The Bride's Kimono Read online

  I smiled sourly. “I thought you hated museums.”

  “Untrue! I like the Museum of Asian Arts because it reminds me of everything I lost when I left Japan.”

  “You could have taken your furniture. You made me sell it.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about. There’s too much that reminds me of you. I thought if I saw you again in the flesh, the dream might stop.” When I looked blank, he said, “I sometimes dream about you at night. It’s the same dream. I hate it.”

  “What’s the dream?” I asked.

  “Well, it’s as if I’m watching you through a glass window somewhere, and you don’t look like yourself because you’re wearing a stiff white kimono with a bizarre headpiece—not a veil, but kind of a tall stiff white hat. I don’t know where I came up with this idea. It’s not like the kimono outfits most Japanese ladies wear.”

  “You and I once watched a bride getting married at the shrine in Kamakura. The robe sounds right, and the hat is actually quite interesting; it’s supposed to symbolically hide a woman’s metaphorical horns from her forthcoming husband.”

  “You mean the Japanese think women are devils?”

  “Never mind that. You’re the one who was scared of commitment, and this dream is just reminding you—”

  “I don’t think so,” Hugh said. “In this dream, you look straight at me, and then you deliberately walk away toward a man dressed in black. I know this bloke is wrong for you, and I call out to say that, but you don’t understand English anymore. Only Japanese.”

  “Bridegrooms wear black kimono,” I said.

  “Don’t tell me—” Hugh’s gaze shot to my left hand, which was bare of everything except the old yin-yang ring I always wore.

  “I’m not,” I said tightly. It wasn’t the complete truth, of course. I should have said that I was involved with Takeo. When Hugh had mentioned the man in black, it was as if the painting hanging behind the bar of a nineteenth-century white gentleman looking over his Tidewater plantation had been transformed into a Fujicolor print of Takeo in his favorite black jeans and T-shirt. For better or worse, he was still my boyfriend. And I was sure that he hadn’t given me his safety travel charm in order for me to spend time in a hotel lounge with my ex-lover.

  “What is it?” Hugh asked, as if he could read my distress.

  “Here’s what I think: you knew I was bringing kimono, so you dreamed about me wearing one. And interestingly, Allison wants me to wear one for the lecture. Not that I want you to see it. I don’t want you to be there.”

  “But I wouldn’t miss you for the world!”

  I laughed shortly. “Actually, you put the world quite a bit ahead of me. In fact, your excuse for going incommunicado was so—pathetic—that I believe it’s actually true. I’m going to go up to my room now, and please do as you originally promised: stay away from both lectures.”

  “But I want to see you speak! I only said I couldn’t go because I didn’t want the others to think I was too eager.”

  “Please don’t come. I don’t want to see you there and mix up what I’m saying, like I did today at lunch—”

  “You still must care,” Hugh said, leaning forward.

  “No!” I exploded, causing the same nosy table of guests to turn. More quietly, I repeated, “No. The problems we had before will never go away. You know what they say about east is east, and west is west.”

  “That’s a cliché,” Hugh said. “I would have thought better of you.”

  “I’m glad you’re disappointed. That makes it easier to leave.” I stood up and took the key card out of my jeans pocket.

  “I don’t believe you,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Call me and we’ll set up a time.” He pulled out a business card. “It’s got home, work, and my mobile numbers on it. I swear they’re all in operation.”

  The “no” I wanted to say was sticking in my throat, so I looked at him one last time and walked away, ignoring the card lying on the table. Hugh didn’t come after me.

  Upstairs, I found I couldn’t get the key card to work in my door. So much for forty-dollar-a-night hotel deals. Once again, I slunk downstairs, hoping I wouldn’t run into Hugh. From the hotel’s front desk, I could see that he’d left the table where we’d sat together. Just my glass, Hugh’s teacup, a few dollar bills, and his business card remained. Since Hugh wasn’t there to see me do it, I scurried in and picked up the business card. I was curious about where he worked, I told myself. That was all.

