The Salaryman's Wife

by Sujata Massey

  We made it out faster than we’d gone up. As Richard stumbled to the curb and relieved himself in the moonlight, I told Hugh about the stairs.

  “I’m going back in with a torch,” he said immediately, pulling a flashlight out of the glove compartment.

  “You’re too weak! I practically had to carry you upstairs earlier this evening. And it’s very dangerous.”

  “What’s the alternative, then? The police?”

  “I don’t want them.” The police would ask about our day’s activities, and if they entered the apartment to look around, they’d notice Setsuko Nakamura’s photo album lying prominently on the kotatsu table.

  “What can we do with him?” Hugh gestured toward Richard, who had zipped himself up and was weaving toward us singing “It’s a Shame About Ray.”

  “He can sleep at Simone’s,” I said, thinking fast. Two of her roommates were still on vacation in France, so there would be space for him on a futon. I called Simone on the car phone and she agreed, urging me to join them. I declined; I had other plans for myself.

  As we drove south, Hugh tuned the radio to a night jazz program. Akiko Yano sang in her high, sweet voice about memories the color of the wind. Keiko’s memories were much darker. Black enough, perhaps, to send me a swift, dangerous message.

  I had laid the groundwork for my accident. On my first visit to Club Marimba, I’d given Mariko my card, which had my business and home addresses in both English and Japanese. She’d slipped it in her purse, which lay open on the dressing table when Keiko had walked in on us. Either the Mama-san had taken the card, or Mariko had given it to her.

  We dropped off Richard at Simone’s cramped but safe apartment in Ebisu and continued on to Roppongi, where I stared out the window at cross-cultural couples. Peroxide-blond hostesses were slipping into the flash cars of old, wealthy Japanese men; more natural-looking Japanese O.L.s walked hand-in-hand with ruddy-faced foreigners they’d probably met at work. I thought about what Keiko had said about warped relationships between foreigners and Japanese.

  “I have a question for you.” I kept my voice light. “Do you think of me as Japanese or American?”

  “I don’t know why you’re worrying about things like this after the night we’ve had—you could have lost your life on those stairs—”

  “You pointed out once that I had a problem defining myself. I wanted to hear what you thought. I’m curious,” I added, feeling his eyes on me.

  “Both,” he said at last. “Turn here. I want to avoid Roppongi Crossing.”

  “It’s impossible to be both!” I was irritated at his cop-out.

  “What do you want me to say? That you have the face and figure of the woman in the Japanese art book, but a meaner streak than Tonya Harding? That despite your tea ceremony manners, you’re absolutely undaunted by power? I heard about how you treated Piers Clancy.” Hugh sighed, making me think they’d had an argument.

  “He deserved it.” I recognized where we were and proceeded slowly into the Roppongi Hills driveway, looking out for photographers. No one was visible except for a good-looking blond woman pulling shopping bags from the trunk of a Volvo. She hastened her step so we all reached the elevator at the same time. I was glad there was no staircase; I couldn’t have handled one tonight, even with the lights on.

  “Halo, Hugh! I suppose you know those television people were waiting outside all afternoon and evening? I was thinking of making them all a cup of tea.” To me, she said in an overly slow and loud voice, “Konnichiwa.”

  “Konbanwa,” I replied, the teacher in me unable to resist correcting her good day to evening.

  “Yes, yes. Four years here and I still can’t keep it straight.” Her throaty laugh matched her lean, tall figure and the black mink that stretched to her slim ankles. Faint lines around her hard blue eyes told me she was either a fanatic sun-worshipper or a few years older than Hugh.

  “Rei, this is Winnie Clancy.” Hugh was yawning twice as much as he had in the car. “You know her husband Piers.”

  ‘Ah so desu ka?” Is that so? I asked. But Winnie didn’t seem interested in anyone but Hugh.

  “Now that you’re out of that tiresome prison, you can come to the black-and-white party benefiting the International School’s swimming pool next weekend.” Winnie placed her massive shopping bags on the elevator floor, cordoning me off into a corner. “If you buy a table of ten, that would cover the cost of the diving board. I’ve got a dinner partner for you already, a lovely girl from Wiltshire who’s working with the cultural attaché…”

  I smiled. It was interesting what people would say if they thought you didn’t understand their language.

