Girl in a Box

by Sujata Massey

“So you’re bugging me?” I asked, feeling the words suddenly stick in my throat.

  “You are agreeing to be recorded. I want to have a record of everything you’re going to say, because you said it was a dangerous situation?” He cut off his own question with a yawn, reminding me that it was six in the morning in Washington. “But don’t let me put words in your mouth. Tell me what’s going on.”

  I told him how the receiver had crackled to life with the voice of Masahiro Matsuyama; how it meant that the boss had actually left the retreat and had come back to Tokyo to phone a threat to someone.

  “I shouldn’t have heard it,” I said at the end. “If he needed to talk to someone on the phone, surely he would have done it from the retreat and I wouldn’t have heard anything. But for some reason, he came back.”

  “Maybe he couldn’t because the inn was in a dead zone. There are mountains around it—I remember seeing that on the ryokan website.”

  “Yes, that’s right. But I can’t understand why he went so far back to make the call.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Michael said. “We have relay stations in different areas capable of picking up signals that would then transmit back to your post. He could have been near a station that one of our guys set up in the past.”

  “And where’s that relay station, exactly? On the Izu Peninsula or more toward Yokohama—”

  “Let’s not get into specifics now. Just tell me who you think he was talking with.”

  I flushed, thinking that of course Michael wouldn’t divulge the location of listening stations, even on a telephone line that was secure. “I have no idea. But the words—the words were so severe, about erasing someone—”

  “Can you repeat what you remember hearing in Japanese, verbatim?”

  “Sure, but, Brooks, I don’t know that you’ll understand it—”

  “Someone else will.”

  Mrs. Taki would. Now I understood why he wanted a tape of my account. I told him, as closely as I could remember, what Mr. Mitsuyama had said about asking for a report, then criticizing the person on the other end for not using power well enough, and then finally, making the threat of erasure.

  At the end of everything, Michael said, “Thank you. You’ve done just what I hoped you would.”

  “The thing is—I don’t want to set it up like he’s a criminal if he’s not. There’s another context to erasure that I’m sure Mrs. Taki will mention to you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, an employee could say to another, ‘If I don’t get that report finished today and on the boss’s desk, I’ll be erased.’ It can mean that you’re just in trouble.”

  “Passive condition,” Michael said. “You just spoke now about being erased, rather than erasing.”

  I nodded, then remembered he couldn’t see me. We’d been talking so intently that I could almost picture him stalking around the office with the phone to his ear. But of course, he was at home. “I understand what you’re saying. I’ve mainly heard the verb used in a passive condition.”

  “Well, e-mail me a file with the transcript. And why don’t you also send all the recordings that you have to date.”

  I hadn’t done it yet, but I knew what I was supposed to do. I was supposed to take the microchip out of the listening station, slip it into my cell phone, and save it as an electronic file. Then I was supposed to send the file, from my laptop computer, to OCI.

  It was a little bit cumbersome, but it was a secure way to get the data back to the United States. I thought for a minute about what it would be like to go back to Virginia myself—how theoretically, now that I’d planted the bugs, I should be heading home soon.

  But I didn’t know when the other shoe was going to drop—and that was enough to make me not want to leave.

  20

  “Where were you? What happened? I was worried!” Mrs. Okuma descended on me upon my arrival in the K Team’s office Monday morning, and immediately, half my worries were gone. She was alive and well, and now I owed her an explanation of why I’d vanished from Okamura Onsen.

  “I was so embarrassed,” I said, and went on to explain that in the dressing room, I’d been questioned about my status by a staff member and told I was not allowed to be in the bath because I wasn’t a registered guest—a rule I’d gleaned from the website. “I wish I could have told you, but I was so ashamed of my behavior that I left immediately. I’m so sorry for any inconvenience I caused.”

  “But there is no need to apologize. You did a great service to bring the information I’d forgotten—I’m sorry I wasn’t there to smooth things for you with the inn staff. The fact is, I was a little late arriving to the bath because the store’s general manager noticed me and wanted to discuss a business matter.”

  “Mitsuyama Enobu-san? The kencho?”

