Girl in a Box

by Sujata Massey

  “So, you’re thinking of going for their clothes in the locker room?”

  “Too risky. I thought I could circumvent the whole problem by going for their shoes. They’ll have to leave them in the ryokan entryway. It’s just going to be a matter of knowing which shoes belong to whom—and getting a quiet moment, like bath time, to go for it.”

  “So you’re thinking of planting something in the shoes?”

  “The heel. That’s the easiest, least detectable place.”

  Michael was quiet for a moment. “I like it. The beauty of it is, they’ll keep wearing their shoes. We can pick up conversations for months—maybe even a year.”

  Suddenly I was alarmed. “The pay is great, and so is the apartment, but…I’m not going to have to spend a year working at Mitsutan, am I?”

  “Nope. If you can bug the big guys—and we actually get good stuff on tape—I can have you out of Japan within the next month. We’ll just have the listening station in your apartment moved to that of another of our colleagues in the area.”

  “I’ll be sure the listening station’s working properly,” I promised. “I won’t make a mistake like leaving the record feature off.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Michael said. “The heel bug is a brilliant idea. But now we have to figure out a good excuse for you to be in Izu, a day and a half from now.”

  A good excuse. I thought about it for most of the night, but the answer finally came when I was drinking cappuccino the next morning at Giulia’s. Unfortunately, I couldn’t call Michael right away—I had to go to work. And Friday was projected to be one of the busiest shopping days of the week; I and the other Mitsutan employees were reminded of this again during the morning lecture.

  Enobu Mitsuyama, wearing another elegant charcoal-striped suit and polished black brogues, talked about how the end of this week was very important. We would have more office lady shoppers in the time frame from five to eight o’clock in the evening, because they would be killing time in the city before going to nightclubs. This meant they would eat casual dinners in the store’s restaurants and from the counters in the food basement; many others would sample free chocolates at the Happy Valentine Chocolate Fair set up on the main floor near Accessories. And as for shopping—well, chocolate was scientifically known to stimulate blood flow and create euphoria, and a shopper in a euphoric state was more likely to stretch herself financially. Cosmetics, Young Fashion, and Accessories were the departments that were expected to double their profits this evening.

  “It is our duty to create a state of joy,” Enobu Mitsuyama boomed into his microphone as he strolled around the first floor. “We are always smiling, always available with an extra size and a kind compliment for our honored customer.”

  After we’d dispersed and gone to our workstations, I asked Mrs. Okuma about how we managed to stay so busy in the evening with the pre-nightclub business, when there were so few nightclubs in the Ginza that appealed to young people.

  “Is that so?” My boss turned from me to look at Miyo. “I’m afraid I don’t know much about nightclubs. Han-san, what do you think?”

  “Shibuya has more clubs, yes, but you can reach it on a straight subway connection. It’s not a great distance.”

  Mrs. Okuma said, “I think we’re close to many good employers, and that’s our advantage. There are some very big companies based around Ginza-dori; they have plenty of office ladies, as well as foreign workers. Which reminds me, Han-san, how are things coming along with the telephone calls to the resident international shoppers?”

  Over the last couple of days, in the rare moments when I’d been at my desk instead of out on the floor with customers, I’d watched Miyo working her way through the call list. I’d grown annoyed by the sound of her flirtatious broken English: “Mr. Johnson? This is Miyo Han calling from Mitsutan K Team. It has been a long time. How about coming back to Mitsutan to say hello to me and buy somethings nice for yourself?”

  Now Miyo said to Mrs. Okuma, “Since yesterday I’ve called seventy customers, and several have made shopping appointments. Mr. Martinson agreed to come at noon today to look for a suit.”

  “Well done, Han-san. Shimura-san, while she’s gone you can pick up the rest of the list, starting with the English speakers. Let me explain it to you.”

  Blessedly, this list was typed in English, because so many of the customers were westerners. The only Japanese reference points were the headings: for example, “place of employment,” “number of K Team visits,” “departments of interest,” and “sales total to date.” I goggled at the amount of money some customers had spent; they were easily earning the five percent thank-you discount. Well, it wouldn’t be hard if you had the funds, and you were shown the best that Mitsutan could offer. I myself had spent $600 on clothing as I tooled around the store over my last few lunch breaks—and I had yet to receive my first Mitsutan paycheck to pay for it.

