“Is this a joke?” I said when Hugh came in.
“I don’t make jokes at forty dollars a pound. What’s wrong?” He looked stricken. “Are you off prawns now?”
“No, it’s just…are they really prawns? They seem too big.”
“These two are almost fifteen inches long. They come from the Atlantic Coast, off Nigeria. I know you believe in the sanctity of terroir and all that, but they seemed enticing. The fishmonger said they were best broiled or barbecued…” His voice trailed off.
“They won’t fit in the broiler,” I said, shaking my head. “And we can’t barbecue in April. We don’t even have a barbecue grill!”
“Why don’t we make one?” Hugh asked.
So we did. We took one of my old blue-and-white hibachi, set it out on the fire escape, and filled it with coals that Hugh borrowed from the downstairs neighbors. While Hugh kept watch over the coals, I ran around the corner to the organic grocery to buy some field greens for a salad, and strawberries and cream for dessert.
When I returned, Hugh had already set the table in the dining room, poured wine, and melted butter with lemon. The prawns were grilling on the rack.
“I didn’t know you liked to grill,” I said.
“Oh, I think it’s in the male genetic code to want to build fires. Is there any more of this wine?”
“Yes, but it’s not chilled. Just take the glass you poured for me.” I didn’t want anything addling my brain. The discussion with Hugh still loomed ahead. After it was done, I planned to jump on the computer to read through the command chronologies I’d gotten on disc from the archives.
The prawns were luscious, rich beyond belief, and a perfect match with the butter. And one each really was enough, if you ate the salad.
I worked steadily at eating. It wasn’t until we’d gotten to the strawberries that Hugh spoke. “Is there a reason you’re avoiding it?”
“The wine? No, I had a little last night. But I can’t drink tonight if I’m going to run tomorrow.” I actually hadn’t thought about running, but it made sense. It was about time I got moving again.
“Actually, what I meant to ask is why you’re still avoiding me. Last night, after I talked to you on the phone, I thought everything might turn out all right, but since I’ve been home, it’s just been…the same.”
“Ah. So you thought this idea, making a special dinner, would change everything back to the way it was?” I paused. “It was a delicious meal, Hugh. Much better than even the Yin-Yang shrimp at Bento. Thank you.”
“There’s no point. Food—you can spend on it, slave over it, but in the end it all goes to waste.” Hugh pushed away his plate.
“I try to think about what happened to us,” I said. “Two months ago, we both had work. We were planning a wedding. Then my aunt came and we weren’t alone anymore. We started pretending we weren’t cohabiting and, in a way, that led to it really being true that we weren’t.”
“The irony is that we weren’t alone two months ago. There were three of us.” He put his head in his hands.
“Oh, Hugh.” I closed my eyes. “Don’t. You know that if we had found out about it, we would have been in such a panic, the two of us pregnant and not married!”
“We would have married. We were on the verge, I thought.”
“And I suppose you think I would have stayed in the apartment and carried out the pregnancy just right, no jogging or heavy lifting and certainly not jumping out of car trunks.” My words came fast and hard.
“I wouldn’t have made rules. How could I ever possibly impose anything on you?”
“Well, you’ve got me living in a city I’ve turned out not to like at all,” I said. “And when we were at Andrea’s that day, you said you wouldn’t marry me if I didn’t do what you wanted. You were different when you were wooing me, Hugh. You were so easy and agreeable. You let me breathe.”
“Right,” Hugh said thoughtfully. “I have changed. I fell in love with you and was delighted when you agreed to move in. Then, your aunt arrived for three weeks and I pretended this wasn’t my flat, because that was what you wanted. Before I knew it, I was mediating your cousin’s legal problems and hauling boxes of your friend’s clothing. Yes, I’ve changed. And pardon me for trying to keep you alive. It’s just that I love you.”
“You can’t mean that. You broke the engagement.”
“I gave an ultimatum and you called my bluff. You threw the ring back at me.” He paused. “But how proud are you, really? I’m finding that after this last week of hell, I’m not too proud to say that I’m sorry. That I want you back.”
