Girl in a Box by Sujata Massey

could be me, because I was new and maybe also because of what I’d said about the Treasury Department, Supermart, and Warren Kravitz. I was far too vocal—and obviously skeptical—to be a decent spy; that was the problem. Michael had talked about my doing other work for OCI after this job was done, but I now thought this first assignment might be my only one. I’d do my best, but it would be a single engagement.
    I thought about the situation long into the night. In the wee hours I gave up on getting any rest, turned on my bedside light, and began to rough out the final draft of the answers that I had been carefully constructing for the Japanese employment application.
    The best thing about the application was that it was a standard national form available at any Japanese convenience store; an agent in Tokyo had picked one up and mailed it to Michael. After I’d filled it out and glued my photo to the correct spot, Michael would mail it back to the agent, who in turn would mail it to Mitsutan’s personnel department. There would be a Japanese stamp and postmark on the envelope, and a phone number with the most common Tokyo cell phone area code, 090, as its prefix. The number matched my new Au brand cell phone, sent over courtesy of the same agent; it was a phone I hadn’t used yet and wasn’t looking forward to using, given that all the commands in the menu were in Japanese.
    I still wasn’t comfortable with kanji, I thought as I painstakingly fumbled my way across my scratch pad, searching for the right words to state my intent regarding employment. I have thoroughly enjoyed my experience as the founder and sole proprietor of a personal shopping business devoted to high-end antique textiles and furniture. After that business became too large for me to serve private customers individually, I grew my business into a wholesale operation to overseas retail clients in California and Washington, D.C.
    I stopped myself. There was no verb in Japanese that would correspond to “grew” in business English. I had the sense that using the verb this way might be incorrect in ordinary English too. I scratched out “grew” and substituted “expanded.” Then I chewed on my pencil and worried about whether I should describe myself as the proprietor of a business. Yes, I was a one-woman operation, but would that sound pathetic to a Japanese department store? Would they think I worked alone because nobody would hire me, which was absolutely true?
    I had to stress who my clients were and raise my own prestige by association. The restaurant I’d decorated in D.C. had been short-lived, but the chef who worked there was famous in Japan, so I would drop his name. Also, they probably had heard of Gump’s, an elegant, California-based department store and mail-order business, which had sold vintage textiles that I’d supplied to them. I would leave out mentioning all the various museum consulting jobs that I’d done; they were irrelevant.
    I worked on the employment intention statement, and another statement about why I wanted to work at Mitsutan in particular. Before long, it was eight o’clock in the morning, yet I was still in my pajamas. I was going to be late for work, the first time ever.
    I dressed quickly, not even bothering to shower, and raced the eight blocks to the office. There I showed my identification card to a new, surly-looking man who sat outside our office, and slipped inside with the key Michael had left him, in a sealed envelope.
    Michael was obviously at his appointment in Langley, so I’d have to do the office security check myself. Fortunately, we’d practiced it a few times.
    After I’d opened the door and deactivated the alarm, I ran my eyes around the room, looking for any signs of a new invasion. There was something different about Michael’s desk: a rearrangement. I studied it for a minute and realized that a silver-framed