Richard glanced nervously back at the closed door of VIP Room 4. “Why did you mention their contract? How could you even read that?”
“Before my mother had her stroke three years ago, I spent four years in Tokyo on an international trade fellowship,” Maya said, her voice steady as she folded two steamed white towels onto a black lacquer tray. “I passed the JLPT N1 and worked as a junior bilingual compliance analyst in Chiyoda. Reading upside-down corporate kanji isn’t hard when you’ve proofread merger schedules for sixty hours a week.”
Richard stared at her, momentarily caught off guard. “You never put that on your application.”
“People don’t hire overqualified trade analysts to carry trays on night shifts, Richard. And night shifts were the only way I could be home with my mother during the day.” Maya paused, her dark eyes narrowing slightly as she looked back toward Room 4. “But what Mr. Takahashi said about me isn’t the real problem in that room.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ten minutes ago, when I came in to clear the sashimi plates, Mr. Vance was on a call with his wife, and Mr. Takahashi was speaking into his cell phone in Japanese to someone in Tokyo,” Maya said softly. “He laughed and said the American was so desperate to protect his late father’s factory employees in Ohio that he only read the English executive summary.”
Richard frowned, lowering his voice. “Maya, stay out of it. That’s corporate business. It has nothing to do with us.”
“When I stepped up with the water pitcher, the Japanese Schedule B page was lying right beside Mr. Vance’s hand,” Maya continued, as if Richard hadn’t spoken. “The heading at the top of that page wasn’t an employment guarantee. It was a post-acquisition asset liquidation clause.”
At the far end of the bamboo corridor, the cedar door of VIP Room 4 slid open again.
Arthur Vance stepped out alone, slipping his silver reading glasses into his suit pocket. He looked toward the restroom sign first, then spotted Richard and Maya standing beside the service credenza. Instead of walking past them, the fifty-five-year-old manufacturer stopped, his eyes moving from Richard’s tense posture to the tray of hot towels in Maya’s hands.
“Mr. Cole,” Arthur said, walking over with quiet authority. “If Mr. Takahashi asked you to reprimand this young woman or send her home, I want to be very clear—she did nothing wrong. My partner has had two glasses of Yamazaki, and his manners are out of line tonight.”
“Thank you, Mr. Vance,” Richard said quickly, offering a practiced hospitality smile. “Everything is fine. I was just reassigning Maya to the main dining room so your meeting can continue smoothly.”
Arthur didn’t look at Richard. He kept his gaze on Maya’s calm, watchful face. Up close, the lines around Arthur’s eyes looked tired—the look of a man carrying an aging family company on his back and hoping a foreign buyout would save the people who had built it with his father.
“He insulted you in Japanese before he told you to pour the drinks, didn’t he?” Arthur asked softly.
Maya hesitated for half a second, feeling Richard’s warning glance beside her.
“I don’t care about restaurant protocol right now,” Arthur added, his voice dropping low enough that only the three of them could hear over the faint murmur of the main dining room. “My father taught me that how a man treats the person pouring his water tells you everything about how he honors his word. Please. Tell me what he said—and tell me why you looked down at my contract right before he hit that call button.”
Looking at the honest concern in Arthur Vance’s eyes, Maya glanced back toward the closed wooden door of VIP Room 4 and said quietly, “Mr. Vance, what he said about me doesn’t matter—but what’s written on page four of the Japanese schedule in front of your water glass will cost four hundred people their jobs by Christmas.”
Arthur Vance went completely still in the dim wooden corridor outside VIP Room 4, the ambient clinking of crystal from the main dining room fading behind him. He stared at Maya, his hand instinctively touching the breast pocket of his charcoal suit where his reading glasses rested.
For two full seconds, nobody breathed. Richard Cole looked from Maya’s calm, steady face to the closed cedar door of the private room, his fingers tightening on the edge of the service credenza.