A Girl Like You: A Novel Part 30

Daughter of Happiness.

There's something very sweet about Joseph when he gets home. He has brought her flowers, a cloud of dark anemones with the white ones taken out so that their garnet colors put her in mind of old tapestries.

"Don't know why they put those white ones in," he says. "White flowers only go with white flowers."

She is amused by him caring about such things, and touched that he takes such care when choosing her something as simple as a bunch of flowers. For a moment she wavers, wondering if she is doing the right thing in leaving Joseph. Being rich doesn't make his need of her any less, and will she ever do better than him, ever be safer than she is with him? Maybe he is right to question whether true love exists. Tamura had despaired of her never taking the sensible path. Perhaps for the first time she should take it now?

Two hours later, as the band at the hospital benefit plays "Rum and Coca-Cola," she is in a different frame of mind. Among Joseph's smart friends, those sure-of-themselves bankers and their urbane wives, the familiar feeling of loneliness has overtaken her. It's not so much that Joseph's friends exclude her, more that they judge her on the superficial level of her j.a.paneseness. She is Joseph's exotic girlfriend, not one of them but someone who adds color to their numbers. She will never be an intimate among them, never be at ease with them. She suspects that Joseph has chosen her for the same reason. That exotic thing always in the mix. It comes to her that the so-called safe path is not for her; that it is quite likely a life with Joseph may be neither safe nor sensible.

And Joseph tonight is adding to her disenchantment. There's something wrong with him, she can tell. His movements have speeded up and he seems distracted, not quite connected to what's going on around him. He has left her twice at their table, heading off somewhere with mumbled excuses as if he is late for an urgent appointment. She is used to his mood shifts, but it is uncomfortable being left at the table to charm in his place.

"Come and dance with me," she says, catching sight of him lurking behind a pillar.

"Sure," he says, slurring the word a little. "Sure."

He is clumsy on the floor, not like Joseph at all, who is usually precise in his steps, easy to follow. Exposed out there under the bouncing light of the revolving mirror ball, she wishes she hadn't asked him to dance with her, wishes that she hadn't come this evening, pretending that this is her life, that she is at home here among this other tribe.

And suddenly Joseph is spinning her and she is falling, twisting her ankle, breaking the heel of her shoe, and Joseph is on the floor beside her, smiling a lopsided smile, his eyes looking at but not seeing her. What is the matter with him?

"Let me help." The voice is deep, not quite baritone. "Give me your arm, lean on me. It will hurt to put weight on that foot."

She lets him take her weight as she limps back to their table.

"I'm Abe Robinson, by the way. I'm a doctor."

"I won't be long, dear girl," Joseph mumbles, and rolls his way to the bathroom.

Abe Robinson has her foot in his hands, putting pressure where it hurts, wincing when she does at the pain of it.

"Not broken," he a.s.sures her. "But a sprain can hurt worse, I know."

"Thank you." A familiar feeling runs through her, the same one she experienced when she first caught sight of Haru.

"No more dancing for a while." He says with a smile.

"Shame," she says, returning the smile, attempting lightness. "Will you have a drink with us?" It's foolish, but she doesn't want him to go.

"Thank you, but I'm with someone." He points across the room to where a girl, a frowning girl in a shiny dress, is looking toward them.

"Oh, of course, you must go."

"It would be better not to drink anymore, you're going to need a hefty dose of painkillers for a couple of days." He fumbles in his pocket for a pen, picks up a napkin, and hands both to her. "I can call on you tomorrow, if you like. Check your ankle."

She writes the address down, hands it to him, and feels a pang as he walks back toward the waiting girl. Stupid, she tells herself. A few minutes in his presence and she hardly knows herself. It must be the champagne, it always puts her in a silly mood.

Joseph returns just as Abe Robinson turns and says, "Ice, lots of it. And keep the leg up."

"How high?"

"Oh, above your heart if you can."

Four months on, and Joseph is still blaming himself. If he hadn't been so high that night at the hospital benefit, Satomi never would have met Abe Robinson, and she wouldn't be leaving him now. He thinks of it as leaving him, as though he is the lover in this threesome, although she has been dating Abe from the first moment they met.

