Secrets of the Apple (40 page)

“Sorry, sorry.” She jerked clumsily, trying to regain control of her limbs. “Why didn’t you just push me off?” she said disgustedly, fumbling for her evening bag and muttering “probably drooled” just under her breath. Waving off their driver, Ryoki opened her door and helped her out, setting her on her feet and keeping his arm around her waist. She tried to pull away, but he held her close all the way into the house, through the main hall, out the back, through the garden, and to her cottage.

“The evening was a great success, Kate,” he said, punching in the code on the alarm pad. He pulled out his keys, fiddling for the right one. “I think it was good for the company. I hadn’t heard you sing like that before.” She looked up, squinting against the security lights.

The key grated into the lock and the bolt slid back.

“I rehearsed with the band in private, as a surprise,” she said through a yawn, her hand over her mouth. “Marcelo’s amazing at getting the right sound.”

She put her left hand on the doorknob.

“Was it hard for you, getting up there like that?”

“Always,” she said, beginning to twist the knob, her dress swooshing against the door as she inched backward. He put his hand on the small of her back, suddenly conscious of the delicate skitter she’d been practicing since January, never allowing him closer than halfway. But Ryoki was done with delicacy and skittishness. He clasped her right hand and carried it upward, gently blowing across her skin and slowly pressing his lips to the inside of her wrist, lightly dragging his fingers across the gooseflesh rising on her arm. With one finger he raised her head to find her lips parted in invitation, her eyes an even mix of passion and panic. “Kate,” he whispered, leaning forward, willing her to meet him, to give herself into his arms. He closed his eyes and for an instant he felt her breath in his mouth—

A loud click.

The latch released and she vanished inside.

R
yoki did not awaken until lunchtime the following day. Heavy-eyed, he showered and dressed before going down to the kitchen for a snack, startling the formidable cook who yelled
“Oi!”
her meaty hand encountering a Chinese sugar bowl that flipped and shattered against the marble pastry board. She recovered and bowed respectfully, one eye trained on the spilled sugar, as though to remind him that there are consequences to interrupting the natural order.

He stepped right; she stepped with him. “May I help you?” she asked, her impressive girth barricading the supply line. He stepped left; she stepped left. “Is there anything you require?”

“No, no, I just want a sandwich.” She started to answer, hands on hips. He gave her a dose of the Tanaka Stare to throw her off kilter.
Quick—zigzag, left, right—juke—bread—HA!
Holder of the Bread equals Maker of the Sandwich!
He visualized doing a victory lap while holding the loaf aloft like the Wimbledon Cup, but thought it might be in bad taste, a fatal miscalculation. Bowing again, she politely snatched the prize from his hands and asked exactly what kind of sandwich he fancied, adding, “No need to come all the way to the kitchen, just pick up the house phone.”

Undeterred, Ryoki held his ground, intending once and for all to reveal his secret identity as Master of the Sandwich, keen to experiment with an unusual set of condiments smeared in precise quantity and particular order. It was time she recognized her place. My house, my kitchen. He opened his mouth and squeaked, “Pastrami.”

In record time she handed him a gourmet pastrami sandwich, garnished with mint and bearing no resemblance to his heart’s desire. “And a tomato sandwich for Miss Kate,” he added. “Salt, pepper, extra mayo, blot the tomatoes—”

“She left an hour ago, dressed up sharp, and Dona Cecelia took Lucas to play with her grandsons. Real quiet here today.”

“Oh, oh yes, of course.” Ryoki wandered out, shoulders sagging, holding a disappointing sandwich, leaving sugar and broken china in his wake. Out of habit he took his lunch to the dining room where he sat chewing and working out what to do with a rare unstructured day, his eyes straying to the great blank space where the Fates had hung. The silence began to congeal around him until he almost felt lonesome for the painting’s greens, yellows and reds, vibrant slashes of life cutting their way into the monochromatic room. He would have mocked the painting had it been there, maybe railed against it; anything would be better than the great green nothing.

When he could stand it no longer, he carried the last quarter of his sandwich into his den where he sat at his desk staring at a pile of reports he’d so diligently carted home the previous evening. Sighing, he reached for the first document, but stopped before his fingers touched the paper.

