Zero. Part 46

"You say that as if you weren't sure whether you would see me this time." She watched his eyes, something he had taught her, along with the tricks she now used to identify people's nationalities by their facial physiognomy. He was always teaching her something useful.

"To be honest," he said, "I had my doubts."

"Why? I've always come before." She could see some nervousness lurking behindhis eyes.

He nodded, acceding the point. "But this is not like before." His deference to the truth always made his comments more forceful. "This is totally different."

There was always something to learn in what he said, as well as how he said it. "This is the final time."

"And you thought I might get cold feet?"

"Pardon me?"

She loved to see that perplexed look on his face. It was partly because it happened so infrequently, partly because there was a thrill in knowing that she had caused it. "That I might change my mind at the last minute."

"I was like that," he said meditatively, "just before my marriage." He rarely talked about his wife. Her mother had been a Jew, he had explained. That made her a Jew. He had known that before they had gotten married, had gone on with it even knowing that it would be a liability should her secret come to light.

Which it had. A rival had discovered her secret. The rival had tried to bring him down, but instead, he had destroyed the rival. But not before his wife had been imprisoned and tortured. She never emerged from her catatonic state and was now in a sanatorium. He visited her every week. "I got, what did you call it?" He smiled. "Cold feet? Yes. I got cold feet. Not that I did not love her.

I loved her. But still." Lillian continued to watch his eyes. "It was a big step. An enormous adjustment. Life is sometimes not so easily disturbed. The mind tends to reject change, don't you think?"

"Sometimes," she said. "It depends."

"On what?" He was genuinely curious, and she liked that.

"On the person. On the circ.u.mstances." She sipped at her gimlet. "Change is only difficult when one is either happy or unhappy. As it happens, I am neither. I welcome the change. It makes me feel . . . free."

"And you have no second thoughts." How like him to be so thorough.

"None."

He nodded, serious. "I understand. I think that is very good." He smiled his quick, charming smile. It made him seem almost boyish. She was reminded of their reunion. It had been many years ago and, of course, she had already been quite friendly with his sister.

It had been his sister who had made the first contact. It had been here in Paris. At a bistro Lillian used to frequent on the Boulevard Saint-German.

Lillian loved to sit and sip her Americano while watching the young college students walking by in chattering groups, laughing, singing, perhaps, an old Pete Seeger folk song. She would be swept away by nostalgia and could summon up whole her own college days. Back then, it had been her only escape from Washington. And Philip's excesses of absence and infidelity.

His sister was a nice-looking woman, though in Lillian's opinion quite plain.

She was perhaps several years younger than Lillian. But as it turned out, she had the same problems. Her husband continued to cheat on her while keeping the fiction of a happy marriage. She had thought about leaving him, she confided in Lillian one afternoon, but she lacked the confidence.

After that, Lillian spent much of their time together bolstering her confidence and trying to convince her to leave her husband. But that was something his sister just could not do. It was too much of a break, too terrible a schism to contemplate. Her life, she said, was so bleak and stultifying. Imagine, she found herself fantasizing about a clerk in her office. You know, s.e.xual things. Wasn't that weird and a little bit wicked?

Absolutely not, Lillian had said. By now she was fully involved in his sister's Me. She found it amazing and just a bit exhilarating to be able to see another person's problems so clearly and to be able to help in solving them. It made her feel wanted. No, better than wanted: useful. Fantasies of that nature were quite normal, she said, thinking of her own. And in fact, what was to stop the sister from making those fantasies reality? Oh, she couldn't possibly, his sister had said. Not ever. It would be evil. But why?

Lillian had argued. If she could not leave her life behind, what was evil about trying to make it as pleasant as possible?In the ensuing afternoons she worked on his sister, slowly convincing her of the positive aspects of having an affair. And in the process had convinced herself that it was perfectly all right for her to have one.

It had been about that time, hadn't it, that she had been introduced to him.

One day his sister had brought him along, a lonely diplomat newly a.s.signed to the Paris emba.s.sy, who needed a little orientation. And my vacation's up, his sister had said. I have to go home. She had smiled, almost shyly. Would you be so kind?

Lillian, of course, had. She was ripe to meet him. She was bored, angry, alone. And in the most romantic city in the world.

