The Pearl Diver Read online

  Everyone meant people with money, I thought cynically. “So how much money do you have to give the senator to become his friend?”

  “An individual can’t give more than two grand because of all the soft-money reforms, but people like me can encourage our friends to give money. Lots of people, lots of money. You weren’t here during the McCain campaign, but I threw a dinner for him that people are still talking about.”

  “McCain wasn’t a Democrat,” I pointed out. “What are you, a switch-hitter?”

  “Usually I describe myself as a conservative Democrat with independent leanings,” Kendall said. “Anyway, I promise you lunch won’t be too political. I want you to relax. You can talk with him about Japan. He did some kind of Zen yoga thing there when he was in his twenties. Maybe you have some friends in common.” She paused. “Oh, Rei. About your clothes?”

  “Yes. What should I wear?” A private lunch with a senator was a first for me.

  “Think Democrat, but dress Republican. Got it?”

  I went through my closet furiously that morning, tossing clothes left and right as I searched for the outfit that Kendall had in mind. At one time, I had many conservative skirts and blazers from Talbots, but Hugh had encouraged me to toss them after I’d left my old life as a teacher. Now I wore sexier, casual things—leather jeans, blue jeans, T-shirts, miniskirts, boots. I also had a magnificent collection of cast-off clothing of my mother’s that spanned the sixties to the nineties. The clothes were well made and beautiful, but none of them was Reagan Red or Bush Blue—after all, my mother was a lefty, too—but in the end, I settled on a cream Ultrasuede pantsuit worn with a black camisole. Looking at myself in the mirror after I’d belted its jacket, I appeared unhappily thick in the middle. Since returning to the States, I’d rekindled my love affair with bread and cheese. The scale said 121, which was horrific for someone who had hovered carelessly between 110 and 115 her entire life.

  Still, the pants had an elastic waist, so I was able to wear them. I covered it all up with an aquamarine-colored raincoat that Kendall had made me buy a month earlier during a frenetic shopping expedition we’d made through White Flint Mall with her babies in tow. A raincoat was a necessity in Washington; it seemed as if it had rained all spring. Today was no exception. I hoisted my umbrella and left Hugh’s Edwardian apartment building on Mintwood Place. The neighborhood we lived in, Adams-Morgan, was a real hike from the Metro; Hugh had chosen it when he was a bachelor, for the restaurants and bars. He hadn’t thought twice about the twenty-minute walk to the Metro because he used a car to go to work downtown.

  It was an odd habit, I thought, this insistence on driving a car in cities with public transportation.

  Again, I was reminded of the city’s deficiencies. When Hugh had courted me, taking me to jazz clubs in Georgetown and coffee shops in Dupont Circle, I’d been charmed; but now that I’d more or less explored every inch of the nation’s capital, I felt otherwise. Sure, there were delightful late-nineteenth-century brick and stucco houses in Adams-Morgan, and you could dance at a real salsa bar, or get a reasonably priced Brazilian bikini wax from a real Brazilian, but that wasn’t enough to make a world-class city experience. Outside Adams-Morgan, the situation was even bleaker. Downtown Washington was a bore, a far cry from my birthplace of San Francisco, and Tokyo, my adopted hometown since college. In Washington, there was nowhere to browse, no scene. Large office buildings were interspersed with ugly chain stores and just a smattering of turn-of-the-century buildings that had gone to pot—literally, from the looks of some of the people lounging outside them.

  As I emerged from the Metro Center station and headed toward Ninth, where Mandala was located, I passed a woman sitting on the steps of an old row house, a child between her knees and a Styrofoam cup at her side. I didn’t always give money to people who asked me for it, and the woman hadn’t even looked at me, let alone spoken. Yet I was overcome with guilt for what I’d just been thinking about Washington. I dropped a dollar in the cup, but only the child looked at me. She had a typically round child’s face, but eyes that looked much older. She seemed to see through me, back to the wild salmon I’d had for breakfast, and the expensive meal that lay ahead. A dollar wasn’t much of a trade, but she nodded at me, and I nodded back.

