The Daydreamer Detective Opens a Tea Shop

by S. J. Pajonas

  “Ah, yes.” He cleared his throat, running his hands over my arms to make sure I was okay.

  “Yasahiro,” Amanda called from across the restaurant, and everyone’s head turned to her. “Will you please hurry up?”

  His jaw tensed, the ripples of muscle in his cheek writhing beneath the surface. He sighed and faced me, presenting his back to Amanda. My belly warmed.

  “How’s your foot? Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” I whispered, and we smiled at each other.

  “I’m waiting!” Amanda called again.

  Yasahiro closed his eyes, and a thought bubble, filled with numbers counting to ten, appeared over his head. He was fighting a public blow-up, and sympathy for him made me sigh in solidarity. He had told me frequently how hard it was for him to deal with Amanda in public, one of the myriad of reasons why they broke up. Seeing it in person was ten times worse.

  He placed his arm around me and guided me with him to the front of the restaurant.

  Amanda rubbed her forehead as Ana ushered people out the door and flipped the sign to CLOSED.

  “I hope that doesn’t leave a bruise,” she said, glaring at Yasahiro. “Is it so awful that I give my boyfriend a kiss in public?”

  “We’re not dating.” His English voice was so dull I nearly guffawed, but I held my humor in check. “We haven’t been together for over two years.”

  “Yes,” she whispered, leaning closer to him. “But they don’t know that. Remember?” She glanced at the reporters outside. “Appearances are everything.”

  “Maybe for you. But not for me anymore.”

  My head bounced back and forth, taking in their conversation like watching a tennis tournament. Amanda narrowed her eyes at me, and I blinked at her, unable to say or do anything to interrupt them. What would I say anyway? “Hi, I’m Yasahiro’s girlfriend?” She’d laugh at me.

  Amanda grabbed Yasahiro’s arm and pulled him away from me, glancing over her shoulder as I closed the distance.

  “Can we talk some place private? Away from your assistant and all these people.”

  “Assistant?” His eyebrows drew together. “No. She’s...”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Amanda shook her head and smiled, the gorgeous Hollywood smile everyone knew. She touched his arm, a possessive gesture that wasn’t lost on him.

  Hey, that’s something only I’m allowed to do!

  I surged forward, but Ana caught me before I pounced on Amanda. She put her arm around me to steady me.

  “I’ll be here for two weeks, babe. You know, book tour and all that. I got in early yesterday and it looks like Giselle and Robert are in town too! Just like old times. A pity I didn’t hear about Morinaga’s restaurant opening, though.” She pouted. “I could have come in a day earlier, and you wouldn’t have been forced to bring your assistant.”

  She twisted her lips, and Yasahiro opened his mouth to speak, but she held up her hand. “Anyway, I’ll be here for a week in Tokyo, then Kyoto and Osaka. Then off to China. All the tabloids have been screaming for us to get back together. Haven’t you noticed?” She paused and smiled for the reporters outside who snapped photos of the two of them. My blood boiled.

  “We’re not getting back together,” Yasahiro ground out between clenched teeth. “It’s over. Beyond over. Light years over.”

  She smiled at him. “It’s never that over.” Her phone chimed, and she pulled it from her purse. “I have a launch party to attend tonight. You should be my date, of course. Eight tonight at the Kinokuniya in Shinjuku. Do you still have the same phone number?”

  His phone rang in his pocket, and he took it out. A number flashed on the screen, not her name, but I knew it was her. He knew it was her, too, by the blank look of anger that crawled across his face.

  “Fantastic,” she said, dropping her phone in her bag. “I’m staying at our apartment in Tokyo —”

  “You’re what?” Yasahiro’s face reddened, and I felt all the blood drain from mine.

  She flipped her hair to the side, and the statement bounced around in my head. “Staying at our apartment in Tokyo…”

  “I booked it myself online. You’re charging an awful lot for the place. I expect to get all that money back. And I have a lawyer set up for Monday at noon to go over what you owe me.” She handed him a business card, lackadaisical between two fingers, like she couldn’t care less what he wanted. “We can discuss terms tonight at the party.” She pulled a scarf from her bag and leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek. He avoided her by a centimeter, pulling out of his shock just in time. She clucked her tongue.