Had she really been surprised that he had turned out to be David Turner? Or, more accurately, the man she had once known as David Turner. The man to whom, long ago, she had been so attracted. Her teacher, her mentor. The man she had saved so many years ago and who then had vanished without a trace. The man who would now become her control in the world of secrets she so desperately wanted to enter.

He was still handsome, dashing, perhaps even more so. Of course he was in need of a bit of changing here and there. But he was as steady, as stable, as a mountain. His world was so well defined that it, quite naturally, helped her bring hers into perspective. The chaos with which Philip had forced her to deal disappeared when she was with him. And best of all, he never left her.

Quite the contrary. It was she who, periodically, was obliged to leave him.

What could have been more natural than for the two of them to slip into a delicious affair? On the other hand, who could have foreseen that events would lead her to this point in time?

"How is Mimi?" Lillian asked now.

"She is fine," he said. "She asks about you all the time."

"I miss her."

"Good," he said, putting his hand over hers.

"I've wanted to ask you this." She was suddenly shy. "Why did you use Mimi?

Why didn't you come to me yourself?"

"The truth? I didn't know how you would receive me. Back in Tokyo, I left you so abruptly. It was necessary, of course, but I didn't know whether you understood that."

Lillian smiled a little. "I remember when Mimi brought you. I remember thinking that I had been sure I'd never see you again. Of course, that's what I had told myself. But I think, now, that I knew all the time that I would.

And then I realized that that was another thing you had taught me: how to be patient."

"I never properly thanked you for what you did for me in Tokyo."

"Yes, you have," she said, squeezing his hand. "Over and over."

Their eyes locked for a moment.

It was time, Lillian knew, to cross the Rubicon. She opened her purse, extracted a tiny packet. "I've brought it," she said. She dropped it into his palm. There, she thought. It's over. And it was easy.

"So," Yvgeny Karsk said, "we have come not to the end"- he lifted his gla.s.s again-"but to a new beginning."

When Eliane awoke, Michael was already gone. She turned over on the futon in Stick Haruma's tiny guest room and felt the warmth Michael's body had made there. She ran her hand over the depression in the futon, stroking it gently.

She put her head where his had been, closed her eyes. She dreamed of him without going back to sleep.

When she opened her eyes again, she was ready to get up.

Wrapping one of Stick's spare kimonos around her, she went into the bathroom.

They would have to get themselves some clothes today, she thought. When she emerged, she heard someone working in the kitchen. Stick was preparing breakfast.

"Have you seen Michael?" she asked.

"Went out before I got up," Stick said, molding rice b.a.l.l.s. He looked up suddenly, said, "You like this stuff for breakfast?""Not especially."

He grinned. "Me either. How about we go to a pancake house I know in Shinjuku?"

She laughed. "Let me guess. All the Americans go there, right?"

"Yup. This place makes the best flapjacks this side of the international date line."

"I've never had pancakes," Eliane said.

"Then you haven't really lived."

A half hour later, Eliane looked across the table at Stick Haruma and said, "What is that?"

He held up the gla.s.s bottle. "Maple syrup," he said. "It goes over the pancakes."

Eliane looked dubiously at the brown viscous liquid. "You must," Stick insisted. "They're not the same without the syrup."

Eliane gingerly poured some over her pancakes, took a bit. "Hey, this is good," she said.

He had taken her to Pancake Heaven. It was on the second floor of an office tower, built out on a gla.s.sed-in balcony overlooking much of the Kabuki-cho, the eastern half of Shinjuku. From this vantage point, they could view streets filled to overflowing with gaily dressed crowds. There did not seem to be one square inch in which to maneuver.

Chrome and pink Formica gave the coffee shop a bright, retro look, and the people who came here to eat the pancakes, eggs and bacon, the meatloaf and mashed potatoes, fit the same description. They were teenagers in black leather jackets or sports jackets out of the 1950s. They laughed and chatted, reaching over one another in a happy tangle to get at the sugar or the salt.

"I like this place," Eliane said. "It's different."

"Yeah," he said, ordering another batch of pancakes, "I don't imagine you'd have much experience with a place like this."

She looked at him. "What do you mean?"

