The Fourth Hand (9 page)

Then, on the plane to Tokyo, Patrick struggled with his speech. Here he was, divorced, for good reason—and feeling like a failed sexual predator, because of pregnant Mary—and he was supposed to address the subject of

“The Future of Women,” in notoriously keep-women-in-their-place Japan.

Not only was Wal ingford not accustomed to writing speeches; he was not used to speaking without reading the script off the TelePrompTer. (Usual y someone else had written the script.) But maybe if he looked over the list of participants in the conference—they were al women—he might find some flattering things to say about them, and this flattery might suffice for his opening remarks. It was a blow to him to discover that he had no firsthand knowledge of the accomplishments of any of the women participating in the conference; alas, he knew who only one of the women was, and the most flattering thing he could think of saying about her was that he thought he’d like to sleep with her, although he’d seen her only on television.

Patrick liked German women. Witness that braless sound technician on the TV

crew in Gujarat, that blonde who’d fainted in the meat cart, the enterprising Monika with a
k .
But the German woman who was a participant in the Tokyo conference was a Barbara, spel ed the usual way, and she was, like Wal ingford, a television journalist. Unlike Wal ingford, she was more successful than she was famous.

Barbara Frei anchored the morning news for ZDF. She had a resonant, professional-sounding voice, a wary smile, and a thin-lipped mouth. She had shoulder-length dirty-blond hair, adroitly tucked behind her ears. Her face was beautiful and sleek, with high cheekbones; in Wal ingford’s world, it was a face made for television.

On TV, Barbara Frei wore nothing but rather mannish suits in either black or navy blue, and she never wore a blouse or a shirt of any kind under the wide-open col ar of the suit jacket. She had wonderful col arbones, which she quite justifiably liked to show. She preferred smal stud earrings

—often emeralds or rubies—Patrick could tel ; he was knowledgeable about women’s jewelry.

But while the prospect of meeting Barbara Frei in Tokyo gave Wal ingford an unrealistic sexual ambition for his time in Japan, neither she nor any of the conference’s other participants could be of any help in writing his speech.

There was a Russian film director, a woman named Ludmil a Slovaboda. (The spel ing only approximates Patrick’s phonetic guess at how one
might
pronounce her last name. Let’s cal her Ludmil a.) Wal ingford had never seen her films. There was a Danish novelist, a woman named Bodil e or Bodile or Bodil Jensen; her first name was spel ed three different ways in the printed material that Patrick’s Japanese hosts had sent. However her name was spel ed, Wal ingford presumed one said “bode
eel
”—

accent on the
eel
—but he wasn’t sure. There was an English economist with the boring name of Jane Brown.

There was a Chinese geneticist, a Korean doctor of infectious diseases, a Dutch bacteriologist, and a woman from Ghana whose field was alternately described as

“food-shortage management” or “world-hunger relief.”

There was no hope of Wal ingford’s pronouncing any of their names correctly; he wouldn’t even try. The list of participants went on and on, al highly accomplished professional women—with the probable exception of an American author and self-described radical feminist whom Wal ingford had never heard of, and a lopsided number of participants from Japan who seemed to represent the arts.

Patrick was uncomfortable around female poets and sculptors. It was probably not correct to cal them poetesses and sculptresses, although this is how Wal ingford thought of them. (In Patrick’s mind, most artists were frauds; they were peddling something unreal, something made up.)

So what would his welcoming speech be? He wasn’t entirely at a loss—he’d not lived in New York for nothing.

Wal ingford had suffered through his share of black-tie occasions; he knew what bul shitters most masters of ceremonies were—he knew how to bul shit, too. Therefore, Patrick decided his opening remarks should be nothing more or less than the fashionable and news-savvy blather of a master of ceremonies—the insincere, self-deprecating humor of someone who appears at ease while making a joke of himself. Boy, was he wrong. How about this for an opening line? “I feel insecure addressing such a distinguished group as yourselves, given that my principal and, by comparison, lowly accomplishment was to il egal y feed my left hand to a lion in India five years ago.”

