Zen Attitude

by Sujata Massey

  “I need to sit down,” Mrs. Sakai murmured, not even looking at him. The policemen closed ranks around her, and she was led off.

  “Please don’t do that again. You’re upsetting the victim’s wife!” the junior constable said to Jun. I tuned out, trying to concentrate on this new knowledge I had about Nao Sakai’s wife. I had told the police about the conditions under which I’d bought the tansu, but I hadn’t given a physical description of the other customer, not knowing about the connection. If I brought it up now, it might make them examine Mr. Sakai’s death more intensely. It would also convert my status from an unfortunate witness to an accidental death into something more sinister.

  I pondered this during the next hour, during which an elementary school class and several neighborhood residents came in to learn about matters such as household registration and bicycle permits. If only life were that mundane for me. I wondered if I would ever consider it mundane again.

  A junior high school student departing with the paperwork for her new bicycle was almost knocked over by a new arrival, a long-haired foreigner with his eyes everywhere except the path in front of him. The man was in his early twenties, dressed in tie-dyed shorts and a tank top bearing the motto Fükengruven. A illegal jewelry vendor, I guessed from the size of his backpack and the long silver lizard earring that dangled halfway to his shoulder. But no court of cops surrounded him. When he noticed the canaries, he snickered slightly and ambled over.

  “Whassup?” The backpacker stuck a finger in a cage, withdrawing it when the canaries backed away. The young man pulled a hand-rolled cigarette out of the waistband of his shorts. He lit the cigarette, turning as he inhaled so I got an excellent view of his dark green eyes. Yes, I was certain now. He was a nightmare version of Hugh—proof of what might happen if my lover chucked his Paul Smith suits and went Rastafarian.

  “Oi, marijuanakai?” The young, gum-chewing constable jumped to his feet and headed for the stranger.

  “No! It’s not pot, is it?” I blurted in English.

  “It’s clove. What’s it to you, lass?” He blew a smoke ring at a canary, which squawked at the outrage.

  “He is only smoking a clove cigarette,” I translated for the police officer.

  “And what is that substance?” the policeman demanded a bit shakily.

  “A spice that is very popular overseas, commonly used in cakes and curries.”

  The backpacker sneered, and the young constable said, “This overseas boy could be fined heavily for disregarding our No SMOKING sign. And for animal abuse!”

  I switched languages and said, “Put it out unless you want to spend the night here.”

  “Talk about an uptight country.” He stubbed out the cigarette on a bar of the cage, knocking ash into the canaries’ home.

  “You’re Angus Glendinning, aren’t you?” I asked.

  The backpacker gave me a thorough up-and-down, then smirked. “Rei? I would not have guessed. You dinna look like a mistress.”

  I swallowed hard and said, “You surprise me, too. Where did you learn that odd accent, the movies?” He hadn’t sounded so ridiculous in the few seconds I’d heard him on the telephone.

  Angus merely laughed. “Shug said to tell you he’ll be a few minutes. He’s gone to fetch his lawyer.”

  Shug. That was the Hugh’s nickname, which had never made sense to me. If I were on better terms with Angus, maybe I could learn about it. Trying to sound nicer, I said, “I’m sorry I couldn’t get into the airport. How did you get into the city so fast?”

  “I rang my bro when you didn’t show up. He told me to take a taxi to his office. When I got there, he said we had to haul you out. Now he’s off to pick up some lawyer. A hell of lot of running around, and all I want to do is crash.” Angus settled down on the other side of me, bringing into my line of vision a filthy sneaker and a grimy ankle tattooed with a snake.

  If Hugh had called in Mr. Ota, the Tokyo lawyer who had gotten him out of a nasty jam once before, he obviously thought my problems were serious. When Hugh finally came in unsmiling, I felt sure of it.

  “I’m sorry,” I said as he bent to kiss me. Jun Kuroi gaped. Obviously he had no idea about all the foreigners in my life.

  “Don’t say anything to them until you’ve had a few minutes in private with Mr. Ota,” Hugh murmured into my hair.