Lately he’d been having these thoughts, too insignificant to be called ideas, more like observations: The constant ticking of all the clocks, the unremitting revolution of night and day, the unbroken success of Tanaka Inc. How many weeks had he been out of his office, yet the world had continued on and on, good and bad, hopes and frustrations. The reports could wait. He dialed Kate’s number, but it went directly to voice mail.

Ryoki pushed back from his desk, rubbing his eyes. Maybe reading would be the thing. Kate always had something worthwhile and never hesitated to lend her books. He left his office and headed out to Kate’s cottage where he knocked as a precaution before disarming the alarm, unlocking the door and heading straight to the large bookcase that dominated one wall of the living room. Slowly he scanned the titles, happily savoring the delicious theft of time. He listened for Kate, hoping she’d come home and join him, his eyes lingering on the books they had read aloud together, the birthplaces of shared jokes and long debates. By the third shelf he’d already tentatively picked out two mysteries and a biography of George Washington. All three looked interesting in theory, but holding them in his hands reminded him of a sweater that seemed a perfect fit in the store but somehow developed itchies on the way home. He continued on to the bottom shelf where he encountered Kate’s battered leather binder, the one with the red paint stain that had traveled in her computer bag all the way from San Francisco. It was as familiar a sight as his own briefcase, though he had never looked inside. His eyes lit as he brushed his fingers down the spine, tracing the stain. There were stories inside, he was sure of it.

He gripped the three books in his hands and looked around the room. All her desk drawers had locks, but the binder was right out in the open, and on the lowest shelf no less, where it would be most susceptible to water damage should there be an accident, a flood or a burst pipe. Certainly it could not be so secret and precious. She knew he had a key to her cottage. He drew his hands to his sides, ashamed to be rationalizing. The books were arranged on the shelves shortest down to tallest, so naturally a binder would be on the bottom shelf—aesthetics over security, typical Kate. As for the key, she trusted him to respect her privacy. He should wait for her permission.

He lost interest in the first books, and returning them to their places started again at the top, willing himself to find something intriguing or mysterious that would distract him from the shabby binder, bottom shelf, third from the left.

First shelf, nothing, second shelf, third shelf. At last be knelt for the bottom, slowing down, examining every title until he came again to the binder. He was beginning to feel sheepish and stupid. Probably making too much of it. Might not be stories, might be nothing but recipes. A woman who brought her own set of measuring spoons would certainly bring recipes, or his mother’s household notes or an address and appointment book. Why torture himself? Might as well just see what it is.

He quickly pulled the binder from its place, noticing it left a gap, like a tooth knocked out. He flipped open the cover quickly, before he had any more time to think about right or wrong. Page one, “Hotel” by Kate Porter, covered in strikethroughs and Kate’s cramped handwritten notes, an early draft, actually several drafts.

He rose from the floor, his right hand already pinching the full thickness of the manuscript, gauging the number of pages. A two-inch binder holds what, two hundred pages? Two-fifty? And this was almost full, more than three quarters. Okay to read the first story—
my present, after all
—but only the first.

He did read his story, complete with scribbled insertions, saw the verbs gather muscle from one version to the next, reducing the prepositional phrases, the long-winded first attempt mercilessly cut and cut until only the essential words remained: Her gift to him.

At the end he sat on the couch thinking. Unwilling to relinquish the binder quite yet, he began to slowly flip the pages, just to take inventory. Ten stories, all at different stages, almost all stacked with more than one version—first try on top, followed by the next revision or two, ending with the most recent version. Then a tabbed divider to preface a new story, first try first, followed by Revision A, Revision B, and so forth., leading him to guess she wrote a story the way she wrote a report at the office, writing all the way through, but refusing to show it to him until it had a chance to marinate—that was her word,
marinate,
so she could go back and refine it the next morning. She was always very particular like that. But in her stories she kicked it to a new level, placed each word like a jeweler.

Having touched all the pages, it didn’t seem like such a stretch to read a few more, but only a few. He reached up to switch on the lamp, but the bulb was out and the overhead light was more for ambiance than reading. Now that he thought about it, she once said she never read in her living room, that the most comfortable spot in her cottage was the overstuffed armchair in the bedroom with its big ottoman and bright task lamp. He moved there, leaving the bedroom door open, not planning to stay long.

