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VERONICA HAD A deadline to meet. Fiesta ware was done. Time to revive a more subtle style. Jaqueline would certainly agree. Veronica studied the curved lips of the seaform green serving bowl that sat beside her typewriter.
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She paused to read her opening, red pencil in hand, when one of the boys slumped into the chair beside her desk.
“Howdy, Tommy,” she said. She was one of the few who bothered to call him by the right name. “You haven’t been around much.”
He checked out the green serving bowl, looked at Veronica. She pointed the pencil at her story. Tommy nodded.
“Ma’s sick,” he said. “Been spending time with her up near LA.”
“Sorry to hear that. Hope she’s getting better.”
“A little.”
“Good. Wish her well for me.” Veronica rolled the paper up a few lines and rested her hand on top of her machine. She really had to get this piece finished.
Her colleague didn’t take the hint. He chuckled and said, “She’s the only one won’t call me Tommy.”
“Yeah? What does she call you?” Veronica asked. She red-lined “snappy” and wrote in “dashing.”
“You’re not getting it that easy. Anyway, I’m here about something else. A phone call I got.” Tommy swiveled his head to look at her. “About you.”
Veronica dropped the pencil. This didn’t sound good. “Go on.”
“I know a bunch of people over at Gaujean and Fleck.”
“Um hmm.” Oh no, that was the law firm where David had met Mrs. Fuji’s daughter. Why did he have to go and blurt out the Pacific stuff?
“Sometimes they ask for help. I have to be careful, but if I can help out, I will. They do the same for me. Works out nice. Anyway, a buddy of mine there called. Said a Mrs. Fuji wanted info on our own Veronica Wills, supposedly from LA. She wanted more than the business office is willing to give out, but public stuff, like birthplace, things like that. Said she didn’t want to bother you personally.”
Sure she didn’t. “Why’s your buddy involved?”
“You know this Mrs. Fuji?” Tommy asked.
Veronica waggled her fingers. “Slightly. Nice old lady. David took me to meet her.”
“She’s the mother-in-law of one of the young hotshots in the firm, so what’s my buddy gonna do?”
She nodded. That Mrs. Fuji was crafty—using her son’s position to let Veronica know she was being checked out. Nice old lady, indeed. “Why is she asking about me? Why not David? He’s the one that mentioned something he shouldn’t know about.”
Tommy shrugged. “Maybe she’s going after David also, but we just don’t know it. Anyway, thing was, I was running up to LA anyway to see Ma, so I did a little poking around. No Veronica Wills born in LA.”
“I told her I was adopted.”
Tommy pushed himself up straight in the chair. “You told David . . .”
“That was off the record.”
“Nothing’s off the record. You of all people should know that. Anyway.” Tommy hooked an arm over the back of the chair and gazed past her profile. “You run across all kinds of people in this line of work. Most people who just want to be someone else, someone more than they were at first, well, they usually leave a loose trail. A trick Ma taught me is to look at references. Employment, places to live, stuff like that.”
“She sounds like quite the operator.” Veronica wished she could melt into the bowl’s deep glaze.
“Sure enough, a reference for Veronica Wills turns out—”
“That’s private. Who gave it to you?” She leaned over and jabbed Tommy’s arm with the back end of her pencil. He looked down at his arm and waited. She slowly sat back, gently placed the pencil beside the bowl, and folded her arms. Thousands of times she had told a story to get the story. Tommy was no different.
He huffed out a loud breath. “Turns out to be a boarding house for Japanese immigrants. It’s still there, you know.”
“Sure it is.” Veronica remembered the nosy parker that ran that joint.
“So I get to digging around, asking about someone who maybe was always sending off envelopes to newspapers. Sure, she remembered someone like that. Was the name Fuji, maybe? No, longer, she says. Wait a minute, she says, and goes gets her books. Youji Toshiko, she comes up with. I ask what she remembers and she gives me an odd look, suggested I might find out more at the Japanese American Center.” He pauses but Veronica remains silent.
