Tengu (7 page)

Jerry watched
him for a minute or two. He couldn’t understand why the man’s appearance
disturbed him so much. The man stood quite still, his cigarette between his
lips. Then he crossed the street and walked downhill toward the corner of La
Sonoma Avenue. In a moment, he was gone.

Jerry looked
down at his hands. His fists were clenched so tightly that his knuckles showed
white through the tan.

B
y four that afternoon, Eva Crowley was quite drunk. She was lying
on the white leather couch of her tenth-floor apartment in the better part of
West Los Angeles, wearing nothing but her black silk underwear, her hair
tousled into a fright wig and her face flushed.

A bottle of
Tanqueray gin stood on the glass-topped Italian table beside her, and it was
two fingers away from empty. Eva’s black maid Matilda had put her head around
the door at about two o’clock that afternoon, but Eva had sent her away. This
particular pain she wanted to nurse on her own. She wanted no sympathy, no
help. She was determined to fight for Gerard, and she was determined to win him
back. But just for a few self-indulgent hours, she needed to wallow in her own
sense of loss.

She sat up. Her
head felt like a hot-air balloon. All around her, the stylish living room
tilted and swayed. She picked up the gin bottle, frowned at it, and then
emptied the last dregs into her lipstick-smeared highball glass. She wished she
didn’t feel so suffocated and sick.

After this
morning’s row, the opulent decor of their apartment seemed even colder than
ever.

She had always
thought Gerard’s taste was sterile. He chose tables made of chrome and gray
smoked glass, tapestries woven in bland abstract patterns, and chairs
upholstered in neutral-colored leather. There was no emotional commitment in
Gerard’s surroundings. No warmth. He was an empty man with an empty mind.

She wondered,
as she swallowed the oily-smelling gin, why she loved him at all. She only knew
that she did, and that she didn’t want to lose him. To lose Gerard would mean
the loss of her dignity, her femininity, and her pride.

To lose Gerard
would mean that her mother had been right all along, that Eva was “born to be
unlovable.”

She climbed
unsteadily to her feet and balanced her way across the polished parquet floor
to the liquor cabinet. There didn’t seem to be very much left.
A bottle of tequila.
A bottle of strega.

Quarter of a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.
Maybe she ought to mix
herself a combined cocktail out of all of them and drink herself into total
unconsciousness.

She was just
trying to focus her eyes and her brain when there was a soft chime at the door.
She stood up straight, one hand on the cabinet for support. It must be the
twins, back from school.

She stared at
her Cartier wristwatch. They were at least twenty minutes early.

“Coming!” she
said, in a husky, high-pitched voice. She made her way out into the
cream-painted hall with its bonsai plants and Spanish rugs, and unlocked the
safety chain on the door.

‘‘You’re
early,’’ she said, opening the door and turning back into the hall. “How did
you...”

She paused.
Something was wrong. It wasn’t the twins at all. Standing in the cool darkness
of the hall was a swarthy, smartly dressed man in a white suit and striped
maroon tie. He took off his hat and inclined his head slightly. He didn’t
attempt to come in.

“You must be
Mrs. Crowley,” he said, in a cultured South American accent. He emphasized Mrs.
as if he was already well acquainted with Mr. Crowley. “I’m sorry if I...”

Eva clutched
her hands over her breasts. Until the man had apologized, she’d forgotten that
she was wearing nothing but a black transparent bra, black panties, and a black
garterbelt and stockings. Her face felt suddenly hot, and she said, flustered:
“Please–please wait there–I’ll just get my robe...”

“Of course,”
smiled the man. But he didn’t avert his eyes.

She retreated
into the bedroom, colliding with the doorframe in her drunkenness and bruising
her upper arm. She found her robe on the floor where she had left it that
morning and struggled into it. She tried to remember where she had taken off
her gray suit, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t even remember driving back from
Gerard’s office.

There were only
fragments.
Pushing past Francesca.
Slamming
the office door.
Standing in the crowded elevator
trying not to sob out loud.

