by JT Lawrence
“You like bees?” I asked, rather pathetically.
Amaya giggled.
“Sorry,” I said, my cheeks turning a deeper shade. “Stupid question.”
“Yes,” she said, smiling with perfect teeth. “I like bees.”
“Do you have a hive at home?”
She shook her head. “I’d love to, but my place is so small. I don’t have a garden. There’s no space for bees.”
“I have one,” I said.
Amaya sat up. “You do?”
“I caught a swarm last year and transferred them from the catch box to the hive in September. I’ve already had honey from them.”
“That’s wonderful,” Amaya said.
That's when I noticed the tiny gold pendant on her necklace. It was a bee set against a hexagonal frame. I gulped. It was now or never. "You could come to see it if you like."
“Are you crazy?” she asked, her eyes wide.
"Sorry," I said, flustered, my damp hands dancing on my lap. "My apologies. You don't want to visit a random stranger. I—"
“I didn’t mean that,” she said. “I meant, are you crazy? I’d love to see them!”
That beekeeping workshop changed my life. I genuinely think I'd still be single and lonely if I hadn't met Amaya that day. Sometimes I call her my delicious honeytrap. After a whirlwind courtship, we married, and my parents could not have been happier. They seemed to like Amaya as much as I did. Unfortunately, my bride's parents had passed away when she was younger, but my mom and dad treated her like a daughter. Even today, my mother brings over treats for her every week, perhaps hoping to fatten her up to get ready for babies.
"We're not ready for kids yet!" I fibbed to my mom. I was ready; it was Amaya who seemed reluctant.
"Not ready? Nonsense!" replied Mom. "If you wait too long, you'll run out of energy."
I didn't agree; I had always had plenty of energy. Energy was never a problem. But I took her point. I didn't want to get to the point where I needed a walking stick to attend our kids' soccer games. When I brought it up with Amaya, her answer was always the same.
I’m not ready yet. Maybe next year.
It was her body, and I respected that. I'd never want to pressure her into anything.
I called Sakura the next day, hoping to get an idea for a birthday gift for Amaya. I was fresh out of inspiration. I had the bad habit of buying her presents all year round, so when important occasions came up, I had nothing in the closet for her.
“Any chance that Amaya mentioned anything yesterday?” I asked. “About something she’s fond of lately?”
“Yesterday?” asked Sakura. “I think you’ve got your wires crossed.”
“Amaya said she had tea with you.”
There was an awkward silence on the line. Sakura’s voice got smaller, and she said, “Oh.”
“You didn’t see her?” I asked.
“I haven’t seen her in a few weeks,” said Sakura. “She’s been busy.”
I was confused because I knew for a fact that Amaya had kissed me goodbye and left to see Sakura twice the week before. I felt sick. This time it was my turn to say Oh.
The next time Amaya was due to meet with "Sakura", I tagged along. By that, I mean I followed her at a safe distance. She didn't act suspiciously at all, except when she climbed out of a taxi outside a tower of apartments I didn't recognise. Standing there, she quickly looked left and right, perhaps to see if there was anyone who would recognise her, and wonder why she was going into a strange building. But she needn't have worried, because Tokyo is such a busy place; the kind of place you can disappear if you want to. She went inside the building, and I followed. I thought I might lose her if she disappeared into the elevator, but she strode into the restaurant on the ground level. I didn't go inside. I stood behind a tall ficus and watched her walk to a reserved table, and I wished like anything that Sakura would soon arrive, and I could sigh and leave swiftly. That did not happen.
A well-dressed man in a dark grey suit arrived and sat opposite her, and they immediately fell into what looked like a lively conversation, which lasted an hour. My heart began to ache. It would be so terrible, so very terrible to lose Amaya. We were perfect for each other! We both loved milkshakes, Rocky Balboa, bees, football, and shirataki. I loved her without limits; my parents thought of her as a daughter. I couldn't lose her, but I didn't know what to do. Some men would fly into a rage—some would hurt their wives—but that was the last thing I wanted to do. Violence was the opposite of how I was feeling. I stood behind that plant for an hour, feeling as if I was losing my wife with every minute that passed. My only consolation was that they didn't touch or kiss. It was cold comfort.
