A Girl Like You: A Novel Part 26

He had an odd way of not responding, as though he hardly heard her, as though he were working out what he was going to say next himself. Perhaps, though, it was only that he was lonely too, eager to talk.

By the time dessert came she knew his age, the kind of movies he liked, "westerns and detectives." She knew that his mother was dead and that he lived with his father, who worked with him in the fish market.

"This place is the best, isn't it? Louie's Italian like you," he said over coffee, waving to the proprietor. "Married to an Irish-American. It's a good combination, like you and me."

She laughed, used to the mistake. "Oh, I'm not Italian, Randal. I'm half j.a.panese."

The moment she said it she saw the effect it had on him. He couldn't have been more surprised if she had reached across the table and punched him in the face for no good reason. He stared at her, confused, his eyes s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up as though he were trying to work out some difficult math problem.

"What?" His face darkened. His voice was suddenly harder, mean.

"You're a j.a.p? A j.a.p?"

"Yes, I'm j.a.panese. I'm j.a.panese and you're Irish. So?"

He stood up without looking at her, kicked the chair aside, and threw a few dollars on the table.

"Warn a guy next time," he flung at her, heading to the door.

The room went quiet, people began to stare. She watched him clumsily navigating the tables, heard his "Jesus" addressed to no one in particular. She put a napkin to her lips, swallowed hard, fighting nausea.

"You okay, honey?" the woman at the next table asked. "You don't look so good."

Outside the restaurant, she felt disoriented, out of place on the sidewalk in the dark. It was raining, the drops falling like snow, thick and slow. The insistent whisper of the river came to her. She thought of the eels Randal had spoken of curling in the deep dirty depths of the harbor, comfortable down there in the dark, knowing their place.

She wasn't sure where the subway was, hadn't wanted to ask a stranger, so for the first time in her life she took a cab.

Angry at herself for being such a bad judge of character, she couldn't wait to get to her room, to bolt the door and be alone. It was hard to admit to being hurt-that would be giving Randal and his kind the upper hand-but she couldn't sleep that night, something horrible scratched in her.

Next morning as Satomi picked her mail up, Mrs. Copeland called to her over the banister.

"How did it go, honey? Is it love?"

"Let's put it this way, Mrs. Copeland: the man was hardly a prince."

"I told you, darling, it's a hard-hearted city."

The letter in her mail was from Eriko. The news was sad. Naomi had died. Her heart had given out in her sleep.

I'm grateful that she didn't suffer, but I miss her so much, Satomi. My only comfort is that she is with Tamura. Now we are both orphans.

Another link gone. She didn't have to cry about Randal now, she could cry for Naomi, beloved Naomi, contrary but kind Naomi, Naomi who with her arthritic hands had knitted mittens for orphans.

After the incident with Randal, New York didn't seem so scary to her; she had survived her baptism and hadn't drowned. If anything, it had become more like Angelina. Not everyone was on your side.

It went against her nature to take advice from someone like Randal Daly, but she determined in the future to make it clear from the start to anyone who was interested, who she is.

There had been other dates that had gone better, but none of them had stirred her much. She had no idea what she was looking for, someone like Haru, perhaps. None of them, though, fit that bill. Not the guy who was all over her in the first hour, or the one who thought himself funny but wasn't, or the nice one who got on her nerves. Sometimes she thought it would be better just to stay at home, where nothing was required of her.

Now she takes refuge in books, in the conversations that she has with Mrs. Copeland about relatives finding each other, about the joy of being found. Nothing interests her more than those stories of reunion.

"It happens," Mrs. Copeland says. "Not that often, but when it does, it's wonderful. You should see their faces when they discover a brother, a cousin, when a loved one is found alive and longing to hear from them."

Satomi can't help picturing a scene where she and Cora are reunited. She imagines them walking together holding hands, eating in the diner three blocks down that serves ten different flavors of ice cream, sitting in the movies thrilling to Flash Gordon.

"You're haunted by that child," Mrs. Copeland observes. "But you must make a life for yourself before you can make one for her."

It's good advice, not that Mrs Copeland seems interested much in her own life. She is looking toward death with the sort of practicality that Satomi thinks must come with age.

"I thought my time was up the other night, could see myself lying in that shower clear as day. But it was just a dream."

"How horrible for you."

"No, honey, I don't mind those dreams so much. No one lives forever, and they sort of prepare you for what's coming."

At Clare House.

"You're new." Joseph Rodman takes his time handing Satomi his coat. The party at the museum is almost over, but he is not sorry to be late, he is more often late than not for most things. His expectations of the show, of his fellow guests, are low.

Satomi nods her head slightly, doesn't answer. Her hand is out, ready to take his coat, but he is fiddling in the pocket searching in a disinterested way.

"You've lost something?"

"No, not really, just playing for time."

"Playing for time?" she turns from him, takes a hanger from the rail, wonders why she feels embarra.s.sed.

