East is East

way to the ladies’ room at the tourist center and wiped the mash of insects and sweat from her face, tied her hair up in a scarf one of the park girls gave her, and stepped out into the lobby to face them.

It was then, only then, that she began to realize just how big a story this was. And how big a part she’d played in it. And what she alone knew that no one else did. Forget Jessica McClure and the woman in the surf, this was the story of the hour and she was at the center of it. They jabbed microphones at her, there were lights and flashbulbs, and she knew that she had a story here, not a short story, not some labored fiction that strove for some obscure artistic truth, but a real true tough hard and painful real-life story—and what’s more, she was the heroine of it. The realization hit her in a single glowing flash-lit moment of epiphany. She smiled for the cameras.

The following day, jane had her accident.

Ruth was back at Thanatopsis, back in the good graces of Septima, back in the hive, the INS had their man and Saxby had his fish. She’d treated her inflamed epidermis to alternating hot and cold baths laced with Epsom salts, dabbed at each of her myriad swellings with alcohol and calamine lotion and slept till noon. Eating a very late breakfast on the patio—no one would have expected her to work after the ordeal she’d been through—she’d run into Irving Thalamus, who was nursing a hangover with the aid of a tall Calistoga and gin and the New York Review of Books. She had a long talk with Irving about her idea, about doing an extended magazine piece or even a book about the whole incident, and Irving had put her in touch with his agent, Marker McGill, of the venerable McGill Madden Agency. That was encouraging, but she was still feeling low over the disaster of her reading, though everyone assured her that it had gone off fine, even if it was a bit on the long side, and feeling lower yet over Hiro. She couldn’t get the shock of it out of her head, the way he’d looked with his fevered eyes and wasted limbs, his sunken cheeks and lacerated flesh—and the leeches, leeches all over him like sticking plaster— and the way he’d come to her. That made her feel lower than anything. He loved her. He trusted her. And she’d betrayed him. But then they hadn’t given her a choice. And in the long run it was for his own good—no jail could be worse than that swamp, and there was no question but that he would have died out there.

Ruth was in the front parlor waiting for Marker McGill to return her call when they brought Jane in. Earlier, it must have been about three or so, she’d looked up from the magazine she was numbly paging through to see Jane, in English riding habit, striding across the foyer as if she were auditioning for National Velvet. Already that afternoon Ruth had talked to the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Atlanta, Savannah and Charleston papers, CBS Radio and Mr. Shikuma of the Japan-America Society, who wanted to warmly congratulate her on her part in the apprehension of his errant countryman and to apologize, at length, for any inconvenience or unpleasantness Seaman Tanaka may have caused her and to assure her that the vast majority of the Japanese—indeed, the entire country but for Seaman Tanaka, who was of course mentally ill—were great respecters of the law and proper behavior. The calls had made her feel better, and she began to warm to the prospect of a book on Hiro and had even begun to daydream about the amount of the advance and what she would do with it, when she looked up and saw Jane and felt incinerated all over again.

The Nordic slave was there at the door—or was he just a Swedish oaf?—and Jane pranced up to enfold him in a public embrace, looking ever so self-consciously cute in her jodhpurs and boots and that ridiculous little riding hat perched like a napkin on the spill of her hair. She was going riding. Ruth was at the center of a media storm, Ruth had risked her life in the swamps and assisted in the capture of a desperate fugitive and thumbed her nose at the law, but Jane was going riding. All the hatred Ruth had for her festered to the surface in that moment and she squinted her eyes to bore into her with a corrosive look. But Jane caught her out again—just as Ruth was about to drop her gaze to the page in her lap, Jane swiveled her head to lock eyes with her, to catch her watching, snooping, prying, envying the Nordic embrace, and gave her a perfect little bee-stung smirk of triumph.

