I finished washing quickly, left my toiletries and the second towel in front of the spigot to mark it as being in use, and made it to the mineral baths ahead of Ozawa. I needed him to use the outer of the two, so I eased into it now. If someone else were to use the other in short order, I’d still be able to vacate this one so Ozawa could get in. And if, as he approached, the other one were empty, I would switch. Odd behavior, certainly, but I doubted he would say anything about it. He’d just wonder absently why someone would do something like that, and avail himself of the open bath.
It turned out to be a good plan. A minute after I’d entered the tub, an old-timer eased himself into the one next to me. “Hot enough for you?” he said, turning to me and smiling with an almost comically perfect set of dentures. I nodded bruskly and turned away. I didn’t care if he concluded I was rude; I just didn’t want to interact with anyone more than I had to, or to do anything else that would make me at all memorable.
But he didn’t take the hint. “You from around here?” he said, sliding down lower until the water was at his chin.
“No, not really.” I used an Osaka accent, thinking if anyone did describe me, it would be better if they described the wrong thing. Ozawa was done soaping up; now he was rinsing himself with the bucket he had brought.
“Sure, I can tell you’re not. Kansai, is it?”
Kansai is western Honshu, the main island of Japan, where Osaka is located. I nodded. Ozawa stood and stretched.
“So? What brings you here?”
“The waters,” I said, thinking of Casablanca.
He laughed, and I wondered if he had caught the reference. “I mean, what brings you to Tokyo?”
Ozawa glanced over at us, then headed to the rotenburo, the outdoor tub. Fuck.
Had he been planning to use the mineral baths, but then changed his mind when he saw they were occupied? Would he skip them entirely tonight? Damn it, I’d been so close, and now I wasn’t sure.
“What?” I said to the old man, realizing he had said something but not having processed what.
“I said, what do you do in Tokyo?”
“Ah. I work for Matsushita.” This was what Panasonic was called back then.
“You don’t say! I worked at Matsushita. I’m retired now, but my son-in-law is there. What do you do?”
Jesus, I thought, feeling I was losing control of the situation, what are the fucking chances of this?
“Uh, air-conditioning.” And if you tell me your son-in-law is in air-conditioning, too, I’m going to drop that curling iron in your tub.
Instead, he said, “I was in lighting. So is my son-in-law.”
“Yeah? That’s great.”
“Well, it’s a living. Long hours, though. No time for anything but work. He’s gained twenty pounds since he started there. Not like you.”
“What do you mean?”
“You look like an athlete. Lucky to have time to exercise.”
Enough. “Whew,” I said, pulling myself out. “That’s as much as I can take. Good talking with you.”
He laughed. “Easier at my age. Less to lose.”
I glanced at the towel as I got out. Still there, just a rolled-up towel someone had placed at the foot of the storage room door.
I dunked myself in the plunge pool and waited. The old man got out and went to one of the spigots to rinse himself. Both mineral baths were empty. I thought about repeating what I had done before, but I was afraid of a similar outcome. I decided this time to just wait.
After a few minutes, Ozawa came back inside. He glanced over at the mineral baths, and seeing them empty, started to head over. I got out of the tub and realized I had overestimated how long it would take him to reach the baths — he was going to beat me there, and he had walked past the outer tub and was about to get in the inner one. Shit.
“Uh, listen,” I said, reaching him just in time. “It’s none of my business, but I don’t think you want to use this one. I couldn’t help notice…the old guy who just came out, he seemed to have had a little accident on the way, if you know what I mean. I don’t want to make a big deal of it or embarrass him. I’ll tell the mama-san so she can take care of it discreetly.”
Ozawa’s eyes widened and he glanced at the tub, perhaps to check whether the accident in question had been of the shoben or daiben variety — in English, number one or number two. There was nothing to see, but still, who would want to soak in urine?
He thanked me and got into the outer tub. My heart was pounding. I glanced around. No one was paying either of us any attention at all. Ozawa eased back against the wall, sliding all the way down into the steaming water.
I sat in front of the spigot I had been using earlier, and inspiration suddenly took hold of me. I leaned over and grabbed the towel with the iron wrapped inside it, letting a sufficient length of cord pay out as I straightened on the stool. Then I turned toward Ozawa and, holding the rolled-up towel at the edge of the bath and glancing into the water, said, “Oh my, it looks like he had an accident in this one, too. I think that’s a turd behind you.”
He sat up abruptly and looked over his shoulder. “What?”
Come on, come on…“No, not there. The other side. Behind you.”
He looked the other way, and then, seeing nothing, scooted forward and grabbed the faucet to pull himself out. The instant his fingers curled around the metal, I released the rolled-up iron into the water just behind him.
For an instant, it seemed nothing had happened. Ozawa wasn’t moving, wasn’t reacting at all, and I wondered whether something had gone wrong. But then I saw he was shaking slightly, almost vibrating, his hand frozen fast to the metal faucet. His mouth was contorted into an odd rictus of effort, and a barely perceptible half groan, half squeal was issuing from between his twitching lips. If he’d been sitting on a toilet instead of reclining in a tub, he would have looked like nothing more than a man straining to achieve a difficult bowel movement.
I watched in horrified fascination. He seemed to be looking straight ahead, but I sensed he could no longer see. I glanced around. No one was looking. I didn’t know if he’d received a lethal jolt, but the longer I waited, the greater the risk of discovery. I grabbed the cord, pulled the plug out of the socket, and hauled the iron out of the water.
Instantly Ozawa’s body relaxed. His hand drifted from the faucet, his lips parted, and a long, sibilant sigh escaped from his mouth. His eyes rolled upward, and he eased back into the water like a man lying down to sleep. His shoulders went under, then the back of his head, and then, his eyes now trained in the direction of the ceiling, his face.
I squeezed the excess water out of the towel, and used the bottle of body soap I had brought to shove the protruding end of the extension cord back under the door. If anyone looked inside the storage room, it would still be odd to find the cord plugged in, but not as odd as finding it plugged in and jammed under the door. Either way, I doubted the proprietors would go out of their way in sharing any suspicions they might have. Confirmation of an electrocution would be bad for business, and knowing this would help them decide that any suspicions were far-fetched and not worth sharing.
I heard someone say, “Daijōbu?” Is he all right? I glanced over. One of the men in the main tub was standing and pointing at Ozawa. But his question was to the people around him, not to me specifically. I wrapped the second towel around my toiletries and the wet towel with the iron inside it and stood, looking around as though unsure of what the man was talking about. Another man hauled himself dripping and streaming from the main bath and started heading over, his focus on Ozawa. I took a step back as though uncertain and wanting to give him room. Another man ran forward from one of the spigots.