The Typhoon Lover Read online

  The Typhoon Lover

  Sujata Massey

  Contents

  Cast of Characters

  1

  I’ve never thought of myself as the blindfold type.

  2

  The club was packed as tightly as Tokyo’s Cube 326…

  3

  The claim I’d made about a morning meeting had been…

  4

  Up-two-three-four.

  5

  After I’d put the bonsai straight out of the apartment,…

  6

  Senator Harp Snowden had a weakness for good food—good Asian…

  7

  I was glad to have eaten the curry puffs with…

  8

  “No!” Hugh said.

  9

  The situation at Dulles Airport was chaotic, with my navel…

  10

  To sleep a full first night in Japan, followed by…

  11

  Takeo had a girl.

  12

  Mr. Watanabe caught up with me a few minutes later in…

  13

  Despite Richard and Simone’s protests, I left Salsa Salsa soon…

  14

  Half an hour later, the two of us had waded…

  15

  During the twenty minutes I’d been in the Kaikan, the…

  16

  The 8:02 train out of Tokyo Station was still scheduled…

  17

  Fifteen minutes later, I was in water again. But this…

  18

  Five minutes later, I had fixed the dinner tray and…

  19

  Afterward, Takeo fell asleep almost immediately.

  20

  “Emi-chan, how wonderful to see you. You came all by…

  21

  The train system was running again, but slowly. While I…

  22

  Chika looked down at the fuzzy balls on her house…

  23

  I had a premonition of bad media, so I expected…

  24

  My aunt had no idea of what scandal was, I…

  25

  I bowed, but Mr. Harada was staring intensely. I wondered whether…

  26

  My departure for Sankei-en was complicated by a special delivery…

  27

  Waseda! I’d spent a junior year abroad here, so I…

  28

  Omote-sando had always been my aunt Norie’s idea of shopping…

  29

  “Emi?” He turned to me with eyes filled with pain.

  30

  My journey back to Yokohama seemed to take forever. Outside…

  31

  Identification check. The only thing I had going for me…

  32

  While I was talking, classes had ended. Richard and Simone…

  33

  The saving grace, as the night rolled on, was that…

  34

  I’d been planning to travel to Kyushu on the bullet…

  35

  When I first visited the island of Kyushu, I was…

  36

  I’d been expecting a luxuriously appointed shop, but the studio…

  37

  There really was no chance of leaving Kyushu that night.

  38

  It was noon when I’d transferred from Haneda Airport to…

  39

  I jogged up the wide driveway, which led through a…

  40

  Kenichi Harada had tossed down his own throat all the…

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Praise

  Other Books by Sujata Massey

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Cast of Characters

  REI SHIMURA: Japanese-American antiques dealer and woman-about-town.

  HUGH GLENDINNING: a lawyer from Scotland currently working for a firm in Washington, D.C.

  KENDALL HOWARD JOHNSON: Rei’s socially and politically connected cousin.

  GLASWEGIAN HANGOVER: a British band with buzz, featuring Hugh’s brother, Angus Glendinning, and Angus’s friends Sridhar, Keiffer, and Nate.

  CHIKA SHIMURA: Rei’s footloose first cousin, the daughter of Rei’s aunt Norie and uncle Hiroshi Shimura, who live in Yokohama. Chika’s older brother, Tom “Tsutomu” Shimura, works at St. Luke’s Hospital in Tokyo.

  MICHAEL HENDRICKS: rising star at the State Department’s Japan desk.

  YUKIO WATANABE, code name ITO: the consul of the Japanese embassy in Washington, D.C.

  BRENDA MARTIN: colonel in the U.S. Army.

  HARP SNOWDEN: a senator from California.

  RICHARD RANDALL: Rei’s former roommate, a Canadian teacher of English.

  SIMONE: a friend of Rei’s living in Tokyo who teaches French.

  TAKEO KAYAMA, code name FLOWERS: Rei’s former boyfriend, now head of the Kayama School of Ikebana.

  EMI HARADA, code name THE BRIDE: eighteen-year-old daughter of Kenichi Harada, minister for the environment (alias Harmony), and his wife, Yasuko.

  FUMIKO NAGASA: Emi’s friend.

  KAZU SAKURAI: celebrated potter; a Living National Treasure, who is married to Nobuko.

  ALI and OSMAN BIRAND, code names BROTHER A and BROTHER B: brothers and partners in an antiques business based in Istanbul. Ali is single. Osman is the father of a son, Ramzi, code name Robert.

  Plus a motley crew of students, fishmongers, cops, cabbies, club kids, and others who make a trip to Tokyo the ultimate experience.

  1

  I’ve never thought of myself as the blindfold type.

  Not on planes, not in beds, and certainly not in restaurants. Especially not a place like DC Coast, where I was sitting on the evening of my thirtieth birthday, listening to my dinner companion trying his best to be persuasive.

  “What happens next will be very special.” Hugh said, picking up the small black mask that he’d placed next to our shared dessert. “You don’t have to put the blindfold on inside here. Just a little later.”

