The Floating Girl: A Rei Shimura Mystery (Rei Shimura Mystery #4) Read online

  Reviewers Talk About "The Floating Girl":

  “Sujata Massey takes readers on a thoughtful tour of contemporary Japanese youth culture in this accomplished murder mystery… Deftly sketching everyday life in parts of Tokyo rarely seen by tourists, Massey tells a series of overlapping stories about identity, the popular media and the hilarious frenzy of contemporary comic book culture.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Rei is one of the most complex female protagonists around. She is Japanese, but she is also an American living in Japan, and this dichotomy gives her observations on Japanese culture a fascinating double edge.”

  —Booklist ‘Editor’s Choice’

  “The real strength of the book is the portrayal of Rei’s continuing struggle to both accept and be accepted in her adopted home.”

  —The Denver Post

  The Floating Girl

  Sujata Massey

  Ikat Press

  Baltimore

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright Sujata Massey 2014, all rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address [email protected].

  This book was originally published as a HarperCollins hardcover in May 2000 with Avon Books edition 2001. The author is grateful to HarperCollins Publishers for the return of full copyright in March 2012.

  Cover and formatting: Sue Trowbridge, interbridge.com. Cover illustration © isaxar, iStockphoto.com.

  Contents

  Reviewers Talk About "The Floating Girl":

  Acknowledgements

  The Floating Girl Cast of Characters

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Why I Wrote This Book

  About the Author

  "The Bride's Kimono" Preview

  Also by Sujata Massey

  Acknowledgements

  I thank sincerely the friends who introduced me to Japanese animation and made writing this book a pleasure: J.D. Considine, of Baltimore, and Akemi Narita and her daughter, Aki, of Yokohama. I am also indebted to each eagle eye belonging to dear friends in my two local writers critique groups, as well as Susan Hofforth, Kerstin Trowbridge, Susanne Trowbridge, Manami Amanai, and Chris Belton, the Tokyo-based novelist and translator. To my current agent, Vicky Bijur, and my past agents, Ellen Geiger and Dave Barbor, at Curtis Brown, and past and present friends at HarperCollins, especially Helen Moore, Carolyn Marino, Betsy Areddy, Robin Stamm, and Gene Midlowski, thanks once again for your flexibility, kindness, and good ideas.

  Much of this book was written while I was staying in India, and I benefited from the loving support of my relatives, especially the ones who were with me: Rekha Banerjee, Hemantika Puri, and Padmaben and A.V. Parikh. Also, thanks to the ones who kept things going at home: Claire and Karin Banerjee, Subir Banerjee and Manju Parikh, and Sam, Harriot, Alex, and Don Massey. I also am indebted to the staff at Parikh Steel Calcutta, especially Jawaharlal Joshi and Neelam Mishra, who let my muse run rampant on their computers. To my husband, Tony, who got me safely back into the United States: You are the best.

  The Floating Girl Cast of Characters

  Rei Shimura: Japanese-American antiques maven moonlighting as a columnist

  Alec Tampole: Australian-born entertainment editor at the Gaijin Times, Tokyo’s monthly magazine for foreigners

  Rika Fuchida: Showa College student working as an entertainment-section intern at the Gaijin Times

  Mr. Sanno: Owner of the Gaijin Times and Sanno Advertising

  Takeo Kayama: Temporarily unemployed flower- arranging teacher turned home renovator. He has a twin sister, Natsumi Kayama, and a father, Masanobu Kayama, who is headmaster of the Kayama School of Ikebana.

  Kunio Takahashi: Amateur artist of the Showa Story comic strip

  Marcellus: Senegalese immigrant who works as a hawker and dancer at Show a Boy nightclub.

  Chiyo: Mama-san of Show a Boy

  Nicky Larsen: Showa College student who falls in love with Japanese amateur animation and the dancing life

  Seiko Hattori: Showa College student who shares Nicky’s passion for amateur animation

  Lieutenant Hata: Rei’s confidant in the Tokyo Metropolitan Police

  Hiroko Shima: Managing editor of the Mars Girl comic strip published by the mainstream publisher Dayo Comics

  Manami Oida: Head artist for the Mars Girl comic strip

  Tsutomu ‘Tom’ Shimura: Rei’s cousin, an emergency-room attending physician at St. Luke’s International Hospital

  The Fish: A businessman who swims with the sharks

  The Hedgehog: A rabid animation fan

  Plus a colorful array of beauticians, journalists, animation fans, and others who dream of turning staid Tokyo into a more animated city.

  Chapter One

  “Is the pain killing you? Shall I stop?”

  I shook my head because the pain had eased temporarily. Miss Kumiko sighed and stroked more sticky warmth over my inner thigh — a deceptively pleasant sensation. I knew that six more inches needed to be cleared. The aesthetician pressed a strip of cotton over my thigh, and I sucked in my breath as she began to pull.

  “Oh!” I gasped as she yanked at least a hundred hairs from their follicles.

