East is East

The footsteps halted outside her door, and then came Owen’s knock and his subdued rasp—no language games, no chirp of humor: “Ruth, it’s for you. Long-distance.”

She knew it, she knew it.

“It’s Saxby.”

Saxby? Suddenly the picture clouded over. Her father was all right, he was okay, as healthy as the Surgeon General himself and sleeping peacefully at one of the better addresses in Santa Monica. But it was—six o’clock? What could Saxby want at six o’clock? Her heart gave a little skip of fear—was he hurt? But no. Why would he be calling if he was hurt—it would be the police or the hospital, wouldn’t it? And then she thought of his fish. If he was dragging her out of bed because of some damned little loopy-eyed fish—

“Ruth, wake up. Telephone.”

She caught herself. “Yes, yes, I’m awake. Tell him I’ll be right there.”

The footsteps retreated. She bent to shuffle through the mess on the floor. She was looking for her terry- cloth robe, and her cigarettes, and maybe something to wrap round her hair in case anyone was up. She found the robe—she’d borrowed it from a hotel in Las Vegas on her way out from California, and there was a rich reddish stain over the left breast where she’d upended a glass of cranberry juice on it—and she came up with the cigarettes too, but no lighter and no scarf. She caught a glimpse of herself in the bureau mirror—sunken eyes, too much nose, a frenzy of fractured little lines tugging at her mouth—and then she ducked out the door, cradling her cigarettes, and found herself staring into the huge startled gypsy eyes of Jane Shine.

Jane was on her way to the bathroom. She was wearing an antique silk kimono over a white voile nightgown and her feet were prettily encased in a pair of pink satin mules. Her hair, ever so slightly mussed from sleep, was thicker, curlier and glossier than any mere mortal’s had a right to be. Her face, bereft of makeup, was perfect.

Ruth was wearing a fifty-nine-cent pair of Taiwanese flipflops, the stolen robe was six sizes too big and practically stiff with filth, and her face, as she knew from her glancing appraisal in the bureau mirror, was the face of one of the walking dead. Sleepy, oblivious, off-guard, Ruth had stepped out of her room with a vague idea of the telephone, and there she was, Jane Shine, her greatest enemy, looking like some forties actress having breakfast in bed on the backlot of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Jane’s eyes narrowed. Her face was alert but impassive. She blinked twice, stepped round Ruth as if she were a minor nuisance, a small but annoying impediment to her majestic progress—a pile of luggage, a potted palm left out of place by the help—and floated on down the hall with a gentle swish of silk. Oh, the bitch, the bitch! Not a word, not an excuse me or beg pardon, not a good morning, hello, goodbye, drop dead, anything. Oh, the icy arrogant bitch!

Ruth just stood there, immobilized, rigid with hate. She waited for the click of the bathroom door behind her, and then she started down the hallway, clenching her jaws so hard her teeth had begun to ache by the time she reached the phone at the foot of the stairs. “Sax?” she practically snarled into the receiver.

His voice came right back at her. He was excited about something—fish, no doubt—and her mood, which was poisonous to begin with, took a turn for the worse. “Ruth,” he was saying, “listen, I’ve got to tell you this before anybody else does—”

She cut him off. All he cared about was fish. Lewis Turco had hurt her, had taken her by the hair and hurt her, and all he cared about was fish. “He grabbed me by the hair, Sax, and he called me a bitch in front of everybody, called me a lying Jew bitch right out on the patio in front of everybody.” The phone gave it back to her—she could hear the outrage trembling in her voice, a slice of anger that fell away into hurt. “If he thinks he’s going to get away with it, he’s crazy … I’ll sue him. I will. I’ll file a complaint… Sax,” she bleated, “oh, Sax.”

There was a silence on the other end of the line. Saxby was confused, and when he was confused he got flustered. “What are you telling me, somebody pulled your hair?” And then he made a leap. “You mean the Japanese kid? Is that how he escaped?”

“Japanese kid? I’m talking about Turco. Lewis Turco. The little Nazi jerk that tags around with Detlef. He went berserk out on the patio last night and he”—her voice broke—“he assaulted me. He went for Irving too, and Sandy. You should see the bruises on Sandy’s chest. He wouldn’t touch me if you were here, he wouldn’t dare, but —but—” She felt herself breaking down.