  I went back to the reception desk, where I saw that the desk clerk was different from the previous evening. I was faced with a slight young man with a wispy goatee, which was ironically perfect with his mock-colonial American uniform.

  “My key card doesn’t work—Brian,” I added after reading the name on his badge. It was so odd, this custom of Americans offering up first names instead of second names. I guessed it was supposed to foster friendly feelings, but at this point, I was not in the mood.

  “Oh, yeah? There’s been a lot of that with this group,” he said.

  “You mean—because we’re Japanese we don’t know how to open doors?”

  “I dunno, ma’am. I just work here at night. What’s your room number?”

  “Four-ten.”

  “Name?”

  “Rei Shimura.” Brian recoded my key card without asking for ID, which was lucky because my wallet was in my room. I said thank you and went off.

  What would Hana do in my situation? I wondered as I got dressed for bed again. She was interested in sleeping with a sexy stranger. I had one who was perfect for her. Ha.

  I wasn’t sure what Hugh really wanted from me. Letting him reenter my life, after having felt so embarrassingly rejected, would salvage my bruised ego—but was unfair to Takeo. Also, the way Hugh had compared me to England, the mother country he resented, was just too Freudian for my taste. Or was it Jungian? I would ask my father his opinion of the metaphor if it were not actually happening to me.

  As I went to hang up my jeans in the closet, my eyes fell on the suitcase where I’d put the kimono. My suitcase really wasn’t a safe place for long-term storage. If I still had a bank account in America, I could have taken the kimono there for storage in a safe-deposit box. I wondered if Allison could do that for me.

  I unzipped my suitcase and moved aside the clothes I hadn’t yet had time to put away. The whole suitcase seemed messier—but somehow less crowded.

  Once I got to the bottom, I knew why.

  The bride’s kimono was gone.

  9

  I did the illogical thing first—yanked open the door and stared down the hall, wanting a glimpse of the thief. Nobody was there, of course. I went back in my room and sat down on my unmade bed, trying to recall the last time I’d checked on the safety of the kimono. I’d carried the bag up to my room around four-thirty and placed it in the suitcase. The door had always been locked, but I’d left the room twice: initially, to help Kyoko Omori look for Hana at the mall, and, in the last half hour, when I’d been with Hugh in the hotel lounge.

  I put my head in my hands, thinking. The thief had probably not stopped at the kimono but gone into my valuables, too. My money and credit cards were in my backpack, but I’d left my passport, airline tickets, and pearl earrings in my underwear drawer. With a feeling of dread, I opened the drawer and shuffled my hands through the practical Jockey cottons and a few silk lingerie sets that matched—those given to me by Hugh, of course, and not Takeo, because he didn’t like shopping. I tossed the contents of the entire drawer on the floor and found that the pearls were still in their purple velvet case. Still, my passport and tickets were gone.

  I was filled with a sense of anger as I began to search more slowly. My clothes were there—was that a damning statement about how out of fashion they were?—as well as Stereotype A, the Cibo Matto cassette, plus my Sony Walkman, and my lecture notes. The folder with the insurance information and agreement I’d signed with the Morioka was still around.

&nb
sp; Fifteen minutes had passed since I’d entered the room and discovered the burglary. It was high time that I called hotel security. It turned out the hotel’s security officer was off on break, so I wound up speaking to the young man with the goatee at the reception desk.

  “We’ll get back to ya,” he said after I’d told him that a kimono, passport, and plane tickets had vanished from my room.

  “What do you mean by that? I need to talk to the police right away. If this robbery occurred tonight the thief might still be in the building!”

  “Security will help you with that. Just hold on till they call you back.”

  A minute after I hung up, my phone rang. I picked it up, hoping for a mature and competent security officer, but got Hugh instead.

  “I don’t mean to be a bother, but I had to talk to you again. Please listen to me, Rei—if only you’d give me another chance—”

  “I don’t have time to listen to you! Something terrible has happened.”

