Secrets of the Apple Page 28

  Ryoki had to speak with Kate at frequent odd intervals, and his third evening away he happened to call as she was giving Lucas a piano lesson, their conversation punctuated by slow depressions of the keys, C D E F G A B C, spoken slowly and clearly in English because Lucas had said he wanted to play music and talk American like Dona Kate.

  After hanging up, Ryoki sat looking at the walls, his hotel room seeming to shrink as the silence pressed in around him, stuffy and thick. He opened the window and put on some music, plugging in his headphones. Mozart’s 12 Variations, performed by a world-class pianist. But he couldn’t get the childish piano lesson out of his head—C D E F G A B C.

  He unplugged his headphones, turned the music up, attempting to drown the silence, create a concert. His neighbor banged on the wall. He turned it off.

  On his fourth evening Kate answered his call during a date with Montgomery, and in the background Ryoki heard a string of muffled expletives he would be ashamed to use in front of a lady. She walked away for privacy and Ryoki apologized, though he secretly took a perverse pleasure in causing the interruption, like dropping a surprise trump. Unfortunately she kept the conversation short and to the point, as though taking bullet-point notes on the back of a business card, drawing the Maginot Line between business and pleasure.

  Two hours later Ryoki went to bed exhausted and unreasonably irritated by the hardness of his mattress and the arrhythmic splatter of rain, like handfuls of tiny glass beads randomly blown against his window. He couldn’t sleep, his mind revolving on what Kate and Montgomery might have been talking about. Did she tell him that Lucas was subtly changing the house, that Sano the Serious sometimes laughed and galloped around the garden with the boy on his back, that Mariko now kept cookies in the pantry all the time? Did she say that she worried about Lucas, that he was being too careful, too anxious to please?

  Two days earlier the boy had been caught in the wee hours, staring at the phone, the new access code crumpled in his fist, tears running down his face, whispering “can’t do it can’t do it.” Ryoki did not want her discussing such intimate household details with Montgomery, though he never said so. Last he’d heard, the subject of Lucas had been banned between them, enacting a truce, agree-to-disagree. He hoped that had not changed.

  What if he’d interrupted a kiss?

  That was the thought he tried to consciously avoid, but the taboo image slithered under the door like a transgressive ghost, surfer-blond hair tickling into red-mahogany curls as lips sought lips and hands—

  Ryoki shuddered violently and got out of bed to turn on his computer, intending to submerge beneath a sea of numbers until the phantasm gasped and drowned. The next evening he agreed to go out with some of Browning’s men—the best of the lot, possible “keepers” for the company, eager to ingratiate themselves. Needed to get to know them better. Should have done it earlier, social responsibilities sorely neglected. Sterile dark hotel room. Long, long night.

  As he expected the men took him to a local strip bar, the nicest in town. His mother had always disapproved of the kind of bonding Japanese men did after work, and in his youth she had often admonished him to stay away from such places. “It degrades those poor women,” she said, “even if they don’t know it. And it will degrade you too.”

  The first time his co-workers invited him to one of those clubs, his mother’s warning rang clearly in his ears. But the other men laughed at his hesitation, teasing that he must be a virgin, the unspoken sneer that he was different, not part of the group. What did mother know? She ate like a monkey. Slap on the back. Let me get my coat.

  Now, sitting between two of Browning’s men he looked around at various scantily clad Brazilian beauties, aping their sisters in Japan, Europe and the United States, glitter rubbed around their eyes for sparkle, their faces contorted in mock passion. Greasepaint love, thought Ryoki. The man on his left tossed back his third drink, his eyes glazed, enthralled by the long legs and high heels dancing a fantasy come-hither before him. The man on his right surreptitiously checked his watch, looking tired, uncomfortable.

  From the corner of his eye Ryoki saw a bleach-blonde Brazilian woman strutting toward their VIP section where the seats had thicker padding and the tips were bigger. She wore a military hat and a man’s long black overcoat that swung and gapped, presenting peeks of shiny black thigh-high boots, spiky five-inch heels striking the floor to the beat of the music. When she was within eight feet she flung off her hat and dropped her coat in one liquid movement, exposing a black patent mini and bustier two sizes too small. She danced closer, kicking her legs, spinning, twisting, bumping her hips, touching her lips, her movements manic, thrilled, the promise of a wild ride. She came so close that even the muted light and heavy makeup couldn’t conceal the large open sores that dotted her face and body. Meth, most likely. Ryoki had seen a number of addicts among the club rats of Europe, seduced by the chemical sycophant that told them they were beautiful even as it turned them ugly.

  The manager and a bouncer rushed forward, catching at the girl’s arms, her gyrations morphing into a feral struggle for survival. “I worked here,” she screeched. “I paid for your car. Everybody came to see me dance! Everybody!”

  “Forgive us, gentlemen,” the manager said. “We’re not sure how she keeps getting in.”

  Ryoki’s phone rang. Gratefully he hurried to the lobby to answer it.

  Lucas had torn a big hole in the Fates. New football, forgot the no-ball-in-the-house rule. Shaking, scared to death. Cecelia caught him trying to run away and snatched him up in her arms, letting him cry and beg for mercy until he had nothing left. Kate was quiet when she’d told her tale, waiting for him to pass judgment.

