by Barry Eisler
She lifted her glass in a toast, then finished the little bit still in it. Mine was already gone.
“Do you want to take a walk?” I said, because we’d been sitting for a while. And because I wanted to be alone with her.
She glanced at me. “Where did you have in mind?”
“I don’t know. I stopped at Zenkō-ji on the way over. The temple in Omotesando. It’s nice at night. Peaceful.”
“That sounds lovely. I could use a little air. I don’t remember the last time I had three cocktails.”
“I don’t remember the last time I had four.”
She laughed. “Okay, we for sure should take a walk.”
I paid the bill, and we said goodnight to Ozaki and headed out. I took a thorough look around as we went through the door, but didn’t see anything that set off any alarms. The guy in the suit must have been nothing. I was glad. I didn’t want to have to worry about anything but enjoying my time with Maria.
As we strolled along the narrow street, she took my arm the way she had outside the museum. Was it just an Italian thing? Did it mean something more? I decided I didn’t care. I liked it. That was enough.
A few minutes later, we were at the temple. We walked up the stone path, and gradually the sounds of the street faded behind us. The moon was higher now, and the grounds were bathed in alternating pools of light and shadows.
“Ah, I love the little temples and shrines,” she said, arching her neck and stretching her arms as though she could feel the place and not just see it. “I hope they never go away, no matter how big the city grows.”
I didn’t say anything, content just to look at her and listen.
She drifted over to the chōzuya, the water-basin pavilion at which visitors purify themselves by washing their hands and mouths before approaching the temple itself. She leaned back on one of the posts and looked at me. “Do you want to hear something funny?”
I walked over and leaned against the opposite post. “Sure.”
“When I saw you at the wedding, I thought you were CIA.”
That caught me by surprise. “What?”
“You were looking around the room so intently. And I thought there was something other than just Japanese in your face, something maybe American. So I decided to have some fun. But then I thought, no, no one so awkward and obvious could be a secret agent.”
So that’s why she had come over. Curiosity more than attraction. But for once, I didn’t overthink it. We were here, weren’t we?
“Hey, thanks a lot.”
She laughed, then said, “You’re not, are you?” Despite the laugh, her tone was serious.
“No.”
“But I suppose you would have to say that, right?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“I didn’t think you were. But then . . . you were in the American army. And you mentioned being in a world the woman you loved couldn’t be part of. And you seemed interested in my husband.”
I looked at her. “The only person I’m interested in is you.”
She smiled. “That’s nice.”
“It’s true.”
We were quiet again. She was hauntingly beautiful in the moonlight: her hair shimmering black, her skin pale white, her eyes hidden in shadow.
After a moment, she said, “What are you thinking?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“If I didn’t want to know, I wouldn’t have asked.”
“That you are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
She laughed. “That’s sweet. I used to hear it a lot twenty years ago, I don’t deny. But not in a long time.”
“I can’t imagine there was a time you were more beautiful than you are right now.”
She laughed again. “Ah, maybe the awkwardness at the wedding was all an act. Maybe you’re a little smoother than I was giving you credit for.”
I thought about making a joke about how maybe the clothes really did make the man. Something like that. But I didn’t. I didn’t want to joke. Or even talk anymore. All I could think about was touching her.
I walked over, my shoes crunching quietly on the gravel. She was facing me, but I couldn’t see her eyes until I was very close. I reached out and brushed the back of my fingers against her cheek.
She looked down. “Ah, John,” she said. “I don’t know.”
This time, I did make a joke. “Because you might be my boss at the museum?”
She laughed and took my hand. But she didn’t move it from her cheek.
“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” she said softly.
“Who would we hurt?”
She laughed again. “Besides each other? My husband. In his position . . . a scandal would be so terrible.”
I reached out and touched her other cheek. Somehow, without being aware of it, I had moved closer. We were standing so near each other I thought I could feel the heat from her body, some electrical current. “I’m not going to tell him,” I whispered. “Are you?”
She was still looking down, but her hands went to my shoulders. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “Of course not. But . . .”
Her voice dropped off. She squeezed my shoulders, and then my arms, and then she took my hands in her fingers. I thought she was going to gently disengage, but she didn’t. She just held my hands, squeezing them tightly, still looking down.
Then her head came up and she looked at me, her eyes bright in the moonlight. “I’m a married woman,” she whispered. “And my husband’s work . . . I have to be respectable. I have to.”
Her mouth was open and I could feel her breath on my face, warm and urgent and perfumed with gin. I wanted to kiss her so much, but the feeling of almost kissing her, of standing on the vanishing edge of whatever precipice we were on, was so delicious and so ephemeral I didn’t want to let it go.
“I have to,” she whispered again, her breath coming faster. “I have to.” And then she gave a little whimper, and one of her hands slipped behind my head and pulled me in, and we were kissing, and the precipice was gone and I was falling, flying, intoxicated by the taste of her mouth and the feel of her tongue and the smell of her perfume. I pushed into her and she pushed back, and I ran my hands over her breasts, her hips, her body, and she held my face and moaned into my mouth, and I wanted her so much I forgot everything else, how I’d met her, who she was, where we were, everything. Without thinking, I swept up her skirt and pulled her into me, and then I slipped my hands inside her panties and the feel of her naked ass, her body against me, her tongue in my mouth, obliterated thought, and all I wanted, everything I needed, was to be inside her.