Surely that would break the ice. It had been good for a laugh at the last speech Wal ingford had given, which was not real y a speech but a toast at a dinner honoring Olympic athletes at the New York Athletic Club. The women in Tokyo would prove a tougher audience.

That the airline lost Wal ingford’s checked luggage, an overstuffed garment bag, seemed to set a tone. The official for the airline told him: “Your luggage is on the way to the Philippines—back tomorrow!”

“You already know that my bag is going to the Philippines?”

“Most luridly, sir,” the official said, or so Patrick thought; he’d real y said, “Most assuredly, sir,” but Wal ingford had misheard him. (Patrick had a childish and offensive habit of mocking foreign accents, which was almost as unlikable as his compulsion to laugh when someone tripped or fel down.) For the sake of clarification, the airline official added: “The lost luggage on that flight from New York
always
goes to the Philippines.”

“ ‘Always’?”
Wal ingford asked.

“Always back tomorrow, too,” the official replied.

There then fol owed the ride in the helicopter from the airport to the rooftop of his Tokyo hotel. Wal ingford’s Japanese hosts had arranged for the chopper.

“Ah, Tokyo at twilight—what can compare to it?” said a stern-looking woman seated next to Patrick on the helicopter. He hadn’t noticed that she’d also been on the plane from New York—probably because she’d been wearing an unflattering pair of tortoiseshel glasses and Wal ingford had given her no more than a passing look.

(She was the American author and self-described radical feminist, of course.)

“You’re being facetious, I trust,” Patrick said to her.

“I’m always facetious, Mr. Wal ingford,” the woman replied.

She introduced herself with a short, firm handshake. “I’m Evelyn Arbuthnot. I recognized you by your hand—the other one.”

“Did they send your luggage to the Philippines, too?”

Patrick asked Ms. Arbuthnot.

“Look at me, Mr. Wal ingford,” she instructed him. “I’m strictly a carry-on person. Airlines don’t lose my luggage.”

Perhaps he’d underestimated Evelyn Arbuthnot’s abilities; maybe he should try to find, and even read, one of her books.

But below them was Tokyo. He could see that there were heliports on the rooftops of many hotels and office buildings, and that other helicopters were hovering to land.

It was as if there were a military invasion of the huge, hazy city, which, in the twilight, was tinged by an array of improbable colors, from pink to blood-red, in the fading sunset. To Wal ingford, the rooftop helipads looked like bul ’s-eyes; he tried to guess which bul ’s-eye their helicopter was aiming at.

“Japan,” Evelyn Arbuthnot said despairingly.

“You don’t like Japan?” Patrick asked her.

“I don’t ‘like’ anyplace,” she told Wal ingford, “but the man-woman thing is especial y onerous here.”

“Oh,” Patrick replied.

“You haven’t been here before, have you?” she asked him.

While he was stil shaking his head, she told him: “You shouldn’t have come, disaster man.”

“Why did
you
come?” Wal ingford asked her.

She was kind of growing on him with every negative word she spoke. He began to like her face, which was square with a high forehead and a broad jaw—her short gray hair sat on her head like a no-nonsense helmet. Her body was squat and sturdy-looking, and not at al revealed; she wore black jeans and a man’s untucked denim shirt, which looked soft from a lot of laundering. Judging by what Wal ingford could see, which was not much, she seemed to be smal breasted—she didn’t bother to wear a bra. She had on a sensible, if dirty, pair of running shoes, which she rested on a large gym bag that only partial y fit beneath her seat; the bag had a shoulder strap and looked heavy.

Ms. Arbuthnot appeared to be a woman in her late forties or early fifties who traveled with more books than clothes.

She wore no makeup and no nail polish, and no rings or other jewelry. She had smal fingers and very clean, smal hands, and her nails were bitten to the quick.

“Why did
I
come here?” she asked, repeating Patrick’s question. “I go where I’m invited, wherever it is, both because I’m not invited to many places and because I have a message. But
you
don’t have a message, do you, Mr.

