by Sandi Tan
Arik reached for Rosemary’s hand to show Mr. Z he’d be a good sport about it and make up for disappointing him. She didn’t resist and let his clammy paw lie atop hers. A shiver of pleasure shot through her as he gently squeezed her hand, lightly running his thumb across her palm.
“That’s a good start,” Mr. Z nodded approvingly. “Free your mind and the rest will follow. Before you know it you’ll be rimming her.”
“Excuse me?” Arik dropped Rosemary’s hand.
“Oh, nothing. Just a mismanaged joke. My bad judgment. I apologize.” Mr. Z pointed at their hands. “Continue. Continue.”
As they locked up the Safe Room and prepared to leave, Mr. Z nursed a secret smile the entire time. His jangling keys echoed as he walked the kids through the empty Arts building.
“Do you guys know the meaning of the term terroir?” he asked.
“You mean, like, terror?” Arik said, as if it were a trick question.
“No, terroir. It’s French. It means territory or terrain, and it pertains to grapes that go into making wine. The idea is that grapes grown in one type of soil, in one location, receiving a certain amount of rain and sun, taste different than grapes of the same species that are grown in different soil, in a different location, and exposed to a different climate. It’s why Cabernets from Napa taste different from Cabs from Chile, or why Rieslings from Oregon are different from Rieslings from Alsace.”
Arik and Rosemary were straining to follow.
“In fact, vintners have noticed that a grape grown in one part of a vineyard could be more or less tannic than the same grape grown just two yards away.”
He saw the kids exchange glances.
“You two are not oenophiles, are you?” asked Mr. Z. The two shook their heads meekly. “Ah, it’s so easy to forget you’re only children. But here’s how terroir is relevant to you—I find myself just fascinated by the fact that you two are such prime examples of terroir as applied to human beings.”
“We’re like grapes?” asked Rosemary.
“Don’t be obtuse. What I mean is that you are who you are because of where you are. For example, all things like money and genes being equal, the Rosemary Park born and bred in Seoul would taste different than the Rosemary Park we know and love who’s born and bred in LA County. Similarly, the Arik Kistorian from Yerevan would be entirely different from the Arik Kistorian we know.”
“Isn’t that just nature versus nurture?” Arik said.
“Well, it’s a bit more than that. I don’t think culture is everything. Terroir also covers natural influences like sunshine and air quality. For instance, you two are gorgeous. You both have that wonderful California tan, that slouchy unformed charm—I mean it lovingly! If you two were doing manual labor in some other part of the world or had to enlist in a children’s army, you wouldn’t have the posture you have, your hands wouldn’t be as soft as they are. In other words, you exhibit all the privileges of your terroir.”
As their mentor walked ahead of them, Rosemary and Arik exchanged another uncertain look. They’d never seen Mr. Z like this, rambling on, making weird slips. But neither of them wanted to be the one to say it. And Rosemary needed to pee.
When Rosemary emerged from the building, Mr. Z was leaning against his car.
“Need a ride?” he asked. She paused, uncertain.
“Want a ride?” he asked. She nodded.
She watched Arik get on his bike and leave the school gates before she climbed into Mr. Z’s car. He handed her a rewritable disk in a paper sleeve.
“Here’s the CD I promised you. Sorry I took so long.” Song titles were listed in hasty Sharpie writing that looked like chicken scratches. Somehow she’d imagined something more special, like a CD in a plastic jewel case, personalized with his doodles in three or four colors. The songs didn’t remotely fill up the seventy minutes the CD could hold—there were just a couple of songs by Billie Holiday, including “Strange Fruit,” and a couple of tracks by a guy called Van Morrison she’d only vaguely heard of.
“Thanks.” She shoved the CD into her satchel and slumped back, wanting him to notice her displeasure. She watched the familiar streets fly by her window.
“What do you think of Arik now?” he asked her after a while.
“I like him.”
“Are you excited about kissing him?”
“Kind of.”
