Shoe Dog (13 page)

She nodded. Like basic accounting principles, she grasped it all intuitively, right away.

I asked if she was seeing anyone. She confessed that she was. But the boy—well, she said, he was just a boy. All the boys she dated, she said, were just that—boys. They talked about sports and cars. (I was smart enough not to confess that I loved both.) “But you,” she said, “you've seen the world. And now you're putting everything on the line to create this company . . .”

Her voice trailed off. I stood up straighter. We said good-bye to the lions and tigers.

FOR OUR SECOND
date we walked over to Jade West, a Chinese restaurant across the street from the office. Over Mongolian beef and garlic chicken she told me her story. She still lived at home, and loved her family very much, but there were challenges. Her father was an admiralty lawyer, which struck me as a good job. Their house certainly sounded bigger and better than the one in which I'd grown up. But five kids, she hinted, was a strain. Money was a constant issue. A certain amount of rationing was standard operating procedure. There was never enough; staples, like toilet paper, were always in low supply. It was a home marked by
insecurity
. She did
not
like insecurity. She preferred security. She said it again. ­
Security
. That's why she'd been drawn to accounting. It seemed solid, dependable, safe, a line of work she could always rely on.

I asked how she'd happened to choose Portland State. She said she'd started out at Oregon State.

“Oh,” I said, as if she'd confessed to doing time in prison.

She laughed. “If it's any consolation, I hated it.” In particular, she couldn't abide the school's requirement that every student take at least one class in public speaking. She was far too shy.

“I understand, Miss Parks.”

“Call me Penny.”

After dinner I drove her home and met her parents. “Mom, Dad, this is Mr. Knight.”

“Pleased to meet you,” I said, shaking their hands.

We all stared at each other. Then the walls. Then the floor. Lovely weather we're having, isn't it?

“Well,” I said, tapping my watch, snapping my rubber bands, “it's late, I'd better be going.”

Her mother looked at a clock on the wall. “It's only nine o'clock,” she said. “Some hot date.”

JUST AFTER OUR
second date Penny went with her parents to Hawaii for Christmas. She sent me a postcard, and I took this as a good sign. When she returned, her first day back at the office, I asked her again to dinner. It was early January 1968, a bitterly cold night.

Again we went to Jade West, but this time I met her there, and I was quite late, arriving from my Eagle Scout review board, for which she gave me much grief. “Eagle Scout? You?”

I took this as another good sign. She felt comfortable enough to tease me.

At some point during that third date, I noticed we were both much more at ease. It felt nice. The ease continued, and over the next few weeks deepened. We developed a rapport, a feel for each other, a knack for communicating nonverbally. As only two shy people can. When she was feeling shy, or uncomfortable, I sensed it, and either gave her space or tried to draw her out, depending. When I was spaced out, embroiled in some internal debate with myself about the business, she knew whether to tap me lightly on the shoulder or wait patiently for me to reemerge.

Penny wasn't legally old enough to drink alcohol, but we'd often borrow one of my sisters' driver's licenses and go for cocktails at Trader Vic's downtown. Alcohol and time worked their magic. By February, around my thirtieth birthday, she was spending every minute of her free time at Blue Ribbon, and evenings at my apartment. At some point she stopped calling me Mr. Knight.

INEVITABLY, I BROUGHT
her home to meet my family. We all sat around the dining room table, eating Mom's pot roast, washing it down with cold milk, pretending it wasn't awkward. Penny was the
second girl I'd ever brought home, and though she didn't have the wild charisma of Sarah, what she had was better. Her charm was real, unrehearsed, and though the Knights seemed to like it, they were still the Knights. My mother said nothing; my sisters tried in vain to be a bridge to my mother and father; my father asked a series of probing, thoughtful questions about Penny's background and upbringing, which made him sound like a cross between a loan officer and a homicide detective. Penny told me later that the atmosphere was the exact opposite of her house, where dinner was a free-for-all, everyone laughing and talking over one another, dogs barking and
TV
s blaring in the background. I assured her that no one would have suspected she felt out of her element.

