Southern Fried Sushi (14 page)

The hotel phone on the bedside table shouted in my ear, and I woke with a start.

What on earth is going on? I flipped on the lamp again and grabbed the phone.

“Carlos?”

“No. This is Kyoko.”

“Oh, Kyoko. Hi.” I slumped back down and closed my eyes. “What a horrible day.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

She didn’t sound like her usual self. “Is something wrong?”

“Ro-chan, I don’t know. But I need to talk to you. About something important. I’m sorry. I know it’s the middle of the night there, and right after the funeral, but … this is serious. Really.”

I was suddenly awake. “What’s going on? Is everyone all right?”

“Well, health-wise, yeah. I don’t know about Carlos, but the staff is fine. But you’ve got to talk to me. Now. Before Dave calls you.”

“Dave? Why? What’s going on? Is it because my no-vote story is due? Kyoko, I’m really sorry, but I was at a funeral for crying out loud. I turned it in as soon as I could get a connection.”

“No. It’s not that.” Kyoko sounded deathly serious.

“Then what?” I felt annoyed. And sleepy.

“Ro-chan. Tell me something. Did you talk to the PM’s wife?”

All at once my heart leaped up and hit the ceiling.

I
couldn’t speak.

“Ro-chan. Please. Tell me you talked to her.”

I felt sick, and my mouth wouldn’t move. “Kyoko, I …”

“You didn’t. Oh no. Oh nooooo,” she moaned.

I tried to think what to say. Should I tell the truth or make up another lie? No, I’d better stop at one.

“What happened?” My hand shook so much I could barely hold the phone.

“The PM’s wife is upset. Said she never talked to you or even had an interview scheduled with you about that issue. She told AP she’d only had one interview with Asahi Shimbun, and she felt they misrepresented her position.”

My lips went white. “But she did say those things.”

“Not to you. And she can disagree all she wants with Asahi, as long as she said it. But if she didn’t talk to you, then …”

Silence.

“Kyoko, help me!” I pleaded.

“I want to, Ro, but I don’t know how I can! You goofed this one big-time! Did you really copy from Asahi?” Her voice rose shrill in my ear.

I swallowed hard and tried to stop shaking. The roomvibrated. That dumb train again. “Kyoko, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

“What do you mean you didn’t mean to? Either you copied or you didn’t! It’s called plagiarism, and you can get in major trouble! You should know that by now!”

“I know. But I missed my deadline!” I gasped, needing oxygen. “I just blanked and forgot a story, and I couldn’t face Dave. I’ve never done either of those before—running late or … lifting. From the Internet. I didn’t think it would make much difference.”

Kyoko’s voice crackled with fury. “I can’t believe it! Ro, of all the dumb, stupid … honestly! What got into that head of yours? Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” She was practically shouting now. “You’re studying ethics, for heaven’s sake!”

Ethics. I covered my face with my hands. “Have you ever copied a story before? Or parts of it? Tell me the truth!” Kyoko didn’t answer. I thought she would deny it immediately, but she didn’t. She didn’t?!

“Tell me the truth, Kyoko!”

“I’m at work!” she whispered fiercely.

“I don’t care! Tell me.”

“Yes,” she hissed. “Of course I have! We all have. Probably Dave has. How else do you think we turn hundreds of articles around in minutes?”

“Then why is one little incident such a big deal?” I whined.

“Because you got caught, Ro-chan! The big no-no! If you’re going to do it, do it right!”

I blinked. “That’s it? That’s my advice?”

“Look, all I’m saying is you’d better think of something really good to tell Dave. He’s ballistic. He’ll probably call you any minute.”

I rubbed my face in misery. “Is there any way out, Kyoko?”

Silence. She sounded weary. “I don’t know, Ro. This is pretty big. I don’t see how even you can dig your way out of this one.

If it goes out that an AP reporter plagiarized … oh, Ro,” she moaned. “Uh-oh. He’s coming this way. I’ve gotta go. Call me.” And she hung up.

