Secrets of the Apple Page 30

  Kate’s narrator, an American tourist from a frozen place called Rexburg, Idaho, stands in the parking lot of a down-at-heel hotel in Richmond, Virginia, right after a freak snowstorm. A man bursts from the hotel, shoving something into his pants. He hits the ice, slipping sideways with every forward step. A pursuer shoves through the same door, screaming, “STOP, THIEF!” with arms flailing, then falls sliding around the corner, gets up, disappears in a futile slow-motion chase.

  Inside the lobby the narrator finds the aftermath of an armed robbery: An unidentified woman sobbing by herself in the corner, a large black man chanting to no one in particular, “Money ain’t nothin’ but a tree, ironed flat and painted green. It ain’t nothin’.” A Latino clerk dialing a number with shaking hands, pushing the wrong button, slamming down the phone and starting over. A white man in a polyester tie talking too fast and too loud into a pay phone. An Asian couple standing near the dingy elevator, looking around the lobby in confusion and pushing the UP button so the doors would slide open and let them back inside.

  In the end the police interview the victims. The criminal is never caught and an inventory of loss taken: $217, a disposable camera, a fake Rolex, and a pair of gold earrings engraved “To My Sweetheart” by a hated ex-husband. The police file their report under “S” for “Shabby.”

  Once Ryoki had properly oriented his expectations, he was able to appreciate Kate’s story for what it was, a subversive comedy that made him laugh out loud at least twice, surprised that she could handle a joke so much better on paper than in real life. Turning out the light, he set the paper on his nightstand and nestled into the pillow to go to sleep, still sniggering at his own stupidity. But as he slipped into sleep, a strange undercurrent began gently tugging at his feet, gradually pulling him further and further beneath the surface and rolling him around the bottom until he stood within Kate’s story, an eyewitness to the crime. Looking slowly from face to face, all the humor fled to the door, sliding away on the ice, slowly but forever uncatchable. The sobbing woman, the big black man, the Latino clerk, polyester white man, the Asian couple—every character was connected by location, economic class, and a common trauma. They needed to talk to each other. He could almost read the words bubbling to the surface, imprinting themselves just under the skin. Ryoki began to talk, break the ice, start them off. He talked and talked, shouted even, but nobody moved. In frustration he picked the kindest face, the big black man, and tried to lead him to the crying woman. But his hand passed straight through the man’s arm. Ryoki held his hand to the light, stunned to discover himself a ghost, powerless to help. Out the window he could still see the criminal running in the distance, impossibly slow, a dark blot on a white field, an insignificant mosquito, a comic villain, a catalyst.

  He looked back at all those poor people, serving time in cages of their own making. Sorrowfully he returned to the window, noticing the chase had looped through an alley and come back into view. He saw something odd, it looked like, almost—blinking, rubbing his eyes, he leaned closer to get a better look. It was true; the criminal moved just like Apple, and as he strained forward he could almost make out her face.

  The next morning Ryoki braced his hands against the shower wall as the hot water sluiced over him. He needed to talk to Kate, to ask her what she meant, to divine whether she had actually foreseen all she had shown him. Standing in the steamy water he could predict the whole conversation. He would smile and laugh, “What, were you trying to tell me something?” To which she would smile and answer, “I wanted you to laugh,” her expression a combination of impish grin and genuine innocence. But he wanted very much to hear her say it, to watch her truthful eyes pronounce him not guilty as they ate their eggs and toast, to give him tacit permission to continue blaming his wife for the wretchedness in his life. His heart sank when he entered the dining room to find Kate had left early for the hotel to take care of last-minute party arrangements that would suck all the hours of her day, leaving him alone with his thoughts.