  “You promised no party,” I reminded him, but not sharply. My stomach was filled with a pleasant mélange of tuna tartare and crawfish risotto and crispy fried bass. It had been an orgy of seafood and good wine, just my kind of night.

  “Hmm,” Hugh said, studying the restaurant bill.

  “If it’s not a surprise party, where are you taking me?” I prodded.

  “Let’s just say I’ve got two tickets to paradise.”

  I rolled my eyes, thinking Hugh was showing his age, when I’d rather keep mine confidential. I didn’t mind having a delicious, leisurely dinner, but he’d practically rushed me through cappuccino and crème brûlée. Hugh was frantic to leave, making me think he definitely had something planned.

  As we waited for the car to be brought to us on the busy corner of Fourteenth and K streets, Hugh folded the tiny black blindfold into my hand. “It’s never been used, if that makes you more comfortable. I saved it from my last trip to Zurich.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in regifting?” I asked lightly.

  “Well, you didn’t want a ring. What else can I offer you?” The undercurrent of irritation in Hugh’s voice was clear. I’d worn his beautiful two-carat emerald for a short while, but ultimately returned it, because engagement rings scared me just as much as turning thirty did. Hugh was thirty-five; he’d been ready for the last three years. I wondered if I’d ever be.

  The valet pulled up with the car and jumped out to open the passenger side for me. I got in, feeling a mixture of excitement and fear about what lay ahead. As we pulled off into traffic, I reclined my seat as far as it would go, hoping that this way, nobody would notice the woman with short black hair and a matching mask over her eyes. Anyone who caug
ht a glimpse might think I’d just come out of plastic surgery or something like that?though most Washington women who went in for that flew to Latin America, where the plastic surgeons were good and there were no neighbors to bump into.

  “Are we headed for the airport?” I asked, with a sudden rush of hope.

  “No chance.” Hugh sounded regretful. “It would have been fun to get away, but I can’t risk any absences when the partner-track decisions are forthcoming.”

  Hugh was a lawyer at a high-pressure international firm a few blocks away. He’d been working for the last year on a class action suit that still wasn’t ready to roll. His work involved frequent travel back to Japan, the country of my heritage, where we’d met a few years earlier. I would have loved to travel with him, but I couldn’t, because I was banned from Japan. It was a complicated story that I didn’t want to revisit on a night when I was supposed to be happy.

  “Don’t think about it,” I muttered to myself. It was my habit to talk to myself sometimes, to try to shut out the bad thoughts that threatened what was a perfectly pleasant life.

  “What don’t you want to think about?”

  “I’m getting nauseated from wearing a blindfold in a moving car,” I said. “Not to mention that my nerves are shot because you won’t tell me what’s going to happen next.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Just hang on, I’ll open the window.” Hugh pressed the control that slid down the passenger-side window next to me. “We’re just going around the corner to park. Will you survive another two minutes?”

  I nodded, glad for a chance to listen to the sounds of the road. I could tell this wasn’t our neighborhood, Adams-Morgan, with its mix of pulsating salsa music, honking horns, and shouting truck drivers. All I heard was a slow, steady purr of cars caught in traffic. After a while, the car moved again and turned a corner. Then it stopped. Hugh’s window slid down.

  “Paradise, sir?” A strange man’s voice asked.

  “That’s right. We’re staying till the wee morning hours,” Hugh said. “Will this cover it?”

  Before the parking valet could answer, I had a few words of my own. “Hugh, you know that I have a nine-thirty meeting at the Sackler Gallery tomorrow. You can very well stay until the wee hours, but I can’t.”

  “Job interviews come and go. Thirtieth birthdays are only once!” He sounded positively gleeful.

  My door was opened, and I unbuckled my seat belt. Then I felt a hand on my wrist, helping me out.

  “You must be the girl getting the big birthday surprise.” The valet’s voice came from somewhere to the left.

  I was busy working through the situation?was this a boutique hotel, maybe??when Hugh tugged my hand. “There’s going to be a downward flight of steps in a moment. Just take it slowly.”

  “What kind of a hotel has subterranean rooms?” I demanded.

  “You’ll know soon enough.” Ten steps, and then a flat surface. “I’m going to hold the door open. Just step through.”

  I had no sight, but my other senses were bombarded. First, the sounds?” Japanese Girls,” an Eels song pounding ominously, and lots of voices: talking, laughing, shrieking. Then there were the smells?smoke from cigarettes and sandalwood incense.

  Someone took my other hand and pressed briefly down on the area over my knuckles. I guessed that I was getting a hand-stamp, the way bouncers did at bars.

  “Hugh, this is so silly,” I complained. “I want to see where I am. If this is the S and M club we read about in City Paper I’m not going any farther.”

  Hugh sighed and said, “I’d hoped you’d stay blindfolded until the magic moment, but if you’re that anxious, you may as well take it off. Go ahead.”

  Had I known of the series of events about to unfold?not this night, but in the crazy, dangerous days that rolled out, right after my birthday?I might have just kept the blindfold on. I would have remained in Hugh’s thrall, powerless to make my own choices, but secure?still twenty-nine and safe as houses.

  But I’m not the kind of girl who stays in one place for long, whether it’s a city or a nightclub vestibule.