"So I'm going to lose out to Mr. America," he says.

"Oh, Joseph, you and I, we're better off as friends," she says consolingly.

"Ouch." He slaps his hand to his chest as though she has cracked open his heart.

"It's true, Joseph, you know it is." She's sad for him, but there's nothing to be done about it.

"d.a.m.n that dance," Joseph says brightly. "That d.a.m.n dance."

He can hardly remember the dance that brought Abe Robinson into her life, except that it had a rumba sort of beat about it. But whatever the stupid rhythm had been, he should have caught her. Would have, if it hadn't been for the snort he'd taken discreetly behind a pillar in the moment before Satomi found him and pulled him onto the dance floor.

"All my stupid fault," he says now. "That's the trouble with the good stuff, you never know if it will take you mellow or hard."

"I'm glad of it, Joseph."

She is more than glad, despite the fact that she has wavered over the months, that she still has her doubts about her and Abe. The love between them feels equal and she can't get used to it. Strange, she thinks, that it should be so hard to trust in love. She had imagined when love came it would drown doubt, but perhaps doubt is the ingredient in the mix between men and women that keeps the love alive. Where there is light there must be shadows too.

But doubts aside, she feels blessed, blessed to have slipped, to have broken the heel of her beautiful shoe, to have turned her ankle.

Abe had felt the current between them on that first night too. Such a beautiful patient, flushed cheeks, strands of dark hair escaping from their burnished knot, the grace of her. He took it all in and knew he was setting his sights high.

Earlier that evening he had watched her from across the floor until something in him had faltered so that he had to look away to steady himself. He had been struck by the odd couple that she and Joseph made. The man appeared obsessively neat, hair tamed, his smooth skin so closely shaved as to make you wonder if he had a beard at all. And the tux so perfectly cut it might have been carved on him. Not the sort, he thought with distaste, to have gone for girls.

"She's in all the magazines," his girlfriend Corrine said sharply, following his gaze. "She's got it all, the looks and the money."

"His money?"

"I guess. He's the Rodman heir."

"They're married?"

"Engaged, perhaps. Not sure."

She didn't project socialite, he thought. Rather she looked lost, out of place. He wanted to know her, to save her, he thought, at the same time as telling himself that was a ridiculous idea. He couldn't shake the thought, though. Not for the first time he felt false being with Corrine. Something must be done about that. To think that he nearly hadn't come. That he had dreaded it. Corrine had been stupidly excited at him winning the tickets in the hospital raffle, wouldn't hear of him giving them away.

"It'll be stiff, formal. I hate that kinda thing," he had said, trying to talk her out of it. "We won't know anyone."

"It'll be great," she had insisted. "Just what the doctor ordered."

Her medical jokes had been wearing thin for months, but he gave in, hired the ridiculous suit, and polished his shoes to a patent shine. And now he and Satomi are together and it's how it should be, or at least it will be when he gets her away from Joseph. It makes him uneasy that she lives with the man, even though he believes her explanation as to why.

"We're friends, Abe," she says. "Nothing more."

"But it's odd, Sati. You have to give me that."

"Why not think of us as landlord and tenant, then?"

"It's the 'us' about it that I don't like, honey."

Satomi hates that Abe doesn't want to know Joseph, that he avoids him whenever possible. She understands it, though, they are poles apart in everything, and despite the fact that Abe has chosen her, he is in most ways a conventional man.

At their first meeting Abe's smile had made her want to run and to draw closer at the same time. Everything about him connected with her at what later she would remember with fondness as being her heart. At the time, though, it had felt more visceral, stomach-dropping, throat-constricting.

Nothing about him had jarred, still doesn't. His physicality touches her more than anything, his brown unwary eyes, his dark curly hair, and the scent of him that brings the earth to mind. There is symmetry in his weather-worn face, an open-aired look that sets him apart from the more usual pale-faced New Yorkers.

She had liked immediately the authoritative pitch of his voice, the way he had loosened his bow tie, which he was obviously ill at ease in, the way without being asked people had cleared a s.p.a.ce for him.