  I was glad to be in the office, going over the list, with Mrs. Okuma nearby. I had noticed the folder she was carrying around, labeled “Izu Retreat,” and I was ready to make a move toward it the first chance I could get. But in the meantime, I went through the list, noticing the starred names that Miyo had called. Atkinson, Barrett, Chambers, Cudahy…almost all of them western, and male. There were many more female customers—but Miyo hadn’t bothered with them.

  I continued through the list, realizing that there were some names I recognized—people like Winifred Clancy, a snobbish embassy wife who might, potentially, embarrass me with questions about Hugh if she ever came in.

  I continued down the column of names and stopped at one I’d never heard before: Melanie Kravitz. I knew the name Kravitz, of course. Warren Kravitz was the banker who had raised the red flag about Mitsutan with Treasury. There were loads of Kravitzes in America, but not so many in Japan. Could this Melanie Kravitz be Warren’s wife?

  I read through Melanie Kravitz’s profile. Native language, English. Employer, Winston Brothers (husband). Departments of interest: designer women’s clothing, designer men’s, accessories, jewelry, cosmetics, traditional Japanese handicrafts. Number of shopping trips to Mitsutan: sixty-five. Amount spent: 13.5 million yen.

  This was Warren’s wife, without a doubt. But why had Warren complained to Treasury about Mitsutan if it was a place he liked enough to let his wife spend $135,000 there? I glanced down the list to see the year-to-date spending of other resident international customers. Most of the sales were between $500 and $10,000; a few were in the high five figures; but the Kravitzes were the highest.

  I felt my fingers itching to pick up the phone and call Melanie Kravitz; this was one person I’d like to take around. But common sense told me that since she was Mitsutan’s number one foreign customer, she’d probably come in spontaneously on her own. I turned a few more pages and came to a printout for client entertainment. I blinked at the sums spent: 20,000 and 30,000 yen per meal. Either Mrs. Okuma and Miyo Han had taken out plenty of customers each time at the store’s restaurants or everyone had eaten like a horse, because the prices at Mitsutan weren’t outrageous by Japanese standards. In a couple of the in-store cafés that I’d glanced into, a cup of coffee was 600 yen, a little under six dollars; cake was only 400 yen; and a sandwich and soup cost 800 yen. Of course, the fancy Chinese and Japanese restaurants on the dining floor would cost more—maybe this was where they’d taken the customers.

  A group of Chinese schoolgirls interrupted my thoughts. They were happy but frantic, with only two hours to shop before their teacher took them down the street to Kabuki-za. They had tiny budgets and huge shopping lists. To my surprise, Mrs. Okuma smilingly offered to take them; but then I remembered that one of her languages was Mandarin. It was amazing to see how smoothly she switched to it. Over her shoulder she said to me, “Don’t leave till I come back.”

  Excellent. I waited till she was out of sight, then slid the folder on the Izu retreat in front of me. I didn’t bother trying to decode the kanji on most of the pap
ers, which looked like reports of sales totals. I wanted directions to the hot spring, the agenda for the meeting, and the six pages of graphs and flowcharts relating to the K Team’s progress.

  Quickly, I photocopied the papers with the directions and agenda, putting the originals back. Then I removed two of the flowchart pages; these would be the “lost” pages. I slid the two pages along with the photocopies of directions into a plastic page protector that I’d tucked into my handbag the night before.

  Mrs. Okuma’s folder was back where she’d left it just as Miyo Han swung back into the office with a self-satisfied smile.

  “Are you finished with Mr. Martinson?” I was determined to keep my normal demeanor, no matter how much she tried to rattle me.

  “Yes,” she answered shortly.

  “But you didn’t bring him back here, for the tax rebate?”

  “Mr. Martinson doesn’t qualify for a tax rebate, because he’s a resident alien.” Miyo looked at me as if I were the biggest idiot on earth.

  “Thanks for reminding me. So I guess all the people in this book can’t get a rebate?” I gestured toward the K Team’s registry book.

