by Brian Deer
Bzzzzzzz. Bzzzzzzzzzzz.
She returned to the rug, walking on her knees. She whispered, “Your car?”
“Nowhere near.”
Bzzzzzzz. Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
The apartment fell silent, a ship hooted on the bay, then she felt Ben’s thick fingers on her wrist. He’d reached over and taken it, slipping a pinky between her bangles. She realized he could feel her pulse.
Ten seconds passed… Ten seconds more… All she heard now were street sounds.
And then she heard different sounds, from somewhere nearer. At first, she wasn’t sure what they were. Low, dull, thumps, that she felt as much as heard. Then she recognized footsteps on planks.
The thumping ceased… A moment’s silence… Then tapping from the kitchen. Hiroshi. He’d climbed the fire escape at the back of the building and was tapping on the French door glass. He was tapping on the glass—tap-tap tap-tap—with metal: maybe a key, or a coin.
Tap-tap tap-tap… Tap-tap tap-tap… Tap-tap tap-tap tap-tap.
She silently counted the passing seconds. Five… Ten… Fifteen… Twenty…
Then feet thumping planks: going down.
Again, she counted. One to ten… Eleven to twenty. At one hundred, the danger would have passed. She’d locked the French doors. That was lucky: she often didn’t. With more luck, he’d assume she was out.
Forty-four, forty-five, forty-six, forty-seven… Sixty-seven, sixty-eight, sixty-nine, seventy.
Then she heard a car’s engine and her iPhone rang. Hiroshi’s face appeared on the screen.
She didn’t pick up, and the picture soon vanished. She exhaled. Relief. She was safe. He’d go to his hotel, call her in the morning, and leave her at the mercy of Ben.
HE MADE a point to look somber when he released her wrist and took a long hit from the MiniVAP. He did somber well: his Mr. Moody was renowned. He once practiced in a mirror at Cleveland Avenue. He watched her ass wriggle as she crawled to the laptop, restored Pearl Jam, and wriggled back to the shaggy blue rug. Then they lay, looking upward, four knees toward the ceiling, chilling out together. At last.
For a while, they didn’t speak, but absorbed the classic band in the glow of the bubbling tank.
“I do so like him.” She broke the spell. “And I admire him so much. He’s a brilliant scientist. No question about that. He’s a man I really respect. And he’s very funny, and compassionate, and kind.”
Ben stroked his T-shirt, feeling his chest. “Sounds pretty positive. Or is there a ‘but’ I hear coming?”
“No. There’s no ‘but.’ Only a few questions, little things I’m resolving with myself.”
He raised both arms and clasped his fingers behind his neck. “Want to share them with a stranger? I won’t tell.”
She pivoted from the rug, swigged a mouthful of beer, and sank back, brushing his shoulder. “Well, I don’t know. How do I put this? Let me think… Okay, you know how you hear about those women, you know, who say, ‘I was married twenty years and I never had an orgasm. I didn’t know what they were till now’?”
He’d worried about the talking—letting her mind wander—but, as topics go, orgasm was admissible. “What, you never had an orgasm? Wow, that sucks. What do we do about that?”
“Don’t be insane. Not me. What I’m saying is, I’m supposing to myself, what if the feeling I’m feeling isn’t the whole, real thing? I mean, not love. I could find myself giving up this apartment, moving to the other side of the world almost, a different culture, new job, living with Hiroshi, and then want to come back.”
“What? You’re saying maybe you don’t love him?”
“I didn’t say that. But I mean, what does it mean? What does it really mean? Love. I don’t know. It’s like having orgasms. That’s what I’m saying. Maybe if you haven’t experienced it, like you read in magazines, you wouldn’t know what you missed. And then maybe you’d never experience it at all because you stop looking. You see?”
“Really lose out.”
“Exactly.”
Her knees sank toward the rug until her legs lay straight. Were we talking body language here, or what?
He rolled to face her, propped his head in a palm, and took another draw on the MiniVAP. Still holding his breath, he lowered the device, and rested his free hand on her belly.
She closed her eyes. This time she didn’t flinch. She was into this for certain. This is it.