“I thought you might be.”
They sped uphill toward Santa Claus Lane. When they got to her block, he parked the car on the side of the street and undid his seat belt. He leaned across to her suddenly, and her natural mechanisms pulled her back against the window.
“No, no, don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid. I just want to ask you. Was that your secret desire? To kiss him?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice rattled.
“Remember, now that I’ve unlocked your face, I can tell your every thought . . .”
She swallowed. His face was only inches from her.
“And for the record, that was a bogus story he told about wanting a dad. Which is why I gave him grief for it. I know what he really wants. He told me—it’s you.”
Darting forth, he pressed his lips against hers, systematically kissing her upper lip, then her lower lip. She tasted the cool mint breath strip she’d seen him place on his tongue like a communion wafer. His lips were shockingly soft. She tilted her neck back instinctively, and felt herself pinned to the seat.
“Part your lips. Just a little.” He nudged his warm tongue inside her mouth, and she gasped, stunned by the urgency of his intrusion. She tried to get her own tongue out of the way but it kept rushing back to meet his. He cupped both sides of her jaw with his hands and kissed her deeper, producing the kind of sucking noises she’d heard in movies. The way he held her face, she felt she was levitating. This kissing thing . . . it almost didn’t matter who was kissing her, she could do this kissing thing forever.
Slowly, one of his hands reached down her neck toward the opening of her T-shirt. And she wanted it, she wanted him to put his mouth where his hand was. And to rub his hand between her legs.
Then, he withdrew. The sudden retraction was more violent than a slap.
“Oh, I’m so sorry, Rose . . . I got carried away.”
“No, don’t apologize. It felt really nice.” Her lips were still on fire.
“You could say I was In The Moment.” He gave her a bashful schoolboy’s smile, which made him seem twenty years younger. Cute. He’s actually cute. He drew her hand to his crotch, and she turned her eyes away instantly. She didn’t want to see it, yet she didn’t move her hand—she needed to know. Her fingers felt him inside his pants, stretching the fabric taut like a dog in a snake’s belly.
“Think of Arik tonight.”
He started up the car and neither of them said another word.
– 9 –
ICE CREAM SOCIAL
Rosemary watched the truck pull up in front of the house.
“Get up, the man’s here!” she hissed at Mira, who was flat on the sofa, gazing up at the fan like a vegetable. “I have stuff to do for school, or I would do this myself.”
“I’m too hot to move,” Mira moaned. “I’m completely stuck to the leather. If I move, it’ll tear my skin off in one piece, I swear.”
“Get up, freak, he’s at our door now.”
“You know that if I do this, I’m, like, aiding and abetting in our forced removal to Korea, right? Besides, I’m on my period. Cut me some slack.”
The doorbell sang its tinny, electronic Godfather theme. As Mrs. Park’s slippered feet shuffled through the house, she glared at her daughters in the living room, neither of whom had budged an inch. Rosemary pointed at Mira: “She said she’d do it.”
“Thanks for nothin’, sister.”
Mrs. Park pulled her hair back into a severe ponytail and o
pened the door with the neutral, apprehensive smile she reserved for workmen and delivery people.
“Good morning, you must be Mrs. Park.” The PestBusters rep was a laconic middle-aged guy in a denim shirt and faded jeans. He had a ponytail too, longer than Mrs. Park’s. “My name’s Dave Keller. We spoke on the phone about the termite inspection.”
“Yes. Please come in.” Mrs. Park waved him in. She stared at Mira to come to her side. “My daughter, Mira. You tell everything to her.”
Mira harrumphed to the doorway and shook Dave Keller’s hand.
“Should I take off my shoes?”
“Nah, it’s OK.” Mira looked at her mother, who nodded.
“Thanks. You wouldn’t have liked the smell of my socks.” He followed Mira into the house. Mrs. Park shuffled along after them. “When was your last inspection?”
“Never,” said Mira. “The house is crawling with all kinds of creatures.”
