She shook her head. “No.”
“How about Yukiko?”
“Not really. Her English is pretty bad.”
Inconclusive. She didn’t know anything. I was starting to doubt that she’d be of much help after all.
I looked at my watch. It was almost five. The sun would be coming up soon.
“We should get going,” I said.
She nodded. I paid the bill and we left.
Outside it was damp but not raining. The lamplights on Roppongi-dori created glowing cones of slowly swirling mist. It was as late as it could get without getting early, and the street was momentarily silent.
“Walk me home?” she asked, looking at me.
I nodded. “Sure.”
Halfway through the twenty-minute walk it started raining again.
“Droga!” she swore in Portuguese. “I left the umbrella at Tantra.”
“Shoganai,” I said, turning up the collar of my blazer. What can you do.
We walked faster. It started to rain harder. I brushed my fingers through my hair and felt rivulets trickling down the back of my neck.
With about a half-kilometer to go, a huge crack of thunder rang out and it really started pouring.
“Que merda!” she exclaimed with a laugh. “We’re doomed!”
We ran for it, but to no real avail. We got to her apartment and ducked under the overhang in front of the rear entranceway. “Meu deus,” she said, laughing, “I haven’t gotten drenched like that in forever!” She unbuttoned her dripping coat, then looked at me and smiled. “Once you’re already wet, it’s actually kind of nice.”
Wisps of vapor were rising off her damp dress. “You’re steaming,” I observed.
She glanced down, then back at me. She pushed a few strands of clinging hair back from her face. “That run made me warm,” she said.
I wiped water from my face and thought, Time to go.
But I remained.
“Thanks for an interesting evening,” she said, after a pause. “You’re not a bad guy, for a stalker.”
I gave her a half-smile. “That’s what people tell me.”
There was an odd moment of quiet. Then she stepped in close and hugged me, her face against my shoulder.
I was surprised. My arms moved reflexively around her.
Just a little comfort, I thought. You were rough on her before. Let her go feeling good.
I was distantly aware that this sounded like a rationalization. It troubled me vaguely. Ordinarily I get along well without.
I could feel her soft shape, the heat of her, conducted with electric clarity through the wet of our clothes.
I felt my body responding. I knew she felt it, too. Ah, shit.
She lifted her head from my shoulder. Her mouth was very close to my ear. I heard her say, “Come inside.”
The last person I’d gotten involved with when I should have treated her only as an asset was Midori. I was still paying the price on that one.
Don’t be stupid again, I thought. Don’t get too close. Don’t blur the line.
But the thoughts were disconnected. No one seemed to be listening.
She’s a bargirl. You don’t know where her loyalties lie.
That one was unconvincing. No one had directed her against me-I was the one who had been pursuing her. She hadn’t needed to warn me about the bugs. My gut told me she wasn’t dissembling.
She put a hand on my chest. “You haven’t… been with someone for a long time,” she said.
I reminded myself that this was part of the reason I’ve lived so long.
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
“I can tell. The way you look at me.”
Her hand pressed closer. “I can feel your heart,” she said.
Between her hand over my heart and her hips at my crotch, she might as well have been administering a polygraph.
I looked out at the street beyond the overhang. The rain was coming in at gray angled streaks. One of my hands moved to her cheek. I closed my eyes. Her skin was wet from the rain and I thought of tears.
She lifted her head and I felt the side of her face settle against mine. Her head moved up and down just slightly, as though in time to some music I could almost hear. I kept my eyes closed, thinking, Don’t do it, don’t be stupid.
I could hear my own breath, flowing through my nose, moving past my teeth.
I started to pull back, sliding my wet cheek past hers. She moved one of her hands to the back of my neck and stopped me.
I shifted my head slightly. The corners of our mouths brushed together. I felt her breath on my cheek.
Then we were kissing. Her mouth was warm and soft. Our tongues entwined and simultaneously I thought Oh you fucking idiot and Oh that feels so good.
My hands found their way inside her coat to her waist. She took my face between her palms and kissed me harder.
I squeezed her hips, then ran my hands up and over the curve of her ribs to her breasts. Her nipples were hard under the wet fabric of her dress. Her body radiated heat. I heard myself groan. It sounded like capitulation.
She stepped back and fumbled in her purse. She pulled out a key and looked at me, her eyes dark, her breathing heavy.
“Come inside,” she said.
She turned and put her key in the lock. The door slid open and we went in.
We kept kissing in the elevator on the brief ride to the fifth floor. On the way down the corridor we were pulling at each other’s clothes.
We moved inside her apartment, into a foyer at the end of a short hallway. There was a living area beyond. Everything was dimly illuminated by the reflected gray light of the street without.
She closed the door behind me and pushed me back against it. She started kissing me again, hungrily, her hands unbuttoning my shirt. Ordinarily I don’t get comfortable in a place until I’ve had a chance to look around it, but the narrow hallway, with Naomi between me and any potential attackers, wouldn’t have worked well for an ambush. I didn’t pick up any danger vibes, at least not of those kind. And Harry’s bug and video detector was blessedly quiescent.
I eased her coat off her shoulders and let it fall behind her. She kissed my neck, my chest, while her fingers worked on my belt and pants. I reached around and undid the zipper at the back of her dress. I moved the straps off her shoulders and the dress slipped soundlessly to the floor. I felt her kick off her shoes.
She pushed my blazer back, but the wet material clung to me. I shrugged out of it and pulled off my shirt. She put a warm hand against my belly for a moment as though to freeze me in that position. I felt the diamond bracelet, a small cold circle around her wrist. Then she reached lower and started to ease my pants down. I stopped her so I could get my shoes and socks off first. Pants-pooled-at-the-ankles is too helpless a posture for me.
I stepped out of my pants and undershorts and kicked them aside. She pushed me back against the door again, circled her arms around my lower back, and pulled us tightly together. Her breasts and belly pressed against me, warm and soft and insanely inviting, and at that instant I didn’t care what this was all going to cost me. What it might cost her.
I took her face gently in both my hands and eased her head back slightly. I looked into her eyes. In the dim light of the hall they seemed to have their own quiet luminescence.
Her hands dropped to my hips and she lowered herself in front of me. I watched her, breathing faster now. The door was cold on my naked back and then her mouth engulfed me and for a moment I couldn’t feel anything else.
One of her hands rose to my belly and I took it in mine, then let it go. My head dropped back against the door with a quiet thump. Some stray hair brushed against my thigh. I could feel every strand of it, as though I’d been stroked with hot filament.
One of my hands drifted down and traced the edge of her ear, the curve of her cheek, the line of her jaw. I exhaled hard, tightening my abdomen until there was nothing left in my lungs, then breathed in sharply through my nose.