East is East (52 page)

It must have been about four when the sky clouded over and the storm came up on them. Abercorn and the man in the cap—his name was Watt-Something and he was one of the sheriff's men—wanted to go in, but Turco wouldn't hear of it. He was clenched like a fist, his face dark and angry. His tone was pathology itself. “I can smell him,” he hissed. “He's out there, I know it.” And then to Ruth: “Keep it up, goddamn it, keep it up.”

She held the microphone to her lips and called out Hiro's name, over and over, though she knew it was absurd, hopeless, as asinine as serenading the bugs with Donna Summer. “Hiro!” she bellowed to the tree toads and tuitles, to the birds and bears and the mute identical trees, “Hiro!,” and the gnats swarmed down her throat and up her nose. She was still at it when the storm broke and the rain lashed them like a whip, windblown and harsh. And then all of a sudden Turco was pinching her arm and shushing her and there it was, thin and plaintive, the distant rain-washed bleat of subjection and defeat:
“Haha! Haha! Haha!”

Hiro came to her arms, came running, awash in filth, bleeding from every pore, his clothes hanging in shreds, splashing through the sludge like a boy coming in off the playground.
“Haha! Haha!”
he cried,
“Ok
ā
san! Ok
ā
san!”
He was crazed, delirious, she could see that, could see it in his face and in the mad wide stare of his eyes. Turco crouched like an insect behind her and Hiro spread his arms wide, running, splashing, stumbling for her, and she felt in that instant that nothing mattered in the world but this poor tortured man, this sweet man, this man she'd kept and fed and loved, and she called out his name once more—”Hiro!”—and this time, for the first time, she meant it.

The rain drove down. The swamp festered and hummed. And then Turco was on him like some sort of parasite, choking him, forcing his face into the water, twisting his arms back till they went tight in the shoulders. They hauled him over the side like a fish
and laid him face-up on the floor of the boat, and now his animation was gone—he looked half-dead lying there, his head thrown back and his sick tan eyes swimming in their sockets. They wouldn't let her touch him. All she wanted was to cradle him, hold his head in her lap, but they wouldn't let her. She lost control then, for just a moment, shoving at Turco, cursing him, and he came back at her with a ferocity that stopped her heart. He didn't touch her, not this time, but the look on his face was a thing she would never forget—only the very thinnest single played-out strand of wire was holding him back. All the long way back to the dock she sat there, staring out on nothing, the rain beating at her, feeling helpless, feeling like an apostate, feeling violated.

That was the low point.

When they got back to the dock, when the crowd overwhelmed the thin line of police and pushed their way through to get a glimpse of Hiro Tanaka, the desperado, the jailbreaker, the foreigner, their plain sunburned faces and steady pale eyes prepared for any extreme of outrage and shock, when a kind of frenzy consumed the press and even the police were hard-pressed to clamp down on their wads of Redman and retain their equanimity, that's when things began to turn. They were all over her, all over him. The police shouldered their way through, cleared a channel to the ambulance, the white arms and legs and sure hands of the paramedics, rain driving down and down and down. The lights flashed, the siren screamed and Hiro was gone, Ruth clinging dazedly to the picture of him laid out on the stretcher, Turco hanging over him like a vampire. They gave her five minutes, and in a fog she found her way to the ladies' room at the tourist center and wiped the mash of insects and sweat from her face, tied her hair up in a scarf one of the park girls gave her, and stepped out into the lobby to face them.

It was then, only then, that she began to realize just how big a story this was. And how big a part she'd played in it. And what she alone knew that no one else did. Forget Jessica McClure and the woman in the surf, this was the story of the hour and she was at the center of it. They jabbed microphones at her, there were
lights and flashbulbs, and she knew that she had a story here, not a short story, not some labored fiction that strove for some obscure artistic truth, but a real true tough hard and painful real-life story—and what's more, she was the heroine of it. The realization hit her in a single glowing flash-lit moment of epiphany. She smiled for the cameras.

The following day, jane had her accident.

