Chapter 2 – Elena & The Cop

THE GARDEN was deserted and dark.  A late spring breeze pushed the bell rope back and forth.  Its satin windings glowed purple, warmed by flickering candles and incense burning.  Behind the bell, the shrine itself was weathered woods--chocolate brown, red and gold.  The silhouette of a seated monk could be seen through an open window.
    Elena smiled and listened to the monk’s lilting prayers as they mingled with the horns of impatient taxis and the whisper of lovers in shadow.  She reached up, gave the bell rope a shake and clapped her hands together twice.  A drum began to beat; a shakuhachi flute began to play.  The music followed her out of the shrine and across the street.  She looked at the sky, hoping her prayers would find their way.  Her son was far away and in danger.
    Police Lt. Nakazono waited in the doorway of a nearby building and watched Elena finish her nightly ritual.  He waited until she walked back in the coffee shop and followed.  As usual, he felt uncomfortable as soon as he stepped inside.  She’d renovated the place a couple of years before and he’d never gotten used to it.  The subdued lighting was peculiar, the strong smell of cedar, while not unpleasant, was disconcerting.  Worse still were the peanut shells customers were encouraged to scatter about.  This was a phenomenon outside his experience and he attempted to pick a path to bar the without crunching any underfoot.
    Elena put down her book and greeted Nakazono.  She explained the kitchen was closed and all she could offer was coffee or beer.  He seemed shy as he ordered, an emotion she would have thought alien to Asakusa’s top policeman.  She wondered what he wanted.
    Nakazono felt better sitting down.  While Elena was getting the beer he surreptitiously swept the floor beneath his stool of peanut shells and scanned the coffee shop.  He’d heard of similar places across town in Harajuku.  But he only left the confines of Asakusa in emergency.  He felt big here and small everywhere else.
    While the peanut shells remained mysterious, the cedar booths and flashy Wurlitzer jukebox were at least comprehensible.  The music was soft, a woman singing in English.  He heard the word love, but could make out nothing else.  Nakazono hated English and had forgotten what little he’d learned as soon as he’d left school.
    This was Japan and if the gaijins couldn’t speak Japanese, fuck ‘em.  He had a couple of patrolmen who could speak the language a little and he let them deal with the foreigners.  He didn’t trust either one and would never promote them but they were useful during interrogations.  What he really needed were cops that could speak Farsi and Chinese--the shina-jin and the Iran-jin were crawling all over the city and his efforts to discourage them from encamping in Asakusa were growing more futile every day.
    Elena set a beer and a glass in front of Nakazono and returned to her stool at the end of the counter.  He stared at the empty glass, annoyed she hadn’t poured the beer for him.  He chalked it up to her gaijin nature; she was half Russian.  She’d show her gratitude soon enough, when he revealed the reason for his visit.
    Nakazono poured the beer himself and drank half.  He wouldn’t admit it but the greatest reason for his discomfort was the woman sitting just across the counter from Elena.  She had a beautiful face and body but she scared him.  He couldn’t look at her without being reminded of his mother and the stories she’d told about the witches that had once haunted Asakusa.  Long white hair, flaming lips and high cheekbones – he still dreamed about them, he still believed.
    Maybe she wasn’t a witch, maybe not, but she had the arrogance of a witch.  Or an American.  The fact that she was Canadian didn’t really register with Nakazono.  In his mind Canadians were just misplaced Americans.  She’d appeared a year ago, one day in the spring, as if she’d stepped out of a movie or the pages of a magazine.
    There were plenty of gaijin women in Asakusa but none like her.  The rest, the Thais, the Chinese, even the noisy independent Filipinas, were all afraid of him.  They understood his position in the neighborhood scheme of things.  She did, too, but she didn’t care.
    The first time he’d seen her, walking toward him with her big gaijin tits and impossibly long legs, she’d looked right at him.  That in itself had been a surprise, most women stared at the sidewalk when they passed Nakazono.  But worse was the way she’d seemed to size him up and dismiss him as insignificant.  She’d walked past, her blonde ponytail swinging fearlessly.  He’d stood angry and frustrated, vowing it would be different next time.
    But it hadn’t been.  He’d stopped her in front of the Matsuya department store and had demanded to see her alien registration card.  Unimpressed with his authority, she hadn’t even blinked.  He’d hoped for fear, would have settled for anger.  But she’d easily fielded his Japanese and handed over her identity card.  He’d felt like a beggar, or worse, like a servant.