“Nice.”
Rosemary went to the stereo and set “Strange Fruit” on repeat. She turned the music up to cover the sounds of Mira leading the termite man around and Mrs. Park padding like a dog after them in her terrycloth slippers. Then she lay down on the sofa and closed her eyes. Oh, what she’d give for an iPod.
The termite guy disappeared up the black hole leading into the attic. When they failed to hear his footsteps overhead for a couple of minutes, Mrs. Park tapped Mira on the shoulder and pointed up there. She mimed drinking.
“Be patient, Ma. Let him do his job.”
Mrs. Park tapped on her shoulder harder, insistent. Mira scowled at her mother, and took a couple of steps up the creaky ladder.
“Excuse me, sir? Are you all right up there? My mother doesn’t want you hurting yourself on her property because she’s paranoid about getting sued.”
The termite man’s head popped out of the hole, and both women gasped.
“Drywood termites,” he said, drolly. “Looks like they’ve been set up here forever. They’re way down at the eaves.”
“Termites?” Mrs. Park covered her mouth, nausea rising.
“I can point ’em out with my flashlight if you want to climb up here.”
“No, no,” Mrs. Park said.
Mira interpreted: “We’ll take your word for it.”
“You ladies are real trusting.” The termite man climbed slowly out of the hole, grunting as he lowered himself down the ladder. “You’re lucky you’re dealing with me. I’ve been in this business twenty years. There’s all these fly-by-night guys out there now who’ll tell ya you need to fumigate the whole place when all they’ve found’s a fly.”
Mrs. Park tapped Mira on the shoulder again, and again mimed drinking.
“Now, is she calling me a drunk?” the termite man asked. “Just kidding. I’m fine for water.”
He put on a jumpsuit and over the next hour or so, poked inside the basement, inspected the garage, and scraped and tugged at the unloved toolshed in the yard. Besides termites, wasps and the endless stacks of old newspapers in the basement—“Tell your mom she really needs to move them, it’s an inferno waiting to happen down there!”—he found five rodent carcasses in the crawl space under the front porch, likely the forgotten treasures of some absentminded mutt.
After everything, they stood on the porch for the debriefing. The termite man’s jumpsuit had him looking like a break-dancer who’d just moonwalked through a sandstorm. He marked up a floor plan he’d drawn on the spot, labeling the areas where he’d found undesirables. There were ten spots, including an entire wall of the garage that was home to a colony of subterranean termites.
“I have to recommend you let us tent the house and the garage.”
“What do you mean, tent?” Mira spoke for her mother, who looked confused.
“We’ll cover the house up like a circus tent and pump it full of Vikane, which is a colorless, odorless poison that only trusted companies like ours are authorized to use. It’ll blast to hell every lil’ sucker living in this structure.”
“So you can’t just go in there and scoop them out?”
“Well, no. Termites live deep underground. You got to think of them as Al Qaeda sleeper cells, know what I mean? They’re just sitting there quietly, then one day you wake up and find your whole house collapsed on top of you.” He folded his arms gravely. “What you want to do is introduce poison into the bowels of the house, using those tunnels that they’ve dug. You can kill as many termites as you want but it ain’t over till you get down to the queen. And I know the analogy’s a little corny but you have to think of the queen as the Osama bin Laden of termites.”
“Somehow I could tell that was coming.”
The man handed his clipboard over to Mrs. Park. The figure he put down was something even she could read: $4,600.
“Oh! Very expensive!” Mrs. Park shook her head in disbelief.
“Well, if you’re planning to sell, I don’t see what choice you’ve got. The buyer will bring in their own termite guy, and once they see what you’ve got here, the deal’s going to fall through. I see it happen all the time. I assure you, not a happy thing.”
Mrs. Park moved her lips while she did the silent math in her head, gravitating to her own corner.
“I know what we do may look invisible to you but it’s all about vigilance,” the termite man whispered to Mira. “Success to us means nothing happens.” He paced the porch, caressing and knocking on the support beams. Mira shadowed him.
