Midnight and the Meaning of Love (52 page)

“Listen,” I told Josna. “I gotta go. I’ll be back tonight. Is that al-right with you?”

She smiled.
“Mi casa es su casa,”
she said, using Spanish.

Every New Yorker knew what that meant, so I did too.

“Here, write down Akemi’s home address here in Kyoto and write down her telephone number.” I pulled out my notepad. She wrote in it.

“May I use your phone?” I asked her.

“Sure,” she agreed. I called the number she had written down and
given me for Akemi. I knew now that I had to double- and triple-check each person dealing with my wife, friend or no friend.

The phone rang four times before a voice mail come on. When I heard my wife’s sweet voice offering Japanese greetings over the recording, I purposely said nothing. I wouldn’t leave any message that might alarm any listener or cause Akemi and me to be traced or trailed. I didn’t want to do anything to trigger Nakamura before his trip. I wanted him to leave Japan. With him out of our way, Akemi and I would find each other and be gone from here. I hung up certain I had been given the correct info this time around. It gave me more reason to trust Josna.

“What exactly did Akemi say to you about what she plans to do now?”

“She plans to escape with you. But she has to do something first. It has to do with her mother. She wants to tell you about it.
She wants you to know.
But her father is really tough, really smart, and really rich. He plans to keep Akemi here in Japan. He is using the matter of her mother to force her to obey him.”

“Her mother?” I questioned.

“I know you’re thinking that since her mother has already passed away many years ago, what could be happening with her now? But her death almost destroyed Akemi. And the anniversary of her mother’s death just passed. It was on May third, the same day as her debut and big art show at the MOMA in New York.”

I recalled the early morning of May 3. My wife was more emotional on that day than usual. She clung to me even though we were outside. She was looking into my eyes with a lingering look of longing, even though we had been together every day and night leading up to that morning. I gave her a strong hug around her feminine frame. I squeezed her so hard that I lifted her off her feet. The moment I released her, she began holding hands with Umma in the middle of Rockefeller Center. I was remembering that it was before most of the shops had even opened for the day.

How was I to know that she was of mixed emotions—love for her husband, love for Umma, and the memory of love and loss of her own mother? Maybe Akemi also felt the weight of not being home in Kyoto where her mother’s body lay—especially on the anniversary. Maybe Akemi felt guilty for choosing to marry and live in New York,
seven thousand miles away from the land where her mother must be buried in the soil.

Josna interrupted my thoughts. “Akemi told me that she felt so nervous at the MOMA. Mr. Nakamura was there backstage with her. She said that he served her some tea to calm her. She said that after the tea, she felt drowsy as she made her presentation before the audience but that she pushed and fought to remain upbeat. She remembered the audience applauding her. She remembered posing in her kimono for the press. But as she walked off the stage, she felt faint. When she awakened, she was on a flight in a private jet beside her father, Ichiro, and Makoto.”

Josna’s words painted a clear picture in my mind. In a few thoughtful sentences she had removed much of my confusion.

“Akemi said she cried all the way home and every day afterward until you showed up.”

“Josna, thank you … I gotta go.”

“Here, you must take my phone number.” She wrote it down. “Mr. Nakamura loves Akemi so much, and as I said he’s tough, but please don’t hurt him. Akemi doesn’t agree with what her father’s doing. Yet she still loves him as a daughter. Surely you can understand.”

“Did Akemi ask you to tell me that?”

“No, she didn’t. It’s just that you have a certain look in your eyes.”

I started moving toward the door to leave. Josna followed me into the ceramic-tiled cave.

“Akemi said you would show up, and you did, all the way from New York. I’m impressed. When the two of you return to New York together, do me a favor?” she said softly. I was listening. She was so helpful to me, I was prepared to do her almost any favor. “When you two reach there, close your eyes and count to one hundred. When you open them, I will be right there beside the two of you. Akemi is my best friend. I can’t live without her,” Josna said sincerely.

“When Akemi comes here,” I told her, “or even if she phones you, tell her I said for her to come over to the studio, to stay here, to wait for me. Tell her I said don’t worry about nothing, not money or about her driver or the security or tickets or anything. Tell her to just come. I’ll take care of the rest. Got it?” I stared into Josna.