Two hours later they brought her in. The horse had gone down on her and broken her right leg in three places. Jane’s face was a snarl of pain, there was blood on her jodhpurs where the jagged face of the bone had sliced through the flesh. They rushed her into the parlor and laid her out on the couch, the Swedish oaf and Owen, who came away with a smear of the anointed one’s blood on his shirt. Jane shrieked like a woman giving birth to triplets, she shrieked breathlessly and without remit, save to break down in the occasional throaty rush of curses and sobs. Ruth moved aside while the whole colony fluttered round. She was horrified, she was, genuinely horrified. She could never take joy in another’s pain, no matter how despicable the person nor how much that person had it coming, could she? No. No, she couldn’t. And yet there was a thin tapering thread of satisfaction in it—even as Jane writhed and screamed and cried out for her mother and cursed the Swedish oaf: “Oh god, oh god—don’t you touch me, Olaf, you pig, you—aiee, Mommy, Mommy, it hurts, it hurts!”—and the thread raveled out like this: now Jane would be out of action. At least for a while. It was a pity, a real pity. Ruth was already thinking up her billiard-room routine.

They took Jane to the hospital. Dinner that night was subdued, a joyless affair that ran to hushed conversation and furtive glances, the colonists numbly lifting Armand’s lobster tortellini to their lips in a state of shock over the events of the past few days. Septima took her meal in the old wing of the house. Jane’s place was conspicuously vacant. Somber rumors circulated—about Hiro, about Ruth, about Jane. After dinner, while Saxby— who alone of all the company remained ebullient and irrepressible—tended to his fish, Irving Thalamus took Ruth aside.

“So tell me,” he said, swirling amber liquid in a snifter, “how’d it go with Marker?”

McGill had called just after the excitement over Jane’s accident had subsided; he was taking Ruth on. He was sure he could sell the book. He’d made some calls and was fielding offers. “Oh, Irving”—she clapped her hands like an ingenue, like Brie—“he’s taking me on.” And then she gave him a look of such melting gratitude, such starry- eyed, humble and worshipful thanksgiving, that he set down his snifter and took her hand in both of his. “Irving,” she repeated, her voice appropriately raw, “how can I ever—?”

“It’s nothing,” he murmured, and he was studying her, giving her a long sly look from beneath the hooded Thalamudian eyes. “Terrible about Jane,” he said after a moment. He still had hold of her hand.

Ruth searched his eyes. What did he want her to say? Was he on her side after all, was that it? “Yes,” she said. “Terrible.”

He looked away then, patted her hand and set it free. He lifted the snifter to his nose, took a deep breath and then set the glass down. “Ruthie”—and he hesitated, went for her hand again—“Ruthie, I’ve been meaning to ask you … you know I’ll be leaving in two weeks?”

Ruth nodded. Her heart began to accelerate. She was acutely conscious of the pressure of Irving’s hand on her own.

“I’ve got this place I’m renting in Key West—greatest weather on earth—it’s about three blocks from the beach. Big open room, windows all over the place. Hemingway lived there one winter.”

She nodded again.

“Look,” he said, watching her from deep within the folds of his hooded eyes, “what I’m saying is this: I want you to come with me. Live there—rent free, no obligations.” He paused. “With me.”

She couldn’t help herself, the names just leaped into her head: Ruth Thalamus, Mrs. Irving Thalamus, Ruth Dershowitz-Thalamus. She saw herself at his side in New York, cruising the literary salons, sashaying into Bread Loaf on his arm, saw herself in bed with him, all that hair, those strong white New York teeth. Her pulse was racing, her eyes were bright. And then she thought of Saxby, sweet Sax, with his fish and his shoulders and the way he smiled out of the corner of his mouth, thought of Thanatopsis House and Septima, of Laura and Sandy and all the rest. She was queen of the hive: this was her home. “You’re sweet, Irving,” she said finally, “and I’ll always love you. You’ll always be my best friend, my mentor, my advisor—”

Irving had retreated behind his eyes, the meager bunch of his lips. “But—?”

“But”—she sighed, and she could look down now, and up, she could scan the room before she came back to him, all the time in the world—“but I can’t leave Sax.”

The first call the following morning was from Marker McGill. He had a deal for her and he wanted to know what she thought of it. He’d gotten an offer from a major publisher—he named the house—for a $500,000 advance against a fifteen percent royalty, first serial rights going to one of the leading women’s magazines—he named it— for $75,000, to run in three installments. How did that sound?

And so, here she was, a guest of the Fortunoffs, contracts in the mail, new clothes spread out on the bed, a journalist on her way to the hospital to interview Hiro Tanaka and take some notes. It was warm, but she would