Secrets of the Apple Page 13

  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 suspi
ciously 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?

  No point asking Kate. She’d just say, “To keep your clothes on,” probably muttering “moron” under her breath. Still, the act had touched him, had purchased the goodwill that had kept him from throwing her out of his room last night, even drunk as he was. She began to save his life the instant she took his shirt between her fingers. Intellectually he could see that, but he didn’t understand why. Again, why did a button matter? He closed the buttons in his palms and squeezed his eyes shut, feeling the full burden of his life, the whole heavy, complicated mess, encapsulated in two disks of mother of pearl. Somehow he’d missed something, something big and important, some powerful key that would allow him to decode the secrets embedded within buttons and homemade chocolate chip cookies. It came to him that he needed a teacher, someone who had the key even if she didn’t realize it, someone who didn’t scare easily, and more immediately, he needed someone who could help him in Brazil. He needed to take Kate to São Paulo.

  The notion and what it would involve unnerved him at first, and he backed away from it. Kate was terminally American and would be an awkward fit at a Japanese company. A good Japanese assistant would be a more logical choice, someone who already knew what to do and how to be trusted by her Japanese co-workers. He remembered coming home after completing his prestigious foreign education and accepting congratulations from so many smiling people who bowed, but smelled faintly of envy and distrust. He could almost hear the unspoken question: Is he still one of us, or has he become a stranger? The trouble had been compounded by his father, who consistently assigned him to foreign offices where he would have more autonomy, more opportunity for leadership experience, pushing him through the ranks so he could take control early, leaving his father free to retire, heedless of the native mistrust that might fall upon his son. Ryoki’s foreign associations, which had been so profitable for the company, were sometimes an Achilles heel within the office, and bringing in Kate might only make that worse. The thought nearly made him dismiss the idea out of hand. Yet a certainty persisted, an absolute conviction that she had something he needed, that this chance should not be missed, no matter the risks.

  His mind revolved around the problem until it occurred to him that São Paulo wasn’t Tokyo. Several members of his São Paulo team had been with him in London and all had had foreign assignments at one time or another. Certainly they would be more understanding. Of course they would. They would be much more understanding.

  By morning Kate seemed such an obvious choice he wondered that he hadn’t offered her the job a month ago. As the sun rose he fell asleep, blessing the lucky twist of fate that had pushed her teaching job back to January. When they met for brunch she pushed her newly trimmed hair behind her ears and called him “Ryoki.”

  Chapter Ten

  Ryoki did not approach Kate right away; such a seismic shift required careful planning and he spent the rest of the weekend semi-distracted as the details of her position in São Paulo took bone and flesh in his brain. First trick, getting her to agree. For some unfathomable reason she still clung to the notion that she should be on vacation.

  Monday, San Francisco: that’s where he’d spring his attack. No, attack was the wrong word—ambush, that was it, an elegant ambush. He’d start his offensive with a box of fine Belgian chocolates nestled in little handmade papers, a replacement for the single square of proletarian chocolate she bought every day after lunch.

  At eleven on Monday morning he began listening for her stomach to growl. Six minutes later, he pulled the box from his desk drawer and laid it in front of her. “I thought this might be more efficient than going to that vending cart every day,” he said, screwing his face into good friend mode, to show her he looked out for the little things. He watched her hands as she picked up the box, caressing the embossed lettering. Encouraged, he loaded the opening question and sighted down the barrel, which was when he noticed her expression, equal parts pleasure and horror.

  “Thanks, that’s really nice of you,” she said uncertainly, heading back to her desk, balancing the box on a pile of papers.

  “Uh, you’re welcome,” he said, his brow momentarily creased by her unforeseen reaction. No matter, just wait till she pops one in her mouth. Nothing mellowed her out like a little chocolate; he knew this from experience. Two hours later, brash and confident, he ambled over to her cubicle to initiate Phase Two: Invite her to lunch, a good place nearby, quaint and comfy, then spring it on her.

  Unfortunately, he found her with her forehead on her desk, slump-shouldered and wretched, surrounded by little handmade papers spilling from a green box depopulated of all Belgians.

  “Wow, does your stomach hurt?”

  “No,” she whimpered, misery echoing back from the surface of the desk. “I could eat another pound, easy.”

  “I’d like to see that,” he said without thinking.

  “You’re an enabler, get out!” she squeaked, her head popping up from her desk.

  On his way out, he felt the green box thump him in the back as little handmade papers fluttered to the floor. There they remained for the rest of the day in a crackly trail from her desk to his.

  Abort Phase Two.

  Undaunted, he reset Phase Two for Wednesday. Forget the chocolate. He’d take her to lunch someplace trendy and chic, make her feel honored and important, soften her up with atmosphere.

  Brian Porter gave him the name of a place owned by a client, even phoned in the reservation himself to make certain they would get a good table. The restaurant turned out to be a spacious room at the top of a hill, very modern, blond wood, white-on-white décor and three glass walls showcasing San Francisco’s spectacular bay and cityscape. Ryoki estimated that three-quarters of the bill was going to pay for that scenery, so he took a good long look to make sure he got his money’s worth. Kate liked views and he expected a bit of ooh and aah or perhaps a sharp intake of breath as she first laid eyes on the postcard panorama fanning out at her feet. But she made no sound, perhaps overcome by beauty. Turning, he found her keen eyes focused inside the room, spe
cifically on the immaculate maître d’ as he choreographed his staff in their elaborate ballet. “Help like that is hard to find in the United States. This place must be very— special,” she said, looking suspicious, on guard. Not good. He needed her to be relaxed and open, like she’d been that day at the park in St. Helena. Maybe he should have taken her on a picnic. Crafted a couple of mind-blowing sandwiches.

  No, no more picnics. Unprofessional. Give her the wrong idea. Maybe scare her off. He started pointing out the window like a tour guide, grasping at random landmarks, killing time while she ate her salad. Lettuce wouldn’t mellow her out like chocolate, but at least it had never prompted her to throw things.

  Five minutes into their entrees, he launched the opening gambit. “I guess you know I’ll be heading down to São Paulo in a month or so.” She smiled and took a bite of her roast duck. “You’ve been invaluable,” he added.

  “It’s been my pleasure,” she said, putting down her fork and chewing slowly before touching the napkin to the corners of her mouth and replacing it in her lap.

  “I don’t actually have an assistant in São Paulo yet. The last one married a Brit and quit when I left London.”

  “That’s too bad,” she said.

  “We work well together.” In truth, Kate was the first assistant he’d ever had who never complained that he left too much unsaid, who sometimes even finished his sentences for him. She smiled at him with her mouth closed, her gaze steady.