Tengu Read online

  ‘She climbed out of the car and locked it. Normally she never bothered, but this morning she felt the need for as many mundane rituals as possible–not only to keep herself from trembling with fear, but to delay the moment when she was going to have to stand face to face with Gerard and tell him: “Choose.”

  Gerard hadn’t come home now for three nights in succession, and Eva Crowley had had enough. She had sworn j to herself in the small hours of the morning, as she lay hugging her husband’s crumpled pillow, that she was going to finish for good all the pain and humiliation of being a cheated wife. No more evenings with only Dan Rather, a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, and her sleeping twin daughters for company. No more false sympathy when Gerard called from the office to say that work had snowed him under again, and I’m sorry, Evie, I just have to keep at it all through the night.

  Today, Gerard Crowley, the self-made president of Crowley Tobacco Imports, was going to be forced to make up his mind.

  As Eva walked across the plaza toward the entrance of Century Park East, her footsteps echoed on the concrete paving, and she could see a distant and severe image of herself in the glass doors, approaching with all the inevitability of her own fate.

  She was a petite, slender woman, with ash-blonde hair drawn back in a bun. Her face was pale and perfectly oval, like a blanched almond. For the frightening and solemn Tengu performance which this day demanded of her, she was wearing a dark gray suit with a pencil skirt, and black stiletto shoes. She could have been going to a board meeting, or a funeral.

  Eva felt breathless as she waited in the deserted lobby for the elevator to take her to the twenty-seventh floor. She began to bite at her pearl-pink nails, and then stopped herself. She hadn’t bitten her nails since she was an overweight young student in New York, plain and agonizingly shy, and hopelessly infatuated with an overbearing slob of a business administration senior called Hank Pretty. Her life in those days had been haunted by slipping grades, headaches, and the vision of spending the rest of her years with a man whose body stank of sweat and whose mind had about as much charm and order as the morning after Mardi Gras.

  Eva and Hank had fought. Hank had hit her. She had spat red blood into the rose-colored washbasin, and the whole world had seemed to be coming to a close.

  She hadn’t attempted suicide, though. Eva had never been the suicidal type. These days, she put on weight when she was anxious, eating too many taco chips and guacamole, and she smoked, too. But she had the painful strength to make appointments with her fears and face up to them, as if her fears were imaginary doctors with bad news about her smear, or phantom dentists with bicuspids to pull.

  She sometimes wished she had no strength at all, and could readily sacrifice herself to Gerard’s faithlessness without a struggle. But she couldn’t, and wouldn’t. She was too much like her father.

  Ornery.

  The elevator bell softly chimed the arrival of the twenty-seventh floor. The doors rumbled open and Eva stepped out. On the wall in front of the elevator bank was a brushed-aluminum sign with the inscription

  CROWLEY TOBACCO IMPORTS, INC. LOS ANGELES–CHICAGO–MIAMI.

  She stood and looked at it for a moment, because she remembered the day it had first been screwed in-to place. Then she walked evenly along the corridor toward the tinted glass doors of the office itself.

  It was a few seconds before eight o’clock. Gerard had always started work early. When they had first married, nineteen years ago, she had hardly ever seen him in the mornings. He had been out of bed and jogging along Lexington Road well before six, and she had only woken up at seven o’clock when the door of his Riviera slammed and the engine whistled into life. The kitchen would be left like the mess deck of the Marie Celeste–half-eaten crispbread, spilled milk, letters ripped open and left on the table–and there would never be any husband around to prove who had done it.

  In later years, though, Eva had woken up earlier. Some mornings Gerard had opened his eyes, and she had been lying there watching him. He had mistaken her steady gaze for affection, even for adoration. In fact, she had been considering the empty and ungraspable nature of their marriage, and wondering who he really was.

  She loved him. She had always known that. She wanted to stay married to him. But she had never been able to decide whether he loved her in return or simply used her as a hostess, and mother, and occasional bed partner. He always called her “Evie,” and for three of their nineteen years she had protested about it. Then she had given up.