  Her story elbowed through his mind as he rode to work, showing him Apple’s face as she raced clumsily away, his reputation stuffed down her pants—the image pumping a bellows at the pilot flame of rage stored in his left ventricle. He nursed the evil image, waiting for the heat, the fury—and there was some. But at nine o’clock he found himself grinning cheerfully at the horde of secretaries streaming around him—Sir, could I get your signature here… and here…. Tanaka-sama, we have the report you requested… At ten he experimented again, tried to feed the fire, teasing the embers to life, purposely visualizing Apple’s face, replaying the horrifying moment when he first looked at the ultrasound, conjuring up the award-winning article that blasted his character. 11:15 a.m., anger, anger, almost, there it is, that’s—no, just reflux. 12:00 p.m., 2:00 p.m., 4:00 p.m.—anger in theory, anger without teeth. The white-hot wrath that had once consumed both flesh and spirit had gradually burned lower and lower over the last months; this he’d already suspected. But here it was prostrate, surrounded by budding trees and fields fertile with ashes, a faint possibility of pity and forgiveness flickering just beyond the horizon. Ryoki felt weightless, his belly tickling with the feeling of flight, twenty feet in the air, looking down on people’s heads as they stumbled and muttered through their lives, never looking up. There was Apple, drinking her favorite appletini, long legs stretched out, cigarette burning in the ashtray, her black hair a blot on the landscape, a villain, a catalyst—a crucible.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  All the way home Ryoki kept his eyes on the window, dazed, staring at all the colors peeking through the stifling cement city—bright flowers bursting pink, purple and red in the intense light of late afternoon, green tendrils fighting their way through every crack, fragile shoots capable of toppling towering skyscrapers, life pushing forward without regard to wealth, poverty, virtue or vice. Apple did what she did. It was wrong, it was cruel, it was vicious, but I married without looking deeper than her face.

  After all the misery, this answer seemed too facile, so Ryoki grabbed for the anger one last time, shaking and squeezing the unfairness with both hands. So unfair, so stunningly unfair. Where’s the tearing point? When does a human being get to scream You Ruined My Life! Ryoki leaned back and took a deep, self-righteous breath, then broke off, wrinkling his nose at a whiff of the bitter pool in which he had been living, half strangled with noxious weeds winding gnarled and snarling through the cracked cement.

  Staggered and overwhelmed, Ryoki entered his house and immediately shouted Kate’s name as he headed toward the second floor and the library. But he was answered by an alarmed maid who scuttled in to inform him that Miss Porter was in her cottage getting ready. Is anything wrong, is everything all right, would he like her fetched? But he waved her off, unaware he was talking under his breath as he took the stairs two at a time, leaving the young maid to run to her friend, giggling and speculating whether the Senhor was drunk or raving.

  In his room he found his tuxedo fresh from the cleaners and hanging on the wooden valet, with socks, polished shoes, shirt, tie and various accoutrements all neatly laid to the side. Kate’s doing, of course. As he went off to the shower he imagined her coming into his room, those quick, efficient steps, his rigging already in her mind, everything planned right down to the last cufflink, unaware that what he really needed was to talk to her. It seemed that some of his wild confusion had abruptly resolved into a pile of speakable words that needed to be taken out and examined within the safety of her honest and practical opinions. But here was this party sitting squarely in the road, Kate’s night, and she’d worked so hard. His musings could marinate until tomorrow, perhaps during a nice quiet evening in the library.

  He showered and shaved, glancing at his hair in the mirror as he wrapped a towel around himself. Getting unforgivably long, especially on top where loose wet curls dripped over one side of his forehead. Hadn’t meant for it to get so long. He pulled out all the tools of his deception, “Professional
Strength” pomade, a hairdryer and the girly flat iron he’d shamefacedly resorted to two weeks earlier, straightening through the top before gelling it sedately back. Seemed unfair he had to work as hard as a woman to look like a man who hadn’t tried at all. But Kate liked it, she’d said so two or three times. He scooped out a bit of pomade, rubbing his palms together for even distribution, and looked up, hands poised two inches from his head, catching sight of his own face, the face of a stranger—happy, devilishly handsome, only vaguely recognizable. He stood frozen, staring at himself for a full minute. It would be a risk.

  He rinsed his hands under the tap and pulled a tube of gel from a drawer, squeezing out a dab, just enough for some control, and stowed both blow dryer and flat iron, unused.

  At the appointed time he went to the front parlor to wait for Kate, knowing she would rush down the hall ten minutes late, completely surprised by the clock. Eleven minutes later he heard the pad of her feet against the tiles, and closing his book went into the foyer to meet her.

