Kojiro swallowed. “I thought you hated love hotels. You said they were sleazy. I remember the exact word,” he said smugly, “because I had to look it up in the dictionary.”
“They are sleazy,” she said laughing. “Imagine coming upon the famous Alamo in the middle of a rice paddy on a back road in Northern Japan. It’s preposterous. It’s wonderful. And,” she added mischievously, “it’s convenient.”
He nodded. “It is.”
Kojiro was right. Business was thriving at the Alamo in spite of its remote location. Every garage but one was filled.
“We’re in luck,” he said brusquely. Although he could hardly contain his impatience to be alone with Libby, he thought it undignified for a married man to appear too eager to make love to his wife.
To someone who had grown up in a society where custom and conformity discouraged improvisation, Libby’s spontaneity was liberating. But Kojiro was not sure he would ever get used to it. When they were as old and established a married couple as his parents, he was confident she would still be doing things to surprise and excite and infuriate him.
“A cultural experience,” Libby said, marveling at the gimcrack replica of the Texas shrine.
“I thought you’d had your fill of cultural experiences after spending New Year’s with my family,” he chided as they made their way across the parking lot to the hotel.
“Not yet, Major Yoshida,” she laughed.
“Sh, sh. Someone might hear you. Love hotels thrive on our crowded islands because of their patrons’ discretion and respect for privacy. In Japan … .”
“They thrive because of their patrons’ lust,” she whispered.
Kojiro reached for her hand. “Ah, that too.”
The hourly rate for the room, named after one of the doomed heroes of the Alamo, Davy Crocket, was posted on the door. Kojiro stuffed two hours’ worth of yen into the remittance box and opened the door.
Having had occasion to visit such establishments in the past, Kojiro was neither surprised or embarrassed by the fanciful surroundings; but Libby evidently was, and from the expression on her face, looked as if she might be having second thoughts about a tryst in the love hotel. Perhaps the décor was a bit overdone, he mused. There were a lot of cowhides and Texas flags and Mexican sombreros adorning the walls — and a lot of mirrors. But that was all part of the fun.
Kojiro never ceased to be amazed at the inconsequential things foreigners found shocking or offensive in Japan — ordinary things the Japanese took for granted, like unisex toilets and arranged marriages. And love hotels. Americans were by far the most critical, he thought, eyeing his American wife apprehensively.
Kojiro put his hand on her waist, nudged Libby into the room and locked the door.
“You haven’t changed your mind, have you? I’d be very disappointed,” he added, steering her toward the king-size bed with its fringed canopy and red, white, and blue quilt.
“Whatever gave you that idea?” Libby said as she tossed the coverlet aside and sank down on the starched sheets.
Her skirt was hiked up above her knees, her blouse stretched taut across her breasts. Kojiro could see the configuration of her bra and barely perceptible swell of her nipples straining beneath the smooth silk.
“Do you always sleep in your clothes?” He asked, a boyish grin spreading over his face.
“Who said anything about sleeping? We don’t have time to sleep; you only paid for two hours.”
“Then we better not waste any more time.”
Afterwards, they sat up in bed and shared a can of iced tea and a package of sesame crackers. Kojiro experimented with the switches on the panel by the headboard and the mattress tilted and vibrated, and the lights pulsed.
Libby giggled in embarrassment as the tempo of the vibrations increased. “How much time do we have left?” She asked worriedly. It was impossible to gage how much time had passed since they rented the room. Twenty minutes? An hour?
“How do you know when your two hours are up? Does an alarm go off or does someone come and knock on the door and order you to get dressed?”
Kojiro glanced at his watch on the bedside table. “Ah, just enough time to do it again,” he said in mock earnestness. “If we hurry.”
“Hmm, yes,” Libby sighed. “We want to be sure and get our money’s worth.”
“You’ve become a very frugal Japanese housewife,” he murmured, as he pulled her on top of him. “It won’t be long before you are … ”
“And you’ve become very talkative for a Japanese man,” she interrupted.
The fog had lifted by the time Kojiro and Libby ventured out of the room and the sky was studded with stars. After the exertions of the past two hours, they were both subdued and a little shy, as they traversed the parking lot, hand in hand.
Libby smiled at Kojiro. “I was just thinking about the night you took me to the love hotel in Hachinohe. I was so angry I never wanted to see you again. And now, despite all the odds against us, we’re a respectable married couple and I’m so hopelessly in love with you, and so happy when you hold me in your arms and we make love … .
“Kojiro, I think I like making love even more than I like flying! Do you believe it’s possible?”
Kojiro’s eyes narrowed and he sucked in his breath. “Ah, it is a difficult question,” he said shaking his head. “But yes, I like making love to you better than I like flying. But that is just between the two of us, Libby. If the pilots in my squadron discovered my secret, I would lose face,” he added sheepishly.
Libby squeezed her husband’s hand. “Your secret is safe with me, Major Yoshida.”
