Read Online The Floating Girl: A Rei Shimura Mystery (Rei Shimura Mystery #4) by Sujata Massey - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Sujata Massey
Ads: Link
represent it?
If I had been working for a real magazine, undoubtedly. But the
Gaijin Times
had its editorial and advertising interests in a hopeless jumble. Mr. Sanno would probably be thrilled if my story turned Kunio into a prominent, profitable artist. Of course, there was a chance that Kunio already had a gallery owner or art dealer behind him. I thought not, since he was so poor that he didn’t have a mailing address.
I reminded myself that even if he was unrepresented, Kunio might not want to work with me. Artists were supposed to be temperamental. I dealt with works created by people who were long in the grave, so I hadn’t had to negotiate with any of them. This would be a new experience.
There was no point in worrying about questions that couldn’t be answered. I opened the
Showa Story
comic that I’d carried with me from the beach. Takeo hadn’t translated it for me yet, so I had to rely chiefly on the artwork to tell me the story. This particular comic began in the year 2000 with a teenage Mars Girl, in a red jumpsuit, beaming herself out of an uncomfortable situation with schoolyard bullies and into outer space. After successfully undergoing training on her home planet, Mars Girl traveled back to Earth in a space capsule loaded with various weapons, including a pretty amulet worn around her neck. At this point, being able to read the dialog boxes would have helped, since I couldn’t understand the exact power of the amulet. I was able to understand that Mars Girl’s space capsule hit some turbulence on her return trip to Earth, and she was sent back to the 1930s. There was no school, just a private house. I could tell that the artist was saying both the house and school occupied the same location because the same address, 1-2-8 Nezu, was written in the corner of each illustration.
1-2-8 Nezu. The 1 in the address referred to the first
chome
, or section, of a neighborhood in old-town inner-city Tokyo; 2 signified the block, and 8 the house number. Nezu was close to Yanaka, the pint-sized neighborhood filled with artisan sweet-makers and Buddhist temples where I lived.
Kunio was clever to use Nezu as the setting. Nezu and Yanaka had not been bombed during World War II, and there were still plenty of old buildings.
Comic books were fiction. Kunio could place schools wherever he wanted. But the insistence on street numbers intrigued me. I paged deeper into the story, watching Mars Girl interrupt a gathering at the teahouse, apologizing abjectly. I knew the
kanji
for various apologetic words because I used them so often.
“Is it too much trouble?” I’d asked the girl in the comic book store. “Sorry, could you tell me where this address is?” I’d asked the woman in the coffee shop. And “I’m sorry, but I can’t guarantee that I’ll give you publicity,” I’d told Chiyo.
In Show a Boy, apologies between women weren’t routine. Chiyo didn’t apologize to the young woman because the Cowboy wasn’t available to lasso her friend, just as the young woman didn’t apologize for interrupting our conversation with her complaint. In the strip club, women didn’t have to answer to the language police.
***
The train had reached Zushi, the stop closest to Hayama. I readied myself to get out, almost wishing that I hadn’t departed Tokyo. If I’d stayed put, I could have zipped over to Nezu to see if the address Kunio had listed for the school was real, and asked around about whether the artist haunted that neighborhood.
A bus ride and ten minutes walk later, I did wish that I’d stayed in Tokyo. The lights were out in Takeo’s family house, and when I rapped on the locked door, nobody answered. I needed a toilet. All the sherry I’d drunk at Show a Boy was making me hop up and down.
If Takeo didn’t arrive home within the next five minutes, I resolved to visit the beach latrine, the fount of the thin, filthy river that ran into the sea. I would have to overlook the warning Takeo had given
If I had been working for a real magazine, undoubtedly. But the
Gaijin Times
had its editorial and advertising interests in a hopeless jumble. Mr. Sanno would probably be thrilled if my story turned Kunio into a prominent, profitable artist. Of course, there was a chance that Kunio already had a gallery owner or art dealer behind him. I thought not, since he was so poor that he didn’t have a mailing address.
I reminded myself that even if he was unrepresented, Kunio might not want to work with me. Artists were supposed to be temperamental. I dealt with works created by people who were long in the grave, so I hadn’t had to negotiate with any of them. This would be a new experience.
There was no point in worrying about questions that couldn’t be answered. I opened the
Showa Story
comic that I’d carried with me from the beach. Takeo hadn’t translated it for me yet, so I had to rely chiefly on the artwork to tell me the story. This particular comic began in the year 2000 with a teenage Mars Girl, in a red jumpsuit, beaming herself out of an uncomfortable situation with schoolyard bullies and into outer space. After successfully undergoing training on her home planet, Mars Girl traveled back to Earth in a space capsule loaded with various weapons, including a pretty amulet worn around her neck. At this point, being able to read the dialog boxes would have helped, since I couldn’t understand the exact power of the amulet. I was able to understand that Mars Girl’s space capsule hit some turbulence on her return trip to Earth, and she was sent back to the 1930s. There was no school, just a private house. I could tell that the artist was saying both the house and school occupied the same location because the same address, 1-2-8 Nezu, was written in the corner of each illustration.
1-2-8 Nezu. The 1 in the address referred to the first
chome
, or section, of a neighborhood in old-town inner-city Tokyo; 2 signified the block, and 8 the house number. Nezu was close to Yanaka, the pint-sized neighborhood filled with artisan sweet-makers and Buddhist temples where I lived.
Kunio was clever to use Nezu as the setting. Nezu and Yanaka had not been bombed during World War II, and there were still plenty of old buildings.
Comic books were fiction. Kunio could place schools wherever he wanted. But the insistence on street numbers intrigued me. I paged deeper into the story, watching Mars Girl interrupt a gathering at the teahouse, apologizing abjectly. I knew the
kanji
for various apologetic words because I used them so often.
“Is it too much trouble?” I’d asked the girl in the comic book store. “Sorry, could you tell me where this address is?” I’d asked the woman in the coffee shop. And “I’m sorry, but I can’t guarantee that I’ll give you publicity,” I’d told Chiyo.
In Show a Boy, apologies between women weren’t routine. Chiyo didn’t apologize to the young woman because the Cowboy wasn’t available to lasso her friend, just as the young woman didn’t apologize for interrupting our conversation with her complaint. In the strip club, women didn’t have to answer to the language police.
***
The train had reached Zushi, the stop closest to Hayama. I readied myself to get out, almost wishing that I hadn’t departed Tokyo. If I’d stayed put, I could have zipped over to Nezu to see if the address Kunio had listed for the school was real, and asked around about whether the artist haunted that neighborhood.
A bus ride and ten minutes walk later, I did wish that I’d stayed in Tokyo. The lights were out in Takeo’s family house, and when I rapped on the locked door, nobody answered. I needed a toilet. All the sherry I’d drunk at Show a Boy was making me hop up and down.
If Takeo didn’t arrive home within the next five minutes, I resolved to visit the beach latrine, the fount of the thin, filthy river that ran into the sea. I would have to overlook the warning Takeo had given
Similar Books
