The trophy was ours.
I walked out of the locker room twenty minutes later to see Naomi Kenn standing against the far wall. She wore jeans and a powder blue sweater, and her shining black hair, still wet from the shower, was pulled back in a tight ponytail. I crossed to her, and she stepped toward me and gave me a hug.
“I knew you would make it,” she said, releasing me but staying close.
“It felt pure,” I said.
Over her shoulder I could see my parents, talking with other parents by the door of the gym lobby. It was my mother’s fortieth birthday, and we had agreed that, win or lose, we’d all drive back together to Goemon, her favorite restaurant, for a late-night dinner.
“I owe you something,” Naomi said, smiling shyly. “But not here.” She looked down, then back up at me, and a look came into her eyes that I’d never seen. “Jake,” she said, in a whisper that spiked my blood. “Don’t take the bus back.”
“My parents are driving me.”
“Can you lie to them?”
I looked at her, not sure I’d heard.
“Because if you can lie to them, I know a place we can go.”
Beyond her, down the hall, I saw my mother look up and see me. She waved, her eyes brimming. I waved back.
“Where?” I asked.
“It’s a secret. Will you meet me out by the base gate in ten minutes?”
I nodded, and she walked away. She walked away, and I walked down the hall to my parents and told them that there was going to be a party on the team bus and that none of the other players would be missing it.
“You might have told us earlier, Jake,” my father said, “and saved us twenty minutes.” But his tone was gentle, his heart full. He put his hand on my shoulder. “I thought you’d have to bank it,” he said.
“I had the angle.”
He squeezed my shoulder and stepped aside, and Mom hugged me close.
“We’re so proud, Jake,” she said. “We always knew…” She stopped and swallowed, her hands smoothing my shirt, straightening the top button. “We’ll see you at home.”
I told Coach at the door to the team bus that I would be riding back with my parents. “My mom’s birthday,” I explained. Then I walked to the gate of the base, where Naomi stood in the door of the guardhouse, talking to two MPs. She smiled goodbye to them, and we stepped through the spotlit gates and walked through the quiet streets to the nearest train station. We reached it just before the rains came. Sudden and hard, streaming down the train windows as we rode, blowing into the car when the doors slid open at deserted country stops.
We’d been friends for six years, easy and natural, but we rode in silence, the air between us charged, electric. Every few minutes the rocking of the train would bring her knee against mine. At Tokyo Station we changed to the Chuo line, and when we passed Shinjuku I knew where we were headed. The rain eased, and eased some more, and by the time we walked through the wicket at Tamabochi Station, it had stopped completely. The night was clear, the streets fresh and sparkling, as we walked the ten minutes to school.
We passed the yakitori truck, dark and shuttered, and stepped onto the school grounds. The buses had come and gone. From the bushes beyond the tennis court came the trill of a lone cicada.
“Do you still have your key?” she asked. I looked at her a moment.
“Yes,” I said.
She meant the key to the gym. Coach gave one to every player so that we could come in early to shoot. I slipped it into one of the big double doors, which opened in with a sigh. I’d never seen the gym so dark and silent. Cavernous. The roll-down bleachers were still in place from the pep rally that afternoon, the walls still draped with banners and streamers. Naomi took my hand and led me under the silent scoreboard and across the wooden court, the dead spot by the free-throw line creaking as we passed, our way lit only by the little moonlight that seeped down through the rafters. Her hand was impossibly warm. She led me to the far corner, to the thick gold wrestling mats rolled up like enormous carpets, the largest one high enough that I could lean back against it. I did, and she stepped between my legs and kissed me.
Nothing will ever be softer than her lips that night. Nothing will ever taste better. Her first kiss was sweeter than the candy she handed me the day we met, her breath more delicate than the rice paper that first stirred my sense of wonder.
“My first one,” I said, just afterward, and she bit her lip, her eyes pure and wide. She reached up and took down her hair, shaking it loose. We kissed again, and then again, her hands on my chest, mine on her shoulders, and then down the back of her blue sweater.
