The line moved forward. She stepped between the screening walls beside the elevator so some pervert in the security department could get a good snapshot of her body, and when she stepped out, she glanced up to find the cowboy watching her.
Sato blushed when she made eye contact and covered her mouth when she smiled so slightly, because the culture demanded this, too. She turned to the elevator and pressed her thumb to the biometric reader while the cowboy’s eyes bored into her back. By the time she’d stepped inside and pressed her thumb to the interior reader, he was gone.
The doors closed and her hands and feet tingled.
For three years she’d toyed with her competition and teased the men in the security departments, but they were all like babies, easily taken and confounded by games of inai inai ba. But the cowboy, he was a man and a warrior, and the idea of facing off against a worthy combatant made her toes curl.
The Kawasaki dealership, part showroom, part garage, was in a corrugated building off the inner loop, a wide thoroughfare just north and across the river from Osaka proper. Bradford pulled the Mira into the small frontage parking area next to a flat-nosed delivery truck and shut off the ignition.
Munroe squeezed his hand.
Lining the building’s front window was an array of motorcycles, their aerodynamic curves and bright vivid colors a mocking laugh at the bleached concrete, harsh angles, discount stores, and factories that made up the area.
It had taken a while to find the place. That was a problem in a country whose address system only made sense to city planners and GPS: sets of numbers pinpointing block and building not geographically, but according to when each structure was built. There was irony in having left Africa for one of the world’s most developed countries only to discover that directions by way of signage, restaurants, and landmarks were still a part of life.
Fingers interlaced, they walked toward the tight row of bikes in the way of treasure hunters who’d finally struck gold after so much searching.
Beyond the window other models filled the floor space, scooters and off-road bikes squished together and adorned with handwritten sale signs in reds and yellows like washing machines in a discount warehouse that just had to go, but these outside were the supersports, the big-girl machines; these were the murdercycles.
Munroe brushed her fingers across a headlamp and need tingled through her limbs the same way saliva flowed at the idea of vinegar. She knew the models by sight, could quote engine size, speed, torque, weight, trail, rake, and wheel base; knew how they handled, what she wanted, and why.
She continued the slow walk to the end of the line and stopped in front of a Ninja ZX 14-R: black-grilled, deep cherry-red, faster, angrier, and half the price of the Ducati she’d left behind in Dallas just over a year ago. And there she stayed, motionless, staring down at the machine, afraid to touch it, contemplating the freedom the bike represented and what it would mean to ride again.
Bradford put his arm around her shoulders and drew her tight to him. He kissed her temple and whispered, “Like getting back on after the horse has thrown you off.”
Munroe nodded, unable to speak, but she didn’t need to, because Bradford understood the present and the past in a way that defied the need for words.
She knelt beside the bike, one knee to the pavement, pressed a palm to the molded plastic, and let the memories wash through her. Bradford knelt beside her and placed a hand on her thigh, reassuring and fully present. Munroe rested her hand on top of his and wrapped her fingers between the empty spaces.
“You’ll be okay,” he said.
She leaned her head on his shoulder.
Nearly a month of concrete, grime, and population density had left her wanting to go where things were green and there was air, in a way that didn’t require chaining her time to train and bus schedules or to Bradford’s work hours the way borrowing his car did. Acquiring her own wheels was inevitable, but that didn’t make one of the fastest production bikes around the default choice.
It had been a long time, too long, since she’d felt the roar, the self-induced terror, and the adrenaline rush that only a machine like this could give.
The last time she’d ridden she’d been tranquilized and kidnapped.
Then her world had burned down as, one by one, those she’d loved most had been tortured or killed as a way to control her.
Bradford tweaked her thigh and, keeping his hand in hers, Munroe stood. She stared down at the machine again, bright red, conspicuous and loud, everything opposite the nonstatement black on black that had always adorned her carnage on wheels.
Things were different now.
Different machine.
Different colors.
Different country.
Different circumstances.
Different life.
She wasn’t superstitious in that way, but she’d be happy for the placebo effect all the same if that’s what reverting to superstitions would bring her.
It wouldn’t. But she couldn’t have known that then.
Those who win every battle are not really skillful. Those who render others’ armies helpless without fighting are the best of all.
—MASTER SUN TZU
Nonomi Sato pulled into the lot, which was already half full. She found a spot, turned off the engine, set papers out on the passenger seat, and leaned over just slightly under the pretense of studying them.
Work didn’t begin for another forty minutes, but her supervisors would have been in the lab since six at least, and she only had so much time before her absence would become an unspoken mark against her. Even so, there were priorities and greater priorities.
She waited for the cowboy.
He would arrive soon. He’d done well for a foreigner in embracing the hard hours required by company loyalty—an American, no less, a rugged individualist from a land of individualists, adapting to a culture where self-identity came from belonging, and companies, as givers of self-value and worth, demanded work take precedence over everything else.
He’d done exceedingly well.
Maybe the cowboy, too, would suffer karōshi.
Death from overwork.
