East Is East

by T. Coraghessan Boyle

  Owen gaped at them, for once at a loss for words.

  “I wonder if you could help us,” Abercorn began, and as the murmur of conversation started up again behind her, Ruth lingered there in the doorway, watching and listening, as Abercorn poured out his tale of woe and Owen blinked in confusion. As it turned out, Abercorn and Turco had waited three hours for the last ferry, and on finally arriving discovered to their regret and embarrassment that there were no accommodations available on the island. They needed a place to spend the night before going off in pursuit of the armed and dangerous alien who’d been terrorizing folks hereabouts—Abercorn actually said “folks hereabouts,” though it was obvious to anyone he was a sweaty-palmed city-bred Yankee who was about as folksy as Bernhard Goetz. Sheriff—he pronounced it “sheriff,” not “shurf,” though he was trying hard—Sheriff Peagler had told him that there might be a bed or two available here, and he’d be more than happy to pay whatever they liked—he was on official government business, after all, and the alternative was, well, flashing his smile and wincing comically at a peal of thunder, the alternative was to go on out there and drown.

  And so Ruth was up early, the first one at breakfast and the first to trot off to work, up before Abercorn could pin her down with any more questions. The woods were still, the morning fragrant with the previous night’s rain. The sun had risen golden and glorious from the chop of the cold Atlantic, and as she walked the path to her studio it seemed to melt into the hard unyielding posts of the slash pines. She walked slowly, breathing it all in, but still she arrived at her studio nearly an hour and a half earlier than usual. It was just past seven, and as she sat down at her desk and stared numbly at the curling page in the typewriter, she could think of nothing but lunch. Would he show up? And if he did, what would she do and what would it lead to? She envisioned her Japanese in bed, envisioned herself in Japan, a country of office buildings, claustrophobic streets and tiny feet, and then finally, to pass the time, she settled down to work.

  Hiro didn’t show up that day. Perversely. It was almost as if he knew she wanted to reach out to him but that he had some kind of cultural thing—some kind of weird Japanese machismo or whatever—that kept him from her. And that evening, since Saxby was still in Savannah and she was just beginning to flex her wings in the billiard room, and because she was bored too and felt like it—the secret, her secret making it all the more delicious—she sat down in the parlor over cocktails and chatted with Abercorn. He’d spent a fruitless day interviewing the blacks at Hog Hammock—“I couldn’t understand a word they said, I mean not a single word,” he said, “and after a while it was embarrassing”—while his assistant had snooped around in the woods with a boom box. She shared a good laugh with him over that, over Turco’s boom box. “Yes,” she said—she couldn’t help it, couldn’t help fooling around with him, just a little bit, just for practice—“I thought I heard Donna Summer out there somewhere today.”

  And where was Turco that evening? Was he tracking down the criminal even as they spoke? “Oh, no,” Abercorn had said, “he’s not that fanatical. No, he just doesn’t like roofs.” “Roofs?” she echoed, her lips drawn tight in an incipient smile. “You’re not going to believe this,” he said, and he lifted a can of warm Coke to his mouth and then put it down again, “but last night, when it was raining?” She nodded. “He takes off out of the room with his backpack and pitches his tent out there in the bushes someplace.” And then they had a good laugh over that one, and Ruth looked into Abercorn’s pink eyes and thought he was kind of cute in a way.

  Two days passed. Abercorn mooned around Thanatopsis House and some of the artists—Regina Mclntyre, in particular—began to grumble. Turco was invisible, out there in his tent, creeping through the marsh, putting his loathsome all into deracinating Ruth’s secret before it had a chance to bear fruit. In the lull of the afternoon, she heard disco music, distant, faint, deadly. The lunch bucket remained on its hook.

  And then, on the third day, Hiro appeared again. It must have been an hour at least after Owen had crept up to the porch and hung the aluminum container on its hook—she’d heard him, heard the groan of the second step, the loose one, but she hadn’t turned, hadn’t moved, and she covered herself with a furious burst of typing. A line of x’s marched across the page, and then another, before she glanced over her shoulder to catch the back of Owen’s bristling head receding down the trail to Diane Arbus, where the precocious Sandy was hard at work on his second novel. Ruth lost track of the time, though her stomach grumbled and she got Hiro’s face confused with that of her failed and hopeless heroine, and she was in another world, the cries of the doomed children echoing around her, the tide pulling at her feet, when the stair creaked again.

