Eight Million Gods Read online

  Nikki’s heart lurched as she forced herself out onto the steel catwalk and then down the rickety ladder. She couldn’t let her fear of heights slow her down. She hit the street and started to run. She didn’t stop running until she was in Japan.

  2

  The OMG Baseball Bat

  She was living in Japan. Osaka, Japan, to be exact. Two months and it still startled her in a way she found weirdly uncomfortable. She had moved dozens of times before in the States, from suburban mental hospitals, to a dormitory at a private high school in the middle of nowhere, to walk-up apartments in gritty inner-city neighborhoods. Never before had she constantly felt like she was being hit in the head with a baseball bat labeled “OMG.”

  Some days it seemed like everything triggered the feeling. Waking up lying on a futon on the floor. Whack! Going pee at a public restroom by squatting over a ceramic trough. Whack! Wandering up and down the levels of a bookstore with thousands of interesting-looking books without being able to read a single word. Whack! Walking through an entire shopping district, surrounded by people, and unable to guess or even ask where to buy a basic cooking knife. Whack! One minute she would be steaming along, enjoying the adventure of living on her own, and then the “OMG” baseball bat of cultural shock would catch her smack between the eyes.

  By lunchtime, she was slightly punch-drunk by the number of hits she’d taken. The only reason she didn’t suggest meeting at KFC or McDonald’s was somehow the combination of familiar and uniquely Japanese that the two food chains represented would have been more unsettling than the little hole-in-the-wall traditional okonomiyaki shop. At least the act of taking off her sandals in the restaurant’s foyer, putting them in one of the many cubbyholes, bowing to the waitress, and stepping down into the sitting area around a grill-topped table was now comfortingly familiar despite being totally foreign.

  Nikki waved off the menu that the waitress was trying to offer her. “Sumimasen,” Nikki tried to remember the Japanese word for “menu.” “English—English . . .”

  “Ah!” The waitress smiled as she realized what Nikki was trying for. “English menu. Hai! One minute.”

  The waitress disappeared into the impossibly small kitchen hidden behind a half-wall where a cook was already standing.

  Her best friend, Miriam Frydman, laughed in greeting. “One of those kinds of days?”

  “God, yes.” Nikki tossed her backpack onto the seat beside her. “There are days I could just kill my mother. All this would be easier if I’d been able to stick to our plan and learn Japanese.”

  Nikki had met Miriam the only time she attended “normal” high school. Not that you could really call Foxcroft “normal” as it was an expensive private boarding school. Miriam always had a fascination for all things Japanese. Nikki just wanted to have half the planet between her and her mother. She and Miriam had come up with the detailed plan that would have had both of them fluent in Japanese, employed by the same company, and sharing an apartment together. Her mother, though, had yanked Nikki out of school in her senior year and ruined every later attempt to keep to the plan.

  Miriam tilted her head and squinted in deep thought. Her bright pink-dyed hair, gathered into quirky pigtails, and her high-school outfit were both part of her own battle with all things Japanese. She’d confessed that she had come to the conclusion that as a gaijin—an “outsider”—she would never fully fit in, so she had decided to stand out. Nikki would never have the courage to dye her hair or wear anything as short as Miriam’s miniskirt, but Miriam was fearless. “Nah, I think you’d still be reeling even if you’d learned Japanese first. I felt the same way for the first six months. Really? The toilets alone break all language barriers when it comes to cultural shock.” She slid her glass slightly closer to Nikki’s side. “A stiff drink does help.”

  Nikki snorted. “I’m actually tempted. Much as a drug addiction scares the willies out of me, knowing that something like valium would make it—make it seem better—for a while . . .”

  Miriam dragged the glass back to her side of the table. “My bad. Sorry.”

  The waitress came back with a sketchily translated menu and slightly better phrased “What do you want?”

  They picked their okonomiyaki toppings, Nikki pointing to her selection on the English menu and Miriam ordering from the Japanese one.

  Nikki tentatively added her drink order. “Mazu?”

