18mm Blues Read online

  So back to the hotel they’d come, sopped to the skin, catching every eye as they squished and dripped across the busy lobby and up. They got out of their wet things and took a shower, which improved their comfort but not Grady’s disposition. Julia sensed he needed or, anyway, wanted quiet, didn’t press for conversation. He hardly said anything, nothing consequential and that was how it went throughout the early dinner that he left her to order up. He ordered the wine. For some reason, without giving the wine list more than a glance he chose the most expensive red on it. An ’82 Cabernet Sauvignon Grand Cru. Then he sipped down only a half goblet of it. Had he asked her preference she’d have told him her state of mind called for a crisp, delicate white, a Riesling or Gewürztraminer perhaps, something more reasonably priced.

  The high point of the evening thus far had been when the valet came to return the clothes they’d worn that day. Clean and hand pressed and none the worse for the river dunking. He must have known from the silt caught in the pockets and seams what had happened, however he remarked that he was kept particularly busy during that time of year because guests were constantly being drenched by the rains.

  Grady appreciated the valet’s tact. For a moment.

  And now, here it was, close to ten o’clock and he was all pillowed up with extras supplied by the housekeeper. Within touch of Julia yet not touching her, resisting that rather sacrificially, and she was again asking was there anything she could do for him. “A foot massage or something?”

  “No.”

  “I could turn on a light and read you a page or two of Alice A. Bailey, what she had to say about ambivalent souls. I think you’d find it interesting.”

  “No.”

  “You’re nothing but a bunch of nos,” she said with an air of subtle reproach followed by a stab at assuming control. “I’m going to call down and have someone up to give you a real professional foot massage. I understand they spend as much as an hour on each foot.”

  “Ever had it done?”

  “Never to that extent.”

  “And never professionally.”

  “You know the best would be to get back on normal track again right away. Brooding is like quicksand.”

  “I’m not brooding.”

  “You’re doing something.”

  “Thinking, I told you.”

  “Meditating?”

  “Whatever.”

  “Well, if it’s just thinking, how about letting me in on it?”

  “Okay, you’re in on it.”

  “I feel as though I’m out.”

  “Believe me, you’re in. Give the airlines another call.”

  Julia refused by not moving or saying anything. After a while she said, “I’m beginning to become an avid believer that everything, good, bad or neutral, happens for a reason.”

  An indulgent sigh from Grady.

  Julia disliked that sigh more than anything about him she’d ever disliked. She got up quickly and went into the sitting room to the table that had the remains of dinner on it. Poured herself a goblet of the wine, took it and the basket of dinner rolls back into the bedroom. Resumed her place on the floor among the pillows. Broke off a hunk of a roll, dunked it into the wine and ate it. It was something she’d been doing with wine and bread ever since her long-ago days with Jean Luc. In fact, Jean Luc introduced her to it. At the Café Flores. Their own special communion Jean Luc had called it as he dipped and extended to her. High priest Jean Luc, determiner of heretics. Fuck those memories. She was creating new, choicer ones.

  Although not at the moment.

  She thought about offering Grady a dunked bite. Maybe he’d get the communion inference and come out of his cave, come out into the sunshine of them. She’d love it if right then he’d come out of it, grab her and giggle her and roll her around the floor. Would that she could will it, perform such emotional telekinesis, move him in an instant to realize he wasn’t so awfully alone.

  Get me, she thought, me, the convert-suicide trying to do the impossible, dispel someone’s insularity. She was certain that was the bout he was fighting. The loss of the rubies had triggered it off and, of course, being shot at. She studied him withdrawn. He looked eerie in the neonized Bangkok atmosphere being reflected into the room. Even temporary hermitism can change the hell out of a person, she concluded and placed the wineglass aside while she plumped her pillows, rearranged them and then herself.