  I shivered, trying to put the moment behind me as I opened the heavy old temple door that led to Mandala. I hadn’t been here before, but Hugh had, for some business lunches, and he’d told me it was fantastic. Judging from the atmosphere alone, it was my kind of place. Flickering electric candles in iron sconces illuminated a gorgeous mosaic tile floor with a floral mandala in its center. The dining tables were made from old Chinese altar tables or doors, I thought after a moment of study. Everything was rubbed to a soft reddish sheen, and the waitstaff wore dark-red shantung Mao jackets over black pants. It was quite a scene, about a million miles removed from the rainy, drab world outside its oversized brass doors.

  The hostess, who had a long, blond pigtail and a hard-to-place European accent, told me that I’d have to wait for a table until my entire party was assembled. I glanced around the half-empty restaurant in irritation and spotted Kendall smack in the center of the room—as close to the mandala as she could get without being on top of it. Kendall, a leopard-patterned cell phone glued to her ear, looked perfect in a teal-blue knit suit and candy-red lipstick. She fluttered matching red-tipped fingers at me.

  “I was just speaking with Harp. He said he’s running a few minutes late,” Kendall said after she clicked off. “Ooh, don’t you look faboo. Did you get that at Neiman’s?”

  “I. Magnin,” I said, which was where my mother had bought it about twenty-five years ago. The San Francisco department store didn’t even exist anymore, but Kendall was an East Coast girl who wouldn’t know that.

  “Very cool. Hey, I was just about to order a martini—how do you like yours? Vodka, gin, dirty?”

  “Not this early. I’ll be happy with a glass of water,” I said, studying the menu card in front of me with pleasure. I loved restaurants, especially ones that knew their way around a stick of lemongrass, as this one probably did.

  “Don’t tell me you’re preggers already!” Kendall exclaimed.

  “Of course I’m not.” I flushed, feeling as if she’d been secretly watching the morning’s activities.

  “Oh, that’s a drag. What kind of undies does Hugh wear?”

  “What do you mean?” I put down my menu, not understanding Kendall’s lightning change of topic. But the fact was, ever since Kendall had laid eyes on Hugh, she’d had a consuming interest in matters relating to him. Yes, the Scottish accent was sexy, as was his six-foot frame and his golden-retriever mop of hair. But he was mine.

  “I mean, does he wear boxers or briefs?” Kendall looked at me expectantly.

  “If Hugh wants to tell you about his underwear, I’ll let him tell you directly.”

  “Now, honey, don’t get your panties in a twist. It’s just that if he’s wearing tightey-whiteys, that could be overheating him and affecting his sperm count. Make sure he’s wearing boxers, okay?”

  “Kendall, why would I want to get pregnant before the wedding?” I was beginning to wish I hadn’t come to lunch. If she kept up this kind of banter around the senator, I’d be mortified.

  “To make sure it really happens! Come on, Rei, it’s one of the oldest tricks in the book. And the best. I hear Grand did it to snare Granddad.”

  Silently, I vowed to myself to buy condoms on the way home.

  “Believe me, it’s better to get on these things right away. You don’t want to have to go through IVF like I did.”

  “I hear that’s pretty rough,” I said in a low voice, because people at the next table were shooting us irritated looks. Probably the topic of sperm count wasn’t what they wanted to digest along with tuna tartare.

  “It is,” Kendall said vehemently. “It hurts, it costs a fortune, and the end product is pretty damn unpredictable. The fertility specialist to whom
I paid half a year’s salary, thank you very much, had me impregnated with five fetuses at one point. I count my lucky stars that I wound up just with the twins.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” I paused. “What happened? Did you lose the others?”

  “In a manner of speaking.” Kendall looked at me evenly, and suddenly I sensed that she was telling me she’d had an abortion. Or would it count as three? “Anyway, Rei, don’t worry. I’ve seen the size of Hugh’s hands and feet. From the looks of them, I’m sure he has no problem with anything down south.”

