Ultimately, however, I deleted that and sent her my usual, “Good luck at work. I’m doing fine. Heading to bed now.” My mother wasn’t really the person to be texting about every trivial detail of my day, anyway.
After that, I looked up the name of the jewelry shop from the business card. Apparently étranger meant “stranger” in French. The shop had a website, but it was only available in English and Chinese, so I didn’t get very far there. They didn’t sell anything online, either. It must’ve been a physical location. Regardless, it was definitely a real jewelry shop.
Maybe the whole incident was a blessing in disguise, though.
I opened the fridge. I’d been skimping on cooking lately, so there was nothing but pickles and condiments in it. And one other thing in my unused freezer—a small black box. It had been ages since I’d even taken it out.
Inside the cloth-covered box was a platinum ring with a tiny pink jewel in the middle.
I patted the muzzle of the Mitsukoshi Ginza lion statue for the first time. It was nice and smooth. An unfamiliar world lay before me as I emerged from the Ginza subway station: Chuo City, the second-smallest of Tokyo’s twenty-three wards, after Taito Ward. It had a different atmosphere than Shinjuku, with its variety of businesses, and had the polar opposite of Shibuya and Harajuku’s lively, youthful vibes. All the buildings were around the same size, with each storefront perfectly aligned, like an expensive bento box. It was almost like the city was an intricate diorama built to display beautiful buildings and advertising that humans were merely allowed to borrow. Though a few things had seemingly slipped through the cracks, like the retro clocktower and bronze statues.
I waited on the second floor of a chain coffee shop near Mitsukoshi. Right on time, the man whose face I would never forget in a million years, even though I’d only met him once, appeared with a brand-new black suitcase in tow. With each table he passed, the customers turned their heads, one after the other—like toppling dominos—to get a look at beauty incarnate. What was this, a zoo?
Richard greeted me with a casual hello and a raised hand. He was wearing a dark blue suit and a button-down shirt. He’d immediately agreed to meet me when I called, saying that it was pointless to discuss an item without being able to look at it. Being a student, my schedule was pretty flexible, so I left the location to him. That was how I ended up in the middle of Ginza.
And so, the man who looked like he could be a walking billboard for a high-class menswear line sat down in front of me. I, on the other hand, was wearing a pair of khakis and a cardigan.
“Thank you again for the help the other day. I hope you’ve been well.”
“I have, thanks. Man, you really are good at Japanese.”
“Language is an important tool of my trade, after all.”
Richard’s tray only had sweets and water on it. It was a little unusual, given drinks were definitely cheaper than the food here. I hadn’t even touched my coffee yet, but I sat up straight and got right to it.
“I brought the ring. I want you to grade it for me.”
I took the small black box out of my backpack, popped the lid open, and showed him the ring with the pink stone in the middle. It was no bigger than the plastic head of a sewing pin, but it glimmered as the light reflected off its facets. It was roughly the same dimensions in terms of length and width—a brilliant, round stone. The silvery metal of the ring was unadorned, with no trace of engraving. It was the singular piece of jewelry I owned.
“It appears to be a pink sapphire.”
“Huh. I did try researching what it might be online, but I was never sure.”
“I see,” Richard said with a nod.
I continued, “It’s a keepsake from my grandmother on my mother’s side. She passed away when I was in high school… She was always convinced it was a fake.”
The jeweler looked a bit surprised. I kept going.
“I mean, it’s weird, right? But my family doesn’t own any other precious jewelry, so neither my mother or I had any idea what to do with it. I couldn’t stand the idea of leaving it unresolved forever, so I wanted to take it to an expert to have it appraised.”
“For stones other than diamonds, we don’t call it ‘grading’ but ‘identifying.’ What you’re looking for is an identification report, unless you were interested in more than the question of the stone’s authenticity.”
“Can you tell if it’s a fake just from looking at it?”
“To a degree,” he nodded. He really was a professional. I guess I shouldn’t have expected anything less. “That said, fakes have gotten quite convincing as of late, so I can’t be one hundred percent confident of my assessment. I would prefer to give it a more thorough examination to be sure.”
When I asked if he’d hold on to it to do just that, Richard’s expression soured for a moment.
“…No?”
“Normally, people aren’t so quick to entrust something so valuable to a total stranger.”
“But we’re not total strangers.”
“Perhaps ‘total’ was a bit of an overstatement. I could be a much wickeder person than those drunks in Yoyogi Park, for all you know. What if I were accepting the ring under false pretenses to defraud you? You would never see your precious heirloom again.”