A taste of sake, p.8
A Taste of Sake, page 8
For the second time in mere hours, Sake was crossing the Bay. But this time it felt different. The rain had tapered off; the fog was lifting. Far below, brave little sailboats bobbed and dipped among the swells, giving themselves up to whichever way the winds might blow them. All they had to do was stay upright and let the wind do the rest.
Her head fell back on the seat while her finger stroked absentmindedly under Taylor’s chin. Maybe, right this very minute, Haha was in one of those sailboats. Or just out of sight, livin’ chilly with a drink in her hand on the patio of one of those cliff-side Marin County showplaces. She pushed away the thought that any picture of a happy Haha wasn’t complete without her being totally demolished—on something more potent than mai tais.
In a few months, though, Sake would turn twenty-three. One thing she could count on no matter what was Haha not missing her birthday.
There was an old Japanese superstition: a child’s third, fifth, and seventh birthdays were auspicious. Starting with those birthdays, Haha had bought Sake all new clothes and took her to the Shichi-Go-San ceremony at the Sokoji temple, even though she complained each time that it cost sixty bucks. There, the priest gave her and the other boys and girls long, skinny sticks of thousand-year candy wrapped in red and white, along with good-luck pictures of cranes and turtles.
After that, birthdays at the temple had turned into a ritual. Every year, even after they’d gone their separate ways for all intents and purposes, Haha met Sake at the temple at noon, to celebrate with tea and candy.
She pulled out her phone and Googled GED: sample test questions.
Find a pair of numbers with:
a) a sum of 11 and a product of 24.
b) a sum of 40 and a product of 400.
c) a sum of 15 and a product of 54.
That didn’t seem too hard. She scrolled down to the next problem.
What is the primary function of chloroplasts?
a) captures energy from sunlight
b) carries proteins to parts of the cell
c) stores water and food for a cell
The answer was A. She knew that without even studying.
Maybe this GED thing wasn’t so tricky.
Fine. Who couldn’t use a long vacation? She’d go back to ye olde homestead long enough to get the loot Papa had promised her. But she’d be back on September first. Haha would be looking for her at the temple. Imagine how proud she’d be if Sake had a shiny new diploma to show her.
Since she’d been working regular at Bunz and living at Rico’s, Sake had been able stop fretting about how she was going to buy Taylor’s next bag of dog chow. But was that really enough?
Imagine the apartment she could rent with a quarter of a million dollars! Maybe even a pretty townhouse in Cole Valley. She could get Haha to quit her vagabond ways, move in with her, settle down once and for all. And wouldn’t Rico love her then, for real? Maybe even enough to stop drinking.
She’d buy Haha a new cell phone so they never had to be out of touch again. After all, Haha was no spring chicken anymore. She couldn’t keep drifting from man to man, apartment to apartment, forever. Could she?
Didn’t Haha want—didn’t she need—her only child, as Sake wanted and needed her?
Chapter 9
“You ever been in love?” inquired Russ Cross from where he and Bill stood in the parking lot of Cross’s strip center.
Cross’s recent divorce settlement had left him bitter and disillusioned. Now the silver-haired investor was anxious to liquidate his assets so he could live on the sailboat he kept docked in St. Maarten.
Bill jammed his hands into his pockets and kicked at the macadam. With Sylvia, he’d only been a kid. He and Brittany had had fun together, but in the end, what she’d done had been a little bizarre, to say the least. And Dynise, the witch? She’d been . . . interesting—in the short run. “Might’ve come close a time or two.”
“Let me guess. As soon as you thought you knew a woman, bam!” Cross smacked his fist into his palm. “She ended up a loose cannon, leaving you high and dry on your beam ends.”
Bill grinned wryly.
Cross threw a deeply tanned arm around Bill. “Take it from me, mate. Don’t ever get married. Marriage sucks the life out of you.” Then he took him by the shoulders and gave him a shake. “Just get my building sold so I can cut my losses . . . spend the rest of my days fishing, drinking rum, and screwing island girls.”
