BLIND TRIAL by Brian Deer (best books to read for beginners TXT) 📗

eyes danced around like they’d broken. She’d set something off when she gave mixed signals. She almost felt frightened by his reaction. She watched him struggle as he tried to control it. You’d think they’d had this fight a hundred times.

And then he recovered—in about three seconds—the moment she explained the proposition. His gaze locked onto her. He seemed to look right through her, through the building, and halfway to Hawaii. Then he reined-in his focus and his mood morphed back to the way it was when she showed him her fish.

“You what?”

She grabbed a cushion. “He’s asked me to go live with him. In Japan, Nagoya. And work for Sanomo. That’s his proposition. He probably means ‘proposal,’ if the truth was known, because I think he’s got bigger ideas.”

“Go live in Japan and work for Sanomo?”

“He says he can get me a job.”

Ben stared, wide-eyed. “You going to do it or what?”

“Not sure.”

He took a step toward her and kissed her forehead. “Sumiko, sweetheart, let me be first to congratulate you. The future Ms. Dr. Murayama.”

“Not necessarily. And please don’t make fun.” She buried her face in the cushion. “This isn’t the right time. I feel delicate.”

He sank to the floor. She heard his knees strike wood, then shuffles and snorts behind the cushion.

She rose from the ottoman, bypassed his smirk, and sought a moment’s refuge in the kitchen. She drenched her wrists in cold water, opened the refrigerator, and poked around shelves of fresh produce. They were jam-packed with vegetables, salads, and bento boxes. Oh, how she hated bento boxes.

Tonight was a mistake: she shouldn’t have done this. She shouldn’t have lured him to California. But she couldn’t let him leave on this awkward, foolish, note. She must act like an adult and be professional.

She tugged a bag of grass from behind a bowl of beetroot and lifted two more Kirins from the fridge. Then she reached into a cabinet for a MiniVAP vaporizer, opened the beers, and returned to the living room.

He’d kicked off his sneakers and killed the ceiling light, leaving the room lit only from the aquarium. And he’d fired up her laptop, which she’d hooked to speakers. She recognized Pearl Jam: Binaural.

There's a girl on a ledge, who's got nowhere to turn

Cos all the love that she had was just wood that she burned.

She sank to the rug, pressed her back to the settee, swigged from a bottle, and giggled. Then she unscrewed the vaporizer, opened the top, and filled the heating chamber with grass.

Ben lay with a cheek in a puppydog hand, his forearm supported on an elbow. “So, you gotta tell me. Like, I’m pretty curious about this. How’d you keep a scene going with a guy from Nagoya?”

She gazed at a light—pink—blinking on the MiniVAP. “Oh, conferences, conferences. You can spend half your life at conferences. I told you, we met in Shanghai.”

“So, you want to live in Japan? Yes, or no?”

“That’s the idea. Or at least give it a try, at least for a while. He’s made me a video of his house. It’s lovely.”

“So, what about this week, if you’ve not made your mind up? Checking out the goods before you purchase?”

“That’s a very male attitude, may I say?”

He rolled onto his back, a knee pointing at the ceiling, open-legged like he’d sprawled in Washington.

She studied his face as she reached for her beer. In the light from the aquarium, he was beautiful.

“Oh, he’s being a tad pushy, I suppose. And this week’s been so difficult. There’s so much to think about really.”

The pink light turned solid. He stretched to the vaporizer and raised its mouthpiece to his lips. She watched him exhale, then breathe in slowly. His lungs had volume. Yes, beautiful.

He passed the MiniVAP and lifted a bottle.

She sucked moist vapor as he spoke. “Can I ask you something?”

“Mmm hmmm.”

But his question was drowned by her front door buzzer: harsh from a box near the stairs.

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

She crawled to the laptop and muted Pearl Jam. That was all she needed: Hiroshi. He was supposed to be shopping with an old colleague from Yokohama on sabbatical from UC Berkeley. They were going for a meal. He said he’d call later. He was such an impulsive man.

The buzzer buzzed again… Again and again… He said he would call. He should have called.

Bzzzzzzz. Bzzzzzzzzzzz.

She returned to the rug, walking on her knees. She whispered, “Your car?”

“Nowhere near.”

Bzzzzzzz. Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

The apartment fell silent, a ship hooted on the bay, then she felt Ben’s thick fingers on her wrist. He’d reached over and taken it, slipping a pinky between her bangles. She realized he could feel her pulse.

Ten seconds passed… Ten seconds more… All she heard now were street sounds.

And then she heard different sounds, from somewhere nearer. At first, she wasn’t sure what they were. Low, dull, thumps, that she felt as much as heard. Then she recognized footsteps on planks.

The thumping ceased… A moment’s silence… Then tapping from the kitchen. Hiroshi. He’d climbed the fire escape at the back of the building and was tapping on the French door glass. He was tapping on the glass—tap-tap tap-tap—with metal: maybe a key, or a coin.

Tap-tap tap-tap… Tap-tap tap-tap… Tap-tap tap-tap tap-tap.

She silently counted the passing seconds. Five… Ten… Fifteen… Twenty…

Then feet thumping planks: going down.

Again, she counted. One to ten… Eleven to twenty. At one hundred, the danger would have passed. She’d locked the French doors. That was lucky: she often didn’t. With more luck, he’d assume she was out.

Forty-four, forty-five, forty-six, forty-seven… Sixty-seven, sixty-eight, sixty-nine, seventy.

Then she heard a car’s engine and her iPhone rang. Hiroshi’s face appeared on the screen.

She didn’t pick up, and the picture soon vanished. She exhaled. Relief. She was safe. He’d go to his hotel, call her in the morning, and leave her at the mercy of Ben.

HE MADE a point to look somber when he released her wrist and took a long hit from the MiniVAP. He did somber well: his Mr. Moody was renowned.