by Paula Hiatt
“Tanaka, have you seen the size of the romance sections in bookstores? They even sell those things in supermarkets.” Ryoki blinked, hoping no one had noticed his lapsed attention.
“It must fill some need,” Ryoki sputtered. “That’s the only reason to produce a product.”
“But they all have the same plot: Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back and they live happily ever after.”
Little Ben was clouding over, his lips screwed together in frustration. No one would look at him. Ryoki beckoned him over, but he wouldn’t give up.
“I admit a lot of the heroes are cheap knockoffs of Mr. Darcy, he’s the archetype,” Phoebe said.
“But I think Emma is really Austen’s best book,” Corinne said, entering the room flicking a dishtowel over her shoulder.
Doug rolled his eyes. “Darcy’s a jerk. Why do I have to be the only feminist in the room?”
“Ah, but he’s a jerk who progresses,” Phoebe said, turning back to her book.
Ben broke out of the circle and ran up to Corinne, his eyes beginning to brim and his voice catching. “I’m the Truth and nobody’s looking at me.” Corinne gathered him in her arms to kiss his hair and whisper in his ear. His face brightened and he wiggled down and ran off. Corinne flung the dishtowel at her husband.
“Doug, I need you to help me with the kitchen.”
“What about Phoebe? She’s just rotting her mind.”
“Phoebe straightened the basement. Everybody’s done their work except you. Kate nearly assigned Ryoki the bathrooms. Luckily I was there to get him off as a guest.”
“What about me. Aren’t I a guest?”
“Doug’s one of the great minds of the twenty-first century. He shouldn’t have to clean the kitchen,” Phoebe said without looking up.
“Mopping builds character, without character you can’t think great thoughts,” Corinne said.
Ben came running in swinging a plastic hippopotamus. He flicked open the hippo’s mouth, revealing a hidden light and swinging it around the circle into every child’s face, chanting in a stage whisper, “I am here I am here I am here.”
Curly pigtails blinked. “No Fair!”
“You saw me. You all saw me. Everybody saw me!” he chanted in a singsong voice.
Deciding there would be no reading, Ryoki began to cast around for something else to do. Through the french doors he saw Kate out in the backyard wearing short sleeves and attacking a large half-naked rose bush, cutting the branches and flinging them behind her. He retrieved his jacket and went out to join her, his hands in his pockets.
She made no sign of hearing him approach and even from across the yard he could see she wore the look of deep abstraction she sometimes had in the office, as though working out an equation that would solve the problems of the universe.
“Chilly?” he asked from directly behind her, shrugging out of his jacket and holding it out.
Kate jumped and hollered, raking her neck on a nasty triangular-shaped thorn. Then she saw the jacket and shook her head. “I’d ruin it in this mess,” she said, rubbing a finger on the stickery branch.
“You’re bleeding,” he said, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbing at her scratch. “What are you doing out here?”
“These roses should have been pruned last fall. March is pretty late, but this bush is just everywhere.” She got right to the middle and began cutting again, rocking the shears around the older, thicker branches. “You have to get rough with this one because it’s so strong,” she said. “Otherwise it puts all its effort into getting bigger and produces very few blooms.”
Ryoki came closer, catching Kate’s right arm, examining the long scratches and pulling out a nasty thorn that had skewered clear through, like a needle taking a stitch, twin dots of red welling from the holes.
“Listen,” she said, looking at him, “Mrs. Calvert asked us to sing at her mother’s funeral on Monday morning. She’s been our neighbor for fifteen years and she was my mother’s friend. I couldn’t say no.”
“But I need you in Las Vegas.”
“I know you do. I worked it out before I promised. Our meetings are scheduled for the afternoon and there are a lot of open flights to Vegas. You can go on ahead as planned and I can follow a couple of hours behind and still make it. We’re completely prepared and I’ll go through my notes on the plane.”
“Kate—”
“I’ve already changed my ticket,” she said.