  I slid off the blindfold, and opened my eyes.

  2

  The club was packed as tightly as Tokyo’s Cube 326 on a good night—impressive for a live venue rather than a DJ club. I had never been inside a place in Washington this crowded and smoky. Wasn’t there a no-smoking law in Washington clubs now? I wondered about it as I scanned the crowd, looking for familiar faces.

  “Is that Kendall?” I asked Hugh, pointing to a slender redhead in a black leather jacket who looked like my married cousin from Potomac, but who was embracing a handsome younger man with a goatee.

  “Yes, I gather she brought a toyboy from her office. But there’s an even better spectacle right ahead.” Hugh touched my shoulders and turned me so that I was facing the other side of the room. A stage was set up with a drum set and keyboards and microphones. Above it was a banner that said in glittering silver letters, HAPPY DIRTY THIRTY, REI!

  I looked from it to Hugh. “You promised you wouldn’t throw a surprise party.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “But I told you I was taking you to Paradise.”

  Suddenly I got it. This unfamiliar nightclub was probably a hot new music venue on U Street. I was amazed Hugh had been able to book it on a Friday night for something as inconsequential as my thirtieth birthday party.

  I asked, “Is this Club Paradise?”

  “Yes, isn’t it brilliant?” He squeezed my hand back. “I had to keep the newspaper away from you all week so you wouldn’t catch wind of what was going on.” Hugh looked very pleased with himself.

  “But I must know only a fraction of the people here.”

  “Andrea, Kendall, and I shared the invites. There are about a hundred fifty of our crowd here. The others, well, they’ve all paid to get in and that helps make up the cost of booking the space. I’m sure they’ll be your friends by night’s end—” As he spoke, he was putting a small glittering tiara on my head.

  “People would pay to come to my birthday?” I was becoming even more confused as Andrea, a beautiful but moody restaurant hostess who’d become a good friend recently, came over to deliver some air kisses.

  “Happy birthday, Rei,” she said. “I’m going to handle the door and make sure nobody gets in on the guest list who should be paying.”

  Kendall bounced up and gave me a kiss on the lips that tasted like a Cosmopolitan. “Happy dirty thirty, dear. You know, I tried to talk Hugh into staving your thirtieth off for a few more years, but he wouldn’t listen. Men!”

  “What do you mean? She’s thirty tomorrow.” Andrea looked at Kendall as if she thought my cousin, who loved to brag about her M.B.A., couldn’t count.

  “A lot of girls don’t publicly celebrate thirty until they’re a little bit older, like thirty-five. Some of my friends from boarding school are going to do that, and I’m trying to decide whether I can carry it off. What do you think?” As Kendall spoke, she was twinkling at the young man she’d draped herself over before.

  “It looks like some of your friends are here,” I said, not wanting to answer her question. “You’ll have to introduce me.”

  “Hugh let me bring about seventy-five of my nearest and dearest. They’re so excited about the show, just thrilled once I explained about—”

  “Watch it, Kendall,” Hugh said warningly.

  “Hugh, I never! George is just my intern, okay?”

  “I’m sure he meant about the show, Kendall, not your toyboy—” I bit my lip. The Viognier I’d had at the restaurant had made me too loose.

  “Let’s get some drinks,” Hugh suggested. “Then I’ve got to dash up there, get the emcee thing started. We’re half an hour behind schedule.”

  As Hugh brought each of us a drink and then wound his way through the crowd to the stage, I watched Kendall’s pretty girlfriends in their preppy prints and Hugh’s lawyer friends in suits begin to circle each other. Around them were many more young
people in black leather and heavy metal, as well as fashionable young men with shaved heads and guayabera shirts, and girls with ironed hair and thigh-high boots. Now I understood why Hugh had been so obstinate about my clothes for the evening.

  I was wearing a favorite pair of black shorts with a vintage Adolfo jacket in purple and black bouclé. Underneath the jacket was a purple camisole that barely grazed my navel, which glinted with a couple of pearls—a recent body alteration about which I had mixed feelings. Because I didn’t want to be taken for a hooker, I’d insisted on mid-heel sandals rather than the Manolo Blahnik stilettos Hugh had given me that morning. Now I was sorry I hadn’t worn the Blahniks, but overall, I was well dressed for the setting.

  “Come on.” Kendall took my hand in hers. “Let’s get close to the stage so you’ll be right there for everyone to see when Hugh makes a personal tribute.”

  “Kendall, I don’t know anyone! I hardly want to be embarrassed in front of hundreds.” I was being so Japanese, I thought while Kendall resolutely dragged me close to the stage. She was from my American side—my mother’s old Maryland family. I couldn’t believe she was so enthusiastic about Club Paradise. She was no stranger to the bars at Zola or Zaytinya, but this place was considerably more downscale than her usual party haunts.

  Hugh placed his whisky glass on a speaker and picked up a microphone. The raggedy buzz of noise faded as he greeted everyone in the suave Edinburgh-goes-to-London-and-next-flies-to-America accent that made Americans swoon. What was it about the British accent that made everything sound smarter? It was similar to the effect of a Japanese accent, which made everything sound sweeter.