Next she brought me home, and I saw the truth of everything she'd told me. Her house
was
the opposite. Though much grander than Chateau Knight, it was a mess. The carpets were stained from all the animals—a German shepherd, a monkey, a cat, several white rats, an ill-tempered goose. And chaos was the rule. Besides the Parks clan, and their arkful of pets, it was a hangout for all the stray kids in the neighborhood.

I tried my best to be charming, but I couldn't seem to connect with anyone, human or otherwise. Slowly, painstakingly, I made inroads with Penny's mother, Dot. She reminded me of Auntie Mame—zany, madcap, eternally young. In many ways she was a permanent teenager, resisting her role as matriarch. It struck me that she was more like a sister to Penny than a mother, and indeed, soon after dinner, when Penny and I invited her to come get a drink with us, Dot jumped at the chance.

We hit several hot spots and wound up at an after-hours joint on the east side. Penny, after two cocktails, switched to water—but not Dot. Dot kept right on going, and going, and soon she was jumping up to dance with all sorts of strange men. Sailors, and worse. At one point she jabbed a thumb in Penny's direction and said to me, “Let's ditch this wet blanket! She's dead weight!” Penny put both hands over her eyes. I laughed and kicked back. I'd passed the Dot Test.

Dot's seal of approval promised to be an asset some months later, when I wanted to take Penny away for a long weekend. Though Penny had been spending evenings at my apartment, we were still in some ways constrained by propriety. As long as she lived under their roof, Penny felt bound to obey her parents, to abide by their rules and rituals. So I was bound to get her mother's consent before such a big trip.

Wearing a suit and tie, I presented myself at the house. I made nice with the animals, petted the goose, and asked Dot for a word. The two of us sat at the kitchen table, over cups of coffee, and I said that I cared very much for Penny. Dot smiled. I said that I believed Penny cared very much for me. Dot smiled, but less certainly. I said that I wanted to take Penny to Sacramento for the weekend. To the national track-and-field championships.

Dot took a sip of her coffee and puckered her lips. “Hmm . . . no,” she said. “No, no, Buck, I don't think so. I don't think we're going to do that.”

“Oh,” I said. “I'm sorry to hear that.”

I went and found Penny in one of the back rooms of the house and told her that her mother said no. Penny put her palms against her cheeks. I told her not to worry, I'd go home, collect my thoughts, and try to think of something.

The next day I returned to the house and again asked Dot for a moment of her time. Again we sat in the kitchen over cups of coffee. “Dot,” I said, “I probably didn't do a very good job yesterday of explaining how serious I am about your daughter. You see, Dot, I love Penny. And Penny loves me. And if things continue in this vein, I see us building a life together. So I
really
hope that you'll reconsider your answer of yesterday.”

Dot stirred sugar into her coffee, drummed her fingers on the table. She had an odd look on her face, a look of fear, and frustration. She hadn't found herself involved in many negotiations, and she didn't know that the basic rule of negotiation is to know what you
want, what you need to walk away with in order to be whole. So she got flummoxed and instantly folded. “Okay,” she said. “Okay.”

PENNY AND I
flew to Sacramento. We were both excited to be on the road, far from parents and curfews, though I suspected Penny might be more excited about getting to use her high school graduation gift—a matching set of pink luggage.

Whatever the reason, nothing could diminish her good mood. It was blazing hot that weekend, more than one hundred degrees, but Penny never once complained, not even about the metal seats in the bleachers, which turned to griddles. She didn't get bored when I explained the nuances of track, the loneliness and craftsmanship of the runner. She was interested. She got it, all of it, right away, as she got everything.

I brought her down to the infield grass, introduced her to the runners I knew, and to Bowerman, who complimented her with great courtliness, saying how pretty she was, asking in complete earnestness what she was doing with a bum like me. We stood with my former coach and watched the day's last races.

