Free Food for Millionaires (50 page)

Leah shook her head slowly. “Oh no. There’s no need for that. I. . . should thank you for being such a good teacher.”

There was such an obvious sweetness in this woman, he thought. She also had some infatuation for him. This happened when you were a teacher. Students fell in love with you. He’d had schoolboy crushes, too, but he was a man now, and there was a lot you could do about a woman if you found her attractive. You could chase her and take her home, or if she was unattainable, you could picture her in your mind as a lovely fantasy. He didn’t think Leah got crushes often, and he guessed accurately by her discomfort when they were seated that she had never had dinner with a man alone who wasn’t her husband. He wanted to say to her,
You’re not doing anything wrong.
It seemed a shame that a woman this beautiful with such talents had this quiet life impoverished of feelings and experiences. She was born to be an artist, but she had to contend with a few solos a year at a small Korean church in Queens. Her stage was too small. He would’ve bet a thousand dollars that she had slept with only her husband. And more likely that she’d never climaxed.

Charles was a modern man, and the lives of Korean women, in his view, were far too narrowly circumscribed. And religion made it even more so. His own sisters-in-law, very nice women and very wealthy in contrast with Leah, were just grown-up girls. They were hardly women in terms of how they spent their time and what they were allowed to do without penalty. The first married woman he’d slept with had enormous sexual passion. In bed, she would occasionally bite him so hard that skin broke. When Charles ended the relationship, she’d attempted suicide twice without explanation to her husband, who’d almost had her committed to an asylum. Charles had to throw all her letters away because they were too violent. The last he heard, she was doing better after she’d had some children.

“Thank you for dinner,” Leah said. She was relieved that it was over. The excitement was too much for her.

“You are a beautiful woman,” he said thoughtlessly.

Leah hadn’t expected this, and Charles saw that her cheeks stained again in that gorgeous peach color of hers from her forehead to her collarbone, and he wondered if her breasts would be rosy as well.

When she brought up practice, Charles said never mind. Could she come in an hour before service? he asked. “You don’t need as much work as the others.” So Leah drove him to the subway station. The green lamps at the station were lit. The darkened streets were empty, and the stores nearby were all closed for the night.

“I should drive you home. I didn’t realize you didn’t have a car.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. It would take you an hour each way.”

Leah couldn’t insist because Joseph might still be awake, waiting up for her. Already she was almost late. He would likely be sleeping in front of the television set.

Leah parked in front of the subway station beneath the elevated platform. A truck drove past and cast a moving shadow across Charles’s face. He looked like the actor who played the bad son in a soap opera she used to watch on KBS. She shifted the gear to park. Charles reached for the door handle, and Leah bowed her head to say good-bye. He retreated suddenly and kissed her on the lips.

Her shoulders tensed, and she jerked away. This was her first kiss. Her mouth was closed. She had felt the pressure of his lips against her clenched teeth. It wasn’t something romantic like she had seen on television. She and Joseph did not kiss. It didn’t seem like something a proper Korean woman might do.

Charles cupped her face with his hands. He kissed her again with greater pressure.

Leah’s arms and hands froze in shock. Then in a few moments she came to, as if she were emerging from a cold bath. She pulled back.

“Uh-muh,”
she gasped.

Charles smiled at her. “You’ve never kissed, have you?” It was a little mean of him to ask this, but he didn’t think she would mind.

Leah moved her head no.

“Hold still.. . .” Charles leaned in and kissed her again. “Do you feel me?” His eyes looked directly into hers.

She’d felt the force of his lips. Was that what he meant? This was absolutely wrong, she thought. “Professor Hong, I have to go home,” she said. Tears formed in the corners of her eyes.

“Don’t call me that,” he said. “I’m Charles. I’m Moon-su.” It had been a long time since anyone had called him that.

Leah opened her mouth a bit, but no words would come.

“Relax your face. I won’t hurt you.” He kissed her and put his tongue in her mouth, and Leah coughed.

“I. . . I. . . have to go home now,” she said. She was crying.

“I think you are so beautiful.” He pushed away the white hair from her face. “Like a goddamn angel,” he said in English.