Ruth was back at Thanatopsis, back in the good graces of Septima, back in the hive, the INS had their man and Saxby had his fish. She'd treated her inflamed epidermis to alternating hot and cold baths laced with Epsom salts, dabbed at each of her myriad swellings with alcohol and calamine lotion and slept till noon. Eating a very late breakfast on the patio—no one would have expected her to work after the ordeal she'd been through—she'd run into Irving Thalamus, who was nursing a hangover with the aid of a tall Calistoga and gin and the
New York Review of Books.
She had a long talk with Irving about her idea, about doing an extended magazine piece or even a book about the whole incident, and Irving had put her in touch with his agent, Marker McGill, of the venerable McGill Madden Agency. That was encouraging, but she was still feeling low over the disaster of her reading, though everyone assured her that it had gone off fine, even if it was a bit on the long side, and feeling lower yet over Hiro. She couldn't get the shock of it out of her head, the way he'd looked with his fevered eyes and wasted limbs, his sunken cheeks and lacerated flesh—and the leeches, leeches all over him like sticking plaster—and the way he'd come to her. That made her feel lower than anything. He loved her. He trusted her. And she'd betrayed him. But then they hadn't given her a choice. And in the long run it was for his own good—no jail could be worse than that swamp, and there was no question but that he would have died out there.

Ruth was in the front parlor waiting for Marker McGill to return her call when they brought Jane in. Earlier, it must have been about
three or so, she'd looked up from the magazine she was numbly paging through to see Jane, in English riding habit, striding across the foyer as if she were auditioning for
National Velvet.
Already that afternoon Ruth had talked to the
New York Times,
the
San Francisco Chronicle,
the Atlanta, Savannah and Charleston papers, CBS Radio and Mr. Shikuma of the Japan-America Society, who wanted to warmly congratulate her on her part in the apprehension of his errant countryman and to apologize, at length, for any inconvenience or unpleasantness Seaman Tanaka may have caused her and to assure her that the vast majority of the Japanese—indeed, the entire country but for Seaman Tanaka, who was of course mentally ill—were great respecters of the law and proper behavior. The calls had made her feel better, and she began to warm to the prospect of a book on Hiro and had even begun to daydream about the amount of the advance and what she would do with it, when she looked up and saw Jane and felt incinerated all over again.

The Nordic slave was there at the door—or was he just a Swedish oaf?—and Jane pranced up to enfold him in a public embrace, looking ever so self-consciously cute in her jodhpurs and boots and that ridiculous little riding hat perched like a napkin on the spill of her hair. She was going riding. Ruth was at the center of a media storm, Ruth had risked her life in the swamps and assisted in the capture of a desperate fugitive and thumbed her nose at the law, but Jane was going riding. All the hatred Ruth had for her festered to the surface in that moment and she squinted her eyes to bore into her with a corrosive look. But Jane caught her out again—just as Ruth was about to drop her gaze to the page in her lap, Jane swiveled her head to lock eyes with her, to catch her watching, snooping, prying, envying the Nordic embrace, and gave her a perfect little bee-stung smirk of triumph.

Two hours later they brought her in. The horse had gone down on her and broken her right leg in three places. Jane's face was a snarl of pain, there was blood on her jodhpurs where the jagged face of the bone had sliced through the flesh. They rushed her into the parlor and laid her out on the couch, the Swedish oaf and
Owen, who came away with a smear of the anointed one's blood on his shirt. Jane shrieked like a woman giving birth to triplets, she shrieked breathlessly and without remit, save to break down in the occasional throaty rush of curses and sobs. Ruth moved aside while the whole colony fluttered round. She was horrified, she was, genuinely horrified. She could never take joy in another's pain, no matter how despicable the person nor how much that person had it coming, could she? No. No, she couldn't. And yet there was a thin tapering thread of satisfaction in it—even as Jane writhed and screamed and cried out for her mother and cursed the Swedish oaf: “Oh god, oh god—don't you touch me, Olaf, you pig, you—aiee, Mommy, Mommy, it hurts, it hurts!”—and the thread raveled out like this: now Jane would be out of action. At least for a while. It was a pity, a real pity. Ruth was already thinking up her billiard-room routine.