  “Did that missing office lady you were looking for come to harm?” Hugh asked instantly.

  I felt embarrassed, because I hadn’t thought about Hana at all—I’d been too consumed with my own calamity. “I don’t know anything about Hana, but my kimono’s gone. I mean, the Morioka Museum’s bride’s kimono. It was in my room, but now it’s not.”

  “Are you sure it’s not misplaced?”

  “Of course I’m sure! I had it locked inside my suitcase, not that the lock was that tough to break, and my passport and plane tickets are gone as well, from my drawer. I was such an idiot to leave the kimono for even a minute. But I thought it would be safer in the hotel than if I carried it around the city. I was so wrong.”

  “Have the police shown up yet?”

  “No. I haven’t even seen a security officer yet, and from what the front desk told me, they can’t guarantee the safety of objects kept in rooms.”

  “How much insurance coverage do you have?”

  “I’m not sure exactly. I added the bridal kimono at the last minute to a group of kimono approved by the Morioka. I don’t have a formal appraisal of the bridal kimono as I did for the others.”

  Hugh clicked his tongue and said, “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “I don’t see why. Mr. Shima, the registrar, gave me a document in Japanese, which I signed. That must cover it—”

  “What does the document say exactly?”

  “I don’t know,” I confessed. “I couldn’t read the kanji.”

  “You mean…you signed a document that you couldn’t read?”

  “It was a touchy situation. I didn’t want to seem stupid.” Instead, I’d acted that way.

  “Okay, what you need to do right away is to get someone you trust to make a translation for you. I’ll turn around at the next exit and be back to help you make heads or tails out of it. That is, if you’ll let me.”

  “I’ll let you,” I said grumpily. Hugh, for all his faults, was the closest I had to a friend in Washington, D.C. I knew that he might lead me astray on matters of the heart, but never on anything that had to do with the law.

  A shower of knocks landed on my door. “Security! Open up!”

  “What’s going on?” Hugh asked.

  “It’s the hotel security.”

  “Try not to talk to them either until we’ve figured out the insurance policy. I don’t want you to accidentally say something that voids the contract.”

  “Oh, no!” I hadn’t thought of anything like that.

  “You okay in there? Open up!” the man, who had a sonorous deep voice that reminded me of Barry White, bellowed from behind the hollow-core door. God, if I could hear him so clearly he could probably hear me as well talking to Hugh.

  “Hold them off as best you can. I’ll be with you within the half hour.” Hugh hung up just as the security officer broke the chain on the door. Now the door banged open, ricocheting off a Dolley Madison portrait hanging on the wall.

  “No!” I screamed as a huge cinnamon-colored man wearing a blue blazer embroidered with the word SECURITY stormed into the room. He held out a massive gray handgun and made sweeping movements from right to left. The whole thing would have seemed silly if I hadn’t known the gun was real. I hated guns.

  “Mark Leese, hotel security. I heard you talking to someone. Who else is here?”

  “Nobody. I was on the phone.” I kept my eyes on the gun. “Can you put that away? It makes me nervous.”

  “Surely, ma’am. Didn’t mean to scare you.” Mr. Leese pushed aside the lapel of his blazer and slipped the gun into a holster. He took a small notepad and pen out of his blazer pocket and sat down at the room’s desk.

  “Your full name, please?”

  “Rei Shimura. But can’t you just concentrate on hunting for the thief right now? There’s a good chance he’s still in the building.”

  “I’ve got to take a statement before I start any so-called hunt.”

  “Regarding the statement, I think I’d better wait till my attorney arrives to make it.”

  “Didn’t you tell young Brian at the front desk you wanted to file a theft complaint?” Mark Leese frowned at me.

  “Yes, I did that,” I admitted.

  “Well, hold all the attorney crap and give me your complaint, then. I got two more hours of shift tonight. I can’t pussyfoot around.”

  “I’m part of the Japanese tour group. I’m not used to burglaries or guns and—and this kind of treatment.”

