East is East

Ruth snapped the door shut, heart pounding, wild excuses on her lips—she was looking for the laundry room and blundered in here by mistake; she was helping Owen’s Puerto Rican slave—what was his name, Rico?—with the trash, yes, his mother was sick and … she could hear footsteps approaching, a heavy tread, relentless, coming nearer … and then they paused—stopped, halted, pulled up short—just outside the door. She was dead. This was it. She pictured Irving Thalamus’s cold lizard look of surprise, Septima’s intransigent nose and Owen’s hard censorious eyes, instant justice, the only artist ever drummed out of Thanatopsis House for petty thievery—but wait: she could throw herself into his arms, yes, yes, pretend she’d come for that—and then she heard the sudden sharp wheeze of the bathroom door opposite and knew she was saved. She took a deep breath, waited for the sound of the bathroom latch and cracked the door again. No one in sight. She stepped into the hall and closed the door behind her.

It was at that precise moment that Detlef Abercorn rounded the corner. He was wearing a set of earphones attached to the Walkman in his shirt pocket, and he was on her before she could react. “Oh, hey, hi,” he said, too loudly, and he slipped the phones from his ears in a motion so automatic it might have been a tic.

Ruth clutched the garbage bag to her chest and gave him a terrified grin.

He grinned back at her, casually leaning into the doorframe with one long arm. She saw that he was looking down her blouse. “Did I tell you I really enjoyed talking to you the other night? I find you a very”—he hesitated, and she could hear a faint metallic voice whispering through the earphones—“a very sexy woman. Really. And I wondered if—I’ve got a car and all—I wondered if you might like to get off the island for an evening—tonight maybe—and have dinner or something?”

Ruth was on familiar terrain now, and as the shock of discovery wore off, she recovered her equilibrium. “I’d like that,” she said, bending to relieve an imaginary itch just behind her left knee, “sometime. Sometime soon. But tonight I’m afraid I already have plans.”

Abercorn didn’t seem put off. He leaned closer and gave her a long meaningful look. “Hey,” he said, putting some gravel into his voice, “I don’t know if I’ll be around that much longer.”

Ruth saw her chance. “Oh? No luck?”

He shot his eyes in disgust. “The guy disappeared. He could be dead for all we know. Either that or he left the island.”

“And your assistant? With the ghetto blaster?”

Abercorn’s laugh was quick and musical. “Yeah, well, that’s another story.” He paused. She couldn’t seem to help staring into his eyes—she’d never seen anyone with eyes that color before. “So this is your room, huh?” he said. “I was kind of hoping you might, uh—”

She put her hand on his arm. “You’re sweet,” she said, “but listen, I’ve got to run. Really. I just realized I don’t think I shut off the hot plate in my studio and—”

“All that genius up in ashes, huh?”

“Something like that,” she said, ducking out from under his arm and hurrying down the hall.

But it wasn’t over yet.

She came down the stairs two at a time, the black plastic bag tucked under her arm, and her only thought was of Hiro, her pet, her secret, face down on the wicker loveseat in the shady studio in the woods. Would he be there when she got back? Would he wake and think she’d gone for the police? Would Turco boogie through the screen door and conk him with his boom box? The furthest thing from her mind was Saxby. But there he was at the foot of the stairs, crabwalking beneath one precarious end of a six-foot-long aquarium. “Ruthie,” he grunted. “I’m … back!”

She saw now that Owen was attached to the far end of the thing and that they were trying to maneuver it round the butt of the staircase and down the narrow hallway to Saxby’s room. The whole operation halted a minute while Ruth descended the stairs to brush Saxby’s lips with a kiss and whisper, “I missed you,” and then, flashing light, the aquarium moved on, and Ruth was out the door, down the steps and across the lawn. As soon as she hit the woods, she broke into a run.

She was out of breath when she reached the cottage, knitting needles embedded in her sides. She wanted him to be there, wanted to talk to him, wash and bind his wounds, watch him eat and sleep and recover the lost light in his eyes—but somehow, as she came up the path, she knew he’d be gone. The cottage was unchanged. She saw the familiar porch, the windows rich with sun, the pine, palmetto and oak, and she heard the birds in the trees and smelled the sweet rich breath of the ocean, and nothing had changed. She mounted the steps, breathing hard, and gingerly swung open the screen door: the cottage was empty.