He shrugged. "Your family has so much money, it probably doesn't know what to do with it. What reason would you have to come here? You probably never even had the opportunity."

"I don't understand," Eliane said. But she was terrified that she did.

"Then I'll make sure you understand," Stick said as the waitress replaced his empty plate with a new one filled with steaming pancakes. "Your father is n.o.buo Yamamoto. The Yamamotos do not hang around neighborhoods like the Kabuki-cbo. He certainly would never have taken his daughter here, now would he?"

"You've made a mistake," Eliane said. "My name is Shinjo. Eliane Shinjo."

"Pardon me, Miss Yamamoto," Stick said, "but there's really no point in going on in this vein. You see, despite the fact that you avoid being photographed, I know who you are. I saw you with your father, Yamamoto-san, at his factory complex in Kobe." He stuck a forkful of pancake into his mouth, continued as he chewed. "Do you remember the day when Yamamoto Heavy Industries announced that it had received government subsidies to develop the FAX jet fighter? I'm sure you do, since you were at your father's side when he made the announcement to the press. There were a lot of foreign dignitaries there. The emba.s.sy was in need of my services. I translated your father's speech."

Eliane put down her fork. "All right," she said. "What do you want?"

He shrugged. "That depends."

"On what?" she asked warily.

"On how much of a help I can be to you."

She watched him as a mongoose will watch a snake. "I don't see that you can be of help to me at all."

"Really?" Stick Haruma continued to eat. "Well, that's too bad. Because Mike finally figured out where this Katei doc.u.ment you've been searching for is hidden. Sure, I know all about everything. He told me yesterday. See, Mike trusts me." He swiped up the last of the syrup with the last wedge of pancake.

He had this down to a science. "Which is more than I can say for how he feelsabout you. He's going to take me with him when he makes his final run at the doc.u.ment. You he's going to leave behind, because he doesn't trust you."

"And, I suppose," Eliane said, "that this is where you can help me out."

"Possibly."

"Mike is your friend," she said. "Why would you betray him?"

Stick relaxed back in his chair, contemplating her. "Is that what I would be doing?" he drawled.

"It seems like that to me."

"Everyone's got a price, Miss Yamamoto. At least, all the smart people I know say that. I wonder what your price is?"

"I resent that."

"I wonder who you're working for? Your father? Masashi Taki? Your mother, Michiko? I can't believe that n.o.buo Yamamoto is mixed up with the Taki-gumi.

Surely you're not Yakuza yourself?"

"No," she said. "I am not Yakuza." She was abruptly exhausted. It seemed to her as if all the layers of deceit beneath which she was operating were like so many sleepless nights laid end to end. The endless lying, the constant fear that she would reveal something that she should not, had worn her down. Having been buried for so long, she now wanted nothing more than to shed all her ident.i.ties. She wanted to be free.

"Then," Stick said, "who are you?"

Eliane looked away from his intense face, out and down to where the clouds of shoppers and strollers clogged the avenue beneath the riot of outsize neon signs. With all her heart she wanted to be down there, walking carefree in the cool morning air. It had begun to rain again, and she wanted it to rain on her. She wanted to feel the reality of that wetness as it slowly soaked through her clothes. She wanted to know, finally, that she was still alive.

But she couldn't. She was trapped here, under the earth, in an ident.i.ty she did not want, telling lies to people she cared about, perhaps even loved.

Without quite knowing how she had gotten there, she had become quite desperate.

"I haven't thought of myself as Eliane Yamamoto in quite some time," she said.

"I no longer remember what it is like to be her. And more than anything else, that is what I want to be."

"Well?" Stick said. "What's stopping you?"

"Circ.u.mstance," Eliane said. "Obligation." She pulled herself away from the view of outside. It depressed her all the more, seeing what she wanted, what she could not have. Because of giri, the burden too great to bear. "Family."

Stick Haruma said nothing. At last she said, "Perhaps I do need your help after all."

"If you can meet my price."

Eliane thought about this for a long time. She seemed to believe that whatever she said next was of the gravest importance. "I want you to help me convince Michael that I am trustworthy." She knew that she was nearing the end of what she was capable of doing. Her anxiety over the fate of Tori colored every word she spoke, every move she made.

"Okay," Stick said. "What's in it for me?"