I couldn’t answer. I stood up and began carrying plates into the kitchen. I couldn’t be as bad as he’d said, one side of my brain told me. The other side said that he was all too right.
I was standing at the kitchen sink, quietly crying, when he came up behind me. I felt his hands on my shoulders, so tentative. His lips on my hair. Then I turned around and into his arms. This was it, the moment we’d needed weeks ago at the hospital. I’d been too broken up to take any more handling. But not now. I wanted it all.
Later that night, I wished for a cigarette. I’d never been a smoker, but now I longed for something to put a bridge between what had just happened and what I was thinking about now. Hugh had made love to me so slowly, so perfectly, but I’d felt as if he had only brushed the surface. As we had moved together I’d felt so serious, so sorrowful, that there was no room for anything else.
I loved him, but if my brain couldn’t tell my body what pleasure meant anymore, what was the point? I had changed. I was not the same girl who’d once run across the streets of Tokyo ignoring the red lights. I was a woman like Sadako, someone who’d crossed an ocean she hadn’t been meant to cross. I wasn’t happy, but at least I was still alive. Sadako wasn’t, but I was on the edge of a discovery of who had done that to her.
Hugh slept soundly on, a half-smile visible on his face in the sliver of light from the open door. But I couldn’t lie still, not for another moment. I tied on a robe and got up and went into the guest room that was once again a study. I opened the envelope containing the photocopies, book, and disc that I’d been given at the Marine Corps library. I booted up the computer. It was time to listen.
34
“You poor thing.” I felt the hand in my hair at the same time Hugh’s voice spoke softly in my ear. I sprang up from where I’d fallen asleep at the keyboard. I’d spent the night at my desk. I’d started around midnight, and now it was light outside.
“Oh, hi.” I shook off his hand, feeling embarrassed to be found this way. “I was listening to records of an inquiry.”
“Can you give me a capsule report over breakfast?” As Hugh spoke, he was tying a Windsor knot in a new necktie, red and blue, with oversized dots. So it really was the morning. I squinted at the old Seiko clock hanging on the wall. It was already eight-thirty.
Hugh poured tea as I told him about Robert Norton’s involvement in the civilian shooting. Then I described the taped recording of the inquiry into the events of the night of June 22, 1970. Sergeant Matthews, who was the highest-ranking of the men in the squad, had the platoon’s sole pair of night-vision goggles to use. When he’d taken the patrol to the suspected enemy site, Sergeant Matthews told the investigator that they’d come under enemy sniper fire. He’d shouted for all to take cover, and then to return fire in the direction of a group of trees from which the shots had come. A high-pitched crying sound confirmed a strike. They’d fired some more rounds just to make certain no accomplices had survived. Then all had retreated back to camp.
The next voice I recalled was that of Jones, the soldier who had died by the war’s end. He gave, in almost the same words, a story identical to that of Sergeant Matthews. The investigator had asked him what he’d thought when he’d heard the high-pitched cry. “I guess I thought someone was wounded. And you know, I was glad we hit someone. We almost fell in a punji pit on the way over; if it hadn’t been for the night-vision goggle
s, we would have. We came across three land mines the day before. It was a serious VC stronghold.”
Becher barely got a word out. He stuck to yeses and nos and, upon being asked to describe the events of the night, offered, “It’s like what Sergeant Matthews said.”
When the investigator pointed out that no shells were found on the scene, along with no weapons, he had no answer. But Norton, when he was asked the same thing, suggested that other Vietcong might have picked up those weapons to use for themselves, along with the spent shells. And he hadn’t seen any women or children on the patio outside the hut, either.
When I was done with the account, Hugh asked me for a definition of a punji pit. I told him he probably didn’t want to know while eating breakfast, but he insisted, so I told him about how the guerillas smeared excrement on long, sharp spikes that they embedded in pits, hoping that their enemy would trip and fall into these pits at night.