  “No, but some of them get discounts, because of the credit card. That’s what we always tell them. So, who did you call?”

  I hesitated to reply. I’d had just five minutes to myself, and I’d been too busy with covert activity to get to the phone calls.

  “Who did you call?” Miyo demanded.

  I admitted, “I wasn’t sure where I should start, so I wanted to ask you for advice. I’d like to know about the personality of some of these people first.”

  “Don’t waste time on that!” Miyo said sharply. “Customers will be coming in all day, and with Okuma-san so—distracted—over her conference, we have very little time. You’ll be busy all day, and I’ll have to deal with making more calls on Saturday when you’re not working. I am shocked that in all the time I was gone, you have nothing to show for yourself.”

  Oh, but I did.

  I smiled at my rival, then went back to the K Team’s book.

  16

  Saturday morning, I awoke a few minutes before my five o’clock alarm went off.

  I was so excited that I actually jumped out of bed. This was the day I was going to breeze down to Izu and fix everything. The night before, I’d stayed up watching television and sewing new pockets into the interior of my brand-new white crinkle-cotton Issey Miyake jacket. Today I was wearing that jacket with stone-colored Agnes B cargo pants I’d bought because of the multiple small pockets, which would handily hide the various pieces of equipment used in bugging shoes. I’d practiced last night, on my own shoes, just to refresh myself, and made a trip to the coffeehouse. Sure enough, when I’d come home and checked the recording running on the transmitter, I’d heard myself, and the clerk who drew my latte, in exquisite detail. I could do it. The only question was whether I’d get the chance.

  As I waited in line at the JR booth to buy my ticket to Atami, I mulled over the first challenge: explaining my presence. If I told Mrs. Okuma that I’d received a morning phone call from Miyo mentioning a paper found lying on the floor, Miyo would never support my story. So I came up with something a little shakier: I’d say that at the last minute, the night before, I had found Okuma-san’s missing pages and, not knowing how to contact the boss at her home, decided to travel straight to Izu.

  No employee would do such a thing, Michael had opined when I’d described my plan to him. A Japanese employee might, I said, reminding him that duty was everything.

  The greatest challenge was timing. The retreat activities were to start at noon, which meant that people would be traveling in the morning. To be on the safe side, I took a train from Tokyo Station at six in the morning; it would put me into Izu’s biggest transfer city, Atami, at around seven o’clock. With luck, I’d be at the ryokan by eight, and things would still be quiet enough there for me to discreetly locate a surveillance position. If I had visual access to the ryokan’s entry, the genkan, I’d see the Mitsuyama men arrive. In the genkan, they’d exchange their shoes for slippers. When the time was right, I’d slip in, remove the shoes for a few minutes to my hiding place, then replace them.

  “Theoretically, the missing papers are your insurance policy,” Michael had said during our last phone conversation. “You shouldn’t try to make yourself known to anyone in the party. Just bring up the papers in a worst-case scenario, if one of the managers spots you.”

  “But Mrs. Okuma needs the document I have. How can she give a good presentation without it? She’s the only female employee there, I’d hate to see her fail in front of all the guys—”

  Michael sighed heavily. “If only you were as loyal to me as you are to this boss of two whole days.”

  “Three—and don’t be ridiculous.” But it was true; I was starting to feel that I really was part of a team at Mitsutan. I felt a great deal of sympathy for Mrs. Okuma, and I admired the store’s general manager, Enobu Mitsuyama, for his ambitious vision and personable style. Mr. Fujiwara, the customer service czar, had been very nice to me; and Mrs. Ono, the alterations director, was turning out to be a surprising ally. It was only Miyo Han who remained a thorn, but I wasn’t going to take that personally. All of the K Team interpreters before me had quit, no doubt because of Miyo’s fierce sense of competition.

  As I boarded the train, carefully putting the ticket away in one of my many pockets, I thought about how I could help Mrs. Okuma yet satisfy Michael’s desire for secrecy. If all went well with bugging the shoes and I was able to escape without detection by lunchtime, I’d simply fax Mrs. Okuma the missing pages from a convenience store, or a similar place back in Tokyo, and hope that it wouldn’t be too late.

