The Daydreamer Detective Braves the Winter

by S. J. Pajonas

  I took a step towards Yasahiro’s building and stopped, movement out of the corner of my eye catching my attention. Turning around slowly, I looked into the shadows across the street but didn’t see anything.

  “Hello?” I called out, but my voice bounced back to me. I had probably seen a cat or something.

  I kept walking, my scalp prickling as I turned the corner. I felt like I was being followed, but I looked around and no one was there. Huh. I was being paranoid.

  Who would follow me?

  Pushing my paranoia to the side, I hastened my steps and headed to Yasahiro’s as fast as my legs could carry me.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I entered Yasahiro’s building and shut the door behind me, pressing my back to it and sighing with relief as I flipped the lock. I peered out the window, both up and down the street, but I didn’t see anyone. Stop being so paranoid, Mei. Who would want to follow me anyway? I knew who. Tama or someone acting on his behalf. A chill seized me from head to toe, causing my hands to shake. I counted to ten and looked out the window again. Nothing but regular people walked to and from the open businesses on the block. I let the air leak from my lungs slowly. Tama was in jail, and I was safe here at Yasahiro’s. There was no need to be this stupid.

  Inside his apartment, the lights were low and Yasahiro cooked at the stove. The apartment smelled of potatoes and fried onions, and my stomach growled in response. I shook off the feeling of being followed and pushed thoughts of Etsuko and her possible secret life aside. As much as I wanted to help every person around me, I had to help myself too.

  “There you are! I hope Murata-san is doing well?” he asked, coming to me to take my coat. To the left of the door sat three large cardboard boxes that weren’t there that morning.

  “She’s fine. She was tired, and I left her so she could take a nap. What are these?” I angled my head at the boxes, but he just smiled. “Are we putting together furniture later? That sounds like fun.” My voice obviously indicated that would be far from fun.

  “It does require a little assembly, but what’s in there is not furniture. Although you could call it furniture.” He bobbed his head side to side. A riddle? What was he getting at?

  “You have me intrigued.” I slipped off my boots and let him hang up my coat before lifting up a flap of the biggest box to see what was inside.

  “Hey! Don’t touch,” he said, swatting away my hand. “Come into the kitchen. I’m making pork chops, mashed potatoes, and green beans for dinner. A meal wholly un-Japanese-like, but I miss what I used to eat in France.”

  At the kitchen island, I leaned over to examine the pork chops. “Mmmm, those smell amazing. There hasn’t been much meat in my diet lately.”

  “We’re going to change that.” He turned off the stove, grabbed a large wine glass, and filled it with red wine. “You wanted wooing, and I always start with wine. I brought this bottle back from France the last time I was there. No label. Just a little family vineyard I would go to on the weekends.”

  I had hoped the evening would go in this direction, a date and some flirting. We originally planned to go into the city, but Mom and I moved in and Etsuko’s funeral was earlier today. This was a nice compromise. But I forgot! Mom would return soon to spend the night as well. Too bad, but I guess I would take a little wooing while Yasahiro was willing to give it. It’s not like we were going to have a lot of private time.

  He drained a big pot of potatoes into the sink, and I sat at the table, sipped my wine, and sang along to the Brazilian jazz music he had playing. I didn’t know the words (they were in Portuguese) but I’d heard these songs a dozen times before.

  Yasahiro grabbed butter and milk from the fridge but paused at the kitchen island to stare over at me. I stopped singing and paid attention, thinking he wanted to talk to me. He shook his head.

  “No. Don’t stop.” He closed his eyes as I picked up the melody again, swaying his head side to side. When the song came to an end, he brought the bottle of red wine around the island to me at the table.

  “You have no idea how nice it is to have somebody else here. I enjoy seeing you in my space, like you were meant to be here, and I’m going to have a very hard time when you leave.”

  As he smiled sadly at me, my breath caught in my chest. He was so forthright and charming, and I once again had trouble believing this was my life. I should’ve pinched myself to make sure I wasn’t still back in my old Tokyo apartment, dreaming of this alternate life. One moment I was freezing and starving, and the next I was warm and well taken care of by a seriously handsome man.

