“Yes.”
“I understand,” the manager said, averting his eyes from Michiko’s stare. The manager told the uniformed clerk, who nodded uncomfortably, following orders, how to fill in the form. Michiko watched her closely.
“When will the automatic transfer be complete?” Michiko asked.
“It will take three working days.”
“Can that be expedited?”
“I am very sorry, but the banks in Switzerland require a day to process and a day to send, plus there is a time difference and we need to get the bank manager’s approval.”
Michiko stared at the woman.
The clerk cleared her throat. “We will have an online system introduced in the fall.”
“I won’t be here then. That’s why I’m doing this now,” Michiko said.
“Yes, I’m sorry. I understand,” the clerk bowed her head again.
Michiko tucked the receipts carefully into her black leather purse, zipped it tight and hoisted it onto her shoulder. Her footfalls echoed against the marble walls as she walked out to the shady boulevard.
Outside, Michiko followed her reflection in the large windows of the elegant shops, before refocusing her eyes to study the interiors of each. Inside one shop, the glass shelves, well-placed mirrors, and sparse racks made the items on sale appear small works of art in themselves.
At Mizuho Bank, Michiko followed the same procedure as at Tokyo-Mitsubishi-UFJ Bank. The clerks there said nothing about foreign bank transfers being a problem. From there, she set up regular international money transfers to be picked up at European locations every month.
At the Postal Savings Bank, she filled in several forms to finalize regular automatic transfers to the address of a factory in Kawasaki, and to a fruit and vegetable stand, also in Kawasaki. From the one new account she had, she entered the password from her notebook and then automatically transferred all the money to her old Postal Savings account.
The rest of that morning’s errands could be finished in a few hours.
The other things she had to do before she left would take time, effort and attention.
Chapter 7
Michiko’s black sunglasses let her check out or ignore whatever she liked as she walked toward the travel agency. Arrangements could be made online, but she preferred going in person. She preferred leaving a human—not a digital—trail, if she had to leave one at all.
Her regular agent—a young man with spiky, dyed, and oiled hair—hopped up as soon as he saw Michiko climbing the stairs. He straightened his wide white collar and tight-fitting suit and waved her toward a partitioned area curtained by potted bamboo.
“Suzuki san, good morning. I have everything ready for you, and I am sure this time, it will be to your complete satisfaction.”
She pulled her sunglasses on top of her head and stared into his eyes. The young man looked down and ran his hand over his head. He managed a practiced smile and signaled for tea before excusing himself.
***
The first time Michiko went overseas, she was seventeen. She was fascinated with the tickets, her first passport, the airplane and the airport. Everyone was going somewhere. The airplane felt like an amusement park ride that was slow at first, with only the clouds outside, but opened into an exotic wonderland.
She had moved out of her father’s place and was living with Reiko, her best friend since childhood, in a small, shared apartment near Yoyogi-Uehara. It was close enough to where they worked to get a taxi home, far enough to be affordable. One of the men from one of the clubs invited her. He would pay for the whole trip.
Reiko was more excited than Michiko about the trip, and the man, but mostly the trip. Reiko was never jealous of Michiko. They were too close and Michiko was always ahead. Reiko fluffed around picking out the outfits for Michiko to wear at the beach resort in Hawaii, a different bikini for each day, a different outfit for each dinner.
“Men notice, even if they don’t say anything,” Reiko lectured her, though she only read about these things in magazines. She wanted to be sure that Michiko would not embarrass herself with a more experienced man on her first trip outside Japan.
While he played golf all morning, Michiko went swimming and wandered the resort shops. After lunch, they had sex all afternoon, and then he went to another meeting over cocktails. She wasn’t sure where, but didn’t really care. They ate late over candlelight, looking out at the Pacific Ocean. Michiko had never seen such large portions of grilled fish or such large glasses for cocktails.
By the end of the week, Michiko longed to go back to Tokyo. The fishing boat tour, volcano trip and waterfall hike were all very beautiful, but there was too much nature. She was relieved, after they went their separate ways at Narita, to see Tokyo’s skyline at night. Later, after she started traveling to European cities, she never went to another resort.
The travel agent returned, followed by a receptionist carrying two small glasses of cold tea. She set each glass gingerly on the table and bowed in retreat. The travel agent opened up the folder with the travel arrangements.
“I have a flight for two on the 20th and another single seat on the 22nd, business class, as you requested,” he said, handing over the itinerary and tickets.
Michiko looked at the thick wad of tickets.
“Of course, we will not be able to secure a refund for you if you don’t use them. It’s only two days from now and…”
“I’m not concerned about refunds. I’m concerned about options,” she replied. “I’m not sure I can get everything done in time for the 20th. You understand?”
“Yes, yes, of course, I understand. Many of our clients have tight schedules that make it necessary to set up multiple bookings.”
“My schedule is tight and uncertain.” Michiko reached to pick up the tickets but the young man politely slipped them into an envelope with the Fly A Way agency logo. He folded and smoothed it neatly before handing it to her.
She stood, pulling down her sunglasses and he followed her to the door where he bowed again as her broad shoulders and long hair disappeared down the industrial-chic stairs.