  She was so outrageous that there was nothing I could do but laugh, which was, I realized, what she’d wanted all along. The IVF conversation had probably taken a more depressing turn than she’d liked. So we laughed for a minute like a couple of high school girls. I broke off only when I noticed an elegant silver-haired man with a face I recognized from the newspaper. Harp Snowden was being helped off with his raincoat by one of the red-silk gang, at the same time that another male customer was trying to pat him on the back, and another was shaking his hand. Harp Snowden’s briefcase slipped but was caught by someone. From the body language, it seemed as if the man who’d caught his briefcase was angling to accompany him to our table, but I saw Harp shake his head before raising his eyebrows at Kendall and shooting her a broad smile.

  Kendall had risen to her feet, as had I. In Washington, it seemed that younger people always stood for older, more important people. He moved toward us with a very slight limp, and I recalled his missing foot. He walked without a cane, though, and from what I could make out from under the cuffs of his dark gray trousers, he was wearing two perfectly normal, polished wing tip shoes.

  “Harp!” Kendall said, bringing her cheek to his mouth for a social kiss that he delivered smoothly upon his arrival. “I brought my cousin Rei Shimura to meet you.”

  “Senator Snowden, this is a real honor.” I started to bow before remembering I wasn’t in Japan. I came up and took the firm handshake he offered. “I’m a great admirer of your consistent stance on gun control. We heard about it all around the world, even when I was living in Japan—”

  “Why thank you,” he said, shrugging off the compliment with a warm laugh. “I hope you’re from Virginia now.”

  “No, she lives in the District proper, where you’ll have no trouble securing votes. My husband, Win, has been trying to find her and her fiancé something more family sized in the suburbs.” Kendall looked at me indulgently. “Rei’s used to historic San Francisco real estate. It’s where she grew up.”

  “Oh, you’re a past constituent!” Harp Snowden smiled at me. “No wonder you’re familiar with my voting record.”

  I blushed with pleasure. I couldn’t believe he was being so nice to me.

  “Rei went on to Japan, but she’s just moved back. I thought she could advise us on what to order.”

  “Actually, I’ve never been here,” I said, feeling awkward about the position I’d been put in.

  “Oh, everything on the menu’s wonderful,” Harp boomed as a handsome Asian man in his thirties with a short, gelled haircut and a spotless chef’s jacket moved toward our table, a square black plate filled with hors d’oeuvres in his hand. “Jiro, my good friend. How are you?”

  The chef was Japanese, I realized with a tinge of excitement as I heard his name. His English, as he started speaking, was soft but strong. “Very well, Senator. But what about you? How was your party last week? I called to check the next day, but you were away—”

  “Back in L.A. The whole menu was terrific, and my wife wants the short-ribs recipe. I told her that it was probably classified.”

  Jiro’s brow creased, and I sensed that despite his good English, he hadn’t understood the metaphor. I said a quick couple of words in Japanese that explained what the senator had meant about the recipe being a valuable secret.

  “Ah. You speak Japanese!” Jiro appeared to really notice me, for the first time.

  “Yes, you certainly do, and it sounds fluent. What do you do with it?” Snowden asked.

  I was beginning to replace the outsider image I’d had of Harp Snowden with that of a smooth-as-silk operator. “Well, I just moved here, like Kendall said, and I’m trying to sell Japanese antiques. It’s a venture I started with a good friend who ships the furniture from Tokyo.”

  “Oh, so you were in Tokyo! Just like me.” Jiro beamed at me and I felt warmly included. In Japan, so often I’d been reminded I was an outsider, but here in Washington, Jiro and I were both Japanese expats.

  “Jiro was one of the iron chefs,” Kendall said. “The cutest one they ever had. He was one for weeks and weeks.”

  “Until the day I made the terrible mistake of my lobster custard. I garnished with cilantro, and the sad fact was, one of the judges had an allergy.”

  “It’s impossible to keep winning,” I said. “Anyway, the show’s finished now, so you have something else important to do.”

  “Yes, and the program brought me a wonderful job offer here in America. And now, before they become cold, I insist you try my amuse-bouche.”

  The little hors d’oeuvres he’d brought certainly were amusing: an assortment of sea scallops wrapped and grilled in lime leaves, cilantro risotto cakes topped with crisply fried seaweed, and miso-smothered rack of lamb ribs.

  While I loved miso, I was trying not to eat meat, so I took a scallop first. I tasted the sea, the lime, and a slight hint of something else. “Hmm,” I said. “Star anise?”