“Got it,” she agreed.

As I strolled down the strange block past the warehouse and then
the factory toward the train station, I watched the sun as it began its final bow of the day. What could Nakamura be thinking? Was it better for his young daughter to be left in the presence of his men in his employ, rather than in the presence of her husband? And what about this Shota, Ichiro, and Makoto? How loyal were they to Nakamura? Would they be willing to give their lives in defense of Nakamura’s plan?

And what of Josna’s suggesting that she would move in with Akemi and me in New York? Why did it appear that I was destined to be surrounded by a handful of extraordinarily beautiful women? In my house full of females, it seemed there would only be them and me and my feet and fist and my guns …

* * *

My mind shifted, like a Rubik’s trying to get back into its original position. Unknowingly, I had jumped on the local and not the express. The ride was long and slow. As the windows darkened, I was working my way back to Chiasa, who I knew would not break her fast without me. Chiasa, my comrade. The meaning I discovered for the word
comrade
in my dictionary was
“one of two or more soldiers bound together by a same or similar mission; one who shares and works together with a close friend toward a mutual goal.”

I thought about Islam, my religion. I believe there is no space for comrades between men and women in Islam. Of course, two or more Muslim men could be comrades. Two or more Muslim women could be comrades with one another. Yet the type of interaction that was taking place in order for Chiasa and me to work together toward a goal—I had not seen any allowance for that in my reading of the Quran. There is no free mixing between men and women in my Islamic culture. Still I had the feeling that although I had no real understanding of it, Allah had provided Chiasa for me.

Sitting on a bicycle in front of the wall leading to the Hyatt, Chiasa was a silhouette. As soon as she saw me climbing upward toward her, she came speeding down toward me.

“Ryoshi!” She called me the strange name that she had chosen for me the day after we first met.

“What are you calling me?” I asked her, as she squeezed her brakes and almost flipped her bike.

“Ryoshi, listen first, please. There is a Japanese girl looking for you in the hotel lobby. I overheard her describing you when I was about to return the bike to the front desk. She said ‘Mayonaka,’ and the hotel clerk checked and said that there was no one registered under that name. She began describing you to the clerk.” Chiasa continued, but by that time I was racing up the hill to catch my wife before she jumped into a car and left. Chiasa crashed into me with her bike, pushing me forward before I was able to break my fall. “I said listen first,” Chiasa said through clenched teeth. “She is not your wife,” Chiasa chided.

“How do you know?” I asked, putting myself in order and walking uphill as she rode beside me explaining.

“I just know,” Chiasa said. “I told her to wait there, I was out here looking for you. I even rode up to the college.”

“Is she still there?” I asked doubtful and angry.

“Last time I looked. Just her and her dog, twins,” Chiasa said. I paused. Now I knew it was Himawari.

“She doesn’t speak English,” I told Chiasa.

“I’ll translate, but you and I gotta get our stories straight first. I told her that I don’t know you but I’ve seen you around the hotel. I told her that I was taking a course at the Red Cross next door.”

“Why say all that?” I checked.

“Because I read Akemi’s diary and I know what kind of girl she is and all about their friendship. I don’t want it to seem like you and I are staying together and then she mixes up the meaning of everything and misleads Akemi.” I looked at Chiasa. I understood. I appreciated her. I felt bad for making her feel like she had to run me down and crash her bike into me to make me hear her.

“You go in first. I’ll show up less than two minutes later. And the hotel clerk warned me that I should have you bring your passport down to the front desk since you are staying here under my name. I told him that you are not staying in my hotel room, that you were just studying at a local college and we were both studying for the Red Cross course.”

I laughed. Chiasa had quite a mind.

