Locked Out

lacked Out Alison Lester It was by far the hottest summer in the three years we'd been in Tokyo. I couldn't go out without feeling unequal to the challenge of getting back home. Even when I put the air conditioning on in the apartment, I could still hear the relentless mating calls of the cicadas outside—like chainsaws in a rain forest—reminding me of the intensity beyond the windows. Children went by in the mornings, dragging their feet and perspiring. I couldn't wait to see them skip and scuffle again in the fall. And what must it have been like for really old people? Every morning, all spring, there had been a woman across the road who pulled the few dozen hairs she had left into a tiny bun at the back of her head, opened her sliding door, put down a mat, and knelt to weed with chopsticks in her tiny garden of potted flowers. I hadn't seen her in weeks. There were Sundays when it was almost too hot for our favorite weekend treat of crêpes in the Omotesando area of Tokyo. Some Japanese like to say that Omotesando is like the Champs Elysées in Paris. I don't know what they're talking about. Omotesando is shorter and narrower, and most of its charm is hidden in its side streets. This was one of those hot Sundays. We had settled ourselves at Le Bretagne, and had been served our usual order of galettes complete with cider when Hank said, "The people in the office think Tm sleeping with Ikeda-san." He related this as if it was supposed to be funny, but it was amazing how simultaneously my face felt hot and my heart felt cold. Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if Natalie, who worked at Louis Vuitton, hadn't told me just the day before that her company's French president had given his rather severe wife the heave-ho in favor of a sparkling Japanese sales manager. "Oh?" I said, forking some warm cheese and ham into our threeyear -old son, Miller. "Can you believe that?" "Maybe," I said. "She's a bit of a flirt, you know." 97 Ecotone: reimagining place I looked at him. "I didn't know." Miller was losing interest in his food, so I let him shake some salt on it. "Yeah," Hank continued, sitting back with a fresh cup of cider, easing into his story. His big, boyish face belied the way his broad chest and thick arms made him look prepared for anything. "When she started she was making one of the other guys really uncomfortable by bringing him tea every morning and standing on tiptoe to adjust his tie and stuff." "I thought that was their job." "Not in foreign companies it isn't." "That's good to hear." Hank didn't seem to register the chill in my tone—he's used to me being a little sarcastic—and continued his story. "Yeah. So when she came over to me I told her she was being unprofessional." "Can I play with the shoes, Mommy?" Miller asked. "Sure, sweets," I said, wiping his face. He slid off his chair and headed for the wooden clogs artfully arranged in the corner of the room. "How'd she take it?" I asked Hank. I wasn't sure I was enjoying the conversation, but I was always quite fascinated by the ways Japanese women worked things out for themselves. "She definitely looked shocked," he said. "And a little huffy. I guess I caused her to lose face." He dug back into his food with enthusiasm, but I wasn't ready to do the same. "So why the rumor?" "What?" "Why do people think you're sleeping with her?" "It gives them something to do?" he suggested. I looked at him skeptically over the rim of my cup. "She's not even that pretty." Hank looked very surprised to hear this, but then seemed to correct himself. "Look," he said, "she's only twenty-two. Her father probably never talks to her, her mother's probably a grin-and-bear-it...