Hugh made a face when I was through. “Let’s talk about night-vision goggles, then.”
“I fell asleep last night wondering about it. If Sergeant Matthews had night-vision goggles, he would have been able to see these people he gave the order to fire upon.”
“I agree in principle,” Hugh said slowly. “But you know, battle is supposed to be so chaotic—he really might not have seen them. And if they were wearing helmets, they might not have heard the difference between an adult cry and a child’s.”
“They should have been able to tell a baby’s cry from an adult’s. I would have.”
We exchanged glances then, and I saw in his face what I’d felt in my gut for the last few weeks.
“I know,” Hugh said. “And I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” I said.
“And neither is it yours.” He paused, then went on, “Are you going to the restaurant tonight?”
I shook my head. I couldn’t begin to tell him about how badly things had gone with Marshall and my payment.
“Well, then, shall we try again?” He smiled at me.
“I don’t really want to go to Bento,” I began.
“No, I mean, trying—as in going back to bed. Tonight,” he added, when I looked at him blankly. “Last night didn’t work for you. I didn’t push because I was—afraid of hurting you. But it must have been—a bore.”
“It was fine.” I felt myself start to blush.
“Well, it’s not fine with me. I want another chance. Let’s have a mojito at Café El Rincon first, just like old times.”
“Actually, Hugh, I’ll take a rain check on that.” I knew there was nothing physically that should hold me back from intimacy. I loved him. I’d wanted to last night, with every ounce of my being—but it just hadn’t been the same. I’d carried a child, and lost it. Sex would never be what it had once been, no matter how many mojitos I were to drink.
Hugh kissed the top of my head. “All right, then. But I’ll see you tonight.”
“You’ve been away from the home office for a while. I expect you’ll need to stay late,” I said.
“Why should I, when I want to see you?”
Ever since he’d returned from Boston, I’d felt so strange—filled with a mixture of excitement and despair. It wasn’t the same. It never would be again. Since I didn’t know how to answer him, I escaped to the shower.
And just as I’d expected, by the time I’d emerged and gotten dressed, he was gone.
I went to my warehouse that day to take inventory. Even if I wasn’t leaving Washington and Hugh’s apartment, it was high time that I revisited the goods Mr. Ishida had sent me in the hope that I’d sell them. Now it was time to see what I could afford to hang on to for a while, and what I really should press to sell—even if I had to do it online, or through classified ads. I was going to keep on earning a living—Marshall Zanger hadn’t stopped me.
The thought of Bento, though, sent me off on a new tack. It seemed so clear that the things that had happened to me, and now Andrea, were linked. I wondered if there was a chance that someone connected to the long-ago scandal in Vietnam was actually working at Bento.
Ever since Andrea had mentioned that her father’s service record had been stolen at work, I’d struggled with the idea that there might be a thief on the premises. For a long time, I’d felt there were a few suspicious characters there. Phong, I knew for sure, was Vietnamese, not only because of his name, but what he’d said about his parents running a Vietnamese restaurant in Arlington. Arlington, Virginia, was another connection to the Norton family, because they’d lived there when Andrea was young. It seemed crazy that Phong would be involved in suppressing any truth about brutality shown toward his own people, but of course, there were two kinds of Vietnamese fighting the battle—the Americans’ South Vietnamese allies, and the Communists from North Vietnam. I remembered that there had been many Vietnamese names sprinkled through the command chronology that I’d read a day earlier. If I learned Phong’s full family name, or his parents’ names, I might find another link.
And what about Jiro? By now, I was almost certainly in agreement with my aunt that he was not Japanese. Could he be Vietnamese? It was a far-fetched idea, but worth looking up—as were the names of all the men working in the kitchen. Alberto, the observant one, the cook who’d seen Kendall walk through the kitchen right before her kidnapping—and who’d also been overly curious about my conversation with Andrea’s father and brother. There was also the new dishwasher called Toro. His arm tattoo seemed more an old-fashioned military one than a fashion statement, and he also looked old enough to have served in Vietnam.