  She froze. Slowly, she told herself, slowly. She gave him her profile and held it, and then she looked full-face over her shoulder. He was there, in the doorway, derealized behind the grid of the screen. The red headband was gone—he was wearing something else now, something tan and twisted—and he was naked to the waist, both straps of the coveralls dangling forlornly behind him. He made no move toward the lunch pail.

  “I want to help you,” Ruth whispered.

  He didn’t move, didn’t speak, just stood there. His face seemed softer somehow, as if he were exhausted or about to cry … and she had a sudden leap of intuition: he was just an overgrown child, scared, hurt and hungry.

  “Take the food. I left it for you. Take it,” she whispered, afraid to raise her voice, afraid he’d bolt.

  She saw him swallow hard. He shuffled his feet. And then he lifted the lunch bucket from the hook and cradled it to him.

  “Listen,” she said, whispering still, whispering like a hunter in a blind, “they’re after you, do you understand? Two men, they’re in the big house.”

  He said nothing, but his face looked softer still. He was finished, she could see it. He’d had it. He was ready to give up, throw in the towel, slip the handcuffs over his wrists.

  “I won’t let them take you,” she said. “I’ll get you clothes, food, you can stay here, out of sight.” She lifted one leg and very slowly swung the chair round to face him. She’d made do with an ordinary face and figure all her life, had triumphed with it, had left a legion of men stunned in her wake, because she had the indefinable something they all wanted and because she knew it. Now, at thirty-four, she had all that and twenty years of experience too, and she was irresistible. “Come in here,” she said, and she was still whispering, but her voice had an edge to it now, peremptory and sharp. “Open the door. Sit and eat”—she made the motions with her hands and mouth—“and then you can rest there on the couch. I won’t hurt you. I give you my word.”

  For a long moment he stood there, his eyes riveted on her. He was bigger than she’d remembered, sadder, his eyes gone hollow and cheeks sunk in on themselves, but when he reached for the door she froze again. Maybe he was dangerous, she thought. Maybe the reports were true. He was a foreigner, after all. He had different values. He could be a fanatic. A maniac. A killer.

  The door swung open and he took a tentative step into the room. He clung desperately to the lunch pail. His eyes were wild. He nearly cried out when the door slammed shut behind him.

  Then she saw what it was knotted round his head: shiny nylon, a thin band of white elastic: Clara Kleinschmidt’s panties. She couldn’t help herself, couldn’t hold it any longer—the armed and dangerous alien was an overgrown kid with Clara Kleinschmidt’s panties wound round his head—and suddenly she was laughing, laughing so hard she thought she’d choke.

  Later, after he’d devoured the lunch, a box of saltines, two apples and a string of Medjool dates her mother had sent her, he fell face forward on the white wicker settee and slept the sleep of the dead. For a long while she just watched him, studying him as a medical student might have studied a corpse or an artist a model. She examined his limbs, his blistered back and scarred feet, the snarl of his knotted hair, the dimensions of his face, even the
string of saliva that dangled from his half-open mouth. He was a mess. A real mess. A week and a half of crouching in the swamps hadn’t done him much good. His flesh—every visible inch of it—was a crusted quilt of bites and scabs and pustules; an infected contusion had swollen the lobe of his right ear—the upward one—to twice its normal size; and a long hyphenated slash trailed away from his eyebrow like the exaggerated makeup of a clown or whore. His face was puffy, his skin sallow and sunburned. The only article of clothing he wore—a pair of ill-fitting overalls—was torn, seam-split, pinched in the rear and stiff with filth. Worst of all was the odor he brought with him, rank and elemental, the stink of rotting meat, of something dead along the road.

