“I should own that company, but instead, I work for you,” I said. “Now, I can hardly wait to tell you about my evening.”
Michael raised his eyebrows. “Drinks first?”
“Sorry,” I apologized. “I don’t have anything in the fridge. I’ve turned into more of a cocoa person, since I’ve been here.”
“I picked up wine at Meidi-ya,” Michael said, going to the fridge. “Pinot grigio from California, although it’s not from one of those special little vineyards you were so revved up about.”
Thank you very much for understanding about California wines, I thought, taking the glass he handed me and clinking it, very lightly. He patted the seat next to him on the apartment’s small sofa.
I settled down next to him with a plate of pastries in front of us, thinking that this was just like old times in the office, eating our meals while we worked. “Well, it turned out to be a trunk show—with me serving as the model.”
“What’s a trunk show?”
“It’s a kind of fashion show, where a vendor brings a lot of goods to be examined, and hopefully ordered for purchase. But I’m actually making a bit of a bad joke, because it turned out that Mr. Yoshino brought many samples of different navel rings for me to try on.”
“What?” Michael put his glass down and sat bolt upright.
“He insisted at the end that I take one home—the most expensive one, of course.”
“Show me,” Michael said.
Feeling mellowed by both the company and the small amount of wine, I turned toward him, shifting backward so that he could see the diamond navel ring glittering just above the low waist of my jeans. But as he stared at my navel, his eyes narrowed.
“I guess you don’t like it?”
“It’s very sexy,” he said, but his voice was like lead. He put his finger to his lips and turned his head from side to side. It was a code that any moron could understand: shut up. Trouble. I followed his gaze around to the windows. All the blinds were closed.
I hadn’t heard anything outside the apartment. What was he, clairvoyant? Quietly, Michael went into my bedroom, then came back out, a pad of paper and pencil clutched in one hand and the handheld bug-sweeping gizmo in the other.
He sat down beside me again and quickly scribbled a note. He held it out to me.
CD B A BUG.
I shook my head at him, realizing that Michael had slipped into another paranoid episode. At least I hoped he was overreacting.
“Time to go to the bedroom,” Michael said loudly, the warmth restored to his voice. He scribbled again and showed me the paper: TO COVR NOISE, WE’LL SIMULATE SOUNDS OF SEX.
I shook my head. He was not only paranoid but silly.
“When you show me a trinket like that, well, it’s asking for it, isn’t it?” Michael waved his arm frantically, indicating that I walk with him into the bedroom. I trailed after him, thinking that the only thing worse than participating in this humiliating pretense was the chance that someone actually was overhearing it.
I’d had the foresight to make my bed that morning, thank goodness. I lay down stiffly and unbuttoned the waist of my jeans. Thank God I was the kind of girl who always wore underwear—and these days, really good underwear, purple silk bikinis by Tsumori Chisato.
Sorry, he mouthed at me. Aloud, he said, “I can’t wait to make love to you.”
I made a nasty face at him; if it turned out I’d opened up my jeans for nothing, I’d kill him.
I watched my boss scan the handheld detector across my navel, and its steady green light turned to a blinking red signal. Positive.
“Wow,” Michael said. “I’ve been waiting for this all night. And you’ve been driving me crazy, going out with this other guy, and now you’re wearing jewelry he’s given you, I’m going to have to take it out with my teeth or something—”
“I dare you,” I said, trying to sound breathy and tempting while I felt with my fingers to where the gold ring screwed into the side of the diamond. I turned the screw attachment, but it was solidly stuck.
“I’m having a little bit of trouble here getting my, um, bra off. Can you help me?”
“God, you’re hot,” Michael said, turning the bedside light on full blast, over my stomach. Under the harsh light one could see everything, even the return of a few tiny hairs that Dora had waxed three weeks ago.
Michael was no better at it than I. He kept trying, but it seemed as if the ring was screwed permanently closed.