Images swirled in my head: The glass-encased news office. Mrs. Inoue reaching handfuls of ginger candy into my cupped hands. My Louis Vuitton scarf. The mountains. The horse chewing grass. Mounds of fresh brown dirt piled around a yawning hole in summer grass.

Sensations of hot and cold swept over me. Light and heavy. My stomach heaved; I needed a doctor.

“God.” My lips moved again. Why on earth I was talking to Him, I didn’t know. “Get me out of this mess. Oh, God.” I buried my face in the blankets.

And the hotel phone rang again.

Nothing, I thought, could ruin my day more than Mom’s funeral. But Dave’s tongue-lashing sliced me to ribbons. He yelled so loudly I held the phone out from my ear. Used swear word combinations that defied grammar. Broke a mug—no, two—and something else heavy.

Dave blasted my lousy reporting skills until they bled and shouted that I had no business working at a professional establishment like the Associated Press.

“You’re fired!” I heard him holler loud enough for Patty to hear down at the front desk. “So don’t bother coming back to Shiodome!” He slammed the phone down, leaving a harsh dial tone grating in my already sore ear.

The words floated past my ears as if transparent.

I forgot time as I sat there frozen, immobile, empty phone still in my hand. My world crumbled and quaked, dissolving with a roar like one of those powerful Japanese earthquakes.

What have I done? What have I done?
The dial tone whined like an annoying mosquito, yet I made no move to hang up thephone. To close the circuit connecting me to Japan and to the last remnant of my life in Shiodome.

I could live without Mom. I had already done that for years. But I could not live without Japan. Without Tokyo. Without the bright morning skies over Shiodome, the crows swooping, the friendly “
Irashaimase!
“ welcome greeting from smiling, bowing Japanese salespeople.

I had literally nothing left.

My head fell into my hands. Japanese samurai ritually took their lives after failure or defeat. I couldn’t imagine pulling a knife blade, but I realized as I stared at the clock, which glowed 4:16 a.m., that my life had indeed come to an end. Just like the samurai.

I thought desperate thoughts. I’d run away, or change my identity, or …

My eyes fell on the room phone, still hanging limp and pitiful in my quivering fingers.

And in complete and total despair—the wild, desperate kind that only comes from feeling your life bleed out before your eyes—I dialed Faye.

S
he met me in the lobby, hair a fright and eyes ringed with dark circles. But she came. She wrapped her arm around me, and I followed her out to the car. She’d left a blanket for me on the passenger’s seat and a mug of hot chocolate in the cup holder. The most thoughtful things, maybe, anyone had ever done for me.

I wrapped the blanket around my shoulders, vainly trying to keep out the chill, and watched the dark city glide past me. I didn’t care where we went. Staunton, Siberia, Mars. It was all the same. Stars hung cold and condemning outside the car windows.

“Machiavelli said to do everything bad at once, and everything good slowly,” I blabbered.

“Who?”

“Machiavelli. An Italian diplomat and philosopher. Well, I followed his advice. I’ve officially ruined my life.”

In Japan Kyoko was taking the subway home from work now. Without me. Forever.

Even the mountains kept their black silence, dark shapes against the indigo sky.

Faye tried to talk, but I didn’t respond. She finally turned on a Christian radio station, and I made no move to turn it offor even protest. Just leaned against the window, watching the streetlights and wondering how on earth I’d made such a mess of my life.

Shiloh P. Jacobs didn’t need God. Didn’t need help. Shiloh P. Jacobs had always worked her way up, not down.

Staunton’s shop-lined sidewalks breathed quiet compared to Tokyo streets that never sleep. No neon, no subways. We wended our way through the country, where the air smelled pleasantly of damp leaves and soil and something indescribably sweet, like flowers. Cicadas whispered in shimmering layers, filling the air with their swelling sound.

If I’d been in my right mind, I would’ve put my window down like Faye and tried to weep, to feel the perfumed night breeze on my face.

But I didn’t. Nothing mattered but Japan.

Especially when the air turned sharp and pungent: the classic aroma of cow. I stuffed the blanket over my nostrils and tried not to breathe.