“Up till about a week ago—well, until that conference to be accurate—I would have definitely said, ‘Yes, I love him.’ Would have been easy. And I’m sure I do, really. But now, you know, I can’t be sure. I’m sure I do, but can I actually be sure?”
He fingered the hem of her T-shirt. This is it.
He tugged. She didn’t move. This is it.
The tension in the fabric emphasized her shape, with its undulating hills of desire. He slid his hand beneath the shirt. She felt like sun-warmed marble. “I get it. I can empathize. I can.”
“It was spending so much time together.”
“You mean with me?”
“No. With him. Yes. No. I don’t know.”
He stroked her belly in slow, light circles. The back of his hand strained against cotton.
“I hadn’t seen him in three months. Of course, we talk on Skype and Zoom all the time. But suddenly we were sleeping together, every night. I mean, really. In Washington, and then here. He stayed over Tuesday night and last night as well, like husband and wife. All of that.”
Ben leaned toward her, supported on an elbow, his chin near her neck. This is it. He lowered his face and licked her skin. He licked long—like a lion, or a big, big dog—arched his back, looked up, and licked the air.
“He’s a great conversationalist. Even with his English. Even on Skype, you know? He’s so knowledgeable, admirable, and he’s a brilliant lover in many ways. I always look forward to seeing him. But is that enough? I mean, it could be everything, or it could be not enough. How would I know?”
He rose to a kneel. Now the big dog panted, air cooling lips and teeth. He stretched a leg across her and tugged at her sweatpants.
Her hips rose toward him. This is it.
“It’s so confusing. I mean, it really is. It’s as if I have to decide between two sides of the same coin.”
“Uh-huh.”
“If I can’t have both sides at once, then what’s best to choose? One day I think one thing, and the next day I think something else.” She pivoted again, bit his stubbled chin, and sank back to rest on the rug.
He dragged off her sweatpants and threw them in a corner. He was right: she wore nothing underneath.
“I mean, I feel I’m two people sometimes. Both my parents are second generation in America, you know, so I suppose I’m technically Japanese. But my grasp of the language isn’t that good at all. I’m as much an American as you are.”
He pulled a handful of condoms from a pocket in his shorts and threw them on the floor by the rug.
“Father said it would affect my schooling, so they usually spoke English when I was in the room. Maybe I know “Dozo yoroshiku onegaishimasu,” and how to ask the time of the next train to Kita-Kyushu. But all that side of me says what I feel is love.”
She tilted upward and raised her arms. Her T-shirt slipped off like silk.
“And the other?”
She bit his shoulder.
He pulled back, nudged her flat, ran stubble across her breasts, and slobbered more canine licks. He licked her neck, jawbone, chin, and mouth, then teased her lips apart with his tongue.
She tried to say more, but her mouth was sealed. His hands gripped her arms: she was pinned. This was gonna be the best… The best fuck of her life. Her reference point, forever, would be him.
He rose to his knees, dragged his shirt from his shoulders. Then he stood and shucked off his shorts.
Sumiko’s eyes widened as her gaze soaked his body. In the watery light, Pearl J
am rocked. Long. Slow. Insistent. Made for love.
Moody. Dark. Neo-Pink Floyd. Edging into white-hot squalls.
Thirty-one
The San Francisco Marriott Marquis, 22:35 Pacific
HIROSHI MURAYAMA strode in from Fourth Street and rode an escalator up to the lobby. He would change into sports gear, work out in the gym, grab a light snack, and call Sumiko.
As ever, he was dressed in his management uniform: black suit, white shirt, and red tie. This attire was specified in 1947 by the Founder, Yoshinobu Sanomo. In those austere, painful times, it was a point of great honor that the leaders of what was then a sulfonamide manufacturer should always be immaculately groomed.
He crossed the hotel atrium—with palm trees and a fountain—his leather soles skidding on marble. He hopped into an elevator, hit button 8 and, as the doors shut, tore off the tie. If there was one thing he loathed about working for Sanomo, it was that terrible Yoshinobu dress code. In the years since they hired him, fresh from Kyoto University, they’d abolished aged-based pay scales. They’d brought in flexible contracts. They’d scrapped the ban on hiring foreign scientists. But the suit-shirt-and-tie outfit? That would never change. And it made them all look such twats.