  To do some thinking of her very own:

  That incident in the river, when, at the crucial moment, she’d temporarily lost the use of her arms. It was weird, the weirdest thing that had ever happened to her. She hadn’t mentioned it to Grady, might never. How could she ask him to understand when she herself didn’t? She wasn’t altogether sure it hadn’t been purely physical, a lapse, for instance, in that part of her brain having to do with motor control of her arms. A thirty-second stroke? If not that, what? Could it have been that she’d wanted Grady to be less eager about running home right away to San Francisco with those rubies? Which was what he’d told her he intended to do. That would mean she’d let the rubies be lost just so she could have her way. Did she have such connivance lurking in her cerebral mechanism? Ridiculous. That just wasn’t her. But, she had to admit, it would fit her wanting to stay on here in Thailand awhile. She was well aware of that desire and also aware that seeing more of William was a part of it. How strangely he affected her. She’d done some libido searching and found her attraction to him was not sexual, not in the ordinary sense. She’d wanted to kiss him, yes, embrace him, yes, and there’d been nothing erotic in those urges. Anyway, the certain thing amidst all this muddle was her love for Grady. As equivocal as it might seem, that was flourishing in her, had already grown beyond the boundaries she’d predicted. How long, she wondered, would he remain in this miserable mental state? Communication was called for, but she knew from experience that it seldom eased real woes. And wouldn’t it be hypocritical of her to commiserate when she’d contributed so substantially to the need for it?

  What the hell, it was worth a try. “One way of looking at it,” she said, “is you’re out the fifty thousand you paid for the rough. That and a few new dreams. With a little hustle and hope you’ll make both up in no time.”

  “Sure,” Grady said, because it was easier to agree.

  The thinking he was doing was the sort a guy normally would do seated alone at a bar on a rainy Tuesday night or during a long, late-night-anywhere walk or while mowing a lot of lawn.

  Taking interior inventory.

  And considering rearrangement.

  It might have appeared that he was sulking, moping or whatever, and, sure, he felt bad about losing those rubies, but that incident alone wasn’t what was getting to him. Rather it was that incident plus the aggregate of all such blighted hopes over his gem dealer days, and he just couldn’t be in the lighter-hearted here and now with Julia and cope with all those replays.

  His Larkin years for one.

  Even then, during his pleasant, clean-slated start with Larkin, there’d been instances that had caused some of his faith in fairness to leak out of him. Early on it had been easy for him to apply a patch. There wasn’t all that much deliberate deceit in the gem business, he’d told himself. Dealers were being honest when they bragged about their tradition of honesty. The sleight-of-deal tricks they pulled, as premeditated and perverse as they might be, were for professional amusement as much as profit. Sleight-of-deal was a given, the soul of competitiveness. Just expect it. It was gamelike. One had to know how to dupe in order to avoid dupery. Bluff to keep from being bluffed. Know the old and new ways to fuck over to not get fucked over.

  Don’t learn the hard way that emeralds were frequently impregnated with oil to obscure their inclusions and give them a livelier green; that among a lot of rubies there might well be a few carats of synthetics mixed in (pure profit); that sapphires were, more probably than not, cooked, heat treated in extreme high-temperature laboratory-type ovens to improve their blue; that GIA
(Gemological Institute of America) certificates, as authentic as they appeared, might be forged; that not every fine white diamond claimed to be of Russian origin (and therefore more expensive) had really come from the tundra.

  Such misrepresentations went on and on and were attempted even when the chance of their being believed was slim. The smart kept on trying to outsmart the equally smart. The not so smart sooner or later got victimized, ridiculed, and sometimes seriously hurt.

  It hadn’t taken long for Grady to become habitually wary, for distrust to become his marrow. Larger patches were required, and often they wouldn’t stick.