  “I don’t want to leave,” I whispered, “but you know I’ll have to when the time comes.” Because there was no way I would let Mom live alone when so many things were uncertain.

  Yasahiro’s buzzer rang, and he pressed the button asking who it was. Mom’s voice answered, and he buzzed her in.

  “Wow! I can’t believe how cold it is out there,” Mom said, stomping into the apartment and dropping her purse by the door. “But I heard it should warm up and snow by Monday.” She slipped off her shoes and patted down her coat, looking between us. A smile grew on her face as we smiled at each other, my face flushed from the wine and feeling comfortable at the kitchen table.

  “Please, take off your coat and make yourself comfortable,” Yasahiro said, returning to the mashed potatoes. “Dinner is almost ready.”

  “Actually, I came to grab my bag.” Mom walked past both of us and into Yasahiro’s bedroom. He wiped off his hands, his eyebrows drawn together, but I waved him off, getting up from the table to join her.

  “What are you doing? The house is still too cold to live there.” I stood over her with my hands on my hips. She was not leaving the warmth of Yasahiro’s place to live in an icebox. That was out of the question.

  “You should stay here with Yasahiro. I’m going to go live with Chiyo until we receive the insurance check. She’s overjoyed to have me live with her.” Mom lowered her voice. “This way you can have time with Yasahiro. Go snag him and don’t let him go.” She squeezed my shoulder as I laughed.

  “Mom, don’t be ridiculous. You should stay here.” I inched back and closed the door behind me, aware that Yasahiro was eavesdropping in the other room.

  “Don’t you be ridiculous. This is the perfect chance for you two, and I’m not going to stick around and get in the way.”

  “Mom,” I insisted. “Listen. I think…” I sat down on his bed. “I think he’s still in love with Amanda. He was talking about her this morning, and I could feel it, his regret. Whatever was between them, it’s not over. And while I have hope for us, I’m not going to… you know, until I’m sure.”

  “Mei-chan,” she said, sitting next to me and taking my hand, “it’s over between them. He still needs closure with her, but it’s definitely over.”

  “Since when do you know anything about ‘closure,’ Mom?” I snorted a laugh and she patted my hand.

  “I read a lot of books. Trust me on this one.”

  “Do you know why they broke up?” I asked, because she seemed so sure.

  She nodded. “But it’s not my business to tell you.”

  “Mom, I’m not the right person for him to move on to. I’m rebound material. She’ll come back, all pretty and talented, and I won’t stand a chance. I can’t do that to myself.”

  “Tell me something. What’s important in a relationship besides love?” Mom turned her face to me and prompted me to answer by bumping her shoulder into mine.

  “Uh… Trust. Chemistry. Having things in common? Laughter?”

  Mom laughed at me and I smirked in return.

  “Yes, all of those things, but trust especially. I loved your father and we had so many things in common. He made me laugh, and he was a great dad. But trusting him was the most important thing. I put my trust in him and he in me. I wish we’d had more years together.” She sighed as she rubbed the top of my hand. “Yasahiro trusts you. It was wrong of me to ask you to keep him in th
e dark about our situation, and I’ve told him that I made you do it, otherwise he may have lost faith in you.” Mom’s eyes watered, and she sucked in a short breath. “And I didn’t want that. Be true and honest, and you will be fine. He didn’t get that from Amanda, and that’s why you’ll succeed where she failed.”

  She stood up from the bed, letting go of my hand, and dabbed at her eyes. “Yasa-kun,” she called out as she opened the door. She ended up yelling directly in his face because he was right on the other side. Sneaky, that one. “Help me bring my suitcase downstairs? Chiyo will be here in a moment. We’re going to pick up Mimoji-chan and go back to her place.”

  He scurried to the kitchen, dropping the potato masher into the sink, and grabbing Mom’s suitcase, he hauled it through the door. “Be right back!”