He argued the point as far as he could, but he didn’t get angry—what was the point? He knew instinctively that she would put people before business until the end of her days, which is why on Monday afternoon Kate arrived in Las Vegas dressed for a funeral.
Chapter Eight
On Friday night Ryoki sat at the baccarat table in the casino’s high roller room “having some fun,” as promised. The final meeting had ended three hours ago at 8:00 p.m., the negotiations far exceeding his expectations, and he could still feel the gentle loosening of muscles and nerves as electrical impulses broadcast success to his individual cells. He sat back in his velvet padded chair, stretching his long legs under the table, feeling almost giddy with victory, or possibly relief. When he moved his head a bit to the left he could just pick out Kate’s perfume from where she sat behind him, the same soft spicy sweetness he’d been breathing without a break since January. Tonight he could feel her scent gently strumming the synapses of his brain and he knew he needed to get away, just to clear his nostrils, to sober up. That would be the smart thing. But he’d promised to play. He took one more deep breath before leaning forward.
He looked around the room at various tables and the assortment of men who played—different accents, suits or blue jeans, portly or balding, it didn’t seem to matter. They all had money, that being the lowest common denominator, and most were accompanied by women far better looking than they were. This group seemed to favor the showier variety, long-legged loving cups, symbols of conquest. Heavy wallets = pretty women, a simple equation proven since the minting of the first coin. Ryoki figured himself to be the youngest man present, and possibly the richest, though tonight he was alone, practically.
He glanced back at Kate, who was focused elsewhere, her expression alert, busy, watching something or someone. He wondered what she was thinking.
Fifteen minutes before their first meeting on Tuesday morning, Ryoki had popped a button on the front of his shirt, halfway down where he couldn’t hide it. Luckily it dropped at his feet, a visible white dot on dark carpet. He picked it up and held it out in mute appeal. Without a word Kate pulled her tiny sewing kit from her bag, threaded a needle with a double length of white thread and knotted the bottom. She pulled his shirtfront out away from his chest so they could both see clearly. “Pay attention,” she said, “I won’t always be here to rescue you.” She took a stitch, from front to back, leaving the tiny knot on top. “Keep the knot on top and just go all the way through the placket once, twice if you’re nervous.” She positioned the button above the knot, holding it a sixteenth of an inch above the fabric. “Now, leave a space for the shank between the button and the shirt to accommodate the thickness of the buttonhole, and only stitch through the top of the placket and the interfacing, so you don’t leave a mess on the back.” Once the button was secure, she quickly wove the needle in a figure eight, around and through her shank, knotting her thread under the button. “Got it?” she asked, a genuine question. He nodded, his head swimming with her mysterious incantation—placket shank interfacing—a vocabulary he apparently wore on his person but didn’t comprehend.
He’d involuntarily fingered that button all day, fourth from the top, third from the bottom. Something about that button mattered, he could feel it, but its significance flickered just outside his consciousness, an uncomfortable teasing, like a name he couldn’t quite remember. Why? Why should a button matter?
Stupid question.
By dinner he’d flung the question aside, putting it all down
to the lingering vanilla scent of her hands on his shirt. Tuesday evening he sent the shirt out with four others just like it to be laundered, hoping that once they had been cleaned, pressed and returned in sterile plastic, he wouldn’t be able to tell which shirt was which. But the question continued to creep out, catching him unawares, like here at the baccarat table.
All week Kate had been invaluable, switching unhesitatingly from English to Japanese to Portuguese, feeding him information as he needed it, often before he had to ask. She maintained a low-key bantering relationship with twelve men, owning up to her screwed punch lines until it became a running gag. She kept the atmosphere light and friendly, the negotiations flowing, like a wife who disarms the clients with homemade pie. At night the men went out to drink and socialize, cementing relationships through alcohol. Kate never came, of course, though the other men pressed her. He knew she never would.
