The Bride's Kimono

by Sujata Massey

  “Shite. I must have given my entire key ring to the towing company,” Hugh said, looking at me gravely. “I have no other key to the house handy.”

  “No. You couldn’t have done that to me, on a night like this—”

  “Well, I’m on the second floor. I probably could climb the fire escape and get in through my kitchen window.”

  Just how many times would we break the laws of Washington that night? I walked outside with him to a small garden, where a motion-detector spotlight came on to illuminate us and a few bushes of late-blooming white roses. It was impressive that roses could be alive in late October, I thought as Hugh swung himself up on a cast-iron ladder that ended six feet above the ground. He climbed to the second-floor landing, where he fiddled with a window before looking sheepishly at me.

  “I left it locked.”

  “What do you want to do? Is your landlord in the building?”

  “Landlady. The last thing I want to do is rouse her at twelve-thirty.” He paused. “I might have to break it. Can you throw me up something to use as a tool?”

  “She won’t hear a window breaking?”

  “Not if it’s done right.” He was stripping off his beautiful jacket. I fished around in my backpack and came up with a portable umbrella. I tossed it up to him, watching it spin in the air like a martial-arts weapon.

  Hugh caught the umbrella and wrapped his beautiful dark green suit jacket around it. Then, getting extremely close to the window, he tapped it. When nothing happened he hit it harder, and I heard the sound of breaking glass. As the glass shattered, a warning went off inside me. If I entered Hugh’s apartment, I was going to cheat on Takeo. There was no question about it.

  Hugh stabbed the umbrella upward as a sign of victory. Then he got to the task of clearing a large enough hole to insert his hand and open the lock. The window was pushed up, and he dove through just as a telephone inside started ringing. I heard him grab the phone and start talking.

  “Yes, yes, it was I, Mrs. Weisburg. I’m all right, and I’m so sorry. Just an accident with a glass of champagne. Cristal, actually—Cristal champagne and broken crystal, heh-heh. I’ll bring a bottle to you tomorrow. Get some rest, and again, I’m so sorry about waking you.”

  After Hugh hung up, he looked out the window again and motioned for me to go around to the front of the house. I nodded, taking off my shoes as I entered the house. I didn’t want Mrs. Weisburg to hear me enter the building.

  “You are so outrageous,” I whispered to him as he tiptoed down the staircase of his building and quietly opened the vestibule door.

  “You’re worse,” he whispered back, before pinning me against the wall, lowering his head for a long, lazy kiss.

  “Let’s go up,” he whispered, leading me by the hand to the second floor and through an opened door to an apartment that was older than any place I’d ever lived in, I could tell from the small fireplace sized just right to burn coal, the divided windows with wavy glass, and the lavish Georgian Revival moldings running around the ceiling. The fireplace and moldings were painted a creamy alabaster, but the walls were a bold, electric blue.

  “Whatever happened to your beige tastes?” I asked, looking with confusion at the rest of the room. There wasn’t much furniture—nothing except a stereo, stacks of books, a leather sofa, and one tansu chest that had been in his Tokyo flat.

  “Don’t even think of giving me your opinion tonight. At present, there’s only one room I want you to decorate.”

  His vast bedroom was painted a rusty ocher color that I liked a little better than the blue. It held his familiar sleigh bed, neatly made up with plain white sheets, and an antique Biedermeier armoire that he must have bought recently. His bedside tables were computer boxes; he’d made a simple attempt at decoration by throwing a monogrammed hand towel over each one. As I looked around, Hugh lit some candles and disappeared for a moment. He came back in carrying a vase of yellow and cream tea roses that looked as if they were from the garden. His flower arrangement was awkward, to say the least—each stem trimmed to the same length and overstuffed in the graceful Waterford vase, with leaves and odd bits of twig underneath the waterline. This carelessly made bouquet was the antithesis of spare, elegant Japanese ikebana. Takeo would have cringed at it, not to mention the sight of me sitting on the sleigh bed, pulling off my stockings so recklessly that they snagged.