“Oh, again and again!” I said, trying to make up for the inadvertent yelp I’d made at his last attempt to pull metal from flesh. Quickly, I scrawled a note: MY COUSIN CAN HELP, HE’S A DR.
Michael shook his head vehemently. Without his saying a word, I traced the probable trajectory of his thought: that we’d give ourselves away if we asked anyone for help.
Michael spoke, his voice almost rough. “So which way do you want it, Rei?”
“I don’t really care,” I said, utterly frazzled. Trying to make it sound like we were still in bed together, I rustled the sheets as Michael hopped out of bed and started quietly picking through his backpack.
“Come on, tell me, honey, while I get a condom!”
“Anything. Seriously, anything!”
Michael was back on the bed, with condoms from the bathroom and a tiny wrench. “Mind if I put on some music, help us relax a little?”
“Sure,” I said, looking at the tool with interest. I hadn’t been issued a piece like that.
Michael reached for the clock radio next to the bed. Puffy blared out, the supersweet duo, and he grimaced.
“Let me find something.” I groped for the remote on the bedside table, and soon Jack Johnson filled the room with his soft crooning and slack-key guitar. I motioned for him to give me his tool, but he shook his head and began to pry gently with a miniature wrench at the connection between the edge of the diamond and the ring. His tugging had hurt a little before, but this time around, he seemed to understand what he was doing. To my surprise, I was starting to become aroused.
There was a change in the atmosphere, similar to the way the air pressure alters right before a storm. I opened my eyes and discovered that Michael was leaning over me.
He took my hand, which was still ineffectively working at the navel ring, and touched it to his face for a minute. Then he stretched it out against the bed, pinning me under him as he lowered his head and kissed me.
Michael Hendricks was kissing me; slowly, deliberately, perfectly. Once or twice back in Washington, I had thought about what it would be like to maybe kiss him, maybe come up to him from behind, graze his neck and shock him away from the center-column article of the Journal. This was not what I’d expected; it was better. Michael’s breath was heaven, a mix of mint and sugar, all that sugar he was always consuming. His tongue curled around mine, and I lost it; I forgot all about being under surveillance and used my thighs to slam his body down on top of mine. As I shuddered at the delicious impact of this, and what would happen next, abruptly, Michael lifted himself away.
I’d gone too far. But I could hardly make an apology, with a microphone plugged into my navel.
“Wow,” Michael said. But he wasn’t smiling; in fact, he was regarding me with an expression I couldn’t understand. He didn’t say anything else as he dug into his backpack again, halfway across the room, safe from me.
Then he returned. I watched him make a thick layer out of condoms from the vanity drawer, stacked against my skin. Then he showed me the tool he’d brought out: a multibladed Leatherman. He made a quick, decisive snip with the gadget’s pliers. A spark flew, and we both jumped.
“Oh!” I said, surprised by the brief electric shock. Michael turned the contraption so I could really see into the ring itself—which contained a black electrical wire.
“You’re amazing,” Michael said, hopping up from the bed and heading for the bathroom. “I got a little carried away. I hope you weren’t hurt?”
“Not at all. But the ri
ng came out of my tummy, can you believe that?” It was a stretch for me to keep the game going, because someone might be listening in.
“Very sorry. I wish I could buy you another, but I’m afraid I can’t afford it.” Michael’s voice was soft.
I got to my feet and snapped my jeans closed. “Let me put the ring somewhere safe. I’ve got to get it repaired; it was a gift from one of my bosses at work, a simply wonderful gentleman. He would be so upset if he knew what happened!”
Michael rolled his eyes and put a finger to his lips. Obviously, I’d gone too far.
Michael dropped the ring into the toilet, and we both watched it whirl away in the company of some lipstick-stained toilet paper.
I turned to Michael, ready to heave a great sigh of relief, but instead, he was running around the apartment with the handheld bug detectors again. I went to the drawer, picked up my own device, and ran it over my purse and my coat, just in case anything else had been dropped in.