  As she nodded, my stomach sank. Could she have been the person the senior Mitsuyama had been threatening? It had seemed as if Enobu was supposed to be a go-between for his father and someone else.

  Miyo Han was listening with a half frown on her face. She was too smart to say anything while Mrs. Okuma was present. But when our boss went off with a Chinese delegation, the cat unsheathed her claws.

  “So, you went to the ryokan where they were meeting? You actually crashed the meeting?”

  “Yes,” I said mildly, “I had to take papers that Okuma-san forgot.”

  “And she asked you to go there? On your day off?”

  “No, it was my idea. I just wanted to help—”

  “Sesame seed grinder!” Miyo slung the Japanese equivalent of brownnose at me.

  “You would have done the same if you found the papers, I’m sure.” I tried to keep my voice mild and even. “And how was your free Sunday?”

  “Super,” she said between her perfectly straight, white, gritted teeth. “Went out with my boyfriend shopping all day long.”

  “I didn’t know you had a boyfriend,” I said, thinking about her propensity to troll for gaijin men on the customer list. This reminded me that I needed to know more about Melanie Kravitz; to figure out why, if she spent so much at Mitsutan, her husband had gone to the effort of creating a lot of trouble for the store. Surely there were easier ways to curtail a spendthrift spouse than by shutting down the operation.

  “Yeah, he’s English. Investment banker,” Miyo added.

  He had to be a moneyman, if he took someone like Miyo for an all-day shopping trip. Seizing an opportunity, I said, “Lucky you. Speaking of banking, I notice quite a few of the people on the call list have connections to banks. I was thinking about calling an American woman customer, Melanie Kravitz, whose husband, the list says, works at Winston Brothers. Or do you or Mrs. Okuma prefer to work with her?”

  She looked at me, that familiar look of suspicion mixed with distaste. “You want to work with her because you noticed she spent the most.”

  I exhaled, feeling relieved that she hadn’t noticed the serious gaffe. “It couldn’t be bad to work with someone who likes to spend, could it? But if she’s your favorite client, I’ll defer to you, of course.”

  Miyo breathed deeply. “Often it’s the two of them together, and there’s nothing I can bear less than a shopping couple. I mean, the guys tell their wives they look bad in their clothes, and the women wind up saying things like the guy’s suit costs too much money. Couples should shop separately, whenever possible. No matter how much they spend, ultimately—it’s just a headache for me.”

  “So it’s okay if I make the call?” I held my breath.

  “There’s no need. She comes in every two weeks, at least.”

  In that case, I’d wait.

  It was a busy morning. A group of Ecuadorian embassy wives kept me in the food basement most of the morning. I cringed inwardly when I saw Masahiro Mitsuyama making his rounds, this time tasting an apple tart and making clearly audible comments about pastry that was too crumbly. When Masahiro Mitsuyama glanced in my direction, he frowned. He recognized me, I thought in a p
anic, and attempted to hide myself behind the largest of the Ecuadorians, but he didn’t push the issue—he just moved on, an underling scurrying behind him carrying various wrapped boxes of food.

  I wondered where Mr. Mitsuyama ate his lunch. Was it with the other executives, in some special room? Or by himself, in the chauffeured car that must have taken him away from the retreat in the dead of night? I hadn’t seen Enobu, his son, that day, I realized suddenly. And that was strange. Enobu was always at the morning pep talk, whether he spoke or not.

  After the Ecuadorians had learned the name of each of the eighty-nine pastries for sale in the basement, I wearily made my way back to the K Team’s office. I could have used some food myself, but store protocol was not to shop alongside your customers.

  As I reached the K Team counter, Mrs. Okuma was issuing a cash rebate for an Englishwoman. She didn’t acknowledge me until the customer was gone.

  “Before you do anything, you need to return some phone calls.”

  “I’m so sorry! I never told anyone they could make—a personal call to me here.”

  “The calls aren’t from the outside. The first one was Mr. Yoshino of Accessories, and he said it was urgent. And there was a second call from Mr. Kitagawa, from Young Fashion.” She looked searchingly at me, and I dropped my gaze. I couldn’t possibly confess what had happened.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, tucking the paper into my pocket.

