“I’m alone. I thought it was obvious.” He looked slightly amused, as if he sensed the real motivation behind my question.
“Given your age I would expect one.” I still didn’t know how much to believe about him.
“I’m not that old. I’m practically a member of Generation X.” He cleared his throat. “Actually, I’m not very successful with women. The ones I know want country houses and babies instead of city flats and ski holidays. Besides, who could tolerate moving every eighteen months?”
“Poor guy,” I said, refusing to rise to his barb about women. What was I expected to do, tell him I was his kind of girl? My nervousness accelerated when he picked up the check the waitress had left dead-center between us.
“I’d really like to pay,” he said when I also reached for it.
“It’s not as if I’m impoverished,” I said, struggling to read upside down and calculate my share.
“Since you refuse to tell me anything about your background in America, what can I do but assume that?” Hugh peeled money out of his clip.
“Assume away, then,” I said as we slid into the taxi. The driver had preceded us outside and already had it warmed up. I closed my eyes and settled in for the long ride home.
“Why the secrets? I know less about you than anyone at the inn,” Hugh complained.
“Could you go a little more slowly, please?” I begged the driver, who was zipping through down-hill turns as if there were no snow or ice anywhere. A familiar, unpleasant feeling was beginning in my stomach and I now regretted the distance and topography between Shiroyama and Furukawa.
“At least tell me why you came to the Alps by yourself for a holiday. If you ask me, you’re the suspicious one.”
“Look, I can’t talk about this.” Perspiration broke out on my forehead as the taxi went into a start-stop routine waiting to enter the freeway. Once we got on, it would be only twenty kilometers home. I should be able to survive that.
“You’re sick?”
Hugh’s intuition surprised me. In a low voice, I said, “I’m sorry. Maybe I should get him to drop me off where there’s a train station. I do better in steady vehicles—”
“The best thing is to rest. Here, I volunteer my shoulder.”
I could not let myself vomit on his beautiful suit, I thought, backing as far as possible into the corner, resting my head against the hard glass window. The vibrations were jarring, so I allowed my head to slump against the seat back covered by a polyester doily. Then I felt Hugh’s hand in my hair.
“Much better,” he murmured, pulling me firmly against his shoulder. It was surprisingly comfortable, cozier still when he arranged his shearling jacket over me. His neck smelled very good, a mixture of soap and leather and something indefinable. “Do you want the window open?”
“Yes. Thank you.” I was able to get the few words out before curling my legs up on the seat and sinking into a half-coma with the chill wind in my face. After a while, I felt the car accelerate and knew we had made it to the highway. Now as the road curved, I felt a pleasant, rhythmic sensation, throwing me a little deeper against Hugh’s shoulder from time to time.
When I opened my eyes again, it was dark. I was definitely on the mend. Hugh’s hands were now caressing my scalp; I moved closer, willing it to go on. He had an annoying personality but physically, he was heaven.
“Feeling better?” he asked.
“Mmm. What time is it?” I felt something brush against my lips.
“Late.” Hugh kissed me again. Despite the gentleness of his mouth, the chastity of it, I felt something start simmering inside me. “Is it all right?” He pulled away and traced my cheek with his finger.
“You ask too many questions,” I mumbled, thinking that despite his gaffes and inability with chopsticks, I found him too sexy for words.
He knew. His arms came around, crushing me close, and his tongue flashed into my mouth. It had been too long since I’d been touched like this; when his lips traveled down my neck, I arched against him, completely lost.
The car stopped abruptly, smashing me against the door. I had forgotten about the driver, forgotten we were anything but a man and woman alone in the dark. A street light shone in the car window, revealing us to be in the minshuku parking lot.
“I’d laugh if I weren’t in such a state of physical distress,” Hugh said. “I can’t even get out of the car.”
“Oh, you mean—”
“I like you too much,” Hugh said raggedly.
“It’s just a physical reaction. It was bound to happen, given the way we met.” I straightened my Campbell tartan skirt, which had ridden up to a perilous level, and jumped out.