  The word got a muffled giggle from Miriam and a blank stare from the waitress.

  From behind the hand covering her mouth, Miriam murmured, “Water is mizu.”

  Nikki winced, wondering what she had actually said to the waitress. Hopefully nothing obscene. “Mizu kudasai.”

  The waitress smiled. “Ah, yes, water!”

  “Mizu. Mizu.” Nikki repeated softly after the waitress left. Miriam might be right and being fluent might not stop the cultural shock, but she was tired of being clueless of what was being said around her. Her whole life had been a series of being completely helpless and at her mother’s mercy or heavily dependent on the kindness of friends. “The plan” was for them to live together, but Miriam was locked into a lease for another four months at a place where she couldn’t have a roommate. For the first time, Nikki was living alone, buying her own clothes, and cooking her own food. She loved being independent, but constantly being lost and confused the moment she ventured out of her apartment was frustrating the hell out of her.

  The waitress returned with their drinks and two mixing bowls with the ingredients for the okonomiyaki. They watched as the waitress mixed up the batter and poured it onto the hot grill. She used a large steel spatula to round the batter into a thick pancake.

  Why okonomiyaki was considered Japanese “pizza” still mystified Nikki; it was shredded cabbage mixed with flour and topped with barbeque sauce and mayonnaise. The only similarity was that it was circular and came with countless toppings. Personally she thought of them as very weird pancakes. She had discovered early on that the shrimp came with their heads still attached and she couldn’t quite deal with having her dinner stare at her with accusing eyes. The other thing that slightly creeped her out was the fact that the shaved bonito on top wriggled as if still alive.

  Once the waitress had both “pizzas” in place, she motioned that they weren’t to fiddle with the dough with the little spatulas that were in lieu of forks and spoons. “Ah—cook—don’t touch.”

  The shoji-style front door slid open, triggering a call of “Irasshaimase” from the two employees. The new customer was one of the impossibly slender salarymen, looking like he would only weigh over hundred pounds if you dipped him and his two-piece suit in one of Osaka’s many waterways. It still freaked Nikki out that, at five foot three, she could look down at a goodly number of the Japanese men, the newest customer included.

  He took off his shoes and tucked them into a cubbyhole next to her sandals as the waitress hurried across the twenty feet between the kitchen and the foyer to greet him properly. Waitress bowed, salaryman bowed back. It was like watching anime come to life; a good, happy moment that Nikki desperately needed at this point.

  The salaryman was installed in the booth beside theirs and the grill-top of his table fired up to get ready for cooking.

  “So?” Miriam nudged at Nikki with her socking clad foot. “Who’s dead?”

  “Hmm?” Nikki studied the salaryman in the guise of cleaning her hands with the wet wipe. He was thin and delicate like a sparrow. She couldn’t tell how old he was; he was so tiny he seemed like he should be only thirteen, but most likely he was a college graduate and in his twenties. Certainly, he made many manga storylines about boys passing as girls more believable.

  Miriam nudged her hard, forcing Nikki to give up her study of the salaryman. “You’re wearing your shirt of mourning. You only wear that after you kill someone. Who’s dead?”

  Nikki tented out her Goth Lolita shirt. It was the most beautiful thing she ever owned, all black silk with long sleeves, and lace eve
rywhere. She’d bought it to cheer herself up after the Brit vanished out of the novel. Did she really only wear it after a murder? “I blogged it. Didn’t you read it?”

  Miriam covered her mouth as she yawned. “I had an nomikai Friday night. God, only the Japanese would require employees get hammered together on a regular basis. I spent most of yesterday in zombie mode. I did see your blog on doing your laundry but nothing on you killing someone off.”

  “I posted the murder later.”

  “Who did you kill?”

  “The expatriate, George Wilson,” Nikki told her glumly. “The idiot pervert.”

  Miriam laughed. “What does this make? Three love interests you’ve killed before even getting to the sex? You have to stop killing people.”