“Ruth, stop it. Listen to me.”

Saxby wouldn’t allow it, wouldn’t listen. He had something to tell her, something more important than the fact that some overdeveloped clod had beat up his girlfriend, some miraculous fish find, the news that would send shock waves through the world of overgrown adolescents who spent their entire lives watching fish fuck in little glass tanks. She was angry. “No, you listen. He attacked me, goddamn it—”

“Ruth, the Japanese kid is here. Hiro. Hiro Tanaka. He’s here.”

What was he saying? Ruth glanced up to see Owen dart round the corner for the kitchen. All the anger drained out of her. “Hiro? What do you mean? Where?”

“Here. In the Okefenokee. I opened the trunk of the car and there he was, curled up like a snake. In the trunk, for Christ’s sake.”

It was early yet and her head ached: it took her a moment to process the information. Saxby was gone, ferreting out his pygmy fish on the other side of the state. Hiro had escaped. The sky was above, the earth below. Gravity exerted its pull, there was magnetic attraction, the weak force. Fine. But Hiro in the trunk of Saxby’s car, Hiro in the Okefenokee Swamp? It was too much. It was a gag, a routine, Saxby was pulling her leg. Even now Abercorn and the sheriff and an army of yapping dogs and shotgun-toting crackers were combing the briar patches and cesspools of the island, and Hiro—the fugitive, the jailbreaker, the big soft kid with the pitiful eyes and overfed gut—was a hundred miles away. In a swamp. The swamp. The swamp to end all swamps. Poor Hiro. Poor Detlef. Poor Sax. But no, it couldn’t be: it was too perfect. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.”

“Did you—” she began, and she was going to ask if Saxby had hurt him, if the raging Saxby had emerged, the aggressive, the rough, but she thought better of it. “I mean, did he say anything or did he run away again or what? Did you try to help him?”

Saxby was keyed up, speaking in breathless explosive little bursts. “It was Roy and me. He was in the trunk. By the time I knew what was happening he was gone.”

“Gone?”

And then she got the full story. Saxby told her how he’d packed the car yesterday afternoon, too excited to remember whether he’d shut the trunk or not, and how they were out on a spit of land, water on three sides of them, and how Roy was backing the boat down the ramp. He told her how Hiro had leaped from the trunk like a wild-eyed maniac and plunged into the boat pond—“Every time I lay eyes on the guy he’s jumping into some mudhole”—and how he’d kept going till he reached the far bank and the swamp beyond. “The guy’s a fanatic,” Saxby concluded. “A nut case. And if he thought Tupelo was something, he’s got a real surprise coming.”

Suddenly Ruth was laughing—she couldn’t help herself. Laura Grobian came wide-eyed down the stairs to breakfast in the silent room and Ruth was laughing, gagging, nearly hysterical with the news, so weak she could barely hold the phone to her ear. The picture of Saxby standing there dumbfounded with his strapping feet and hopeless hands, of Hiro, his crooked teeth set in the big moon of his face, splashing for his life all over again, churning up the duckweed and plunging ever deeper into the swamp—trading one swamp for another—it was too much. It was like something out of Heart of Darkness —or the Keystone Kops. Yes, that was it: The Keystone Kops Meet Heart of Darkness. And the irony—that was what really killed her. The plan had worked. Hiro had finally got his wisli—he was off Tupelo Island—and he’d made it in the trunk of Saxby’s mother’s car. It was funny, oh, it was funny.

“It’s not funny, Ruth. It’s not.” Saxby was hot, his voice pinched to a rasp. “Look: Roy’s already called the police. I’m calling to warn you. After yesterday … I mean, the guy turns up in the trunk of my car and they’re going to believe I didn’t know about it? Or you either?”

She hadn’t thought of it that way. But still it was funny. “You’re innocent, Sax—they never hang an innocent man.” She knew she would regret it, but she couldn’t help herself: suddenly her mood had improved. She was positively giddy. This was fun.

“Goddamn it, Ruth. This is your deal. You’re the one who—” Saxby stopped dead. His voice just wilted. Static crackled over the line. Outside, the sun emerged to dig a shallow grave in the mist.

“Sax?”

“Tell me the truth,” he demanded, “and no crap now—you didn’t help him escape, did you?”