“Wait.” I looked back to see he had paid the driver and followed me out of the car, wrapping his coat around himself. “What exactly is so offensive about me?”
“I don’t want you—intellectually.” It was painful to spell out that although he was so attractive, he was all wrong. There was the baggage with Setsuko, and a sense of inexplicable danger.
“You little snob! Who are you holding out for, someone who went to Cambridge?” His voice was mocking.
“It’s not that. You’re just—too old, too Scottish, too…” I fumbled for the words.
Too gaijin.” He found the last word.
I didn’t reply, just stood beside the minshuku door, shivering. He walked past without looking and closed the door in my face.
9
“Skiing tomorrow, so early to bed for us tonight, neh? Now that the terrible business is over, we can get a taste of what we came here for.” Yamamoto was talking to Hugh when I came in after waiting a miserable five minutes outside to fake a separate entrance.
“You’ll have a great day tomorrow. The snow is pure powder,” Taro told him.
“Rei-san! Where have you been? You missed dinner.” Yuki was there, with Mrs. Chapman at her side. It was a veritable conference.
“I’ve been, ah, exploring.” As soon as the word was out, I started blushing, although only Hugh would catch the double meaning. “I’m cold. Very cold! I think I’ll take a bath.”
Upstairs, I changed into my nightclothes before going downstairs to the bath, which, in fact, had become free. I didn’t need Hugh after all. I simply hung the FAMILY ONLY sign on the door and went in.
I looked over the dressing room’s neat trio of sinks and the stack of empty bamboo baskets where bathers would leave their clothes. I slipped out of my slippers here and trod barefoot into the bath chamber. A monotonous drip ran from a shower along the wall. I walked across the wet wooden floor to pull it closed, and then turned my attention on the long rectangular bath. As I’d remembered, there was a low, wide window running along one side. I leaned over the side of the bath and slid open the window. There was no screen, just a four-foot drop to the roped off, trampled area where Setsuko had lain.
The bath was covered with heavy lids, just as I’d seen it the first time. I lifted the lids off the tub to peer into its copper-lined depths. The underwater bench ran around all four sides; it looked to be only two and a half feet below the surface. I rolled up the sleeve of my yukata as best as I could and reached in, feeling for anything that might have been left behind. I stopped moving when the outer dressing room door opened.
“Excuse me?” Hugh’s voice was tentative. He didn’t enter the bath chamber until I’d opened the door.
“I didn’t think you’d come.” I squinted at his weird ensemble: the shirt and trousers he’d worn earlier, plus black leather gloves.
“You should be wearing gloves, Rei. Did you touch the window?” he scolded.
The criticism relieved me. Clearly, we were going to pretend the taxi incident never happened. I said, “If you come over here and look outside, you can see how easily she was dropped. Which explains why there were no footprints leading away from the body.”
“I remember you fiddling with the window on New Year’s Eve.” Hugh came up behind me to look. “I closed it when I came back
later with Yamamoto.”
“So?” I asked, not seeing what he was getting at.
“So we have your and my prints on the window, while, for all we know, Setsuko’s killer wore gloves.”
“We shouldn’t wipe it clean, I suppose.”
“Certainly not. Can you imagine if we have to explain it to a judge one day?”
I resumed my search of the bathtub, thinking that if I’d been alone, I could have taken off my clothes and gone underwater. I could still do it tomorrow.
“Look at these bath covers.” Hugh held up one of the large plastic pieces I had put to the side. “Lightweight, but stiff as hell. I could crack one over your head, and you’d be out. Then I could have my way with you—say, hold you under water until you drowned.” He chuckled. “Hypothetical, my dear.”
Feeling disquieted, I said, “They look pretty clean to me, although anyone could have washed them off under a shower.”
“Very true,” Hugh said, going over to fiddle with the shower drain. It was disgusting work; I was glad I wasn’t doing it.
“You’re not finding anything, are you?” I asked after I’d spent ten more minutes trolling for evidence in the bath.