  “Sorry, sorry, sorry. I hope you haven’t been waiting long,” she said, placing her shoes on the floor and putting her hand on his arm as she bent forward to step into a pair of strappy red satin heels. Ryoki stood stock-still. Mentally he’d been waiting for his friend, his confidante. But this, this was—Red.

  Red. All Kate. Her gown had the romance of Byron, the clean elegance of ancient Greece. It drew the eye, but kept her secrets. No rhinestones, no glitter. Pearls, soft points of light glowing against pale skin. Dark hair unbound, heavy curls just over her shoulders, red filaments riding atop the dark waves. He leaned to breathe her perfume long and deep. She straightened and stepped back, looking directly into his face, her eyes shining a deeper green than he had ever seen them. “Are you okay?”

  “Nice dress,” he stammered, shoving his hands in his pockets to keep from touching her.

  “You like it? It’s one of mine,” she said, smiling as she turned toward the hall mirror for a lipstick check, as she always did before leaving the house.

  “‘Yours,’ as in you didn’t borrow it, or as in I didn’t buy it?”

  “Mine, as in I designed it. I think it suits me,” she added absently as she moved to the door. Kate had once told him she understood clothes. Obviously he hadn’t really grasped her meaning.

  “You look amazing,” she said. “Women would be crawling all over you even if you weren’t rich.”

  As they were pulling down the drive, she leaned back and put her hand to his hair, twisting a curl around her finger and smoothing it away from his face. “You should always do your hair like this. Was it hard? It looks so—” She broke off and pulled her hand away uncertainly.

  “No harder than for you,” he said.

  “You got a perm?” she asked slowly.

  “You don’t have curly hair?”

  “Bone straight, since birth,” she said, fingering her hair distractedly. “But you actually have naturally curly hair. That’s why you keep it so short. I never realized.” She looked away from him. He wished he’d cut his hair.

  “I thought you said you liked it,” he said.

  “I do. It suits you perfectly. Devastatingly handsome.” But her voice sounded flat, devoid of the teasing lilt of three minutes earlier. She turned to face the front and began buckling her seatbelt. He wished he’d shaved his head bald. Kate need never have known.

  For the rest of the drive, Kate appeared miles away. He wanted to touch her hand, but he didn’t have the nerve, and at dinner he fell victim to the seating chart, separated from Kate by yards of important executives and politicians. The Brazilian Minister of Finance caught him with his eyes drifting toward the splash of red silk on the other side of the room. “Uma mulher vestido em vermelho melhora o mundo, né?” he murmured with a knowing smile. Ryoki nodded with a smile and replied that yes, a woman in red does indeed improve the world. Thereafter he kept his eyes meticulously forward like an anxious pupil.

  There were six speeches, all kept mercifully short. Rumor had it that Porter-san had made the rounds two days earlier, sweetly threatening to let the air out of anyone’s tires who dared to exceed the five-minute mark. Everyone laughed, treated it like a joke. But only one intrepid man got so far as four minutes, fifty-eight seconds.

  As applause for the final speaker was dying down, a single chord sounded from every corner at once as the curtain rose, revealing The Bandeirantes leaping straight into their latest hit which had been blaring from radios and sound trucks for the last three months. Famous rock group, A major coup for Kate. Ryoki looked over to find her smiling at him, watching for his reaction. Odd, he hadn’t seen the mushroom cloud when she blew her budget into the atmosphere. He smiled. She winked. Perhaps she was in denial.

  The Bandeirantes turned out to be a great success, playing a wide range of sambas and original pop music with their signature big band twist, injecting energy into the room and filling the dance floor with old and young. Meanwhile, Ryoki did his duty, mingling with key individuals and dancing with their designer-clad daughters who fluttered their eyelashes at his fortune without missing a single movement of the beautiful band. For thirty minutes he’d lost sight of Kate’s red dress, and had finally resorted to standing by himself, craning his neck to find her, until she suddenly appeared behind him, touching one finger to his back and placing another on his sleeve to make him lean closer to her mouth as she spoke. In the middle of the crowded room, her touch carried all the comfort of chocolate chip cookies and an easy chair at the end of a long day, the spicy scent of her perfume teasing his brain until he couldn’t take in a single word. She drew back, looking at him expectantly, as though her sentence had ended with a question mark.

