Tom Boyle - East is East

And then suddenly a roar went up from the patio below and her heart froze. There was a shriek and the sound of shattering glass and then a burst of laughter. She thought she heard a door slam. She had to get out. But what to do with the evidence? She couldn’t just … the pillowcase. But no, he’d be sure to miss that. And then her eyes fell on the wastebasket, a cheap straw thing lined with the generic black plastic bag. Breathlessly, she bent to lift out the bag and dump its contents back into the naked straw basket, hurry, hurry, starting at every sound, the seconds ticking off and what if he caught her and what would she say? Still, even under duress, she did manage to notice the discarded letter from his agent and the card, neatly torn in two, from—who was it from?—his son. She stuffed them into the black plastic bag along with the rest of her booty, and tentatively cracked the door.

It was a shock: someone was coming. A dark form, movement: someone was coming.

Ruth snapped the door shut, heart pounding, wild excuses on her lips—she was looking for the laundry room and blundered in here by mistake; she was helping Owen’s Puerto Rican slave—what was his name, Rico?—with the trash, yes, his mother was sick and … she could hear footsteps approaching, a heavy tread, relentless, coming nearer … and then they paused—stopped, halted, pulled up short—just outside the door. She was dead. This was it. She pictured Irving Thalamus’s cold lizard look of surprise, Septima’s intransigent nose and Owen’s hard censorious eyes, instant justice, the only artist ever drummed out of Thanatopsis House for petty thievery—but wait: she could throw herself into his arms, yes, yes, pretend she’d come for that—and then she heard the sudden sharp wheeze of the bathroom door opposite and knew she was saved. She took a deep breath, waited for the sound of the bathroom latch and cracked the door again. No one in sight. She stepped into the hall and closed the door behind her.

It was at that precise moment that Detlef Abercorn rounded the corner. He was wearing a set of earphones attached to the Walkman in his shirt pocket, and he was on her before she could react. “Oh, hey, hi,” he said, too loudly, and he slipped the phones from his ears in a motion so automatic it might have been a tic.

Ruth clutched the garbage bag to her chest and gave him a terrified grin.

He grinned back at her, casually leaning into the doorframe with one long arm. She saw that he was looking down her blouse. “Did I tell you I really enjoyed talking to you the other night? I find you a very”—he hesitated, and she could hear a faint metallic voice whispering through the earphones—“a very sexy woman. Really. And I wondered if—I’ve got a car and all—I wondered if you might like to get off the island for an evening—tonight maybe—and have dinner or something?”

Ruth was on familiar terrain now, and as the shock of discovery wore off, she recovered her equilibrium. “I’d like that,” she said, bending to relieve an imaginary itch just behind her left knee, “sometime. Sometime soon. But tonight I’m afraid I already have plans.”

Abercorn didn’t seem put off. He leaned closer and gave her a long meaningful look. “Hey,” he said, putting some gravel into his voice, “I don’t know if I’ll be around that much longer.”

Ruth saw her chance. “Oh? No luck?”

He shot his eyes in disgust. “The guy disappeared. He could be dead for all we know. Either that or he left the island.”

“And your assistant? With the ghetto blaster?”

Abercorn’s laugh was quick and musical. “Yeah, well, that’s another story.” He paused. She couldn’t seem to help staring into his eyes—she’d never seen anyone with eyes that color before. “So this is your room, huh?” he said. “I was kind of hoping you might, uh—”

She put her hand on his arm. “You’re sweet,” she said, “but listen, I’ve got to run. Really. I just realized I don’t think I shut off the hot plate in my studio and—”

“All that genius up in ashes, huh?”

“Something like that,” she said, ducking out from under his arm and hurrying down the hall.

But it wasn’t over yet.

She came down the stairs two at a time, the black plastic bag tucked under her arm, and her only thought was of Hiro, her pet, her secret, face down on the wicker loveseat in the shady studio in the woods. Would he be there when she got back? Would he wake and think she’d gone for the police? Would Turco boogie through the screen door and conk him with his boom box? The furthest thing from her mind was Saxby. But there he was at the foot of the stairs, crabwalking beneath one precarious end of a six-foot-long aquarium. “Ruthie,” he grunted. “I’m … back!”

She saw now that Owen was attached to the far end of the thing and that they were trying to maneuver it round the butt of the staircase and down the narrow hallway to Saxby’s room. The whole operation halted a minute while Ruth descended the stairs to brush Saxby’s lips with a kiss and whisper, “I missed you,” and then, flashing light, the aquarium moved on, and Ruth was out the door, down the steps and across the lawn. As soon as she hit the woods, she broke into a run.

She was out of breath when she reached the cottage, knitting needles embedded in her sides. She wanted him to be there, wanted to talk to him, wash and bind his wounds, watch him eat and sleep and recover the lost light in his eyes—but somehow, as she came up the path, she knew he’d be gone. The cottage was unchanged. She saw the familiar porch, the windows rich with sun, the pine, palmetto and oak, and she heard the birds in the trees and smelled the sweet rich breath of the ocean, and nothing had changed. She mounted the steps, breathing hard, and gingerly swung open the screen door: the cottage was empty.

Angry with herself—she should have told him where she was going, should have brushed off Abercorn, should have run both ways—she threw the bag down and fell into the rocker by the window. He was gone. He’d never trust her now. But then so what? What did she care? Let him starve. For a long while she sat there rocking as the shadows lengthened and the calm of evening fell over her books, her typewriter, the hot plate and pitcher plants, all the familiar objects of her little life in this temporary outpost. And then, at long last, it occurred to her—and the thought was as sharp as a pinprick—that he might be testing her. Even now he might be crouched in the tangle out there, watching and waiting. All right, she thought, and got up from the chair, poured some water from the jug into a basin and carried it out onto the porch. She made a separate trip for the jug, and left it beside the basin. Then she fished through the bag and arranged the soap and Band-Aids, the towel and clothing and the rest of it on the rail, stuffed the two letters in her hip pocket and started back, through the cloistral deeps of evening, to Thanatopsis House.

In the morning, the things were gone. He’d returned the basin to its hook beside the fireplace, and she found the rag of the overalls and Clara Kleinschmidt’s violated panties neatly folded in the corner. He didn’t come for the lunch pail that afternoon, but she left it there on its hook—she joked to herself that she could stand to lose a few pounds anyway—and in the morning it was empty. The same thing happened the following day and she thought they’d established a pattern, a rhythm, but she was wrong. A day passed, and then another, and there was no sign that he’d been there. Lunches spoiled. Owen was perplexed. Abercorn packed up his suitcase and Turco his boom box, and, assuring the colonists that the Japanese was no longer a threat, they climbed into their battered Datsun and drove off to the ferry. Saxby filled his aquarium with rocks, water and plants, and in the small hours of the long thick endless nights made Ruth’s blood rush with his lips and his fingers and all the rest of him too. And Ruth established herself in the billiard room and at the convivial table and sat down to her typewriter with a new purpose and a delicious lingering thrill of expectation: he’d be back, her Japanese, any moment now. She knew he would. After all, she thought, how could he resist?