Kisses were all I’d hoped for, ever, but she moved in tighter between my legs, tight enough that she could feel me through her jeans. I braced for her to back away, but she stayed, and then to my shock she began to move. Gently, slowly, but unmistakably, the whisper of her jeans filling my senses. I put my hand to her cheek, fighting to keep steady. She took two of my fingers in her tiny hand and pressed them to her open neck. Then she pressed them to the tight swell of her powder blue sweater. And to her belly. And onto the button of her jeans.
Can you lie to them? she had said. Sweet Naomi Kenn.
Neither of us moved. I could hear, just behind us, the back door of the gym rattle once in the wind. Her dark, beautiful eyes held mine. And then she took her hand away and nodded, and I opened the button on her jeans. She nodded again, her eyes deep and trusting. I took the zipper in my fingers and pulled it down. When it reached the bottom, she drew in her hips and let her jeans slide down her. Down past her panties — white, stunning. Down past her perfect thighs.
We were both trembling now. I didn’t know where to touch her, or how, so I took the bottom of her blue sweater between my fingers. She pulled it out, gently, took my fingers in hers again and pressed them to the lace band of her panties. I ran my finger along it, mesmerized. “Yes,” she whispered. I ran it back. “Yes,” she whispered again, breathless, expectant. I couldn’t do it. “Jake,” she said, urgent now, but I still couldn’t, so she slid her own fingers inside the band of her panties and lifted them away from her skin, giving me a glimpse of dark heaven, and when I still didn’t move, she took my fingers again, and Naomi Kenn, the sweet, pure missionary daughter, guided them inside her panties and pressed them into her wet pussy.
Instinct told me to spread them wide, and her sudden cry pierced me to the bone. I tried to ease them back out, certain I’d hurt her. “No!” she said, pressing a hand to her panties, pinning my fingers in place. One, two, three seconds, her eyes on mine again, steadying me. “Okay?” she whispered, and I nodded, and she took her hand away and put both her hands on my shoulders. I stayed dead still, not quite believing that I was inside her. And then slowly, ever so slowly, Naomi Kenn eased forward, taking my fingers deeper into her.
Her first gasp sent a thousand volts right through me. She gasped again, her fingers digging into my shoulders as she eased forward a little more, then a little more, moving up onto her toes, her shoes barely touching the gym floor, and then not touching it, her strong legs circling mine, then closing around them, all her weight now transferred on to me. I put my left arm around her waist. I had her. And her eyes found mine again.
“Okay,” she whispered.
I moved my fingers, gently, and the first shocks of pleasure broke over her sweet face. I moved them again and sent her head back. She put her arms around my neck and brought her face to my shoulder, and then, as I worked my fingers inside her, she put her lips to my ear and treated me to her every sound.
Sounds I hadn’t imagined in all my dreams, sounds that rose and deepened as I slipped a third finger into her, and then a fourth, her shoes kicking the backs of my knees as the waves hit her. And they hit her and hit her and hit her, and she rode them, passively at first, in thrall to my fingers, controlled by them, “Jake!” and “Yes!” and “God!” in my ear as the sensations inside her built and built. Within minutes they were too much for her. Within min
utes she felt the first stirrings of release, and her soft cries of wonder gave way to gasps of joy, then, as the shocks kept coming, to grunts of pure want. And Naomi Kenn, the sweetest soul in a school of three hundred, began to surge against my fingers.
