Secrets of the Apple (31 page)

Thirty minutes later Ryoki entered Kate’s office to find her humming as her fingers flew on her keyboard. The spiky pile of flora occupied fully one quarter of the air space, displacing her trademark bouquet of fresh heart-shaped anthuriums, the delicate architectural flowers she generally kept not only on her desk, but in the library at home. He picked up the open card on her desk and read it:
“See you Friday, Love Matt.”

Ryoki cleared his throat, startling her into looking up at him. “It’s come to my attention that your cell number has been compromised,” he said. “I need you to have it changed.”

“Changed?” He saw the “why” forming on her lips.

“Today. Right now, if possible. We can’t be too careful,” he added, shutting the door and returning to his own office, feeling as though he had just locked an empty hen house.

* * *

Since Kate had a date on Friday, she didn’t plan on coming home for dinner. That morning they’d had a big fight over security arrangements for her evening with this Matt character, in which Ryoki had pointed out the common use for mats, perhaps unwisely adding that the name Rug also had a nice ring. Very professional and dignified as fights go, no shouting, everything kept behind closed doors. If the office staff noted a slight chill that afternoon, it was nothing anybody could prove, no thrown ledgers or broken glass to label exhibits A and B.

At the last minute Ryoki opted not to go home either, issuing the office a general invitation for drinks, code for boys’ night out. Too long since he’d done that, and high time. Looking forward to it. Good for the office to see him out in public having a grand old time while Kate was out with another man. Perhaps others besides Arima had noticed their friendship and had drawn the wrong conclusions, important to quash any potential rumors. All around, it was the perfect thing.

Back at the house, Mariko was loading the refrigerator with the delicacies that would have been the Senhor’s fine dinner. She’d gone out with a basket to give it all to Nishimura, the silver-haired old gardener, whose fine steady hands she’d been admiring since the first day she came to work at the house. But she’d jumped behind a tree when she found him talking to that Cecelia, who hadn’t been able to keep her eyes to herself since they were girls, and had run off with Mariko’s sweetheart, Marcelo Ito, the coffin-maker’s son. The boy had long since turned gray and died, but in Mariko’s private heart his eyes were still the stuff of romantic legend. Cecelia’s boys all had their father’s eyes.

Mariko looked at her hands as she closed the refrigerator, less spotted and wrinkled than Cecelia’s, better genes, slower aging. Maybe she would take a plate out to the garden in an hour or so. Better act quick, though. The Senhor and Dona Kate would soon be back to wanting their dinners at home, she was sure of this. Signs of things to come always showed up first in the kitchen.

Ryoki returned home that night well after eleven and found Kate’s house shoes still in the cabinet, meaning she still wasn’t home. So what? Tired, ready to go to sleep. An hour later he lay in his bed staring at the novel in his hand. How on earth had it gotten such great reviews? Halfway through and he still didn’t respect a single character. He lowered the book in disgust, but he still wasn’t quite ready to close his eyes. He forced himself to concentrate on projects pending at work, the executive equivalent of counting sheep. He worked out the details of a proposal to reallocate construction funds for greater efficiency, taking a pen from the nightstand and making notes in the margins of his book. Amazing what a man can accomplish in the middle of the night with nobody to plague him. Had to remember to replace the notepad by his bed, though, always carried it off somewhere.

He reached into the night table drawer to return his pen and caught sight of the two shirt buttons he’d carried in his pocket all the way from Las Vegas. He picked up the buttons, rubbing them on his fingertips until they stuck and clicked them together, just as he had done the night he decided to bring Kate to São Paulo. He admitted to himself he’d been waiting for the click of the front door. Kate had flatly refused to take any professional security, conceding only that she could be driven to the restaurant, adding with a giggle and a wink that her date was of Scottish descent and would therefore provide plenty of deterrent.

He didn’t get it.

Ryoki’s eyes drifted around his room, searching out the dark corners made gloomier by the bright lamp beside him. His name appeared on the deed to this house, Tanaka Inc. all over the place. But it was really Kate’s house; she understood it better. On the very first day she already knew there was bad blood between the cook and the housekeeper. How did she know that? In all this time he had seen no evidence of domestic discord, but he did not doubt her.

