“Really?” I say, a little too quickly. Something stabs at me, a burst of pure longing. “What’s she like? I mean, in real life.”
“Oh no,” he says, raising a finger. A bit of that mischief has crept back into his eyes, that infuriating smugness on full display. Like he’s just so amused by everything. “You are not getting any more information out of me until you tell me what this is actually about.”
Auntie Och chooses this moment to slam two steaming plates of katsu down in front of us. Mine is a fairly traditional pork cutlet, but Hank’s gone for the experimental side of the menu: cheese katsu. Kind of like a big mozzarella stick. My eyes go instinctively to the food, the freshly fried panko bread crumbs glistening in the light. Mmm.
“Here. Eat,” Auntie Och says, waving a hand and giving Hank a suspicious look. I told her he was a “friend from school” and that we were working on an extra credit summer project together. Auntie Och’s eyesight is just bad enough, I hope she won’t recognize him from all of Rory’s Dance! Off! viewing.
“Arigato,” Hank says, with a perfect accent. Rolled r and everything. Show-off.
“Ah, good boy, speak Japanese,” Auntie Och says, her suspicious gaze turning to something more curious. “You not Japanese, though, ne?” Her eyes narrow as she scrutinizes him. “Filipino?”
“Filipino-Chinese mix,” he says, grinning at her.
“Mmm, a mutt like Rika,” Auntie Och says. It is unclear from her tone whether this is a good thing or not. Then she sweeps away from the table with no other pleasantries.
“This looks great,” Hank says, inhaling the fragrant, greasy steam wafting off the katsu. “Good god. I haven’t had carbs in months.” He glances around surreptitiously—like, what, he’s expecting paparazzi at Katsu That? Then he very carefully picks up a piece of katsu with his chopsticks, the cheese oozing out of its panko shell as he pops it into his mouth. “So,” he continues, gnawing on his katsu. I try not to stare at the little bit of cheese that gets stuck to the corner of his mouth—or the striking fullness of his lips, the way the lower one is just a little bit fuller than the other. Even his imperfections are interesting to look at.
Not that I’m interested. In anything.
“You were saying?” Hank says, making a “go on” kind of gesture with his chopsticks.
“Right.” I assess him, trying to block out the imperfect perfection of his features and get a read on his gullibility. What lie can I tell that will get him to help me? What lie would the nure-onna tell? What lie will be believable?
Then I realize: the freaking truth isn’t believable. So I might as well go with that.
“Hank—”
“Henry.”
I blink. “What?”
“Henry. Is my actual name. When I was starting out, my reps thought Hank sounded more . . .” He gestures vaguely with his chopsticks.
“Henry,” I say. I don’t know why, but this tiny change seems to focus him. Like he just got a little bit clearer before my eyes or someone removed the Instagram filter or something. “I think Grace Kimura is my mother,” I continue. “Like, I think she had me as a teenager and then left me with her sister and it was all a big secret and . . . well, I don’t know the rest. Because of the big-secret part. That’s why I need to find her.”
I tell him about yesterday’s discoveries in a garbled burst, my katsu getting cold in front of me as I recap what happened, the evidence Rory found in Auntie Och’s weed drawer. Everything we think we know—which isn’t much. I show him the photos of Auntie Suzy and Grace, of Grace and me when I was a baby. And some more recent pictures on my phone of Auntie Suzy, to really sell it.
“See,” I say, jabbing an index finger at a current photo of Auntie Suzy that I’ve positioned next to the picture I stole from Suehiro. “This is obviously the same person. So—”
“You don’t need to show me all this stuff—I believe you,” he says, waving a hand.
I blink at him again. “You do?”
He flashes me that easy grin. “Like I said, you’re a terrible liar. These sound like the first true words you’ve said to me since we met.”
I bristle. “That is not true—”
“So you really are the Citizens Patrol of Little Tokyo?” His grin widens. Ugh, so very annoying. “I do have one question, though.” He rests his elbows on the table and leans forward, meeting my eyes. “How has the truth of Grace’s identity remained a secret for this long? Has no one else in Little Tokyo recognized her? Because she still looks”—he taps the photo of young Grace—“so her.”
I lean back in my seat, considering. “That’s part of this whole mystery, I guess. But to be honest—Little Tokyo has a lot of secrets. And people keeping each other’s secrets. Grace getting pregnant when she did was probably seen as shameful. If she was, like, banished or something, and then went on to become one of the most successful and beloved Japanese American celebrities on the planet . . .”
“Then no one would want to admit they’d banished her in the first place,” Hank—er, Henry—says, pointing at me with his chopsticks. “Yeah, I gotcha—shame, duty, family, community secrets. I’m familiar with all of these things thanks to growing up in not one but two Asian cultures. Do you think everybody’s just pretending they don’t recognize her?”
“Maybe,” I say. “But the more pressing issue at the moment is that it seems like Grace has dropped off the face of the earth. And I really need to find her. I know you guys did that movie together, so . . . have you talked to her? Since yesterday?”
Henry takes his