“There’s nothing I’d like better than to sell your property, man.” The same transaction that would allow Cross to spend his golden years with a perpetual piña colada in hand would earn Bill his biggest commission ever. That, plus the savings Bill had been squirreling away since he was a kid, would be more than enough for a substantial down payment on the house on Elm Street. That is, if some other lucky buyer hadn’t already snapped it up by then.
Remnants of last weekend had infiltrated all of today’s meetings and phone calls and showings. The helicopter crash at Domaine St. Pierre was the talk of the valley. Since word got out that Bill was an actual eyewitness, everyone he ran into hounded him for details. But when asked about Xavier’s biracial love child, he found her impossible to explain. How did you describe a woman who looked as sweet as cotton candy, but when she opened her mouth, Eminem came out?
Even now, locking his car in the parking lot of his apartment building, precious signed contract safely tucked into his briefcase, Bill couldn’t stop thinking about Sake. Good thing he’d got rid of her before he got too wrapped up in her drama. The last thing he needed was someone who had no compunction about phoning him at all hours of the day and night to be at her beck and call. Hadn’t he already had more than his share of crazy chicks? Mom was right. He needed to find someone nice and normal to settle down with. Especially now that his goal of home ownership dangled tantalizingly within reach.
He stepped over the threshold of his dark, quiet apartment, dropped his keys into the plate by the door—and immediately experienced a letdown. No friendly dog jumped up to greet him. No one asked about his day. Bill was a people person. What was he doing here all alone when there were dozens of wine bars and taverns within a twenty-mile radius? He grabbed his keys, turned right around, and walked out again.
But none of the guys were down at Toasted, the pub nearest the golf course. He eased onto one of three empty seats at the bar and ordered a beer anyway. No sooner did his draft arrive than two women in scrubs and practical, rubber-heeled shoes sat down next to him.
Bill loved golf, but he wasn’t especially good at it. Something he was good at, though, was small talk. Within minutes, he knew the women’s names and that they worked at Queen of the Valley hospital. Marissa liked Moscato and Deborah, a physical therapist with a confident demeanor, was drinking pinot. When Marissa got up to use the ladies’ room, Deborah scooted over to keep Bill company.
Deb was in the middle of repeating a patient’s funny story when Bill’s phone rang, the name on the screen hitting him with a cocktail of elation and dread. “Excuse me.” He faked an apologetic face. “Client.” And then immediately felt guilty for lying.
“Sake?” Bill answered, walking away to talk in privacy.
“’Wassup?”
“Er, what’s up with you?” He frowned. “Where are you?”
“Back at Papa’s house. I’ma be hanging out with you, after all.”
“What—how—?”
“You can come get me?”
She had a way of turning a question around into a demand. Who did she think he was? Her personal assistant?
He glanced over his shoulder at Deborah, picturing her in the doorway of the house on Elm Street, a baby on her hip, dinner on the stove, welcoming him home from a hard day of selling real estate. Was it a premonition, or just his age talking? He’d be thirty this year. He’d sown his mild oats, and everyone knew what came after that.
“Now?”
“You got somethin’ better to do?”
The chutzpah! With sudden certainty, it hit him that Deborah, even after knowing Bill an entire year, wouldn’t have had the gall to ask him to do the favors Sake had asked of him within mere days of meeting each other. “Actually, yes. I mean no. I can’t come get you. I’m busy.”
“Whatevs.”
“Why? What is it this time?” He couldn’t just leave it at that, could he?
“Doesn’t matter now.”
“Can’t you just—?” Bill huffed through his nose, resolute. “No. I can’t come get you right now, at the drop of a hat.”
“I said, it’s cool.”
“Wait—” But she had hung up.
Bill walked back to the bar and Deborah’s indulgent smile. “You were saying?” he asked. But his laugh at the end of her story was forced. All he could think about was Sake and wonder what kind of trouble she’d gotten herself into this time.