  “I’ve tried! I just can’t stop myself. One minute George is drinking sake in his Umeda apartment, getting ready to go out, and the next he’s taking an eight-hundred-dollar Blendtec blender to the guts.”

  “A blender?”

  “Yeah, ever notice how sharp the blades are on a blender? I broke the glass container against George’s head and set the blender on puree.” Nikki made the sound of the blades spinning and twirled her index finger in a tight circle. “Blood all over the white countertop.”

  “Cool. I approve.”

  Nikki laughed. “I thought you would. The color contrast was stunning.”

  “Where did he get the blender?” Miriam pointed out the one thing that worried Nikki about the murder.

  “I think he brought it from the United States. Does it really matter? It’s not like it’s a sword or firearm.” It still geeked her out that the Japanese had more laws controlling swords than guns.

  The waitress returned to flip over their pancakes. They were nice and golden on the cooked side. As Miriam asked the waitress something in Japanese, Nikki realized that the office worker was staring at her in utter horror.

  Oops.

  It was something she kept forgetting; since English was taught in Japanese schools from first grade up, Japanese people normally understood a lot more English than she understood Japanese. She played back their conversation and winced. How was she going to explain?

  “I didn’t really kill anyone. I’m a writer.” Was that what the Japanese called authors? “I write books. Novels? Miriam, help.”

  Miriam laughed and said something that made the man bolt from the booth, grab his shoes, and run still in his stocking feet out of the store.

  “What did you say?” Nikki cried.

  “I told him you don’t kill nice little uke like him, only big bad seme.”

  “Miriam! I don’t kill people—real people.”

  The waitress returned with the salaryman’s drink order and eyed the empty booth with confusion.

  “Ix-nay on the urder-may,” Nikki said. “I don’t want a burned okonomiyaki.”

  “You know, you could just delete the scene. George had real promise as a hero. Rich. Handsome. Alive.”

  “No, I couldn’t,” Nikki grumbled. “You know that. George is now dead to my hypergraphia. When characters are alive, everything just flows. All I have to do is occasionally nudge things into place with a little research on the details. Once they’re dead, it’s blank-page time. I don’t have time to be staring at blank pages. Besides, he was turning out to be a completely sick bastard.”

  It had been the sale of her first novel that allowed her to continue on with their plan despite the fact she couldn’t speak the language, hadn’t gone to college, and had no work experience. Her advance on royalties arrived two days before her mother. It had gotten her to Japan and into an apartment, paid for a laptop and all the things she needed day-to-day, like clothes, with enough left over for her to survive for over a year. Even better, her publishers asked her to write a second novel. Unfortunately, they wanted the book within a year’s time. She needed to deliver it on time because she would run out of money shortly after her deadline. It was a race to see if she could finish writing before her funds ran out.

  The problem was that the novel had to meet certain standards. Because her first book was being marketed as a romantic thriller, she needed a heroine and a hero who meet, fall in love, and survive to the end. So far, all her possible romantic leads had been killed—except the one that mysteriously vanished in mid-sentence. But she suspected that he was dead, too.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll work through it,” Miriam said. “Do what you do best, and I’ll fill in any missing pieces. Team Banzai go!”

  Which was why Miriam was her best friend. She had always protected Nikki and gave her hope when life went to hell.

  “Thanks,” Nikki said.

  “Okay, so we need a new romantic hero. A stud muffin for your little dormouse artist.”

  “She’s not a dormouse, she’s just emotionally scarred. George would have completely freaked her out. Him and his school girls in bondage fetish.”

  The shoji door slid open again and two more salarymen in dark suits ducked into the shop. These two were tall and sturdy looking.

  “Irasshaimase,” the waitress and the cook called, welcoming the new customers.

  The men scanned the shop, said something to each other as they noticed Miriam with her pink ponytails, and then focused on Nikki. There was something decidedly unfriendly about their faces.

  One slipped off his shoes and headed for them like a very polite avenging angel.

  “Miriam.” Nikki indicated the man.

