Читать книгу Amorous Woman - Donna George Storey - Страница 11

My townhouse was, to say the least, not ready for guests. I hadn’t bought furniture for the downstairs, partly because of money, but mostly because I liked the spaciousness of it after my cramped apartment in Japan. Now, with two normal American guys glancing uncomfortably around the empty rooms, what had been an abundance of pure possibility seemed to reveal a disturbing lack.

It got worse. Murmuring something about getting me a glass of water, Brad walked into my kitchen and opened the refrigerator door to find nothing but a container of plain yogurt and a phallic-looking package of pickled white radish.

‘We need to get you some dinner,’ Brad said. ‘Is Chinese OK? There’s a pretty good place a few blocks from here.’

I waited meekly as Brad called in our order—Buddha’s Delight and brown rice for me—and sent Tim out to pick up the food.

What else could I do then but invite him up to my bedroom?

When Brad saw the fireplace and the pile of wood the former tenants had left stacked neatly beside it, he offered to make a fire, which wasn’t such a bad idea on this chilly spring evening.

‘Thanks for doing all of this. I’ll be ashamed to face you next week in class, but you’ll probably get me fired for what I did, so at least I won’t have to worry about that.’

‘Do you mean because of those funny faces you made? I won’t tell. In fact, that’s when I decided I liked you.’

I felt oddly moved by his words. I wanted him to like me. I wanted them all to like me. That was the problem.

‘Well, I’d like to keep my job.’

‘I want what you want, Sensei.’ He smiled at me for a long moment, then began crumpling newspaper for kindling.

I stretched out on the floor and tucked the meditation pillow under my head. I liked watching him at work. His rolled-up sleeves and loosened tie gave him a fetching vulnerability, a boy playing businessman. ‘You must have been a Boy Scout.’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but I dropped out.’ I laughed.

The doorbell rang and Brad motioned me to stay put while he went downstairs to let Tim in. With a bag of fragrant Chinese take-out in his arms, my Irish engineer looked even more delicious than I remembered. There it was again, that pang of arousal. Like hunger, but lower.

Yet strangely enough, I wasn’t torn between them now. I did have them both here, in my realm, where I could admire them in the firelight, the sharp Caucasian topography of their faces so exotic but nostalgic, too. With my belly full and warm, my lust mellowed into a desire for good company, which they were, telling me funny stories of work, imitating the bosses, explaining movies and fads I’d missed in all those years away, teaching me to be American again.

It might have been an illusion, our sudden friendship, but isn’t all human intercourse as fleeting? Strangers become lovers over a few beers; husbands turn to strangers with a single frown. I could already feel the silence of the place when they left, the loneliness.

I wondered how I could get them to stay. It was then I realized what I really wanted from both of them. Or rather, I wanted to give them something, exactly what they had asked for.

For all of those years in my adopted country, I was locked up in silence. There were many things I didn’t know how to say, either with words or in other ways, and so many more it wasn’t proper to speak of at all. What would it be like to tell my story honestly?

‘Do you really want to hear the truth?’ I asked. They both turned to me, chopsticks in hand.

‘Remember? The truth about my life in Japan? You might find some of it . . . surprising.’

Tim nodded. Brad mumbled, ‘Absolutely. I’m all ears.’

‘It’s a story of bygone days. In some ways Japan changes so quickly, but many things stay the same. Oh, and there’s a lot of sex in it. Too much maybe. Do you think you can handle it?’

They exchanged a glance.

‘We’ll give it our best try,’ Brad said in a soft voice. Suddenly I saw an image of myself sitting before them in yukata, the blue-and-white cotton robe you wear to relax at a hot spring. As they watched, I untied the sash, pulling open one panel, then the other, so they could see me as I really was. Not my nipples blushing dusty rose, or the reddish-blond curls where my thighs met, but something softer, darker, deeper than flesh.

I took a long, slow breath. I began to tell my story.