Girl in a Box Read Free

kind of pack-out many times, and yours should be a snap. All you’ve got are clothes and books, correct?”
    â€œAnd music. And cooking stuff, and…”
    â€œNo problem,” Michael said, pulling a thick roll of tape from his jacket. “As we pack, I’ll tell you everything.”

2
    It was all about a store—a Japanese department store, Mitsutan. This was the place where I’d shopped with my Japanese relatives for as long as I could remember, mostly at its Yokohama branch, but for special occasions, at its huge flagship location on Ginza-dori, Tokyo’s historically high-class shopping district. At the Ginza store, my Japanese grandmother had bought me an expensive kimono to celebrate my turning three and seven years old, landmarks in a girl’s life. Eighteen years later, when I’d returned to Japan to teach, I was stunned to discover that the clothes at Mitsutan—and nearly every other department store and boutique in Japan—fit me as if they’d been custom-made.
    At first I’d gone a little crazy buying Agnes B skirts and Lucky jeans. Within weeks, though, I figured out that an English teacher’s salary couldn’t stretch to cover the cost of these wonderful clothes. I gave up shopping for clothes at Mitsutan and firmly adjusted myself to wearing the designer hand-me-downs that my mother mailed in lavender-scented boxes from San Francisco.
    â€œThe Treasury Department has received some complaints,” Michael said, jolting me from fashion nostalgia. “Treasury thinks—given the current state of Japanese retail sales—that Mitsutan’s profits, especially those from the Ginza store, fly in the face of all logic.”
    I put down the stack of towels I’d been about to dump into a box. “Come on, doesn’t our government understand that most Japanese companies fudge their profit statements? There’s an art to writing those financial reports to please the stockholders and save face with their competitors. Of course they’re going to look like they’re doing better than the reality.”
    â€œThere’s a great difference between juggling numbers on paper to protect an image and actually profiting because of illegal activity.” As Michael spoke, his long fingers stretched packing tape across the top of the fourth box of my possessions.
    â€œSo what has Mitsutan done that’s illegal?” I nestled towels around my trusty Panasonic boom box, another relic of my youth. “Sell Anna Sui at too steep a discount?”
    â€œI don’t know what Anaswee means,” Michael said, “but to answer the former question, our bosses have a special interest in the store.”
    â€œDo you mean there’s some perceived threat?”
    â€œLet’s hope it’s actually nothing,” Michael said. “It’ll be easier all around, if it’s nothing. But there’s been this—concern—raised, and I actually think it’s a compliment to our little agency that we’re given the chance to handle it.”
    â€œBut I’m not knowledgeable about modern retail. Antiques are my thing.” The previous job Michael had assigned me had tied into American military efforts to recover an antiquity stolen from a museum in Iraq. It had been a difficult job that called not only on my training in art history but on skills I had never realized I had. The job had been one of the most meaningful experiences of my life, though it had also caused me heartbreak.
    Michael sat back on his heels and looked at me. “I know that you have both the guts and talent to handle this thing. Not just anybody can do the job; the last person who attempted it was killed.”
    â€œWhat?” I exclaimed.
    â€œIt was a Caucasian male agent who went over, undercover.”
    â€œHow was he killed?”
    â€œThe official story was drowning. The reality was that he was beaten to death, and his