The Hyatt valet parkers watched closely as I approached Himawari. Obviously she had raised suspicion about me by asking around. As I heard the growl of her wolf, I motioned for her to come
to me. She began walking over. I walked back toward the street curb outside the Hyatt so she would follow. She did. As she arrived, Chiasa rolled up and went into action, speaking Japanese. When Chiasa stopped talking, Himawari’s wolflike wild eyes moved around as though she was uncertain. Maybe she wasn’t buying whatever Chiasa had said. Her wolf wasn’t buying it either. He growled at me. With her curved nails she yanked his chain one swift time and he yielded. She wrapped the leash more tightly around her right palm and he sat.

“Mayonaka,” she said, and motioned me to follow her and the wolf. When she saw Chiasa flinch, she put her left hand up as if to say stop.
“Sayonara”
was all that came out of her cold lips.

Because Chiasa wanted us to pretend not to know each other, I followed Himawari, hoping that she would lead me to Akemi somehow.

Her wolf was wearing crocheted boots with a strip of brown leather inlaid on each. Now that I was walking behind her, I could see that Himawari was also wearing crocheted sandals with a hard sole and a brown leather strip running up the back of her calves. It was cooler now that the sun had set, yet I never understood dressing up a dog. Her wolf was well groomed. His coat of hair was fluffed and white and clean. It looked like they both had just come from the hairdresser.

In a dark alley we met up with her invisible crew, which had swelled from three to six. I was tight about it. This situation was growing too well known for ninja warfare.

The six girls bowed to me all at once.

“Konbanwa,”
I offered the evening greeting. They giggled some. Himawari did not.
“Namae?”
I asked their names.

Lined up like dominoes, they responded one by one; “Kiiro,” “Ao,” “Midori,” “Shiro,” “Aka,” “Murasaki.”

I looked at each of ’em briefly, knowing they were set to make a fool out of a foreigner. I don’t speak Japanese, but I had studied my cards and understood clearly that they had given me the names of colors instead of their true selves. Yellow, blue, green, white, red, purple, they had said. But I wouldn’t blow their spot. All they knew was Mayonaka, so we were even.

“Mayonaka des,”
I introduced myself.

Just then Murasaki said, “I speak English to Himawari-san.”

“Hai,”
I agreed, but I could hear that she had no real command over English herself. Himawari spoke some Japanese. Murasaki translated.

“We friends Akemi. You know that, right?” she asked me.

“Hai.”

“Come please.” She turned and they all turned and walked to the nearby front door of a closed and darkened shop. Midori pulled a thin chain from inside her miniskirt and dangled it. She inserted the key into the shop door. When it opened, they all looked at me. Himawari was standing behind me—with her wolf. I didn’t know what they wanted. I thought of everything: were they trying to set me up on a B and E? Midori went inside but didn’t flip the lights on. The others followed her in and they all stood in a row.

“Please come,” Murasaki said. I turned and looked back at Himawari, the unpredictable ice princess, boss of the invisible doll crew. I motioned with my head that she should go inside. I already decided I wouldn’t enter if she didn’t. Midori came to stand in front of Murasaki. Since Midori held the keys to the place, I figure she was its owner or more likely the real owner’s daughter. Midori began speaking to Himawari. Himawari didn’t respond. She wrapped her leash around a metal pole planted in the ground beside the shop. She walked in as Midori held the door open. My heart was pounding. Maybe Akemi was inside. I entered. Midori locked the door behind me.

Through the dark I could see racks and racks of clear plastic cases. On closer look, they were each a tiny square filled with beads of every type and color. The line of girls walked to the back of the store. Eight people in a row shook the floor and the beads rattled. Murasaki was the first one to drop down a tight twisted iron spiral staircase into a basement. The seven of us behind her followed.

“Welcome,” Murasaki’s voice said in English, and the light raised up from dark to dim to bright. I was surrounded now by hundreds of tiny glass figurines carefully placed on three steel racks.

One by one each of them dropped down and sat on wooden cubes like crates, but they weren’t crates. The walls that surrounded us were all plastered with pictures of Japanese teens. My eyes searched and scanned. My mind merged. “The all-girls club in a secret location close to the high school” I recalled Chiasa saying.

“Akemi-san,” Murasaki said, pointing to a picture of an even younger Akemi arm in arm with a group of girls. I guessed on quick glance that those were the same girls that were sitting right here.