  “I picked these for you the other day,” Hugh said, setting the flowers down on the left side of the bed, the side where I customarily slept. “That’s why they’re a bit shabby. I hoped you would have made it here earlier, but I didn’t want to rush you.”

  “I waited too long,” I said, and without further delay pulled him over me.

  Hugh was the same—and different. Touching his body was like retracing my way across a familiar landscape, but knowing it was the last time I might make the trip filled me with urgency. I sensed Hugh felt the same; his mouth moved over me with a hunger that reminded me of the way I’d devoured chocolate, cheese, and wine at my first meal in Washington.

  I couldn’t make up my mind which way I wanted him. I wanted him every way: on top, behind me, underneath. I didn’t know that I’d scratched him until I saw a smear of blood from my fingertips on his sheets. By then it was too late; I was coming, and that was all that seemed to matter.

  “That was insane,” he whispered, rolling to my side sometime around two in the morning. For the first time I heard more than the sound of my own breathing.

  “I know. Was it what you expected?” I whispered back, suddenly sensing what it must have been like to have to make love to me in so many positions. I’d stretched him to his limits—I hadn’t wanted it to end.

  “Well…I’ve dreamed about this so long, I didn’t know what to expect. You delivered every fantasy, I guess…” Hugh trailed off, sounding unsure.

  “But not the tenderness,” I said. “It should have been more focused. I worry—I worry that you didn’t come.”

  Hugh sighed. “How could I, knowing that it’s going to end? I can’t find joy in another man’s woman. But don’t worry about me. It was perfect sex otherwise, wasn’t it?”

  I rolled over and looked at him in the dim light that came from the one candle that hadn’t flickered out. “What if I don’t go back to him?”

  “Of course you will,” Hugh said, sounding weary. “Someone fluent in Japanese, who can fit in the way I never could.”

  “But you fit into me like nobody else—”

  “So I’m a great lay. Thanks. That really warms my heart.”

  “Come on, Hugh. Give me a break.” I kissed around his chest until I could feel the faint heartbeat. Then I continued my travels down a trail of gingery hair that ran along his chest.

  “What are you doing, Rei?” Hugh whispered as I moved below his navel—as if he were shocked.

  “Loving you,” I said. And I did.

  26

  The morning after, with Hugh. In Japan, it usually meant us lying together, me dozing against his chest, thinking halfheartedly about bringing tea to bed, while he talked on the cell phone, telling his secretary at Sendai Limited that he’d eaten bad sushi the previous evening and wouldn’t be in until at least noon.

  Late Saturday morning in Adams Morgan I awoke with my body curled against Hugh’s back, hearing a telephone ring, just like the old days. Hugh picked it up, mumbling something. Then he handed it to me.

  “It’s for you.”

  “Hello,” I muttered, completely irritated. Who in the hell knew I was sleeping at Hugh Glendinning’s apartment? Even if Yoshi and Kyoko suspected he was more than a friend, I didn’t think they’d actually track him down through the Washington phone book, especially since I hadn’t mentioned his last name.

  “Rei.” A man was pronouncing my name in the way that only Japanese did—with a soft R, that was somewhere between an R and an L. Since the guy had used my first name, and not my last, I knew it had to be a friend.

  “Is this Yoshi-kun?
” I asked in Japanese, adding onto his name the casual, affectionate suffix used for young men and boys. Kun was the word to use with a guy when san felt too stiff—just as chan was used for women one was close to.

  “Who’s Yoshi-kun? Your third boyfriend?”

  It was Takeo, loud and clear and furious. The connection was so good that you couldn’t even tell it was a long-distance call.

  “Oh, hi, Takeo,” I said, putting stress on his name and punching Hugh lightly, to make sure he got the point. I wanted him to leave the bed, to give me at least a modicum of modesty. Instead, Hugh was regarding me with the lazy, contented expression of a man who had just had a night of great sex—and expected more of the same.

  “Oh, hi, Takeo.” Takeo mimicked my American accent perfectly. “Hi to you, Rei Shimura. It’s ten o’clock on a Saturday morning. Instead of being at your hotel in Northern Virginia, area code 703, you’re in the 202 area code, which I know means Washington, D.C. Why is that?”