  “Don’t delay! When you get requests from other departments, you must answer them immediately. You know how to dial numbers in the annex, don’t you? You may use the desk phone.”

  With a growing sense of dread, I punched in the numbers for Mr. Yoshino’s extension. The call, I knew, was being recorded on the equipment at my apartment, so I would have to explain the situation to Michael and Mrs. Taki.

  “Excuse me for disturbing you, Bucho-san, it’s Shimura Rei,” I said, using the honorific title reserved for upper managers. Mr. Yoshino, Mr. Kitagawa, and Mr. Fujiwara were all called bucho.

  “Ah, Shimura-san, let’s see, ah, thank you for returning the call. You must be very busy.” Mr. Yoshino was mumbling, and I realized that he was as nervous as I. “The fact of the matter is, I have a matter to discuss with you.”

  “Oh?”

  “Well, why don’t you come see me about it? How about this evening? Or if that’s not good, lunch?”

  Suddenly, I got it. I was not in trouble; I was being asked out. And for a single Japanese woman to date a married man was, unfortunately, a growing trend. There was even a slang word for this type of infidelity—furin.

  “I’m so sorry, but my responsibilities today are all-consuming.”

  “Tomorrow, then?”

  “My day off, and I won’t even be in town.”

  “Ah, but what about the evening? I know a wonderful little restaurant in Shinjuku, a very quiet, peaceful place.”

  I swallowed hard. I couldn’t slam down the phone or say anything rash, not with Mrs. Okuma sitting next to me. And Mr. Yoshino had the goods on me, which meant he could get me fired if he wanted. “Perhaps later in the week is more convenient. Would that suit Shacho-san?”

  He was quiet for a moment, then said, “How about Thursday?”

  After I hung up, I noticed that Mrs. Okuma was looking at me curiously. “What did Yoshino-san ask of you?”

  “It seems like he wants to talk to me about encouraging my customers to buy a new accessories line. He thought I should stop by during my break hour, but I know we always get a lot of customers on Mondays.”

  Mrs. Okuma looked at me thoughtfully. “You are a hard worker.”

  I blushed. If only she knew that my sole achievement, in his eyes, was walking naked.

  “Yes,” Mrs. Okuma continued. “In your short time here, I have noticed all the extra effort you have made. I have no choice in the employees I get for my department…but this time, I feel quite lucky.”

  Thank God Mrs. Okuma wasn’t around when I returned the second call, to Mr. Kitagawa. This time I was tougher—because Mrs. Okuma wasn’t listening, and because I suspected that he’d been the one who’d touched my thigh.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t think my boyfriend would be comfortable with my meeting you outside the office,” I said in response to his invitation for a drink that evening at a wine bar located near Hiroo Station.

  “Surely, if a senior executive just wished to…talk over your employment situation with you…he wouldn’t object.”

  What was he suggesting, blackmail? Would he ruin everything, when I was so close to getting the last few bugs planted?

  “I can meet you, but it can’t be until later on in the week.” I didn’t want Mr. Yoshino to catch wind that I’d gone out with Mr. Fujiwara during a time I’d said I was busy.

  I hung up, with the date set for Wednesday, wondering which evening was going to be worse. If only there was a way I could channel back the power I’d felt when I’d left the rotenburo bath and use the situation to my advantage.

  Mrs. Okuma was back. “What did Mr. Kitagawa want?”

  I thought quickly because, out of the corner of my eye, I saw that Miyo was heading into the office, purse in hand. She’d come back from lunch. “The fact is,” I improvised, “it turned out he’d actually spotted me at the retreat on Saturday, and he wanted to know why I was there.”

  “Ah so, desu ka.” Mrs. Okuma’s face was grave. “And did you tell him about how you’d traveled so far, at your own expense, because I forgot a document?”

  “Not exactly. I did say I was there helping you, but I made it seem like a planned thing, not a crisis.”

  “How thoughtful of you,” Mrs. Okuma said. “You have a good head, neh?”