  She opened the office door. There were decorative plants and white vinyl chairs, and a wide teak desk. There was nobody around. Eva waited for a moment, and then crossed the reception area to the door marked GERARD F. CROWLEY, PRESIDENT. She felt peculiarly numb, and her hesitation in front of the door seemed to last for whole minutes.

  Here I am, she thought. I’ve seen him so tired that he was weeping. I’ve seen him laugh. I’ve seen him sick, and I’ve seen him happy. I’ve seen every detail of his naked body. The pattern of moles on his thigh. The curl of his pubic hair. I’ve borne him twins. And yet I’m standing in front of his office door, almost too frightened to knock.

  She knocked.

  There was a pause. Then his voice asked, “Who is that?”

  In a dry, tight falsetto, she said, “It’s me.”

  “Evie?” he queried.

  She opened the door. The office faced east, and it was suffused with the milky light of morning.

  Gerard, dark and unshaven, and wearing a black shirt with the sleeves rolled up, was sitting behind his wide white desk. On the corner of the desk, her eyes wide with anticipation, was his receptionist Francesca, auburn-haired, tall, and dressed in skin-tight white cotton jeans and an olive-green silk blouse.

  There was a silver cigar box on Gerard’s desk. It had been Eva’s tenth-anniversary present to him. It was engraved: “With undying love, your Evie.” That was how much he had taken her character away from her.

  Gerard said, “You’re up early.”

  He was a very lean man, with thick black wiry hair that was just beginning to turn gray. His face was long and angular, with a thin, sharp nose and sharply defined lips. His eyes were deep-set and dark, and yet she had always felt they were oddly lacking in expression. You couldn’t look at him for very long without having to glance away in search of something more sympathetic.

  Francesca stood up. Eva was conscious of the receptionists’s breasts, shifting under the thin silk of her blouse. Thirty-six C cup, she guessed, but definitely braless today. There were cheap silver puzzle rings on the girl’s fingers, and Eva could almost picture those fingers clutching Gerard’s stiffened penis. The same way any prizewinner holds a trophy.

  “I, er… Evie, it’s good to see you,” said Gerard. He stood up, and came around his desk to greet her. He was far taller than she was, nearly six two, but somehow he seemed shorter today, diminished.

  Francesca said uneasily, “I think I’ll go make that coffee now.’’

  “Sure,” said Gerard, with pretended ease. “Would you like some coffee, Evie?”

  Eva shook her head. “I don’t think so, thank you.”

  There was a moment of tension. Gerard rubbed his hand across his mouth, as if he was unconsciously making sure that there were no traces of strange kisses. “Well,” he said, “I kind of guessed that you wouldn’t.”

  Francesca was still standing by the door, and Gerard glanced across at her and closed his eyes briefly in a catlike expression which meant. You go make coffee, I’ll handle this. Francesca paused, then left, leaving the office door fractionally ajar.

  “Sit down, why don’t you?” Gerard asked Eva, indicating a white revolving armchair.

  Eva said: “No, thank you. I don’t think it’s going to take me long to ask you where you’ve been these past three nights.’’

  He was walking back around his desk. He looked up at her, his dark head outlined against a bright golden painting of drying tobacco leaves. “Where I’ve been?�
�� he asked her. “You know damn well where I’ve been.”

  “You’ve been working three days and three nights without sleep?”

  “Almost. I had paperwork up to here.” He raised his hand up to the level of his eyes.

  “The Turkish consignment?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Mostly.”

  “So David Orlando’s lying?”

  “David Orlando? David’s in Dallas.”

  Eva lowered her eyes. “I know he is,” she said softly. “I called him there yesterday. He told me he handled the Turkish consignment all by himself, and finished up two days ago. He also told me you had almost no work in the office this week, and that you wouldn’t be pushed until early next month.”

  Gerard stared at her for almost half a minute, without speaking. Then he opened his silver cigar box, hesitated, and finally chose a small Havana. He reached for his cutters, snipped the end off the cigar, and placed it with exaggerated precision between his lips. Eva found his silence, his meticulous actions, distinctly unnerving. His eyes seemed less penetrable than ever.

