Chapter 30
Hiromi’s apartment was maddeningly far away.
She lived on a long, thin island that stretched beside Manhattan, linked to the rest of the city by a subway line, a ferry, and a cable car.
The last is what we took, pressed close to each other in the nearly empty tram. She said it was the most romantic way to get there, but I didn’t want romance; I wanted to complete this conquest, take this prey between my teeth.
We arced up, over the water, and back down at a stately, infuriating pace. I hadn’t had sex since before Peter’s fall.
I would devour her.
“This island is where New York used to store its undesirables,” Hiromi said, looking down. “A smallpox hospital was at the south end. A lunatic asylum up north.”
“Which one are you in?” I asked.
She smiled—I didn’t have to worry about what she wanted. Her pupils were large, her lips full, her pulse fast in our interlaced fingers.
We wanted the same.
Don’t lose yourself, Veronica always said. The first rule for lovemaking with ordinaries: stay present, in control. Never let go.
“The smallpox hospital is a ruin. The asylum is apartments, but they’re too pricey for me. I’m in the Landings.”
“What was that? A leper colony?”
“It was always apartments.” She ran her index finger along my bottom lip. My pulse matched hers. “Let’s save the rest of the travelogue for morning.”
Hiromi unlocked her apartment door, dropped her bag, kicked off her sandals. I slid the jacket from her shoulders.
The door slammed behind us. Hiromi jumped.
“Sorry. It always does that. But you never flinch, do you?”
I kissed the question away, tossed her jacket, unbuttoned her paint-spattered dress. It had been too long. Her lace bra wouldn’t undo. My hands were unsteady.
Hiromi pushed them aside, finished the unfastening for both of us—her dress, my waistcoat. She pressed me against the door. The metal cold against my overheated body.
Our kisses deepened, tongues touching, sparking, fluttering with our breath.
“Jess,” she breathed, and the room spun for a moment—only Sebastian called me that, now that Peter was dead.
She lifted the crow skull from my neck and placed it gently aside.
More undoing. My linen trousers around my ankles. Hiromi hooked my underpants with her thumbs, pushed them down, and turned toward the bed. To the right of her tailbone was a tattoo—the innards of a watch.
I reached for it, but she was already on the bed. The apartment was tiny.
The windows were shadeless and crowded with plants and bowls of candy. Lyon’s surveillance man hadn’t followed us out of Mixed, but he would know the address. He could’ve gotten here before our stately tram.
But a telephoto lens wouldn’t capture much through that clutter, in this dark. We were too entangled, intertwined in the blackness. My mouth on hers, her hands in my hair. Both of us naked on our knees on her bed. I wasn’t sure either of us was breathing.
Our bodies pressed together, she nibbled at my bottom lip. I wanted to feast on her, to taste every inch of her skin. To scream.
“Shhh,” Hiromi said.
Had I screamed?
She gently bit my neck, my shoulder. Her mouth covered my breast, her tongue teasing my nipple. Heat and wet and sparking nerves.
She ran her hand down my side, brushing past the ripple of my ribs, the swell of hipbone. The pressure of her palm, the heel of her hand, her fingers everywhere, but especially on the nerve endings thrumming between my legs.
I had to take control.
I always gave pleasure first, reeling in my own later, when my lover was expended. That was the family way. Anything less than control was surrender.
Prey, I reminded myself.
But Hiromi’s hand was cupping me. Her thumb teasing my clit, fingers sliding inside. I groaned, eyes closed—and saw something in the humming darkness behind my eyelids.
I could surrender to this, to her.
She moved her hand again and it happened, all at once, me in pieces.
“A confession,” Hiromi breathed afterward, her cheeks flushed. “I wasn’t sure you were queer.”
I squeezed her hand, wondering if there was some way not to lie.
Queerness is a culture; my only culture was Morton. My sexuality was Morton too—I slept with people for relief, for practice, to seduce, to solidify connections.
Kiss and kill, Sebastian liked to say, are essentially the same. They change someone forever, all at once. The comparison had seemed silly, but at that moment, pressed against Hiromi, it made sense. I’d let myself go as never before with anyone, ordinary or legacy.
Did Sebastian surrender every time? Was that his trick? Could you lose yourself without losing anything?
