Secrets of the Apple (12 page)

“What was your conclusion?”

“Melanie needs Scarlet, but Scarlet doesn’t understand how deeply she needs Melanie. We still don’t really understand that dynamic, although I used a lot of three syllable words to make it sound like I did.” She smiled to herself as she laid the book on the dresser and left the room, shutting the door behind her.

Something about that private little smile whispered across his skin and tickled down his spine, exploding a series of roman candles in the base of his stomach. It happened sometimes when they were alone in the office, triggered by a sudden fall of her hair across one shoulder or the sight of her fingers unconsciously twirling a pen. Simple attraction, male and female, that was all.

He tried the usual remedy. Leaning back, he closed his eyes, concentrating on breathing slowly in and out, and thinking about the strange chemistry between men and women, pheromones and hormones, reminding himself it was all molecules, just science, easily explicable. An enlightened man knew better than to be taken in by the absurd stuff of romance novels.

However, this morning’s emotional chemistry lesson, so effective in the office, seemed to lose its potency in Kate’s bedroom, which apparently amplified the overwhelming mystery of rushing blood and pounding heart. As a last resort he focused on Apple, his beautiful ex. There. Killed his pulse stone dead.

Everybody’s good for something.

Twenty minutes later he was coming down the stairs for breakfast, when the doorbell rang twice in a row, followed by a thumping sound outside, like something heavy falling. He swung open the door, intending to jump out and startle whatever giggling niece or nephew he imagined was out there. Instead he found a middle-aged woman with hair the color of wheat rinsed in pink lemonade, wearing a black polyester cocktail dress with stretch wrinkles across the middle.

“Hi, I’m Susan Calvert, from down the street. My finger just slipped on that bell when I dropped my purse. Sorry about that.” She was nervously brushing invisible dirt from her purse and looking at Ryoki who smiled politely, his eyes drawn to the erratic motion of her hands.

“I understand all the girls are here today and my mother passed two days ago and—” She put a lace-edged handkerchief to her eyes, almost concealing the white tissue protecting the delicate fabric from her mascara.

“Mrs. Calvert?” Kate said, coming down the hall. Ryoki saw his chance and attempted to bow out, but Mrs. Calvert snagged hold of his arm to be led inside and offered a chair.

“Come in, and I’ll call the other girls,” Kate said, leaving Ryoki and his charge in the formal living room to shift uncomfortably on the elegant but hard-hearted furniture.

Silence slapped the oxygen the minute Kate left and Ryoki was about to make a daft comment on the fine crystal chandelier, when Mrs. Calvert stepped into the breach.

“You must be Kate’s boyfriend. I don’t believe we’ve met,” she said, plucking at her handkerchief, carefully so as not to shred the tissue.

He opened his mouth to clarify, but she didn’t give him the chance.

“My mother’s funeral is on Monday. I’ve been wondering and wondering what to do about the music. Then I saw all the cars and remembered the Porter girls were all home for a few days. They’ve sung together for lots of things, even their own mother’s funeral. Beautiful family, such lovely people.” Her voice broke and she paused to dab at her eyes.

“I sure miss Mary. That’s Kate’s mother, but of course you know that,” she said, tapping her forehead. “They gave her quite a send-off when she died. Must have been a whole shop of flowers and people lining up at the funeral home and filing by the casket for three solid hours the night before, then that big old church full clear to the back for the funeral. Those girls singing and playing…You’d have thought she was somebody important instead a just a housewife. But she seemed to have that effect, which is funny, because she wasn’t what you’d call a social butterfly. In fact, she once told me that what she really wanted was an electric fence so all she’d have to do is go out in the morning and pick up the bodies. But people sure did line up to pay their respects when she died. She just had that effect.”

Ryoki managed to make a few more noncommittal noises before she put her hand back on his arm and leaned toward him. “I want to get your opinion on something. I want to sue that nursing home for neglecting my mother.” Her eyes refilled with tears. “There was this woman that used to steal my mother’s pudding two, three times a week, and none of the staff ever said a thing to her. Then this woman up and trips during dinner and flips her dress clear over her head. Naturally my mother just laughed and her lower teeth fell out, that’s when the meatball slid wrong and cut off her air. If they hadn’t all rushed off to help that other lady, my mother might still be alive. Besides that, somebody should have helped her get some better-fitting teeth. And besides all that, if they’d stopped the other lady from taking my mother’s pudding, she wouldn’t have laughed and she’d still be alive today. What do you think of that? My husband says no.”

