As if spurred by magic, Zack’s agent called him, asking when the Japanese buyer could come by the studio to check out what he had available.
After that day, nobody heard from Zack for days at a time. He was too busy channeling his energy into more productive ventures, while keeping his thoughts of Rachel to the long hours of his sleepless nights.
Soon.
Chapter 33
“Reicharu-sensei wa hidoi naaaa!”
Rachel remained firm against the glass doors leading to the busy town streets. Before her, an irate eight-year-old demanded that he be let out. It did not help that Rachel was the only adult in the whole classroom. Where were the parents when she needed them the most?
“The least you could do is say it in English,” she spat back. “You mean to say, ‘Ms. Rachel is mean.’”
“Mizu Reicharu izu min.” The boy looked up, expecting Rachel to give him a pardon since he made a half-assed attempt to leave the classroom ten minutes ahead of schedule. This little twerp thinks it’s a game, huh? He didn’t really want out into the street. He thought it would be funny if Rachel let him loose into the world. He probably didn’t even understand that she would get into so much trouble that she’d be fired without a further word from her employer. Nor did he probably care.
This was the life of a glorified English-speaking babysitter in Japan. The company marketed a year or more abroad implanting English jargon and haphazard sentences into young minds. In truth, Japanese parents paid exorbitant funds to send their kids to weekly classes that consisted of nothing more than exasperated ex-pats crying to go home. Nobody straight out of college was trained to deal with this shit! Hell, Rachel had done it before and she could barely do it now!
Somehow, she made it through the torturous final hour of her classes. The young boy did not get his deeply desired jailbreak. Nor did any of the other kids learn a lick of English that day. Oh, well. Rachel still got paid.
After the last child was seen off with her parents, Rachel locked the door and went to fill out her class report. Do I tell the head office about this shit or what? She at least needed to tell the Japanese teacher so she knew little Shota was being a shit again. Nothing Rachel wasn’t used to, but it was these kinds of days that made her want a hard drink.
I never wanted to drink before I met Zack. Not that Zack made her want to drink – most days – but she had certainly drunk more around him. Way more in the span of one summer than she had drunk before.
She tapped her pen against the lesson book, staring at the wall in front of her. The school’s copy of her teaching schedule was tacked up. What a terrible reminder that this was the life she chose… over Zack.
Not that she regretted it. The only thing Rachel regretted since stepping on the plane to Tokyo was not packing enough socks. She had forgotten that her school didn’t allow pure white socks. Something about them getting dirty faster, and that was simply not acceptable.
I meant every word I wrote in that letter. From her needing her space to the insecurities that were insurmountable. Being with Zack for much longer would have sent her down the kind of mental spiral a woman does not easily crawl back out from.
Naturally, she was grateful that he had paid for her mother’s care. Rachel wasn’t of the mind to pay him back, per se, but she was going to save up enough money at this job to pay the bills once the year was up. The offer had been too good to pass up once it had fallen into her lap. Daisuke hadn’t been able to promise her a raise, but he had hooked her up with the region of her choosing. She didn’t return to the exact town she had taught at before, but it was close enough.
Everything was close enough. Close enough to the life she had once lived before meeting Zack.
I think about him every night. When she lay in her futon late at night, reciting the next day’s lesson plans and going over the freelance work she did for select clients, she recalled what it was like to sleep in his arms and bury her face against his naked chest. For a few brief, select nights, she had been able to achieve true intimacy with someone again.
She wondered if she would taste it once more someday.
I only have myself to blame. She shouldn’t have pushed the relationship past what she was ready for. She had learned that lesson well.
Still… she often wondered what he was doing, if he had moved on already, how his art was going… was Uncle Roy still in the city, or had he departed for wherever he wintered? Rachel’s birthday had passed, which meant fall was in full swing. Winter would soon come to that part of America. How much would it snow that year? As much as it would in Japan?
What did Zack do in the winters, when going to the marina wasn’t as fun as it would be come summer?
