Secrets of the Apple (13 page)

He’d involuntarily fingered that button all day, fourth from the top, third from the bottom. Something about that button mattered, he could feel it, but its significance flickered just outside his consciousness, an uncomfortable teasing, like a name he couldn’t quite remember. Why? Why should a button matter?

Stupid question.

By dinner he’d flung the question aside, putting it all down to the lingering vanilla scent of her hands on his shirt. Tuesday evening he sent the shirt out with four others just like it to be laundered, hoping that once they had been cleaned, pressed and returned in sterile plastic, he wouldn’t be able to tell which shirt was which. But the question continued to creep out, catching him unawares, like here at the baccarat table.

All week Kate had been invaluable, switching unhesitatingly from English to Japanese to Portuguese, feeding him information as he needed it, often before he had to ask. She maintained a low-key bantering relationship with twelve men, owning up to her screwed punch lines until it became a running gag. She kept the atmosphere light and friendly, the negotiations flowing, like a wife who disarms the clients with homemade pie. At night the men went out to drink and socialize, cementing relationships through alcohol. Kate never came, of course, though the other men pressed her. He knew she never would.

Ryoki shifted in his chair at the baccarat table, sneaked another quick glance at Kate. She wore a simple black dress that went to her knees, shoulders covered, nothing shiny or sparkly, not even pearls, though he knew she had at least one set with her. As a welcome gift from the hotel, the management had sent him a ten-millimeter pearl necklace and a thousand dollar gambling credit. Laughing, he’d handed them both to Kate. “I think they’ve mistaken you for my wife.”

“That makes sense. Most men would like to keep their wives in a separate room eight floors down,” she said, laying the credit and the jewel box on his coffee table next to her bag. “I’m not much for gambling, though. Looks too much like theft.”

Ryoki had laughed, sprinkling a pinch of superiority at her unexpectedly bumpkin attitude, as befitting a sophisticated man of the world. Though, if he had been completely honest with himself, he’d have admitted he didn’t care for gambling either. He’d watched his parents and grandparents don chic evening clothes, diamonds glittering at ears, necks and wrists, playing casinos all over the world. He’d watched his friends succumb one by one to the momentary thrill when the turn of a card decreed a winner and a loser. He truly wanted to know what was so exciting, but somehow there had never been any glamour for him. Yet millions had been entertained in this R-rated Disneyland. What was the draw? He still tried such places occasionally, hoping his moment of epiphany might suddenly occur, marking his transition into full adulthood. He’d been waiting thirty years now.

“Corinne likes it,” Kate had told him. “Her eyes glaze over the minute she walks into a casino and she plays every quarter in her purse, totally mesmerized.”

“Robbery is entertaining. That’s why it’s in so many movies,” he’d said.

So far she’d spent this evening doodling on cocktail napkins, capturing the expressions of the characters around her, like the little thumbnail sketches he sometimes discovered in the margins of her work papers. Unprofessional, but he liked the little surprises so he never mentioned it, a guilty pleasure.

He risked another peek. Her pen lay motionless in her lap, her attention still distracted. Why didn’t she run off and spend that casino credit? She had nothing to lose, maybe a lot to win. Maybe with that much easy money she could discover the joys of gambling for herself, maybe demonstrate it for him, the way she’d shown him how to sew on a button. Instead she stayed behind him, seemed unaware of him, but when she moved he could hear the faint, slidy silkiness of her dress. He secretly blamed her for his loses at the table; she blew his concentration.

An attendant came by with his scotch, not his first of the evening, or his second. Actually, he’d stopped counting. Drinking, there was another proof of his immaturity. He approached alcohol as his did gambling, still looking to find joy in the inebriate freedom as his friends did. Growing up, watching the slow, ugly deterioration of his grandfather’s liver had permanently scuffed that pleasure. But tonight he craved the alcoholic escape. Perhaps excessive celibacy had skewed his reality. That had an easy remedy. Kate was off limits, of course, being Brian Porter’s niece, besides there had been no sign of willingness on her part. If he needed any more evidence, he need only look at the women in the room. They kept touching their men on the arms, shoulders and backs, little promising touches, unlike Kate who kept her distance. One woman kept glancing at Ryoki, catching his eye. She’d probably jump ship without much provocation. Petite, dark hair, fair skin, red lips. She looked a little like Kate, could pass as a sister or maybe a cousin. No harm in a little private fantasy, he told himself. Men did it all the time.