“Nothing you’d want to touch. Clumps of hair, mostly Japanese, though there are some light ones, probably mine or Chapman’s. It’s impossible to tell in this muck.”
We gave up after a while and went into the dressing room to dry off. Hugh was washing his hands when I heard a squeaking of vinyl against wood: the sound of someone walking quietly in slippers before halting at the door.
“Busted,” I mouthed at Hugh.
“Don’t worry. We’ll pretend we really went in,” he whispered, turning on the sink. He plunged his head under the faucet and I did the same.
Outside the door, Mrs. Yogetsu was waiting for us, her face wrinkled in a prune-like expression of disgust.
“Oh!” I said, for want of anything better.
“Is there a problem, darling?” Hugh murmured, kissing the top of my head.
“This is not a love hotel! It’s a decent place, and I will not stand for your screwing in public rooms.” Mrs. Yogetsu was using plain verb forms meant for inferiors, a slur I’d understand.
Hugh nuzzled my neck, continuing to play the role of lover. I kicked him and started apologizing.
“I am very, very sorry. It was a mistake we made, as foreigners. I’m so sorry, I won’t do it again.”
“Sumimasen” Hugh apologized with one of his sporadic Japanese expressions. Despite the humility of his words, I felt his body rumbling with silent laughter.
“People who walk in the night come into danger. It happened to the Nakamura woman. Watch that it doesn’t happen to you,” Mrs. Yogetsu spat before storming off to one of the nearby doors, presumably her private quarters. The belt to her robe caught in the door as she slammed it. The door creaked open again, and the belt was whipped inside.
I wanted to laugh, despite the gravity of the situation. But there was no place to do it.
“Come. I want you to have the autopsy,” Hugh whispered when we got upstairs
“Can’t we do this later?” I was still nerved out by Mrs. Yogetsu.
“It’s got to be now. I’m leaving at seven o’clock to ski.” He pushed me inside and locked the door.
“I don’t know why you insisted on concocting that false love scene if your reputation is so precious. What about your colleagues and Yamamoto?” As I shook out the wet robe and spread it to dry near the space heater, I answered the question for myself. The Japanese people around us would consider him virile; I’d be the tramp.
“She’s the important one. And the crucial thing is that she not know what we were up to. Here you are, Miss Prim.” He pulled a packet of papers out of his suitcase.
“Can I take this, work on it a little while?” I scanned four pages of tiny typed characters and realized how impossible it would be to translate.
“By all means. It does no good in my hands.”
“In the museum, I overheard some docents saying they didn’t like Mrs. Yogetsu. She overcharges them for flower-arranging lessons.” I sunk down on the edge of his futon. “I think she’s horribly arrogant but that’s not enough—”
“Not enough to make a murderer. Come here. If you go to sleep with a wet head, you’ll catch cold.” Hugh knelt behind me and started rubbing my wet hair with a towel like I was a dog that got caught in the rain.
“That’s not very Scottish of you. I hear your countrymen tramp around wintry moors wearing kilts with nothing underneath.” I spoke lightly to cover up the fact that his touch was making goose bumps break out all over me.
“A kilt is good cover, unlike that obscene sleeping costume you affect.”
“I explained to you earlier that this is Japanese thermal underwear. It’s indigenous clothing.”
“But you run around in it like you’re some kind of American boy! Let me advise you that you aren’t.”
I pulled away as the towel chafed my neck. “Oh, I forgot. Gaijin prefer an Oriental fantasy girl who always agrees.”
“I think you know me better than that,” he said shortly.
“I don’t think I know you at all,” I said, although in a way, I did. He anticipated my thoughts, finished up my sentences. And I knew the way his hands felt on me, which was another reality unto itself.
“If you are going to leave, do it now.” He’d taken away the towel and was stroking his fingers through my hair. “And I don’t want any changed minds or midnight visits where I have to tuck you in and lie awake the rest of the night slowly going mad—”
“That’s how you felt last night?” I twisted around and saw something desperate in his eyes.
“Yes. You were so sick and fragile, and all I wanted to do was this.” As his mouth drifted over mine, he pushed me backward on the soft mattress.