  That was especially true when he became associated with Harold Havermeyer. Harold personified the respected gem dealer. He was by far the most insidious and slighting dealer Grady had ever encountered. Harold’s reputation in the trade included those qualities, and they seemed mainly to be what had brought him the respect. Now that Grady had put some space between himself and Harold he thought it likely that the reason Harold had given up on him was Harold had detected a reservoir of fairness left in him. Perhaps Harold had watched and waited for it to dry up, and when it didn’t he just couldn’t have it around. The last thing a dealer such as Harold would trust was fairness.

  Another, more recent, of the replays was the Rangoon Emporium. Grady doubted that he’d ever been made to feel so ineffectual. Out of place and small time, bullied by the more established dealers and their deep pockets. He was sorry that he’d attended the Emporium, but, on the other hand, perhaps it was a lesson learned and for the best that he accept his true size.

  As for the clash that afternoon on the river, he’d by now had a chance to review it and was close to believing it hadn’t been merely an episode of random terrorism by a couple of privileged cretins. There were too many inconsistencies for that explanation.

  Why, for instance, if those two had been out for thrill kills, hadn’t they kept on right after they’d done in the driver? That hesitation by the shooter, which allowed Grady and Julia to drop down out of sight, could have been intentional.

  And then, why hadn’t the speedboat been brought close alongside to accommodate a point-blank finish?

  And then, why had the shooter, who’d been such a sure shot when he dispatched the driver, not been able after that to hit anything but air and water? Even when Grady was tending to the engine and steering and such an easy target? Misses on purpose? Seemed so. And, if so, where was the water taxi being towed to? And the larger question, why?

  They were after the rubies, Grady thought. Had to be. Possibly those two had a regular thing going, waylaying precious stones after they’d been cut way out there at the Lady So Remembered Gem-Cutting Factory. That, of course, would require someone at the factory to let them know who and when.

  One of William’s cutters?

  William himself?

  It was William who’d suggested, practically insisted, they take a water taxi. The only other person who’d known of the rubies was Reese, the dealer who’d recommended William. Of the two, the shadow more likely fell on William.

  William and his winning ways, all charm and candor and eager cooperation. Shouldn’t have trusted him, Grady thought. Should have seen the setup coming. It was obvious now why William had taken the cutting and faceting of the rubies on himself. The reason he’d done the stones so swiftly and well had been self-serving. He needed to have them done before Grady departed for San Francisco, or else he’d have had to ship them by air insured, not giving his boys a chance to steal them.

  As neat and tight a fit as that scenario seemed to be, Grady didn’t want to believe it. Because, he realized now, he’d been on the way to liking William, and, also, because he felt as though he was fresh out of patches.

  No more patches.

  But no paucity of options.

  What if, he thought (and it was by no means a new thought), he were to get out of the gem business? Not sometime soon or later on but tonight, in fact at that very moment. Chalk up the years he’d spent in it as a long-term misdirection. He couldn’t recover the years, of course, but it was in his power to return to the moment when he’d been captivated by gems and instead, this time, be merely appreciative of them and get on with his first chosen profession.

  He would buy a sound Federal-style house somewhere close to Litchfield, close to home. Give it a fresh coat of white and all the new black shutters it needed. A brick walk in a herringbone pattern to its front door, twelve-over-twelve windows, screened-in side porches. Barns too, it would have to have typical fat, red barns. And huge maples, grateful for the nourishment he gave them and that he knew how to install steel rods to help support their one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old main leaders. He would plant ten thousand jonquil bulbs in the lawn and carry on a territorial war with moles and mice and the place would be admired, especially each April, pointed out as where Grady Bowman, the landscape architect, lived.

  With his wife, the artist.

  Or where Julia Bowman, the artist, lived with her husband, the landscape architect.

  Either way would be fine.

  He would establish himself by casting some bread upon the water, charge no fee for planning and doing the grounds of some new important estate down in Greenwich or someplace in northern Westchester County. Put his heart and future into it. No matter that it took six months or even longer, do it right, have it admired. No topiary. He’d still live up to the aesthetic pledge he’d made when he was twenty to never shape a swan out of a boxwood or a mushroom out of a yew. He’d have every plant, tree, shrub appear as though it was having its own wild way and altogether create the illusion of nature on the verge of chaos. That sort of symmetry was acknowledged as the most difficult to achieve, but he’d do it, be happy doing it.

