MAID IN TOKYO: Chapter 2

Chapter 2

My alarm woke me at eight the following morning.  I threw a plush teddy at it and succeeded in knocking it off the dresser and into a small pink waste bin.  I fell out of bed and staggered to the bathroom, turning the bath taps on and shrugging out of my T-shirt and shorts.  I patted my flat tummy and returned to bathroom.  I washed myself thoroughly before stepping into the bath and sinking up to my chin in hot water.  It was then that I was suddenly struck by how lonely an existence I had.  I hadn’t been with a man in over two years and was beginning to wonder if I was over the hill in my mid twenties.

What was I doing with my life?  Other girls my age were working in offices or shops, or married to nice men and living happily ever after.  Of course I knew that most Japanese wives were unfulfilled, and their overworked husbands sometimes sought the comfort of other women. 

My hand had strayed between my legs and I began to massage myself slowly.  I stopped as I realised what I was doing.  I could feel my cheeks flush.  This wasn’t the place for that, I chided myself.  I closed my eyes and did it anyway.

Dressed in my other maid uniform I closed my door behind me and locked it, popping the keys into the little bag I always carried.  It was just after nine and old Mr Sato was on the landing, looking out at the high buildings of Taito-ku and beyond.  He turned to look at me, a big smile making his wrinkled face resemble crepe paper.

“Oh you look so pretty, Suzuki-san,” he called.  I bowed and when I straightened up I gave him the stock welcome for our guests.

“Welcome, master,” I said in a girly voice, giving him a peace sign and a big grin.  Mr Sato applauded me and gave me one of his shiny red apples.  His son would always bring him a bag of red apples every week, and I always seemed to have around half of them.  Mr Sato was my oldest fan.

“Thank you, Sato-san,” I cooed and bowed deeply.

Work that day was pretty slow.  It was a Sunday and I think most of our customers had forsaken us for the sights and shops of Akihabara’s main shopping area.  Certainly the few that we did get were laden with bags full of PVC figures, soft toys and more merchandise than a normal human can cope with.  It was my belief that the average otaku, if there was such a thing, possessed an almost superhuman ability to acquire more… stuff than they could possibly keep.

Take for example my friend Eiji.  I’ve already mentioned his habit of collecting anything to do with the MPD, including requesting a copy of the report filed on him when he was arrested… well, I know for a fact that he has model police cars scattered everywhere in his flat, and he keeps buying more.

They are indeed a rare breed.

It was a little after two in the afternoon and I was playing a card game with one customer when Eiji came into the café.  This was the first time he had ever come here.  Akiko welcomed him and I saw him talking animatedly to her.  She turned to catch my eye and I apologised to the man at the table and trotted up to where Akiko and Eiji stood.  Akiko bowed and went to the man I had just left, adopting a cute voice and adding “ne?” to the end of every sentence.  We had to know how to talk in a cute voice – it was all in the training manual.  Yes, maids these days have to be fully trained to work in restaurants and cafes. 

“Momoko-san, can we talk somewhere?”

Eiji looked a little worried and I took him to one of the more private areas of the café.  He sat down and looked at his hands.  I brought him a cup of café latte and sat down opposite him.

“What is it?  You look like you’ve seen a ghost, Eiji.”  I never used an honorific with Eiji, we were closer than that.  He used it, but more out of respect for me than anything else.

“Our shop was robbed last night.  Someone broke in and stole some of the replica guns from the top floor.”

I stared at him, my hand covering my mouth.

“Oh no.  How many did they steal?”

Eiji counted off on his fingers.

“Two Colt 9mm pistols, an Uzi and two AKMs.”

I stared blankly at him: I had no idea what he was talking about.

“They’re guns, right?”

He nodded and looked around.

“They’re only plastic but they look real.  If the robbers were to hold up a bank or another shop no-one would know the difference.”

“But they can’t fire, right?”

Eiji shook his head.

“They can fire BB pellets but nothing else.”

Okay, I thought.  I knew what BB guns were.  We had a boy in school who took pleasure in scaring the teachers with such a weapon one day.  The police were called and he was so afraid that he went off the deep end, waving it around and acting like a yakuza hit-man.  A jittery police officer shot him, killing him instantly.

He was only fifteen.