  “It was only an accidental death—I mean, it’s terrible, but Jun and I are here voluntarily. You really didn’t need to come.”

  “We’ll talk about it later. Anyway, my brother arrived safely and we’re going to have a wonderful time.”

  “There is no need to worry,” Mr. Ota chimed in, standing just behind Hugh. He was bearing a massive box of sweets, as if he’d come to make a social call. When he presented it to the constable in charge of us, I understood. He was softening people up, making them beholden.

  “Shug, if you want to get her out, you need to give the pigs a payoff. That’s what I did in India,” Angus said.

  I didn’t get the chance to ask why he’d been in an Indian police station, because Mr. Ota was gesturing for me to accompany him into a small office that had been vacated for our conversation. Hugh had already narrated for him the story of how I’d met Mr. Sakai while buying the tansu, so all I needed to fill in were the afternoon’s events.

  “Don’t you want to talk to Jun?” I asked when he was finished.

  “Not at this time,” Mr. Ota told me. “I’m going to meet the police chief now. He doesn’t know it, but our fathers play gate-ball in the same senior citizens’ league.”

  The importance of this became clear when, fifteen minutes later, he emerged from the chief’s office with the declaration that I was ready to go home.

  “What about Jun?” I didn’t want to leave him behind.

  “Go ahead. My father’s driving here, they told me,” Jun said.

  Since his car had been impounded, he would definitely need a ride back to Hita. I said a regretful good-bye, betting this was the last time Jun Kuroi ever did a favor for a foreign woman.

  The journey home took forever, since we had to stop in the Ebisu neighborhood to drop off Mr. Ota. Hugh went into his office with him for a few minutes, then came back out and got into the driver’s seat. He looked tired, so I offered to drive. He shook his head.

  “I’ll drop you and Angus off at the lobby with the luggage, then go to the garage and park. Okay?”

  “Sure,” I answered, although I wasn’t relishing the opportunity to be alone with his brother. When I unlocked the apartment door, Angus scrambled ahead, dropping the luggage in front of me.

  “I didn’t know my brother was doing so well. This place is fab!”

  “The apartment is paid for by Sendai, the Japanese company that employs him,” I explained.

  “Ah so,” he said in a parody of Japanese speech. He inclined his head in the direction of a group of wood-block prints by Hiroshige. “Those look expensive. They must have come with the place?”

  “Actually, those are mine. I’m a dealer.”

  “Really? I wouldn’t have thought he went for that.”

  “I’m teaching him,” I said, picking up Angus’s heavy duffel bag. He took the other end, relieving me of half its weight.

  “You’re teaching him? Shite!”

  The Scottish pronunciation of the profanity didn’t make it any sweeter to my ears. Through gritted teeth, I said, “He’s a fast learner. Let’s go into the study—”

  “So what exactly are you dealing? I hear Ecstasy’s big here.”

  He thought I was a drug dealer. I squeaked, “Not drugs! I’m an antiques dealer!”

  “Really? Don’t blow a gasket.” Angus laughed.

  “This is your room,” I said, trying to regain my composure. “There’s an apartment key on the tansu—the bedside chest. I covered it with a protective cloth, but please use a coaster if you put any kind of beverage down on it. I’d rather you didn’t smoke in the apartment, because the furniture and art are very deli
cate. If you must have a cigarette, you can smoke on the balcony.” I realized belatedly I was sounding like my mother.

  “Got it, mum.” He put his hands up in mock surrender.

  “About dinner,” I began. “I marinated eggplant and also made some soba noodles and a cucumber salad.”

  “I’m no flower-eater!”

  “Hugh will help you order some take-out food, then.” I was exasperated. “There are a ton of menus in the kitchen left over from his bachelor days.”

  Hugh finally arrived, but before I could tell him about dinner, he spoke in a low, hard voice. “You. Me. Bedroom.”

  “What are you, Tarzan?” I protested against a background of Angus’s ribald laughter.

  Hugh ushered me in and slammed the door. He had been quiet on the car ride home, and I thought he was tired. He’d been seething.

  “How could you let this happen? My God, Rei.”