About the Author
Juliet McCarthy’s adventurous life began in California, in San Francisco. She grew up in the Silicon Valley when it was still famous for its bountiful farms and luscious fruits, graduated from Los Gatos High School and later, Gonzaga University in Spokane Washington with a BA in history and English. Her goal upon graduation was to live in Europe, inspired by a trip to the British Isles and France when she was fifteen. She eventually landed a teaching position with the Department of Defense and taught for two years in England and then a year in Germany, at Ramstein AFB where she met her future husband, a dashing young fighter pilot.
As an Air Force wife, she feels as if she has lived her life in perpetual motion, moving from one state to another, from one continent to another. Her abiding passions are literature (reading and writing), Medieval English history, Japanese art and, of course, traveling.
More From This Author
(From Love Above All)
Oh, if only her classmates could see her now, Susan mused wistfully. A card-carrying member of the military industrial establishment. If she hadn’t felt so miserable, she would have laughed at the irony of her present predicament.
Captain Susan Ryan readjusted the name tag on her uniform for the third time, trying to align it exactly one-half inch above the left breast pocket and directly across from the small silver shield embossed with the staff of Asclepius that designated her as a physician in the United States Air Force. She grimaced at her earnest reflection in the mirror, exasperated by the rigorous attention to detail that had to be expended on appearance, especially when the end result was so unflattering.
Susan was not vain, but the ill-fitting blue jacket with its epaulettes and extraneous pockets and rows of pewter buttons served to emphasize her diminutive height and schoolgirl dimensions. Only her hair, a vivid shade of red, redeemed her from total anonymity. But due to Air Force Regulation 35-10, which prohibited a woman’s hair touching the collar of her uniform, the unwieldy tangle of curls was constrained in a prim knot at the nape of her neck.
She grabbed her cap off the dresser. As she was about to emerge from the front door of her billet, the quiet morning was shattered by the ear-splitting boom of a jet plane breaki
ng the sound barrier somewhere high overhead. The windows rattled, and Susan, still unaccustomed to the sudden blast of sound that regularly punctuated the day at the test center, jumped in alarm. Slamming the door behind her, she squared her shoulders and marched resolutely to the car.
• • •
The waiting room in the clinic was crowded with anxious mothers and cranky children by the time Susan arrived. After exchanging her blue jacket for a more comfortable and less threatening white smock, she perused the first chart on her desk, and then entered the adjoining examining room. Instead of the usual harassed mother trying to soothe a frightened toddler, she was met by a tall, disgruntled looking pilot pacing back and forth in the crowded little room and a small boy perched on the edge of the examining table, wheezing and sputtering for breath.
“Ma’am.” The man inclined his head skeptically toward Susan as she introduced herself. “Major Martin Bennett and this is my son Harold Percy.” He patted the boy’s thin shoulder. “Harold, Harry, is having a little problem with his asthma. He’s only been here a few days but the dust seems to have aggravated his allergies.”
The major glanced at his watch and then back at the boy, whose round, soulful eyes were fastened on Susan with a combination of hope and trepidation.
Major Bennett moved out of the way while Susan squeezed past him to wash her hands at the sink. He was ill at ease in the surroundings, worried about his son, and irritated at having been kept waiting. As it was, he had already had to call the squadron and cancel a test flight that had been on the board for several weeks.
He watched Captain Ryan as she proceeded to examine Harold. When she addressed the child she smiled and said reassuring things that helped calm him down and ease his distress; but she changed gears when she addressed Martin, was brisk and businesslike. He drummed his fingers impatiently on the end of the table. Major Bennett had a pilot’s mistrust of doctors in general and a man’s skepticism about women doctors in particular. He would have been the first to admit that his suspicions were unreasonable. Intellectually, he was certain Captain Ryan was as competent as any male physician; but frankly, he would have preferred Harold be seen by Major Astaldi across the hall. He thought a word was in order about his recent divorce, his custody battles with his estranged wife, and he was in no mood to confide in a supercilious young woman. Hell, she looked like she ought to be in high school, she was so slender and petite. Not an officer in the United States Air Force. Her figure, what he could see of it under the starched smock, was as shapeless as a boy’s.
“Have you ever used one of these, Harold?” Captain Ryan held up an inhaler. “When you’re having trouble catching your breath this little gadget comes in handy. I’m going to have someone come in and show you how to use it while I speak to your father. And then I’m going to come back and see how you’re doing.” She squeezed his hand. “We’ll have you better in no time.”
An ebullient corpsman came in to demonstrate how to use the inhaler while Major Bennett followed the doctor into her office. He chose to stand rather than take the proffered chair across the desk from Captain Ryan. The major, who had acquired something of a reputation as a ladies man on the base since his divorce, did not usually relate to women in such an adversarial fashion and he was vaguely surprised by the hostility this particular one aroused in him. Seated behind her desk, scribbling furiously on an open chart, she certainly didn’t look very threatening but he couldn’t shake his initial antipathy. It must be her voice, her strident northeastern accent that grated on his nerves. He liked fluid vowels and a soft, feminine drawl. In the pilot’s estimation, northern women, particularly easterners, were too brusque, too combative.
Martin studied the diplomas arrayed proudly on the wall behind the desk. A real Yankee all right — Albany Medical College, Albany, New York; Tufts Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts. How long was a pediatrics residency, he wondered. Four years? Five? She must be well into her thirties or else was some kind of wunderkind who had graduated from college when she was sixteen.
