Amorous Woman. Donna George Storey
‘Do you remember after he said that, you did this?’ Brad folded his hands and rolled his eyes in perfect imitation of a surly teenager.
‘I did not do that,’ I protested, but my voice rose in a damning adolescent whine.
‘You did, and not only that. When he said, “Lydia Yoshikawa will provide you with a highly experienced insider’s perspective on Japanese interpersonal relations,” you did this.’ He brought his hand to his mouth as if to stifle a snicker.
I’d been sitting at the back of the room and didn’t think anyone would bother to look in my direction. Of course, Brad had been paying attention.
Instinctively I turned to Tim for help. All he gave me was a merciless grin, his eyes narrowed as if he enjoyed watching me squirm. Harsh punishment for such a small transgression, a bit of flirting with his friend. The nice ones are always the cruelest in the end. They lull you into thinking you’ve found paradise then cut you out cold.
‘The truth?’ I said again. ‘That might take a long time.’
They gazed at me, waiting.
What could I tell them? That I knew little of Japanese business practices, but plenty about picking up strangers in hot spring baths, handcuffing guys to beds in tacky love hotels, playing mistress to wealthy playboys, and miming sex acts on stage at a year-end banquet, among other activities I had thought best not to mention on my résumé? That if I hadn’t had sex with every last able-bodied Japanese male over eighteen, it wasn’t for lack of trying? That I was a fraud and a lecher who’d spent every class undressing them in my mind and forcing them to service my insatiable sexual needs?
Suddenly tears sprang to my eyes. Real tears. I had been unprofessional and now I would lose my job, just as I’d lost everything else. What a fool I was to think I could make a fresh start. I was still the same old troublemaker, indulging dangerous whims, sabotaging myself at every turn. I buried my face in my hands and took a few deep breaths. Clear your mind. Let it go. Then a stronger voice rose up through the beer-induced fog, older, familiar, the one I always listened to: Run.
‘I’m not feeling well. I think I’d better go home,’ I managed to say. ‘I don’t think I can drive myself though. If one of you could please call a taxi . . .’
That’s how Tim ended up driving me home in my car, with Brad following me in his to drive Tim back to the office, and then they both insisted they walk me in to make sure I was OK.
In fact, I couldn’t have worked out a better way to get both of them back to my place for a three-way romp if I’d planned it from the beginning.
CHAPTER SIX
My townhouse was, to say the least, not ready for guests. I hadn’t bought furniture for the downstairs, partly because of money, but mostly because I liked the spaciousness of it after my cramped apartment in Japan. Now, with two normal American guys glancing uncomfortably around the empty rooms, what had been an abundance of pure possibility seemed to reveal a disturbing lack.
It got worse. Murmuring something about getting me a glass of water, Brad walked into my kitchen and opened the refrigerator door to find nothing but a container of plain yogurt and a phallic-looking package of pickled white radish.
‘We need to get you some dinner,’ Brad said. ‘Is Chinese OK? There’s a pretty good place a few blocks from here.’
I waited meekly as Brad called in our order—Buddha’s Delight and brown rice for me—and sent Tim out to pick up the food.
What else could I do then but invite him up to my bedroom?
When Brad saw the fireplace and the pile of wood the former tenants had left stacked neatly beside it, he offered to make a fire, which wasn’t such a bad idea on this chilly spring evening.
‘Thanks for doing all of this. I’ll be ashamed to face you next week in class, but you’ll probably get me fired for what I did, so at least I won’t have to worry about that.’
‘Do you mean because of those funny faces you made? I won’t tell. In fact, that’s when I decided I liked you.’
I felt oddly moved by his words. I wanted him to like me. I wanted them all to like me. That was the problem.
‘Well, I’d like to keep my job.’
‘I want what you want, Sensei.’ He smiled at me for a long moment, then began crumpling newspaper for kindling.
I stretched out on the floor and tucked the meditation pillow under my head. I liked watching him at work. His rolled-up sleeves and loosened tie gave him a fetching vulnerability, a boy playing businessman. ‘You must have been a Boy Scout.’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but I dropped out.’ I laughed.
The doorbell rang and Brad motioned me to stay put while he went downstairs to let Tim in. With a bag of fragrant Chinese take-out in his arms, my Irish engineer looked even more delicious than I remembered. There it was again, that pang of arousal. Like hunger, but lower.
Yet strangely enough, I wasn’t torn between them now. I did have them both here, in my realm, where I could admire them in the firelight, the sharp Caucasian topography of their faces so exotic but nostalgic, too. With my belly full and warm, my lust mellowed into a desire for good company, which they were, telling me funny stories of work, imitating the bosses, explaining movies and fads I’d missed in all those years away, teaching me to be American again.
It might have been an illusion, our sudden friendship, but isn’t all human intercourse as fleeting? Strangers become lovers over a few beers; husbands turn to strangers with a single frown. I could already feel the silence of the place when they left, the loneliness.
I wondered how I could get them to stay. It was then I realized what I really wanted from both of them. Or rather, I wanted to give them something, exactly what they had asked for.
For all of those years in my adopted country, I was locked up in silence. There were many things I didn’t know how to say, either with words or in other ways, and so many more it wasn’t proper to speak of at all. What would it be like to tell my story honestly?
‘Do you really want to hear the truth?’ I asked. They both turned to me, chopsticks in hand.
‘Remember? The truth about my life in Japan? You might find some of it . . . surprising.’
Tim nodded. Brad mumbled, ‘Absolutely. I’m all ears.’
‘It’s a story of bygone days. In some ways Japan changes so quickly, but many things stay the same. Oh, and there’s a lot of sex in it. Too much maybe. Do you think you can handle it?’
They exchanged a glance.
‘We’ll give it our best try,’ Brad said in a soft voice. Suddenly I saw an image of myself sitting before them in yukata, the blue-and-white cotton robe you wear to relax at a hot spring. As they watched, I untied the sash, pulling open one panel, then the other, so they could see me as I really was. Not my nipples blushing dusty rose, or the reddish-blond curls where my thighs met, but something softer, darker, deeper than flesh.
I took a long, slow breath. I began to tell my story.
CHAPTER ONE
How did I become an amorous woman? I think this is the best way to describe myself until not so very long ago, although I don’t look the part of the sensuous vamp. I’m more of the gamine. Strawberry blond hair, even features, and an easy smile usually earn me a ranking of second-prettiest girl at the party. And everyone knows we try harder.
I did well in school, a talent not usually associated with the courtesan, but I found that reading books and reading men are not really so different. Being smart meant I was not voted ‘most likely to spend her days devoted to erotic pleasure and the fulfillment of male sexual fantasies’ in my high school yearbook,