Secrets of the Apple (16 page)

“Are you sure it was really as public as it felt to you?” Kate asked. Ryoki resisted rolling his eyes at her naiveté. The reporter was only the beginning of the onslaught, a raw materials supplier for every ax grinding stranger possessing a microphone or internet access.

“Miu knew this would spatter a lot of mud on her family name, and she needed to make sure she could get back into her father’s bank account. So before the story became public, her clever lawyer advised her to contact this friend of hers from Tokyo U, a journalist who launched her career with the story that I oppressed my wife and abandoned her for months at a time while I was in London. No mention that she chose not to come with me, of course. Apparently I stopped her from progressing. Luckily, she escaped into the arms of a more evolved man.”

“Evolved from what—morality or just apes in general?”

Ryoki grunted.

“Any chance of forgiving her?” she asked after a pause.

“Have you forgiven your husband?” His question sounded harsh to his own ears.

“How do you know I’m not to blame?”

“Would you have fooled around on your husband?” he blurted, immediately wishing he hadn’t.

“I don’t actually believe in sex outside of marriage, so I’m going with no.” Ryoki looked at her, taken aback as red splotches bloomed up her neck and pinked her cheeks. “And yes, I’m upfront about it with the men I date,” she said defensively, looking at her watch and getting up to tuck and zip her suitcase, preparing her escape.

He jumped up and put his hand on her bag. “Do you want to watch a movie? It might be nice to stay in for a while,” he said. She glanced from him to her bag, a hesitation, an opening. “Come back to San Francisco with me, we’ll finish the project and I’ll write you a glowing letter of recommendation, make some calls. I can help your career. I’m still good for that, even if I’m not very evolved.”

For the next half-hour they both stood with their hands on that suitcase while Ryoki talked and talked, once stepping in a steaming pile of schmoozy charm generally reserved for women in bars, until Kate gave him the stink-eye and he course corrected, shamelessly pimping every pleasant moment they’d shared since January, drawing on the second-generation connection, “we’re practically family.” He’d used all his best material and was getting nervous when he pulled his hail mary—the saga of his office chair, which got him a smile that stuttered into a laugh, sending the last of their fight off into the ozone, leaving them to stand together as two survivors. Before her laugh could die away, he took her hand and pinched her fingers around the zipper, jointly unzipping the suitcase. He even slid his hand under the closed lid and pulled out three inches of silky white, the
coup de grâce.
He stepped back, head to one side, silently asking.

“Maybe a movie would be nice,” she said slowly, reaching for the remote and taking a seat on the couch and tucking up her feet as she scrolled through the pay per views. Taking the hint, he pulled out his phone and keyed in the concierge number on the back of his black American Express. A chipper travel agent restored her original ticket and they watched a cornball romantic comedy that under normal circumstances he would never have endured without a paralyzing drug. But he’d have watched it twice, if she’d asked.

When the movie ended, neither of them made a move to get off the couch. It was too easy to stay in Kate’s room, insulated from the murder, hovering far above the news vans clustered to tear the juiciest bites from the gaudy spectacle. They clicked on a second movie, then a third, any excuse to delay the moment of separation when they would each have to sit alone and think about Jake McLeary. By the end of the third movie, their eyes had begun to feel square, and they scavenged two decks of cards, invented new rules for solitaire, and played card tricks which eventually degenerated into throwing cards into the ice bucket from all points in the room, fashioning them into missiles and airplanes. Ryoki won a miniature shampoo for the greatest distance, and Kate scored a disposable shower cap for the most shots ever missed in a single afternoon. All the while they talked and talked.
I was once in front of my whole high school with my underwear hanging out from under my leotard. 

Well I was—
he was going to tell about the maid in San Francisco, but it was still too raw. That is, cough, I walked into the girl’s toilet in third grade.

Phfff, big deal. I win this round.

Back and back they reached, into the innocent years before they grasped the existence of a Ruiz or a McLeary. It was not until after nine when the last card had become so hopelessly mangled that they found themselves hungry for the first time that day. They looked around the room littered with folded cards and decided to venture downstairs to one of the casino’s better restaurants, carrying the shampoo and shower cap in their pockets, calling them trophies but fingering them like amulets.