  “We’re going to have to fix that.”

  She swept past Ana and me, out the door, and all the reporters churned in her wake up the street to a car parked and waiting.

  She wanted to get back together with him. They had a secret apartment together? There was a lawyer involved? Everyone wants them to get back together?

  She was in and out so quick, so in command of everyone, even Yasahiro, that I wasn’t able to open my mouth and defend myself. I was caught up in a category five Typhoon Amanda, and when she left, I clung to a tree, stunned and soaking wet.

  Yasahiro turned to me, achingly slow. If I was clinging to a tree, he was stranded on a rooftop a block away, watching a flood of water carry his house off into the distance. I believed we could cross the waters to each other, but not now. By not dealing with her ages ago, just believing she’d go away and stay there, he brought this upon us.

  “I can explain —”

  I held up my hand and glared at him. “You said it was over.”

  “It is,” he pleaded, his hands together, crushing the business card between them.

  “Apparently not for her.”

  I turned and headed for the kitchen, grabbed my bag and coat from Yasahiro’s office, and ran out the back door before he could follow me.

  Chapter Six

  I thought my legs would carry me home, but as I left the restaurant, I angled towards Chiyo and Kumi’s bathhouse, Kutsuro Matsu, instead. My stomach growled, and my head lightened like a balloon. I’d gone to Sawayaka to eat lunch, and I had completely forgotten about it. It was too late now to go back, and with Akiko out of town, I had to talk to someone, and that someone was Kumi.

  I zoomed up the street, my legs working double time to get me to the bathhouse before anyone saw me. I didn’t like to have breakdowns in public, and it was rare that I cried, so I didn’t want anyone to see me in this state, angry and on the verge of tears.

  I slid open the door to Kutsuro Matsu and the front entrance was swamped with people. A tourist group had chosen the day for a trip to a traditional Japanese bathhouse. The language they spoke sounded Scandinavian, and they ignored me as I inched around the crowd. All the men and women smiled and talked, looking freshly washed and happy. Several were angling past me on their way out the door. I caught Kumi’s eye as she finished ringing people up at the front desk, and her face fell when she saw me. I must have been a mess. She waved me back to the locker room and held up one finger to show me she’d be there soon.

  I found the locker room empty, quiet with only the murmur of the tubs and the air conditioner blowing, so I sat in the corner, pressing my back to the cool wooden lockers. I was in a world of trouble. Amanda had come back for Yasahiro, and she wasn’t going to take no for an answer. I knew he was strong, that he didn’t love her anymore, that he loved me, but when dealing with a powerful person like Amanda, she could end us anyway. She wasn’t some random girl. She had money, influence, and fame on her side. If I was going to fight her, I’d have to go to an entirely different level.

  What kind of stunts would she pull? Would she trick Yasahiro into meeting her in Tokyo in public? She said she had a lawyer involved. Would she blackmail him to keep him around? A whirlpool of possibilities swirled in my head. I’d seen a lot these past few months, between two murders and almost losing everything. A year ago, I was a naïve young woman, never believing crime or attemp
ted murder would happen to me. Those were things that happened to other people. Even growing up with the scars on my back, I still believed the best in people. But now, I possessed a healthy dose of cynicism.

  Kumi entered the locker room, heading straight for me.

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  My hands shook as I pushed the hair from my face. “You could say that.” I sighed, exhaling all the air from my lungs in one swift breath. “Amanda is back.”

  Kumi drew her hand to her mouth to cover a gasp. “No!”

  “Yes. Most definitely.”

  “What the hell is she doing here?”

  I giggled at her vehemence. She rarely ever swore, but when she did, she meant it. “If you haven’t already guessed, she’s back for Yasahiro.” I sighed again my shoulders hunching over. “She thinks she’ll get him.”

  Kumi squeezed my arm. “There’s no way that’ll happen. Even a blind man can tell how much he loves you, and how much he despises her.”