He bought the women a second round, thinking it would keep him there longer, but when there were still a couple of inches of wine left in their glasses he made an excuse to leave.
One beer, and your common sense is shot.
From the parking lot, he returned Sake’s phone call.
“So what’s your crisis this time?” He hated that he was grinning.
“I got something to ask you.”
“Did you eat yet?”
“No.”
“Want to grab something?”
“A girl can always eat.”
On his way to the winery to pick up Sake, Bill considered a dozen places to take her before deciding on Bottega, equally beloved by tourists and locals alike.
“They’ve got an unbelievable cellar here,” Bill said after they’d been seated.
“I don’t drink.”
Bill looked up from his menu. She was a Californian who didn’t drive, and now the daughter of the most notorious vintner in Napa Valley didn’t drink?
“I’ll just order me a pot of herb tea.”
“You can get anything you want. My treat.”
When Bill was nervous, he tended to talk even more than usual. And something about Sake made him anxious to please. He found himself opening up about his work, then his colorful parents. While he moved on from his family tree to the NorCal real estate market and then the current state of the local, state, and world economy, he couldn’t take his eyes off Sake, who was carefully peeling apart the layers of her dinner roll.
“Do you actually find that roll more interesting than the Fed’s plan to normalize interest rates?”
“That is a croissant, not a roll. Look at these layers! Whoever made this got some mad lamination skills.”
How did she do that? Always knock him off track? “Tell me. Exactly what happened after I dropped you off at the winery this morning?”
Sake popped a morsel of perfectly baked dough into her mouth and chewed, swooning. “Mm. So flaky . . . so buttery.” She swallowed. “So, here’s how it went down. Papa gets all assholian ’bout how I cut hair in the middle of the night—like he’s layin’ down some kinda curfew on me, twenty-two years old!—and then I was all like, I’m not about to ride your leg like everyone else around here—”
“Wait. You said that to him?”
Sake looked at him like he had an IQ of about ten. “You think I’d actually say that to my father? That was, you know, just a metaphor.
“Then he was like, da da da school, woompty woomp work, somethin’ somethin’. Finally, he let up. Sent me back downtown, like I wanted in the first place.” She sipped daintily from her teacup. “Copped a ride from my man Bruno.”
“But then”—Bill spread his hands—“what’re you doing here, now?”
“Gimme time. So I went in to my work to tell my boss I was back, and do you know, that heartless thug was already training my replacement?”
“You got fired?”
“For taking off to go to my sister’s wedding. Can you believe that?”
“You’d given advance notice, right? How far ahead did you tell him that you needed time off?”
“See, that’s just it,” she said, analyzing her second roll—er, croissant—as she separated it. “I didn’t have any notice to give ’cause I didn’t even know about no wedding till the day before.”
Bill frowned. “I don’t understand.”
She made an impatient face. “I only found out about it when Papa bailed me—”
Bill’s eyes flew open wide.
Sake licked her fingers. “Nothing. All you need to know is, I lost my job. And then, my damn boss wouldn’t give me my back pay.”
“He can’t do that.” The more Sake talked, the more Bill’s head spun with questions.
“Oh. Yes. He. Did,” she said, cocking her head from side to side with each word.
Bill’s shyster radar rang like a fire alarm. Was she about to hit him up for cash?
“Papa told me if I stay up here till my birthday, get my life on lock, I can go back and press restart.”
“Then what do you need me for?”
“Back me up. Taylor’s gonna need a place to stay for a while.”
Bill released his held breath. “I think I can handle that. I don’t mind having a dog around.” Truth was, he liked the company. But then he remembered—this was Sake. With her, nothing was straightforward. He envisioned her coming around at times that might be . . . let’s say, inconvenient.
“We can set up some sort of visitation schedule.”
Sake scowled. “What do you mean, visitation schedule? I got to see Taylor every day.”