Ryoki shifted in his chair at the baccarat table, sneaked another quick glance at Kate. She wore a simple black dress that went to her knees, shoulders covered, nothing shiny or sparkly, not even pearls, though he knew she had at least one set with her. As a welcome gift from the hotel, the management had sent him a ten-millimeter pearl necklace and a thousand dollar gambling credit. Laughing, he’d handed them both to Kate. “I think they’ve mistaken you for my wife.”
“That makes sense. Most men would like to keep their wives in a separate room eight floors down,” she said, laying the credit and the jewel box on his coffee table next to her bag. “I’m not much for gambling, though. Looks too much like theft.”
Ryoki had laughed, sprinkling a pinch of superiority at her unexpectedly bumpkin attitude, as befitting a sophisticated man of the world. Though, if he had been completely honest with himself, he’d have admitted he didn’t care for gambling either. He’d watched his parents and grandparents don chic evening clothes, diamonds glittering at ears, necks and wrists, playing casinos all over the world. He’d watched his friends succumb one by one to the momentary thrill when the turn of a card decreed a winner and a loser. He truly wanted to know what was so exciting, but somehow there had never been any glamour for him. Yet millions had been entertained in this R-rated Disneyland. What was the draw? He still tried such places occasionally, hoping his moment of epiphany might suddenly occur, marking his transition into full adulthood. He’d been waiting thirty years now.
“Corinne likes it,” Kate had told him. “Her eyes glaze over the minute she walks into a casino and she plays every quarter in her purse, totally mesmerized.”
“Robbery is entertaining. That’s why it’s in so many movies,” he’d said.
So far she’d spent this evening doodling on cocktail napkins, capturing the expressions of the characters around her, like the little thumbnail sketches he sometimes discovered in the margins of her work papers. Unprofessional, but he liked the little surprises so he never mentioned it, a guilty pleasure.
He risked another peek. Her pen lay motionless in her lap, her attention still distracted. Why didn’t she run off and spend that casino credit? She had nothing to lose, maybe a lot to win. Maybe with that much easy money she could discover the joys of gambling for herself, maybe demonstrate it for him, the way she’d shown him how to sew on a button. Instead she stayed behind him, seemed unaware of him, but when she moved he could hear the faint, slidy silkiness of her dress. He secretly blamed her for his loses at the table; she blew his concentration.
An attendant came by with his scotch, not his first of the evening, or his second. Actually, he’d stopped counting. Drinking, there was another proof of his immaturity. He approached alcohol as his did gambling, still looking to find joy in the inebriate freedom as his friends did. Growing up, watching the slow, ugly deterioration of his grandfather’s liver had permanently scuffed that pleasure. But tonight he craved the alcoholic escape. Perhaps excessive celibacy had skewed his reality. That had an easy remedy. Kate was off limits, of course, being Brian Porter’s niece, besides there had been no sign of willingness on her part. If he needed any more evidence, he need only look at the women in the room. They kept touching their men on the arms, shoulders and backs, little promising touches, unlike Kate who kept her distance. One woman kept glancing at Ryoki, catching his eye. She’d probably jump ship without much provocation. Petite, dark hair, fair skin, red lips. She looked a little like Kate, could pass as a sister or maybe a cousin. No harm in a little private fantasy, he told himself. Men did it all the time.
Ryoki started when Kate touched him. She stood close behind him, her hand on his sleeve, speaking into his ear.
“There’s something I need to take care of. I’ll be back in a bit,” she said before sailing out of the room, pausing only briefly to speak to the door attendant.