When I finished, Michael was sitting on the edge of the bed, with his head in his hands. “I think everything’s normal again.”
“Actually, everything’s different now. Isn’t it?” Since Michael and I had touched each other, the blurred outline that was Hugh Glendinning, the man who broke my heart, had faded even more. What did this mean, though?
Michael nodded absently, but didn’t speak.
“Why did you kiss me?” I asked, thinking that I was the one who typically did stupid things—but this time, the mistake had started with Michael.
“Oh, I don’t know.” Michael glanced at me quickly, then looked away. “Jet lag, I guess.”
“What?” This was both the most bizarre and the worst excuse I’d ever heard.
Michael continued, “My body clock’s out of sync, which really screws with the endorphins. I’m always like this.”
“So mean you’ve had the impulsive kissing problem for a while?” I asked sarcastically.
“Yes. I mean, no! I haven’t done what I did in—a long time.”
Because of Jennifer. I thought about his long-gone wife, and the desire that had flared in me subsided.
“Well, if you’re as exhausted as you’re saying, you’d better get back to the New Sanno and take care of yourself. Get a good night’s sleep. It’s already almost midnight.”
“But you,” Michael said. “What about you? I don’t know what to do.”
“In what regard?”
“I can’t figure out if Yoshino was acting alone,” Michael said. “You met Mr. Kitagawa the day before. From what you told me, they both seemed familiar with details that could have been gleaned from your personnel file.”
“Maybe. But personal spying is a kind of national passion,” I said, following Michael back into the living room, where he sidled close to the wall and gently lifted the edge of the drawn blind to look outside. “This is the nation that created the X-ray camcorders that people use to see what others look like undressed. This navel ring bug is probably something he gave to me because he wants to be able to hear me pee or something—-”
“So you think it’s just a matter of his prurient interest in you?” Michael shook his head. “And you think this prurient, pathologically obsessed accessories manager is sharp enough to run his own listening station? And by the way, where might it be located?”
“Not too far away, five or ten miles,” I said.
“Agreed. It was a very low-power bug, judging from the fact that I didn’t kill you when I removed it.”
“Was there—a chance of my being electrocuted?” I held my breath.
“No.” Michael sounded tired. “That was just a joke.”
“Oh.” I flushed, because before he’d answered I was starting to put it together in my mind that Michael had kissed me because he thought we were on the edge of death—that it was the one and only chance he had to show me how he felt. What a sentimental fool!
“We were talking about the listening station,” Michael continued. “As I was saying, the bug was low-power, so the receiver would have to be very close to this apartment”
“Or what about the annex?” I asked. “That’s where his office is, and I’m right across the alley from him, almost fifty hours a week. Maybe he’s interested in what’s going on in my life over at Mitsutan.”
“Another possibility. I wonder if he’s acting alone or at the request of someone.” Michael turned back to the room and studied me. “How can we find out?”
29
I had trouble getting to sleep, although Michael had assured me by phone, after he reached the Sanno, that he had inspected the street and had seen nothing to indicate anyone was watching the apartment—at least, from the sidewalk or parked cars.
He’d left the apartment in heavy disguise, looking exactly like a working-class Asian man. He’d swapped the cat-burglar black for clothing from the disguise closet—a red baseball jacket with a Jinglish slogan, “Number One Fan,” embroidered across the back; and a pair of plain khaki trousers and vinyl loafers. I’d watched with interest as he’d applied his makeup: a heavy foundation that turned his face and the backs of his hands a light gold; several eye shadows that he blended, in the manner that I did, to minimize the eyelid crease. He pulled a pair of glasses out of the disguise drawer: round, wire-edged frames that looked Asian. The only Japanese male accessory that he lacked was a man-bag, but the government stylists who had stocked the disguise closet had failed in this department. So Michael picked up the same plain black briefcase he’d arrived with and was off.
I wondered how he’d gained admission to his hotel looking like that, but it had happened. Maybe he’d wiped off the makeup at the guard station, or just explained himself brilliantly. Michael had options.