Even today, it had brought humiliation. He found such incidents unbearable. First, on the Dirty Harry Tour of San Francisco, a loud little girl tugged her mother’s elbow over a “penguin with its tongue hanging out.” Then he’d met for a beer with an old friend at Berkeley, who asked, “Do you wear it in bed?”
At the eighth floor, the elevator doors snapped open, and he stuffed the tie into a pocket. The maneuver was complicated by a white paper bag, clamped to his side with an elbow. This afternoon, shopping in the Haight-Ashbury district, he’d spotted a copy of “Ain’t That Loving You Baby” to add to his vinyl collection. Its sleeve was torn near the listening dog logo and some fool had scrawled a price on the back. But all he needed now was “Return to Sender” and “Money Honey” and framed on his bedroom walls in Nagoya would be the complete original singles of The King.
Finding this treasure had lightened his day. The rest was troubling. Not good. At breakfast, dear Sumiko was tense, abrupt. Perhaps he hadn’t pleased her enough. And tonight, he’d stopped by, but she wasn’t home at ten o’clock. He wondered if she needed more space. She had a meeting, she’d said. But could it go on so late? And she didn’t seem sure who would be there.
He’d pulled up on Potrero Hill and phoned from his car but saw that her lights were out. A scruffy man, like Jimi Hendrix, emerged from a side gate. But, if she’d taken another lover, it wasn’t him.
HE TAPPED his key card at room 807 and was startled when he pushed open the door. The lights were on. And not one or two lights. All of the lights were on.
He pressed the door wider, heard the sounds of TV, and saw a man sitting at the desk. He was Black, with a leather jacket, heavy glasses, and a beard. He was watching TV in a chair.
“Excuse me. My room?”
The man smiled. “You sure?”
He saw Viva Las Vegas on the bed.
Then he heard splashes—urination—from the bathroom, and a White man appeared, zipping his fly. And he was more than a man: an American police officer, in uniform, with badges, and a gun.
A police officer was using his bathroom.
The first man stood, reached into his jacket, produced a wallet, and flipped a gold badge.
“Mr. Murayama?”
“Correct. I am he.”
“Hiroshi Murayama?”
“Yes.”
The man flipped the badge away. “Raimundo Idahosa, SFPD. What are you saying now we found it? Personal use?”
“Found what? Personal use? Use what?”
“If it’s personal use, best say so now.”
“I do not understand this ‘personal use.’”
“Okay. Gave you a chance. Mr. Murayama, I’m arresting you on suspicion of possessing a controlled substance with the intent to sell.” The detective relieved him of “Ain’t That Loving You Baby” threw it on the bed and produced a pair of polished steel handcuffs. “Contrary to the laws of the State of California. Do you understand?”
He was paralyzed. Speechless. Must be wrong room. “Excuse me? Don’t understand.”
FRIDAY JULY 25
Thirty-two
SHE’D THOUGHT about the sex. She’d thought about his body. She’d even thought about him naked in her apartment. But what Sumiko Honda hadn’t considered was Ben Louviere staying the night. No fragments of the fantasies that had plagued her for a week envisaged him failing to leave. No shards of her daydreams since he arrived in San Francisco ended with him falling asleep. Yet here he was, at daybreak Friday, uncompromisingly asleep in her bed.
She sat at a dressing table near the foot of that bed and absorbed his physical presence. He lay right-sided under a sky-blue sheet with his shoulders and chest exposed. His left hand stretched behind him into the space from which she’d risen; the other pillowed a cheek of dark stubble. She watched his body swell as his lungs pulled air: swamping bronchioles, rushing alveoli, riding erythrocytes into his heart.
How long was their lovemaking? She couldn’t remember. Every move had felt so perfect. How long before he crashed on the living room settee? How long before he dragged her to the bedroom? How long did they lay, her mouth against his, until she fell asleep breathing his breath?
