Leave It to Me - Bharati Mukherjee [27]
He scraped his chair back across the red linoleum floor. “Poor fucking Jimi,” he sighed. “Now you have me all depressed.” He pulled the table forward so it’d be easier for me to slide out.
The cashier had the receipt and two more fortune cookies on a tiny plastic tray. “Everything fine?”
“Thanks, Lee.” Ham picked one cookie off the tray and tossed it to me. “I never look.”
I read my fortune. Confucius says, Come back for marvelous meal to same restaurant. Frankie would have been mortified; first we were sinister, now we’re getting cute.
Ham took out a ballpoint and scribbled on the receipt. “Who do you want to be, hon? Staff? Talent? Consultant? In case the IRS wants to know.”
“Force of nature,” I said. Deal with that, Mr. Accountant. “In case the Flash ever asks.”
The cashier said, “My grandson Byron, he has the acting bug, Mr. Ham.”
We’d almost made it out the door.
“Why not send him over sometime? Who knows, maybe we’ll cure him.”
We walked out into lemony-gray afternoon brightness, holding hands.
In North Beach the afternoon was still warm, but the stretchy shadows thrown by commercial buildings got me down. I slipped my arm around Ham’s waist as we strolled down a sloping block. “What now? What comes after squid?”
We were passing a café. A cozy café. Ham could have gone into it, ordered two espressos, we could have hunkered down at the wood counter and listened to Verdi.
Ham stopped. I caught his look. Sex, like grace, comes at you when you least expect it. “Your place?”
A mean question. “Not today,” I said.
“My office then.” We kept walking towards ShoeString.
“You’ll give me a VIP tour?”
“Maybe.”
I was in the studio’s guest suite on the floor directly above Ham’s office. You needed a special key to a special elevator to get to it. That’s where we found ourselves après-squid.
The whole floor was one big room, divided into purple and crimson alcoves for sleeping and partying. On the ceiling were murals of scenes from The Father of His Country, Part I. Fishing junks burning in a Hong Kong harbor. A half-naked white karate champ chopping bloody evil Japanese soldiers à la the young Frankie Fong. Grateful peasants stringing up fat tyrants. Asian belles with boob implants waving peacetime palm fronds.
“Like it?” Ham slid his hands under my T-shirt.
“A monument to yourself,” I murmured, “must be the most satisfying kind.” I let myself savor the probes and touches of those expert hands.
“Get you a drink?” The tip of Ham’s tongue traced my hairline.
“I don’t mind.”
“Later,” he whispered. The hands dragged themselves down my midriff. “Let’s be indiscreet first.”
I unbuckled Ham’s belt, and tugged his shirttail out and over his pants, felt him harden. He let go of me to unbutton his shirt. From just below the left collarbone to halfway down his chest, a scar cut diagonally through gray-brown chest hair. I kissed the scar. “I might tell you how I got it,” he said, “when we have that drink.” He stepped out of his slacks and shorts, but kept his socks and loafers on.
“Tell me how you like it,” he coaxed, pulling me down on a sofa, and pushing me back against cushions. “It’s all fair game.” He knelt in front of me. “You taste sweet. Sweet and corrupt and tender and very young.”
“Poor Ham,” I whispered, “poor Jimi.”
Afterwards we lay on the rug, and didn’t talk about Ham’s scar. We talked about safe things, like the perfect pet for a filmmaker (tropical fish), straight-to-video love affairs, dangerous women, what’s left that’s still sexy, still exciting.
“Got to go back to work sometime.” He raised himself on an elbow. “Want that drink now?”
I reached under the sofa with my feet for my T-shirt. “I want a job now.”
“That’s easy.” Ham pulled on his shorts. Gray-brown hair whorled above the wide waistband.
“Here’s a harder