That night we stayed at a hotel on the edge of town, in a suite painted and decorated in an unsettling shade of brown. The color of burned toast, we agreed. Sunday morning we spent in the pool, hiding from the sun, sharing the shade beneath the diving board. At some point I raised the subject of our future. I was leaving the next day for a long and vital trip to Japan, to cement my relationship with Onitsuka, I hoped. When I returned, later that summer, we couldn't keep “dating,” I told her. Portland State frowned on teacher-student relationships. We'd have to do something to formalize our relationship, to set it above reproach. Meaning, marriage. “Can you handle arranging a wedding by yourself while I'm gone?” I said. “Yes,” she said.

There was very little discussion, or suspense, or emotion. There was no negotiation. It all felt like a foregone conclusion. We went
inside the burned-toast suite and phoned Penny's house. Dot answered, first ring. I gave her the news, and after a long, strangling pause she said: “You son of a bitch.” Click.

Moments later she phoned back. She said she'd reacted impulsively because she'd been planning to spend the summer having fun with Penny, and she'd felt disappointed. Now she said it would be
almost
as much fun to spend the summer planning Penny's wedding.

We phoned my parents next. They sounded pleased, but my sister Jeanne had just gotten married and they were a bit weddinged out.

We hung up, looked at each other, looked at the brown wallpaper, and the brown rug, and both sighed. So this is life.

I kept saying to myself, over and over, I'm engaged, I'm engaged. But it didn't sink in, maybe because we were in a hotel in the middle of a heat wave in exurban Sacramento. Later, when we got home and went to a Zales and picked out an engagement ring with an emerald stone, it started to feel real. The stone and setting cost five hundred dollars—
that
was
very
real. But I never once felt nervous, never asked myself with that typical male remorse, Oh, God, what have I done? The months of dating and getting to know Penny had been the happiest of my life, and now I would have the chance to perpetuate that happiness. That's how I saw it. Basic as Accounting 101. Assets equal liabilities plus equity.

Not until I left for Japan, not until I kissed my fiancée good-bye and promised to write as soon as I got there, did the full reality, with all its dimensions and contours, hit me. I had more than a fiancée, a lover, a friend. I had a partner. In the past I'd told myself Bowerman was my partner, and to some extent Johnson. But this thing with Penny was unique, unprecedented. This alliance was life-altering. It still didn't make me nervous, it just made me more mindful. I'd never before said good-bye to a true partner, and it felt massively different. Imagine that, I thought. The single easiest way to find out how you feel about someone. Say goodbye.

FOR ONCE, MY
former contact at Onitsuka was still my contact. Kitami was still there. He hadn't been replaced. He hadn't been reassigned. On the contrary, his role with the company was more secure, judging by his demeanor. He seemed easier, more self-­assured.

He welcomed me like one of the family, said he was delighted with Blue Ribbon's performance, and with our East Coast office, which was thriving under Johnson. “Now let us work on how we can capture the U.S. market,” he said.

“I like the sound of that,” I said.

In my briefcase I was carrying new shoe designs from both Bowerman and Johnson, including one they'd teamed up on, a shoe we were calling the Boston. It had an innovative full-length midsole cushion. Kitami put the designs on the wall and studied them closely. He held his chin in one hand. He liked them, he said. “Like very very much,” he said, slapping me on the back.

We met many times over the course of the next several weeks, and each time I sensed from Kitami an almost brotherly vibe. One afternoon he mentioned that his Export Department was having its annual picnic in a few days. “You come!” he said. “Me?” I said. “Yes, yes,” he said, “you are honorary member of Export Department.”

The picnic was on Awaji, a tiny island off Kobe. We took a small boat to get there, and when we arrived we saw long tables set up along the beach, each one covered with platters of seafood and bowls of noodles and rice. Beside the tables were tubs filled with cold bottles of soda and beer. Everyone was wearing bathing suits and sunglasses and laughing. People I'd only known in a reserved, corporate setting were being silly and carefree.

Late in the day there were competitions. Team-building exercises like potato sack relays and foot races along the surf. I showed off my
speed, and everyone bowed to me as I crossed the finish line first. Everyone agreed that Skinny Gaijin was very fast.