  She didn’t know how long she sat there watching him—he never moved, but for the rise and fall of his breathing, and the sun slid imperceptibly across the sky. It was cocktail hour (or thereabout: the angle of the sun as it struck the western window and illuminated her pitcher plants told her that much) when she finally made up her mind to get him some clothes, soap, hydrogen peroxide—she was afraid he’d decompose without it. She thought of a piece of fruit—a pear or banana—its skin speckled, jaundiced, blackening finally and collapsing on itself. She pushed herself up, eased out the door and made her way back to the big house.

  If she’d hoped to slip in unnoticed, luck was against her. It was a day of unadulterated sunshine and sweet wafting ocean breezes, and her fellow colonists had taken the cocktail hour outside. They were gathered on the patio, glasses glinting in the sun, as she came up the walk. “Ruthie!” Irving Thalamus called, his face lit with chardonnay. “La Dershowitz,” raising his glass high, “fictioneer extraordinaire, come and drink some vin ordinaire!”

  She had no choice, really: she needed him, and he’d begun, in a big way, to notice her. She crossed the sunstruck lawn, aware of the turned heads and the lull in the chatter, moving in her inevitable way, the heroine of her own movie, picturing herself in that dazzle of sunlight, in her tight jeans and clingy blouse. “Irving,” she said, moving into his embrace and exchanging a salutatory kiss that lingered half a beat too long, and then she was nodding to Ina Soderbord and Sandy De Haven and Regina Mclntyre and chattering nonstop until someone stuck a glass of wine in her hand and she could pause, for a second, to drink. She let the moment subside and then she was pleading the need to bathe and change for dinner—she’d been working so well she’d missed the time—and her empty glass was on the serving cart and the oaks leapt up at the edge of the two-acre lawn and the sun sat in the windows of the great gabled three-story house and she was up the steps and in.

  She was thinking she could get the Band-Aids and antiseptic in the communal bathroom—nobody in the foyer, three quick steps and up the stairs—but what about pants, shoes and socks, a clean shirt? She could rifle Saxby’s room—he’d never notice—but Saxby had the washboard front and fall-away hips of the athlete, and she knew his pants would never fit. Ditto Sandy and the austere and long-shanked Peter Anserine. There was Bob the poet, but he was too short, and Detlef Abercorn, who’d been given a back room on the third floor, but he was too tall. She could always buy something in Darien, but she’d have to wait for Saxby and the ferry and she’d have to make explanations—and she didn’t want to make explanations, not even to Saxby.

  In the bathroom she found iodine, hydrogen peroxide, Vaseline, a box of flesh-colored Band-Aid strips, two bars of lilac-scented soap molded in the shape of gaping alligators, and a hand towel. She was bundling everything up in the towel, listening for footsteps, when she thought of Irving Thalamus. He’d be perfect—not that he was as paunchy as her Japanese, but he was about the same height and he did carry a comfortable little middle-aged spread. A flutter of laughter rose to her from the patio below. She’d have to hurry—no telling when one of them would be up to evacuate a bladderful of wine or gin or repair their makeup. She opened the door slowly, the towel tucked under her arm, and she looked both ways before stepping out into the hall.

  She could feel her heart going. There were no locks on the doors—not even an inside latch for nighttime privacy. It was Septima’s belief that her artists were to be trusted implicitly with mere material things, and given the freedom to roam about and exercise their libidos with no more restraint than mutual consent. “There are no marriages at Thanatopsis,” she’d explained to Ruth on welcoming her to the colony, “we don’t recognize the institution. Here,” and she’d beamed at Saxby, who stood behind Ruth, rubbing the inside of her wrist, “here we believe in lettin’ the artist express him or herself, in whatever way he or she pleases.” Yes. And now Ruth was alone on the second floor, the appropriated toilet articles tucked under her arm, expressing herself in a stealthy and antisocial way.

  Her own room was on her left, but she passed it, passed Clara Kleinschmidt’s room and Peter Anserine’s—if anyone asked her what she was doing, she was going to the bathroom, the little one at the end of the hall, to wash up, not wanting to monopolize the full bath in case anyone might want to shower before dinner. And then she passed Owen’s room and ducked round the corner. Ahead of her was the door to the back stairway; to her left, the bathroom. And to her right, the door to Irving Thalamus’s inner sanctum. She hesitated, heard the laughter and tinkle of glass again, and then she was in.