  “‘Despises’ is a strong word. There are days when he mentions her and I see the light in his eyes.” Kumi frowned as I pinched the bridge of my nose. A headache was crawling from my sinuses to the front of my brain, a common occurrence when I didn’t eat. “And I don’t blame him or anything. I still look back on some of the guys I dated and smile. Except for Tama. He’s dead to me.”

  “Of course.” Kumi took my hand and steadied it. “Have you had lunch yet?” She leaned over to look at the clock on the other side of the locker room. “It’s past 14:00.”

  “No.” I stood and released her fingers to pace. “What am I going to do?”

  “I... I don’t know. What can you do?”

  “I’ve got to get in front of this, head her off before she does anything too risky. If I could only stop her...” I paced back and forth, and Kumi hummed under her breath.

  “What about her ex-boyfriend? That guy she was dating last year.”

  “What guy?” I halted and my blood pressure dropped, cooling my skin.

  Kumi’s lips quirked. “You may not have been Googling Yasa-kun, but I have.”

  “You have? Why?”

  “He’s the only famous person I know! Of course, I’m Googling him. I don’t know how you stay away.”

  Hollywood gossip was boring, and I’d never bought tabloid papers or magazines. It just wasn’t my thing. So it should’ve come as no surprise I hadn’t poked around on celebrity websites either, especially now that my boyfriend had been on those sites as recently as two years ago.

  “It’s purely a survival strategy.”

  “Anyway, Amanda had been dating someone in secret for almost a year. They weren’t living together or anything. Nothing as serious as Yasa-kun, but still, the internet was all over it.”

  “Huh.” I sat back down next to her. “And?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “You know me and my Tumblr addiction. It was on every celebrity Tumblr for a while, then it wasn’t.”

  “Then?”

  She gulped and paled. “Then there were photos of Yasa-kun and Amanda together again.”

  “What?” I jumped up, but she reached out to grab my hand.

  “Trust me. The photos were old. Yasa-kun looked younger and so did Amanda. People said they were new, and then other people commented that they weren’t. It felt fake, which is why I never mentioned it. Plus, several of the photos were taken on days I had spent time with the two of you. I figured they had to be fake.”

  “Still... Someone wanted those photos out there to show they were together.” I deflated back to the bench. “What am I going to do?”

  “You’re not going to do anything. Amanda is a nobody now —”

  “Not true,” I interrupted.

  “She’s a nobody to us, to Yasahiro. Don’t worry. We’ll figure something out. I’m sure we can come up with something to keep her away.”

  “No, no, no. It won’t work,” I said, moaning. Despair flooded me, threatening to carry me away.

  “You don’t need to worry. Trust me.”

  I stammered, not knowing what to say. There was nothing that could keep Amanda away. When she wanted something, she got it. Every news story I’d read before I stopped obsessing over her stated she was never turned down for a role she wanted, and she scored her book deal in a big New York auction. It must have been a blow to her ego to lose Yasahiro, and the only way to correct that would be to get him back. It would be a fight, I knew it.

  “Honestly,” Kumi said, taking my hands. “He loves you, one-hundred percent, without a doubt. I know he wouldn’t leave you for Amanda.”

  “Kumi, how can anyone know such a thing?” Her certainty baffled me. Especially since I was the one who spent all my time with him, and I wasn’t certain.

  “I just do. Now, let’s go buy sushi from the place up the block and then you can take a bath. You shouldn’t bathe when your blood sugar is so low. Come on. I could eat again anyway.” She smiled as she rubbed her blossoming belly, and my thoughts softened to baby smiles and Kumi wearing her newborn in a sling. I’d much rather dream of that than Amanda.

  She gestured me out to the front desk, but I took a long moment to breathe deep and steady myself.

  If Amanda wanted a fight, I’d go in with fists raised. I could only hope I would knock her out in the first round.

  Chapter Seven

  “Will you please talk to me?” Yasahiro’s text blinked at me, and I waited a few minutes before I replied.

  “I need time to think. I’m going out to the farm.”