There was no one in the street. It wasn’t past ten o’clock, but the streets were bare. The yellow streetlights flickered above them. Charles was the most handsome man she had ever known. He was telling her that he thought she was beautiful. If she weren’t married, she would have let him keep kissing her. But what she and her husband did on Friday nights was something that only married people did. Only sexual relations between a husband and wife were sanctioned by God. Leah did not think much about sex, except as something she should do to help her husband, but it crossed her mind that it might be different with Charles. The thoughts filled her with shame. Adultery could be committed in sheer thought alone—that much she knew. The great King David in the Old Testament had killed his trusted friend Uriah when Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba, became pregnant with David’s child. David, the Lord’s anointed shepherd king, had fallen prey to lust. He had murdered his friend to cover his sin. At this moment, what Leah felt was a kind of desire, and the feeling itself was strange. The professor wanted her, too.

Charles stroked her hair, and Leah didn’t want that gentleness to stop. When was the last time anyone had touched her hair?

But he had to stop. Leah didn’t know how to make him leave the car. Instead, she asked if she could go home.

“Do you want to come to my house?” he asked her.

“I have to get home,” she said again. Was he out of his mind?

Charles got out of the car, opened the driver’s door, and took her hand. Leah stepped out of the car. Did he want to drive somewhere? But he had no license, she told herself.

He walked around, opened the backseat door, and motioned her to sit in the backseat.

“Let’s sit closer,” he said.

Leah bit down on her lower lip, not knowing how to make this stop. It felt like a terrifying dream with interludes of comfort mingled with shame.

Charles kissed her and stroked her back as if he were calming a child.

“Professor Hong. . . please, no.” Her shoulders grew rigid.

He kissed her again, and she submitted to the pressure of his tongue.

He put his arm around her waist and pulled her toward him at first, then gently lowered her on her back. He began to massage her breasts.

“I want to see you,” he said, unzipping her dress and unhooking her brassiere.

She shook her head. “Please, no,” she murmured. “I have to go home,” she cried quietly. “Please.”

Charles slipped his hands under her panty hose and pulled off her undergarments. He positioned himself squarely above her and lowered himself. “Leah, oh, Leah. My beautiful Leah.. . .”

Leah shut her eyes tight, unable to say a word. She wept, and her jaw trembled. This was her fault. She should not have gone to the restaurant with him alone. He must have known that she found him attractive. That she was in love with him and thought of him at work. He was a man who had been all over the world and known many women. He must have sensed all this, and she couldn’t stop him.

When it was over, her face was wet. Charles dried her tears with his hands.

“There’s no need to cry. You can come home with me. I will take care of you,” he said. “Everything will be all right. I don’t care what people think. And you mustn’t, either. You are an artist. I can get money. You could leave your husband. We could move away. Anything is possible. I must have been waiting all my life for you.” As he said these things, Charles began to believe they were true. It was possible to imagine a future with Leah. He could imagine a happy life with a person like this. She would make an excellent wife for a composer. They could go to his house right now, and he could keep her there. He would make love to her properly on a bed. He didn’t want to wake up alone anymore.

Leah looked at him in horror. What was he saying? She licked her lips because they felt so dry. She wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands. “I have to go home,” she whispered. She pulled up her panties and hose and hooked her brassiere. She reached behind her to zip up her dress, and Charles helped her. He kissed her forehead again. He felt so happy.

“You mustn’t be upset,” he said. “We made love tonight.
Yobo,
when can I see you again?”

“I—I don’t know,” she said, unable to think.

“Come early on Sunday,” he said. “As early as you can. You can call me any time you like.” She was the purest thing he had ever touched. He loved her. It made sense that she was frightened, but he believed that she loved him, too.

Leah returned to the driver’s seat. Charles stood by the car and stuck his head in the car window to kiss her. At the mouth of the subway station, he waved good-bye.

When Leah got home, Joseph was asleep in bed, and she showered. She soaped her breasts and pubes thoroughly. She wanted to forget what had happened. It would have been a relief if someone shot her dead. When she got into the bed, she lay there and said her prayers. In the backseat while the professor was pushing into her, words had blurred in her head like crazy muffled pleas to God to save her. But in that time, whether it was five minutes or less, she couldn’t say for sure, no one had passed by or come for her.