Eiji reached across and help my hands in his, which seemed unnaturally clammy. 

“We’re shutting the shop early because the police want to carry out a full investigation.  They say it’s because it was replica guns.  They even threatened to close us down if they were used in a crime.”

I thought at that point Eiji’s love affair with the police had come to an end.  He looked me straight in the eye.

“There was a female detective with them, Momoko-san.  She was so cute.”

I snatched my hands away as he blushed.  There was I thinking he had come to me for a shoulder to cry on, instead he was mooning over a pretty policewoman.

“Baka!” I hissed, and then looked round to see if anyone was looking.  Luckily the other girls were occupied playing various games with the customers.  I think I even heard Yuri singing a theme song in an annoying little girl voice.  It was all so easy for her… and she was wearing those fake glasses again!

I turned back to Eiji and told him I would see him after work.  We agreed to meet at the corner of the road, just at the entrance to the mobile phone shop which occupied our ground floor.

*          *          *          *          *

The hours passed quite quickly as the trade picked up after a while and I left the café exhausted, hot and annoyed at Yuri again.  As I had Monday off I decided to go for a late night drink with Eiji, so that he could tell me all the details of the robbery – and no doubt about the delicious female officer.

I met Eiji as agreed and we set off for home.  There was a nice Yakitori place not far from our block that served up the best meals this side of paradise.  The chicken was to die for.  Some glasses of Chu Hi and a good meal would relax me, and Eiji could tell me all about his day.

We had just reached the Satake indoor shopping street entrance when Eiji suddenly stopped, gasping.  He dropped the bag of beer cans he was carrying.  I followed his gaze and stifled the scream that threatened to rip itself from my throat.  Not more than four metres away was a body.

Even in the darkness we could see it was a young man.  He was lying propped up against the shutters of one of the shops, his head on his chest.  He was wearing a cheap pair of tracksuit bottoms, Nike trainers and a t-shirt.  A large dark patch was spread over the shirt and the upper portion of his tracksuit, puddling around his backside.  At his outstretched hand was the dark ugly shape of a handgun.

I grabbed Eiji’s thin arm for security.

“Is he dead?” I asked, pointing and stammering.

“I think so.”  He pulled out his mobile with trembling hands and dialled 110, the number for the police emergency line.  I could only stare at the body of the young man, recalling the nightmare from my school days.  When Eiji hung up he started to move backwards, pushing me with him. 

In the distance we could hear the siren of a police car and when I looked down towards Ueno I could see two officers from the police box down there rushing towards us on their bicycles.  When they reached us one of them took us up to the main road, just opposite the big hotel there, Villa Fontaine Ueno.  The other policeman bent down, then knelt before the body.  He touched a gloved finger to the throat.  He stood up and said something into his radio; his voice was drowned out by the siren of the big Toyota patrol car that ground to a halt nearby.  Two officers dashed out and rushed up to the officer with the body.

The whole thing was unreal.  Here I was standing in a maid costume, late at night with my friend, red light bathing the scene of what could only be a murder.  By this time people had started to come from their flats, and I could see open curtains in the hotel windows.  The only sounds seemed to come from the radio in the car.  It was like some weird dream.

Pretty soon a mini patrol car had turned up and the two policewomen inside had set up a traffic diversion and were directing cars away from the scene with their red illuminated batons.  Detectives had arrived in a huge black Nissan: a cool looking man who was surprisingly attractive, and a woman in a skirt and sleeveless top.  I looked at Eiji and he had a half smile on his lips.  I assumed this was the female detective who had questioned him earlier in the day.

            Since we had found and reported the body Eiji and I were kept away from the crowd that stood silently around the area, held back by thin yellow and black tape.  I watched as a forensic officer knelt down and, using a clear plastic rod picked up the pistol by sticking it up the barrel.  He called to the male detective as he stood up.  All the while there were flashes from a police photographer’s camera.

            The forensic man talked to the detective, indicating the gun, which he eventually placed in a clear plastic bag.  The detective then approached us, pulling off his rubber gloves.  He reached inside his jacket and offered Eiji his card, flashing me a toothy smile.  Close up he was so very good looking. He was in his forties I would imagine, but his hair was still black and he looked to be in good condition.  His face was angular, with very narrow eyes that reminded me of a samurai painting.  He was a good bit taller than most of the people around the scene.