  “Tanaka desu.” He introduced himself as Mr. Tanaka. Make that Detective Tanaka as he produced a police badge and flashed it. He continued talking.

  “What’s he saying?” Nikki turned to Miriam for a translation.

  “Oh my God, Nikki,” Miriam gasped. “He’s arresting you for murder.”

  3

  In the Kitchen,

  With a Blender

  Nikki liked pens. She took some comfort knowing that most writers did. Only her obsession for ink-based writing instruments was on the same level as a wino’s fixation on wine. The only things she had ever stolen in her life were pens, usually cheap ones off peoples’ desks. The only new pen had been a six-hundred-dollar Cartier Diabolo fountain pen with an 18K-gold nib. (One couldn’t really blame her; her mother had dragged her down Rodeo Drive in some vain attempt to make Nikki presentable during an election campaign and triggered a writing fit in Neiman Marcus. She had locked herself in a bathroom stall and written out a vivisection on a fistful of paper towels.)

  What “worked” best for her hypergraphia were cheap retractable ballpoint pens supplied by oxygen companies and such to hospital staff to promote their products. It was her special brew in a brown paper bag. She could hold the compulsion off sometimes by just gripping one tight and clicking it repeatedly.

  Since arriving in Osaka, she’d fallen in love with Zebra Surari emulsion ink pens with 0.5mm points in five colors. She bought them like some people bought cigarettes. She had a dozen in her backpack, mostly black, her favorite weapon, but at least one of the other four colors. She paired them with the B6-sized Campus notebook sold at FamilyMart. Compared to what she bought in the United States, the slim notebooks were stunningly cheap, yet superior in paper quality. God, the Japanese understood writing by hand.

  Handcuffed in the back of the tiny police squad car, she really wished she could think of anything except pens. And how much she needed one in her hand. With paper. And both were within her backpack beside her.

  Maybe if she used her teeth . . .

  Then again, perhaps thinking about pens was better than thinking about the mess she was in. This wasn’t the United States. The police could and would hold a suspect as long as they wanted. There was one case where they arrested a man and held him for questioning for three days. He was suspected of nothing more than groping women on the train. When his parents reported him missing to the very police station that was holding him, they weren’t told that he was just down the hall. In the end, the police realized that they had the wrong man and r
eleased him without apology despite media outcry.

  And they suspected her of murder!

  She bit down on a whimper as the need to write grew a little more desperate. She closed her eyes, took deep cleansing breaths, and tried to focus only on her happy place. Pristine white sand. Water so blue that it defied description.

  The car pulled to a stop and they were at the Osaka Prefectural Police Headquarters next to the sprawling gardens of the Osaka Castle.

  God, she would kill for a pen.

  The police department looked much like its American counterpart—desks crowded with computers, office supplies, and paper files threatening to overrun everything. Luckily they stopped her by a desk with pens in a coffee mug. She eased around so the cup was behind her and in reach of her handcuffed hands.

  “Watashi no nihongo wa heta desu,” she said while running her fingers blindly over the pens. It meant—hopefully—that her Japanese was bad. “Wakarimasen.” Which meant “I don’t understand.” She found a retractable pen. She gripped it tightly, and carefully, silently, clicked it. She took a deep breath and relaxed as she breathed it out. “Please. Does anyone speak English?”

  The policemen were talking to each other, ignoring her. She silently clicked the pen a few more times, trying to decide what to do. If this were the American police, she would ask for a lawyer and refuse to talk to the police until someone showed up, probably from the public defender’s office. All the anecdotal evidence, though, seemed to suggest that Japanese citizens didn’t automatically have the right to an attorney. If she asked for someone from the American consulate, would they call the embassy for her? Did she want someone?

  No. And definitely not. She clicked the pen again.

  Detective Tanaka took her by the arm and led her to an interrogation room. At least that’s what it looked like: a tiny room with just a steel table and four chairs. She didn’t wait for him to point at one of the chairs. She slid in one without being told.