The Porter sisters began trooping in, followed by their father, who entered holding a hand out to Mrs. Calvert. Ryoki saw his chance and bolted.

An hour later when he heard Mrs. Calvert leave, Ryoki brought his book into the family room, though he hoped to scare up a game of chess. Unfortunately the board was already occupied by two brothers-in-law whose names he couldn’t remember. Instead he sat opposite Doug who was reading
The Art of War,
and Nancy’s daughter Phoebe who sat absorbed in a romance novel.

“You reading
Screwtape?
” Doug asked. Ryoki nodded, thumbing through for his place. “I like Lewis,” Doug added. “Studied him in college. I guess he had this borrowed mother who made him chop wood and do household chores. My professor used to pull his tie and say, ‘One of the great minds of the twentieth century should not have been wasting his time chopping wood.’ I wish my wife had taken that class.”

Phoebe looked up at Doug and narrowed her eyes. “Corinne’ll be here in a minute to make you help with the kitchen,” she said, clearly annoyed by his chatter.

“So, Pheebes, what are you reading?” Doug asked.

“I’m on vacation,” she said.

 “Pay money for that book, did you? They all have the same plot,” Doug said.

“It costs less than a movie ticket and it lasts longer,” Phoebe said without looking up.

Children began to filter in from outside, their noses pink from the March chill. They appeared to be in the middle of some peculiar game Ryoki couldn’t understand. They’d formed a large wobbly circle and each began pantomiming a random activity, except the one who was “it,” called “Truth” in the game, who went from player to player trying to get their attention without touching or speaking above a whisper. He watched a curly pigtailed girl go around the group making faces and silently jumping around. Finally she succeeded in catching little Ben, making him snort a laugh by crossing her eyes and sticking her fingers up her nose. The kids erupted in laughter, chanting, “Truth Truth Truth” as Ben took his place as the new “Truth” and began moving from player to player.

“Tanaka, have you seen the size of the romance sections in bookstores? They even sell those things in supermarkets.” Ryoki blinked, hoping no one had noticed his lapsed attention.

“It must fill some need,” Ryoki sputtered. “That’s the only reason to produce a product.”

“But they all have the same plot: Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back and they live happily ever after.”

Little Ben was clouding over, his lips screwed together in frustration. No one would look at him. Ryoki beckoned him over, but he wouldn’t give up.

“I admit a lot of the heroes are cheap knockoffs of Mr. Darcy, he’s the archetype,” Phoebe said.

“But I think
Emma
is really Austen’s best book,” Corinne said, entering the room flicking a dishtowel over her shoulder.

Doug rolled his eyes. “Darcy’s a jerk. Why do I have to be the only feminist in the room?”

“Ah, but he’s a jerk who progresses,” Phoebe said, turning back to her book.

Ben broke out of the circle and ran up to Corinne, his eyes beginning to brim and his voice catching. “I’m the Truth and nobody’s looking at me.” Corinne gathered him in her arms to kiss his hair and whisper in his ear. His face brightened and he wiggled down and ran off. Corinne flung the dishtowel at her husband.

“Doug, I need you to help me with the kitchen.”

“What about Phoebe? She’s just rotting her mind.”

“Phoebe straightened the basement. Everybody’s done their work except you. Kate nearly assigned Ryoki the bathrooms. Luckily I was there to get him off as a guest.”

“What about me. Aren’t I a guest?”

“Doug’s one of the great minds of the twenty-first century. He shouldn’t have to clean the kitchen,” Phoebe said without looking up.

“Mopping builds character, without character you can’t think great thoughts,” Corinne said.

Ben came running in swinging a plastic hippopotamus. He flicked open the hippo’s mouth, revealing a hidden light and swinging it around the circle into every child’s face, chanting in a stage whisper,
“I am here I am here I am here.”

Curly pigtails blinked. “No Fair!”

“You saw me. You all saw me. Everybody saw me!” he chanted in a singsong voice.

Deciding there would be no reading, Ryoki began to cast around for something else to do. Through the french doors he saw Kate out in the backyard wearing short sleeves and attacking a large half-naked rose bush, cutting the branches and flinging them behind her. He retrieved his jacket and went out to join her, his hands in his pockets.