Ryoki started when Kate touched him. She stood close behind him, her hand on his sleeve, speaking into his ear.

“There’s something I need to take care of. I’ll be back in a bit,” she said before sailing out of the room, pausing only briefly to speak to the door attendant.

Ryoki could still feel her breath warm in his ear, the skin pricking under his shirt—the Valentine’s Day party, Take 2. Distraction, that’s what he needed. He downed the last of his scotch in a single gulp, nearly choking as it burned down his throat and stung his eyes. He looked again at Kate’s double. She stared back. He was right; she
was
willing. Ryoki took a good look at the man he’d be depriving: mid-forties, purplish birthmark on his forehead, graying at the temples, loud-mouthed, strong New York accent, big hand gestures, expensive suit, a caricature of a gentleman. He knew he should feel guilty for stealing his girl, but there was a certain meanness in him tonight and he didn’t care. After twenty minutes of expressive eye contact, the woman understood him perfectly. When he rose to leave, he saw her squeeze her man’s arm and lean over to whisper some affectionate excuse.

It seemed almost too easy, and as he waited for her outside the doors he wondered vaguely if she was a prostitute. He’d never paid for sex and had never intended to start. But at this moment his core principles felt comfortably elastic and his mind began a useless orbit around the question of exactly how many scotches he’d consumed. By the time she came out to meet him, he’d abandoned the undertaking. She took his arm. “I’m Angelica,” she said.

“Tanaka.”

She smiled up at him. “Tanaka, that’s a nice name. Where’re you from?”

“Tokyo.”

She took his arm and nudged him toward the elevators where they seemed to appear instantly, without consciousness of movement. In the brighter light she looked less like Kate, with a sort of hardness around the edges. But the lighting was flattering enough that he didn’t mind and when the elevator doors slid open, they both stepped inside.

Outside his room, he unlocked the door and stood aside to let her enter.

“Nice suite,” she said.

“Are you a guest here?” he asked.

She placed her tiny evening bag on the coffee table without answering, bumping the hotel magazine which slid off to the side, revealing Kate’s gambling credit and the jewel box containing the pearls. The sight hurt him a little. Must have been sitting there for days. Maybe left on purpose.

“Do you have to get back to your friend?” Ryoki asked, pulling his eyes from the table.

“I left it open. It’s good to leave things open. You never know what’s going to happen.” She didn’t ask about Kate, though he knew she must have seen her.

He offered her a drink. She declined. She took a step toward him, touching his hand, slowly dragging her fingers up his arm onto his chest. It was exactly what he’d wanted only a moment before, an aggressive, exotic foreign woman, a fantasy, all the pleasure and none of the reality. But at her touch he suddenly felt unsure, mildly revolted. She was almost too aggressive, as though in a hurry to get to her next client. He thought to push her away, ask her a few questions, just to talk a bit, ameliorate the tingling of wrongness that persisted in the back of his mind. Then he felt the pressure of her lips against his mouth, slowly sliding across his jaw and down his neck. Logic began to crumble into random words, gradually fracturing into a disjointed alphabet. What could be wrong about this? All animals did it. The scotch had worked its dark spell, quietly consuming rational thought until he stopped caring about anything but the immediate thrill on his lonesome skin.

A sharp rap at the door made them both jerk and freeze. Rapping again, sharper, harder. Ryoki recognized Kate’s voice:

“Open the door, please. I need to talk to you.”

“Don’t answer,” Angelica whispered, running her lips up his throat, flicking her tongue in and out of his ear. There was a moment of indecision, a choosing. Abruptly her tongue felt more clammy than sexy, as if Kate had blasted the hex astray. Irritated, he rubbed the saliva from his ear as he straightened his shirt and opened the door. There stood Kate, an ice queen in a black dress, face to face with Angelica, exposing the serrated disparity between true beauty and optical illusion: the beguiling lighting, the heavy makeup, the single yard of fabric masquerading as clothing—special effects, tawdry magic.