Wal ingford? I can’t imagine what you would ever come to Tokyo for, least of al for a conference on

‘The Future of Women.’ Since when is ‘The Future of Women’
news
? Or the lion guy’s kind of news, anyway,”

she added.

The helicopter was landing now. Wal ingford, watching the enlarging bul ’s-eye, was speechless.

“Why did
I
come here?” Patrick asked, repeating Ms.

Arbuthnot’s question. He was just trying to buy a little time while he thought of an answer.

“I’l tel you why, Mr. Wal ingford.” Evelyn Arbuthnot put her smal but surprisingly strong hands on his knees and gave him a good squeeze. “You came here because you knew you’d meet a lot of
women
—isn’t that right?”

So she was one of those people who disliked journalists, or Patrick Wal ingford in particular. Wal ingford was sensitive to both dislikes, which were common. He wanted to say that he had come to Tokyo because he was a fucking field reporter and he’d been given a fucking field assignment, but he held his tongue. He had that popular weakness of wanting to win over people who disliked him; as a consequence, he had numerous friends. None of them were close, and very few of them were male. (He’d slept with too many women to make close friendships with men.) The helicopter bumped down; a door opened. A fast-moving bel man, who’d been standing on the rooftop, rushed forward with a luggage cart. There was no bag to take, except Evelyn Arbuthnot’s gym bag, which she preferred to carry herself.

“No bag? No luggage?” the eager bel man asked Wal ingford, who was stil thinking of how to answer Ms.

Arbuthnot.

“My bag was mistakenly sent to the Philippines,” Patrick informed the bel man. He spoke unnecessarily slowly.

“Oh, no problem. Back tomorrow!” the bel man said.

“Ms. Arbuthnot,” Wal ingford managed to say, a little stiffly, “I assure you that I don’t have to come to Tokyo, or this conference, to meet women. I can meet women anywhere in the world.”

“Oh, I’l bet you can.” Evelyn Arbuthnot seemed less than pleased at the idea.

“And I’l bet you
have
—everywhere, al the time. One after another.”

Bitch!
Patrick decided, and he’d just been beginning to like her. He’d been feeling a lot like an asshole lately, and Ms.

Arbuthnot had clearly got the better of him; yet Patrick Wal ingford general y thought of himself as a nice guy.

Fearing that his lost garment bag would not come back from the Philippines in time for his opening remarks at the

“Future of Women” conference, Wal ingford sent the clothes he’d worn on the plane to the hotel laundry service, which promised to return them overnight. Patrick hoped so. The problem then was that he had nothing to wear. He’d not anticipated that his Japanese hosts (fel ow journalists, al ) would keep cal ing him in his hotel room, inviting him for drinks and dinner.

He told them he was tired; he said he wasn’t hungry. They were polite about it, but Wal ingford could tel he’d disappointed them. No doubt they couldn’t wait to see the no-hand—the other one, as Evelyn Arbuthnot had put it.

Wal ingford was looking distrustful y at the room-service menu when Ms. Arbuthnot cal ed. “What are you doing for dinner?” she asked. “Or are you just doing room service?”

“Hasn’t anyone asked you out?” Patrick inquired. “They keep inviting me, but I can’t go because I sent the clothes I was wearing to the laundry service—in case my bag isn’t back from the Philippines tomorrow.”

“Nobody’s asked me out,” Ms. Arbuthnot told him. “But I’m not famous—I’m not even a journalist. Nobody ever asks me out.”

Wal ingford could believe this, but al he said was: “Wel , I’d invite you to join me in my room, but I have nothing to wear except a towel.”

“Cal housekeeping,” Evelyn Arbuthnot advised him. “Tel them you want a robe. Men don’t know how to sit in towels.”

She gave him her room number and told him to cal her back when he had the robe. Meanwhile she’d have a look at the room-service menu.

But when Wal ingford cal ed housekeeping, a woman’s voice said, “Sol y, no lobes.” Or so Wal ingford misheard.

And when he cal ed back Ms. Arbuthnot and reported what housekeeping had told him, she surprised him again.

“No lobe, no loom service.”