6
MODEL

H
ER EYES SHUT,
Ella could picture the notes seeping into her body. She wanted to rest her head but feared falling asleep—not because she was bored, but because she felt secure and peaceful sitting here. Ensconced in her dark red seat at Carnegie Hall, she put out of her mind the custody hearings, the letters of character reference required by the court-appointed social worker, and the image of her sharp lawyer, who made her feel naive at best and at worst plain stupid. Ella was also tired. At night, she worried about losing Irene, who’d already started to string words together last month. Her baby’s favorite breakfast this week was steamed rice, chicken fingers, and apples—Irene called food “bop-bop” and milk “oo-yew.” When she was in bed alone, Ella stared at Ted’s old pillow. How could she have missed all the obvious things about Ted? How much did a man change after he married? Was she dumb, or had he concealed his true self? What had she done wrong?

But right now she was on a date, sort of, with David Greene. Since he had broken up with his fiancée less than a month ago, they had gone to dinner twice, seen each other at school, and spoken on the phone almost nightly, but they hadn’t done much besides. He held her hand during dinners, and they always hugged good-bye. He asked her to go to the movies and parties, but after work, Ella preferred to fix Irene’s dinner and give her baths. She didn’t like being out during the week. She’d never brought David to her home. He said he understood. Ella was lousy at saying no, but when it came to Irene, she found it easier to do so. But it was Radu Lupu playing Beethoven, he’d insisted earlier that afternoon. You can’t miss this, he’d said, his blue eyes darkening. “Call the sitter, please, Ella. You must hear him play. And these are such good tickets.”

They were very fine seats. The pianist played sublimely. She and Ted had rarely gone to concerts. He’d preferred films and fancy restaurants. Ted was particular about food. He rarely frequented a restaurant with a Zagat rating below 22. Did Delia know how to cook?

In the past six years of being with Ted, she had forgotten what she preferred. The music that she was listening to now was unquestionably gorgeous. What upset Ella was that she had paid such careful attention to the things that Ted loved (Kurosawa films, Coltrane, lamb curry with naan but not basmati rice, and Relais & Châteaux hotels) and had submitted to all of his preferences. Was that why he’d left? Did he think she was a mindless pushover? Wasn’t that what her lawyer thought of her, too? From the few times Casey had answered Ella’s questions about Delia (Ella had masochistically begged Casey for scraps of Delia’s biography, and Casey had given her the smallest of portions), her husband’s soon-to-be second wife had the features of a pistol, a firecracker, a tinderbox. Explosives came to mind. Ella had failed to be stimulating enough to keep her husband at home. And she had gotten fat. Though she had ultimately lost the weight—every pound of it after Ted moved out. She was as thin as she was in college. There were stretch marks and loose skin across her abdomen, but otherwise she had the body of a slender twenty-five-year-old woman.

The piano music ceased, and the orchestra entered the final movement. Ella had played piano until the eighth grade but had stopped because she didn’t like her piano teacher, who used to put his arm around her and cuddle when she played well. He had smelled strongly of cloves and wore an old cardigan with holes on the elbows. Her father had let her quit without explanation, and she’d ended up taking more tennis lessons. Ella had liked playing the piano, and she used to love to play tennis, which Ted didn’t like as much as golf or skiing. The thought of not having done these things she’d loved made her feel foolish. And it hadn’t done her any good. Her husband had cheated on her, and people found her insipid. Ella felt her tears, and she wiped them away before David could see. It would be too difficult to explain them.

The music was done. The audience rose to their feet to applaud. Ella got up instinctively and clapped as hard as she could. There was a debt owed to a person who gave you beauty and feeling. A few dispersed to the exits, while most clapped thunderously for encores.

After two additional songs, David helped her with her raincoat.

“Dinner?” he suggested. Ella might say yes since Irene was already asleep.

Ella glanced at her watch. She felt terribly alert. “Where do you live, exactly?” she asked. All she knew was that he lived on the Upper West Side.

“Seventy-eighth and West End,” he said with a puzzled smile.

“Can I see where you live? Is it an apartment?” Ella fixed David’s collar and smoothed her hands over his shoulders. The gesture comforted him. “I mean, would that be all right?”