It simply wasn’t possible for any person to work twelve or more hours, day after day, year after year, without rest on weekends or holidays.
Not without paying a physical price.
Sato paid the price, would continue to pay, but her duty had an expiration date. She would never be her mother, whose only value was as a diplomat’s wife, the perfect companion in a white-glove world, the flawless hostess to dignitaries and the Thai and Malaysian elite. She’d never be her father, whose self-identity had been handed to him by the Japanese government and then abruptly taken away while he was still years from retirement, leaving him with nothing but a hole where self should have been, so he’d filled that hole with drink until the hole swallowed him completely.
Sato glanced through the window, turned a page, and continued the fake reading. At last, the cowboy arrived.
The motorcycle rumbled low and rolled behind the line of cars, the lead rider in black helmet, black jacket, and riding gloves, a perfect match to the red and black of the machine, and the cowboy an odd contrast with his boots and jeans in browns and blues.
Sato followed them in her rearview, then side-view, then the passenger’s window as at the far end of the lot the bike drove into an empty parking space and up onto the sidewalk and looped back half-way toward the building front. Sato had seen the Ninja twice before and she’d found it odd then, and odd now, that the cowboy was the passenger. There’d been no reason to give the motorcycle much thought before, but things were different now.
The cowboy, hunter and trail sniffer, was good at his job. He saw what others didn’t see, and whether he knew it yet or not, he’d entered her game, and that meant the motorcycle and its rider mattered; it meant everything about him mattered.
The driver straightened and shut off the engine.
The cowboy pulled of
f his helmet and strapped it down to the sliver of passenger seat. He ran his fingers through his hair, shrugged out of a backpack, and retrieved his hat and several folders, then strapped the empty backpack down with the helmet.
The rider’s visor flicked up and the two conversed, but the cowboy blocked Sato’s line of sight and she couldn’t see the face within the helmet.
A moment later, the visor was down and the rising whine of the engine carried back, and the motorcycle rolled along the sidewalk, down the pedestrian ramp, into the parking lot, through the gate, and was gone.
Sato gathered the papers and grabbed her purse. She stepped out and made it to the sidewalk before the cowboy reached her car, then walked slowly to allow him time to close the distance.
When he was directly behind her, she tripped.
The cowboy had good reaction time. He grabbed her arm before she’d completely tumbled and she cried out when he did, as much from fake surprise as fake pain. He pulled her back and she limped upright, blushing and apologizing.
The cowboy held her at arm’s length and studied her face. “You all right?” he said.
Sato nodded.
That was the easiest way to remind him that she understood his language and an easy way to invite further conversation. She would allow him the illusion of pursuing her, and bedding her, and in so doing she would unburden his thoughts until she’d learned about him and uncovered secrets from his past, and then, piece by piece, she would neutralize the threat by destroying him.
But he didn’t accept the invitation. She tried again.
“Thank you,” she whispered, blushing at him once more. Then she smiled the killer smile that had for years, across cultures and borders, served as both rejection and invitation, virgin and whore, the smile that deprived men of the ability to reason.
The cowboy nodded, acknowledging her smile, and his gaze tracked down her legs, checking to see if she’d been hurt, but his eyes reflected no hint of awareness of her invitation. And then he let her go, and walked on.
Sato stared after him, following slowly, face flushed and hands shaking.
Rejection was a new experience and wholly unexpected.
Confusion tingled along her skin.
She hadn’t pegged the cowboy as a closet homosexual, although sometimes people were surprising in that way. Two riders on a motorcycle did raise that possibility, but no, this wasn’t that. She’d watched him. He was a man’s man. He appreciated women, even Asian women. Sato stared at the cowboy’s back, measuring his broad-shouldered forward stride.
She’d underestimated him. Victory adapted form endlessly. She’d neglected that truth, relying on old tropes and easy habits because he was a man.
This was a failure to be rectified.
—
The elevator traveled down two levels and required Sato’s thumb again before the doors let her out. They opened onto a small foyer, tiled and clinically white, with little black camera bubbles secured to the ceiling. The foyer then divided into two and Sato went left, into the women’s changing area, which was a fraction the size of the room on the other side.
She keyed the combination for her cupboard and placed her lanyard inside. She exchanged her skirt and shirt for an approved set of thermals and pulled the pieces on, then closed the door and spun the lock.
She pumped the dispenser on the far wall to wash her hands and face with alcohol gel. No amount of moisturizer could make up for the drying damage of the alcohol and laboratory air; that was an unfortunate cost of doing business.
Sato left the locker room for the air curtain and the gowning room, where she pulled on one-time-use paper coveralls and swapped the slip-ons for rubber clogs followed by disposable shoe covers. Lastly, a hair cap swallowed the tight black bun and gave her head an angled alien look.
She faced a large steel door with a small glass window, stood to its right, and rested her chin on a pad for the iris scan. All this trouble to secure the lab, to keep the research and machines disconnected from the outside world.
All this trouble, and yet she was here.
Lab activity was already well under way when she stepped inside, printers running, techs feeding glass tubes through droppers. On the far wall was another door that led to the animals and the operating theater.