Bill used his objective voice, the one he used when he was negotiating with clients. “Well,” he said reasonably, “you might have to compromise there . . .”
“Compromise? You telling me when I can and when I can’t see my own dog?”
Was she going to make him spell it out for her? “It’s just that, well, you know. I have a life.”
“Everyone’s got a life. I got a life, too: Taylor. Taylor is my life. Especially now that I had to give everything else up.
“You gotta work. I get that.” Her face was open, her eyes candid. So how could she not see his point?
“Riiiight . . . there’s work, and then there’s life after work. There are times when I might want to, you know, go out on a date or something.”
“Date? People still date?”
Bill shrugged. “I do.” Note to self: Look up alternative word for “date” in Urban Dictionary.
She slanted him a suspicious look. “You got a girlfriend?”
“Well, no, not exactly.”
“What do you mean, ‘not exactly’? Do you or do you not have a girlfriend, Bill Diamond?”
Earlier, at Toasted, Bill had made a prudent investment in his future by asking Deborah to go out on Friday night.
“If you got a girlfriend, what’re you doing buying me dinner at this fancy restaurant?” She looked around for her bag and slung it over her shoulder, ready to bolt.
“I don’t have a girlfriend.” He planted a staying hand atop hers. “But I may get a girlfriend at some point. . . .”
“And if I’m hanging around, you’re afraid I’ll be in the way, izzat what you’re saying? Throw salt on your game?”
“Well, no, I—”
“Yes, you are.”
Bill’s hand slipped off of Sake’s and went palm up as he leaned back. He had nothing.
Sake took a moment, then lifted her chin and bored her eyes into his. “Okay. I tell you what. I’ll compromise. On nights you got a booty call—”
Booty call? Furtively, he looked around to make sure no one had overheard. He had his reputation to protect. “I don’t have booty calls—” he said in an undertone.
“On nights when you do what it is that you do, you just let me know, and we can skip visitation.”
“You’re forgetting,” he added, pumped that another good excuse had come to him, “every time you come to my apartment to see your dog, first I have to pick you up, then, when visiting hours are over, drop you off again. Why? Because you don’t drive.”
He sat back again with a satisfied smirk.
Sake’s face fell. She looked up through lowered lids. “You’re real proud of yourself for that shiv in the kidney, aren’t you?”
Immediately Bill regretted cutting her. There she went again, buffeting his emotions like a whipsaw.
But a man had to stand his ground. “Look, I’m sorry, Sake, but you can’t expect to just drop into my life and start running the show. Three days ago I didn’t even know Sake St. Pierre existed. Now all of a sudden you’re planning to be omnipresent.”
She lifted a brow. “Somebody’s being negative. You didn’t hear me? I said, let’s compromise. Whenever you got something better to do, just lemme know.”
The server arrived, balancing their plates on his arm. “Who’s got the Patatine Fritte?”
“Right here.” Sake lit up, eagerly taking her plate from the waiter’s hands before he had the chance to properly set it down, and from that moment on, all the bad stuff melted away like a snowball in an oven. Starting with the way she closed her cat eyes to savor her first crunch of the parmesan-coated fries, to the careless way she sat with her elbows on the table, one crossed leg jutting out from beneath the tablecloth, where it almost tripped two waiters, every move Sake made fascinated him, leading him to drag out his meal with more rambling talk long after Sake’s plate was clean and she had started stealing forkfuls of his neglected duck confit.
Later that night, Bill realized he couldn’t even recall the taste of his meal. Usually when he couldn’t sleep, it was because he was wrestling down a fine point on some deal—making a case for a zoning variance, crafting some creative financing. But ever since dinner, he was preoccupied with visions of Sake—the way her pride hung on, even when he’d hurt her feelings . . . her easy grace offsetting her cheap dress . . . right down to the way her slender fingers tapered to hold a greasy French fry. . . . What was it about her that had him losing his usually well-ordered mind? He couldn’t let his guard down for a second when she was around.