  “Did his ball survive?” Ryoki asked.

  Kate hesitated. “The painting might be ruined.” He could hear her apprehension in the silence.

  Ryoki remembered his father’s mercy the night he broke a Fabergé egg with a basketball, punishing him for breaking the rule without trying to take the egg out of his hide. “Have Lucas pull some weeds for breaking the rules and we’ll say no more about it,” he said.

  As Ryoki clicked off he took one step back into the smoky club, the half-dressed girls, their arms beckoning, lips pouting, teasing him back to his seat. He thought again of the first time he made love: the bored girl, the great lie exposed. At twenty-two he’d gone to his first strip club, sitting wretchedly uncomfortable, checking his watch. At what point had he glazed over, willingly deceived by marsh lights and glitter? He looked at the phone in his hand, the connection broken. Needing a breath, he stepped outside the windowless club and felt the heralding drops on his face and hands, the flash of lightning—one thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three—and the crack of thunder. He stood face up as the heavens began to pour to earth, heedless of the wet, deluged by the fluid homesickness that had been lapping around him for days, testing the cracks, looking for a way in.

  Ten minutes later the rain ceased as abruptly as it had begun, but by then he had ordered his reluctant bodyguard to wait for the others while he walked two miles back to his hotel. He needed to be alone, to try and understand what had happened at the club, to think about Kate. Her fault he couldn’t stand being in the club. Given him a taste for authenticity.

  Maybe it was time to change his strategy there. Somehow he had turned Kate into forbidden fruit. That was no good; only added to her allure, built her up in his mind. Needed to know the truth, see her as she is.

  He’d once read that in a forest, firefighters let certain fires burn naturally, to clear out the surplus dry tinder and avoid the lunatic infernos that invariably resulted from excessively efficient fire suppression. Perhaps if he acknowledged the possibility that he might feel more than a simple attraction, pled to infantile jealousy before his own personal judge, let a small fire burn until it burned out, he could avoid the disaster of falling in love with an unsuitable woman.

  By the time he reached his room the idea seemed superb, insp
iring. Should have thought of it before. He showered, brushed his teeth and lay back on his pillow, giving himself carte blanche to fantasize without a time limit, falling asleep with her name breathing silently from his lips.

  The next morning he awoke in such dreadful loneliness he unconsciously reached for the phone. It was much too early to call, but he was hungry to hear her voice. Halfway through punching in her number he stopped. Maybe this wasn’t such a great strategy; maybe he was digging himself deeper. The phone rang in his hand.

  “Hello, sorry,” Kate said, “I know it’s early, but I just got off the phone with your dad and I wanted to catch you in private, before you left for your meetings.”

  “What’s going on?” he said, almost worried she could read the passion of his dreams through the crackly connection.

  “Your father pointed out that your birthday is in about five weeks and it roughly coincides with Tanaka, Brazil’s one-year anniversary.”

  “Not really.”

  “Well, if you count the day they started remodeling the offices. Anyway, he wants to combine the parties,” she said. “He can’t be here, but he really wants to make it a birthday you won’t forget. I think it’s really important to him.”

  Ryoki groaned. “A huge corporate birthday party will make me look like an egomaniac.”

  “People already think that. It wouldn’t hurt for them to see you socializing like a regular guy. You haven’t had much time for that, especially lately. With everything that’s happened, it would be a good chance to promote solidarity in the office, let everybody know things are okay.”

  “I’d rather have a cake at home. We could invite Lucas. I bet he likes cake.”

  “Your birthday actually falls on a Thursday, and I was thinking we could celebrate your real birthday at home and have the corporate party on Friday, with a minor mention of your birthday. What do you think, good compromise?”

  “Kate, this is going to be a lot of work. I really don’t think you have the time,” he said in a hopeless effort to head it off.

  “You saw a little family dinner at my house. I know how to give a party. Besides, I’ll be working with an event planner.”

  The call ended in a shambling Maybe—I’ll think about it—We’ll see, and twenty minutes later he stood shaving before the mirror, wondering why his father approached Kate first. Not that it mattered. It was only a party. Why should he care? Nice to hear her so early in the morning, though. Maybe she would have to call him more often to discuss the details. Maybe planning it will leave her less time for Montgomery. Ryoki rinsed his razor under the tap, ashamed of his selfishness. Jealous of Montgomery—already admitted that. His father wanted the party. “Important to him,” that’s what she said. Maybe he should give in, if it was important to his father. He called her back, impatient to hear her voice.

  By the next night Ryoki had figured out his mistake of the night before. Fantasy cannot rule. But he relaxed his heart, allowed himself to feel, really feel the hidden luxury inside him. By the second week he began calling Kate just before she went to bed when he knew he would get her alone. By the third week he had Kate’s photo set as his screensaver, heedless of whoever might walk into the room. It kept giving him a little thrill to see her face pop up when the keyboard had been idle, smiling at him from their garden, eyes alight from the joke he’d made right before he snapped her picture.