Faye parked the car in front of a nice two-story, cabin-like country house. I got out, still holding the blanket around me, and looked up at the stars. Streaks of pale blue ribboned along the horizon.

I stood there stiffly, watching pink glow over the mountains. Blooming in the hour of my greatest defeat. Robins chirped from the trees.

“I’ve lost my job. Everything. All I need to do is throw my ring across the yard, and it’ll be complete,” I whispered.

“Don’t do that,” said Faye, her light tone sounding a bit forced. “It’s pretty expensive.”

“My life is over.”

“Aw, honey. There’s always a silver lining. Wait and see.”

I should have hated her for saying something so insipid, but I didn’t. I felt nothing. I stared up at the sky until chill and dew got the best of me and stumbled into the house after Faye.

B
right sunshine streamed through ruffled curtains, and scents of bacon and coffee teased my roiling stomach. I still had on my jeans and kelly-green-striped J.Crew polo shirt—the first thing my hands found when I’d rooted through my suitcase in the dark back at the hotel. I grabbed my cell phone, scrolling through the sudden mound of text messages. Hundreds of them from Kyoko.

D
AVE SAYS YOU’RE FIRED
. I
‘M SO SORRY
. Y
OSHIE-SAN’S BOXING UP YOUR STUFF
. I
CAN’T BELIEVE
I
T! CALL ME
. C
ALL ME!

W
HAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO WITH YOUR THINGS?
C
ALL ME
.

R
O-CHAN, YOU CAN’T LEAVE JAPAN! YOU JUST CAN’T!
C
ALL ME
.

I
KNOW YOU’RE UPSET
. D
ON’T DO ANYTHING STUPID, OKAY?

R
O?
A
RE YOU THERE?
C
ALL ME!
K
YOKO
. N
ORA’S TAKING OVER YOUR SPOT
. S
HE’S A PAIN
. W
HY, WHY DID YOU COPY?
C
ALL ME!

I couldn’t read them anymore. I liked Kyoko, but suddenly I could no longer relate to her. She still worked for AP; I didn’t. She still saw Japanese sky as she stepped out of the subway tunnel I loved; I did not. Kyoko had become a friend far away, over a gap I couldn’t cross.

My dad had sent a few messages, too, about Mom, but I deleted them. Thinking of him only made matters worse.

Reality began to dawn when I went to my e-mail inbox and found scores of messages from AP’s human resources department. Last paycheck information. Questions and instructions about the apartment.

I rubbed my face to shatter the bad dream, but when I opened my eyes, Faye’s flowered guest bedspread still smiled back at me.

And after all this time, Carlos hadn’t called me. Not even once.

My thumb scrolled and scrolled, searching for something—anything—from Carlos Torres Castro. But his name refused to show itself, like my hope.

I took off my diamond and shoved it in my pocket. Who wants to marry a guy who could care less if I’m breathing?

I dialed Carlos’s number and got voice mail. “If you don’t call me back immediately, consider everything off, and I keep the ring.” I hung up. The expensive ring, at least, would make him jump.

In two minutes (I timed it) the phone rang. “Look, I’m in a meeting,” Carlos retorted, voice coolly restrained. “You know I care, Shiloh. But I’m busy. You can’t expect me to drop everything for you.”

“No, I don’t know you care. How have you shown it to me, Carlos?”

“I’m here for you. I’m waiting for you to come back. I’m just … I can’t bring your mom back, okay?”

I flinched. “I didn’t ask you to bring her back! I don’t even want—” My voice stopped, and my fingers holding the phone

tightened. “I just want you to call me! Do something!”

I expected him to apologize, but instead he remained quiet.

“Kyoko’s called me a million times, and you haven’t even so much as sent me a text message.”

I shouldn’t have mentioned Kyoko. Carlos snorted angrily. “What does Kyoko have to do with anything?”

“She’s a friend. And you’re … silent.”

“Oh, so I’m not a friend now? That’s what you think?” His tone turned angry. “Well, Mia said you … she said …”

I sucked in my breath. “What did you say?” The color drained out of my face so fast I held on to the bed to keep from falling.