She made no sign of hearing him approach and even from across the yard he could see she wore the look of deep abstraction she sometimes had in the office, as though working out an equation that would solve the problems of the universe.

“Chilly?” he asked from directly behind her, shrugging out of his jacket and holding it out.

Kate jumped and hollered, raking her neck on a nasty triangular-shaped thorn. Then she saw the jacket and shook her head. “I’d ruin it in this mess,” she said, rubbing a finger on the stickery branch.

“You’re bleeding,” he said, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbing at her scratch. “What are you doing out here?”

“These roses should have been pruned last fall. March is pretty late, but this bush is just everywhere.” She got right to the middle and began cutting again, rocking the shears around the older, thicker branches. “You have to get rough with this one because it’s so strong,” she said. “Otherwise it puts all its effort into getting bigger and produces very few blooms.”

Ryoki came closer, catching Kate’s right arm, examining the long scratches and pulling out a nasty thorn that had skewered clear through, like a needle taking a stitch, twin dots of red welling from the holes.

“Listen,” she said, looking at him, “Mrs. Calvert asked us to sing at her mother’s funeral on Monday morning. She’s been our neighbor for fifteen years and she was my mother’s friend. I couldn’t say no.”

“But I need you in Las Vegas.”

“I know you do. I worked it out before I promised. Our meetings are scheduled for the afternoon and there are a lot of open flights to Vegas. You can go on ahead as planned and I can follow a couple of hours behind and still make it. We’re completely prepared and I’ll go through my notes on the plane.”

“Kate—”

“I’ve already changed my ticket,” she said.

He argued the point as far as he could, but he didn’t get angry—what was the point? He knew instinctively that she would put people before business until the end of her days, which is why on Monday afternoon Kate arrived in Las Vegas dressed for a funeral.

O
n Friday night Ryoki sat at the baccarat table in the casino’s high roller room “having some fun,” as promised. The final meeting had ended three hours ago at 8:00 p.m., the negotiations far exceeding his expectations, and he could still feel the gentle loosening of muscles and nerves as electrical impulses broadcast success to his individual cells. He sat back in his velvet padded chair, stretching his long legs under the table, feeling almost giddy with victory, or possibly relief. When he moved his head a bit to the left he could just pick out Kate’s perfume from where she sat behind him, the same soft spicy sweetness he’d been breathing without a break since January. Tonight he could feel her scent gently strumming the synapses of his brain and he knew he needed to get away, just to clear his nostrils, to sober up. That would be the smart thing. But he’d promised to play. He took one more deep breath before leaning forward.

He looked around the room at various tables and the assortment of men who played—different accents, suits or blue jeans, portly or balding, it didn’t seem to matter. They all had money, that being the lowest common denominator, and most were accompanied by women far better looking than they were. This group seemed to favor the showier variety, long-legged loving cups, symbols of conquest. Heavy wallets = pretty women, a simple equation proven since the minting of the first coin. Ryoki figured himself to be the youngest man present, and possibly the richest, though tonight he was alone, practically.

He glanced back at Kate, who was focused elsewhere, her expression alert, busy, watching something or someone. He wondered what she was thinking.

Fifteen minutes before their first meeting on Tuesday morning, Ryoki had popped a button on the front of his shirt, halfway down where he couldn’t hide it. Luckily it dropped at his feet, a visible white dot on dark carpet. He picked it up and held it out in mute appeal. Without a word Kate pulled her tiny sewing kit from her bag, threaded a needle with a double length of white thread and knotted the bottom. She pulled his shirtfront out away from his chest so they could both see clearly. “Pay attention,” she said, “I won’t always be here to rescue you.” She took a stitch, from front to back, leaving the tiny knot on top. “Keep the knot on top and just go all the way through the placket once, twice if you’re nervous.” She positioned the button above the knot, holding it a sixteenth of an inch above the fabric. “Now, leave a space for the shank between the button and the shirt to accommodate the thickness of the buttonhole, and only stitch through the top of the placket and the interfacing, so you don’t leave a mess on the back.” Once the button was secure, she quickly wove the needle in a figure eight, around and through her shank, knotting her thread under the button. “Got it?” she asked, a genuine question. He nodded, his head swimming with her mysterious incantation—
placket shank interfacing
—a vocabulary he apparently wore on his person but didn’t comprehend.