It was my own fault. The next Wednesday, the first car on the 8:03 train was full. I dropped back to the second and squeezed on, but all I could think about was Momo sitting in the car ahead. This had never happened before. At Momo’s stop I got off too, desperate for a glimpse of her. When I spotted her leather bag at the top of the stairs to the street, I made a big mistake. I followed her.
I felt guiltier with each step. But I didn’t stop.
She didn’t go far. Five minutes from the station, she entered a park. Near the gate, a severe-looking lady pulled on white gloves to wipe her spaniel’s bottom and bag his droppings. The dog wore a frilly pink blouse. Momo leaned down to scratch it behind an ear. Then she kept walking. She was headed toward a playground next to a baseball diamond. This was the moment when I could have come to my senses, turned around, run. But I was in too deep. I kept following my Tokyo Girl.
Now Momo was talking to a stout, middle-aged woman in a cheap red windbreaker. The woman didn’t have Momo’s lovely shape. She looked like a fire hydrant. But she had the same nose, and when she gestured at something across the playground, I could see the same large hands. She handed Momo a beaten-looking blue backpack. Then they both turned and motioned at a child who was creeping up the incline of a seesaw. Hand straight out, fingers waving, the Japanese sign for Come over here.
The low sun was behind me, and the dusty playground managed to glow magically in the late-afternoon light. The team of young men practicing on the baseball diamond wore brilliant blue shirts. They darted after balls smacked high into the warm air, bolting like startled deer. I could see the little family clearly, but to them I must have been just an outline.
The boy was probably no more than four. He backed down the incline, turned and dawdled reluctantly back to Momo and her mother. The kid who reached out and took his mother’s hand had a protruding lower lip and a scowl I could read from fifty feet away. All he needed was a miniature crocodile briefcase and a pair of Ray-Bans. Goto Jr.
I’d been had. It felt like a sucker punch, and I’d walked right into it. Momo was an ex-mistress of Goto’s, maybe even Akiko’s predecessor. She’d made the mistake of getting pregnant. Child support for an ex-mistress of a high-ranking yakuza? This wasn’t Canada. When I walked into the picture, I provided everything she needed. Who else had regular contact with Goto and his present mistress, combined with a convenient opening in the girlfriend department? Who better to try to get inside a briefcase that might have been stuffed with cash? That probably contained the kind of information a man like Goto would never risk leaving his person? Bank-account numbers, passwords. Combinations to safes. There was no tragic brother, no list of nuclear unfortunates. It was the money Momo wanted. All she needed was a lovestruck gaijin.
I began to walk toward them. The little boy noticed me first. Maybe I looked frightening coming out of the sun, or maybe I was the first Westerner he’d ever seen. He grabbed Momo’s hand and tugged her around to face me, and her face went dead. Her eyes narrowed and her mouth tightened. Only a few days ago, I’d been nuzzling her behind the ear. She yanked the kid around and walked away. Momo’s mother peered at me a moment, gave a little shrug as if to say, You asked for it and trudged after them. I felt like I’d walked headfirst into a telephone pole. A concrete, Japanese one.
That night I played the worst gig of my life at the Tom and Mary. Goto didn’t show up, which was just as well, because I wasn’t sure I could face him. He didn’t show up all that week. I began to get the unsettling feeling that he knew a lot more about my comings and goings than was good for me. Each night, I slept with a chair wedged against the door.
By the time Wednesday came around again, I’d made up my mind. I spent an hour before Akiko’s lesson in a bar around the corner from her street, working on my resignation speech. No more yakuza-girlfriend students. No more yakuza, period. My next gig in Goto’s bar would be my last. I’d had enough of the fast life. Back to Mrs. Ogawa and her determined Debussy, thank you very much. And another whiskey, please.
But I was on a roll for being wrong. And, of course, I was wrong about my last gig for Goto. I’d never get to play it.
When I got to Akiko’s house, the door opened even before I reached it. Akiko was holding a dripping bag of ice to one side of her face.
“You are a fool,” she said. The words were mangled, as though she’d just had a root canal. “I thought all men knew.”
“Knew what?”
“It’s not free.”
“What isn’t?”
“What you had from Momo. What he got from me. You have to pay.”
I wanted to say, You said got, not gets. But I didn’t get the chance. The man with the strange hair appeared in the doorway. Akiko backed into the house, and I stood beside the pond, trying to collect whatever wits I had left after three whiskeys. What had happened here? Had Akiko finally stood up to Goto? Had she also stood up for me? Chisel Face wasn’t going to tell me. He touched my elbow and motioned toward the black Mercedes in Akiko’s carport. I’d been too drunk and distracted even to see it.
“Please,” he said.