“I left him a note,” Heather said. “And I don’t care about Omar. He can’t dictate how we live. I plan to be knocking on your door tomorrow for coffee. And you better answer.”
“Even Mike thinks you should stay away from me,” Michelle reminded her.
“He doesn’t know you.” With that, Heather turned and hurried down the hallway.
Michelle smiled and stayed at the door. She knew Heather would think of something more to say. She was right.
Heather turned around, smiling wickedly, “I really need you to help me. Totally out of food, and you know I can’t reach anything. So, tonight after work. Then we can go to the mall and shop!”
Michelle sighed. She hated shopping at the mall, but Heather was right. Omar couldn’t dictate how they lived and she really didn’t want to cut her best friend out of her life, even for a little while. Besides, Heather really couldn’t reach the top shelves in the grocery store. Not that she wouldn’t get immediate help from the bus-boys who worked at their local store; they were all madly in love with her.
“Okay. But I might be late. I’ll call you from work,” Michelle said.
Heather nodded, waved, and disappeared into her condo.
Michelle rushed back inside, picked up her purse, patted Lucifer a goodbye and hurried to her car in the garage. She didn’t want to be late for her first day back at work. She pressed the button to take the rag-top down and heard the mechanical grinding sound as her car turned into a convertible and she made her way out of the garage.
She needed to feel the sun and wind in her hair to shake out the cobwebs almost as much as she needed to breathe. Michelle looked at her watch and decided she could take the long way to work, along Kalakaua Avenue, so she could see the ocean and smell the salty warm breeze. The sea was bright blue and sparkling in the sun, making her eyes water as she took in the sight once again after her short absence. Tourists were already camped out on their blankets in the sun, which was barely over the horizon, and she could see surfers far out beyond the small rollers, waiting their turn to ride the waves in to shore on their boards. Damn, she thought, her heart lifting at the beautiful sight, I love this place.
Her office was in the Honolulu downtown area, and she turned her car away from the ocean, making her way through increasing traffic to the high-rise building which was the corporate headquarters for Heroshi Hawaii.
When she walked in the door, Tom Mitsuto, her boss and President of Heroshi Hawaii, was standing in the lobby in front of the huge desk, where Susan, the receptionist, sat. Susan was handing him a large stack of yellow post-it notes.
Tom, a small Japanese man, didn’t smile when he saw Michelle. He gave her a small bow, then a handshake, and said “I’m glad you’re back, Michelle.” He handed her the pile of post-it notes. “These belong to your department, I believe.”
Susan waited till their boss walked away, “Christ, am I glad to see you! You wouldn’t believe the complaints in your department. Tom’s been trying to run it himself. I give him the property management notes every day and he divides them up and distributes equal piles to the accounting, maintenance and building departments. I don’t know what they do with them. Probably throw them in the trash.”
“Oh good grief,” Michelle said, laughing and shaking her head, as she read and sifted through the notes. “What a mess.”
“Japan’s a day ahead of us. They’re going crazy, asking me what’s going on. Evidently that property guy, Rod Nakamura, who was here from Japan last month has been gone from corporate headquarters too, and... Oh my God! You were with him?”
Shit, if Susan figured it out everyone would know. Michelle shook her head and put her finger over her lips.
Susan leaned forward, whispering, “He’s so smart, and a real charmer. I won’t say a word if you promise to tell me all.”
“You’re trying to bribe me,” Michelle whispered back, attempting to look stern.
“Of course I am. We’ll have lunch and you’ll tell me everything.”
“It’s a date,” Michelle promised.
Lunch turned out to be a lovely dream. The day went by in a flash and Michelle was still working as the sky got dark. There had been leasing meetings for new tenants, handling maintenance repairs, financial projections for all six buildings, meetings with accounting to approve invoices for expenditures on the buildings, and a meeting with the construction department for space expansions for several of the tenants.
She felt like she’d been trampled by a herd of elephants and knew she was wilting under the pressure. There were so many angry tenants that she hadn’t had time to soothe, but maybe tomorrow would be better, she thought, as she fixed her files and tried to put everything in order in preparation to leave. Her light was the only one left on the whole dark office floor.
The one bright spot in the day had come with a phone call from Rod in Japan.
Michelle saw the incoming ID on her cell and said, “You’re up in the middle of the night?”
“Missing you and can’t sleep.”
Michelle laughed, “Good try. More like the time change has your biological clock upside-down.”
“Well, it sounded romantic.”
The upshot of the conversation was that Rod’s father had contacted his mother after they visited him at his home in the Napa Valley of California while they vacationed together. Now Rod’s mother wanted to meet Michelle. Luckily, Rod’s mother was in Japan. Just the thought of meeting her made Michelle feel panicky.
Michelle had been watchful all day for unnatural events, like the ones she experienced when Omar was on the attack and tried to sabotage her work, but everything seemed normal so far. There were no major disruptions happening in any