“Off I go, to the Japanese American Center. I tell the lady there my ma’s sick and asking after an old friend, so she lets me into the archives. Man, the records they keep. They’re very proud of them, you know. They have immigration records listing where everyone is from. Meanwhile, I keep wondering where Veronica Wills is from.”
“I’m American,” she says as if by rote.
“The lady looks through the Osaka list, where your family’s from, maybe.”
“Now look . . .”
“Hold on.” Tommy sat up with a grin. “Hiya, Dave.”
At the sound of David’s name, Veronica put her tingling fingers on the typewriter but couldn’t think of one darned thing to type except “Youji Toshiko.”
“This looks like a conspiracy over here,” David said. He leaned over to examine the empty serving bowl. He looked at Veronica. She pointed to the column she wasn’t getting to write. “What’s going on?”
“Not much, amigo. Ma’s sick. I’m just looking for some womanly advice.”
David stepped back, regret on his face. “Sorry, don’t want to interrupt.”
He hurried off and Veronica realized Tommy had said about the only thing that would send the newsman scurrying.
“Your ma’s sickness seems awfully convenient,” she said. “I’m beginning to suspect that you never even had a mother.”
“Veronica, I’m hurt,” he said. “And you’re avoiding the subject. Which is, this nice lady goes down the list and bingo. She finds Youji Toshiko. Address matches the one at the boarding house.”
“So?”
“Here’s the thing. I tell her thanks for finding Ma’s lady friend and she says I must be mistaken, Youji is a man’s name. I was confused, but told her I must’ve misunderstood Ma.” He stopped talking and hunched over with his elbows on his knees again.
Veronica listened to the clatter of the newsroom. She heard Stan’s hesitant pecking and Timmy’s rapid-fire business typing. She counted the rings of David’s phone at the back of the room. She got to five before Tommy spoke again.
“I had that long drive back from LA to muck around with this stuff. An idea started. Impossible, right? But then, there’s the famous Veronica scarves—always around your neck. And some of the things Dave’s said about your coyness and all. We put it down to Oriental shyness or whatever. But.” Tommy flicked a look at her chest and inspected his shoes. “Tell me I’m bowling down the wrong alley.”
She could keep up the charade, only it wasn’t a charade. She was Veronica Wills, born American. Trouble was, she was also Youji Toshiko. He was born in Hiroshima, and he still lived. Being born American suggested certain freedoms, but would anyone understand that a particular kind of freedom had blossomed from the heart of a disaster? That a city’s worth of dead made resurrection easier?
“You’re smarter than you look,” Veronica said.
“Yeah.” Tommy lit a cigarette and rubbed his palm with his thumb. He flicked a couple of more looks her way, at her hands, her chest, her scarf, her mouth, but he never looked her in the eye. Finally he pulled his reporter’s notebook from his pocket. “My buddy told Mrs. Fuji to call me directly. She called while I was out and left a number.”
“What are you going to tell her?”
Tommy wiped some dust off the tip of his shoe. “Guess I have to tell her that Veronica’s original name was Youji Toshiko. Act like I don’t know what that means.”
“Let me talk to her first.” She unearthed a scrap of paper covered with handwritten notes from her desk and pushed it over to him. He sighed and held up his notebook and copied out Mrs. Fuji’s number. Then he stood and rubbed the top of his buzz cut. “Whatever you tell her, I don’t want to know.”
“Thanks, you’re a pal.”
“Tell that to Ma.”
“I will,” she said. “Guillermo.” Some would be appalled by his Mexican heritage, the way they talked.
He raised his eyebrows. “Touché.” He turned and sauntered toward the exit.
“Wait,” Veronica called.
Tommy looked back at her.
She beckoned and waited until he returned to her desk. “What are you going to say to David?”
He backed up. Another quick peep at her chest. “Not my place to say anything.” He turned away again.