  Part of him whispered that the little fire was burning too high, that he was acting as giddy and wide-eyed as an anime character. But he comforted himself that his secret was still contained. Everyone kept random pictures on their computers. Browning had kept a graphic of Superman as his screensaver. Didn’t mean anything.

  When Izumi Nakamura arrived to begin the takeover process, he had heard gossip in Tokyo that the scion of Tanaka, Inc. had acquired an American consort just like his father. After two days in Brazil he told his wife that at least some of the rumors were certainly true.

  At the beginning of the fourth week, Ryoki booked a plane ticket for Friday, convinced he could not get away an instant earlier. But as the week progressed, he began to see that the handoff to Nakamura was going more smoothly than he had anticipated, and by Thursday he found the last i had been dotted and the last t crossed. Joyfully he boarded the first flight he could get, a last-minute piece of luck on a very full plane. No time to call ahead and warn anyone.

  As the plane accelerated for takeoff, he rehearsed to himself the many attractions of São Paulo, his own office, his own team, his own bed. But as speed pushed his body back into his seat and his stomach tingled with the lift, the left side of his brain whispered that if all went well he would arrive to discover he had fabricated a goddess from an ordinary woman, smearing her thick with raging hormones and lipstick. His right brain chanted Kate Kate Kate.

  Ryoki leaned forward to pull a book from his computer bag and a lock of his hair fell forward. He touched his head, weaving his fingers through the top, gone slightly wavy in the humidity. His hair had needed cutting since before he’d left São Paulo, but he had had no Kate to make his regular appointments, he himself having no memory for such things during the throws of the day. The wave wasn’t obvious yet, almost unnoticeable if he used gel, dry pomade and a hairdryer, a few of the tricks learned from years of watching hairdressers turn one thing into another. Too bad he inherited his mother’s curly hair. As a child his hair had been much curlier, a source of teasing from his peers and a red flag among some of his more conservative school administrators. As he grew the curls had loosened, become more manageable and he’d learned to keep the minor defect to himself. Lucky he didn’t get his mother’s blue eyes. Sometimes he wondered if he’d have actually worn colored contacts despite his 20/20 vision, or if it would have been a relief to give up hiding. At the hairdresser’s he’d once seen an old woman bat the stylist’s hand away as he pulled up a section of her hair, color brush held high. “Enough,” she said. “I’ve been doing this every two weeks for thirty years. I’m not fooling anybody.” He wondered at what age he would outgrow the cowardice of youth. He touched his hair again. He should have waited, gotten a haircut and taken his original flight the next day. Maybe he could stop somewhere on the way from the airport.

  But by the time he touched down, Ryoki was no longer conscious of his hair. He could be home just after eight, traffic willing. Certainly Kate would be home. She never went out until after Lucas went to bed.

  She might not be home at all, but still at the office.

  Of course she’d be home, unless Lucas went to stay with Cecelia’s grandsons.

  Montgomery might have picked her up early.

  Maybe she’s home.

  He picked up the newspaper next to him on the back seat, looking for a distraction. He didn’t read it, was unaware he was shredding the edges with his right hand.

  She’s not with Montgomery. Certainly she couldn’t be with Montgomery.

  At 8:32 p.m. Ryoki stood in his own front hall, laying a large brightly wrapped box on the table and listening for the piano. After an agonizing pause he heard a halting childlike song, one hand at a time. Kate’s laughter, barely audible, adding in slow English, “Very good, exactly right.”

  Ryoki kicked off his shoes and took the stairs two at a time, checking his speed just before he reached the door. Easy, now. No point scaring them. He entered the room at a sedate walk and there she was in the flesh, her back to him, seated next to Lucas in a chair pulled up to the piano. He’d taken three steps into the room when she turned around, her face lighting up.

  “Look at you, a day early!” She rose, moved toward him, “welcome home” in the curve of her lips and the light in her eyes.

  Ryoki stood still, said nothing, fearing she could hear his heart beating from across the room. He wanted to speak, began to stammer as she drew nearer, but no words came out.

  Keep control Keep control.

  He bent to kiss her cheeks in a Brazilian hello, but she misinterpreted, put her arms up for a hug,
bailed out halfway, her face flushing pink as she tried to step back. His arms wrapped around her back, pressing her body to his in a great bear hug. One beat, two beats, three—break away. That was the plan. But he couldn’t. He felt the pressure of her hands on his chest as she tried to escape his hold. In answer his arms tightened as he lifted her off the floor and swung her around until she giggled and squealed, “Put me down, put me down!”

  He set her down on her feet, his heart knocking in his chest. She straightened her blouse and took three steps back. “Are you hungry?” she asked, pushing the hair from her face.

  “They served dinner on the plane,” he said, shoving his hands awkwardly into his pockets.

  “Umm, that means you stirred your food around without eating anything and in an hour you’ll be cranky and have a headache.”

  Ryoki saw Lucas’s hand tugging at Kate’s sleeve, and he captured the boy for a good tickling. “I brought you a present,” he whispered, nodding conspiratorially toward the front hall.

  “Arigato,” Lucas said, dipping a bow, going on in a combination of Portuguese and simple Japanese to tell him how much he liked the new football Ryoki had sent, but the short-handled shovel had puzzled him.