  “How nice that you called. How did you get this number?” I bluffed, while thinking about how horribly fast everything had unraveled. I wasn’t cut out for this kind of thing. I could barely balance on a pair of geta sandals. Why had I thought that I could balance two men?

  “I called your room, and a woman picked up. A strange woman, with an American accent—”

  “Hey, that could be important! What did she sound like? It might have been the kimono thief.”

  “Don’t try to distract me with any bogus stories about kimono thieves. It was your mother.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “She said her name was Catherine Shimura, and she was hanging up clothes of yours that you had thrown about carelessly. I didn’t know you were staying with your family.”

  “They came to support me in my time of crisis,” I said, keeping my eyes on Hugh, who had gotten up, put on boxer shorts patterned with smiling faces, and started to pull himself back and forth on a rowing machine. A loud squeaking and grinding ensued as he rowed faster and faster. His face was red with exertion or anger—maybe both.

  “Well, your mother told me to try you at this number. Hey, what’s that sound? What are you doing, Rei? Don’t tell me you’re in bed with that fellow who answered the telephone.”

  “That noise is not from a bed, it’s a rowing machine.”

  Takeo exhaled suddenly. “Hold on. You’re at a gym?”

  “You could say that,” I said, looking around Hugh’s bedroom. There was a squash racket propped up against the wall, along with a few cans of balls.

  “Oh.” Takeo burst into warm laughter. “Oh, Rei. Of course. I should have figured that’s why a man answered the telephone. He’s a trainer or something.”

  “Something,” I said. Hugh was still rowing and glaring at me.

  “Great. I brought my running shoes. I wouldn’t mind working out for an hour to help fight the jet lag.”

  “Jet lag?” Suddenly my head was spinning. I lay back and stared at a sweet antique electric light fixture on Hugh’s ceiling. I had to center, to get my bearings. What Takeo had just said about jet lag made me very nervous.

  “Yes. This is the part you’re going to be very happy about. I’m at the Hotel Sofitel on Connecticut Avenue. I thought about how sad you’d sounded the last time we spoke and decided that you needed me. I traveled even though I didn’t have my safety travel charm. I got a seat on the last night flight out of Narita yesterday afternoon—and now I’m here.”

  I agreed to meet Takeo in an hour. After I hung up, I put my head in my hands and moaned, “What am I doing?”

  “Getting ready to take a shower with me,” said Hugh, who’d finished his exercises and was stripping off his boxers to go into the shower. “Come on. It’s a nice big old-fashioned shower, with a shower head out of the side of the wall that will hit you in a place I think you’ll adore—”

  “Oh, shut up,” I said, but I went in the shower with him anyway, not wanting to waste any time. I had to remove the scents of smoke and sex. A horrifying thought hit me: what if Takeo wanted to make love when I reached his hotel? I couldn’t do it now—maybe not ever.

  After we got out, I dried myself with the soft towels I remembered so fondly from Japan. Then Hugh shaved and I rummaged through his armoire.

  “What are you looking for? Maybe I can help,” he called cheerfully from the bathroom.

  “Something to wear,” I said.

  “And you think I’m a ladies’ size four?”

  “I was thinking I could borrow one of your Marks and Sparks Tshirts and a pair of sweats or leggings or whatever.”

  “Sports clothes will look ridiculous with stilettos. Why can’t you wear that insanely sexy red dress back to the hotel and get changed there? I’ll give you a ride back after we pick up my car at the garage.”

  “I don’t have time to make it back to the Washington Suites. I’m expected at the Sofitel in forty-five minutes.”

  “Sofitel. What are you talking about?” Hugh stuck his head out of the bathroom to look at me.

  “Takeo was calling from there. He flew to Washington because he was worried about me.”

  “Oh, my God.” Hugh walked into the room. He was still naked, and I carefully looked away from the parts I should never have gotten involved with again.

  “So—so that’s why I need to get dressed in fresh clothing. I can’t possibly go see him in clothes from last night.”