That night Amaya wrapped her slender arms around me and asked me what was wrong.
“You’re not yourself,” she said.
“I’m all right,” I told her, turning away to hide my wretchedness. “Just a headache.”
She made me ginger tea with our homemade honey to soothe the pain, but it did not help.
The next meeting with "Sakura" took us to a wedding of a young couple where I had to camouflage myself behind a draped pillar while I watched the guests file into the chapel. Amaya looked radiant in a modest blue dress I recognised. When she took the arm of yet another stranger, I felt like she had stabbed me in the heart. Although they were not intimate, it was clear she was attending the wedding as the man's date. I didn't know if it would hurt more to see her with the restaurant man again or if a new face was worse. My mind was swirling, and I didn't know what to think. I wanted to tell someone. I realised that Amaya was my best friend because usually, I told her everything. Now, when I really needed her, I had no one. I didn't want to trouble my parents, and I had no siblings. Sleeping became difficult, and I lost my normally healthy appetite. The street vendors called out at me as I passed them.
“Hey, Daiki-san” they yelled, grinning. “Was it something we said?”
I bought a pancake to reassure them and fed it to a stray dog on the next block.
The next time I had trouble sleeping, I took Amaya's phone and searched it. We both knew each other's passwords, so it was easy to get in. I flipped through her photos, her notes, her social media, and found nothing unusual. She didn't have any new contacts that I didn't know which puzzled me further. Surely if she were seeing other men, she'd have their numbers and some messages from them? But Amaya was too bright for that, I realised. If she were having affairs, she wouldn't keep any evidence on her phone. Not the phone I knew the password to, anyway. I switched on a flashlight and began combing through her cupboard while she slept. I felt guilty doing it, but I was desperate to know what was going on. While my nature is usually extremely optimistic, I found myself suspecting the worst. Just before I was about to give up searching for her secret phone, I heard a vibration deep in the closet. Like the flash drive, it was high up and pushed right towards the back, hidden in a pair of black socks. I extricated it and looked at the alien device in my hand. I hesitated, getting the feeling that it was a digital pandora's box. Once I looked at what was on the phone, there'd be no going back.
I made sure that Amaya was sound asleep before I held the biometric button to her thumb to unlock the phone, then I took it to the bathroom and closed the door. I was holding my breath as I scrolled through the list of contacts. I didn't recognise one name of the hundreds listed; mostly male, some female. One of the contact numbers was the name of a bank we did not bank with, along with what I guessed was an account number and PIN. I looked for the bank app on the phone and logged in with that information. My stomach cramped when I saw the account information. Why did my wife have a secret bank account? Did I not give her enough money to live comfortably? And, why was there only one benefactor listed on the statement for every single payment to her?
THE FAMILY ROMANCE OF NEUROTICS
I spent the night with the odd name bouncing around in my head. The next morning I set out to solve the mystery of Pandora's Box. I tracked do
wn the address of the company listed on Amaya's clandestine bank account and phoned to book an appointment with the owner and was pleasantly surprised to be granted one. Things are looking up, I thought. Things will go my way. Soon the mystery would be solved, and we can go back to how it was, before.
Showered and dressed, I caught a taxi to the building in Sumida, which was very elegant, streamlined and monochromatic. Usually, I prefer bright colours and kawaii over minimalism, but I liked the architecture. It made me feel calm.
“Ohayō Misutā Tanaka,” said a handsome man in chinos. They weren’t the cheap kind. “I’m Yamamura—Yama for short. Thanks for coming in today.”
He led me from reception to a white, high-ceilinged room with large windows where the air was fragrant with the jasmine tea that was steaming on the table. I could see the Tokyo Skytree in the distance. We sat, and Yamamura steepled his manicured fingers and looked at me in a friendly way. “What can I do for you today?”
I hesitated. How does one tell a charming stranger that he had invaded his wife’s privacy to find this place?
“Go ahead,” he said. “I’m listening. I’m sure I can help you.”
