Fuminori Nakamura - Evil and the Mask

“Eh?” I said. “That was still fine.”

“It’s a house rule. This too.”

She wiped the condensation off the outside of my glass with a white cloth.

“But,” she began, looking away hesitantly for a moment and then facing me again. “Um, have we met before or something, like, a long time ago?”

My heart beat faster. She pushed her face closer to mine. I couldn’t tell if this was a spontaneous gesture or a practiced technique.

“This is uncanny,” she said. “I don’t know.”

The jazz coming from the speakers seemed to have grown louder. Breathing unsteadily, I groped for my cigarette but couldn’t find it. The room felt overheated. The ends of Kaori’s black hair seemed to tremble in a faint draught. I lowered my eyes and took my driver’s license out of my wallet.

“See, my name’s Shintani, like I said. Look, the characters for ‘new’ and for ‘valley,’ first name Koichi. Have we really met somewhere? It might not look like it, but it’s quite an unusual name.”

She stared at the photo.

“Maybe it is. But mine’s even rarer.”

I knew I was supposed to ask her what it was, but I couldn’t bring myself to hear that name. I tried to change the subject.

“Have you got any hobbies or anything?”

“Hobbies? Umm.”

She glanced to one side, as though she was giving the matter some serious thought.

“Not really, but I like reading. Thoughtful stuff.”

“Thoughtful?”

She nodded noncommittally.

“Oh, I don’t mean really difficult books. I like books that make me laugh too.”

A group of high-powered executives in expensive suits walked in.

“There’s got to be some thought behind it. Of course it should be interesting as well, but if you only read shallow books, you’re likely to absorb some of the ugly attitudes behind them.”

“I see what you mean, I think.”

“Apart from that, I collect hair-ties.”

“Hair-ties?”

“Yes. Rubber bands to hold my hair when I’m removing my make-up. I’ve got about fifty at home.”

I laughed. “Really? Why do you do that?”

“I don’t know. Is it odd?”

The bar was slowly filling up. The music changed from jazz to classical piano, then back to jazz again. Several young women in sexy dresses were circulating through the room. I dropped my gaze, unable to look squarely at Kaori’s breasts and shoulders in her white dress.

“You’re nice, Kaori.”

She shook her head.

“No, I’m not. For example, sometimes I get really annoyed. Look, see that important-looking guy over there?”

When I followed the direction of her eyes I saw a portly man in a bow tie.

“That’s my boss. He’s really strict — he comes around saying things like, ‘You forgot to light that customer’s cigarette twice.’ So Azumi, she came up with a plan.”

She smiled at the memory.

“Since he’s really busy, he often takes a nap in one of the back rooms, and he keeps a toothbrush in there. She got the janitor to use it to clean the toilet, and then put it back.”

I laughed again.

“That’s mean.”

“Yes. We’re horrible. But please don’t tell anyone.”

I wondered what the hell Konishi was doing when she was supposed to be working on a case, but I found myself laughing too. Time was slipping by. Even though I knew it was an illusion, I felt like it was flowing backwards, winding back the years.

“You definitely don’t seem like someone you’d find in a place like this.”

“Really?”

She rested her slim arms on the table.

“The first time I was invited here by a friend. Before that I was working for a company, but it went bankrupt in mysterious circumstances.”

She raised her eyes as though she were thinking.

“Several bad things happened around then, and I realized that I should have some money.”

I reached for my drink. The sweat on my palm mingled with the droplets on the surface of the glass.

“At least if you’ve got money you can get a room somewhere and live by yourself, even if you’ve got no friends and nothing you can rely on. Don’t you agree?”

“I guess.”

“I didn’t think I’d ever be lucky, so I decided to at least save some money. Just recently, a bit at a time.”

She smiled faintly. It was exactly the same as her smile from all those years ago. I remembered her room, without a single doll or stuffed toy.

“You’ve got to be happy,’ I said, and then choked up.

“What? You think so? Thank you.”

The place was getting crowded. The piped music was still jumping from one style to another. My body felt limp but I managed to stand.

“I’ll come again,” I said. “Would you be able to go out somewhere with me, or meet me somewhere or something like that?”

“Really? I’d like that.”

She smiled openly. I couldn’t get my words out properly.

“But, are you sure? You don’t know what kind of guy I am.”

“I’m sure. Usually we only go out with regular customers, but you’re a friend of Azumi’s.”

Her white dress was still painful to look at.

I WENT HOME and lay on my bed. I got an email from Kaori, saying that she’d enjoyed meeting me, that she wished I could have stayed longer, and that she hoped I’d come again. At the end she asked me playfully not to tell the manager about the toothbrush story.

I read and reread her message, which seemed to have fewer emoticons than a typical email from someone in her line of work. I was strongly tempted to watch her recording again, but I resisted. I waited for about thirty minutes, drinking whiskey, and then sent her a reply. The next thing I knew I was waking up on the floor. I had no idea how long I’d been asleep. Whiskey glass in hand, I moved to the couch and stared blankly at the wall. Its smooth, flat surface seemed to reject everything. I was covered in sweat. I’d had that dream about the chairs again. The one where there were six empty chairs in front of me, and I was waiting for something or someone that would judge my whole life. The phone rang, and I answered without thinking. It was Ito.

“Are you drunk?” he asked.

His voice echoed inside my head.

“Well, never mind. You told me the cops had identified a member of JL. Where did you hear that?”

“It doesn’t matter who I heard it from.”

I really didn’t care. I had no interest in the subject at all.

“You were right. We’re in deep shit. Actually there’s someone else who’s under suspicion, and I was more worried about him. I had no idea they’d spotted this other guy, the one you were telling me about, with the protruding jaw.”

Ito’s breathing was a little uneven, as though he was on the move.

“He’s close to me. If he gets caught I’ll be in real trouble. He’s the one that stole the cell phone from that woman detective you hired.”

“So what?”

“You’re pretty slow, aren’t you?” His voice rose. “That means he knows about you too. Even though you haven’t done anything yet, if he gets arrested the cops might start investigating you as well, in connection to JL. And he knows about Kaori.”

“What?”

“When I said I was going to use Kaori to get money out of Fumihiro, either by threatening him or by forming an alliance with him, he was against it. He said she must have money of her own, because she was Kuki’s daughter, so we should just take it directly from her instead of going to all that trouble. I disagreed, because I don’t like getting women involved on principle. But right now he’s probably desperate. He needs money to escape. And I can’t get hold of him, and I don’t know why.”