  Hugh shook his head. “I don’t believe you! You told me last night you were thinking of giving him up. Now you want me to lend you my clothes so you can go and meet your lover all nice and fresh, as if nothing ever happened between us. Well, forget it. I’ll do anything for you but that.”

  He was right, of course. I had hinted to him that I might give Takeo up. Not meeting Hugh’s eyes, I slipped back into the underwear and dress I’d worn the night before. I knew Hugh’s reaction was a taste of what might have greeted Hana if she’d made it back to Yoshi alive—and he’d figured out how deceitful she’d been.

  I said good-bye to Hugh, but he wouldn’t respond. I went downstairs as quietly as possible, regretting that I’d never even gotten a chance to see the whole apartment. At the corner of Columbia Road and Eighteenth Street I had a quick cup of coffee and a vegetarian empanada from a stall called Julia’s.

  Forty minutes till I was due to meet Takeo. I paid the bill and started looking for clothes. Where was Nation’s Place mall when I needed it? All I could find were silky Indian saris and Indonesian tie-dyed Tshirts. Finally I found a shop with cheap blue jeans for sale in the windows and some Central American shirts and accessories inside. I wound up with a scratchy but warm embroidered wool shirt, a pair of Wrangler jeans in a size actually meant for teenage boys, and beaded black leather moccasins. I went out the door looking like the coffee-advertising icon Juan Valdez without the sombrero, for forty-five dollars plus sales tax.

  Now I had to figure out the Metro. When I asked someone on the street for advice, I was shocked to learn that the Sofitel was a five-minute walk. Takeo was staying so close to Hugh’s that it was scary.

  Why had my mother given Takeo Hugh’s number? How did she have it handy, anyway—had she been carrying it around for months, waiting for the right moment to mess up my life? Outside the Sofitel, I walked around the corner and found a telephone booth. I dialed the Washington Suites and asked to be put through to my parents’ room.

  My father answered, which shook me slightly. I was ready to rail at my mother for giving out Hugh’s number, but what could I say to my father about the situation? He’d been through enough at the police headquarters. I couldn’t bear for him to guess I was involved in a sexual situation again.

  “Daddy, it’s Rei. When did you get back from Baltimore?”

  “Two hours ago this morning. We know you never came home last night, and frankly, we’re a little concerned.”

  “Is Mom around?”

  “She’s in your room hanging up some clothes she brought back for you from her
mother’s cedar closet in Baltimore. She’s been there since nine-fifteen or so. If you’d rather talk to her than me, why don’t you call her there?”

  I sensed the hurt in my father’s voice. “Um, no, that’s okay. Please tell her that I’ll be back in the mid-afternoon. Until then, I request that neither of you tell anyone where I might be, no matter who they say they are.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m just taking care of a little business,” I said. “I’ll explain more later. And by the way, Dad, I didn’t intend to stay out last night. It happened sort of spontaneously.”

  “As spontaneously as your encounter on the Metro,” my father snapped.

  “Would it make you feel any better knowing that both times I was with the same man?”

  “No father likes the idea of his daughter spending the night with any man. At least not until she’s married.”

  I sighed. Despite his work as a psychiatrist specializing in adults with relationship problems, he was still a dyed-in-the-wool Japanese father.

  “I’m sorry. I’ll get back to the hotel sometime in late afternoon. I’ll take you to dinner tonight.” I hung up before he could say anything else.

  The Sofitel was a pretty hotel—old, with fantastic rococo moldings all over the walls and ceilings. It was small, though, and I felt the eyes of the staff on me as I walked over to the elevators wearing my odd Central American fashions. Sailing up, I smoothed down my hair—I had forgotten to comb it after getting out of the shower, so I now probably had a bed-head look.

  At the third floor, an Asian man got in and I moved to the back of the elevator, giving him the right amount of space. I studied the panel showing the floors, dreading the moment when it would stop on the sixth floor—Takeo’s. As I was watching the light panel, I had a sense that my companion in the elevator was scrutinizing me.

  I knew my clothes were odd, but were they really too informal for the hotel? I looked straight at the man and caught my breath when I realized it was Mr. Shima. Suddenly I remembered what Allison had said casually about him staying at the Sofitel.