“No trouble this time,” he said to the receptionist, and went back to work.
***
From Aoyama Boulevard, Michiko walked past the Omotesando crossing and turned down a narrow side street between two rows of buildings and into an inner courtyard with two floors of small, neat shops. She walked up the small staircase to a perfume boutique.
A wave of aromas wafted out as the saleswoman purred a soft, “Irrashaimase! Welcome!”
Michiko dug in her purse for a bubble-wrapped package in a clear plastic bag. She handed it to the saleswoman, who took it gently with a bow.
“Did you want the Lotus Royale or Lotus Supreme?”
“I want the same one as last time.”
“That maker has divided the Lotus into several types now, but the Supreme is closest to the one before.”
“I want the one before exactly as it was.”
The saleswoman stopped and said, “I will check in the back to see if there is another bottle left. If not, I can ask them to special mix it for you?”
Michiko frowned and the salesclerk hurried to the back.
Michiko checked out a counter of green-tinted hand-blown glass with sample strips. She sniffed them until she found one she liked and rubbed a drop on her wrist, inhaling after it warmed up on her skin.
The saleswoman came back out smiling.
“One last bottle of the same lotus scent. I am so sorry they changed it. I liked the old one, too.”
“You wore the old one also?” Michiko asked.
“Oh no, I can’t afford it. I liked the smell when I tried it out for customers here in the shop,” the saleswoman said quickly. “Can I fill the bottle for you the same as before?”
“Yes,” Michiko said, nodding at the package. The woman took the bubble wrap off of the diamond glass perfume bottle and held it up in her hands.
“Was this you
r mother’s?” the saleswoman asked, running her finger over a chip in the glass.
“Why do you ask that?”
“I’m sorry. It’s none of my business. It’s just that a bottle of this quality seems special.”
“It is special,” she answered.
“I’ll take it to the back and fill it up for you.”
***
When she first ran away from home as a girl, Michiko jammed as many of her mother’s things in a bag as would fit: the perfume bottle and her mother’s blouses, her school books and the leftover bag of candies her mother had sucked on as the cancer ate her up.
That first time, she hid in an abandoned factory until the police found her. She wrapped herself up, shivering in the dark and thought about what she could have done to stop her mother from dying. She felt it was her fault, for not being a good girl.
The policeman, who found her late in the evening, didn’t scold her but sat with her on the ratty old tatami mat on which Michiko had hunkered down.
“Everyone is worried about you,” he said to her in a soft voice.
She nodded, choking back tears.
“I knew your mother, too. She was quite a woman,” he said. He’d worked in the same district for years. “It’s so sad she had to go so soon.”
Michiko sniffled.
“Let’s get some ice cream on the way home. What do you think?”
Michiko nodded yes, and the policeman helped her up.
At the gates of her father’s small factory, all the workers—twenty sweaty machinists and metalworkers—let out a cheer when the policeman walked into view, holding Michiko in one arm and carrying the bag with the other.
The men, seeing her pretty little face safe at home, lit cigarettes and laughed with relief. The boss’s little girl was all right. They had stopped work that afternoon to scour the neighborhood for her in their coveralls and towel-wrapped heads. They would have to pull an all-nighter to finish the large order by the next day’s deadline.
Michiko dropped the last of her ice cream in the gravel-covered parking lot and apologized with a cute bow for worrying them. She knew about work even at that age. The workers lifted her onto their shoulders and danced her around until she giggled. When her father returned, he sighed and lit a cigarette. They looked each other in the eyes before her father apologized to the policeman and took her bag and passed it to Michiko.
Then, she allowed herself to be led upstairs by one of the older workers, Uncle Ono. He was almost too old to work, and had a bad back from lifting too much over the years. From then on, he would look after Michiko when her father was too busy, which was almost always.
Tired and hungry from her ordeal, and still cold, Michiko’s bag slipped from her grasp and fell down the metal stairs, chipping her mother’s perfume bottle inside. Hearing the crack, Michiko zipped open the top and pulled the bottle out in one hand and a chipped-off piece in the other, trying to fit them back together like pieces of a puzzle.
Tears came to her eyes as she squeezed one hand around the chip and the other around the bottle. The sharp chipped glass cut into her small fingers and blood filled her little palm as she pounded up the stairs to the rooms where they lived above her father’s factory.
***
“Here you are. Just as you like it. And I have a new perfume I think you might like.” The saleswoman’s cheerful voice startled Michiko out of her reverie. The saleswoman wiped down the beaded glass with a soft cloth and wrapped the bottle in bubble wrap. “It’s a new scent perfect for your classic looks.”
“Classic looks?”
“I mean your face is lovely in a traditional Japanese way. Do you ever wear kimono?”
“Never.”
The saleswoman pulled out a sampler bottle. “The base aroma is Chinese star jasmine, but grown in Japan. To me, it smells of nectarines and peaches, with a hint of jasmine. It’s made only when the crop is right, sometimes only once every three years.”
Michiko took off her sunglasses and brushed her thick hair to the side. The saleswoman leaned forward to place a drop behind Michiko’s ear and motioned for her to rub it in just a little.