She was ninety pounds to my one-seventy, but I had to brace against the hard, rolled mat as she drove herself against me. With an athlete’s power she drove, her thighs tight on my hips, driving, driving, her hands in my brush cut, on my ears, then pounding my shoulders as she lost control, her eyes closing, her head thrown back, her cries rising up into the rafters of the gym I grew up in. The gym where I first learned to sweat, to work, to sacrifice, where I first learned, that night, the truth of sex — its fury, its isolation. Learned it all in the split second when Naomi Kenn opened her eyes and I searched them in vain for a trace of the girl I knew. She shut them again and threw her head back, and I could only hold her against me as she bucked and bucked, and no harem whore ever fucked her king any harder than sweet, pure Naomi Kenn raged against me in her final seconds. Raged and raged and finally collapsed, her pounding heart against mine, her cheek on my chest, her ninety pounds limp, broken as I turned her, gently, and set her on the wrestling mat, then knelt into her and held her tight. I held her and held her, until I could feel her shoulders begin to shake, until I could feel on my skin, like the water of life, the hot tears that rolled from her eyes.
I must have biked the two miles from the school to my house in five minutes, oblivious to the night around me. I didn’t notice the rain start up again, didn’t see the police car parked at the end of the block, didn’t wonder at the lights in the living room, when my parents should still have been away at dinner. It all registered at once, as I opened the front door and saw, in the genkan, the three pair of black, polished, hard-tip shoes. I took my own sneakers off slowly, untying the laces, and then walked down the dark hall and into the living room. Coach — ashen, old — sat on the edge of my father’s favorite chair, and behind him, their hands crossed formally at their belts, stood three policemen. Two, actually, and one interpreter.
I knew enough Japanese to understand the key words. Jiko. Accident. Torakku. Truck. Yudachi. Mountain storm. I heard them from the policeman and then again, surreally, from the interpreter. I stared at the white gloves of the policemen. Immaculate. Ludicrous. Did they have to wear them? Furyo Jiken. Freak. I looked at the interpreter. “It was not their fault,” he was saying, his pronunciation precise. “Even thirty seconds sooner. Even ten seconds…”
You might have told us earlier, Jake, and saved us twenty minutes.
• • •
I step from the fire escape back through the open window into my apartment. I walk to the kitchen and sit down at the table. I dip my fingers into my drink, flick them, and watch the drops sizzle and vanish against the face of the iron. I hold it by the handle and press it, hard, to the white silk tie on the table, watching the steam escape into the air. I take the iron slowly up the length of the silk, flattening every crease, every wrinkle, shrinking the fibers, strengthening them. I finish the first tie and iron the second one the same way. And now the third. I look at the clock. Six o’clock. I iron the fourth tie, then fold each of them and slip them into the wide pocket of my blue Guayabera shirt.
I carry my drink to the window and step out onto the fire escape again. I lean on the railing, take a long sip of vodka, and look down on the city. Manhattan at dusk, quiet, coiled. I watch the lights in the windows come on one by one.
I went years without thinking of Naomi Kenn. And then I shook Mimi Lessing’s hand in Mr. Stein’s office and looked into her face and I saw it. In her eyes. The same purity, the same killing innocence, but in a woman this time, not a girl. And beneath that purity — something else.
I take another long sip of Absolut. She understands. In some way I can’t fathom, Mimi understands. If things were different — but they never are. I close my hand around the black railing, remembering hers along the river. Her tiny fist on the river railing. The glint of her ring. In my pocket, against my chest, I can feel the warm ties.
She dreams of them, I know. She has listened and she has watched, and it hasn’t cured her. She still dreams of the silk, so soft and ruthless. Dreams and then wakes, and she can almost feel it against her skin.
I finish my drink and look west, out over the roofs of the buildings.
Two hours, I’ll make it last. Longer.
Tonight, Mimi Lessing will learn the worth of dreams.
And their cost.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Her name was Sister Grace.
Thirty-seven years ago, on a warm March afternoon, I sat in the last row of the eighth-grade classroom at West Side Catholic. The scent of spring came through the open window behind me, mingling with the fresh shavings of the pencil I was sharpening onto the floor. I looked up at the sound of the door, expecting to see the stern face of our Latin teacher, Father Keegan. Instead, I saw the beautiful substitute.