He opened his book again to read some more, but couldn’t focus beyond the second sentence. If this is how he felt when the lady of his house was away with another man, how had his wife taken him so by surprise? Why hadn’t he heard the echo of her absence?

What had their maid looked like? What was their cook’s name? Ryoki had no answers. His wife might still have cheated; she seemed very intent. But if he had known these details, understood how to read the household map the way Kate did, might he have seen the empty spaces in time to head off the greater disaster? Maybe not, no way to know. So unfair, what she did.

Apple had been such a beautiful bride, so sweet and eager at first, always smiling, nothing openly calculating. Had her lover already crawled under her skirts, or had there been a transition period, a time of dithering between husband and lover? Ryoki didn’t know, never saw her withdraw. Where had his eyes been?

He thought of his old office in London. He could have picked the stapler out of the upper right hand drawer and pulled papers from the printer blindfolded. But what their maid’s
name?

“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” An old phrase, something his mother used to say.

So wrong what his wife did. So unfair. He curled to his side, unwilling to think about it anymore. She might still have cheated. Probably couldn’t have stopped her.

He leaned over and tossed the two buttons back into his nightstand, slowly pushing the drawer shut and turning out the light. In the silence of the house Ryoki heard a faint bumping as the front door opened and closed, followed a few minutes later by the louder squeak and click of the backdoor closing beneath his room. Outside his windows the exterior lights flicked on, activated by her movements. Her cottage door opened and closed, and in four minutes the garden lights turned off. Gradually he relaxed and drifted off, the house falling into a whole and peaceful silence.

The next day Kate and Ryoki took a long time over brunch. When the maid brought the empty platters back to the kitchen, Mariko harrumphed to herself. Having finally contrived to get Nishimura alone the evening before, she’d spent a happy two hours sharing a sumptuous picnic in one of the garden’s hidden alcoves and gone to bed speculating on the number of impromptu nights off still to come. But healthy appetites meant the master and mistress had talked and laughed, probably both determined not to let recent events come between them. This would shave the margin of opportunity in the critical opening maneuvers with Nishimura. Even so, she took hope that last night he’d already begun to nibble around the hook. It might be enough.

She pushed a lock of gray hair out of her face, thinking she should have known what to expect. The first week the foreigners arrived she’d written her sister that the fearsome new Senhor had unnerved her, until she had seen the transparent need he had for his lady. These things were easy to spot in men. A month later she wrote that she happened to observe Dona Kate in a moment of deep sorrow, something she never expected to see in one who had never known want. Her sister, who had also worked in many great houses, wrote back that any human could feel need and pain, even rich foreigners, though it was hard to tell why.

D
uring the next week the Tanaka household creaked and groaned as the inhabitants shifted to accommodate this Mr. Matthew Montgomery, their invisible new inmate. The security team had to rethink their schedule, dinner times became more scattered and erratic, and the maids could no longer sneak off for delicious stolen hours with their boyfriends because the Senhor and Dona Kate couldn’t be trusted to stay in the library where they belonged. Cecelia in particular watched the whole proceedings clucking her tongue and feeling unsettled in her bones like something was coming. Only Mr. Nishimura went on unperturbed, having little thought to spare beyond his war with the weeds and his dearest passion, the prize orchids he grew in the greenhouse.

That entire week Kate and Ryoki spent just one evening together in the library, their music and reading interrupted twice by calls from Montgomery. Kate’s eyes sparkled as she laughed at some joke waggling through the phone.
Well and good
, Ryoki consciously printed across his consciousness, just what he wanted, perfect for everybody. Reduce intimacy, that was key—irritating ringtone, thought she didn’t care to be tracked.

Everything would be absolutely perfect, he told himself, had not the irksome security factor continued to divide them. According to Kate, Montgomery’s presence provided an instant solution of such magnitude it could very well cure hunger and bring about world peace. But Ryoki still felt they needed a grace period before dropping their guard, time to see if the relationship would gel and word would get around. Who was this guy anyway? Kate trusted him, but she had trusted her husband and he turned out to be a pirate.