  “I just went to the park to take care of my problems. It all went wrong—”

  “Mr. Ota told me the police chief says you’re very lucky to have escaped.”

  “From whom?”

  “Jun Kuroi, if that’s even his real name! Whoever heard of a guy named Jun? And he could be charged with kidnapping or worse.”

  “If Jun were a dangerous person, the police would hardly let him go home,” I pointed out.

  “His father’s coming to speak to the police, not to take him home. I didn’t say anything earlier because I didn’t want to upset you.”

  “Upset me? That’s putting it mildly. You tricked me into leaving!”

  “The police needed to ask Jun more questions, not you. But what I’d like to know is the depth of your connection to the suspect.”

  “Do you mean to ask, was I meeting him for an afternoon quickie? No, Hugh. He’s just a guy I met in Hita who helped me fix the car’s taillight and is doing everything to help me get my money back for the tansu.”

  “That bloody two million yen! How many times have I told you I’ll absorb the cost? It’s nothing to me!”

  Angus began pounding on the door. “Come on out! No time for shagging.”

  I stalked out of the bedroom, brushing by Angus, who was holding a crystal snifter filled with what smelled like Hugh’s favorite eighteen-year-old Scotch whiskey.

  “Mmm, that will go well with pizza or whatever you wind up eating,” I said to Angus.

  “Take-away’s a good idea.” Hugh was pouring his own glass of Scotch. “Hey, Angus, careful with the stereo. What do you want to play?”

  “I’ve got Nine Inch Nails, Skinny Puppy, and Revolting Cocks.” Angus went on fiddling with Hugh’s expensive tape deck. “The cassettes I’ve been carrying around are a couple of years old. It’s hard to stay connected when traveling.”

  “Maybe you should turn on the radio,” I suggested. “There’s an FM station that plays the latest international stuff.”

  “I like industrial music, not sickening pop,” Angus said.

  “Give Angus a chance to play what he wants,” said Hugh, surprising me with his sharpness.

  “So what do you want to listen to first? Revolting Cocks are kind of dancey, Skinny Puppy is more noise, and everyone knows the Nails—though I’m not sure you’ll have heard this remix from the Lost Highway soundtrack.”

  “Anything.” Hugh sank onto the sofa, shutting his eyes.

  “Nine Inch Nails, then.” Angus slid a cassette into Hugh’s state-of-the-art tape deck, and as a terrible clashing of guitars began, I went to the window and looked down.

  Fourteen stories below me was a dark, humid city where a man had traveled to meet his death. High up in Roppongi Hills, we had air-conditioning and a song called “Perfect Drug.” Hugh’s apartment was its own world, a country to which I held a short-term visa. A place where I could stay, but never truly belong.

  Chapter 7

  Angus’s cassette was still going when I got up the next morning. I unplugged the stereo and stomped into the kitchen to eat breakfast, unable to tolerate the grinding metal sounds any longer. Hugh had already gone off to work, leaving a conspicuously marked Japan Times on the table. The article said a car dealer and an unemployed foreign woman had discovered the body of Nao Sakai, an antiques dealer from Hita. Autopsy results would be released within a few days.

  I sipped tea and thought about my options. I could stay in the apartment, making phone calls to various clients, but that would mean I’d be stuck with Angus. On the other hand, I could return to the police station to see what was happening with Jun.

  After dressing in a blue cotton dress I hoped did not scream “unemployed foreign woman,” I discovered Angus had awoken and was lounging on the living room sofa watching an Australian soap opera.

  “Oh, you’re here!” I said, struck by a sense of duty. “Do you have plans today? Need any suggestions?”

  “I’m still waking up, but after a while I might go looking for some local bands that play in a park,” he said, yawning.

  “Yoyogi Park?”

  “Yo something.”

  I recalled what Jun had told me. “The city government has cracked down and banned musical performances there. You can’t even play a radio outside anymore.”

  “Bloody police state,” Angus muttered. “Well, they’ve got to practice their songs somewhere.”

  “Look, Angus, I’d help you look for some local music spots today if I had the time, but I don’t. There’s a good record store in the neighborhood. Maybe one of the salesclerks could tell you about some concerts.”