He can't quite place the accent. She's definitely not a New Yorker, more West Coast than East, he thinks. The low pitch of her voice, and her unhurried way of speaking is measured in comparison to the city's gabble. He likes the cool look of her. It's strange that he should be so instantly charmed, especially as she has nothing of the boy about her, except maybe a linear sort of elegance.

"I'd rather look at you than what's on show here tonight," he says. He isn't flirting, it's the truth.

She's used now to New York flattery, but his compliment doesn't feel like flattery-not the standard kind, at least. She senses that the usual banter doesn't apply here. She sees sympathy in his stare and is irritated. Has he worked out that she's hiding in the cloakroom? Does he feel sorry for her? He is making her uncomfortable, and she wishes he would hand over his coat and go away.

"My name's Joseph. Yours?"

"It's Satomi. Satomi Baker."

"Satomi?"

"It's j.a.panese."

"But you aren't ..."

"I'm half j.a.panese."

"Perfect. Quite perfect."

Time is running out for Joseph, and if a woman must be courted, if he must keep his promise, then perhaps she is different enough to be the one.

On her way home that evening Satomi wonders whether she was right to refuse his dinner invitation. She's bad at jumping in these days, less willing than she used to be at taking chances. New York makes you cautious. And Joseph Rodman is like no one she has ever known, although there is something of the museum's director about him. She wouldn't know how to be with a man like him.

Two weeks later and on his third request she agrees to dinner, providing that it's somewhere not too smart.

"I don't have the clothes for anywhere smart."

The moment she accepts the invitation she regrets it. It seems to her that Joseph Rodman is a man who expects perfection. He is so well groomed as to be intimidating, he smells of cologne, and he is obviously rich, coming from a world she can only guess at. Her father would not have approved, would hardly think him the kind of man for his daughter. And Tamura, who judged men by Aaron and found most of them wanting, would she have approved? Satomi's mother would have been kinder than her father, of course, less willing to judge.

"Go," Mrs. Copeland has encouraged, feeling herself in parentis. "Plenty of time to lie low when you're old."

"Remember, nowhere fancy," Satomi warns, hoping it might put him off.

But he is stirred by the idea of it, of finding somewhere "not too smart," of being out with the hat-check girl on an ordinary date.

You could start from scratch with a girl like her. He has found a Vermeer languishing in a cupboard, a delight of color and composition. All she needs is the right frame. Relief floods him. Things might work out after all.

It seems to Satomi that Joseph under his smartness has a good character, although he doesn't give much of himself away. A frank smile and impeccable manners are hardly enough to go on. He's conceited, that much is obvious in his head-to-toe neatness, the sleek cut of his hair, the perfect ovals of his nails. But are such things flaws? Perhaps that sort of perfection is natural for the rich, how would she know? She has noticed that in art, though, his eye is taken by the simple-a costly sort of simple, but still a taste she shares.

Joseph, despite his exacting style, has honed his taste to be the opposite of that of his widowed mother, Dulcibele, who revels in what he considers to be a vulgar sort of fondness for the overdone. His infrequent visits to her glittering white mansion on the sh.o.r.es of the Hudson are uncomfortable, the times they come across each other in town unwelcome to them both.

He blames his mother's selfishness for not caring for his father, for the broken thing in himself that he's finding hard to fix. She can't be blamed, though, for the promise his father had extracted from him. A deathbed promise, he thinks dramatically, although it was given months before the old man died.

"You must marry, Joseph. It's the right thing for you."

"I don't think I'm made for marriage, Father."

"But it will make you happy, Joseph. I know it. Promise me. Promise me that you will."

His son must make an heir to the Rodmans' great fortune, just as he had done himself. It's a duty not to be dodged. A man of Joseph's tastes could too easily lose the way. At the very least, a wife on his son's arm would put paid to the gossip. A pretty one might even switch Joseph's taste to the more conventional.

With the promise given, the old man when the time came had let go of life with a deep sigh and a pleasurable sense of relief. Joseph, along with the Rodman fortune, was left with the pledge, and the novel feeling of being committed.

Unused to courtship, he fumbles through his now-regular outings with Satomi, pleased when she finds his jokes funny, flattered when he has her attention. He is already fond of her, charmed by how different she is from those smart uptown girls his mother has her eye on for him. Having a girl on his arm is odd, but not as unpleasant a sensation as he had feared.

Satomi feels more the Angelina girl than ever when she is with Joseph. Before him, she hadn't thought herself to be so ignorant. But she's learning, and she likes it. She knows now that wine is not for her, but she enjoys the bookish flavor of whiskey and the taste of a New York strip steak. It's amazing to discover that she likes opera, amazing that she should even go to the opera. The linking of Satomi Baker with Joseph Rodman is so extraordinary a thing that she is tempted herself sometimes to repeat in her head, a girl like you. She loves the plays Joseph takes her to on Broadway, even though he often thinks them poor. It's shocking to her how little impresses Joseph.