    Nakazono finished his beer and asked for another.  Elena was talking in English to the gaijin and didn’t hear his order.  Embarrassed, he raised his voice and both women turned and stared.  He asked again, this time more politely, and stumbled over the words.  The blonde said something and Elena smiled.  He felt his face flush, certain they were talking about him.
    Things were not going as expected and when the gaijin began to gather up her things to leave, Nakazono glued his eyes to his beer glass, afraid to even look at her.  Her feet went crunch-crunch as she crossed the room; he shifted his eyes to the bottle, staring at the label until the lettering began to blur.  The smell of the cedar counter top was overpowering--Elena laughed, the gaijin laughed, and Nakazono looked around for the toilet.  A bell jangled above the door and the blonde let herself out.
    “Excuse me, Lieutenant.  I’d like to close up now,” Elena said.
    She still didn’t have a clue as to what the cop wanted.  They hadn’t spoken more than a couple of paragraphs in the last thirty years and most of that had come at her husband’s wake two months before.
    Elena had been less perplexed at his appearance at the ceremony than by his attempts at solicitous behavior.  At ease harassing bar hostesses or in curbside conversation with local yakuza, Nakazono was a graceless man who did not feign sympathy well.  The role had fit him no better than his shiny suit.
    Both of them had been raised in Asakusa and had gone through primary school together.  Nakazono seemed to have forgotten that he’d been Elena’s main source of unhappiness for a number of years.  She still remembered him taunting her, shouting at the top of his lungs on the playground.  To a little brown-haired girl, terribly aware she was different from her playmates, he’d been a monster.  He’d often chased her all the way home, his belly bouncing, his buttocks jiggling inside tight blue short-shorts.
    Nakazono was gripping his beer glass so tight his knuckles were white.  Knowing he couldn’t just blurt out his offer, he tried to make conversation.  She hadn’t smiled once; her face remained impassive.  Absolutely convinced she was happy to see him, he kept at it.
    The cop talked to Elena of their school days, seemed to expect that their memories could coexist and even fraternize.  She was appalled.  He’d been a spoiled bully in the midst of rubble and starvation.  The child of an immigrant from an enemy alien nation, Elena had been more afraid of Nakazono than the tall American soldiers occupying her city.
    But the occupation was long over.  And if Nakazono hadn’t changed--he was still a fat, sordid bully--she had.  Her father had somehow hung on to his property and today she was a rich woman.  Her coffee shop was just one of nine businesses in a building she owned free and clear.
    Like clockwork, she collected rent from the owners of the Chinese restaurant, the Korean bar and the book shop.  On the second floor were five small bars.  She owned one outright and leased the others.  Nine apartments, very desirable by Tokyo standards, occupied the next three floors.  The smallest rented for 140,000 yen a month, the largest for 300,000 yen.  On the top floor was the penthouse where she lived with her daughter May and a much smaller apartment she’d built with her son in mind.  Soon he’d come home and she wanted more than anything to be ready.  Someday she would move into the little apartment and he could have the penthouse.
    The apartment had stood empty for the first year after she’d renovated the building.  Last year, for reasons she was still unsure of, Elena had rented it to Helen for less than it was worth.  A month later she’d made her annual overseas trip to visit her son.
    Sam was a drifter--Bangkok, Singapore, San Francisco and London--he’d worked on newspapers in all these cities.  For the last few years she’d brought May along and the trips were always the highlight of the year for the girl.  She’d loved Cape Town and was praying that Sam wouldn’t move on before she got another crack at its beaches.  May had a map of the world in her bedroom and had drawn an ominous circle around Moscow.  The girl had an uncanny ability to predict her brother’s movements.
    Elena smiled to herself.  They weren’t the most conventional family but it seemed to be working better every year.  The death of her second husband, a casualty on the Tomei expressway, had only increased the chances of bringing her children together again.
    That was as it should be and Elena felt little guilt that the death of the man should bring her happiness.  He’d been in the way far too long.  It had been a mistake to remarry and she’d regretted it for years.  At the time she’d thought he would provide stability for Sam but the opposite had proven true.
    Sam’s real father had been an American and her twelve-year-old son had not been able to make the transition to a Japanese step-father.  They’d fought almost continually for the first two years, battling for possession of Elena.
    Her love and her loyalty had never been in doubt and her new husband had eventually surrendered, disappearing into his job and himself.  He’d treated his home like a dormitory, leaving early in the morning, returning very late at night.  For the first few years Elena had often thought of divorce but he’d been no more trouble than an irresolute ghost, coming and going but never really there.