Mariko bowed slightly when Sato entered, a greeting between the lower lab’s only two women that had become something of a ritual. Mariko nodded toward Akio Tanaka, and rolled her eyes.
He had ear buds in his ears, the volume up so loud that Sato could hear the music from a meter away, and he sat on a stool, hunched over a laptop with that glazed look that said he’d stayed working through the night.
Sato giggled and Mariko smiled. They’d talk later.
Here, sequestered away from the cameras, the listening devices, and the security men upstairs who analyzed every word and gesture, the mood was lighter and the jokes flowed freer. Sato continued on to her workstation. Dirty trays and slides awaited her, as did data sets and an hour’s worth of the mundane that had stacked up in her absence—none of it that important.
She put a hand on Tanaka’s shoulder so he’d know she was beside him.
He pointed to a three-inch stack of paper.
She’d sort through his handwritten notes and correlate them for input. As the assistant to the head researcher, she was privy to every trial, every test, success and failure alike, and down here, in the bowels of the facility, as close to the research as it was possible to get, where nothing violated the theft-prevention protocols that cut the lab off from the world, there was nothing to record her movement and habits, nothing to stop her from taking what she wanted.
Munroe woke to Bradford’s rustling. The texture in the air, the fewer sounds reaching through the windows from the street, told her that he was up earlier than usual. He leaned over to kiss her, as he did every morning, but this time he stayed beside her, propped up on an elbow, tracing a finger around her belly button.
He whispered, “Come to work with me today?”
Munroe opened an eye and looked at him, beautiful in the shadows, muscled and half naked. They’d become like ships passing in the dark as the weeks dragged on and he left earlier, came home later, or sometimes not at all, leaving them to seek stolen moments and the occasional Sunday afternoon to collide in their own isolated ocean.
“I have to stay overnight,” he said. “Take me in and spend the day with me?”
Munroe brought his hand to her lips, and held it there longer than a kiss warranted. She didn’t have to use words to say no because he wouldn’t have asked the way he had if he hadn’t already known her answer. He’d known it from the day he’d invited her into the office and made his very carefully crafted point, deliberately excluding her, fully aware that as the minute hands ticked their slow painful march around the clock, she’d hurt more than if he’d simply said Maybe tomorrow and had left her at home.
He’d gotten what he wanted: she’d never asked to be a part of his assignment again. She couldn’t fault him for what he’d done. Life had a way of screwing things up for them, and work had a way of becoming life. From his point of view, keeping her away from his job was best for them both, might keep them together longer this time around.
Bradford shifted, sat up on the bed beside her. He pulled her hand back with his, putting it to his cheek. “If I said I’m sorry, would it matter?”
She leaned over and bit his thigh. He twitched and said, “Ow,” but it came out more as a question than an exclamation.
She glanced up and smiled and said, “Sorry.”
“Am I missing the analogy?”
“No,” she said, and traced her finger around the indentation, “I just wanted to bite you.” Then she rolled back and put her head on the pillow. “You’ve already apologized and I’ve accepted your apology. I’ve got no grudge.”
“Then you’ll come with me today?”
She sighed and turned toward the window: her version of Maybe tomorrow.
“It’ll be different,” he said. “You’ll be with me all day and I’ll give you something to do. Real work,” he said, “not busywork.” He held his little finger up in front of her face so she couldn’t avoid it. “Pinkie promise.”
She batted him away.
He was such a cheater.
“Okay,” she whispered, and slid around him, off his side of the bed, and reached for the armoire. She pulled the one modest dress off its hanger, the same outfit she’d worn the first time, same outfit she’d have to wear again if Bradford ever offered another invitation. The lack of alternatives had come from the mistaken assumption that she could do as she’d always done in the past: travel light and source what she needed locally. Instead she’d discovered a robust fashion industry that had no concept of women her height and size, which turned online shopping with international shipping into her only option for women’s clothes and shoes.
She hadn’t bothered. Men’s clothing worked fine, anyway.
“Hey,” Bradford said. He tugged her hand and pulled her to him. He wrapped his arms around her thighs and rested his cheek on her stomach. “I know the way things turned out hasn’t been easy for you—hasn’t been easy on us—not what I imagined the workload would be when I signed on and definitely not what I described when I asked you to come.”
She rested a hand on his head and ran her fingers through his hair. “I’m a big girl and I can deal with it,” she said. She leaned down and kissed him, then left him for the ofuro.
—
Bradford held true to his promise and kept Munroe with him throughout the day. If Tai Okada questioned her involvement, he never let on, and in those first hours, the three of them poring over old documents, Munroe grasped what Bradford’s role within the company had become.
Behind its run-down and dilapidated appearance, behind the show of cameras that didn’t do much more than intimidate, was an invisible state-of-the-art network that monitored phone calls, protected data from cyber attacks, and analyzed employee connections and patterns based on the RFID chips embedded in the badges.
The Mask: A Vanessa Michael Munroe Novel Page 4