The restaurant was crowded but not excessively noisy, except for the large table next to Kate and Ryoki, all suit-wearing women in their thirties, whose chatter revealed them to be in town for a conference, some connection to universities, maybe female English professors or women in administration—hard to tell. They seemed to talk all at once using words like “predilection” when “preference” would have served rather better, and each kept a few bites of dessert on her plate so the endless toasting could continue under the respectable guise of dinner.

“You’ll be just like them some day,” Ryoki said. “Isn’t that your hope and dream?” Kate smiled into her menu.

“Yes,” she said, “and if I scramble all the way to the top of the heap, they might dab a few tears on the day I announce my retirement, then reassign my office before I’ve even vacated it.”

He looked at her skeptically. He’d heard her use the word “predilection” once, though come to think about it, it may have been sarcastic.

 “If you feel that way, why bother?”

“I enjoy teaching. I really love it. But I have no illusions about my market value. In the marketplace everybody’s ultimately replaceable, even you.” She’d made a joke, but her smile had an edge to it. Ryoki thought of his grandfather who had built an empire and passed it to his son. His grandfather had only been dead a year, but in December a new employee had blundered badly, demonstrating he’d never heard of The Great Tanaka.

Kate pulled off her watch and leaned over to drop it in her purse, smiling politely when she happened to make eye contact with a tall woman at the university table. The woman raised her glass in hardy salute. “I’m Sheila,” she said, laughing out loud before knocking back her drink in one quick flick, definitely not her first. Kate smiled again and dived straight back into her menu.

But Sheila had tired of her companions and frankly stared as Kate gave her order to Ryoki who relayed it to their server when he arrived, perfectly natural for two people who had learned etiquette at their mothers’ knees. Sheila had learned the rules from a manual purchased just before her first professional interview,
Etiquette for the Politically Correct Age.
“Hey,” she boomed, “haven’t you heard? Women in this country can order their own dinner.” Diners’ heads popped up all over the restaurant. A gray-haired couple, Italian leather and old silver, spared Kate and Ryoki a sympathetic glance while Sheila stood to take a bow and a few of the more raucous tables clapped and whistled for the woman with the courage to stand up for Kate’s rights. Most of the restaurant had no idea what had prompted the outburst, but they were on vacation and happy to join in pretty much any celebration, pleased to pack another story among their souvenirs, “the Japanese man caught trying to oppress the young American ingénue.”

Ryoki looked at Kate, trying to think of something consoling to ease her inevitable embarrassment. Maybe he could take her hand, look into her eyes and remind her she had just saved his life, that he was only alive because of her towering strength. Towering strength—too cliché. And too masculine sounding, now that he thought about it. What else could he—

“I need to get my hair cut,” Kate said, taking a casual sip of her drink. “Do you think you could occupy yourself tomorrow morning?” Caught off-guard, Ryoki burst out laughing. Some of the diners took it as further evidence of his general boorishness, but Kate leaned closer, awarding him a conspiratorial smile. It was the first time he’d looked her right in the eye so close and he faltered, noticing her eyes were not brown at all, but green, dark green speckled with tiny gold nuggets.

The server arrived with their salads and Kate leaned back, the moment spent. Maybe he was wrong about the green; it could have been a trick of the light. But Ryoki couldn’t shake the disquieting impression that for an instant she’d shed her glasses like Clark Kent and revealed her secret identity. Kate reminded him of a hero. She just had that effect.

By the time they’d walked back to her door, the stress of the last twenty-four hours had caught up with her and she had that wilted look, the one she got when he worked her too late too many days in a row. She always ran out of steam before he did. He needed to be more conscious of that. He put his hand on her elbow, but only because she was tired, he told himself, not because he needed to touch her. When she opened her door, he saw the floor strewn with bent cards, looking even messier than he’d remembered. He offered to help her clean up, but she showed no inclination to invite him in. He knew she wouldn’t, but a maverick strand of hope tickled one ear, making it itch. He wouldn’t have tried anything anyway, not with Brian’s niece. But hotel rooms can be awfully lonely and quiet. In the bright light of the hall he looked at her eyes again. Green, quite green. How had he missed that?