Ryoki could still feel her breath warm in his ear, the skin pricking under his shirt—the Valentine’s Day party, Take 2. Distraction, that’s what he needed. He downed the last of his scotch in a single gulp, nearly choking as it burned down his throat and stung his eyes. He looked again at Kate’s double. She stared back. He was right; she was willing. Ryoki took a good look at the man he’d be depriving: mid-forties, purplish birthmark on his forehead, graying at the temples, loud-mouthed, strong New York accent, big hand gestures, expensive suit, a caricature of a gentleman. He knew he should feel guilty for stealing his girl, but there was a certain meanness in him tonight and he didn’t care. After twenty minutes of expressive eye contact, the woman understood him perfectly. When he rose to leave, he saw her squeeze her man’s arm and lean over to whisper some affectionate excuse.
It seemed almost too easy, and as he waited for her outside the doors he wondered vaguely if she was a prostitute. He’d never paid for sex and had never intended to start. But at this moment his core principles felt comfortably elastic and his mind began a useless orbit around the question of exactly how many scotches he’d consumed. By the time she came out to meet him, he’d abandoned the undertaking. She took his arm. “I’m Angelica,” she said.
“Tanaka.”
She smiled up at him. “Tanaka, that’s a nice name. Where’re you from?”
“Tokyo.”
She took his arm and nudged him toward the elevators where they seemed to appear instantly, without consciousness of movement. In the brighter light she looked less like Kate, with a sort of hardness around the edges. But the lighting was flattering enough that he didn’t mind and when the elevator doors slid open, they both stepped inside.
Outside his room, he unlocked the door and stood aside to let her enter.
“Nice suite,” she said.
“Are you a guest here?” he asked.
She placed her tiny evening bag on the coffee table without answering, bumping the hotel magazine which slid off to the side, revealing Kate’s gambling credit and the jewel box containing the pearls. The sight hurt him a little. Must have been sitting there for days. Maybe left on purpose.
“Do you have to get back to your friend?” Ryoki asked, pulling his eyes from the table.
“I left it open. It’s good to leave things open. You never know what’s going to happen.” She didn’t ask about Kate, though he knew she must have seen her.
He offered her a drink. She declined. She took a step toward him, touching his hand, slowly dragging her fingers up his arm onto his chest. It was exactly what he’d wanted only a moment before, an aggressive, exotic foreign woman, a fantasy, all the pleasure and none of the reality. But at her touch he suddenly felt unsure, mildly revolted. She was almost too aggressive, as though in a hurry to get to her next client. He thought to push her away, ask her a few questions, just to talk a bit, ameliorate the tingling of wrongness that persisted in the back of his mind. Then he felt the pressure of her lips against his mouth, slowly sliding across his jaw and down his neck. Logic began to crumble into random words, gradually fracturing into a disjointed alphabet. What could be wrong about this? All animals did it. The scotch had worked its dark spell, quietly consuming rational thoug
ht until he stopped caring about anything but the immediate thrill on his lonesome skin.
A sharp rap at the door made them both jerk and freeze. Rapping again, sharper, harder. Ryoki recognized Kate’s voice:
“Open the door, please. I need to talk to you.”
“Don’t answer,” Angelica whispered, running her lips up his throat, flicking her tongue in and out of his ear. There was a moment of indecision, a choosing. Abruptly her tongue felt more clammy than sexy, as if Kate had blasted the hex astray. Irritated, he rubbed the saliva from his ear as he straightened his shirt and opened the door. There stood Kate, an ice queen in a black dress, face to face with Angelica, exposing the serrated disparity between true beauty and optical illusion: the beguiling lighting, the heavy makeup, the single yard of fabric masquerading as clothing—special effects, tawdry magic.
Standing straight, head erect, Kate smiled her schoolmarm smile and walked ten steps into the room, forcing Ryoki to all but leap out of her way. She dropped her little purse on the couch, a careless but unmistakably intimate gesture. “I’m sorry I was gone so long. It took longer than I’d expected.” She paused to look at Ryoki as though he knew exactly what “it” was. “The doorkeeper told me you two had headed off and I took a guess at where that might be.” She looked at Angelica, still smiling. “Your friend is looking for you in the bar. I told him I’d send you down if I found you.”