The Bride's Kimono Page 23

  “All right.” Yoshi took the wine menu eagerly in his hands. At last, he selected a Vini Spumante. Hugh seemed startled by the choice but gave the order to the waiter. I wondered if Italian sparkling wine was very expensive. Hugh had told me ahead of time that he planned to pay for the whole meal, and knowing how hard it was to try to split checks in Japan, I agreed in principle. Kyoko didn’t drink anything, but Hugh, Yoshi, and I shared the bottle. It was a delicious wine—bubbly and sweet enough to set off the salty appetizers that arrived a few minutes later.

  “You made a wonderful choice, Yoshi-san. Do you know a lot about wine?” I asked.

  “Oh, no, hardly! It’s just that we don’t have choices like this in Japan. It’s easy, with such a fine list, to pick something enjoyable.”

  “But how did you know which wine to choose?” I persisted. I hadn’t thought he was prosperous enough to indulge in regular wine buying in Japan. I knew I wasn’t—even though I loved American and European wines, all I could afford was Japanese beer.

  “I read magazines,” Yoshi said. “They have recommendations that I try to remember.”

  “Choices are difficult, aren’t they?” Hugh said. “I personally think the hardest choices to make are about relationships.”

  Kyoko drew her brows together as if she were perplexed.

  “‘Relationships’ means the situation between two things, or two people. Boyfriends and girlfriends, or husbands and wives,” I explained, shooting Hugh a warning glance. I couldn’t tell what he was up to.

  “I’ve been wondering, Yoshi-san, about how these arranged marriages work,” Hugh said.

  Kyoko said coldly, “I thought you were Rei-san’s special friend.”

  Now it was my turn to blush. “Well, I do think of Hugh as a friend, but the locations we live in make it impossible for anything greater to occur. Also, as you can tell from our argument when parking the car, we are two very different types.”

  Yoshi drank a little more of the sparkling wine and looked at Hugh. “I wouldn’t recommend arranged marriage for you. I don’t think you have the right personality.”

  “And you did?” Hugh drank the last of his glass of wine, and with a subtle movement of his hand summoned the sommelier. This time he and Yoshi put their heads together and ordered two different Tuscan reds. I knew what Hugh was doing—trying to open the floodgates of communication with the help of alcohol, something that was done frequently among colleagues after work was finished in Tokyo.

  “I’m a busy person,” Yoshi said. “I could try to meet girls myself, but it would take a long time to find one who is right for me. An agency makes things easier. Hana was the eleventh girl I’d met with, so I guess I had become fairly tired of the process. Still, she seemed great. You never met her, but, well—she was something.”

  “I talked to Hana about the arrangements on the plane,” I said, smiling at Yoshi. “She was willing to stay at home, but she wasn’t a housewife type, was she? It probably appealed to you that she enjoyed travel and international culture.”

  “That’s what I noticed when we first talked,” Yoshi said. “But in the end…well, I was a little worried. The surface was beautiful, but I think she was a little bit high-strung. I wasn’t sure she should go on this trip, but Kyoko-san thought it was a good idea.”

  Again, a hint of intimacy. I looked at Kyoko and said, “Why did you say that?”

  “Well, she, ah, wouldn’t be able to shop so freely after marriage,” Kyoko said, looking daggers at me. “Yoshi-san called me to ask me to take special care of Hana during the trip. I feel especially terrible because I shirked my responsibility.”

  “I’m a little confused. You two sound as if you’ve known each other for a while,” Hugh said, deftly introducing the issue I’d wondered about.

  “Of course. Kyoko is my cousin. Didn’t you know?”

  “No!” I said, staring at them both.

  “This is the situation,” Yoshi said easily. “Kyoko’s mother is my mother’s younger sister. We grew up a few miles from each other. We’ve been very good friends since birth.”

  “But I thought—you were Hana’s friend from work,” I said to Kyoko, who had been staring at her capellini Benneton.

  “Only recently. Yoshi is the one who told me the news about the engagement. Then I made it my business to learn more about Hana,” Kyoko said.