  I was left alone in the apartment to contemplate and consider my options. Mom insisted that Yasahiro and Amanda were over, and I had no reason to doubt her even after the morning conversation with him. This meant I had a real chance, and the thought of that sent my heart racing and flushed my cheeks. Because here I was, living in my boyfriend’s apartment, we’d been dating for almost three months, and we still hadn’t slept together. And wow, I was ready. All the little looks, gestures, and flirtatious jokes had been building up to this. There was still one more thing to overcome, though.

  Yasahiro returned to the apartment, cold and shivering. “I’m glad you’re no longer at home because there is no way you both would make it through a night like this.” He slipped off his shoes at the door again. “Well, we have a lot of food because I cooked for three people, so let’s eat.”

  I spent the entire dinner loose and happy, drinking wine and telling stories. We both talked of school and growing up on a farm, and Yasahiro wanted to hear about the jobs I had, even though I had been fired from every single one of them.

  “You weren’t fired,” he said, clearing away our empty plates. I ate everything and could’ve had seconds. “You were downsized. That’s a whole other ballgame. It’s not like you were fired because you were horrible at your job.”

  “Well, I would argue that I actually am horrible at those jobs and that was the reason I was let go. I know I’m a good project manager, but being a salesperson was too difficult for me. That, and it was unfair. I came into three of those five jobs as a project manager, and they piled on the sales positions later when they let other people go. I was always working more than one job, and only being paid for one.”

  Yasahiro filled up my glass with wine again. I was already warm and giggly from the amount of wine I’d had. I was sure at this point he was just trying to get me drunk. I giggled and then covered up my mouth to hide it.

  “What’s so funny?”

  I remembered Mom told me to be honest and true with him. “I think you’re trying to get me drunk, and you’re doing a good job of it.”

  Yasahiro was going to stop at the halfway point, but he upended the bottle and filled my glass almost to the top. “There. Now we’re getting somewhere.” He set the empty bottle down next to the sink and grabbed a new one from the pantry. “It wasn’t your fault that other people managed their businesses poorly. You got caught in the middle.” He dug the wine key out of the drawer of utensils. “While I’m opening this, you should take a look at what’s in the boxes.”

  Hmmm, I’d been wondering about what was in the boxes all dinner long, and now I had the chance to investigate. I took my glass of wine and headed over to the pile of cardboard boxes, being careful not to show how tipsy I was. I’d lost enough weight in the last two months to make me a cheap date, and the wine was so good, it went down like water.

  I slid my finger along the flap of the biggest box, but this one was sealed shut with tape. The other three boxes were open so I squatted down, set my wine aside, and opened one of the smaller boxes.

  “Ahhh! These are beautiful!” I plucked out a clear glass ball about the size of my hand with a loop of string on top. The sphere glittered with an iridescent sheen much like an oil slick. I held the bubble of glass up to the light and peered through it, wondering about the talented person who crafted it. “Where did you get these?”

  “In Italy, from a woman who makes glass art.” He poured himself another glass and joined me. “There’s more inside.”

  I set the sphere gently in the box and touched the other dozen ornaments, just as beautiful as the first.

  “Wow. They must’ve been expensive.”

  “Not really,” he said, shaking his head. “She was an apprentice and learning the trade. I was in the right place at the right time.”

  I set that box aside and opened the next one. Fluffs of silver garland and lights filled the box to the brim. I saw where this was going.

  Yasahiro grabbed a knife from the kitchen island and cut open the largest box. I squealed and clapped my hands as he pulled out a fake Christmas tree.

  “Oh, this is so wonderful. I haven’t had a Christmas tree since I was a kid. When I was a teenager, and we had just gotten Mimoji-chan, he attacked the Christmas tree one winter and broke a bunch of ornaments. My mom refused to put it up the next year. And I never had room for one in my tiny apartment. Instead, I would roam Ginza and be sucked in by the decorations.“

  “I love this time of year. In Paris, the city is lit up and holiday parties happen every weekend in December. We always had a tree.” His face fell into a moment of melancholy. “So I wanted to revive this tradition.”