He began to read, lightly skimming through the initial drafts, concentrating on the most recent attempt. So many details he recognized, ordinary acorns lifted out of their lives to grow and branch in a different reality, like the blue glass bowl he remembered from Saint Helena because of the way she’d stared at it, commenting that it looked like water, or the boy they’d seen in the market with the gimpy walk and the weeping sores on his filthy bare feet. He even spotted himself, reincarnated as a redheaded college student in Pittsburgh with more freckles than money and an embarrassing crush on Audrey Hepburn. Ryoki had never seen an Audrey Hepburn movie, but the boy was a cookie-eating Master of the Sandwich who flipped his pen when he was thinking. She laid him plain, stripped of all money and position. At least she cast him as the hero, albeit a complicated one.

When he had reached the last divider, it was getting dark and he began to get a creepy-crawly that Kate would certainly be back soon, snatching her binder and whacking him over the head. But that last tab was marked with a tantalizing “NEVER To Be Published.”

To his credit he did pause to ponder the real meaning, if it might be code for
Don’t Read
. An hour earlier he’d called the kitchen for another sandwich which he now wolfed distractedly, hardly caring that it needed a stronger mustard. By the time he’d wiped the crumbs from his mouth and pulled a mint from his pocket, he’d decided that
Read
and
Publish
were completely unrelated and he flipped the final divider with only the faintest twinge of guilt.

He found the final section to be organized differently than the others, pages and pages of handwritten text on wide ruled paper, “The Puzzle,” scrawled across the top, underlined three times. He pinched the thickness with his fingers, too much for a short story, the rudiments of a novel maybe?

He read the first page dated the previous September. Something familiar about that voice, an eerie echo of Kate herself, perhaps because she was trying out first person, different than the rest of the stories.

I remember walking into the post office and catching sight of myself in the heavy glass door. I’d eaten off my lipstick and my dark hair fell limp on my shoulders, the roots damp with humidity. I looked dull, like a junker Mercedes. People notice when you look sick and green or chic and polished, but never when you look dull. Dull people are anonymous.

I wondered how I looked to him. Dull, probably.

Kate’s unnamed protagonist bought steaks at Dillman’s, dropped off two suits and a dress at DeAngelo Dry Cleaning, never letting on she knew the proprietor shouted gibberish that he pretended was Italian. She came home and turned up the music, dancing around her living room, posing and pouting like a rock star. She caught sight of herself in the mirror.
“Crumpled blouse, limp hair.”
Glancing at the clock, she quickly showered and put on a clingy red jersey dress, smudging on her eye shadow, soft, smoky, barely there. Her husband returned as she was applying her lipstick, but he left quickly, bouncing a tennis ball. He had a wicked backhand.

I held the lipstick loosely in my fingers. Fire-Engine Red, “Guaranteed to start a fire,” the advertisement said. The door slammed and his car squealed out of the driveway. I automatically slid my feet into my best black heels and sat with my back against my dressing table, scraping it into the wall. I wanted to cry, scream, scratch my fingernails across the moldings, leaving ten perfect marks. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.

Ryoki stopped reading, shut the cover and sat nervously tapping the leather, finding a scuffed place and worrying it with his finger. First person, so like her, didn’t match the rest of the binder. Sounded more like…

He needed to stop, none of his business, though his finger still held his place. Must stop. Really must.

He flipped open the binder and read on, hustling to outpace his conscience. Might be a novel, could be, still that possibility. Dated entries, like a—

Read faster, faster, just skim.

He didn’t skim. He read every word. For months he’d been wondering how any man could leave a woman who conveyed love with a mere prick of her needle, and here Kate had been writing down the answer. It wasn’t a journal, not exactly, but her private attempt to make sense of the dreadful cataclysm, unsparing of herself, no heroes, no villains, continually penning a version of the same question,
“What could I have done differently?—I wish I hadn’t taken offense; I could have climbed through that window even if my skirt was white; Why did I get upset over the muddy boots, who cares about muddy boots? Nothing else I could have done there.”