He’d been strong, determined. But so had she. He’d controlled her. But only to her will. She’d ridden upon wave upon wave of orgasm. He’d been worth bringing two-and-a-half thousand miles.
She tugged at the cord of a venetian blind, and the light doubled, tripled, quadrupled. She peered through its slats toward morning over Oakland. How quickly the night had passed. A vaporous sun hung pale behind a haze, drifting above a mist, floating upon a fog, swirling across the waters of the bay.
Behind her, he moaned, rolled onto his back, and stretched his big hands toward the ceiling. “Where are you, beautiful? I’m lonely. Come to Ben. You’re leaving me all alone. Come to Ben.”
She turned toward the bed, then back to the bay. Options. Choices. Decisions. She must Whatsapp Hiroshi. But the day was half-formed. One might say it hadn’t yet started. She tugged another cord and the bedroom dimmed. She slipped beneath the sheet.
He was warm.
THE TWO remaining cardinalfish looked brighter than yesterday. Perhaps they, too, got it together. When Friday rebooted and Sumiko resurfaced, their black and silver stripes looked blacker and more silver. Their dorsal fins trailed more resplendent. They hovered above the reef like hot air balloons on a day without wind or cloud.
She turned from the aquarium and studied the remains of a night she’d wanted for a week. Five Kirin bottles ringed the shaggy blue rug, like a circle of standing stones. Her MiniVAP rested where a stray foot kicked it. Her laptop screen hadn’t slept. Clothes lay where they fell when he’d stripped them both naked: her Extinction Rebellion T-shirt, his baggy blue surf shorts, her sweatpants, his sneakers, her bangles.
She checked her iPhone: nothing from Hiroshi. She felt surprise and relief in one emotion. She yanked back the curtains, padded to the kitchen, and called “milk or sugar?” down the corridor.
Returning to the bedroom, she stepped round the bed, inhaling his smell as she passed. It was the smell of last Friday when she stepped into the module: soap, fresh sweat, and something magical. She clunked a mug of coffee beside a digital alarm clock, amid a scatter of condom wrappers.
Ben sprawled, legs apart, fingering his chest, his knees making a tent in the sheet. Then he kicked—left–right, left–right, left–right—till he lay naked, grinning, and hard. He squeezed his biceps, stroked his abdominals, and ran his thumbs through a fur of pubic hair. He pressed forward his erection, opened his palms, and his cock sprang back with a slappp.
“I need you again beautiful. I’m feeling so lonely. Let’s go to paradise again and come back s
lowly.”
And wouldn’t that be a journey: to drift again on currents, as light and untroubled as the fish? But again would be the fifth time, and she needed to be practical. There was danger here in going too far.
She set down a second mug, retreated to the bathroom, and donned a yellow flannel robe for protection. Then she picked up a used rubber from the floor in the corridor, and set about the living room—tidying, straightening—brushing last night into the past. She shut down her laptop, put away the vaporizer, and dumped her T-shirt in a basket. She gathered the bottles, squeezed the bangles onto her wrist, and pressed his shorts to her face.
What they’d shared was incredible. But she’d got to stay real. She’d got to keep a grip on this thing. She laid the shorts with his sneakers, found the big manila envelope, and took it to the bedroom: more protection.
He was sitting on his heels and made a grab as she passed. But she dodged and returned to the window. He rose to his knees. She tightened her robe. He smirked and made a dogsniffing sound.
She eyed the clock. “Why don’t you take a shower?”
He pushed out his tongue and snapped it back.
She opened the envelope, pulled out her list, and flicked through the pages without reading. Against the power of his gaze, they meant nothing. Nothing. Those blue, blue eyes lasered her robe, punctured the window, smashed through Oakland, and blazed all the way to where they met.
He must have felt her desire in the Marriott lobby when Trudy Mayr arrived at the conference. Even then he must have known what she wanted. Needed. And if he’d known that then, what did he know now? She’d got to keep a grip on this thing.
She riffled through the list and returned it to the envelope. “I was right, wasn’t I? Actually forging signatures. And Wilson quite obviously knew.”
“Yes, you were right. Totally right. Come here and claim your reward.”
“No, look, this is work. I’m serious.”