A knocking at my door woke me. I pried open my eyes and looked at the clock on the bedstand. Precisely 9:10 A.M. A little groggy and bemused, I opened the door to a waiter standing next to a cart holding my breakfast.
As I ate, I turned on the television. The hotel had an English language channel, but it was playing an incredibly boring interview with a visiting Christian missionary. I would think missionary work could be interesting and exciting, but the interview featured a great deal of bureaucratic mumbling about the details of the missionary’s trip and almost nothing in the way of interesting stories or observations.
I turned the channel to the network that ran News Pop, and although everything was in Japanese and I didn’t understand a word, I still found it more interesting. The Japanese shows seemed to start at odd times, like 9:35, instead of regular hourly or half-hourly intervals. They had more commercials, but individual advertisers seemed to run shorter commercials. An advertiser might run the same commercial two or even three times in a row, however. With some of the commercials, it was hard to figure out what they were trying to sell because the pictures seemed to have nothing to do with the product. They might show a picture of rain in a pine forest and at the last minute pitch you to buy shoes. Maybe if I understood Japanese the relationships would be clear, but trying to figure out what I was seeing was still amusing. One thing that was very exciting was seeing the promo I shot the previous night. In the forty-five minutes or so I watched TV, I saw it run twice.
It was around 10 A.M., which meant it was 5 P.M. in Los Angeles. Mariko had told me to call her to let her know I had arrived safely. I knew she was waiting for my call so I picked up a card by the phone and read how to make a long distance call to the Kawashiri Boutique, where she worked when she wasn’t looking for acting jobs.
Mariko is in her midthirties, so she’s a bit younger than I. She worked for most of her life at a bank and decided a few years ago that she wanted to be an actress. She also realized she had a drinking problem and got active in AA. She reshaped her life by her own choice and I admired her for it. With the loss of my job, my life was changed through the actions of others and I was still trying to figure out how I was going to cope.
I guess changing our careers and lifestyles two or three times during the course of our lives is no longer unusual in the United States. Internal changes and external changes demand this from increasing numbers of us. Mariko and I have both had failed marriages, so we’ve both already had major changes in the course of our lives. For me, finding Mariko was another major change and the longer I know her, the more I realize how profound that change is.
I started punching numbers on the phone, using the U.S. country code, the area code, and the boutique’s phone number. She picked it up after only a couple of rings.
“Hello, Kawashiri Boutique,” she said. Pretty mundane, but her voice sounded like the sweetest poetry to me.
“It’s me. I got here uneventfully and I’ve already seen myself on Japanese TV pitching the show.”
“I’m glad you called. I miss you already.”
“You should have gone into hock and joined me.”
“Don’t tempt me. It’s just too much money.”
“That’s true. My breakfast this morning cost around thirty-five dollars for eggs and toast. That’s about fifteen dollars per egg and five dollars for the toast.”
“So the beautiful pearl necklace I was expecting is out?”
“Don’t worry. I haven’t done any shopping, but I’m sure I can find a lovely souvenir T-shirt for you.”
“You don’t have to bring anything back for me except yourself,” she said. “Just come back safe.”
“That’s no worry. I’m here in Tokyo, the safest big city in the world.”
“Tell that to the thousands gassed by that Japanese cult. Speaking of safety, I had some excitement here last night.”
“What happened?”
“Mrs. Hernandez called the police because she thought someone was breaking into your apartment.”
Mrs. Hernandez is my neighbor in the duplex I rent. She has a good heart, but she’s a snoop. When I’m doing the snooping, it’s okay. When I’m being snooped on, it’s annoying. I’ve left my apartment at 6 in the morning and returned at 2 A.M. the following morning and she’s commented on it, including the exact times I left and returned. She’s retired and has nothing better to do than to watch the comings and goings of her neighbors. The positive part about her is that she is superior to any home alarm system.
“What happened?”
“She was convinced that someone was prowling around your apartment late last night, so first she called the police and then she called me.”
“Why did she call you?”
“She knows I have a key to your apartment. She wanted me to come and let the police into your apartment.”
“I’m surprised she hasn’t had a key made for herself, just so she can snoop at leisure. Did you go down?”
“Of course. We went in and looked around, but I saw nothing out of place and the police saw no signs of a forced entry. At least your apartment didn’t look like Cathy’s.”
Cathy was a friend of Mariko’s who was called at work by the police and asked to return home because her apartment had been burglarized. That morning Cathy was rushed and late for work, so she actually ran out of her apartment without properly slamming the door behind her. A neighbor noticed her door was ajar and peeked through the open door to see if everything was okay. What the neighbor saw caused him to call the police.
When Cathy got home, there were two police cars and four police officers waiting. A female police officer pulled Cathy aside and said to her, “We want you to enter your apartment to see what’s missing. Please don’t touch anything because we want to dust for fingerprints.” The officer hesitated a moment, then said, “You might want to prepare yourself for a few seconds before you go in. I’ve been inside and they pretty well trashed your apartment looking for valuables. Things are thrown everywhere and it’s a complete a mess, so watch where you step.”
Cathy braced herself and stepped into an apartment with clothes and other belongings tossed on the floor and spread around the apartment. Then she had to brace herself a second time to tell the police officers that nothing was missing and that was how she normally kept her apartment.
I started laughing and said, “That story about Cathy was the reason I cleaned things up before I left for Japan. I thought if anybody did go into the apartment, I didn’t want to be accused of felony sloppiness. So there was no burglar after all?”
“I guess not. I think Mrs. Hernandez must be losing it. She rousted me out of a sound sleep for no good reason.”
“That’s very strange. She’s usually very accurate. She acts as a one-woman neighborhood watch and not too much goes on that she doesn’t notice. If she said there was a prowler, I’d tend to believe her.”
“She said the prowler got into your apartment, but when we looked, there was absolutely no sign that anyone had been in there. If someone did get into your apartment, they decided there was nothing worth stealing.”
“It’s still strange,” I said.
“So, what’s on the schedule today?” Mariko asked, changing the subject.
“Cheap sightseeing, if I can swing it, and a stop by the studio this afternoon.”
“Well, have fun, and come home safely to me. I love you.”
“I love you, too.”