“Yes, of course,” he said. Lately she was difficult to predict. Ella hadn’t even wanted to come to the concert tonight. He’d had to cajole a little, ask her to call the sitter to stay later; he’d told her that she needed to make room in her life for the beautiful things. And now she wanted to see his house.

On the street, Ella wondered herself what had made her do that. David tried to hail a taxi, but there were none free. Let’s take a train, she said, and they took the 1 train to Seventy-ninth and walked. With David, she was allowed to make a suggestion about how to get to places and where to go. It was liberating, but she felt the added responsibility for his happiness. What happened if he didn’t want to do what she wanted? It had yet to happen, but it would eventually. It was easier in life, then, to just go along.

As they walked to the house, he talked about his students at the prison. They wanted to publish their poems but feared their ideas might be stolen. David didn’t make fun of them, she noticed. “They shouldn’t be so suspicious, but isn’t it marvelous in a way that they’re proud of their creative ideas?” he asked. “That they think of what they made up as something subjectively and objectively valuable? They believe that their poems are good enough to steal.” Ella nodded, thinking this was right. What was valuable in her life? If Ted took Irene away, she’d have nothing.

“Are you all right?” David asked.

“Yes,” she said. It was unfair to think only about her divorce all the time. “David, your work is amazing. You’re making people believe in themselves. You do that for me, too,” she said. “Your friendship means so much to me.”

David squeezed her hand. “You mean a lot to me.”

The house was an orange brick town house in a style Ella couldn’t properly name—an arched entryway, a dark-paneled door resembling a chocolate bar, and a sloping roof. Its facade was attractive and evidenced its good maintenance. When David opened the door, Ella was a little taken aback by what she saw.

The living room was beautiful, with old rugs on the floor, a high wall full of books, and heavy mahogany furniture from his family. Paintings that looked like Wyeths hung on the walls.

“Would you like a drink?” he asked, and she said no. “Hungry?” He offered to order dinner from a pizzeria down the street. “I usually have cereal for dinner or a sandwich.”

Ella shook her head no again. “I want to see the rest of the house,” she said. “It’s lovely.”

“Okay.” David was famished. Or at least he had been at the concert. Now, all he could think about was how to touch Ella, but he was afraid. Under normal circumstances, not that this had happened to him so many times, but if another woman had asked to come over to his house, he might have said no unless he was ready to sleep with her; but when Ella asked, he didn’t think it was because she wanted to have sex. There might have been something else, but he didn’t know what exactly. But now that she was here, he wanted to touch her, to be close to her.

“I have a record of his.”

“Who?” Ella glanced at the sofa. She’d been brazen enough to ask to see his house but felt that she needed his permission to sit down.

“Radu Lupu,” he said. “The pianist. From tonight.”

“Where’s he from?”

“Romania, I think.”

Ella shifted her weight slightly from one foot to the other. Feeling increasingly awkward, she finally sat down.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he said. “It hadn’t occurred to me to invite you—”

“I’m sorry.” She interrupted him, feeling even more self-conscious. “It was rude. I think I wanted to know how you lived. What you’re like outside of where we usually are. I wanted to see your house. I thought—I don’t know what I thought.” Ella opened her eyes wide, then closed them for a few moments. “Oh, good grief.”

“No, no,” he protested, smiling at her. It was a good sign, wasn’t it? She wanted to know him better. Ever since his confession the day she’d returned from the lawyer’s office, he’d been thinking about how things would be between them. He’d hesitated to bring it up. “You don’t understand. I’m so glad you’re here. Do you want to listen?” he asked.

“Hmm?”

“The record.”

“Oh, sure. Yes. I’d love that.”

David put the compact disc in the player. It felt good to have something to keep his hands busy.

“Okay, now I’ll give you the rest of the tour,” he said after adjusting the volume. They went downstairs, and David showed her the kitchen and dining room on the ground floor. There was a small garden outside that needed tending.