  If only she didn’t want him so much, and need to know that he still loved her. If only she was weak enough to stay at home and be satisfied with what she had.

  Outside, a fire siren warbled and whooped along the Avenue of the Stars. Gerard waited until the echoes had died away, and then he said: “You were that suspicious, huh? Suspicious enough to call up David?”

  “What would you have done, Gerard, if I’d stayed away for three nights?”

  He opened a box of kitchen matches. “You forget that you don’t have any reason for staying away nights. I do.”

  She tried to smile, but her mouth couldn’t manage it. “That’s obvious enough,” she said. “But the reason isn’t work, is it? It’s her.”

  “Her?”

  Eva nodded toward the half-open office door. “She’s the one, isn’t she? Francesca?”

  Gerard let out an abrupt, uncertain laugh that was almost a cough. “Evie...” he said, “I don’t really think you’re being very fair to me here...”

  “You don’t think I’m fair?” Eva interrupted, in an intense whisper. “What the hell do you call fair?”

  “I mean understanding,” protested Gerard. “I mean you don’t seem like you’re trying to understand what’s going down here.”

  “What’s to understand? You’re going to bed with your receptionist!’’

  “Evie,” Gerard said, raising his hand, as if he were fending off a flapping bird. “Evie, every human situation has its two sides. You don’t seem to understand that.”

  Eva turned away. “You’re just the same, aren’t you?” she said. “Always trying to make me feel guilty for the things that you’ve done. Well, it won’t work this time, Gerard, because I do understand. I understand that you’ve been leaving me at home to run your house and look after your daughters while you go off fornicating with your twenty-five-year-old receptionist.’’

  Gerard let out a breath.

  “Can you understand that I still love you?” he asked her. “Can you understand that what I feel for Francesca hasn’t made the slightest difference to my appreciation of what you are?”

  She turned back toward him. She was frowning. “Are you serious?” she asked.

  “Never more serious in my whole life.”

  “My God,” she said. “I don’t believe you sometimes. You treat love and appreciation as if they were brands of tobacco.”

  He struck a match. It flared up, and there was a sharp smell of burned phosphorus. He kept his eyes on her while he lit his cigar. Then he waved the match to extinguish it, and puffed smoke.

  Eva hated the smell of cigars.

  “I love you, Evie. That’s all I can say. If you don’t believe me, then I’m really sorry. But it’s true.”

  “Do you love Francesca, too?”

  He nodded. “Yes. In a different sort of way.”

  “What different sort of way? You mean, more sexually? Is she better in bed than me? She’s younger, I suppose? Her breasts are more–I mean, her breasts are firmer? And does she do things I won’t do?”

  Gerard continued to puff at his cigar. “She’s different, that’s all. She’s a different person.”

  “I see. Different. That tells me precisely zilch.”

  Gerard held out his hand toward her. She didn’t take it. She wished she could. Her anger had almost burned itself out now, and a numb depression was gradually filling her up, as if she were lowering herself into an unpleasantly tepid tub of water. She could feel the tears on her eyelashes, and she knew that if Gerard gave her any sympathy now, any warmth, she was going to be lost.

  “Evie,” Gerard told her, in a gentle voice, “I’m the kind of man who can never stay still. It’s in my nature. You’ve known that from the start. That was one of the reasons you married me. You knew I wanted to go places, make money, widen my horizons.”

  “I didn’t think your horizons included other women,” said Eva sharply.

  “It was inevitable. It’s not a disaster. It won’t do anything to break us up. I needed a different kind of relationship with a different kind of woman, and I found it with Francesca. That’s all.

  There’s no reason why we should have to make a big production out of it. It’s happening all the time.”

  Eva opened her pocketbook and took out a crumpled piece of tissue. She dabbed at her eyes, and said, “You needn’t think I’m crying. I’m angry, that’s all.”