“Good, solid wood.” He shook his head. “Houses built these days look like they came out of a box from IKEA. A little shake and down they go.”
Mrs. Park returned, smiling graciously.
“We think about this. We call you later, okay?” She gripped Mira’s shoulder, pulling her away from the man.
“Fine by me. But the longer we wait, the greater the damage.” He winked at Mira, cueing her to talk sense into her mother. “Is it okay if I wash my hands?”
Mrs. Park led him back into the kitchen. They passed Rosemary sprawled on the sofa, listening to the loop of “Strange Fruit.” While the man washed his hands, Mrs. Park fluttered back to the living room and slapped Rosemary’s bare thigh.
“Rosie!” she hissed. Rosemary opened her eyes and saw her mother gesticulating: her shorts! They had ridden up her thigh and part of her butt was exposed.
The termite man came back through the living room with clean hands.
“That’s a great song,” he said to Rosemary.
“Yeah, it’s really poetic.”
“A little creepy don’t you find, though?”
“How do you mean?” She tugged at the hems of her shorts.
“Black bodies hanging from the trees? Are you hearing the same song I am?”
“Well, yeah . . . It’s a song about strange fruit . . .”
The termite man smiled for the first time.
“It’s about lynching, honey.”
Mira darted out the door after her sister. Rosemary was already on her bike.
“Where are you going?” Mira called. “Wait for me, I want to come.”
The evenings were getting shorter again, even if the days were still hot and stubborn with summer. Sprinklers seemed to be running on every yard on the block except theirs.
Mira cajoled her bike out of the garage and pedaled after Rosemary.
“What’s your hurry, Stinko?”
“You’re the one who wanted to come! I didn’t invite you.”
They biked uphill fast. Rosemary was making for Mount Curve.
“Slow down, jerk!” Mira called after her.
“Just go home!”
“Don’t you want to know what the termite man had to say?”
“I don’t give a fuck what he had to say!”
Rosemary stopped outside the blue cottage with the apricot tree, Mr. Z’s h
ouse. Mira slowed down and stopped as well, panting. She got off her bike and turned it so it faced downhill, in the ritualistic way they’d done for years.
“Wanna race?” Mira asked. No answer from Rosemary, who was busy gazing at the cottage from where they stood. There was a new-looking silver Ford Taurus in the carport; Mr. Z’s Nissan wasn’t there. The apricots were all gone, and the white dog was dozing, half-concealed by shrubbery.
“Hell-o?” Mira flapped her arms wildly. “Why are you staring at that house?”
The curtains in the blue cottage were partially open and they could see that the house was bathed in the warm glow of lamplight. The aroma of home cooking—roast chicken?—was in the air, full of warm, garlicky goodness. Somebody turned the chandelier on in what must have been the dining room. Rosemary caught a glimpse of her—a svelte Indian lady in a silk floral blouse, perhaps in her mid-thirties. She was carrying a small vase of roses, and they looked fresh; she leaned forward to put them down on the dining table. Rosemary couldn’t see if she wore a ring but had to assume that this woman was Mrs. Z. She hadn’t expected Mr. Z’s wife to be anything but a generic white girl who’d loaf around in an old college sweatshirt and elastic-waist pants as soon as she got home from work, yet here she was—Mrs. Z. Elegant, exotic, gorgeous. Her hips got to meet his, night after night after night. This was the woman he chose.
Mira tinkled the bell on her bike several times.
“Shut up! What are you doing?” Rosemary shot daggers at her.
“I’ve been talking at you for, like, five minutes . . . You’re scaring me. Why are you acting like some Peeping Tom?”
“I think it’s a really cool house.” Rosemary sounded a little wistful.
“We’ve been by here like a million times, and you never even noticed it before.”
“Yes, I have.”
“No, you so haven’t. So . . . do you want to race or not?”
“Not.”
“God, then why did you even come here?”