  “Winnie, please.” Hugh looked mortified.

  “Oh, how impolite of me. You have a guest this evening.” The door opened at her floor but Winnie leaned in the doorway, unwilling to depart. “After your little friend leaves, come by for a sherry.”

  “I’m exhausted. Better not.” Hugh waved and pressed the CLOSE button.

  “I don’t know, Hugh. You seem to have a bizarre connection with older, married women.” I lifted the back of my skirt to rub my thigh still sore from Keiko’s blow.

  “If it weren’t for Winnie, I’m sure Piers would have left me to rot in Shiroyama.” Hugh’s eyes were focused straight ahead. I followed his gaze and realized he was watching my actions in the mirror. I took a while dropping the hem of my skirt and stepped off the elevator in front of him.

  “Don’t go before I take a look at your leg,” he offered while turning the key in his door.

  “Did I miss seeing the M.D. on your card?” I kicked off my shoes and descended on the sofa.

  “I’m the king of sports injuries! My medicine chest has everything. Sticking plasters, hot packs, cold packs, anti-inflammatory tablets…”

  “Good.” I reached under my skirt and began tugging down my pantyhose.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Hugh demanded.

  “Wouldn’t someone descended from the Pagans know? Help me here, I can’t quite reach.” I laid my legs across his, leaving him to pull the stockings down the rest of the way. He shook them out and folded them into a small square.

  “You’re so tidy you could get a job folding underwear at Mitsutan,” I teased, savoring the feeling of his hands gliding up the back of my thighs. The horror of the staircase seem very far away.

  “I forgot which leg it was.” He appeared more flustered than I’d ever seen him, I realized with a rush of happiness.

  “Should I turn over for you to look?”

  “This game of yours, Rei, I can’t be held responsible.”

  “It’s not a game. You owe me.” I leaned over and, very slowly, touched my lips against his. He held back for a second and then groaned, crushing me against him. By the time we broke, both our jackets were on the floor and he was regarding the safety pins cinching the waist (of my skirt with a tender expression.

  “I thought you would never let me near you again,” he said.

  “That’s not what you said to me in the English Pub.” It still hurt, remembering.

  “I was trying to make it easier for you, more graceful.” He kissed his way down my neck.

  “And you say I’m the one with tea ceremony manners! Tell me, are we staying on this slippery leather sofa all night?”

  “I don’t expect you to come to my bedroom. There’s no rush.” Hugh sat back and looked at me.

  “Why not? I was in there earlier today and it looks fine. You could move the rowing machine to a better place, but I liked the sumo wrestlers and your closet full of cashmere.” I was already unbuttoning his shirt.

  “Even if that’s a back-handed compliment, I’ll take it.” His eyes locked with mine. “I’ll take you.”

  True to his word, Hugh took a long time with me. It was after one o’clock when the last layers of clothing came off and we rolled across the sleigh bed. The next set of explorations seemed to last a century.

  When Hugh fin
ally entered me, he stopped midway and ran his finger across the wetness on my cheek. “Am I hurting you?” he whispered.

  It wasn’t pain I felt, just a startling rush of emotion. I pulled him closer, whispering that if he didn’t start moving, I’d die. Had I known it would be like this? Yes, I thought as we began. There was no space between us anymore. With each stroke, I felt myself changing into something else, someone different.

  “You’re my obsession.” The words choked out of Hugh as my body seemed to splinter off in a hundred different directions. I rode out the rest of his passion, soaring as his breath caught and he made a final great push.

  Hugh curled his arms around me after he’d taken care of the condom. Both of us were breathing like we’d run for an hour.

  “Was that the way you like it?” he murmured.

  “I’d probably like it every way with you.” Just thinking about what had happened made me press my legs together.

  “Why is it you can be so honest about sex and dishonest about your other feelings, so brutal to me?” The voice was warm and teasing, but I stiffened.

  “You’re the brutal one, starting an argument when I’m lost in the most delicious afterglow.”