I started to slide her panties down, but she broke the kiss. “No,” she said, panting. “Not here. Take me somewhere. Your place. A hotel. Anywhere.”
I had to fight for a moment to understand what she was saying, and to formulate some sort of coherent response. “I’m staying in a love hotel in Shibuya.”
She laughed, still panting. “A love hotel? You must have been pretty confident.”
Even in the heated moment, I could feel myself blushing. “No, it wasn’t that. They’re just cheap and convenient. I mean, if I’d been confident, I would have stayed someplace fancier. But this one’s okay. Basic. Not one of the themed types. Just a clean room with a bed and a shower and a bath.”
She kissed me again, deeply. “Take me there, then. Hurry.”
We adjusted our clothes and staggered back to the street. A moment later, we were in a cab. The ride took less than five minutes, but it seemed excruciatingly slow. We kept a discreet distance from each other in back, but everyone knew the top of Dogenzaka in Shibuya was a warren of love hotels, so between that and the electrical current I felt radiating from both of us, the driver must have had a pretty good idea of what was going on. It probably didn’t help matters that Maria had her hand on my thigh, the slight pressure of which just inches from an erection that felt the size of Tokyo was making it a challenge to control my breathing.
&n
bsp; To maintain a modicum of decorum and deniability, I had the cab stop on the main thoroughfare—Dogenzaka, for which the neighborhood was named. From there, we walked up a narrow, sloped street, with others like it snaking off in all directions, an area called Hyakkendana, meaning one hundred stores, many of which were love hotels. There were plenty of regular establishments, of course, including some excellent restaurants specializing in basic Japanese fare, and in fact I knew the area primarily for a unique coffee shop called Lion, which McGraw had liked to use for dead drops. But Hyakkendana was also famous, or infamous, depending on your view of such things, for the hotels, along with a startling variety of sex shops.
“I can’t believe it,” Maria said as we walked arm in arm. “You really stay here?”
“Well, most people use these hotels for ‘rests,’ not ‘stays,’ but yeah. You’ve never been to one?”
She laughed. “Why would I?”
“Don’t worry, I told you, this isn’t one of the crazy ones. It’s called Hotel Elegant, which is maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but inside it’s pretty normal.”
“Oh, now I think I might be disappointed. I’ve always envisioned these places as so, mmm, extravagant. I heard they’re like theme parks.”
“Well, we could find one like that, if you like.”
She laughed again and squeezed my arm. “Maybe next time.”
We got to the hotel and hurried inside, past the receptionist window, the curtain behind it concealing all but the counter where money and room keys changed hands. We took the stairs to the second floor and, a moment later, were inside the small, plain room, kissing, the door locked, Maria’s back pressed against it and my hips pressed against hers. I put my palms on the door above her head because I was afraid if my hands were free I’d go too fast, but maybe I needn’t have worried because she took advantage of the position to slide my sweater up past my head and over my arms. I tossed it aside and put my palms back on the door, and she ran her hands over my ribs and chest and stomach.
“Oh mio dio,” she said, looking at my naked torso. “And I thought the bar was beautiful.”
“Is it okay?” I said. “I mean . . . this. Doing this.”
She shook her head. “No. It’s terrible. But I don’t care. I want to. I think I wanted to when I saw you at the reception. But I convinced myself it was something else.”
I looked down at her body, then began to undo her blouse, taking my time, hyperaware of the sound and feel of each button moving through each buttonhole, marveling as more of her cleavage, then the black lace of her bra, then the skin of her belly slowly revealed themselves to me. There were buttons at the wrists, too, and I undid those, then eased the blouse off her shoulders and ran my palms down her bare arms until the blouse slipped over her hands and onto the floor. I wanted so badly to have her naked. But, as at Zenkō-ji a short while earlier, I was aware of the feeling of being on the edge of a precipice, an ephemeral moment that was the threshold of something even better but that itself could never be recaptured, and I wanted to draw that moment out, savor it, treasure it, torture myself with it. If this was nen, I would never be able to repay Miyamoto for teaching me the concept.
“Turn down the lights,” she said.
“I want to look at you.”
“And I want to look at you. Just a little.”
I dimmed the lights, then came back and scooped her up in my arms. “You’re crazy, don’t,” she said, laughing and punching me in the shoulder. “You make me feel ridiculous.”
I didn’t answer. I just kissed her, and after a moment her arm snaked around my neck and she forgot her protests. I carried her to the low bed and eased her down, then lay next to her. I tried to keep going slowly, but the more our clothes came off, the more difficult that became.
Finally, we were naked. Her skin was wonderfully smooth and her body insanely voluptuous, and when I touched her, my fingers slipped easily inside. “Wait,” she breathed. “Not like that. Not so fast. Here, I’ll show you.”
She took my hand and showed me how she liked to be touched. “Oh, yes,” she said, breathing deeply. “Oddio, yes, like that. You see? Not so much so fast. You should, mmm, tease before you attack, you know?”
