Tokyo Heist

by Diana Renn

  “Going out? I don’t know that I would use that term. It’s like we’re in this gray area. We just had this one ambiguous weird kiss thing at a camp party. But the thing is, I don’t even know who this girl is,” he goes on, leaning forward and putting his elbows on his knees. “On one level, she’s really smart and interesting. She sees stuff in film I’ve never noticed. Her work at camp was brilliant. She won a camp Academy Award.”

  “But?”

  “Camp ends, we’re back in town, she starts going to soccer practice, swim team practice, student government meetings, getting all caught up with her friends—who completely ignore me when we’re with them, or who laugh when I’m not trying to be funny—Violet, I think you were right. She just wanted me to help her look good at film camp.”

  “It’s not about my being right. Look, I’m sorry that things got so confusing with Mardi. I’m sorry because you’re obviously not happy with her.”

  He sighs. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I guess I was really flattered that someone like her would even pay attention to me.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “Stop hanging out with her, I guess. Even though she’s taking video production this semester, and things are going to be awkward. I just don’t know how to tell her.”

  “Are you asking me for advice? Me, the great relationship expert?” I laugh.

  “It’s not funny. I feel stuck. And I have to do this tonight. It’s killing me.” He kicks at a patch of grass.

  I study the green grass marks on the white part of his spectator shoes. I remember buying those shoes with him at a vintage shop in the U District last year. How we laughed that day, trying on outfits. And then I remember how we chased Skye all around downtown at the beginning of the summer, how we had so much fun together before all these complications set in—with the mystery, and with Mardi.

  The fundamental fact, beneath all the layers of complications, is that I really, really like this crazy guy. He may not be perfect, but who is? And I love that there’s nobody like him. No one comes anywhere close to Edge.

  “What happened with us anyway?” he asks in a soft voice. “Before camp, before Japan?” He reaches over and plays with a loose thread on my kimono sleeve. He’s not even touching my skin, but my whole arm tingles from how close he is.

  “I don’t know.” I look down at my feet, my face burning. “You said I wasn’t listening to you. You might have been right about that.”

  “Oh, that.” He sighs. “I’m sorry I said that. I think I was just getting so much attention from that video on the Internet, which was cool at first, but it made me overthink things. I wondered if people were just talking to me because of what I’d done, not because of who I am.”

  I nod. “I can understand that. It’s weird, you think you want to do things, important things, to stop being invisible, and to get people’s attention. Then you get that attention and you still worry that nobody sees you for who you are. You can’t win.”

  Edge looks at me. “I see you. I always saw you, Violet.”

  I swallow hard. It’s now. “I have one last idea to help you out with your Mardi situation,” I tell him. “It’s a crazy one, though.”

  “Crazy is good. Tell me.”

  I take a deep breath and lift my gaze from his shoes to his eyes. “You could just tell her your girlfriend would rather that you didn’t hang out anymore.”

  “My girlfriend? The person I’m looking at now?” His voice is low and quiet.

  I’m falling into his eyes. “If you want. I mean—I’d really like that.” I know, in that moment, I’m done hiding things. From now on I’m going to be more open about my art. My passions. My feelings. “I really like you.”

  And suddenly, Edge’s arms are around my waist, and mine are around his shoulders, and it feels completely natural and amazing. And then he’s kissing me, and I’m kissing him back, and I’m startled by the softness of his lips and the strength of his arms. I’m so shocked at what a great kisser he is that I don’t even have to worry about whether I’m any good or not.

  It’s like being in a woodblock print, I want to tell him. Time stands still. We’re in our own world, under our tree, the sunset pink and orange bathing our faces.

  But I don’t tell him this. I don’t say anything. All I have to do in this moment is be here.

  After a while, we break apart and just hold each other. I rest my cheek on his shoulder.

  “I have wanted to do that for a very long time,” he murmurs into my hair.

  As we’re sitting there, through our screen of madrona trees I notice a red Honda Civic drive into the museum parking lot. My dad and Skye get out. Skye gives him a little push and says, “Hurry, Glenn!” and they run up the museum steps.

  I shrug and smile. My relationship with my dad, like any relationship, is a work in progress. Today, showing up late to my show—but showing up all the same—I guess that’s progress.

  “My dad just got here,” I say, reluctantly extracting myself from Edge’s embrace. “And I’ve got to get back to my exhibit. I can’t let Reika do all the talking for me.”

  “Right.” He moves a stray curl from my face and tucks it gently behind my ear. “You’ve got your adoring fans. I suppose I’d better get used to sharing you with the world.”

  Holding hands, we leave the shelter of the madrona grove behind. We walk back to the art museum to join the people there.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE: ABOUT MOON CROSSING BRIDGE

  The Moon Crossing Bridge at Arashiyama is a real print by the famous Japanese ukiyo-e artist Ando Hiroshige (1797–1858). The print is from a landscape series called Famous Views of the 60-Odd Provinces. The van Gogh drawings and painting in Tokyo Heist that are based on this print are fictitious. However, I like to imagine that his renditions of Hiroshige’s print could exist. Here is why.

  Hiroshige created over 5,400 prints in his lifetime. There’s no record of whether van Gogh owned a copy of The Moon Crossing Bridge at Arashiyama, but it’s entirely possible he possessed it, saw it, or at least knew of similar prints in Hiroshige’s masterpiece series, Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido (scenes from the highway connecting Edo [Tokyo], to Kyoto). Woodblock prints were inexpensive and plentiful in the nineteenth century, and reproductions, often exported to Western countries, were widely available.