I knew that Marshall kept his employment records in his office, because I’d caught a glimpse of a folder labeled as such when Jiro had taken me in there to give me the check Marshall had finally made out to me. If I could get a glimpse of the employment records, I could learn more about Phong and Toro.
Andrea was right at her station as I made it into Bento around five-fifteen.
“Hi, sweetie,” she purred, moving in to deliver a society-lady set of cheek-to-cheek air kisses, and indeed, she looked very Grace Kellyesque tonight, for a girl who was half-black and half-Japanese. Her curls had been lacquered behind her ears, and she wore a fluid silk charmeuse dress the color of a Cosmopolitan.
“You look stunning,” I said, suddenly feeling self-conscious in my bootleg jeans and small T-shirt that barely grazed my navel. I was too casual, but I’d come straight from the warehouse and wasn’t anticipating staying for dinner.
“Oh, thanks.” She made a funny face. “I wouldn’t be dressed like this if you hadn’t helped save my wardrobe. So what’s going on with the military records you’ve been looking at? I have to tell you that your timing is perfect, because we haven’t opened for dinner yet.”
True, but Phong was at the bar, a few steps away. He was polishing the zinc surface and looked up at me as if he, too, was interested in hearing what I had to say.
“I can’t talk about that right now,” I said in a low voice. “I’ve got to get into Jiro and Marshall’s office to check up on something—without them knowing. Are the two of them in?”
“Well, Marshall’s going off to Mandala for the night, but Jiro’s in, and the kitchen guys are all eating dinner before the shift starts. Tonight it’s a Japanese noodle soup, kind of like what your aunt made, but with shrimp. And speaking of your aunt, has she checked in yet?”
“No. I have her hotel number, though. I’ll call her.” I was distracted by Andrea’s inquiry because I had wanted to make it into Marshall and Jiro’s office. Too many people would see me. I should have arranged my trip to arrive later on, when it would be busy and nobody would have time to think about why I was there.
“Andrea, could you do me a favor?” I asked in a low voice.
“Sure. What do you need?”
“I want to look at the real names of the people who work here, where they were born and stuff like that—”
“Like the INS?” She frowned at me. “Oh, I know. You’re still o
n that trip of your aunt’s about Jiro not being Japanese.”
“It’s not that,” I whispered, mindful of Phong hovering nearby. “Never mind.”
“I’d like to help you,” Andrea said, “but there’s no way somebody like me could get away with being in that room. And I just got my job back. I don’t want to risk losing it.”
I nodded.
“Well, maybe later on, after the restaurant closes, we could get together at Plum Ink to talk about things,” Andrea said.
I remembered that Hugh was making a special effort to be in that night. I couldn’t just walk out afterward. “Andrea, I don’t think I’ll be able to drive over that late. I’m sorry.”
“Oh, of course,” Andrea said. “I’d almost forgotten about what happened to you. Can we just check in by phone or something?”
“That’s a great idea. You have my home phone number,” I said. “Call me tonight after eleven, okay?”
The kitchen door opened and Justin came out, once again dressed in waiter’s garb: a lime-colored cotton shirt tucked into black wool-gabardine pants. He smirked at me. “Well, hello, sweetie. Come again to collect your hard-earned cash? Or are you going to add another dinner to your tab?”
I said in a carrying voice, “Actually, I needed to buff some furniture, but it turns out that the special wax I left here is gone. I’m going to have to get some more from my warehouse and come back either this evening or tomorrow.”
“You have a warehouse?” Justin eyed me skeptically. “I thought you worked out of your home.”
“I have a warehouse, Justin.” I was losing my patience. “Believe it or not, I have a warehouse and a professional life outside this restaurant.”
“Is that so?” Marshall’s voice said. He’d come in right behind me, so I hadn’t noticed. Now I was very glad I hadn’t gone into his office.
“Yes, that’s the way it is. I appreciate the payment you made for the picture framing, but I’m still waiting for the rest,” I said.
The Pearl Diver Page 29