Standing straight, head erect, Kate smiled her schoolmarm smile and walked ten steps into the room, forcing Ryoki to all but leap out of her way. She dropped her little purse on the couch, a careless but unmistakably intimate gesture. “I’m sorry I was gone so long. It took longer than I’d expected.” She paused to look at Ryoki as though he knew exactly what “it” was. “The doorkeeper told me you two had headed off and I took a guess at where that might be.” She looked at Angelica, still smiling. “Your friend is looking for you in the bar. I told him I’d send you down if I found you.”

There was an awkward pause, a moment of silent combat between the two smiling women. Ryoki’s eyes slid to Angelica before he sighed inaudibly and turned to Kate. Angelica, seeing herself outmaneuvered, bristled but kept her tone even and polite, “Maybe we’ll meet again soon. Like I said, you never know what might happen.”

Ryoki supposed he answered, but would never remember what he might have said. Perhaps he was too drunk, or just too dumbfounded. He took no further notice of Angelica. Kate the smooth, correct hostess, showed her out. When the door clicked shut, she paused an instant before turning to face him.

“Well,” he said quietly.

“Well, what?”

“Is her friend really waiting for her in the bar?” He was giving her a chance to explain, to offer some trifling reason for this galling invasion of his privacy.

“Yes, but she won’t make it that far. I harangued security until they promised to meet her at the elevators. It took me a while. They were all up in arms about some virus that had just attacked their security system. But eventually things started coming back online and they promised.”

Ryoki stood staring, his confusion resolving into cold fury. “You sent security after some poor woman because she was with me?” he said, nearly undone by the mental image of Kate brandishing a torch and leading a pitchfork-wielding mob through the casino. “Kate, you’ve made me ridiculous and you treated that woman like a prostitute.” His voice rose, clipped and hard. “What possessed you to do such an absurd, invasive thing?”

Kate did not speak at first, her placid expression slowly turning to shock, then anger as her face set and her mouth hardened into a straight line.

“There was no kind of pubic scene. I went by myself looking for you, and the attendant said he’d seen you leave with that, that spider—”

His eyes narrowed. “You were jealous, so you sicced security on some poor woman.”

“Again with the ‘poor woman.’ Why not call her ‘girl’ and throw in ‘defenseless’ while you’re at it? I left to alert security specifically about her, never dreaming you’d run off with her the minute my back was turned. How much have you had to drink anyway?”

“What, upset she’s going to get some and you aren’t?”

It was a nasty thing to say and Kate looked away in disgust. When she faced him again she looked grand and fierce, her eyes glittering in the soft light.

“You’d be defenseless against her.”

He laughed, harsh and grating, stepping up close, trapping her against the wall, breathing used scotch into her face. “Take a good look, Kate. I can handle one little girl.”

“Nothing worse than a stupid drunk,” she mumbled to herself, shoving him back with two hands. “I noticed her because she was looking at you. There was definitely something off about that ‘little girl,’ something odd in the way she was checking her skirt, like she was worried she was showing too much leg. That’s the last thing girls like that worry about. And when she shifted on her stool I couldn’t help but see a knife holster strapped to the inside of her thigh. She looked up and we locked eyes. The hairs prickled on the back of my neck, and I knew she meant harm, absolutely and without doubt.” She shuddered, her eyes speaking her sincerity. She believed what she said, all the way through.

“Maybe you
think
you saw something,” he said, refusing to believe it, “but you couldn’t have had more than a brief glimpse from that distance.”

“She meant
harm,
” Kate repeated, shaking her head as if ridding herself of a nasty dream.
Ryoki stared. How had he not noticed Kate was crazy, crazy pure and simple? Because she was pretty enough and smart enough to hide it for a time, but lift the veil and there she was, insane and a public embarrassment. Ryoki wanted to be rid of her.

“I’m going downstairs,” he said. “When I get back I want you gone. By that I mean back to Salt Lake or wherever your keeper is.”

Kate didn’t move.

“‘Downstairs?’ What do you mean? A minute ago you were in for the night.”

“I’m going to find that girl and get what I want. Now, get out!”

“No, you won’t. You’d be too embarrassed to go back after I sent her away.”