  In Europe, many Impressionist and Postimpressionist painters were fascinated by all things Japanese. They were part of an aesthetic movement that became known as Japonisme. Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890), as a collector and student of Japanese woodblock prints, was a part of that movement. He lived and breathed Japanese prints. Almost literally, he inhabited ukiyo-e: they papered the walls of his studio in Arles, France. He directly copied the prints in order to understand their composition and use of perspective. In fact, as his mental health deteriorated, he actually imagined he was in Japan, not in France. In his correspondence, he told friends that all he needed to do was open his eyes and paint what he saw; he didn’t need to copy from Japanese prints anymore.

  Van Gogh transformed three of his Japanese print copies into major paintings. The Bridge in the Rain and The Flowering Plum Tree were directly based on Hiroshige’s print designs and given van Gogh’s special touches: elaborate borders and decorated frames (with his version of Japanese kanji characters), heavy brushstrokes, and richer or more contrasting colors than were used in the original prints. The third Japonisme painting, The Courtesan, was copied from a print by Keisai Eisen. Eisen’s Courtesan originally appeared on the cover of Paris Illustré, a popular nineteenth-century magazine. Today, all three paintings hang in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and can be viewed in their virtual gallery: www.vangoghmuseum.nl.

  What if van Gogh really did a series of sketches and a painting based on The Moon Crossing Bridge at Arashiyama? Wouldn’t such works have surfaced
long ago? Not necessarily. Van Gogh was a prolific artist who did not enjoy great success or sales in his lifetime. His brother Theo acted as his art dealer, yet there are a number of paintings and drawings that were not sold through traditional means, both during and after van Gogh’s short life. Some art was given away, put into storage, left behind in a house, or otherwise not accounted for. Van Goghs have turned up, over the years, in surprising places all over the world, even beneath other paintings on canvases reused by van Gogh or by other artists.

  Who knows how many van Goghs are out there, waiting to be found?

  Acknowledgments

  Writing Tokyo Heist has been a long, exciting journey. I’d like to thank the many people who helped along the way.

  I feel incredibly lucky to have Kirby Kim as my agent. I am grateful for his keen editorial eye, his enthusiasm, and his belief in Violet’s story. Kirby found the perfect publisher for this book and, with Ian Dalrymple, expertly steered me through the publishing process.

  Enormous thanks to the Viking/Penguin team. Specifically, I’d like to thank Regina Hayes and Leila Sales. My writing is forever improved from working with such talented editors, and I am particularly grateful for Leila’s help in reshaping the story. This book is what it is today because of her attention to detail. I am grateful for the keen eyes of Susan G. Jeffers, Janet Pascal, Jennifer Tait, and Abigail Powers. Also many thanks go to Kate Renner for creating the cover design of my dreams, and to Catherine Frank, who initially acquired the novel.

  I owe so much to my writing group: Steven Lee Beeber, Clare Dunsford, Eileen Donovan Kranz, Patrick Gabridge, Vincent Gregory, Edward Rooney, Heather Totty, and Deborah Vlock. Fearless readers and steadfast friends, for years they donned hard hats and stepped into the construction zone of my novel. They rescued me from shaky scaffolding, plucked me off of falling beams, and cheered me on to the end. I’ve learned so much from these talented writers. I hope we all write together for many years to come.

  I owe thanks to other talented writer and editor friends: Marc Foster, for early feedback; Julie Wu, for title help and library companionship; Elizabeth Hale, for plowing through an unwieldy draft; Lisa Borders and Lisa Nold, for consulting on manuscripts and helping me find my story. Kira Gabridge and Naomi Shwom read drafts and offered their perspectives on teenagers and otaku culture.

  Arigato gozaimasu, Kyoko Shiga. Thank you so much for reading, for consulting on Japanese culture and language, and for fielding questions on everything from wagashi to footwear to the depth of the Katsura-gawa. Any errors are my own. Arigato gozaimasu, as well to Bill and Yuko Hunt, who opened so many doors in Japan. You may have thought you were merely giving travel advice and entertaining, but in fact you were setting me on the long path of writing this novel.

  Many people in law enforcement and in the art world offered assistance with research. Among them, Special Agent Robbie Burroughs of the Seattle FBI fielded questions about art theft. Sarah Thompson at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston gave me a crash course in Japanese prints, access to their ukiyo-e collection, and the opportunity to shadow an art conservator. Elizabeth English and Sarah Gurney consulted on art collecting and art conservation. Brigid Alverson helped me to navigate manga. Sam Garland taught me how comic book artists work. And I’m grateful to my former employers and colleagues at Golden Age Collectibles in Seattle, who introduced me to the world of comics, manga, and anime back in the 1990s.

  The Writer’s Room of Boston provided the ideal writing space during early drafts. Later, Tricia Gaquin and Andrea Lyons, babysitters extraordinaire, helped me to carve out time.

  I’d like to thank the Apocalypsies, as well as my partners in crime on the Sleuths, Spies, and Alibis blog, for their support, wisdom, encouragement, and inspiration.

  I am so grateful for the boundless support of my entire extended family, especially my parents (all of them). My stepdaughters, Sarah Nager and Rachel Nager, read drafts and offered encouragement at a most critical time. My son, Gabriel, gave me the gift of long afternoon naps.

  The biggest thank-you goes to my husband, James Nager, who enthusiastically traveled in Japan with me, and who supported my long, odd working hours. Thank you for waiting so patiently on the other side of this novel.

  DIANA RENN grew up in Seattle and now lives in Boston with her husband and son. She has taught writing and ESL in Boston and South America, and has published several ESL textbooks. When she’s not writing, she enjoys traveling with her family, bicycling, and taiko drumming. Tokyo Heist is her first novel. Visit her at www.dianarenn.net.