  Instead of returning to my studio, I got on the bus heading toward home. My original plan was to eat lunch at Sawayaka, spend an hour with Yasahiro during his lunch break, have a soak at the bathhouse, and return to the studio to keep painting into the afternoon. Then Yasahiro and I would spend the evening together as we always did on Fridays.

  I stared out the window as the bus came to a stop on the corner. Though I had gained confidence in myself during lunch with Kumi, I still felt I could never measure up to Amanda. I looked back to those first few days of my relationship with Yasahiro, before I knew Amanda existed, and I wished I could return to that innocence.

  Even when I’d learned of Amanda, and I stopped myself from Googling her constantly, Yasahiro and I had formed a relationship without her. The winter had been hard, but it had been just the two of us, and we made it through together. Now that she was back, I wasn’t sure where I stood. How could I even compete?

  I got off the bus outside of town before it looped back into the city center. Pulling my scarf around my neck tighter, I leaned into the spring wind and walked the kilometer out to home, my mother’s home, the farm where I grew up. With the land around the farm starting to grow green again, the area looked less desolate than usual. Birds swooped into the rice paddies, picking up bugs and yammering at each other. I shielded my eyes as the sun bounced off the watery fields and blinded me before I headed up to the house. The pine trees on either side of the gravel drive whispered in the winds, and my mom’s new Toyota Corolla was parked out front. She was home.

  “Mom?” I called out as I opened the front door and kicked off my shoes. I slipped into house slippers and made my way to the kitchen, knowing she’d be in there if she was anywhere.

  “Mei-chan? Is that you?”

  Mom was chopping vegetables at the island, a pot of soup stock bubbling away on the stove, and she was listening to piano concertos, humming along. She set down her knife and came around, smiling and holding out her arms.

  “What are you doing home? I didn’t expect you back today.” She gave me a hug even though she’d seen me that morning.

  “I, uh, ran into a little problem.” I sighed as I sat on the stool at the island. “And I figured I’d come here instead of going back to Yasahiro’s.”

  Mom’s face fell into a frown, and her eye twitched, a nervous gesture I associated with worry. “What happened? And please don’t tell me someone is dead. I think we’ve had enough d
eath to last us another decade.”

  I had to laugh, even though it was far from funny. “No. Nobody died. Instead, someone came back from the dead.” Mom paused, her knife suspended in midair over a carrot. “Amanda is back.”

  Mom closed her eyes and froze in place. “I always knew this would happen, but I didn’t expect her to come so soon.” She opened her eyes and stared out at the new barn, the empty shell of lumber framework casting shadows across the lawn. The concrete platform was clean and the four walls and roof were up. I had probably just missed the workers by an hour. “I hoped we’d be in a much better place...” Her voice trailed off.

  “Why does it matter? I’m not here to impress her. I never could anyway.”

  Mom returned to chopping her vegetables. “You’re right. It doesn’t matter. But I wasn’t thinking of her. I was thinking of you.”

  I shook my head and shrugged my shoulders, not getting her point.

  “Listen, Mei-chan. Wherever that woman goes, so does the media. If she’s going to be in your life, so will they. She overcompensates now after losing Yasahiro.”

  “How would you know this?” When I pictured my mom, she was working in the fields, gardening, or cooking at the stove. I forgot she had a computer and smartphone of her own. She still worked at the Midori Sankaku kitchen twice per week, too, most likely gossiping in the kitchen. Was she following the gossip about Yasahiro and Amanda?

  “I’m not a hermit, my darling daughter. I check the news every day.”

  “Anyway, it’s fine, Mom. She doesn’t even know who I am.”

  “Ha!” she barked out and returned to chopping. “You’re delusional if you think she doesn’t know exactly who you are. There have been photos of you and Yasahiro-san online. She knows. She knows.”

  My memories rewound through the day to Sawayaka. Amanda had looked straight at me, me with paint on my face and Yasahiro holding my elbow, and she had known? She’d pretended like I was nobody. She even tried to kiss him right in front of me! The very nerve she had was outrageous.