Jake & Mimi (28 page)

The trophy was ours.

I walked out of the locker room twenty minutes later to see Naomi Kenn standing against the far wall. She wore jeans and a
powder blue sweater, and her shining black hair, still wet from the shower, was pulled back in a tight ponytail. I crossed
to her, and she stepped toward me and gave me a hug.

“I knew you would make it,” she said, releasing me but staying close.

“It felt pure,” I said.

Over her shoulder I could see my parents, talking with other parents by the door of the gym lobby. It was my mother’s fortieth
birthday, and we had agreed that, win or lose, we’d all drive back together to Goemon, her favorite restaurant, for a late-night
dinner.

“I owe you something,” Naomi said, smiling shyly. “But not here.” She looked down, then back up at me, and a look came into
her eyes that I’d never seen. “Jake,” she said, in a whisper that spiked my blood. “Don’t take the bus back.”

“My parents are driving me.”

“Can you lie to them?”

I looked at her, not sure I’d heard.

“Because if you can lie to them, I know a place we can go.”

Beyond her, down the hall, I saw my mother look up and see me. She waved, her eyes brimming. I waved back.

“Where?” I asked.

“It’s a secret. Will you meet me out by the base gate in ten minutes?”

I nodded, and she walked away. She walked away, and I walked down the hall to my parents and told them that there was going
to be a party on the team bus and that none of the other players would be missing it.

“You might have told us earlier, Jake,” my father said, “and saved us twenty minutes.” But his tone was gentle, his heart
full. He put his hand on my shoulder. “I thought you’d have to bank it,” he said.

“I had the angle.”

He squeezed my shoulder and stepped aside, and Mom hugged me close.

“We’re so proud, Jake,” she said. “We always knew…” She stopped and swallowed, her hands smoothing my shirt, straightening
the top button. “We’ll see you at home.”

I told Coach at the door to the team bus that I would be riding back with my parents. “My mom’s birthday,” I explained. Then
I walked to the gate of the base, where Naomi stood in the door of the guardhouse, talking to two MPs. She smiled goodbye
to them, and we stepped through the spotlit gates and walked through the quiet streets to the nearest train station. We reached
it just before the rains came. Sudden and hard, streaming down the train windows as we rode, blowing into the car when the
doors slid open at deserted country stops.

We’d been friends for six years, easy and natural, but we rode in silence, the air between us charged, electric. Every few
minutes the rocking of the train would bring her knee against mine. At Tokyo Station we changed to the Chuo line, and when
we passed Shinjuku I knew where we were headed. The rain eased, and eased some more, and by the time we walked through the
wicket at Tamabochi Station, it had stopped completely. The night was clear, the streets fresh and sparkling, as we walked
the ten minutes to school.

We passed the
yakitori
truck, dark and shuttered, and stepped onto the school grounds. The buses had come and gone. From the bushes beyond the tennis
court came the trill of a lone cicada.

“Do you still have your key?” she asked. I looked at her a moment.

“Yes,” I said.

She meant the key to the gym. Coach gave one to every player so that we could come in early to shoot. I slipped it into one
of the big double doors, which opened in with a sigh. I’d never seen the gym so dark and silent. Cavernous. The roll-down
bleachers were still in place from the pep rally that afternoon, the walls still draped with banners and streamers. Naomi
took my hand and led me under the silent scoreboard and across the wooden court, the dead spot by the free-throw line creaking
as we passed, our way lit only by the little moonlight that seeped down through the rafters. Her hand was impossibly warm.
She led me to the far corner, to the thick gold wrestling mats rolled up like enormous carpets, the largest one high enough
that I could lean back against it. I did, and she stepped between my legs and kissed me.

Nothing will ever be softer than her lips that night. Nothing will ever taste better. Her first kiss was sweeter than the
candy she handed me the day we met, her breath more delicate than the rice paper that first stirred my sense of wonder.

“My first one,” I said, just afterward, and she bit her lip, her eyes pure and wide. She reached up and took down her hair,
shaking it loose. We kissed again, and then again, her hands on my chest, mine on her shoulders, and then down the back of
her blue sweater.

Kisses were all I’d hoped for, ever, but she moved in tighter between my legs, tight enough that she could feel me through
her jeans. I braced for her to back away, but she stayed, and then to my shock she began to move. Gently, slowly, but unmistakably,
the whisper of her jeans filling my senses. I put my hand to her cheek, fighting to keep steady. She took two of my fingers
in her tiny hand and pressed them to her open neck. Then she pressed them to the tight swell of her powder blue sweater. And
to her belly. And onto the button of her jeans.

Can you lie to them?
she had said. Sweet Naomi Kenn.

Neither of us moved. I could hear, just behind us, the back door of the gym rattle once in the wind. Her dark, beautiful eyes
held mine. And then she took her hand away and nodded, and I opened the button on her jeans. She nodded again, her eyes deep
and trusting. I took the zipper in my fingers and pulled it down. When it reached the bottom, she drew in her hips and let
her jeans slide down her. Down past her panties — white, stunning. Down past her perfect thighs.

We were both trembling now. I didn’t know where to touch her, or how, so I took the bottom of her blue sweater between my
fingers. She pulled it out, gently, took my fingers in hers again and pressed them to the lace band of her panties. I ran
my finger along it, mesmerized. “Yes,” she whispered. I ran it back. “Yes,” she whispered again, breathless, expectant. I
couldn’t do it. “Jake,” she said, urgent now, but I still couldn’t, so she slid her own fingers inside the band of her panties
and lifted them away from her skin, giving me a glimpse of dark heaven, and when I still didn’t move, she took my fingers
again, and Naomi Kenn, the sweet, pure missionary daughter, guided them inside her panties and pressed them into her wet pussy.