  The bullet train tracks ran right past Fujisan—a mountain that, for once, was free of cloud cover. I took this as an auspicious sign, though the bright weather would make my own attempt at concealment, in the garden at Okamura Onsen, a little harder. I stretched back against the soft chair, wishing it were one o’clock and my mission were accomplished. But it was six forty-five in the morning. I had plenty of time to kill.

  The train raced close to the rocky black coast, where seagulls circled over the choppy waves. A few fishermen were setting up on the beach, getting ready for a day’s work. As we neared towns, the smoke from outdoor baths rose skyward. Normally, these scenes of relaxed country life would have charmed me, but I was too tightly wound to enjoy them.

  I disembarked at Atami Station. Here, the local women wore unpretentious warm down coats and sensible boots; but still, each held a Louis Vuitton handbag. I had brought a white nylon Coach backpack, wanting to look like a young vacationer, but because it came from Mitsutan’s accessories department, it cost fifty percent more than it would have in the United States. I wished I’d thought ahead and bought one in Washington, but I hadn’t known, until I’d reached Tokyo, that this was the backpack of the moment: a must-have, if I wanted to appear like a fashionable twenty-three-year-old.

  A shuttle bus to the ryokan was available, but to arrive so visibly would wreck my strategy. I drank a can of hot Georgia coffee and studied the map at the station exit, which showed a Prince Hotel half a mile up the river from Okamura Onsen. I’d decided that the Prince was large and anonymous enough to make it the perfect starting point for my expedition.

  The taxi ride to the hotel took me away from a city loaded with touristy kissaten coffee shops and pachinko parlors and deep into the country, through tiny hamlets of tile-roofed houses and wild groves of mikan trees, the delicious, uniquely Japanese tangerines that were famous in Izu. The town of Okamura, with its small stucco houses, had signs everywhere pointing to various spas and hotels. Not many people were about at this hour—I saw only locals cycling or walking to their jobs. At the hotel, a boxy modern spa complex, I paid the 2,000-yen cab fare and stepped inside the hotel to visit the women’s restroom. I went out by another entrance, being careful to load my backpack with two liters of water and
a bag of salty-sweet sembei rice crackers, remembering something Michael had once said about being prepared for surveillance that could go on for hours without breaks for food or drink.

  I strolled by the river, which had an English-language sign reading, Keep a River Clean. Don’t Throw the Trash. Little need to worry, I thought, because there was zero evidence of garbage or any other detritus in the clear stream flowing over black rocks. A fisherman and his son waded through the shallow river, scooping for fish with nets, oblivious of my presence as I continued along a dusty path, river on one side and small vegetable plots planted with cabbage and daikon on the other. A farmer had set out bags of tangerines on a rock, with a little can next to them for payment. I dropped 300 into the can and added three tangerines to my backpack.

  A slight bend, and then I saw Okamura Onsen, a stately group of cream-colored stucco villas with beautifully tiled roofs that reminded me of temples. Around them were the gardens full of blooming plum trees and aged storehouse buildings.

  When Michael and I had been looking at the ryokan website, I’d learned more about it. Okamura Onsen’s oldest buildings, the great hall and storage buildings, had been the property of an Edo silk merchant called Nario Okamura. In the 1960s, the Okamura family had sold the land and antiquated buildings to a hotel group who had carefully restored it. With only twenty-five guest rooms, it was a very small inn, not the kind of place you’d expect for a typical corporate retreat, unless the retreat was meant to be very intimate and inner-circle.

  From Mrs. Okuma’s paperwork, I’d learned about the other Mitsutan executives who’d been invited to this retreat. At the top of the list were Masahiro and Enobu Mitsuyama; Mr. Fujiwara, director of customer service; Mr. Yoshino; and the senior manager of the two floors devoted to Young Fashion, Mr. Kitagawa. I knew everyone except Mr. Kitagawa, though I’d seen him moving through Young Fashion, notebook in one hand and Palm Pilot in the other, taking notes. He was a stylish man, with hair long enough to touch the back of his collar, who wore really good suits—Jil Sander and Giorgio Armani, straight from the rack of what was currently selling in Men’s Designer Wear.