  Hurry, she told herself, hurry, and she fought down her resentment over the size and appointments of the room—her room was like a shoebox—and went directly to the cherrywood armoire. Hurry, screamed a voice inside her and her hand trembled with nervous excitement—this was like the movies when the hero breaks into the killer’s apartment and the killer always, always comes back to surprise him—as she fumbled through the jackets and shirts and pants still wrapped in plastic from the dry cleaner. Nothing noticeable, she thought, nothing he’ll miss. In the drawer below she discovered his underwear—briefs, silk from the feel of them, in pink and red and royal blue. She thought about that for the fleet-ingest instant, about his hairy abdomen and the tight band those skimpy briefs would make, about his cock and balls swollen against the material, and then she had what she wanted—a pair of Bermudas she’d never seen him wear—so what if they featured flaming yellow parrots and chartreuse palm trees?—and a plain white V-necked T-shirt. She slid the drawer back in, closed up the armoire and reached under the bed for a pair of battered tennis shoes. He’d never miss them.

  And then suddenly a roar went up from the patio below and her heart froze. There was a shriek and the sound of shattering glass and then a burst of laughter. She thought she heard a door slam. She had to get out. But what to do with the evidence? She couldn’t just … the pillowcase. But no, he’d be sure to miss that. And then her eyes fell on the wastebasket, a cheap straw thing lined with the generic black plastic bag. Breathlessly, she bent to lift out the bag and dump its contents back into the naked straw basket, hurry, hurry, starting at every sound, the seconds ticking off and what if he caught her and what would she say? Still, even under duress, she did manage to notice the discarded letter from his agent and the card, neatly torn in two, from—who was it from?—his son. She stuffed them into the black plastic bag along with the rest of her booty, and tentatively cracked the door.

  It was a shock: someone was coming. A dark form, movement: someone was coming.

  Ruth snapped the door shut, heart pounding, wild excuses on her lips—she was looking for the laundry room and blundered in here by mistake; she was helping Owen’s Puerto Rican slave—what was his name, Rico?—with the trash, yes, his mother was sick and … she could hear footsteps approaching, a heavy tread, relentless, coming nearer … and then they paused—stopped, halted, pulled up short—just outside the door. She was dead. This was it. She pictured Irving Thalamus’s cold lizard look of surprise, Septima’s intransigent nose and Owen’s hard censorious eyes, instant justice, the only artist ever drummed out of Thanatopsis House for petty thievery—but wait: she could throw herself into his arms, yes, yes, pretend she’d come for that—and then she hear
d the sudden sharp wheeze of the bathroom door opposite and knew she was saved. She took a deep breath, waited for the sound of the bathroom latch and cracked the door again. No one in sight. She stepped into the hall and closed the door behind her.

  It was at that precise moment that Detlef Abercorn rounded the corner. He was wearing a set of earphones attached to the Walkman in his shirt pocket, and he was on her before she could react. “Oh, hey, hi,” he said, too loudly, and he slipped the phones from his ears in a motion so automatic it might have been a tic.

  Ruth clutched the garbage bag to her chest and gave him a terrified grin.

  He grinned back at her, casually leaning into the doorframe with one long arm. She saw that he was looking down her blouse. “Did I tell you I really enjoyed talking to you the other night? I find you a very”—he hesitated, and she could hear a faint metallic voice whispering through the earphones—“a very sexy woman. Really. And I wondered if—I’ve got a car and all—I wondered if you might like to get off the island for an evening—tonight maybe—and have dinner or something?”

  Ruth was on familiar terrain now, and as the shock of discovery wore off, she recovered her equilibrium. “I’d like that,” she said, bending to relieve an imaginary itch just behind her left knee, “sometime. Sometime soon. But tonight I’m afraid I already have plans.”

  Abercorn didn’t seem put off. He leaned closer and gave her a long meaningful look. “Hey,” he said, putting some gravel into his voice, “I don’t know if I’ll be around that much longer.”