Instinct told me to spread them wide, and her sudden cry pierced me to the bone. I tried to ease them back out, certain I’d
hurt her. “No!” she said, pressing a hand to her panties, pinning my fingers in place. One, two, three seconds, her eyes on
mine again, steadying me. “Okay?” she whispered, and I nodded, and she took her hand away and put both her hands on my shoulders.
I stayed dead still, not quite believing that I was inside her. And then slowly, ever so slowly, Naomi Kenn eased forward,
taking my fingers deeper into her.

Her first gasp sent a thousand volts right through me. She gasped again, her fingers digging into my shoulders as she eased
forward a little more, then a little more, moving up onto her toes, her shoes barely touching the gym floor, and then not
touching it, her strong legs circling mine, then closing around them, all her weight now transferred on to me. I put my left
arm around her waist. I had her. And her eyes found mine again.

“Okay,” she whispered.

I moved my fingers, gently, and the first shocks of pleasure broke over her sweet face. I moved them again and sent her head
back. She put her arms around my neck and brought her face to my shoulder, and then, as I worked my fingers inside her, she
put her lips to my ear and treated me to her every sound.

Sounds I hadn’t imagined in all my dreams, sounds that rose and deepened as I slipped a third finger into her, and then a
fourth, her shoes kicking the backs of my knees as the waves hit her. And they hit her and hit her and hit her, and she rode
them, passively at first, in thrall to my fingers, controlled by them, “Jake!” and “Yes!” and “God!” in my ear as the sensations
inside her built and built. Within minutes they were too much for her. Within minutes she felt the first stirrings of release,
and her soft cries of wonder gave way to gasps of joy, then, as the shocks kept coming, to grunts of pure want. And Naomi
Kenn, the sweetest soul in a school of three hundred, began to surge against my fingers.

She was ninety pounds to my one-seventy, but I had to brace against the hard, rolled mat as she drove herself against me.
With an athlete’s power she drove, her thighs tight on my hips, driving, driving, her hands in my brush cut, on my ears, then
pounding my shoulders as she lost control, her eyes closing, her head thrown back, her cries rising up into the rafters of
the gym I grew up in. The gym where I first learned to sweat, to work, to sacrifice, where I first learned, that night, the
truth of sex — its fury, its isolation. Learned it all in the split second when Naomi Kenn opened her eyes and I searched
them in vain for a trace of the girl I knew. She shut them again and threw her head back, and I could only hold her against
me as she bucked and bucked, and no harem whore ever fucked her king any harder than sweet, pure Naomi Kenn raged against
me in her final seconds. Raged and raged and finally collapsed, her pounding heart against mine, her cheek on my chest, her
ninety pounds limp, broken as I turned her, gently, and set her on the wrestling mat, then knelt into her and held her tight.
I held her and held her, until I could feel her shoulders begin to shake, until I could feel on my skin, like the water of
life, the hot tears that rolled from her eyes.

I must have biked the two miles from the school to my house in five minutes, oblivious to the night around me. I didn’t notice
the rain start up again, didn’t see the police car parked at the end of the block, didn’t wonder at the lights in the living
room, when my parents should still have been away at dinner. It all registered at once, as I opened the front door and saw,
in the
genkan
, the three pair of black, polished, hard-tip shoes. I took my own sneakers off slowly, untying the laces, and then walked
down the dark hall and into the living room. Coach — ashen, old — sat on the edge of my father’s favorite chair, and behind
him, their hands crossed formally at their belts, stood three policemen. Two, actually, and one interpreter.

I knew enough Japanese to understand the key words.
Jiko
. Accident.
Torakku
. Truck.
Yudachi
. Mountain storm. I heard them from the policeman and then again, surreally, from the interpreter. I stared at the white gloves
of the policemen. Immaculate. Ludicrous. Did they have to wear them?
Furyo Jiken
. Freak. I looked at the interpreter. “It was not their fault,” he was saying, his pronunciation precise. “Even thirty seconds
sooner. Even ten seconds…”

You might have told us earlier, Jake, and saved us twenty minutes
.

•     •     •

I step from the fire escape back through the open window into my apartment. I walk to the kitchen and sit down at the table.
I dip my fingers into my drink, flick them, and watch the drops sizzle and vanish against the face of the iron. I hold it
by the handle and press it, hard, to the white silk tie on the table, watching the steam escape into the air. I take the iron
slowly up the length of the silk, flattening every crease, every wrinkle, shrinking the fibers, strengthening them. I finish
the first tie and iron the second one the same way. And now the third. I look at the clock. Six o’clock. I iron the fourth
tie, then fold each of them and slip them into the wide pocket of my blue Guayabera shirt.

I carry my drink to the window and step out onto the fire escape again. I lean on the railing, take a long sip of vodka, and
look down on the city. Manhattan at dusk, quiet, coiled. I watch the lights in the windows come on one by one.

I went years without thinking of Naomi Kenn. And then I shook Mimi Lessing’s hand in Mr. Stein’s office and looked into her
face and I saw it. In her eyes. The same purity, the same killing innocence, but in a woman this time, not a girl. And beneath
that purity — something else.

I take another long sip of Absolut. She understands. In some way I can’t fathom, Mimi understands. If things were different
— but they never are. I close my hand around the black railing, remembering hers along the river. Her tiny fist on the river
railing. The glint of her ring. In my pocket, against my chest, I can feel the warm ties.

She dreams of them, I know. She has listened and she has watched, and it hasn’t cured her. She still dreams of the silk, so
soft and ruthless. Dreams and then wakes, and she can almost feel it against her skin.

I finish my drink and look west, out over the roofs of the buildings.

Two hours, I’ll make it last. Longer.

Tonight, Mimi Lessing will learn the worth of dreams.

And their cost.

H
er name was Sister Grace.