On Thursday morning he decided to swipe Kate’s phone and called doorMatt on the sly, requesting that he come a little early that evening, pick her up at the house rather than meet her in the city. A bit sleazy, he knew, but he couldn’t rest until he’d done it. Kate said Montgomery was an international finance consultant. Certainly he would come, out of professional curiosity, if nothing else.

That evening Montgomery showed up early as promised and was led into the front sitting room by a blushing, giggly maid who wiggled her arm until her peasant blouse slipped coyly off one shoulder before she scuttled off to notify the Senhor of his guest. Ryoki had just offered Montgomery a drink when Cecelia entered to ask if anything was wanted, a pretext to get a gander at the interloper, disapproval clearly written in the set of her jaw and the stiffness of her back. When she entered the room, the two men were just taking their seats, quiet and cordial. She later reported to her daughter that they circled each other like tigers, then, biting her lip, she added, “At least that was my impression.”

Up close Montgomery turned out to be more handsome than Ryoki had hoped. One of those tall, sunburnt blonds with artfully streaked hair and a voice four decibels too loud for the room. He was an educated surfer, someone who wore a good suit, but sometimes answered to the appellation “Dude.” Perhaps Kate was collecting blonds herself.

They started off with small talk, Montgomery broaching the crucial subject first. “So, I guess you wanted to talk about security,” he said, rubbing the thick muscles on his neck, a smug smile on his face. “It seems to me that if I gave Kate a good smooch for the cameras, the trouble would be over. What am I missing here?”

Ryoki smiled and nodded politely without giving up an inch of ground. One date did not give him the right to use her first name, let alone give her a “smooch,” public or private. In his opinion Americans were entirely too casual with each other. “How long have you known Kate?” he asked.

“About a year and a half. She was a grad student moonlighting as a Portuguese tutor and I did a lot of business down here, so my company put me in touch with her and one thing led to another.” He grinned with a glint in his eye, dangling the corner of a red satin romance. But Ryoki knew Kate.

“You knew her husband then,” Ryoki said, picking invisible lint from his trousers.

Montgomery looked at Ryoki a beat too long, perhaps weighing the need to appear “in the know” against the possibility that his answers might be checked. “Oh, yeah, well, I knew he was a Stanford guy, stockbroker, but you know how she is, keeps things to herself. Funny story—I knew right off that she was married because she always wore her ring, but her husband was suspiciously absent. Then one night we were studying Portuguese at her place and this uniformed marshal shows up, serving her papers demanding she give up anything of his she might have in her possession, which meant her wedding ring. Turns out she was separated, but still wore her rings. That’s when it all came out.” Montgomery paused, licking his lips, rubbing his palms on his pants, possibly aware the story hadn’t come off quite as funny as he hoped.

“A marshal?” Ryoki prompted.

“If you ask me, the ring wasn’t all that impressive, but she wanted to keep it, and she asked me kinda shy-like if I knew any good lawyers. Don’t know why she didn’t do that in the first place. Anyway, she went to court over that ring, and the judge awarded her the ring plus half. If you ask me, Stanford guys don’t know when to quit.”

“Few people do,” Ryoki said.

“Actually, she had me help her put her settlement in an investment account. After I was transferred down here, she emailed asking what the consequences would be if she withdrew that money. Said her job had been delayed and she wanted to live at home and write for a year, was really looking forward to it. Had to look twice when I saw her picture in the paper down here. Must be fate brought us together again.”

Kate writes?
Ryoki kept his expression carefully neutral as though he’d known it all along.
To write for a year?
Sounds far too serious to be a hobby. All their hours in the library, and she’d kept it to herself. Stung, he fixed his gaze on Montgomery, searching for any quality that would cause her to give him her trust. He’s educated, privileged, and an American. Is that all she needed to know? She wouldn’t bother buying textbooks to understand one of her own breed.