  I paused, thinking of how I could phrase the next question. In the end, I decided there was no subtle way to do it. “Kyoko-san, did you ever give Yoshi your opinion of Hana’s character?”

  “No, I didn’t. It isn’t my business. I’m a little—please excuse me for a moment.” Kyoko got up swiftly and walked toward the back of the room. I guessed she was going to the ladies’ room to compose herself.

  Yoshi said, “Kyoko-chan didn’t tell me anything important until the plane ride over here. I guess she felt she needed to speak at last, because hearing about things from the police would be shocking.”

  “What did she say exactly?” I asked.

  “She said that Hana had been looking for a temporary playboy. She did the best she could to keep control of Hana’s movements. Rei-san, I understand you also tried to help. But it didn’t work, unfortunately. The police told us there had been signs that she had relations with someone before she died.”

  “I didn’t like what she was doing,” I said. “I wouldn’t have wanted to be you, left behind in Japan, not knowing.”

  I’d spoken spontaneously, and after the words had come out, and Hugh’s face had gone ashen, I realized why I’d been so angry about Hana’s campaign. I was talking about myself, revealing what it had felt like finally knowing, after having seen a magazine photo, that Hugh was spending his nights pleasurably with another woman on another continent. At that time I’d wanted to kill him. Had Yoshi felt the same about Hana?

  25

  Kyoko eventually came back, and not another word was said about Hana. Dinner was excellent, everyone agreed. Hugh and Yoshi had both devoured sautéed lamb chops with mushrooms over a mint risotto, while Kyoko nibbled on a Milanese-style breaded veal chop served with a tomato salad. The homemade mozzarella cloaking my eggplant-filled mezzelune pasta had seemed like a comforting blanket, but it couldn’t smooth over the uncomfortable feelings that had surfaced for me.

  I savored a giant chocolate truffle and tried to recall what the point of the dinner date had been. I’d hoped to figure out whether there was a legitimate reason to suspect that Kyoko and Yoshi had caused Hana’s death. What seemed clear, at least from the story they’d presented, was that the cousins were close, but Kyoko had felt constrained to conceal from Yoshi his bride’s shortcomings. Whether Kyoko had loved her cousin enough to kill Hana to prevent her sullying him seemed out of the question. Still, I thought there might be something just a little more passionate in her feelings for Yoshi than what one would typically feel for a cousin. Japan had no laws against first cousins marrying, either.

  We left the restaurant around eleven, walking around the corner to the place where Hugh had parked the car. As soon as we got in, a car stopped behind us, clearly waiting for the spot. Hugh began steering the Lexus out into the street, but before he’d gone a few feet there was a twisting, sinking movement.

  I hadn’t put on my seat belt yet, so I fell against the passenger door, and Kyoko, in turn, fell on top of me. She felt heavy and strong, I noticed immediately. Stronger than she looked. I imagined Hugh and Yoshi were also losing their balance in the front seat, but a quick glance in their direction showed they each had a lap shoulder belt.

  Hugh stopped the car, even though it was at a crazy angle on the street. “Sorry, friends. I must have a flat tire.”

  “Don’t worry. If you have a spare, I can change the tire.” Yoshi had already unsnapped his seat belt and was making movements to get out of the car.

  “I’ll do it myself, because I’m the idiot who must have gone too long without checking the pressure.”

  The car behind us was hon
king, because it wanted to get into the space we’d vacated. However, the angle at which Hugh had stopped on the street was blocking it in both directions. Now was the time that Bob Marley could have made himself useful, but as he wasn’t around, I jumped out into the street and directed the traffic myself.

  Hugh had gone around to join Yoshi in looking at his right front tire. He held a small flashlight to it, as cars were slowly inching by. The male driver of a huge Ford SUV took the time to roll down his window and yell, “You’re blocking the road, fools!”

  I didn’t answer him, and neither did Hugh. There was an expression on Hugh’s face that told me this might not be a simple case of popping on a spare. He was crouched down by his left tire now, running a hand over its surface. Then he moved to the back and examined the other tires.

  “What is it?” I said, going out to join him.