My toes were wriggling inside my shoes. “I would very much like to know what this company does. There is no information on the internet.”
“Ah,” Yama said. “Of course. Have you recently lost a loved one?”
Again, I hesitated. In a way, I had. I'd lost the idea of Amaya as the perfect wife, and our relationship as honest and resilient. Still, I knew this was not what the man was asking.
"No," I replied, wondering where this exciting conversation was going.
Yamamura sprang up. He had lots of energy in his body; I could tell he loved his job.
“This is the Family Romance of Neurotics,” he said. “We specialise in companionship.”
My jaw suddenly began to ache. My heart surged, but not in a good way. "You're an escort agency?"
Yamamura coughed in alarm. "Oh, no," he assured me. "Not at all. Not one bit. We are a kind, wholesome enterprise that helps people."
This made me feel marginally better. “People who need … company?” I asked.
"We enlist stand-ins," Yama said. "Terrific actors who can pretend to be your mother, your daughter, your best friend. We have actors who enjoy the cinema who will go with you to a film if you don't enjoy going alone. Same goes for dinners, travelling, or just quiet time at home. We have people who you can hire to cry at funerals—or weddings!—or if your boss needs to shout at someone, we offer that service, too. We're open and flexible. The possibilities are endless."
On the way home, my mind was racing, imagining Amaya in these situations. I could picture her standing in a cemetery, holding a black umbrella and mourning like in one of those melancholic American films, tears falling with the soft rain. I imagined her laughing at someone’s bad jokes over a sashimi platter, or cooking one of her excellent dishes—shirataki with mushrooms, or yakisoba.
She was a wonderful person. I'm sure she was very good at making people feel better about life. Amaya had a way of lighting up a room. Perhaps a room wasn't enough for her; maybe she thought it was her duty to light up other peoples' lives. Perhaps it was my duty to allow her to do that. I decided that I would tell her everything and let her know that I supported her generosity of spirit. Secrets in a marriage are corrosive, aren't they? Yes, I had felt a stab of acrimony when I discovered her secret phone and bank account, but I understand why she hid it from me. I needed to apologise to her for sneaking into her phone.
When I arrived home, I got out my rainbow duster and finished cleaning the office. It felt good. Then I remembered the Hello Kitty flash drive and went to get it from our bedroom, but it was gone.
What had been on the disk? Photos, lists, personal information. Perhaps the kind of data that The Family Romance of Neurotics would supply one of their employees. One of the hobbies listed was my love of beekeeping. I had been to every bee talk and workshop in the city but had never seen Amaya before that day we met. The necklace she wore had looked brand new. I realised that her sitting down next to me at the workshop had not been an accident. My parents' nagging echoed in my head. First, it was "You need to find someone!" and then it turned into "We want grandchildren!" They'd chime it over and over. The knowledge of what they had done crashed in on me like a tsunami, and I just sat there for a long time, trying to process the information. I wished I had never found that disk; wished it had stayed buried in its black box at the top of the cupboard. I couldn't change the past, but I could pretend that I had never found it. I washed my hands, straightened my shirt, and strode down to the kitchen where delicious aromas swirled in the air. Amaya had already begun cooking.
“Amaya-chan!” I said, and we hugged like a regular happily married couple. I decided I could make it work. I offered to chop the onions, and she passed me the board. She was a good actress, I thought. Very talented. But I could be a good actor, too.
Dear Reader
Thank you for staying with me on this journey!
I love hearing from readers, so please don’t hesitate to get in touch. I’m only an email away!
Also, If you have the time, a review will be much appreciated.
I’d especially like to know which story was your favourite, and if there are any in particular you’d like to see turned into novels.
"Lawrence makes every word count, telling each story with elegance and emotional punch.” — Patsy Hennessey
"Each story is masterfully constructed ... Humorous, touching, creepy, but most of all entertaining, this collection is superb." — Tracy Michelle Anderson
Seeing as this is the last book in the Sticky Fingers series (for now) I hope you’ll look at my backlist to see if there are any other books that might interest you.
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Janita
www.jt-lawrence.com