They took Jane to the hospital. Dinner that night was subdued, a joyless affair that ran to hushed conversation and furtive glances, the colonists numbly lifting Armand's lobster tortellini to their lips in a state of shock over the events of the past few days. Septima took her meal in the old wing of the house. Jane's place was conspicuously vacant. Somber rumors circulated—about Hiro, about Ruth, about Jane. After dinner, while Saxby—who alone of all the company remained ebullient and irrepressible—tended to his fish, Irving Thalamus took Ruth aside.

“So tell me,” he said, swirling amber liquid in a snifter, “how'd it go with Marker?”

McGill had called just after the excitement over Jane's accident had subsided; he was taking Ruth on. He was sure he could sell the book. He'd made some calls and was fielding offers. “Oh, Irving”—she clapped her hands like an ingénue, like Brie—“he's taking me on.” And then she gave him a look of such melting gratitude, such starry-eyed, humble and worshipful thanksgiving, that he set down his snifter and took her hand in both of his. “Irving,” she repeated, her voice appropriately raw, “how can I ever—?”

“It's nothing,” he murmured, and he was studying her, giving her a long sly look from beneath the hooded Thalamudian eyes. “Terrible about Jane,” he said after a moment. He still had hold of her hand.

Ruth searched his eyes. What did he want her to say? Was he on her side after all, was that it? “Yes,” she said. “Terrible.”

He looked away then, patted her hand and set it free. He lifted the snifter to his nose, took a deep breath and then set the glass down. “Ruthie”—and he hesitated, went for her hand again—“Ruthie, I've been meaning to ask you … you know I'll be leaving in two weeks?”

Ruth nodded. Her heart began to accelerate. She was acutely conscious of the pressure of Irving's hand on her own.

“I've got this place I'm renting in Key West—greatest weather on earth—it's about three blocks from the beach. Big open room, windows all over the place. Hemingway lived there one winter.”

She nodded again.

“Look,” he said, watching her from deep within the folds of his hooded eyes, “what I'm saying is this: I want you to come with me. Live there—rent free, no obligations.” He paused. “With me.”

She couldn't help herself, the names just leaped into her head: Ruth Thalamus, Mrs. Irving Thalamus, Ruth Dershowitz-Thalamus. She saw herself at his side in New York, cruising the literary salons, sashaying into Bread Loaf on his arm, saw herself in bed with him, all that hair, those strong white New York teeth. Her pulse was racing, her eyes were bright. And then she thought of Saxby, sweet Sax, with his fish and his shoulders and the way he smiled out of the corner of his mouth, thought of Thanatopsis House and Septima, of Laura and Sandy and all the rest. She was queen of the hive: this was her home. “You're sweet, Irving,” she said finally, “and I'll always love you. You'll always be my best friend, my mentor, my advisor—”

Irving had retreated behind his eyes, the meager bunch of his lips. “But—?”

“But”—she sighed, and she could look down now, and up, she could scan the room before she came back to him, all the time in the world—“but I can't leave Sax.”

The first call the following morning was from Marker McGill. He had a deal for her and he wanted to know what she thought of it. He'd gotten an offer from a major publisher—he named the house—for a $500,000 advance against a fifteen percent royalty, first serial rights going to one of the leading women's magazines—he named it—for $75,000, to run in three installments. How did that sound?

And so, here she was, a guest of the Fortunoffs, contracts in the mail, new clothes spread out on the bed, a journalist on her way to the hospital to interview Hiro Tanaka and take some notes. It was warm, but she would wear the coat anyway—the fall season had begun, after all—and yes, she thought she would highlight her hair just a bit, to bring out some of the reds and golds. Then she would slip into her stockings and heels, don the new suit, collect her tape recorder, notepad and pens, and call a cab. There would be photographers outside the hospital and she would look smart for them—seductive, yes, attractive, yes, but in a mature way, a chic and businesslike way. She was a journalist now, after all—like Joan Didion, like Frances FitzGerald—and she had an image to maintain. Journalism—and she said it aloud to herself as she stepped into the shower—it was a noble profession.