            Eiji and I bowed then Eiji handed me the policeman’s card: ‘Detective Hiroshi Kuroda’ was printed in bold black characters with the emblem of the MPD underneath, followed by direct line and mobile numbers.  I pocketed the card and gave him a smile despite the situation.  I shocked myself by looking to see if he wore a wedding ring, which he didn’t.

            “You found the body?”  he asked us.  Eiji and I nodded.  I glanced back to where paramedics were carrying the now-covered body into the back of a waiting ambulance ready for transporting to the police mortuary.

“If you don’t mind me asking, why were you out dressed like that?”

I looked down at my frilly maid uniform.

“I work at La Rose maid café in Akihabara.  I finished at nine.  We were on our way home when we found… him.”

Detective Kuroda nodded and wrote some things down in a leather notebook. 

“Whose home are you going to?”

Since Eiji had forgotten how to talk I told him that we stayed in the same block of flats, pointing in the direction of the building, a couple of minute’s slow walk away from this murder scene.

“Right.”  He looked over my head and towards the shopping centre.

“Toyama! Toyama-san!”

I turned to see the policewoman approaching us, her annoyingly long legs flashing under the skirt as she walked with the confidence of a woman totally at ease.

“Oh, it’s you again,” she muttered, recognising Eiji, then turned back to Kuroda.  He gave her a quizzical look, to which she replied that Eiji had been one of the shop assistants in the scene of the robbery she reported earlier.  In her hand was the gun.

“A toy,” she intoned.

“That’s a Mamoshi plastic scale model of a 9mm Colt pistol.  You can see the copyright stamp on the grip.”

We all looked at him.

“Is this the same as one of the items stolen from your shop, Watanabe-san?” she asked.  Despite being infatuated with this example of female power Eiji was scared stiff.  I patted his arm.

“Tell her, Eiji… you haven’t done anything.”

Eiji nodded and bowed deeply.

Kuroda took the bag and held it in his hand.

“Very light.  I can see how it would fool someone from a distance, but it looks like a toy from here.”

He handed it back to Toyama, who looked closely at it through the bag.  She gave me a side glance that sent chills down my spine and then walked back to the black Nissan.  I turned to Eiji who, despite his fear was watching her walk away… I could see that his eyes were staring at her backside.  I hated her for having a figure like that.  She looked like a Western model with that figure, tall and leggy.  I was secretly praying that she would trip up and fall flat on her perfectly made-up face.

I turned back to Kuroda, intently talking into a mobile phone, his back to us.  I nudged Eiji, who had resumed his terrified expression.

“I’ve never seen a dead body before,” he whispered.

“Neither have I.” 

I had been to a funeral for an aunty but they had kept the coffin closed.  I never expected that my first corpse would be like this: the violence and all of that blood.  I began to feel sick and a little dizzy.

“Are you feeling ill, Suzuki-san?”  It was the rich mellow voice of Kuroda.  I looked up at him and nodded like a child, too emphatically.

“The two of you will have to come to the station to fill out witness statements, and then you we’ll get a car to bring you back.  It shouldn’t take less than an hour.”

I saw him wave to another plain-clothes policeman, his plastic armband held in place by an all-too-obvious safety pin.  He jogged up to us and stopped short.  I almost expected him to snap to attention and salute.

“Can you take these young people back to the station, Beniya?  Take their statements and then I want them taken home in a car.  Understood?”

Beniya nodded sharply and directed us to a waiting police patrol car.  A uniformed officer opened the rear passenger door for us and bowed as we clambered into the black interior.  The officer slammed the door shut and then he and Beniya took the front seats.

I had never been in a police car before, and the sounds and smells were playing hellish games with my nerves.  I could see that Eiji had calmed down and was smiling despite the gravity of the situation.

“What are you smiling at, you idiot?”

“This is the latest model of the Crown… nice.”

Here we were, being taken to the police station to give our witness statements about us finding a dead body and here was Eiji, enjoying the chance to ride in a nice new police car.  I wondered if all otaku were so single minded.

My nerves jangled even more as the car started up and we headed down towards Kusagi-dori Avenue and headed off for Ueno.  I wanted to thump Eiji more than ever!