    When May was born, divorce became out of the question.  Two parents were almost always better than one and little girls certainly needed fathers.  Raising her daughter alone might have been more fun but Elena knew it was also selfish--May was far too young to be consulted in the matter.
    With a daughter of his own, her husband became slightly more substantial, a situation intolerable to Sam.  Elena had packed her son off to college in the United States when he was eighteen.  That he’d never returned was a sadness, but not a tragedy.  Elena believed young men should go off on their own.
    She was a happy woman with a glorious daughter and loads of money but she still missed her son.  The last time they’d talked, Sam had promised to come home for Christmas and this time she knew he meant it.  She had a special calendar in the kitchen and each morning she crossed off a day.  Once she’d calculated the hours and laughed at herself.
    Nakazono was still blithering; he’d shifted from the good old days to neighborhood gossip.  He looked up at her with not an inkling of understanding.  His eyes were difficult to find, hard little things like the beads of an abacus.  Just looking at him made her queasy.  His face was bloated with a grayish sheen, his crew cut looked sharp enough to cut her hand.  The stiff bristles were too black to be natural; his scalp was pale underneath.
    Nakazono was not a man for pleasant conversation.  He saw it as a tool weaker men employed when trying to get under a woman’s skirts.  Intimidation was faster and produced better results.  He looked up and grunted--she was no different from all the rest.
    Elena picked up Nakazono’s beer and set his half-empty glass in the sink.  His look of anger pleased her.
    “There’s something I wanted to talk to you about,” he said.
    Elena fetched a broom and began to sweep the floor.  “What’s that?” she asked, her back to the cop.
    Nakazono watched her work.  She was still sexy, her auburn hair long and free.  It seemed he’d loved her all his life.  That he’d never approached her or even hinted at his feelings was as it should be.  But now that his wife had divorced him there was nothing to keep them apart.  Surely she felt the same.
    “You’re all alone.  Your husband’s dead,” he said.
    Elena finished sweeping and turned off the overhead lights.  She had an idea where the conversation was going and didn’t even want to hear it.  She moved through the darkness straightening up the room.
    Nakazono glared at her from inside a circle of light cast by lamps over the counter.  She seemed to be ignoring him.  But that couldn’t be possible, she must be playing hard to get.  The frustration of the evening broke over him.  What started as a request ended up a shouted demand.
    “Come over here.”
    Elena’s patience was at an end, she didn’t have to take this kind of shit from anybody, especially this hated man.  She gave him a look reserved for the rare drunk that forgot where he was and who he was dealing with.
    “That’s it,” she snapped.  “I’m closing up and you’re leaving.”  She marched over to the cop.  “Come back tomorrow if you’ve got anything to say.  I don’t have time for you now.”
    Nakazono didn’t budge from his seat.  He felt weak, worse than when the blonde witch had ignored him on the street.
    “Wait a minute, this is important.  You need a man to take care of you.  I’m very powerful...”  Looking up into her unyielding face, Nakazono wasn’t even strong enough to finish the sentence.
    Her anger gave her courage.  Elena looked down on the cop with disgust and whispered in English, “You’re such an asshole.”
    He couldn’t fathom the words but he got the point.  His hand shot out and grabbed Elena by the wrist.  He was a man of action, not soft talk, and he felt a semblance of his old self as he stood up and shook her.  “You’re going to marry me, you cunt.  I, uhh, love you.  A woman can’t take care of all this property by herself.”
    Elena laughed and slapped him.  “You miserable slob.  I wouldn’t marry you if my life depended on it.”
    Conscious thought abandoned Nakazono, he was swallowed by a fog of rage and hysteria.  He slapped her hard and slammed her head into the counter.  Elena moaned and felt his hands grabbing her breasts, ripping open her blouse.  Bent over the counter, his bulk a huge weight on her chest, she couldn’t even scream.  She tried to kick out as he yanked up her skirt--she watched blood run from her mouth and stain the beautiful cedar.
    Nakazono banged Elena’s head into the counter again and again.  He unzipped his trousers.  When she felt his hands close around her throat she knew she’d made a terrible mistake and she cried.  Her tears mixed with blood and she went away, to another time, another place.  She remembered sitting on a mountain above Cape Town with her son and daughter--the sun had been in her eyes.  The day had been so lovely it had been hard to breath.