"What's he like, darling?" Mrs. Copeland asks Satomi as they stand in their hallway together, looking down through the window at Joseph's waiting cab in the street below.

"Um, he's sort of fine, I guess. He makes me laugh quite a lot, and he's rich, I think, but he's not for me, really."

"Are you sure, darling? The words 'lucky girl' come to mind."

But Satomi doesn't so much feel lucky as false. Despite herself she can't help judging. Joseph is far too extravagant, too wasteful. To see him leave food on his plate, wine in his gla.s.s, is painful to her. He buys things just to try them, a new brand of cigarettes that he throws away after one drag, books that he likes the cover of but will never read, and so much cologne that it makes her dizzy.

Yet the sense that Joseph, like her, is dislocated in some way draws her to him. And there is something of Dr. Harper's warmth and wit about him that she likes. She wonders what it's like to be him, to never have to worry if there will be enough money at the end of the week for food, to never question your good fortune or deny yourself anything.

Oh, money, she can hear her mother say. It isn't a child of your own, or even a fresh-laid egg.

I wish I could be like you, Mama, she replies in this conversation in her head. You always knew the path to take.

In Joseph's efforts to charm Satomi, he tells himself that art is the thing. If he can't seduce with his manliness, he will do it with art. So they stroll the long arcades in the hushed atmosphere of New York's galleries, gazing at the glorious paintings of battles, of lush naked women, and of misty landscapes. She can recognize now the pure light of a Raphael, the sweeping brushstrokes of a Gauguin.

It pleases the teacher in Joseph. He hopes the pa.s.sion on the canvases will satisfy enough to deflect for a while what he imagines must be Satomi's expectations of him.

He takes her to those restaurants that have an intimate atmosphere, but where he doesn't have to be alone with her. He is saving himself from those moments when a different man would take the opportunity to make his move, those moments that could lose him the game. In its own way it is a romantic sort of wooing, he thinks.

Satomi, though, is confused as to what she and Joseph are, exactly. It seems to her that he is more teacher than boyfriend. There's something about him that she can't get a hold of. Perhaps it's the sense she has that Joseph is in hiding, she wishes she knew from what. Whatever it is, though, it doesn't feel like a regular boy-girl thing. She's relieved that he hasn't made a move, but she can't help thinking it strange, asking herself questions. Why doesn't he kiss me? Why is taking my arm to cross the road the nearest he gets to touching?

Aware that he is not pulling off the boyfriend thing, he steps up what he thinks of as treats for her. He takes her on a tour of his New York. They pound the streets, and visit the grand buildings of Lower Manhattan. He points out ornate ceilings and reels off dates.

"This is New York cla.s.sical," he says, trawling her to the Cunard Building to marvel at its great hall. "Nothing much left of New Amsterdam these days, but the American Renaissance style compares with Paris, with Rome, even. It's marvelous, don't you think?"

It's a step too far, but she can't help laughing.

"Oh, for goodness' sake, Joseph, no more, please. Let's get some coffee. I can't face another museum, another bank, another set of Corinthian columns."

Buildings are not her thing and she is bored, reminded of those times in Mr. Beck's cla.s.s when her mind had wandered, when she and Lily had caught each other's eyes and raised them to heaven.

"It's the worst thing, to be bored," Joseph says. "Sorry, Sati, I'm a fool. What would you like to do?"

He is glad that she speaks up for herself, that she is not in his thrall. It would feel more like cheating to him if she was.

"I'd really like to visit the Statue of Liberty, and I want to ride the elevator to the top of the Empire State Building."

"Really! You know it's twelve hundred and fifty feet above the ground up there?"

"Are you scared of heights, Joseph?"

"No, only of tourists." They both laugh.

If only they could agree to be nothing more than friends, she would be able to enjoy his company better. Joseph makes the best of friends; he is good at listening when she needs to talk, easy with her silences when she doesn't. But though it seems to her that they are playacting the man woman thing, though nothing of what they are to each other is spoken about, she senses that he is aiming for something different than friendship. So, as though she is cheating, she feels guilty when she goes with someone else on a date without telling him.

"Only to save his feelings," she says to Mrs. Copeland.

"Really?" Mrs. Copeland shrugs her shoulders, raises one eyebrow.

Knowing nothing about Joseph, Dr. Harper's cousin Edward, in a matchmaking move, had set it up.

"Pete Elderkin. A nice guy," he said. "I think you'll hit it off."

And he is a nice guy, sort of. Fresh out of the Army, with a crew-cut bullishness about him, Satomi can tell he is the sort of man who takes life on the run. He had grabbed himself a job in a big cross-state delivery business, in the same week of his demobilize from the Army. Compet.i.tion doesn't bother him, only standing still bothers him, he says.

"I'll make it up to transport manager in no time," he tells her. "I pretty much run the place on my own now. Wouldn't surprise me if I end up owning the whole d.a.m.n thing."