  “All four tires have been slashed. We’re going to have to call for a tow.”

  I explained the situation to Yoshi and Kyoko, who looked grave.

  “Do you think…the man who wanted money for parking did it?” Kyoko asked.

  “Probably. Me and my big mouth,” I said.

  “What does that mean?” Kyoko asked.

  “It means I shouldn’t have said what I did. And I should have given him what he demanded.”

  “No, I should have given the money,” Yoshi said. “After all, you and Hugh have done so much for us. Dinner was a delicious experience.”

  “I’m a little worried how long we’ll have to wait,” Hugh said. He’d gotten off the phone and slowly driven the car to a space in front of a fire hydrant—the only area on the street he could move into so that traffic could travel in both directions. “Friday night is a busy time. Yoshi, I think I should put you and Kyoko in a cab back to the hotel.”

  “That’s fine, and we have plenty of money to cover the fare,” Yoshi said. “Kyoko told me that she was rather tired. And how about you, Rei-chan?”

  Everyone looked at me.

  “I’ll stay with Hugh for now and make it back later after the tires are fixed.” I flagged down a taxi, got Kyoko and Yoshi inside, and gave the driver specific instructions on how to reach Washington Suites.

  It was ten minutes later when I returned to Hugh, who was talking to a cop who was writing out a parking ticket.

  “It’s not his fault!” I bleated. “The car was vandalized, with tires slashed. We had to pull over somewhere, out of the path of traffic—”

  “As you’re hearing, sir, this lady is recounting the same sad story. We’re expecting the towing company any minute,” Hugh said. But no amount of explanation worked. The policeman kept writing while steadfastly ignoring us. At the end, he handed Hugh a ticket with a flourish.

  “Fifty bucks,” Hugh said. “As the Americans say, easy come, easy go.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ll pay you back,” I said when the policeman had left.

  “What do you mean? It’s not your fault. When you told me what that guy said to you, I wished I’d gone after him.”

  “About being Chinese?”

  “No, about being married to me.” Hugh rolled his eyes.

  “Hugh, I—I wonder if it was necessarily that Bob Marley guy who did it.”

  “Who else could it be?”

  “Kyoko was gone from the table for a long time.”

  “Why would she do a psycho thing like slashing tires?”

  “I don’t know if she was thinking about doing something to hurt you. Perhaps it was a message to me, for being so nosy and obnoxious.”

  “Or what about the car that followed us?” Hugh asked. “I thought I lost it, but who really knows?”

  “I’m scared.” It was the first time that I’d said it aloud, because I’d felt I didn’t even have a right to that emotion in the beginning. After all, millions of Americans had suffered car thefts, home breakins, and muggings. When the bride’s kimono had vanished, I’d thought of it as a terrible thing to happen, but not a violation of my own safety. Now—with the death of Hana, the unknown person waiting for me at the Spanish Steps, and the phantom driver—I had to take the situation more seriously.

  Hugh took my hand in his. “I am, too. But I don’t want to give in to whoever did this. We’ll figure out who did it and—oh, look, our salvation is here.”

  The tow truck arrived with blinding white lights flashing on top of its cab. Now traffic was seriously snarled. With a backdrop of honking, Hugh took care of the business quickly, tipping the driver twenty to deliver his car to a particular car-repair place in Adams Morgan. Then we were alone.

  “Should we take the Metro?” I asked, thinking that I might not even be able to make it back to Northern Virginia before the line shut down at midnight.

  “There’s no Metro in Georgetown. I guess it’s supposed to keep out the riffraff.”

  “Well, that strategy worked well,” I said sarcastically.

  “Yes, look at the two of us,” Hugh said. “A couple of daft foreigners who’ve broken the law twice in the last forty-eight hours. Not to mention evading a possible charge of prostitution and solicitation.”

  I laughed then, for the first time all evening. “So, what do you want to do?”

  “How about listening to live music somewhere? I can’t offer Moby, but we could probably hear a jazz act.”

  “There’s a good place for music here,” I said, thinking there was no point in running for the Metro after all, especially since I didn’t really want to go to the Washington Suites. “I went there in college once. It’s in an alley.”

