in hand, the little English teacher from Nichiyu would surely say and do whatever he wanted.

When I walked into orthopedics, the chip on my
shoulder had grown as large as Ueno Park. I pushed aside the curtain that guarded the entry to Hugh’s room, inspecting a large arrangement of white roses with a card that said “Love from Winnie and Piers” and yellow tulips from Hikari Yasui before reaching Hugh, who lay shielded by the
Japan Times
.

“I’m not ready yet, Nurse,” he muttered. When I pulled the newspaper away, he brightened. “Rei! I thought you were one of them, forcing bed pans on me every quarter of an hour. This is the most humiliating experience of my life.”

“Wasn’t prison worse?” I didn’t return the charming, lopsided smile he gave me.

“Close the curtain, will you?” He patted the edge of the bed for me to sit down. I did, leaning assiduously away from his outstretched arms. He sighed and said, “I see you’re living up to the terms of our agreement.”

“What’s that?”

“My punishment. It happens to me every time we start to get close. I find it rather tiresome, especially at a time like this.”

“I don’t hate you,” I whispered, conscious of the open door. “I just had a rather rude surprise on television and in the newspapers this morning. Something about me being called as a witness for your defense.”

“Wouldn’t you testify for me?”

“No! Not when all of Tokyo knows I left your apartment at eight-fifteen in the morning. I look like your mistress, not an objective observer.”

“I see.” Hugh paused. “I know it’s rotten for your image to be wrapped up with mine. That’s a
good part of why I tried to hold myself off you for so long.”

“It would have been nice if you had asked me whether I’d be willing to testify.”

“Darling, that’s not the way lawyers work. They don’t ask, they subpoena. And if I had asked and you’d agreed, the prosecutor would have asked all about what we’d concocted together. It was the best thing, really.”

He was bluffing. Searching the Nakamura house and spending the night together had compromised my credibility beyond repair. We both knew it.

“We’re not going to talk about defense or trials at all. Starting now, for your good and mine.” Hugh flashed me the look that had led to my last meltdown. “I have enough on my mind with the bastards who beat me up.”

“That attack was my fault. I am so sorry I provoked Keiko—”

Hugh flicked my apology away. “Actually, it could serve me rather well. If I have to show up in court in a wheelchair, Mr. Ota has a powerful visual argument that evil forces are trying to hush up the truth about Setsuko’s death.”

“But we still aren’t sure Keiko was behind Setsuko’s death. Mariko said she was in Tokyo on New Year’s Eve, too far from Shiroyama to do anything,” I reminded him.

“The gangsters could have followed Setsuko’s car north to Shiroyama, just as they followed me yesterday. I saw their Cadillac near my building and then outside the travel agency when I stopped to make
that call to you. They jumped me after I left the phone booth.”

“If you collapsed so publicly, why is it that nobody knows you went to the hospital? The press aren’t here and there’s nothing about it in the papers or on TV.”

“Everyone scattered before the police pulled up. Nobody wanted to be a witness.”

“I’d tell about what happened between Keiko and me.” I put my hand over his. “You know I’ll defend you.”

“We won’t talk about it.” Hugh squeezed my hand. “Anyway, I was glad I had the sense to say I hadn’t seen the guys’ faces. Your cousin—rather a helpful guy, that Tom—confirmed that. He’s also told me all kinds of startling things about you, things I’d never have guessed.”

“Like what?” I felt my stomach lurch, and I started worrying whether Tom had described just how ungainly I was at fifteen.

“That your poverty is self-chosen. Your father’s a psychiatry chief or some such thing in the States—”

“Does that make me more appealing to you?” I froze.

“It makes me think that there’s absolutely no reason for you to be camping out in that wretched neighborhood.”

“At the moment, I’m staying with Tom and my Aunt Norie.”

“Why don’t you sleep in my flat? The building has doormen and a concierge and loads of police, now that I’m so notorious. In a hurricane, the safest place is in the eye of the storm.”

“You haven’t met my aunt Norie, a most formidable guardian.” I smiled, remembering how she hadn’t allowed me to leave without a freshly ironed handkerchief and nutritious box lunch.

“I worry she might guard you from me.” Hugh pulled me close and began toying with the buttons on my blouse. I pried his hands off as the curtain slid open and a young nurse holding a bedpan gasped.

“Let me give you some time to yourself.” I jumped up to leave.

“I’ve nothing to give you.” Hugh shook his head at the nurse.

“Shampoo and shave, sir?” She sounded anxious to serve him in any possible way.

“Mm, maybe.” He rubbed a hand across his stubbly jaw.

It was a good time to go. I placed two video-cassettes I’d picked up on the way to the hospital between the flower arrangements.

“What are you leaving me, one of Richard’s sexy videos?”

“Sorry. I brought Akira Kurosawa’s
Seven Samurai
and
Yojimbo
.” I explained about Japan’s founding father of film, adding, “These are a couple of black-and-white classics about the samurai era, and they’ve even got subtitles! So you can work on your Japanese.”

“I’d rather work on you.” His voice sent a suggestion through my body that I didn’t need to hear, not with nurses bouncing into the room like balls in a pachinko machine.

“I’ll be back tomorrow. Can I bring you anything?”

“How about my mail, my laptop, and all the Nakamura discs? The concierge will let you in.” His face brightened. “Wait. Get Yamamoto’s copy of the key.”

“My life’s complicated enough,” I protested.

“We haven’t seen sight nor sound of him since he went home. Why don’t you corner him and ask some of your infamous questions? If your work with Keiko was any indicator, you’ll probably get something worthwhile out of him.”

Perhaps I’d get someone else’s legs broken. I took the telephone number and waved good-bye from the door, afraid to get near again.