  “Afterglow?” His tongue lapped at the back of my neck. “Who says it’s time for afters?”

  “I thought men couldn’t, so soon…” I reached down to find evidence to the contrary.

  “Let’s see what happens,” he suggested, and we did.

  We must have slept briefly toward morning. In the next minute, it seemed, J-WAVE’s morning man was bellowing “London, eleven P.M.…Moscow, one A.M.…Tokyo, seven A.M. It’s Tokyo today!”

  Hugh kissed my shoulder and floated the sheet off my body.

  “Wakey, wakey, darling. Time to get up.”

  “Why?” I moaned, covered my head with a down pillow.

  “You’re going to sub for Richard’s class in two hours, and we can’t miss breakfast.”

  “What are you, a morning person?” I lifted the pillow to squint at him.

  He laughed. “It’s a very good morning because we’re going to change history, aren’t we?”

  “I can’t tolerate lectures this early in the morning.”

  “In our past, whenever you’ve left my arms, we’ve had a terrible row. You’re coming back to me tonight in a good mood, aren’t you?”

  “Who can predict the future?” I asked.

  Easing out of bed wearing nothing but the bandage around his ankle, Hugh looked pretty divine. Rolling on my side to watch him, I smiled like the Cheshire cat.

  “How about a shower? There’s room for two.” He went into the bathroom, turned on the water, and began singing what vaguely sounded like the Eurythmics’ “Obsession.”

  “I never knew a man without a job or future could he so cheerful,” I chided, following him under the spray.

  “I have a tremendous future: burglar, spy, or assassin…I can’t imagine you’ve had the pleasure of shagging someone like me before?”

  I hesitated just long enough to make him wonder. After all, I was from the USA, crime capital of the world. “I haven’t.” I wrapped my arms around him.

  “Prosecution rests, then.”

  Our combined laughter splashed across the tiled room as if there were nothing to worry about at all.

  As we ate breakfast, we kept looking at each other. Hugh was wearing a white terry cloth robe and I was in one of his Thomas Pink shirts, cuffs turned over twice. He had fiddled with the buttons down the front. “It shouldn’t be too low because you’re teaching salesmen, and I know what they’re like. But open enough that it shows your lovely collarbone.”

  “I’ve never spent this much time worrying about what I wear to work. Do you do this every morning when you go off to Sendai?” I grumbled.

  “Never, When I’m employed again, maybe you’ll worry for me?” He smiled, handing me a cup of Darjeeling with the milk and sugar already mixed in.

  I shrugged, thinking he needed no help in the clothes department. He could probably tell the skirt I was wearing for work was a polyester-wool blend, and my evening shoes were from Washington Shoes’ bargain section. It was a pretty odd combination, but there was no way I dared repeat the outfit I’d worn to work the previous day.

  Breakfast was simple, Hugh fix himself a soggy English cereal called Weetabix, which I declined. He made me toast and went back to the Asian Wall Street Journal. As I sipped the pleasantly sweet tea, my eyes strayed to the robe falling slightly open around his thighs and I wished I were staying in. As it was, I spent a good half hour on the telephone talking to my landlord about the urgent repairs needed, and after that, explaining to poor hungover Richard why he couldn’t go home yet.

  “What’s on your schedule today?” I asked when finally readying myself to leave.

  “I’ll start out with a massage at TAC and then have lunch with Mr. Ota. This afternoon, I’m going to see Setsuko’s travel agent. Ota got the name and number, but I told him I wanted to go myself. I thought I’d try to work a little harder at integrating in the culture.” He tied my belt and kissed me deeply, smelling of toothpaste and shaving cream. “Are you satisfied?”

  “Temporarily,” I said, tearing myself away before I was lost. I rode down in the elevator with two businessmen and shot through the lobby, my evening shoes clicking against the marble floor. I walked outside into blinding sun and half-tripped when I heard my name.

  “Shimura-san Shimura-san!”

  I turned around like a fool into the face of two cameras.

  “Aren’t you a friend of the accused murderer Glendinning-san?”

  “Are you hoping to become a hostess at Club Marimba?”