He pointed to the staircase and gestured for her to climb ahead of him. On the second floor, there were two large rooms: a guest room and the other, a kind of music room with a large piano and a cello. Two music stands faced each other as if in conversation. Ella sat on the piano bench and placed her hands on the keys. The song she remembered was “Clair de Lune” by Debussy. It had been a difficult piece for her, requiring a lot of practice. She began to play, stumbling in places, but she kept at it, and even in her awkward playing, she felt moved by its sentiment and loveliness. She remembered having to miss
The Brady Bunch
in order to practice her lessons, and her favorite had been Jan, the middle girl with the straight blond hair. She had wanted five siblings, too. Why hadn’t her father remarried? She might have had a family, something beyond the life she had tried so hard to create for her father by herself.

“When did you learn that?” he asked.

“A long time ago. I’m full of surprises today.” Ella stopped playing and touched her brow. “If I’d known that I’d be playing for you today, I would have practiced more as a girl.”

“You play very well,” he said. Ella had more feeling in her piano playing than in her words, he thought. She was more careful with the way she said things.

“No, I’m not good. But you know, I enjoyed that. Maybe I’ll try to learn again. Irene and I’ll take lessons together.”

David sat behind his cello and played something she didn’t recognize.

“What is that?”

“Debussy, too. Sonata in D minor,” he said. “I only played a little of the beginning.”

Ella smiled at him. “I never knew.”

“I never told,” he said, moving his bow away from the strings dramatically. “Okay, only one more flight, unless you want the attic tour to check out my air-conditioning system. But after, I am ordering a large pizza unless you disagree,” he said. “Or we could go out and eat something.”

Ella didn’t reply but followed him up the stairs.

They stood together on the patch of the third-floor landing, and Ella hesitated from entering the rooms, and he didn’t move, either. There were three bedrooms: one was the master—large, but almost empty of furniture except for a full-size bed and a single nightstand piled high with books. Another bedroom had been converted into a study. And the third bedroom was another guest room. In the corner window, there were a dozen jade plants in different-size pots.

“They’re all jades,” she exclaimed. “I have some, too.”

“They all came from the same mother,” he said proudly.

Ella studied the plants again. There was so much you learned from visiting a person’s house.

“It’s such a big house. And you take care of it so well.” Her own home was also large. That had been very important to Ted. For two people in Manhattan who worked in schools and earned modest salaries, their luxurious housing made no sense. Her own house was paid for by Ted and her father, but now she knew that David must have had family money, too, or investments.

“Did your fiancée live. . . here?”

“My ex-fiancée,” he corrected her.

“Sorry.”

“No. She never lived here. That hadn’t occurred to me. I’m a nice Catholic boy.”

“Oh? It hadn’t occurred to you?” Ella said, smiling.

“I’m nice, but I’m not a priest,” he said, clearing his throat. He wanted to kiss her. Ella’s mouth looked like a small red fruit.

“No, that’s not what I meant,” she said, her voice faltering. She’d been talking about cohabitation, and he was talking about sex, but she wasn’t really talking about that. Was she? They still hadn’t left the stairwell. They were both frightened by the idea of sex, but he was trying to say that he thought of her that way. And she was now thinking of how it would be to have sex with David. Then she remembered the herpes and how she had never told him, and perhaps he might never wish to be with her, and how she would, of course, understand.

“I have herpes,” she said. Just like that.

“Pardon?”

“Ted. He gave me herpes when he slept with Delia. He told me recently that she didn’t have it, but somehow we both do. And if I slept with you, and I had an outbreak, then you might get it. I read a few books about it since. I found out when I was pregnant with Irene. You wouldn’t necessarily get it, but you could, and, and. . . I’m not saying that you want to sleep with me. But since I am being nothing if not presumptuous today, I might as well just say it, because I may never have the nerve again— Oh God.” Ella turned around and walked downstairs.

“Wait. Wait. Come back.”

Ella turned around.

“Come back, please. Sit with me.”

Ella sat on a step. David sat beside her.

“I do want to sleep with you. I want very much to make love to you.”

“Herpes,” she said, and when she said it again, she didn’t know what he thought, because she couldn’t even look at his face when she said it. But hearing it from her own lips made it feel less awful. It didn’t sound like the plague, which was how she’d felt when the doctor had told her. Reading the books, having Irene be born fine, and David not looking horrified—it wasn’t the end, she realized. It was a disease, but it wasn’t as if she were going to die, and if he didn’t want to be with her anymore, then she would understand. It wouldn’t be love. Didn’t you go through anything for love? Maybe no one would ever want her.