She belted her
robe and went back to the front door. The man was still politely waiting there,
his hat in his hand, a small enigmatic smile on his face. He was short and
lightly built, and the shoes that peeped out from under his unfashionably
wide-bottomed pants were made of white kid, and as small as a tightrope
walker’s. His hair was oiled back into curls over his ears, and he wore a thin
clipped mustache.

“Your husband
isn’t here?” he asked her.

“Gerard? He
doesn’t usually get back until late. Sometimes he doesn’t get back at all.”

“He hasn’t
called you? We had an appointment, you see. I was supposed to meet him at the
office, but when 1 went
there,
his secretary told me
that he’d already left for the day. I thought he might have come home.”

Eva shook her
head. There was an awkward pause.

“Do you think
there’s any point in my waiting for him?” asked the man, raising his hat as if
he wanted to hang it up somewhere.

“Well,” said
Eva, “I don’t know. He may be coming back. He may not. He hasn’t told me.”

“I’m very
impertinent,” said the man. “Here I am pushing myself on you like this, and I
haven’t even introduced myself.” He inclined his head once again, like a
respectable parrot. “My name is Esmeralda. I am a business acquaintance of Mr.
Crowley. We are almost friends.”

“Almost?” asked
Eva.

The man smiled.
“Nobody in business can really afford to have friends. Friends are a luxury.”

Eva swayed a
little. “Well, Mr. Esmeralda, since you’re almost a friend of Gerard’s, I guess
it wouldn’t do any harm to invite you in.”

“You don’t have
to. I may be a robber.
Or a rapist.”

Eva took a deep
breath. “The way I feel right now, Mr. Esmeralda, that’ll be your lookout.

Please come
in.”

She led the way
into the living room, and Mr. Esmeralda closed the front door behind him. He
hesitated in the hall for a moment, and then hung his white hat on top of
Gerard’s golf clubs. He followed Eva into the pale Italian-styled room,
shooting his strartlingly white cuffs and adjusting his necktie. Eva clumsily
collected her empty gin bottle and smeary glass, but Mr. Esmeralda seemed to
take that in his stride.

“Would you care
for a cocktail?” asked Eva, blurrily. “I’m afraid I only have tequila or
strega. Or maybe some bourbon, if you feel like it.”

“I don’t drink,
as a rule,” smiled Mr. Esmeralda. He paced over to the window with mesmerically
precise steps and stood for a while admiring the Crowlcys’ two-thousand-dollar-a-month
view of the Rancho golf courses. “You have a pleasant apartment here.”

“Thank you,”
said Eva, sitting on the far end of the couch and tugging her wrap around her
knees. “Actually, it’s all Gerard’s taste, not mine.” She paused. “If I’d had
my way, we would have furnished it in elegant Colonial.”

Mr. Esmeralda
smiled briefly. His smiles came and went like shadows on a cloudy day.

“I feel that
you’re not happy with the world today,” he told her.

She frowned at
him. Then she ran her hand through her hair. “I don’t know what makes you feel
that. Happiness is only relative, after all. At least I have a roof over my
head, and enough to eat.

And nearly enough to drink.”

“You mustn’t
think that I’m being inquisitive,” said Mr. Esmeralda.

Eva gave a
dismisive wave of her hand. “I don’t mind. I don’t even know why I went to all
the trouble of getting drunk. It hasn’t made anything better, and it hasn’t
made anything worse.

Getting drunk,
Mr. Esmeralda, is only a way of deferring the pain until tomorrow.

Mr. Esmeralda
turned and faced her. “No pain can be deferred without paying interest, Mrs.

Crowley.
Tomorrow, you will pay for these hours of forgetfulness with your hangover.
Life is a business, like any other.”

Eva thought
about that, and then nodded. “Some business,” she said, not particularly to her
unexpected guest. Not even to
herself
.

There was
another pause. Mr. Esmeralda walked across the living room, his tiny shoes
clicking on the floor. He picked up a nautilus shell from a side table, and
turned it over and over in his hands.

“Did you know
something?” he asked quietly. “The first sailors who found these shells said
that if you put your ear against them, you would hear the cries of every sailor
who had ever drowned.”

He inclined his
head toward the open shell and listened. Then he set it down on the table
again.

“Did you hear
anything?” asked Eva.

