Читать книгу Amorous Woman - Donna George Storey - Страница 7

After Brad left, I felt my smile widen from polite to genuinely pleased. Without even trying, I’d finally gotten Tim all to myself.

‘Are you sure you can’t talk your girlfriend into going with you to Tokyo?’ I asked, a touch perversely, as if I really did want them to get back together.

‘I’m sure,’ he said with a small, defiant smile. Maybe I’d have a little company tonight after all? Perhaps I was being a little harsh on myself with my vow to give up sex for eternity. After all, the Buddha taught we should be open to what life hands us and take the middle way between renunciation and pleasure. I could just tell by the way Tim moved his body and used his hands that he was the attentive, caring sort of lover who would most definitely bring me pleasure. He’d kiss and fondle my breasts for hours until I came just from the sweet tug-tugging of his lips on my throbbing nipples, then he’d gently part my thighs and use his tongue down there with such slow, savoring skill that I’d come again, drenching him with my juices, and he’d swear it was the sweetest nectar he’d ever tasted. Afterwards, he’d wrap me in his arms and we’d float together, not the doomed and melancholy drifting of the courtesan with her lover of the moment, but as twin spirits joined in timeless bliss.

Suddenly I realized Tim was talking to me. Perhaps he had been for some time.

‘I do want to settle down, just not quite yet,’ he said with surprising firmness. ‘So, I’m going to do it. And whatever happens, at least it will be an adventure.’

‘Yes, I’d rather do something I regret than regret something I didn’t do,’ I said with a smile.

‘I know exactly what you mean.’

My chest tightened. It was brave of him to give up safety for adventure and suddenly I wanted to give him something to help, something more than tips on exchanging business cards or even a few sweaty rounds of sumo-wrestling on my futon.

And so I told him how living in Japan will give him a leisure no mere tourist has to know the rhythms of the place, a land of tiny poems. In autumn, he’d see the persimmons glowing like huge, orange jewels on their bare branches, then winter’s dusting of snow on blue tile roofs. He’d learn why the old erotic pictures are called ‘spring prints’—because in that season the air is as soft as a lover’s whisper—and he’d sigh at the perfect coolness of iced barley tea slipping down his throat on a wilting summer afternoon. As the year passed, he would become part of it. The neighbors would stop staring and start to nod a greeting, and one day the tiny old lady in the gray kimono at the snack stand would wrap up his regular order of red-bean­and-rice balls before a word was spoken, and she’d flash him that first gold-toothed smile, and he’d be happy all day. It’s like someone’s given you a whole other life, I told him, an extra life to live for a while.

Tim listened, lips parted, the way men do when they want to be enchanted. And how could I blame him for falling under Japan’s spell? Not so very long ago, I was enchanted, too.