It’s what I want. That thought flashed through me as I kissed him back, my hands gripping his shoulders.
“I’m not so awful, am I?” he breathed when we came up for air.
Not replying, I offered him my neck. Yes, he remembered the spot that had sent me reeling across the taxi seat. He knew that, and more. Soon I was tugging at his starched cotton shirt and then, his belt. I couldn’t let go.
“Be careful,” he chided, disappearing beneath the quilt. “I’m too old, too Scottish…”
“But I want you anyway,” I sighed. It was chemistry, pure and simple. I stretched my hands down his body and found him the way I’d expected: rocklike.
“Say that to me tomorrow.” His mouth was on my navel.
“Do you want to, ah…” It was as if some second, renegade voice within me had spoken, the one that told me if I halted this erotic journey I’d wonder forever about roads not taken.
“I’m not prepared. Are you?” He pulled the covers back and regarded me with astonishment.
“No. I came for the museums.” A crazy laugh started somewhere inside me.
“Maybe I have something else for you then,” he murmured, and his mouth and fingers trailed downward. He was a Pagan all right. In the space of a few minutes I exploded, gasping, into his hand which had flashed up to cover my mouth.
“You’re delicious. I could have you for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.” He resurfaced and drew me into a kiss. I was incapable of speech. When he stroked me again, I flicked away his hand. It was my turn. I broke away and slid down the length of his lightly furred chest and stomach, lingering long enough on his thighs that his rough breathing told me he couldn’t stand it anymore. Then I closed my mouth over him and began learning the track of his desires.
“What happened to Miss Prim?” Hugh whispered afterward. “I’m not going to ask how you knew, just feel grateful.”
“I was listening to you breathe.” I could talk again and felt wonderful.
“Darling, you’ve got to admit what happened was beyond physical.”
“Metaphysical?” I traced the ridge between his pectorals, now slic
k with sweat, enjoying the sound of our shared laughter, low and intimate.
“Sssh,” Hugh cautioned. “We’ll rouse Yamamoto.”
“Do you think anyone heard?” I would die a thousand deaths for having forgotten about the thin walls. “Not likely, as it’s the only time we ever shut up.” I felt him holding my hand, a curiously innocent gesture after all we had done. “Will you be around tomorrow when I come back from skiing? Things have changed for us, and there’s something I want to tell you.”
“It’s tomorrow already. This is about Setsuko, isn’t it?”
His silence told me yes.
“You’re a bastard,” I said and rolled away from him. He pulled me back.
“I brought the matter up now so I can reserve you for the evening. We’ll get out of here to talk. Wait for me?”
“I’m not exactly the waiting type.” The comfortable feeling I had allowed myself to be lulled into was almost completely gone. “And going to be busy.”
“More museums to see? I’ll take my chances, then.” He ran his tongue over the nape of my neck.
“I should go back to my room. So you can rest up for your skiing,” I whispered.
“Please don’t.” Hugh threw a leg over me, and his voice softened. “This is the going to be the best part.”
Neither of us spoke again, as if willing it to be so.
When I awoke, the room was bright and he was gone. From my cozy spot under the blankets, I saw a neatly folded pile of my thermal underwear and his yukata. I smiled at that; clearly, he wanted me to be covered for my trip back across the hall.
I’d make an effort to be tidy for him, too. I rolled up the bedding and slid it into the closet, stopping when I heard something knock against the back wall. I pulled the futon back out and crawled in to investigate. My hand closed around a gray velvet jewelry box.
I sat back on my heels and considered things. I knew it could be nothing for me. What had happened between us physically—and, I grudgingly admitted, emotionally—had surprised both of us. Even if he had bought me a present in advance, all that could be had in Shiroyama was lacquered wood.
I popped open the box and looked down at something sickeningly familiar—a choker of eight-millimeter, perfectly matched pearls in the pinkish shade Japanese women preferred. Pearls with a twenty-four karat butterfly clasp that was broken along the edge, as if someone had yanked it hard.
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