“You must have known I was into you.”
“Oh, you’re very into me. But Crystal says you’re a straight girl experimenting. A rich girl slumming in your idea of the art world.”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Crystal doesn’t like me.”
“You didn’t ping my radar either. Not at first.”
“I always look my best in camouflage,” I said, and slipped from the bed. A small fridge sat humming in her one-counter, one-cooktop kitchen. Inside it were Fanta, tamari, and a can of sardines. I would stock it properly.
I closed the fridge door and opened the single cupboard: dried noodles and more hard candy. I turned to give Hiromi a disappointed look.
She gave me one back. “Eleven courses, Jess. Eleven. I can’t believe you’re hungry.”
“I’m always hungry after sex.”
Hiromi reached to her bedside table and threw a candy at me.
I caught it. Bitter lemon. “You were expecting me.”
“I think I’m addicted.”
“To me? Or bitter lemon drops?”
“Not sure yet.”
Hiromi’s apartment was sparsely furnished, but every surface was as cluttered as the windowsills, mostly with ceramic bowls of candy.
The clutter continued on the walls—murals of vines, leaves, flowers. Two densely packed racks of clothes. There was neither dining table nor chairs.
No robots either. Those clearly stayed in her studio.
“I do like candy,” she said.
“But not paying bills.” The small chef’s block beside the stove was piled high with them.
“Candy’s cheaper than electricity. Come back to bed.”
So I did.
Prey, I told myself, taking control, sliding my mouth down Hiromi’s belly, parting her legs, teasing open the lips, tasting the salty, lemony musk of her, holding her hips as she surrendered, groaned, turned to liquid, begging me not to stop, then slipping out from under to drown me in more pleasure.
When I woke, light blazed through the windows. Hiromi sat at the end of the bed, sketching me. Another first: Lovers never woke before I did.
“Garrett doesn’t like portraits, remember?” I’d have to steal it on my way out.
“I wouldn’t show it to him in a million years. It’s too intimate. Your lips are swollen.”
“So are yours,” I said.
“And all those scars.” She looked down, marking the paper with short, quick strokes. “Like you were in a war.”
“We climb without ropes.”
“And play with knives,” she said. “Were your parents at the funeral?”
“Sketching me naked makes you ask about my parents?”
“I want to know where you come from,” she said. “More specifically than the great Morton sprawl. Was your mother one of those fabulous ladies with hints of red?”
“She wasn’t there.”
“Your father?”
Covered in red the last time I saw him. “He died when I was ten. My memories of him come and go.”
Hiromi nodded. “Same with my parents. I remember them, but my memories are mixed up with old photographs. One shoebox, full of pictures and documents. They weren’t very online.”
Her pencil had stopped sketching. I took her hand, kissed it.
“I used to imagine them as Romeo and Juliet,” she said. “Like they fled Japan because the families didn’t approve. It could be true. Sometimes they were so absorbed in each other, they’d forget I existed.”
I frowned.
“Not the Morton way?” she asked, smiling. “They loved me dearly, Jess. They just loved each other more. I still have their clothes.”
She pointed at the racks in the corner.
“Do you ever wear them?”
“Everything that fits. That dress from last night belonged to Mom’s grandmother—the only relative she ever mentioned. Don’t know about the rest, but I pretend it all came from Japan.”
“All the best clothes are inherited,” I said. “My waistcoat last night was Uncle Orrin’s.”
“The sinister man who took my phone away.”
“Yes. How did you survive without family?” How did anyone?
“Samantha. She worked with my dad. She let me move in, kept me from winding up in the system, kept me in school. Fuck, I had the biggest crush on her.”
“She’s what, forty?”
“She was thirty back then. She ignored my crush.”
“But not forever,” I said.
“She gave in when we were celebrating my college graduation, drunk as shit. Then she spent days apologizing for what I thought was the best night of my life.”
“I’ll never apologize.”
“We shall see.” She leaned over her sketchbook to press her raw lips against mine. “How old are you again?”
“Same age as you.”
Hiromi pulled away, regarding me. “So you keep saying. But sometimes I think you’re barely out of high school. Other times…you seem a thousand years old.”
“It’s somewhere in between,” I said.