But she questions now if there is such a thing as love at first sight. All that drowning, heart-pounding, mouth-drying thing that night may simply have been l.u.s.t, the girlish longing for a man as masculine as Abe to carry her off. But it's love now, all right, the sweet and the bitter of it, the open and the guarded heart, the full-blown flower of it. Being with Abe is like being taken by a river: there's nothing you can do about it except let the water have you.

A regular caller now, Abe never comes up in the elevator. He gets the doorman to call the apartment while he waits downstairs in the lofty atrium.

It has set a pattern, Joseph thinks. Abe summoning, Sati running.

"He doesn't like me," he tells her flatly.

"He doesn't know you," she says. "He will like you when he gets to know you."

Abe's dislike, which Joseph senses is more like distaste, feels familiar to him. He has experienced it before. Abe's kind of man judges his kind harshly. It's to be expected. He has no doubt that Abe will ride off into the sunset with Satomi. His kind, the tall, tieless kind, always get the girl. Money, he knows, isn't going to get him out of this one.

"He's too conventional for you," he attempts. "He'll always be a doctor, nothing more. You won't have travel, or new people, adventures."

Satomi is living the life now that has always been a mystery to him: walks, and the movies, and meals in diners that he has never heard of. And bike rides in the park. Bikes when there are cabs. It makes no sense. And what's worse, every weekend in Freeport with Abe Robinson's mother, Frances, a woman who Satomi says is reserved with her.

"She has a good heart, though," she a.s.sures him. "It's just that Freeport's a pretty tight community, friendly enough but wary of strangers, I guess."

"Just as you told me Angelina was."

"I never said friendly, did I?"

He has shown her the best of New York, given her a cultured life, and she is settling for Freeport.

He can't fake being pleased for her, he is too sorry for himself. But there is time, he thinks, time for them to fall out of love. They have only known each other a few months, after all, less than half a year. Flash fires burn out quickly. In his less optimistic moments, though, he's resigned to her leaving; the pair are hopelessly attracted, it's just a question of when, he knows.

When comes on an evening when a b.u.t.tery sky, pinkish to the west, leaks its color into the apartment as Joseph is mixing their drinks.

"Abe has asked me to marry him," she ventures, accepting the whiskey he is offering.

"And?"

"And I've said yes, of course."

"Are you sure, really certain? It's all a bit whirlwind, isn't it?"

"Maybe, but it doesn't feel like that. And we both want it."

"Well, marriage, it's a big step. You might live to regret it."

"What else can we do? Abe hates me living here with you. That's natural, isn't it? And we want to be together."

"Have an affair. Get it out of your system."

"I don't want an affair, and neither does Abe. We're sure about each other and we're going to marry. Be happy for me, Joseph."

"So when will it be, this marriage?"

"As soon as we can arrange it. A couple of months or so."

"I'm used to you, Sati. I'll never find anyone like you. You're abandoning me to those uptown mustangs with their long teeth-it's cruel, you know. I'll get eaten."

"Joseph, you shouldn't marry at all." She is firm. "Your father loved you; if he had known how hard the promise would make your life, he would never have let you make it."

"But I did make it, and broken promises breach the dam."

"So do lies, Joseph."

"Yes, I'm sorry about that."

"I don't mind, it's only that you didn't..."

"Tell you, I know. I should have been honest. I've always been devious when I want my way."

"Well, I know now."

"I guess you think I'm all out of sync?"

"I can't say I understand it. It seems strange to me, I've never heard or read a word that describes it."

"Oh, there are plenty. 'h.o.m.os.e.xual,' 'queer,' 'ponce,' 'nancy boy,' take your pick."

"I don't like any of them. It doesn't matter anyway, we'll always be friends."

"Mmm, if it's to be allowed."

"I'll allow it. Don't worry about that."

"I'm going to miss you."

"I'll still be in New York."

"But not my New York. I mean, a doctor, dear girl! You'll end up spewing out babies, living in Queens or somewhere just as awful. Where do doctors live anyway?"

"Queens, actually! Jackson Heights, to be precise. And I don't think that I'll be spewing babies out, as you so charmingly put it, but I want them. Abe wants them too."