I smiled and did as she wanted. After a few moments, she was panting and her hand felt more like an afterthought than a guide.
“You really like teaching me,” I whispered.
She laughed. “Yes, I think you’re right. I’m going to teach you everything, everything I know, everything I like. Everything I’ve missed. Is that all right?”
It was about the most all right thing I could imagine. I kissed her and said, “Yes.”
And she did teach me. She was wonderfully uninhibited about everything she wanted me to do—with my hands, my mouth, the positions she most enjoyed. And she needed no instruction at all in her corresponding explorations of my body, though once I had to warn her I was getting too close, to which she laughed and told me, “Ah, good, it’s good you should wait for me, I’m glad I don’t have to teach you everything.”
I don’t know how long it went on. An hour, at least. Long enough so that my balls actually started to ache. I didn’t care, though. It was another precipice, another fleeting moment I wanted to make linger for as long as I could.
I was on top of her, looking into her eyes, moving in and out of her so slowly it was almost unbearable, when she breathed, “Ancora. Ancora. More. Now, give me more.”
I quickened my movements. But she said Ancora again, and again, and then a long furious string of Italian I couldn’t make out, and she began thrusting back into me as though enraged, enraged because what I was giving her wasn’t enough. I was afraid I might hurt her, but the Ancora, ancora, ancora was like a chant, a drumbeat accompaniment to the fury in her eyes and her voice, and it all pushed me over the edge of control and I started fucking her harder, deeper, but even that wasn’t enough, and I wanted, needed, even more, and I dropped my arms around her legs and swept them forward, pinning her knees to her shoulders, and I gripped the sheets in my fists and looked into her eyes and fucked her faster, harder, as deeply as I could, and I didn’t care if it was too much, nothing else mattered but being all the way in, all the way inside her, and her face contorted and she cried out, “Sì, dai, così, sì!” the last dissolving into a long, drawn-out inarticulate cry, and I felt her coming and then I was coming, too, and she grabbed my hair and pressed her mouth over mine and cried out again and again in time to our fervent rhythm.
Finally, it subsided. I released her legs and put my elbows on the bed to take some of my weight. I looked in her eyes, catching my breath, feeling mildly in shock, and she shook her head as though in disbelief and cooed something in Italian.
“What?” I said.
She shook her head again. “It’s much too filthy to translate.”
“Oh, please.”
She smiled. “I just . . . haven’t made love in so long. I tried to tell myself I didn’t miss it. I didn’t know I’m such a liar.”
I laughed and eased myself onto my side next to her. She looked away as though in thought, and for a moment I just watched her, flushed, naked, her breasts rising and falling as she slowly caught her breath.
Then I realized—she was crying.
“Hey,” I said, stroking her hair. “Hey. What is it?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Was it something I did?”
She wiped her eyes and looked at me. “Not you. I have a guilty conscience.”
“Your husband?”
“My son. Those three years I couldn’t leave the house . . . every day, I considered suicide to be with him. I was a coward not to, and I’m a coward still. What if he needed me? What if he needs me now?”
I looked at her for a long moment, moved by her sadness, and by the trust she must have felt to share it with me.
“You know how I feel about God and all that,” I said. “But I think if there is any kind of afterlife, it has to be eternal, rig
ht?”
“I suppose so.”
“Then what seems like years to you, from your son’s perspective, would be barely an instant. It would seem like you’re not even apart. And even if it did, I’m sure he’d be okay. I’m sure he’d want you to enjoy whatever fleeting time you had in this life before you joined him in the next one.”
She smiled. “Ah, I thought you were a spy, but now I see you’re a philosopher.”
I stroked her cheek. “I don’t want you to be sad.”
“The strange thing is, I’m used to it. I’ve gotten good at covering it over, or distracting myself with work, but of course it’s always there. But I accept that. I don’t even mind, exactly. Sadness is my connection to Dante. And I wouldn’t give up that connection for anything. But . . . the truth is, just for a moment tonight, a moment ago . . . I did forget.”
A tear ran down her cheek and I brushed it away. “It was only a moment,” I said. “I think it’s okay to forget for a moment.”
“I just . . . didn’t expect it.”
We were quiet again. Then I said, “I was afraid I hurt you. I mean, I was trying not to, but then . . .”
She stroked my cheek. “You’re very considerate, John. But you know, it’s possible to be too considerate.”
“I’m sorry.”
She laughed. “It’s okay. You made up for it. Besides, we don’t know each other so well yet. If you don’t know a woman, you should err on the side of considerate. If she likes you to be less so, it won’t be long before you learn.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“Why do you like teaching me?”
“Ah, is it too much?”
“Not at all. Most of the important things I know, I learned the hard way. This is better.”
She laughed again. “I don’t know why, exactly.” She paused, then went on. “But I think maybe . . . because we will only know each other for a short while. And I’m, mmm, egotistical enough to want you to remember me. No, not just remember. I think I want . . . part of me to stay with you. To shape you, and become part of you. To stay inside your soul, the way you’ve now been inside my body.”