  “Get off my back. You’re making me feel like I’m back at home, my mum and sisters jumping down my throat,” he said.

  I leaned against the doorway and asked, “Is that why you travel incessantly? Because you don’t like your family?”

  “They’re the ones who don’t like me,” Angus said fiercely. “I canna do anything right, coming after him. Imagine what it’s like to have everyone talking about your brother. They call him the business whiz, the golfing guru—not that he’s ever around, you know?”

  “But you’re very bright. You were accepted into some pretty good boarding schools,” I pointed out.

  “Booted from all.” Angus sounded proud. “For the love of drugs, sex, and rock, and roll . . . didn’t Shug tell you?”

  “Not exactly.” The irony was that when Hugh was young, there had been no money for him to attend boarding school. He’d gone to a free grammar school instead, and only made it to Glasgow University because he had a full scholarship. After graduation he went to work at a silk-stocking law practice, sending much of what he earned to fund Angus’s education.

  “Your brother drives you crazy, yet you came to stay with him.” I studied Angus’s sulky face.

  “I’m here because I’m on a round-the-world ticket. I need a place to bunk.”

  “So this apartment is basically your hotel?”

  “Don’t get pissy with me! It’s not your home, either.”

  “True,” I said, remembering the strange unhappiness that had flooded me while standing at the window the night before. “Well, I’m off for the day. I’ve left a subway map in the entryway and some tour books. Have fun.”

  “Ta, then.” Angus turned back to the television. “Neighbors!” He sang the show’s theme in a falsetto, a mocking swan song for my departure.

  I rode the Hibiya Line thirteen stops to Ueno. My unlucky number, I thought while walking slowly past the cheerful bustle of hawkers in the Ameyoko bargain shopping alley selling everything from dried fish to deodorant. I had developed painful shinsplints from running the previous day and was misted with perspiration when I arrived at the police station.

  I went straight to the women’s rest room to freshen up. I could hear something unpleasant going on in a toilet stall, the painful sound of vomiting. Probably a young, pregnant office worker. I was drying my hands and face when the stall door opened and a middle-aged woman went to the sink to rinse her mouth. I glanced at her bent frame and, as she slowly straigh
tened, made the identification: Mrs. Sakai, the woman with the mole.

  She was looking at her sagging face in the mirror, the cheeks mottled by dozens of tiny red pinpricks, capillaries broken by her vomiting. I knew because it always happened to me. Her pageboy hairstyle looked limp and oily, and her lipstick had worn off into a crayoned line around the edges.

  I moved closer to the mirror so she saw my face. At first there was no recognition, but then she turned.

  “Aa!” she exclaimed, sounding horrified.

  “You’re feeling ill. I’m sorry.” Despite what she’d done in Hita Fine Arts, I did feel terrible for her. She’d lost her husband.

  “They tried to make me eat. I couldn’t keep it down.” The haughty air she’d assumed in the shop was completely gone. She wiped her mouth with a limp yellow and pink dotted handkerchief she pulled from her pocket.

  I offered her a fresh package of tissues someone had thrust into my hand at the Roppongi subway station that morning, a sales promotion for something or other. She didn’t take it. Sensing my time was limited, I spoke. “About Jun Kuroi—he was only trying to help me. It wasn’t his fault that your husband died.”

  “Helping you?” She sounded distracted.

  “You were at the shop that day. If it wasn’t for you, I would have paid a fair price for the tansu.”

  Her face flushed. “You think because I was his wife, I was not truly interested in the tansu! Let me tell you, I really wanted it—I had developed a fondness—”

  “Stop it. You and your husband knew the chest was an overpriced fake.”

  “Fake?” She looked incredulous.

  “The metalwork was changed. I didn’t notice, and my mistake was your husband’s gain.”

  “How can you talk about gain? He’s dead, he has gained nothing!” Mrs. Sakai took a brush out of her handbag and began raking it through her hair. “My husband paid a fair price to the consignor who gave him that piece.”

  “If that’s true, why were you running away from Hita?”