Captain Ryan cleared her throat to get his attention.
“Ah, sorry. I was trying to figure out just how old you are.” He forced a smile. “You look too young to be practicing medicine.”
“Really?” She made another note on Harold’s chart. He wondered if she was annoyed with him. Her face remained impassive, her lips compressed into a thin, unsmiling line.
Major Bennett swung the chair closer to the desk and took a seat. Shrugging, he said, “That was out of order. I apologize.” She ignored him.
“Major, is Harold taking medication for his asthma?” He leaned over and withdrew a paper bag from one of the zippered pockets on the leg of his flying suit.
“This.” He handed her a bottle with the dregs of sticky red syrup. “Lorraine, uh, Harold’s mother sent this along for his cough.”
“I see. How long will your son be staying with you? I don’t want to interfere dramatically with his treatment — ”
“The boy is living with me for the foreseeable future. My wife, I mean Lorraine, is having some problems at the moment and we thought … ” Enough said. Major Bennett had no desire to disclose the sordid little drama of his marriage to Captain Ryan. It was finished. The less said about it, the better.
“And what does Harry think about all this?”
“Harry?”
“Does he want to live with you, Major Bennett? Or is he unhappy over the separation from his mother?”
“I don’t know. I suppose he is glad to be here. When I picked him up he was excited to see me.” The major stood up and shoved the chair out of his way, exasperated by the doctor’s intrusive questions. “Look, I would rather not discuss my personal affairs, if you don’t mind.”
Susan fiddled with the pens on her desk, aligning them in a row. “I thought your son’s asthma might be aggravated by the emotional upheaval he’s going through. Asthma often has a psychological component as well as a physiological one.”
“Well, I’d prefer you concentrate on the physiological one so the poor kid can breathe and I can drop him off at the babysitter’s.” He glanced at his watch. “I have to go to work. I had to cancel a flight this morning in order to bring him in here,” he added accusingly, as if Susan were personally responsible for his son’s asthma attack.
Susan stood up, brushed by the major and returned to the examining room. Harold was sitting on the edge of the table, his thin legs swinging back and forth. He smiled shyly at his father.
“Well, son, you look like you’ll live.” Martin thumped him on the back and gave him a hand while he jumped down. The boy’s face was still pinched and white but the fear that had animated his dark eyes was gone. He clung to his father’s hand. The major looked uncomfortable and kept trying to disengage his fingers from the child’s clasp.
“I’d like to see Harold again on Friday,” Susan said. “In fact, I’d like you to make an appointment for a complete physical so I could do a work-up. If he’s going to be staying here with you I think there are some tests we should do.”
“Friday? Right.” Martin shoved Harold out the door. “Thank you, Doctor … ” He glanced at her nametag on the pocket of the smock. “Captain Ryan.”
Susan watched the pilot and his little son navigate through the young mothers lined up on the chairs in the waiting room. “Take it easy, Harry,” she called after them. Poor little guy, she mused. Harold Percy. What a moniker for a tike like that to be saddled with. His narrow shoulders seemed to sag with the weight of the world as he hurried along trying to keep up with his father’s long strides.
And as for the major … He came across as rude, condescending — the kind of man who depended on his good looks and rank to compensate for his churlishness. She continued to watch the pair with keen interest until they disappeared around a corner.
• • •
On Frida
y morning Martin found himself back in the pediatric waiting room at the base hospital. He didn’t object to sitting among all the mothers quite as much as he had the first time. He discovered that once they found out he was a single parent they were friendly and sympathetic. He rifled through the pile of magazines on the table: Family Circle, Parents, Good Housekeeping. An article on how working mothers juggled their obligations to their families and jobs caught his eye, but lest anyone see him reading a woman’s magazine, he settled on Prevention and discovering the merits of adding tofu to one’s diet and the pleasures of sex after sixty.
Hell, his parents were in their late sixties. He had never given any thought as to whether or not they indulged in such high jinks. He smiled to himself. Leave it to his old man, that bastion of southern rectitude, to still be enjoying the marriage bed while his eldest son relied on the benevolence of casual acquaintances or else resorted to reading the occasional Playboy for sexual thrills. Which reminded him. He had to get rid of the magazine on his nightstand. He had discovered Harold looking at pictures of the Playmate of the Month last night after his bath. Living with a five-year-old was going to take more forbearance than Martin had imagined when he was suing for custody of the boy.
Harold was kneeling at his father’s feet playing with some Matchbox cars he had brought along in his pocket. Martin smoothed the fringe of brown curls off his son’s forehead. He needed a haircut.
Martin wished Harold didn’t resemble his mother quite so much. Perhaps he would find it easier to get along with the child if he wasn’t reminded of his former wife every time he looked at the kid, but Harold had the same delicate features, the dark eyes, the perfect Cupid’s bow mouth. He was small for his age and thin. No. Scrawny. He looked like a waif in one of those ads for needy children. The same sad expression, a pleading look in his eyes.
Martin shifted in his chair. He felt ashamed of himself for such unnatural feelings; disappointed that Harold was not sturdier and more aggressive.
The Unquiet Heart Page 24