  “You don’t have to be angry.”

  “I don’t have toJbe angry? I’ve found out my husband’s unfaithful and all I have to do is congratulate him?”

  “You can accept, can’t you? Take it for what it is?”

  Eva looked at him, and slowly nodded. “I can accept, Gerard, but I can’t forgive.”

  “What does that mean? You want a divorce?”

  “I don’t know. Yes. I mean, no, I don’t.”

  He came nearer and held her arms. He gave her a wry, comforting smile, almost sad, and she could hardly believe that he was the same Gerard she’d married, the same earnest, ambitious, courteous young man who had given up his seat on a crosstown bus on a wet day in New York, and then sheltered her under his umbrella all the way back to her apartment door. The same young man who had taken her out to Mexican restaurants, and told her over the enchiladas, by the swiveling light of a tabletop candle, that he was going to be rich and famous, and that he wanted her to marry him and come to live in L.A., so that she could share his wealth and his fame, and his love too.

  Here he was–rich, well known in his own business, but distant now, a remote and incomprehensible man who seemed to have sold himself somewhere along the line of their married life to some other idea of what life should really be. He looked the same, and she still adored him the same, but his attention appeared to be focused someplace else.

  She saw herself in the amber-tinted mirror on the other side of the office. She looked pale and odd, but far less distraught than she’d imagined. In fact, she was surprised at her calmness.

  Gerard’s back, dark and tall, looked like the back of a complete stranger.

  “Well,” said Gerard. “What are you going to do? If you’re not going to divorce me –what?”

  Eva bit her lip.

  “You’re trying to tell me you won’t...”

  Francesca came to the door. She wasn’t carrying any coffee. Gerard held Eva’s arms tightly, and warmly, but he said in his softest voice, “No. I won’t give up Francesca.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  A few minutes after ten o’clock that morning, the telephone started ringing in a shady, secluded apartment on the fourth floor of a yellow house on Alta Loma Road, off Sunset Boulevard. It rang and rang for almost five minutes before a sliding door opened somewhere in the apartment, and silk-slippered feet came padding along the polished wood floor of the corridor.

  Nancy Shiranuka picked up the telephone with long red-lacquered fingernails. She said, “Moshi mos
hi,” in a flat, expressionless voice. Then she said, “Oh, it’s you.”

  She stood silent, listening. She was a small, delicately boned girl, even for a Japanese. Her face had that startling wide-eyed Hokkaido prettiness that Japanese men find devastating, and even Americans consider magnetic, especially if they’ve served out East. It was an acquired taste, Nancy’s prettiness, like chazuke, rice and tuna fish with green tea poured over them. She wore nothing but a loose silk robe of glistening black, open at the front. Her long black hair hung tangled and damp over her shoulders.

  All around her, the apartment was lined with polished oak paneling, and split-bamboo blinds where drawn over the windows. There were two or three black and-white silk cushions on the floor, and a low table of carved black wood, but apart from these the room was bare. On the walls were three erotic woodblocks by Settei from the Qnna-shimekawa osbie-fumi, the book of sexual instruction for women. The sun shone across the room in narrow stripes.

  Nancy asked, “Are you sure this is true? Did Torii tell you? And what happened afterward?”

  She paused, listening, and then said, “I see.”

  While she was listening, the sliding door opened again, and there was the sound of bare feet along the corridor. A very tall American came into the living room, his midriff wrapped in a towel, and he stood quite close to her, watching her with hooded eyes. He was gray-haired, at least sixty-five, and his body was gnarled and muscular and scarred. His face was composed entirely of angles, like Abraham Lincoln’s image on the side of Mount Rushmorc, and even before you knew who he was you would have guessed he was a military man.

  His name was Ernest Perry Ouvarov, ex-U.S. Naval Commander. He had distinguished himself at Midway and Okinawa, and after the signing of the Japanese surrender on the deck of USS Missouri, he had been largely responsible for the brilliant reorganization of the American naval administration in the Pacific. Truman had once called him “the knight of the high seas.”