  “Blues Alley,” Hugh said, smiling at me.

  The club was two rooms, equally dim and smoky, and packed with even more people than Café Milano had been. These patrons were serious music lovers who bobbed and swayed and called out cheers to the voluptuous woman with long, rippling hair and skintight leggings who was singing on a small stage. She was called Charmaine Neville. Hugh had never heard of her, so I told him about the better-known Louisiana band called the Neville Brothers. Together, we decided she was probably a sister or cousin to them.

  “What kind of Scotch do you have?” I asked when the waitress came around to the small table we’d managed to find. The best bet was the Macallan, so I ordered Hugh’s neat and mine mixed with water. When the waitress left, he said, “Why did you order something so strong? You know I don’t drink that much anymore.”

  “After everything you’ve done for me tonight, the least I can do is buy you a drink,” I said. There was another reason I’d ordered the whiskey. I wanted to go back in time, to pretend I was a year and a half younger, at a strange bar in the Japanese Alps, tasting Scotch for the first time at the behest of a man whom I was attracted to, yet slightly afraid of. The fear was gone now—but the attraction wasn’t.

  Hugh didn’t touch his drink; he seemed riveted by Charmaine Neville singing an old standard about infidelity and emotional anguish.

  “She’s got a powerful presence,” Hugh said, taking off his jacket and loosening his tie. “Now, I want to hear what happened at the museum today. How did the lunchtime lecture come off?”

  “The lecture was a disaster, but fortunately very few people were there to witness it. Afterward I got strong-armed to go over to the Japanese embassy, where I was questioned by some bureaucrats and Mr. Shima, the registrar from the Morioka Museum, who interrupted his vacation to come out and help handle the crisis. It’s just awful. They don’t trust me at all, it’s clear.”

  “So…the blue car,” Hugh said. “It could have been the embassy of Japan, or the police.”

  “Police or diplomats wouldn’t slash our tires,” I said.

  “No, of course not,” Hugh said, but he didn’t sound particularly convinced.

  Charmaine Neville was now singing a song with a chorus about a man who had the right key but put it in the wrong keyhole. Couldn’t she give the theme a rest?

  “I need some air,” I said to Hugh. I got up and made my way through the crowd out the club’
s exit to the tiny alley. There, I leaned against the old brick building and breathed deeply of the cold night air.

  Hugh joined me a second later, carrying our coats over his arm.

  “Here.” He offered me my coat. I slipped it around me.

  “I wish that place had room to dance,” Hugh said, taking me into his arms. I was wearing the stiletto heels my mother had treated me to, causing our bodies to come together in a way that was undeniably sexual.

  “This feels terrible,” Hugh murmured into my hair.

  “How can you say that?” I moved in closer.

  “I don’t like the idea of infidelity. Listening to her sing about it…and having you in my arms now feels wretched. Yet I must admit I’ve never felt more aroused.”

  “It kind of reminds me of the very first time, in the Japanese Alps.”

  Hugh shook his head. “I don’t feel that way. Then I’d only known you a short while, and I wasn’t in love with you yet. It’s not like it is tonight.”

  I looked down, feeling my cheeks get hot.

  “Tell me again where your parents are right now.” Hugh said.

  “They’re spending the night in Baltimore,” I said.

  “You sent them off, eh?”

  I laughed. “No. They wanted me to come. I mean, to go along with them—”

  “I’m the one who wants you to come,” Hugh said, and from the way he looked at me, I caught his meaning entirely.

  Georgetown traffic is bad on the weekend, but if you stress the urgency of the situation and promise to tip well, amazing things can happen. Our cabdriver zigzagged across yellow lines, made illegal turns, and even cruised through two red lights to reach Adams Morgan in about ten minutes. Hugh didn’t touch me in the taxi at all, just kept his eyes on me, which was all the more maddening.

  His apartment was inside a handsome old town house: red brick with black shutters. We walked in the front door, and as Hugh fiddled around for something in his pocket, I gazed through another door to the building’s hallway, which was paved in turn-of-the-century red and black octagonal tiles.