LITMIR.BIZ

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idea to share a drink with the woman who had so far presented herself as an adversary. My hesitancy to answer must have seemed an affirmative response, because she got up from the chair and went to the kitchen. I watched as she pulled two cans from the sack and opened them with an expert flip of the tabs.

      “Sorry about the can,” she said. “I’d rather not use Ren’s glassware.”

      I nodded and we both took a sip. She put down her beer and casually folded her legs underneath her. “Sure, I have a key.” She took one out of her pocket and showed it to me, then slipped it back in. Her hand stayed inside her pocket while she looked at me. “That’s not unusual is it? Ren gave it to me so I can take care of his place while he’s away.”

      Indeed, that was not unusual, but it suggested they had more than a casual relationship. One person didn’t just hand the key to his or her apartment to someone without first establishing trust. I took a sip of beer. She finally drew her hand out of her pocket slowly, making it a deliberate act of sensuality, I believe, or perhaps wanted to believe.

      Sounding like an uncle without an emotional thread in his being, I said, “I’m only here out of good intentions. Mizuno’s mother is concerned that he didn’t show up for the holiday as usual.”

      She shrugged as if that wasn’t important. “I’ve lived in the building for almost four years,” she announced. “Ren moved in a few months after me. I noticed him right off, but he didn’t seem interested in me, nothing other saying ‘Hi.’”

      She delved into the past like a projectionist searching for a particular frame. My own film loop was unraveling while I listened to her, largely because my impression was that she was making up a story, ad-libbing like an actor in an unstructured screen test. Her storytelling was smooth but not practiced, as if she were listening intently to her words, making sure none of her story bore inconsistencies. She was writing a script of falsehoods that had to stand on its own. When I first saw her stroll into the apartment, I thought at last I had something concrete. A real, beating-heart connection to the missing son. Disappointment brings one down from the high of success, or anticipation of such.

      She went on with her story: “We finally said more than ‘Hi’ one rainy night, a night like this one, when the rain was so fierce that walking through it was like swimming. He was coming in from the rain, I was just leaving. We collided at the top of the stairway. He was so sweet …”

      The limit of my patience was being reached while I waited for her to get to the point. I sipped the beer that tasted more of aluminum than hops. “Excuse me,” I said. “I hate to interrupt, but I feel strange, guilty perhaps, sitting here in Mizuno’s apartment talking about him as if he is dead. I should be leaving, but I had a few questions before I go.”

      She unfolded her legs and I couldn’t help staring. “Okay. Ask away.”

      “For one, I asked earlier if you have seen him recently and you gave a rather vague answer.”

      She switched legs again. “You see, I don’t ask him where he goes. I never ask when he will be back. If he tells me, fine. But I’m not the kind to pry. And I’m not his girlfriend.”

      Girlfriend or not, I believed they had been intimate.

      She continued: “Sometimes I don’t see him for months but I can often feel he is here. Um, does that make sense?”

      Compared to what she said so far, relative to all that I had uncovered in my investigation, it made excruciating sense. My own system of logic—as twisted as it had become—was as irrational and unreliable as the people I encountered. My downfall was trying to make sense of the irrationality I faced: affairs, disappearances, embezzlement, blackmail, and violence. All of the irrational acts occurring for purposes never fully articulated, for if they were, they would sound absurd, outlandish, and with almost no chance of making someone happy. Even if they succeed, the consequences are never what was intended, but then it doesn’t matter because the unsociable acts become the goals in and of themselves. Getting away with it, or just getting away, is the measure of success. So the actors come to believe, for rarely do their lives improve with success; they only shift their ultimate demise to another path.

      But then perhaps that is all we can really accomplish in life.

      “I don’t think Ren is dead but maybe he wants to be dead.” Her voice grew soft, her gaze went off to the side as if she were delivering a soliloquy. “What does it mean to die anyway? It’s more than a loss of a functioning body, it’s as if we leave our body behind. This change happens before we actually die, in a physical sense, it can happen a few milliseconds before, or it can be years before.”

      Again I felt as if my own torturous death were imminent and I had a chance to stop it if I knew how, but I would never reach such a moment of enlightenment. For to reach that moment meant I would already be dead.

      Report

      26 August: 5:45 p.m.—Shinshin Group is located in their own twelve-story office building near the baseball stadium. I waited for a half-an-hour in the lobby for the art director. When she greeted me, she told me she had only five minutes to spend. “I’m on deadline,” she said. An appropriate term but I kept the thought to myself as our company’s professional standards require. She was dressed in a blue skirt and white blouse. Her demeanor was stern, all business, clearly wanting to get rid of me as soon as possible. We stood in the lobby like sparring partners waiting in the boxing ring for the bell.

      “I’m following up on your claim that Mizuno Ren has passed away,” I told her. [NB—I am reporting the exact dialogue in the event she presses charges.]

      “It’s not a claim; it’s a fact.”

      “Please explain the basis for your claim that it’s a fact.”

      “I have to explain no such thing.”

      I said nothing, waiting to see if she would change her mind and offer something. Most people get very uncomfortable with silence. She wasn’t one of them. “I haven’t found any evidence that would indicate Mizuno is dead. Claiming someone to be dead when he or she isn’t can be prosecuted as a criminal act.”

      She grimaced and ushered me into an empty conference room. We sat at a marble-topped table with brushed aluminum legs in swiveling, leather chairs. An office worker followed us into the conference room carrying tea and coffee service, which I declined. [NB—I did so in order to maintain a distant, professional relationship with the art director.]

      As soon as we were settled, she said, “You can’t bully me. I’m not a person who can be bullied.”

      “I believe both of those statements,” I said, although I wasn’t sure if the two propositions she gave really differed at all.

      “I want to make one thing clear,” she went on, “I’m telling you the truth. I worked with Mizuno Ren on five or six projects and he was always an intelligent and enthusiastic participant. He was never perfunctory with his work as artists can be. Mizuno wanted to know all about the project, who it was intended for, what was the subject matter, who was the book designer, how it was going to be packaged and marketed. It was as if he wanted to know all the details so he could fit them into the art to the best of his ability.

      “He was soft-spoken, articulate and knowledgeable without being a know-it-all. He was always interested in you, not only as a client but as a person. He was quite unusual in that regard, a rare trait. I always found myself looking forward to our meetings.”

      At this point, I wondered to myself if there was some dimension to their relationship other than client and freelancer. But I decided not to inflame her, as her adversarial posturing had begun to soften.

      “Of course,” she said emphatically, “all that wouldn’t matter if his work was inadequate. We will put up with some outrageous personalities to get the highest quality work.” Here she paused and shook her head as if recalling some instances. “Ren’s work was always outstanding,

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