  “I’m sorry, what did you say?” He waved his arm toward the raucous stage, shifting the blame.

  Kate moved closer, standing on tip toe and speaking directly into his ear. “Marcelo, that’s the lead, used to spend every Thursday evening listening to his grandmother’s old records while she told him stories. Can you hear the influence?”

  “What did they cost me?”

  Kate’s eyes twinkled. “Not a thing.” She waited for this to sink in. “You can kiss my feet if you want to.”

  Ryoki looked blank.

  “Told you I was in a band, one of the founding members, vocals and keyboards,” she said, wiggling her fingers over an imaginary piano. “We all used to attend the same British school.” She leaned over conspiratorially, “They don’t actually play private parties, but they thought it would be fun if all the original members could be together for one night.” She gestured toward the lead singer, “Besides, I tutored Marcelo in English practically every day. So you could say that because of me, they’re breaking into the international market.”

  Ryoki looked at the band again, focusing on the individual men who had been part of Kate’s early adolescence. Caramel-skinned, chiseled, handsome Italian features, upper-class bearing. He wondered if this Marcelo had been her first kiss.

  “Dance with me,” he said.

  She drew back, bug-eyed. “Dance?” she squeaked.

  “You do dance don’t you?” he said.

  “Oh,” she faltered, “well, I took Social Dance—I and II.”

  “Well then,” he said, taking her hand.

  “They called me the goat on roller skates,” she warned when he drew her close.

  He smirked, he’d seen her fall off her heels.

  “You didn’t have the right partner,” he whispered back, taking position for the swing. Just the basic at first, then he’d test the waters with a few easy moves. With a slight finger pressure here, a nudge of the arm there, he carefully communicated a simple pattern until the room swirled into blue, green, and yellow impressionist splotches. The music ended with an abrupt chord and she spun out of his arms as the lead singer laughed heartily, trailing off just like on the radio. They stood facing each other, panting, grinning like delighted children. “You love to dance,” she said.

 
“So do you,” he said.

  She blushed as the music started up again, a love song, tender and flowing, giving them a nice breather. Without speaking they stepped into the public embrace, beginning with arms properly extended, though elbows gradually bent, lowering clasped hands until forearms rested together, and she began whispering cornball jokes, her breath just grazing his ear, tearing him in half with wanting.

  As the last note faded Ryoki reluctantly dropped his arms and clapped mechanically, wondering if he could inveigle a third dance, when Kate’s name was spoken into the microphone and she began to walk toward the stage. Without conscious thought, his hand rose to hold her back, but she was already too far away. Then it struck him: What exactly had she meant, all the original members together?

  He felt an inexplicable uneasiness as he watched her mount the stage steps. The leader introduced her in Portuguese, smiling and laughing, gesturing to Kate who colored and laughed too. But Ryoki had been too distracted to concentrate and understood next to nothing. Afterwards the Japanese translator stepped to the microphone and explained in clear, dignified tones that Miss Porter had known the band when they were still wearing Batman underwear, and they had only agreed to come if she promised to perform a few songs for old time’s sake.

  Ryoki’s dinner began to attack him from the inside. He didn’t want her to do it, not here, not up in front of all these strangers.

  She stepped up the mic, smiling a toothy 1000-watter, opened with a joke, laughed at herself, and completely charmed the room.

  Ryoki kept blinking and swallowing. She was so easy with the audience, so natural, the shy girl passing as the butterfly. His mind flashed back to their first corporate meeting together, how handily she’d captured that roomful of dour men. That kind of performance only comes with practice. But somehow, listening to her sing night after night, he had never made the connection. Such a talent, costing so many thousands of practice hours, ultimately existed for public exhibition. He could see this absolutely clearly, could genuinely rejoice in its truth. Yet, a greedy, selfish little man had begun beating the inside of his skull, his brass tipped cane repeating a two-syllable tattoo, Please don’t, please don’t.