He shook his
head.
“Only the sound of a woman in distress.”

Eva looked
away. “It’s really not very interesting, you know.”

“Your husband?”

She gave a
humorless laugh, which turned into a cough.
“Of course.
What other kind of problems do women of my age and background ever have? We’re
too trusting to take lovers.

We’re certainly
too conventional to fall in love with other women.
Or dogs.
Or whatever.”

Mr. Esmeralda
nodded. “You wait patiently at home, hoping that your spouses will have
sufficient loyalty to keep away from pretty young receptionists.”

Eva stared at
him. “You know about Francesca?”

“Of course.
I have taken your husband and Francesca to
dinner on several occasions.”

“I don’t
believe it,” Eva whispered.

“Oh, I’m afraid
it’s true,” Mr. Esmeralda told her. “But you don’t have very much to fear. At
the end of the day, Francesca is far more interested in disco music and
fashionable clothes than she is in your husband. In time, their relationship
will collapse of its own accord.”

Eva licked her
lips nervously. Mr. Esmeralda paced around the couch, this way and that, around
and around, and he kept appearing on one side or the other, and disappearing
again, as if there were three of him, three dapper triplets, all with maroon
ties.

“Are you in
tobacco, Mr. Esmeralda?” asked Eva, in a much higher voice than she’d meant to.
“I was once,” said Mr. Esmeralda. “But times change, you know how it is. These
days, I’m in this and that.”

“I see,” said
Eva faintly. “Mr. Esmeralda...”

“Yes?”

“Well, I hope
you don’t mind, but–would you care to sit down? You’re making me rather
confused. Rather giddy.”

Mr. Esmeralda
stopped pacing. Then he said: “My dear Mrs. Crowley, of course,” and sat down
on the opposite end of the couch with all the grace of a settling butterfly. He
laced his fingers together and smiled at her. He wore no rings.

“Gerard has
never mentioned you,” said Eva.

“No,” said Mr.
Esmeralda, “I don’t suppose he has.”

“You’re
very...”

She stopped
what she was saying. She wasn’t at all sure what she had been going to say
anyway.

She wanted to
tell Mr. Esmeralda that she thought he was very soigne, very together, and
really very clean. She had never seen such clean cuffs and fingernails before.
But you couldn’t say that to a total stranger.

Mr. Esmeralda
said, “Go on,” coaxingly, but she shook her head.

“Well,” he
said, leaning back on the cushions of the couch, “whatever you were going to
say, it couldn’t possibly have affected the way I think about you.”

“About me?
You scarcely know me.”

“I know you, my
dear Mrs. Crowley, as well as any unhappy woman
needs
to be known. In fact, my own view is that unhappy women hardly need to be known
at all. Only two things matter.

Their
unhappiness,
and their beauty. You have both.”

She looked
toward the liquor cabinet. She bit her lip. Then she looked back at Mr.
Esmeralda.

“Are you trying
to make a pass?”
she .
ked
him.

He smiled
silently for a moment, and then he let out a sharp little bark of laughter.

“I don’t see
what’s so funny,” she said. She could hear how much her voice was slurring.

“Nothing is
funny,” said Mr. Esmeralda. “And then again, everything is funny. Yes, I am
trying to make a pass.”

She blinked at
him. “Why?”

“Why? That is
one question that no woman has ever asked me before. My dear Mrs. Crowley,
don’t you know why?”

“Perhaps.
But I want to hear you say it.”

“Then I shall.
I am trying to make a pass at you because you are a delicate, beautiful woman.
You are sad, and you are drunk. Your husband has temporarily deserted you for a
receptionist with a noticeable bust but no IQ, and therefore you are prey to
any man who makes you feel attractive and confident once again.”

Eva pressed the
heels of her hands against her forehead. Mr. Esmeralda sat with his legs neatly
crossed, watching her.

Eva said, “You
must think I’m a fool.”

He shook his
head.
“Not at all.
There are only two fools in this
menage.
Your husband, for rejecting you; and me, for laying
my heart so openly on the line.
I risk frightening you away. I know
that. But if I don’t make love to you now–who knows, your husband may decide to
come back tomorrow, and my chance will be gone.”