Rachel put away her materials. After one last trip to the restroom, she grabbed her things and the keys to the front door. Lights turned off. Shoes were back on. Rachel unlocked and opened the door so she could turn around and lock it again.
A man waited for her. He stood beside a limo, holding a placard that said RACHEL TAYLOR in big, bold print.
“Jesus!” Rachel leaped where she stood, nearly crawling up the wall of the rickety old school building. “What the hell!”
The Japanese chauffeur wiped his gloved hand beneath the name on his sign. “Taylor-san?”
Rachel didn’t know whether she should admit that she was the one he searched for or not. What the hell was this, anyway? Some kind of prank? Did Travis Kyle from her district think this was a funny joke to play on her since she was “fresh meat” again? Sending old Japanese men to find her at nine at night in the middle of a rural neighborhood?
The chauffeur stepped forward and handed Rachel a business card. One handwritten word appeared before her eyes.
“Please.”
Her fingertips touched the ink on the card. She recognized that handwriting anywhere, even when her brain tried to tell her it was a lie.
“All right,” she said with a sigh. The last train back to her apartment was supposed to take off from the station in fifteen minutes. It was a ten minute walk. If this driver screwed her out of getting home in a reasonable amount of time, he was looking at a nice, long drive back into the town Rachel lived.
Instead, the limo pulled onto the highway – going in the opposite direction of where Rachel lived.
They were heading into the city on a Friday night. The same night most of the region filtered into the city to go to the movies and hit the bars and clubs with their flashy friends. Rachel was not dressed for anything fancy. Her school had a generously lax dress code for teaching children. Instead of wearing three-piece suits, stuffy sweaters, and scratchy tights beneath conservative skirts, Rachel raced around the classroom in a pair of denim jeans and Pokémon themed T-shirts. Okay, so tonight I’m wearing a plain T-shirt and my flannel over it.
Point was, Rachel was not dressed for a fancy night in the city. She was dressed for lounging around her apartment, eating bento from the corner convenience store and playing games on her laptop.
“Where are we going?” she asked the driver, first in English and then in Japanese. “Can you even tell me?”
The driver only gave her a small smile in the rearview mirror. If Rachel hadn’t recognized the handwriting on the card, she would be panicking.
Or at least she swore it was Zack’s handwriting. What if it wasn’t? What if she was setting herself up for disappointment? Or worse? She was having a fit about him to begin with!
Honestly, Rachel had expected Zack to track her down in Japan sooner rather than later. He had the means. He had the resources. The reason she didn’t tell him she was leaving was because she worried he would try to stop her at the airport or follow her in his own plane.
Or maybe he would sail there in his yacht. That was probably what really happened and why he took so long to catch up to her.
I haven’t written to him. I haven’t called him. They hadn’t spoken in nearly two months. For all Rachel knew, Zack had considered themselves broken up and moved on.
She considered texting him, but she only had a cheap prepaid Japanese cell phone and never bothered to memorize his number. By the time she decided to text Parvati about this, the limo pulled over and a valet stepped forward to help Rachel out of the backseat.
“Do you know what’s going on?” she asked him, but this man also did not speak much English. The more embroiled she became, the more Japanese she forgot.
The building was nondescript, although a small sign hung out front. Most of it was written in Japanese. Rachel could make out a little bit of it. “Wondrous World of Fantastical Imagery.” That didn’t tell her much. All she learned from anything was that it was a semi-formal event. The women wearing little black cocktail dresses and the men in their collared shirts made her feel woefully underdressed. At least she wasn’t wearing a Hello Kitty T-shirt!
The doorman took one look at her and motioned for her to come inside. Rachel still had no idea what was going on, but went along with it anyway.
It was an art gallery. One packed from wall to wall with guests clearing a path for her.
Women whispered to each other. Men looked her up and down. A man named Masayoshi Suzuki, who was credited with putting the event together, was the first to approach Rachel’s hand. His Japanese words fell upon her deaf ears. There was no way Rachel could appreciate what he said when her eyes were transfixed on the artwork before her.