I, on the other hand, didn’t. I turned on my bedside clock, and saw that it read two. It was Friday morning already, practically time to pull myself together for work at Mitsutan. My game plan was simple: avoid engaging in risky behavior. No pointed questions, no more planting of bugs. I was to maintain my holding pattern at the K Team desk until I was cleared to leave.
I flipped my pillow over, thinking that I’d never get to sleep. Of course I understood that my personal security was at risk—the fact that I’d so naively stuck the navel ring in my middle made me sick each time I thought of it—but I couldn’t stand doing nothing. What was my job? Listening. Now, more than ever, I needed to know what was being said.
Since I couldn’t sleep, I decided to do some listening. Michael had been confident that the apartment was bug-free, but just to be on the safe side, I slipped the first microchip of the department store recordings into my cell phone and crawled back into bed with a notepad and pen.
It took a good hour to transcribe everything from the first two bugs. I decided to type up my translation on the PC right away, in case I became too sleepy before I finished listening to all the tapes. I didn’t want to leave my handwritten notes around; my plan was to send the translations right to Michael, then purge the evidence.
Lulu, one of the first consignment boutique departments I’d bugged, had a lot to transcribe, and it wasn’t as boring as I’d expected. I was able to hear the tough circumstances for the independent designers operating a business under the Mitsutan roof. There were calls back and forth between Mr. Kitagawa and Miss Akai, the Lulu manager, not only about clothes sold but about which clothes had been tried on or rejected that day. He discussed at length the plight of some spring separates that hadn’t sold well. Miss Akai offered to mark down the garments by twenty percent. Kitagawa agreed, with some stipulations: the sale merchandise had to be displayed discreetly, and it would be allowed to remain on the floor for only three weeks before Lulu would have to remove it. Finally, Mitsutan would collect eighty percent of the price of sales merchandise, rather than the normal sixty-five percent, as compensation for the vendor’s inconvenience to the store. Miss Akai accepted her orders, sounding subdued.
I remembered hearing about similar situations in the United States
, where some prestigious department stores had demanded a kickback from their wholesalers after the stores had to put the merchandise on discount. It was against the law, and the American stores had paid high fines. Given the power Japanese department stores seemed to wield over their consigners, I doubted that Mr. Kitagawa’s demand was illegal. At the same time, I felt secretly lucky to know in advance that Lulu was going to have a surprise sale. I’d return to the department and maybe be able to buy myself a pair of pants as cool as Melanie Kravitz’s.
After I was through listening, I realized that during all the time I’d spent eavesdropping on the accessories department, I had not heard Mr. Yoshino at all. He hadn’t called in hounding the manager about her daily numbers; nor had she telephoned him for any reason. Maybe it was because the department was doing so well, or because Mr. Yoshino was so far removed from the sales team; he was so high up, in terms of status, that perhaps he didn’t think daily communication with the accessories section manager was necessary. But Mr. Kitagawa—whose rank was similar—did make daily contact with his people. I’d heard him.
So maybe Yoshino was a hands-off manager; or else, I thought darkly, he’d planted bugs in his department so he could learn what he needed without having to call anyone.
I finished my notes, took a walk around the apartment, and did a few yoga stretches. It was just after three-thirty, and I was nowhere near ready to sleep. I seated myself in the lotus position, clapped the headphones on again, and began listening to the third recording, which came from the bug in Masahiro Mitsuyama’s shoe. An argument with his wife started his day; then there was more grumbling as he was driven to work and made calls on his cell phone to various colleagues. The high point was a tirade against the food basement’s sushi chef, because Mr. Mitsuyama was offended by the color of the tuna. I wrote it all down, imagining Michael’s reaction. Utter boredom.
The fourth recording started out at the K Team, more or less with conversations I’d heard because I’d been there. Midway, I heard a new voice: a whiny woman’s voice speaking in English. Melanie Kravitz.
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