  “Rather a lot of strange coincidences,” Miyo said when Mrs. Okuma had picked up the telephone and was deep in conversation with a client. “And a lot of sesame seeds ground, as well.”

  I looked straight at Miyo and said, “Well, the fact is, I like to cook.”

  I was busy all day, but not too busy to notice, by day’s end, the new message sitting squarely in the center of my desk, written in neat kanji by Miyo, who, Mrs. Okuma said, was out on a run around the store with an energy trader from Houston.

  Mr. Fujiwara had called and wanted to hear back from me, as soon as possible.

  “Oh. I’m sorry I missed that call,” I said to Mrs. Okuma, who was looking at me curiously.

  “What do you think it’s about? I mean, for so many of them to call you today.”

  “I’m sure it’s the same thing the others wanted,” I said, before realizing my mistake. I’d made up separate lies for Kitagawa and Yoshino; I would have to remember to keep those stories straight. “Actually, I have no idea. Is it common for store managers to check up on K Team members like this? If so, our department must be awfully valuable—I’ll really do my best to make everyone happy—”

  “Fujiwara-san usually communicates his orders through me.” Mrs. Okuma looked at me thoughtfully. “This certainly is a policy shift, for executives so high to work with a K Team clerk.”

  Now her approval of me was turning to suspicion. Damn those men for calling me on the K Team phone! I’d have expected them to be more discreet, because that was how Japanese men hoping to engage in furin were said to operate, at least if they wanted their liaisons to be successful.

  “I’ll make the calls back to them on my lunch hour, I think. I don’t want to take time away from my work,” I said piously.

  “But you never had lunch. And it’s almost four.” Mrs. Okuma still kept her eyes on me. “You should have reminded me.”

  I took my lunch then, without calling anyone. I went to the annex and tucked myself into a corner table, with a limp iceberg, corn, and cucumber salad in front of me and a can of hot green tea at my side. Smoke from a table nearby drifted over, surrounding me in a stinky fog that exacerbated my misery.

  I left the store at seven without returning Mr. Fujiwara’s phone call. I told Mrs. Okuma I’d do it on my way
home. The truth was that I was sick of answering to male bosses—at this point, I didn’t even want to call Michael.

  I had to call him, though. He was going to know about the inappropriate interest of the Mitsutan executives as soon as he heard the recordings of the bugged K Team phone. It was my duty to give him advance warning about the trouble I’d inadvertently created for myself, although I couldn’t imagine what he could suggest I do to save myself.

  No, I thought, he wouldn’t tell me to save myself. He didn’t think of me as a girl in a box who needed protection from wolfish older men; he thought of me simply as an agent.

  I was no longer in the store, so I didn’t have to worry about camouflaging my feelings. I boarded the subway slowly, despite the pushing crowd around me. I didn’t care; I had finally given in to my painful pinched toes, and the even more painful realization that the first men I’d be dating, after Hugh, were not of my choosing at all.

  21

  Tuesday morning—my first genuinely free day since starting at Mitsutan—didn’t dawn auspiciously. It was dark and rainy. In this weather, I was going to have venture out to borrow a kimono and all the trappings from my aunt in Yokohama, and make it by eleven o’clock to the Broken Needle Memorial Service.

  I decided to make my own coffee that morning rather than have it at Giulia’s so I’d be able to check in by phone with Michael.

  After we’d exchanged greetings, he got down to business. He said that Mrs. Taki had reviewed the tape of what I’d said in Japanese, and the context of “erasing” was not what I’d thought.

  “But the general manager wasn’t at the store yesterday,” I said, after listening to Michael’s explanation.

  “Did you ask anyone where he might be?”

  “No. I didn’t want to arouse any suspicions.”

  “Hmm. I suppose he’s likely to be meeting with the staff at another one of Mitsutan’s stores. You haven’t heard any sound from his bug?”

  “That’s right. I’m not sure why.” I hoped it wasn’t because he was dead.

  “I’d like to know if he has anything to say about Jimmy DeLone. You know the guy’s still in Tokyo?”