The nun’s habit she wore could not contain her radiance. No, the strict black cloth only set off the pale blue of her eyes, the warm color in her cheeks, the ivory of her neck beneath the high collar. And most of all, the quiet, stunning swell of her bosom. Sister Grace spent the hour administering an exam, her soft footsteps filling my senses as she walked slowly down the ordered rows of desks, from the blackboard to the windows and back again. I wondered how the boys around me could concentrate on their tests. Each time she neared, I grew flushed and dizzy, the black text of my exam swimming on the page in front of me. She would reach me, turn, and then start back the other way, and I would lean low over my paper and breathe in. She smelled of rainwater and salvation.
That night in bed I gave into the fever for the first time. The priests on Sunday, the Fathers at school had been clear: when boys felt the fever coming on, they were to clasp their hands and pray. I had always done so, but not that night. Nor the next. Nor the next. Even now I remember the intensity of those first visions, and their innocence. I imagined her by a waterfall, her back to me. Lowering her habit inch by inch. It took her a full week to reveal her neck, another to bare her shoulders, a third to uncover her smooth back. I awoke each morning filled with shame, but each night I returned to her. I would go only so far, I told myself. So far and no further.
When she appeared in class again, I drank in every delicate detail. The white of her fingertips as she pressed a piece of chalk to the board; the curving outline of her legs as she moved. And as before, the swell of her bosom beneath the saintly black cloth. My nighttime visions grew bolder. Soon she had stepped clear of the habit and walked naked into the calm blue water. I wouldn’t allow her to turn toward me. Not until I saw her again.
I waited desperately for her to return to our class, but April passed without her presence. And then May. And then early June, and the final week of classes. I thought I had lost her, but when I took my report card home to my father and he saw that my Latin scores had fallen below ninety, he grew angry and called me into his study. My punishment, he said, would be to endure a summer tutor. Which of my teachers should he approach?
She came each Saturday afternoon, and for one hour we sat across from each other at the mahogany table in our living room.
“Malus,” she would say.
“Male, malum, mali,” I would answer, struggling to keep my eyes on her hands.
“Amor.”
“Amorem, amoris, amori.”
Our lessons were from two to three, and when they finished, my mother would take me to the reading room at the Alcott Hotel, where I would read the international papers to her as she sipped a double martini. As soon as we returned home, I would excuse myself to my room, soak a washcloth in hot water, and lie down on my bed, the cloth over my eyes.
My visions grew ever bolder. Sister Grace naked in the water, turned toward me now. Her face, then her neck, then her shoulders rising into view. I pressed the warm cloth hard to my eyes, torn between her purity and my unspeakable desi
re, keeping her breasts below the waterline, yes, but allowing my free hand to drift down and do the devil’s work. Afterward I would rush to the sink and scrub my hands with coarse soap, then kneel on the cold tiles and pray.
All through the summer this continued, until the last Saturday in August. The day of our final lesson.
At the end of it, Sister Grace put her hands on my shoulders. “You’ve been a fine student,” she said, her mesmerizing swell just inches away from me. “I hope to see you in the fall.”
My mother and I walked to the Alcott, as usual, but we found the front doors barred and the worried concierge on the sidewalk. A waiter had been felled by tuberculosis, he explained. The hotel would reopen on Monday.
And so we returned home.
As my mother removed her gloves in the foyer, I walked ahead of her down the hallway. A few feet from my father’s study I stopped still, not comprehending the sounds that came through the door. I looked back at my mother. For just an instant she stood with her head tilted, as if she might be listening to a bird. “Go to your room,” she said quietly. I didn’t move. She walked toward me, her eyes no longer on mine but on the closed door of the study. In those eyes, already, were the first glints of madness. “Yes,” she said as she reached me, and then again, dreamily, “yes, you had better stay.”
She opened the door and I saw the black habit strewn over the back of my father’s armchair. I heard his gasping roar and, much softer, her startled cries. And across the room I saw the end of everything. My father’s strong forearm in the small of her back. Her delicate fingers, curled and gripping. Her blue eyes, wide in shock. And her breasts, the breasts that had haunted me, that I hadn’t dared to imagine, pressed hard into the desktop.
• • •
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