  He would, he thought, begin really thriving again the moment he again stomped the blade of a shovel into a bed of loam, as soon as he felt acorns underfoot while walking a Connecticut woods, as soon as he was at a drafting board determining the locations of terraces, paths and walks.

  He would do his landscapes and Julia would do hers.

  He would get on the phone and place a call to his family. He would bounce his voice off a satellite and into their ears and hearts. Let them know what he’d decided and to expect him and Julia soon.

  He stretched to reach for the phone on the nightstand. Julia was in the way and his hand got sidetracked by the back of her neck, that place so susceptible to attention. His touch immediately moved her to him. Her foot overturned her wine goblet and at precisely the same moment there were two raps on the door.

  Room service come for the dinner cart, Julia thought, inclined to ignore it and anything else now that Grady had broken his ice jam.

  On the condition that this would be the last such disturbance of the night, she got up, slipped on a robe and went to the door. Was about to open it when an envelope fell from the message slot onto her bare toes. She picked it up. Switched on the sitting room lamps. Saw Grady’s name, just his name, on the face of the envelope written in black with a wide-nibbed pen by a bold hand. Expensive stationery, she knew from the substantial feel of it, the envelope unmistakably lined.

  She took it to the bedroom to Grady, who was now slouched and sunk down reconditely among the heap of pillows. It appeared she’d lost him again and thought she had the damn interruption to blame for that. She dropped the envelope onto one of his few exposed areas and switched on the near lamp.

  Grady squinted at his name as though it were entirely unfamiliar. The envelope was politely sealed at only the point of its flap. The note within read:

  Dear Mr. Bowman:

  I have only just this moment learned that you were here in my part of the world. We have never met, however, I would like to remedy that by inviting you to be my guest for a stay at my home in Bang Wan. Your schedule permitting, of course.

  No need to reply. My driver will fetch you tomorrow morning at nine.

  Respectfully,

  Hattori Kumura


  Grady read it twice to himself and a third time aloud. A chance to meet Kumura, he thought. He’d probably never get another. Hell, Connecticut could wait! “Want to go?” he asked Julia.

  “I thought you were itching to get back to San Francisco.”

  “Do you know who Hattori Kumura is?”

  “No, but I gather from the tone of this note he wants something. Is he wealthy?”

  “I guess.”

  “Wealthy people seldom if ever write fan letters.”

  “That what you think this is?”

  “Sure. This Kumura guy doesn’t know you but infers that he knows of you and that he likes what he knows. Oblique flattery is often more compelling than the frontal kind.”

  “What makes you so good at reading between the lines?”

  “Well,” Julia arched, “I do have talents other than those I use to gratify you.”

  “But I’d settle for the latter,” Grady grinned.

  “So, who’s this Kumura?”

  “Kumura pearls.”

  “Is that good?”

  “In my estimation, but not only mine, Kumura pearls are unexcelled.”

  “You sound like a testimonial advertisement in Town and Country.”

  He tried to fix her with a look of reproach. “I’m putting up with you right now. Do you realize that?”

  She smiled. “Tell me about Kumura pearls.”

  He did. She listened.

  Then she read Kumura’s note again, noticing his use of the word fetch and thinking that odd. She got the hotel’s complimentary map of Thailand from the desk drawer. Shared it with Grady. The map didn’t have an index, so there was no easy telling where the place mentioned in Kumura’s note was located. Finding it became an undeclared competition. Grady thought logically it would be somewhere in the environs of Bangkok. Julia, meanwhile, searched all over the map. “Thailand’s got a lot of Bangs,” she remarked as she saw village after village with that first name.