“Goodnight,” he said, bowing to the waist. She looked up and down the hall.

“Goodnight, Tanaka,” she said, bowing also to the same degree.

Ryoki turned to go, pausing mid-step. She had finally given him a name, but it was the wrong one. He put out his hand to shake. “I’m Ryoki,” he said. She smiled and took his hand in a firm friendly shake.

“I’m Kate.”

* * *

Ryoki found his room neatly made up, the broken lamp cleared away and replaced. Some conscientious maid had retrieved the two popped buttons and left them on top of his neatly folded shirt with a note inquiring whether he’d like to have them reattached. Of course he wanted them reattached. What good was a shirt without buttons? He put the shirt and buttons on his nightstand and got ready for bed.

Spending the day with Kate had kept the grisly images at bay, curiously neutralized. But alone in his bed the dark gelled thick and sticky as McLeary’s face resolved into a lurid haunt, bulging eyes, laughing mouth as Ruiz’s words echoed in his ears:
You never know what’s going to happen
. After an hour he went to the bathroom to splash water on his face, leaving the new vanity lamp on when he went back to bed. McLeary and his bloody entrails had ripped a hole in his ordered universe, sucking chairs and desks and potted palms, the fearsome cacophony jerking him from a long complacent slumber into a world he no longer understood.

What happened last night? Had McLeary died Ryoki’s death, or had Ryoki almost died McLeary’s? Does death rest on the turn of the card, or was Kate God’s asset on the ground sent to load the dice? What if she hadn’t been there?

He shivered under his blanket.

He and McLeary were not so different, really, two businessmen out to spend some of their success on a little distraction. They’d even picked the same girl, careless and reckless, like it didn’t matter.

He recalled his first experience with sex, something he hadn’t thought about in years. He’d waited until he was eighteen, a full two years after most of his friends. Wanted to be in love, to feel the exquisite truth he read about in poetry and novels. The girl had been so beautiful, a year older, already broken in. Holding hands they’d gone to a discrete hotel and Ryoki made love with his heart gloriously exposed, taking on light and air despite the fumbling intimacies of his inexperience. At the crucial moment he opened his eyes, bursting with loving words in every language he knew. But he’d caught her unawares, looking off at the lamp in utter boredom, if not distaste. He looked the other way, finishing in silence. Afterwards he found her prepared with a set of off-the-rack smiles and tender mouthings that sounded suspiciously well-worn.

That night he’d gone to bed hurt and disoriented, raging at love, the great lie. But as the dark hours passed, a curious detachment crept over him and by morning he decided she’d done him a favor, unmasked the popular romantic conspiracy, taught him not to invest so much in a mere animal act. The following afternoon he bought her a gift, a bracelet she’d admired. As a point of honor, he’d always been faithful to his girlfriends, and he had bought them all bracelets, pretty little shackles, a private joke, a sense of continuity. His wife’s bracelet had been the most expensive, of course, since it was an engagement present. Twenty carats of diamonds. Kate didn’t wear bracelets.

The Porters were certainly a conservative family, but he knew Kate’s decision to abstain from premarital sex reflected more than a strict upbringing. She had a keenly analytical mind and more than once he’d seen her make a choice based on probable repercussions rather than temporary convenience, even if it left her vulnerable. He remembered numerous trivial instances in the office, even exploited them in his mad rush to complete his project. Now alone in the muted light of his room, he recognized he should not have been surprised when she stood firm in her demand that he get some rest, or that she went to such dire lengths to defend him against Angelica Ruiz. Had Kate thought of it, she might have escorted that psychopath out of his room herself, and he would have been too dimwitted to stop her. McLeary’s ghastly face rose up again, morphing into Kate’s, her green eyes wide and bulging as she lay gutted in an empty hotel corridor. Her strength could also be her kryptonite.

He leaned over and picked up the two buttons from his nightstand, rubbing them between his fingertips until they stuck, clicking them together like tiny castanets. He’d paid many people to sew on his buttons, but Kate had been the first person to bother teaching him how to do it himself. He rolled the buttons over his skin, feeling their smooth edges. Why had that brief moment felt so intimate? Why did a button matter?