“Just the right accent for your looks!”
“What’s it called?” Michiko asked.
“‘La Petite Mort’, made by a French company but very Japanese.”
“Interesting name,” Michiko smiled. “But the scent is a little strong for a funeral.”
“Are you going now?” The saleswoman asked, a little startled.
“Yes.”
The saleswoman reached under the counter for a damp hand towel wrapped in plastic. “This will take the scent away.”
Michiko pulled the plastic off, unfolded it and wiped the scent away, then cleaned her hands.
The saleswoman walked her to the door.
Chapter 8
Stepping under the wooden torii archway of the shrine where Steve Deveaux’s funeral was being held, Hiroshi frightened a few crows waiting for leftovers near the gate. They flapped up into the gray sky, squawks lingering in the damp air. His feet crunched on the wet gravel as he walked to the stone font to rinse his hands and shake them dry before entering the grounds.
He looked up at the temple design soaring skyward. The roof was made of gray slate and all the walls, beams and woodwork were painted black. Lights for the funeral cast glimmers along the beams and pillars, which were wet from the evening drizzle.
A pop song spilled out from the main hall, the bouncing bass line and bright vocals sounding phony in the ancient shrine, sadder than silence would have been.
Hiroshi noticed a woman sitting alone on a far-off bench along a walkway whose narrow roof encircled the main courtyard. It was hard to make out her face as the drizzle grew heavier and droplets fell from the dingy canopies and slate roofs.
Chairs were set outside under faded white canopies, under which a few people sat on folding chairs, their legs pulled in to stay dry. Dozens more were seated reverently inside the main hall on zabuton floor cushions facing the altar. Hiroshi could see them through the wood-framed, rippled-glass front doors of the hall.
It had been a long time since he’d attended a funeral. When he lived in Boston, he’d missed the funeral of his grandmother and of a college friend. His parents’ funerals had been long before, when he was too young to do anything but follow directions. A chain of funeral memories seemed to encircle him and weigh him down as he sat on a folded chair under the canopy.
He pulled out the photos Takamatsu had sent him of Deveaux’s former colleagues at Bentley Associates: an older woman in a well-tailored business suit, prim with a passport smile, and another of a young man who was model-handsome, much younger than the deceased, with a perfect smile only American dental work could produce.
On the back of the photos were their names: Barbara Harris-Mitford, Mark Whitlock. The wind blew drops of rain onto them, which Hiroshi wiped off, and tucked back in his pocket, wondering why Takamatsu had sent printed photos rather than digital, but Takamatsu had always been old-school. Hiroshi could only see the backs of heads at a distance through the rain, so it didn’t much matter.
Inside, a man in a business suit was giving a speech in Japanese. That was followed by a eulogy in English. Hiroshi could not hear either very well from outside the glass, as the patter of rain on the plastic canopy grew louder. After the speeches, another pop song started and those inside the hall began getting up. Someone rose to help a woman from the front row, weak from grief, stand and walk toward Steve Deveaux’s urn. A line formed behind her.
Other people, a little confused by the protocol, stood up and walked toward the urn next to the dead man’s photo, paying their respects. Each lit incense and placed it in front of the altar, the urn and the photo. Each in turn walked out of the temple hall and huddled under the closest canopy, chatting in small circles and glancing at the rain.
Hiroshi wondered about the next gathering, where everyone could eat and drink and console each other, but no on
e made a move. Hiroshi could see no other place for coming together.
As people talked, the business types in black suits and black ties fiddled absently with the umbrellas in their hands. Hiroshi repositioned himself to confirm the two colleagues were present, but he couldn’t tell from that distance.
He remembered the solitary woman on the other side of the courtyard, turning around to be sure she was still there. She sat motionless on a bench under the roof of the walkway, staring at the ceremony without moving. Three monks stood under the roof of the wooden walkway near the main shrine, watching the funeral from afar.
The wind blew fine drops of rain under the canopy and people started to put up their umbrellas and hurry their conversations. What was Hiroshi going to tell Takamatsu? He felt as useless as the closed-circuit camera that captured nothing at the train station.
He knew he should talk to the woman and to Steve’s colleagues, but instead, he put up his umbrella and walked to the racks of ema. He brushed the wooden pentangles with his hand. They swayed, pendulums of action and reaction. His eyes glided over the anxieties, hopes and desires inked on the soft wood, a few of the outer ones already blurring where the rain hit them.
***
When Linda first arrived to live with him in Japan, she loved going to temples and shrines. She had asked him question after question about what everything meant, but he could hardly answer. He’d never gone to shrines or temples, even at New Year. He appreciated their beauty, and they were a great places to visit together, mainly because she was so interested. Little by little, he started reading about shrines just to answer her questions.
Once she discovered all the things to do at each place—buy omamori protective amulets, get an omikuji fortune told, have a sutra written, or put prayers on the ema—she wanted to do it all. She had quite a collection of omamori at home and left ema at each of the temples they visited. She wrote some alone, too, hiding them on the back racks without letting him see.
The Last Train (Detective Hiroshi Series Book 1) Page 4