East is East

Just as Owen stepped into the room to announce dinner, there came a knock at the outer door. The front parlor, where cocktails were served, gave onto the foyer and the regal front entrance. No one ever knocked—all had free entrée—and the thunderous, rude, impatient booming at the front door took them all by surprise. The noise level dropped off to zero, conversations died; all heads turned to peer through the parlor doorway to the foyer, to which Owen, his shoulders thrust forward and with an officious look on his face, was proceeding. Ruth, who was then in the first stages of the metamorphosis that would make her the cynosure of Irving Thalamus’s clique and rescue her forever from the oblivion of the silent table, followed him.

Owen threw back the door, a wild busy smell of drizzling nature flooded the vestibule, and Abercorn and Turco, the one too tall, the other too short, stomped dripping into the room. “Hello,” Abercorn said, extending his hand to the bewildered Owen and flashing a flawless smile, “I’m Detlef Abercorn, Special Agent of the INS, and this”—indicating Turco, who glared round him suspiciously—“is my, uh, assistant, Lewis Turco.”

Ruth felt her heart catch. This was the man she’d spoken to on the phone a week ago—spoken to blithely, pleased with the attention—the man to whom she’d divulged every relevant detail of her encounter with Hiro Tanaka on Peagler Sound. And now here he was, horning in on her secret. She wasn’t calculating, not yet anyway, had no dream of Hiro as anything more than a creature that needed to be stroked and appeased and comforted—an exotic and fascinating creature, yes, but not yet her own, not yet her sword and wedge and bludgeon to lay all of Thanatopsis House at her feet. She wasn’t calculating, but she knew that she wouldn’t—couldn’t—cooperate with this tall and very wet man in the cheap detective’s overcoat.

Owen gaped at them, for once at a loss for words.

“I wonder if you could help us,” Abercorn began, and as the murmur of conversation started up again behind her, Ruth lingered there in the doorway, watching and listening, as Abercorn poured out his tale of woe and Owen blinked in confusion. As it turned out, Abercorn and Turco had waited three hours for the last ferry, and on finally arriving discovered to their regret and embarrassment that there were no accommodations available on the island. They needed a place to spend the night before going off in pursuit of the armed and dangerous alien who’d been terrorizing folks hereabouts—Abercorn actually said “folks hereabouts,” though it was obvious to anyone he was a sweaty-palmed city-bred Yankee who was about as folksy as Bernhard Goetz. Sheriff—he pronounced it “sheriff,” not “shurf,” though he was trying hard—Sheriff Peagler had told him that there might be a bed or two available here, and he’d be more than happy to pay whatever they liked—he was on official government business, after all, and the alternative was, well, flashing his smile and wincing comically at a peal of thunder, the alternative was to go on out there and drown.

And so Ruth was up early, the first one at breakfast and the first to trot off to work, up before Abercorn could pin her down with any more questions. The woods were still, the morning fragrant with the previous night’s rain. The sun had risen golden and glorious from the chop of the cold Atlantic, and as she walked the path to her studio it seemed to melt into the hard unyielding posts of the slash pines. She walked slowly, breathing it all in, but still she arrived at her studio nearly an hour and a half earlier than usual. It was just past seven, and as she sat down at her desk and stared numbly at the curling page in the typewriter, she could think of nothing but lunch. Would he show up? And if he did, what would she do and what would it lead to? She envisioned her Japanese in bed, envisioned herself in Japan, a country of office buildings, claustrophobic streets and tiny feet, and then finally, to pass the time, she settled down to work.