  “Japanese women don’t like to cry out,” Miss Kumiko said brightly. “Not even when delivering babies. When my niece was born, my sister was silent. At moments of severe pain, she bit a handkerchief. Would you like a handkerchief?”

  “No, thank you, and this is hardly childbirth. It’s a bikini wax!” Damn my American half for making the process necessary. If I’d been fully Japanese, I would have inherited the hairless gene. But I was a hafu or hanbunjin or konketsujin or whatever name Miss Kumiko secretly used for mixed-race people. It was my own stupid vanity that had brought me into Power Princess Spa before the start of the July beach season. I had one final business appointment that afternoon, and then a drive the next day to the beach. But first I had to get through the pain.

  “Madam, it is not that I mind, but the manicurist in the next cubicle has problems,” Miss Kumiko whispered. “Surprise screams from
customers can cause her to lose rhythm.”

  “Maybe there’s a reason your customers scream,” I said.

  “Jaa, we are all done!” Miss Kumiko made a series of light slaps against my groin. This was kinkier than I’d expected, but then again, this was my first experience with waxing in Tokyo. I would live and learn.

  I put on my skirt and limped out to the stylish black-and-white reception area.

  “Rei Shimura?” The salon’s bleached-blond receptionist called me up to her stylish chrome desk.

  “Yes?” I continued at my slow pace, thighs sticking together because of a few remnants of wax.

  “We have two kinds of bikini wax, large and small,” she announced so clearly that some of the other customers in the waiting area looked up from their magazines. “When we spoke on the phone, we thought you were a typical Japanese, so we quoted you the price for a small wax. However, Miss Kumiko reports that you required the large wax. Therefore the fee is a bit higher: six thousand yen. Is that fine?”

  The entire reception room seemed to be leaning close to hear my embarrassed answer.

  “Fine,” I said glumly. An exchange rate of about 100 yen to the dollar made the price of hair removal about $60, more than twice the going rate in the United States. I paid up, thinking the only silver lining was that Miss Kumiko wouldn’t require a tip. This was Japan, where you never paid extra for good service. It was expected.

  I walk this uneasy line between pleasure and pain—and understanding and confusion—almost daily. Four years ago, I emigrated from San Francisco to Tokyo to find a job working with Japanese antiques. Nobody would hire me, so I had to establish my own business. It’s been a struggle at times, but I’m proud to say that at last I’ve leaped over the poverty line. Miss Kumiko would not think of asking me to find her an antique chest, but plenty of older, wealthy Japanese have done that. Even in an economic downturn, I’d had some very lucky breaks.

  After I struggled out of the Power Princess Spa, I headed toward my latest lucky spot: the Gaijin Times, an English-language magazine aimed at foreigners living in Tokyo. Its editor-in-chief, an ambitious young woman journalist called Whitney Talbot, had hunted me down after she’d read my article on ceramics for a Japanese antiques magazine. Whitney had asked me to write similar articles with, as she put it, “an element of street sass.” I was apprehensive, but when she named a price for a monthly column, I decided I had to try. My first article was a guide to haggling for antiques at the weekend flea markets held at Tokyo’s Shinto shrines. It was supposed to be a do-it-yourself article, but my phone started ringing off the hook with insecure foreigners willing to pay me to haggle for them. It had become very good business.

  I put away my quick rush of pride as I entered the narrow sliver of a building that was home to the Sanno Advertising Agency and the Gaijin Times. I rode the elevator up to the third-floor hall, where everything was painted a dull beige.

  Throbbing music coming from speakers stationed on either side of the Gaijin Times office door was the first indicator that the magazine was striving to break free from a beige mold. Inside were chocolate-colored walls, chocolate brown tables, and a gray lump lying across the chocolate-and-strawberry print carpet.

  I drew closer to the lump to identify it. Alec Tampole, an Australian who edited the magazine’s copious nightclub listings, was stretched out on the floor, arms angled out from his side in an A shape, his knees curled snugly against his chest.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, hurrying over.

  “I’m doing some Pilates exercises. I forgot you were coming in today, Rye.” He pushed his legs over his head in a move that looked like yoga

  “My name is actually pronounced ‘ray.’ As in Sugar Ray,” I said, striving for a pop music reference that he would understand.

  “Come closer so I can hear you over the music.” Alec slowly lowered his legs, grunting with exertion.

  I stood as close to his ear as possible and shouted the correct pronunciation.

  He laughed. “Right. Rye. Had an accident coming over?”

  “No. What do you mean? Is something going on outside?”

  “That’s not the kind of accident I’m talking about. What’s that gunk on your knickers?”

  “You bastard!” I realized belatedly that the music maven had been angling himself for a perfect view up my skirt. I leaped away from him.

  “Heh heh. Had a hot wax for a hot date, eh?” As he swung his hips over his head once again, I kicked his large, khaki-clad behind. His anguished yelp was music to my ears as I left the reception area, heading into the tiny warren of offices and my next assignment.