  I knew he was thinking of his apartment with Amanda. Quick! Change the conversation.

  “You were right. The tree is not really furniture but it could be. I should’ve guessed.” Moving on from whatever memory he was having, I tried to butt myself in and make a new one. “We should put it up.”

  We left our wineglasses on the table and got to work. He set up the tree in the corner at the end of the couch. I opened my computer and navigated to the Internet radio, finding a station that played Christmas music. With festive music in the background, we decorated the tree, and I told him about the last Christmas I remembered with my dad.

  “He died the spring after, but I’m glad I remember that Christmas. He bought me my first bike and told me he was going to teach me how to ride it in the summer. My older brother taught me instead two years later. Mom could never bring herself to do it.”

  I hung one of the last glass bulbs on the tree and stepped back.

  Yasahiro put his arm around my shoulders. “I remember getting my first bike for Christmas too. Now I love to ride. It’s my favorite form of exercise.”

  We both fell silent and stared at the glittering tree.

  “Do you want me to sleep on the couch tonight?” he asked, leaning over to kiss below my ear.

  His lips were soft and warm, sending my scalp prickling and making me smile. My insides melted into a pool of jelly, churned on by the wine I drank, and my conversation with Mom earlier faded away. I wrapped my arms around him, answering his question with a kiss, one I didn’t hold back. For the first time since we met, my body, mind, and soul believed he was into me, that I was the only one he thought of when he thought of his “girlfriend.” That other woman may have entered his thoughts every now and then, but only as a regret. I was the one who had his full attention now.

  He clutched my back and squeezed me to him, our lips fully engaged with each other, and any space we had between us was obliterated by the closeness of our bodies. I pulled away from his lips and caught my breath, and he didn’t let go. He held on tight, almost as if he was afraid to let me go because I’d run away. I wasn’t planning on it.

  “There’s one more thing,” I whispered into his ear. “Will you come with me?” I tried to turn out of his grasp because I wanted to pull him to the bedroom, but he held on tighter.

  “Don’t,” he said, his breath rushing over the top of my head. “I don’t want to let go.”

  Smiling, I lifted my arms, wrapped them around his neck, and jumped up to wrap my legs around him. “Then ca
rry me.”

  He took long strides to the bedroom, catching the door in his hand, and shutting it behind us with a slam. He tried to set me on the bed and lay me down, but I put up my hand.

  “Stop.” Admirably, he did, like I’d zapped him into a frozen state. “You sit.” I angled past him and turned around, putting him in my place. His face fell into a frown once he was disconnected from me, but I ignored his pout and soldiered on.

  My hand hovered over the light switch. “No,” I said, pulling my fingers away. The lights needed to stay on.

  I turned to face him. His chest heaved beneath his black shirt and realization crawled over his face like ice across a pond.

  Tremors invaded my hands as I reached down for the hem of my sweater and pulled the heavy knit over my head. I had another layer of t-shirt to shed as well because the weather was too cold not to dress warmly. I stepped to him so we were within arm’s reach.

  “I need to show you first… I need you to see.”

  He stayed silent, but his eyes spoke when his voice could not. He was frightened. He knew this day was coming, and my stomach cramped with worry. What if this ruined everything? Everything had been so perfect. I hesitated with my fingers at the hem of my shirt.

  “I’m scared,” I whispered, my lips trembling. I had wanted to be strong for this moment, but I was afraid of everything slipping away. “My last boyfriend broke up with me when he found out. He never even saw the scars. He said he didn’t want to date someone damaged, and he could find someone prettier than me.” I dropped my hands to my side, my eyes filling with tears.

  He darted his hand out and took mine in both of his. “Don’t cry. It’s not going to be that bad. I promise.”

  He stood up, grabbed my shirt, and pulled upwards before I could protest. I still had my bra on, but I was immediately cold, so I folded my arms to my chest and leaned into him, pressing my forehead to his shoulder.