  Mr. Leese’s voice softened and slowed as he said, “I apologize, miss. I didn’t know you were part of the tour group—I thought you were American! Did you call the tour director yet?”

  “No.” The thought of contacting Mrs. Chiyoda hadn’t crossed my mind.

  “Okay. While we wait for your…attorney”—he raised his eyebrows at the word—“I’d like to get started checking for the stuff with the assistance of our housekeeping department. The front desk manager said you’re missing a bathrobe, a passport, and plane tickets. Is that right?”

  “Not a bathrobe! A kimono is a fancy-dress garment made of silk, and this one was old. Even more valuable.”

  “Well, most people would be more concerned about their passport, and tickets. There’s a government office downtown that can issue your new passport—all you have to do is report the loss. And if you came in on All Nippon Airways with the tour group, you won’t have a problem getting your ticket reissued. It’s a hassle, but not impossible.”

  As soon as he’d left me alone, I found the Japanese documents the Morioka Museum had asked me to sign. I tiptoed down the hall to Kyoko’s room and knocked lightly on the door.

  Kyoko was still wearing the street clothes I’d seen her in earlier. She was in the midst of hanging up clothes that I guessed she’d bought when she was at the mall earlier in the day.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” I began. “I’ve got a problem. It would be so kind if you could translate a Japanese letter I have with me.”

  “You received a letter from Japan, Rei-san?” Kyoko sounded curious.

  “I brought it with me. It relates to travel insurance on some goods—at least, I think so. My kanji ability is rather poor.” I handed the letter to Kyoko, and she scanned it with a bemused expression.

  “Oh, this is about kimono! Hana told me you worked with clothing design or something like that. But I didn’t know—something as typically Japanese as kimono!”

  Kyoko was reacting in such a strangely gushy way that my radar snapped on. I’d never thought she could be a thief, but maybe…as she read through the document, I glanced around her room. I didn’t see my kimono, but still, I wasn’t reassured.

  At last Kyoko spoke. “This is a simple description of item number 1866 from the Morioka Museum. Shall I summarize what it says?”

  “I’d rather hear it word by word. I’ll write it all down,” I said, grabbing a pad of hotel stationery off the top of the desk, as well as a cheap ballpoint pen stamped with the hotel’s name.

  Kyoko w
ent back and read the letter verbatim. I copied it in Japanese, and after that asked her to clarify a few vocabulary words that I’d never heard. At the end of it, I had to conclude that, as Kyoko said, it was just a description of the bride’s kimono. There didn’t seem to be anything that sounded like promises, or restrictions, relating to travel insurance.

  “Thanks so much, Kyoko-san,” I said, gathering up my things to leave.

  “Rei-san, why do you have this letter? You don’t work for a museum, do you?”

  I weighed the pros and cons of disclosure. I wanted my problem to remain private; however, Kyoko had been staying close enough to my room that she might have heard or seen something. “I was carrying the bridal kimono from the Japanese museum to the one in America where I’m giving a lecture. There was a legal problem, so I couldn’t put the kimono in the American museum. Sometime, either yesterday evening or today, the kimono was stolen from my room.”

  “How terrible! Oh, what are you going to do?”

  I let out a gusty breath. “I don’t know. I’m hoping that hotel security or the police can catch the person who took it. I can’t possibly replace it because it was a one-of-a-kind antique.”

  “Oh, my. Losing something so special—it’s almost as awful as my losing my friend.”

  We sat in silence for a minute. I was thinking of the two, Hana and the bridal kimono, as victims with a lot in common. Both had come over on the same flight. But while Hana was missing for the night, I knew that my kimono had to be gone for good.

  “Hana-chan said you must be rich, but I guess you really aren’t.”

  “She was the one with a status handbag and shoes,” I said, feeling irritated. “Why did she think I was rich?”

  “You were carrying boxes so special they had their own plane seat. Hana said she didn’t believe they were souvenirs because they were so huge—and besides, nobody gives souvenirs to their parents, just to colleagues, friends, and neighbors.”