The Fourth Hand

poetesses and sculptresses, although this is how Wallingford thought of them. (In Patrick’s mind, most artists were frauds; they were peddling something unreal, something made up.)

So what would his welcoming speech be? He wasn’t entirely at a loss—he’d not lived in New York for nothing. Wallingford had suffered through his share of black-tie occasions; he knew what bullshitters most masters of ceremonies were—he knew how to bullshit, too. Therefore, Patrick decided his opening remarks should be nothing more or less than the fashionable and news-savvy blather of a master of ceremonies—the insincere, self- deprecating humor of someone who appears at ease while making a joke of himself. Boy, was he wrong. How about this for an opening line? “I feel insecure addressing such a distinguished group as yourselves, given that my principal and, by comparison, lowly accomplishment was to illegally feed my left hand to a lion in India five years ago.”

Surely that would break the ice. It had been good for a laugh at the last speech Wallingford had given, which was not really a speech but a toast at a dinner honoring Olympic athletes at the New York Athletic Club. The women in Tokyo would prove a tougher audience.

That the airline lost Wallingford’s checked luggage, an overstuffed garment bag, seemed to set a tone. The official for the airline told him: “Your luggage is on the way to the Philippines—back tomorrow!”

“You already know that my bag is going to the Philippines?”

“Most luridly, sir,” the official said, or so Patrick thought; he’d really said, “Most assuredly, sir,” but Wallingford had misheard him. (Patrick had a childish and offensive habit of mocking foreign accents, which was almost as unlikable as his compulsion to laugh when someone tripped or fell down.) For the sake of clarification, the airline official added: “The lost luggage on that flight from New York always goes to the Philippines.”

“ ‘Always’?” Wallingford asked.

“Always back tomorrow, too,” the official replied.

There then followed the ride in the helicopter from the airport to the rooftop of his Tokyo hotel. Wallingford’s Japanese hosts had arranged for the chopper.

“Ah, Tokyo at twilight—what can compare to it?” said a stern-looking woman seated next to Patrick on the helicopter. He hadn’t noticed that she’d also been on the plane from New York—probably because she’d been wearing an unflattering pair of tortoiseshell glasses and Wallingford had given her no more than a passing look. (She was the American author and self-described radical feminist, of course.)

“You’re being facetious, I trust,” Patrick said to her.

“I’m always facetious, Mr. Wallingford,” the woman replied. She introduced herself with a short, firm handshake. “I’m Evelyn Arbuthnot. I recognized you by your hand—the other one.”

“Did they send your luggage to the Philippines, too?” Patrick asked Ms. Arbuthnot.

“Look at me, Mr. Wallingford,” she instructed him. “I’m strictly a carry-on person. Airlines don’t lose my luggage.”

Perhaps he’d underestimated Evelyn Arbuthnot’s abilities; maybe he should try to find, and even read, one of her books.

But below them was Tokyo. He could see that there were heliports on the rooftops of many hotels and office buildings, and that other helicopters were hovering to land. It was as if there were a military invasion of the huge, hazy city, which, in the twilight, was tinged by an array of improbable colors, from pink to blood-red, in the fading sunset. To Wallingford, the rooftop helipads looked like bull’s-eyes; he tried to guess which bull’s-eye their helicopter was aiming at.

“Japan,” Evelyn Arbuthnot said despairingly.

“You don’t like Japan?” Patrick asked her.

“I don’t ‘like’ anyplace,” she told Wallingford, “but the man-woman thing is especially onerous here.”

“Oh,” Patrick replied.

“You haven’t been here before, have you?” she asked him. While he was still shaking his head, she told him: “You shouldn’t have come, disaster man.”

“Why did you come?” Wallingford asked her.

She was kind of growing on him with every negative word she spoke. He began to like her face, which was square with a high forehead and a broad jaw—her short gray hair sat on her head like a no-nonsense helmet. Her body was squat and sturdy-looking, and not at all revealed; she wore black jeans and a man’s untucked denim shirt, which looked soft from a lot of laundering. Judging by what Wallingford could see, which was not much, she seemed to be smallbreasted—she didn’t bother to wear a bra. She had on a sensible, if dirty, pair of running shoes, which she rested on a large gym bag that only partially fit beneath her seat; the bag had a shoulder strap and looked heavy.

Ms. Arbuthnot appeared to be a woman in her late forties or early fifties who traveled with more books than clothes. She wore no makeup and no nail polish, and no rings or other jewelry. She had small fingers and very clean, small hands, and her nails were bitten to the quick.

“Why did I come here?” she asked, repeating Patrick’s question. “I go where I’m invited, wherever it is, both because I’m not invited to many places and because I have a message. But you don’t have a message, do you, Mr. Wallingford? I can’t imagine what you would ever come to Tokyo for, least of all for a conference on

‘The Future of Women.’ Since when is ‘The Future of Women’ news ? Or the lion guy’s kind of news, anyway,” she added.

The helicopter was landing now. Wallingford, watching the enlarging bull’s-eye, was speechless.

“Why did I come here?” Patrick asked, repeating Ms. Arbuthnot’s question. He was just trying to buy a little time while he thought of an answer.

“I’ll tell you why, Mr. Wallingford.” Evelyn Arbuthnot put her small but surprisingly strong hands on his knees and gave him a good squeeze. “You came here because you knew you’d meet a lot of women —isn’t that right?”

So she was one of those people who disliked journalists, or Patrick Wallingford in particular. Wallingford was sensitive to both dislikes, which were common. He wanted to say that he had come to Tokyo because he was a fucking field reporter and he’d been given a fucking field assignment, but he held his tongue. He had that popular weakness of wanting to win over people who disliked him; as a consequence, he had numerous friends. None of them were close, and very few of them were male. (He’d slept with too many women to make close friendships with men.)

The helicopter bumped down; a door opened. A fast-moving bellman, who’d been standing on the rooftop, rushed forward with a luggage cart. There was no bag to take, except Evelyn Arbuthnot’s gym bag, which she preferred to carry herself.

“No bag? No luggage?” the eager bellman asked Wallingford, who was still thinking of how to answer Ms. Arbuthnot.

“My bag was mistakenly sent to the Philippines,” Patrick informed the bellman. He spoke unnecessarily slowly.

“Oh, no problem. Back tomorrow!” the bellman said.

“Ms. Arbuthnot,” Wallingford managed to say, a little stiffly, “I assure you that I don’t have to come to Tokyo, or this conference, to meet women. I can meet women anywhere in the world.”

“Oh, I’ll bet you can.” Evelyn Arbuthnot seemed less than pleased at the idea.

“And I’ll bet you have —everywhere, all the time. One after another.”

Bitch! Patrick decided, and he’d just been beginning to like her. He’d been feeling a lot like an asshole lately, and Ms. Arbuthnot had clearly got the better of him; yet Patrick Wallingford generally thought of himself as a nice guy. Fearing that his lost garment bag would not come back from the Philippines in time for his opening remarks at the “Future of Women” conference, Wallingford sent the clothes he’d worn on the plane to the hotel laundry service, which promised to return them overnight. Patrick hoped so. The problem then was that he had nothing to wear. He’d not anticipated that his Japanese hosts (fellow journalists, all) would keep calling him in his hotel room, inviting him for drinks and dinner.

He told them he was tired; he said he wasn’t hungry. They were polite about it, but Wallingford could tell he’d disappointed them. No doubt they couldn’t wait to see the no-hand—the other one, as Evelyn Arbuthnot had put it. Wallingford was looking distrustfully at the room-service menu when Ms. Arbuthnot called. “What are you