  Chapter Two

  “Where’s Whitney?” I aimed my question at Rika Fuchida, the magazine’s college intern, who was standing with bare feet on Alec’s desk taping up the edge of a Cibo Matto poster that had come loose. I was surprised Alec wasn’t in the room watching Rika. Her skirt was shorter than mine.

  “Oh, hello, Rei-san!” Rika was Japanese, so she had no trouble with my name. “Didn’t you hear that Whitney-san is not here anymore?”

  “No. Is she working from home?” I glanced at my watch. I had to be somewhere else in two hours, but I really had wanted to see the editor for approval of my next column topic. I was proposing a piece on how to buy and refinish a tansu chest for less than a thousand dollars.

  Rika shook her head so vigorously that her trendy short pigtails bounced. “Whitney quit.”

  “Oh, no!” I was aghast.

  Alec leaned in the doorway and joined our conversation. “She took a job at the Asian Wall Street Journal. Going on to greener pastures, heh heh. Good thing for all of us that she did a bunk. This magazine needs to be more culturally connected. Whitney spoke the language, but she didn’t know much about the pulse of modern Japan.”

  “If the Journal hired her, somebody obviously thinks she’s good,” I said. From what I’d heard about her Yale education and journalism experience, Whitney was almost overqualified for the Gaijin Times.

  “Mr. Sanno, the magazine’s owner, is sitting in on the story meeting today. He’s the one who’s going to select the new editor.” Alec looked as if he would explode with excitement.

  “Don’t get any ideas about showing off during the meeting. I saw your resume. The only journalism experience you’ve had prior to this is the Johns Hopkins University Newsletter.”

  “I’m not interested in the editor’s job,” I replied coolly. His mention of the magazine owner made me nervous. Would Mr. Sanno even want to keep me on as a columnist? I was very grateful for the publicity that the Gaijin Times column had given my business. My net earnings were 20 percent higher since I’d started being published.

  “It’s almost time for the meeting,” Rika said. “May I pause in your office redecoration, Alec-san, in order to serve the coffee?”

  “I’ll help you,” I offered, not wanting to stand next to Alec for a minute longer. It was only when Rika and I were placing small glasses of iced coffee on wooden coasters around the conference table that I realized how foolish my move had been. I was acting like an obsequious office lady. This was not the way to reinforce my stature as a columnist to the magazine’s owner.

  I wondered what Mr. Sanno was thinking when he took the seat of power at the end of the battered steel table. The magazine’s staff of six full-time editorial employees was a motley assortment of young people who perfectly reflected patterns of immigration to fin de siècle Japan. There was Joey Hirota, the half-Taiwanese, half- Japanese restaurant critic; Norton Jones, a fresh Columbia University graduate who covered national politics; Toshi Ueda, a recent Waseda University graduate who was the photo editor; my friend Karen Anderson, a former model who had put on weight and now wrote about fashion trends; the repulsive Alec, who did the music and entertainment listings; and Rika Fuchida, Alec’s intern assistant. The gang wore faux- and genuine vintage patterned polyester, double knit and jersey. Earrings swung from multiple holes, and heavy rings and bangles clat
tered against the table whenever anyone reached for their coffee. There was an undeniable odor of tobacco hanging over the group and a ratio of one ashtray per person on the table, although nobody was smoking yet, perhaps in deference to the magazine’s owner.

  Mr. Sanno appeared about forty years old, but instead of the gray or navy suit that was de rigueur with men his age, he was wearing a flashy green suit with wide lapels. He sat at the end of the table flipping through a large ring binder filled with pages of spreadsheets. Numbers, I thought, tensing up. I suspected that he would talk about what had proven profitable in the past, and how we would need to change.

  “Thank you for allowing me to join your regular story meeting. You are kind to let me intrude into your busy day.” Mr. Sanno’s voice was surprisingly high. I wondered if this was because he found speaking English a strain. He spoke at the level of someone who did business on a daily basis with English speakers, but he didn’t have the relaxed fluency of Japanese who had lived or studied overseas.

  “Hey, no worries! I’d like to see a lot more of you,” Alec said in his brash Australian way, and I sensed stiffening around the table. Alec was trying to turn his role as de facto editor into a permanent promotion.

  “Thank you, Mr. Tampon,” Mr. Sanno said, smoothly botching the pronunciation of Alec’s surname. I didn’t hide my smile. “We shall all miss the leadership of Miss Whitney Talbot. However, as we frequently say in Japan and China, the kanji character for crisis is made from those for two words: danger and opportunity. Our challenging time offers a great chance to move forward, to create a larger circulation for Gaijin Times.”

  I stopped smiling. Mr. Sanno was talking about numbers even sooner than I’d expected.

  “You may know that the Gaijin Times is the only magazine that Sanno Advertising owns. Perhaps you would like to understand why we created this magazine?” He glanced around the table. “Because we own the Gaijin Times, we can run advertisements on its pages for free. Of course, we charge our clients the cost of our advertising services, and they agree that it is a fair system. If we have a Mexican restaurant as a client, we run an ad for the spot, and in the same issue, Mr. Joey Hirota gives it a good review.”