East is East

In summer, darkness comes quickly on the islands. The sun pales, the dense green of the vegetation washes to gray, and night drops like a curtain. They ate, they talked, and before long fireflies perforated the darkness beyond the windows and Ruth could no longer make out Hiro’s features. “I’ll help you if I can,” she said finally. “I suppose that makes me an accessory or something, but I’ll think of some way of getting you off the island and on a train or a bus going north.” She paused to light a cigarette, the match flaring briefly in the darkness. “You might not find the City of Brotherly Love, but at least in New York you can disappear—that much I know.”

Hiro’s voice was low and troubled and it came to her out of the darkness. “I can never repay my debt to you, not in a hundred lifetimes.”

“Forget it,” she said, “you would do the same for me—anybody would.” She didn’t know exactly what she meant by that, but she could feel his embarrassment, some sort of macho Japanese thing, she supposed, and she was just talking to cover it. To change the subject, she asked him if he wanted a cigarette.

“No, sank you too much,” he said. His voice dropped even lower. “But how, Rusu, can you get me off this island?”

She didn’t have a clue. She didn’t have a car either, and judging from the look on Sax’s face that night on the sound, she couldn’t very well let him in on the secret. Or could she? “I don’t know,” she said, and she realized in that moment that she didn’t really want to get him to the mainland, not for a while yet, anyway. “But you can’t risk leaving here—the cabin, I mean. Do you understand? They’re after you—everybody on the island. And those two men—you remember the disco?—they’ll be back, I know they will.”

The words were barely out of her mouth when Hiro went rigid. “Shhhh, Rusu,” he said, “what was that?”

“What?” she whispered.

“Shhhh. Listen.”

And then she heard it: the snap of a twig, footsteps on the path. Suddenly a light played over the front of the house, and Hiro was on the floor.

“Ruth? You in there?”

Saxby.

She was on her feet in an instant—“Yes, yes, I’m here,” she called, trying to sound nonchalant, though her heart was boring a hole in her—and then she was at the door, intercepting him at the threshold.

He was wearing a T-shirt and jeans, and his hair had fallen across his eyes. He held the flashlight in one hand, angling the beam so it caught the side of her face. “I looked all over the place for you,” he said.

Her circuits were jammed. She couldn’t think. “I was here,” she said.

“What are you doing?” he said. “Sitting here in the dark? Were you talking to somebody?”

“I was working,” she said.

“In the dark?”

“I was thinking. Thinking out loud.”

He said nothing, but after a moment he lowered the flashlight and let the huskiness creep into his voice: “Hey,” he said, “you’re really weird, you know that, Ruth Dershowitz?” And then he took hold of her, the screen door gaping on its hinges, the beam of the flashlight playing crazily off the ceiling. “That’s what I like about you.”

She wrestled with him a bit, let him kiss her, held him. “Let’s go, Sax,” she said, whispering into his shoulder. “Let’s go back to the house.” Pause. “Somehow, I just don’t feel like working anymore.”

He kissed her again, hard and urgent. “Time for play,” he said, and his hand was on her breast.

“Not here,” she said.

“On the couch,” he whispered, and the flashlight clicked off and dropped with a thump to the weathered planks of the porch. He was struggling with her top, trying to pin her against the doorframe, lift her off her feet and find her mouth with his tongue—all at the same time.

“No,” she said.

“Yes,” he said.

“Out here, then. On the porch.” He had the top up around her armpits, a hand on her hip; she could feel his tongue wet on her nipples. “Out here,” she breathed, “under the stars.”

And then she swung away from him, caught at his belt and tugged him out of the doorway. In the next moment she was down on the rough planks of the porch and he was on her, breathing hard, and she was making room for him, giddy and hot and beyond caring, the screen door slamming behind them with a sudden sharp slap of punctuation. He’s in there, she thought, moving beneath Saxby, in there listening, and then she was over the top and thinking nothing, nothing at all.