  ‘Chigai-masu,” I said. The expression translating as “it’s different” was the polite way to deny something. But the questions kept coming and if I’d understood correctly, the last one was about whether I’d enjoyed a night in Glendinning’s bed. I cast about desperately for escape and spotted a taxi, its passenger door already swung open in welcome.

  I jumped in and locked both doors, ignoring the elderly salaryman with a cane who had been making painstaking progress toward the vehicle.

  “Bakayaro!” The salaryman swore and waved his fist as the taxi drove off. But the driver was twinkling at me in the rearview mirror, and I realized that for the first time in Tokyo, I was behaving like I was somebody.

  26

  At Nichiyu, Mr. Katoh was waiting by my desk, anxious for an update on my health. I assured him that aspirin and sleep had brought me to a near-perfect recover.

  “Maybe you came back too early.” My boss studied me with concern. “Your face is flushed and your mouth is swollen, perhaps you should take you temperature…”

  In other words, my night showed. I hoped I would be strong enough to handle the salesmen, a particularly noxious all-male assortment of junior executives. We had a history of bad blood since last summer’s company retreat, when the men had asked me to stand atop a table for a casual photograph. Before I realized what was going on, somebody had darted the camera under my skirt and snapped a picture. I’d reported it to Mr. Katoh as an incident of seku hara—sexual harassment—but all that happened was I received a mysterious extra two weeks’ pay and Richard took over the salesmen’s instruction.

  At nine o’clock I strode into their classroom carrying the new espresso maker like armor before my body. According to Richard’s plan, today’s task was teaching all parts of the machine in English plus some fancy coffee talk in French and Italian. There was giggling at first, but I ignored it and got down to business, asking two students to role-play an encounter between customer and salesclerk.

  “What is caffe rat-te?” Mr. Takeuchi asked his partner, Mr. So.

  “Caffe rat-te is a delicious beverage made from milks and exsu-presso—”

  “Espresso!” Mr. Nara, the know-it-all, shouted from the back row.

  “Espresso,” continued Mr. Takeuchi. “For added delicious taste, please tr
y a sprinkle of cinnamon or nutmeg or cocoa.”

  “Beautifully said. Now, can Mr. So explain the perfect formula for caffe latte?”

  “One half milks, one hall kohi,” said Mr. So.

  “No, two parts milk, one part kohi,” corrected Mr. Takeuchi.

  “Mr. Takeuchi is right, but please remember we must not call it coffee or kohi. We need to use the Italian word espresso to show how special the product is.” It wasn’t my favorite machine. I’d burned my hand trying to steam milk with it two weeks ago. This wasn’t the time or place for my opinions, though. The men ran through the lesson in a remarkably ordered format, leaving the last fifteen minutes free.

  “Miss Shimura, please may we have conversation time?” Mr. So begged. I was surprised; usually, the students didn’t like exercises where they couldn’t crib from the book. I readily agreed.

  “What shall we talk about today, then? Any suggestions from the floor?” I asked.

  “Current event!” shouted Mr. Nara.

  “Sure. What’s in the news?” I’d seen only the Asian Wall Street Journal that morning and had no idea about anything beyond a brief surge in the U.S. dollar.

  “Mr. Nara, did you watch television this morning?” Mr. So asked so stiffly I wondered if he had rehearsed.

  “Why, yes! I watched News to You. There was some very interesting news on that program.” Mr. Nara grinned and rubbed his hands together.

  “So, what’s up?” I asked, trying to teach a colloquialism but making half the class squirm with laughter.

  “The program say Miss Shimura is friends with a satsujin-han.”

  “The word in English is murderer,” I said, feeling cold.

  “This murderer is gaijin from Scotland. Scotland is a part of Great Britain, you know.” Mr. Nara smirked, playing to his crowd.

  “Selfridges,” said someone from the back, mentioning our biggest British vendor.

  “Does your murderer know about Selfridges?” Mr. So turned an innocent face toward me.

  “It’s interesting that you choose to call this person a murderer,” I replied. “In Japan, as in the United States, a person cannot be called a murderer unless he or she is convicted. And as you may have heard, Mr. Glendinning was questioned and released.”