  “Yes, yes! We roast and grind the spices here. It’s not a Japanese ingredient, of course, but Chinese. This restaurant is what people call Pan-Asian. We mix European flavors with the Far East,” Jiro explained.

  “It’s very delicious,” I said. “I haven’t had anything as tasty and sophisticated in a long time.”

  “Jiro’s opening a new restaurant on H Street, near Fifth,” Kendall said. “Win’s selling the building next to it, so he’s been watching the progress and says it’s going to be great, like Mandala only more vintage-looking.”

  “Actually, it will be quite different from Mandala,” Jiro said. “The new restaurant we are calling Bento, after the simple wooden box used to hold food. At lunch the service will be bento service, nice and quick, and for dinner, it will be kaiseki ryoori, when people have more leisure to eat slowly and appreciate.”

  “I ate kaiseki just once in Japan,” Harp said. “They told me it was the highest form of Japanese cuisine. Each of the courses, as I recall, had something to do with the yuzu root. Why they chose yuzu is beyond me, though!”

  “What do you think?” Jiro deferred to me, and I realized that he was being very Japanese—hesitant to tell the senator that yuzu was a revered food, and if he didn’t appreciate it, it was probably because he was foreign.

  “Kaiseki cooking is very intellectual,” I said. “The goal is to send out a parade of exquisite small dishes that are linked, symbolically, and what they look like is sometimes more important than what they taste like. I’ve eaten kaiseki only a few times, but each time, the meal took up half a day—”

  “Not here,” Jiro said with a rueful smile. “We need to turn over tables faster than that. We are timing it for presentation over two hours.”

  “Well, I almost wish that was the timeline for lunch, not dinner,” Kendall said with a laugh. “I like a nice long time to chat over lunch.”

  “You can always stay as long as you like, Kendall,” Jiro said. “And actually, the problem is, we may not be able to do proper Japanese lunchtime service. We were supposed to receive bento boxes last month, but the manufacturer is having trouble finishing our order. He says he does not have the resources to produce the amount we need in time.”

  “A Japanese manufacturer?” I asked.

  Jiro wrinkled his nose slightly. “No. The boxes in Japan are made of pine or balsa and are too simple for what we are trying to accomplish. We found a woodworker in California with a supply of redwood. I wouldn’t concern myself with these problems normally, b
ut you see, the design of our food must coordinate with the kind of utensils we offer—”

  “I could look into lacquered or stained wooden bento boxes for you,” I said. “I know a good source for them in Kappabashi.”

  “Thank you, Miss, ah…” Jiro raised his eyebrows and I realized that I hadn’t introduced myself to him. I told him my name quickly, and he smiled. Then, as if he’d sensed the needs of Kendall and the senator, he told us about the day’s specials.

  After listening to the recitation, Kendall went for salmon, the senator free-range beef, while I chose soft-shell crabs with a lemongrass-chili salsa and a salad of jicama and orange. I began a quick mental calculation of how much more I could afford to eat, since I had gone out with $40 in my backpack and had, in the course of ordering the two menu items, almost spent it all already.

  Kendall and Senator Snowden had moved to second base, a general discussion of how the various Democratic candidates were doing. Kendall needled him a bit about whether he was going to jump into the race of Democratic hopefuls, and instead of answering her, he pumped her for information about the kind of fund-raising events that had worked best in northern, versus the rest of, Virginia. I became slightly bored by the talk about town-hall meetings and musical entertainment, but the food was wonderful, and I ate steadily.

  Senator Snowden surprised me by turning the conversation to Japan. He’d been flown there for periodic spells of R and R during the Vietnam War, along with thousands of other men. “Two weeks’ worth of Kirin and young women was supposed to put us in the mood to go back and reload our weapons,” he said ruefully. “I made the fatal mistake of leaving the Yokosuka Honch to visit a Buddhist temple. And once I sat down to meditate, I saw the truth. I couldn’t go back to the old ways.”

  “Do you mean you went AWOL?” I asked.

  “No. But I turned into the kind of man who was too frightened to pull the trigger anymore.” He smiled, and I could imagine just how attractive—and un-wimpy—he must have been in his twenties. “Understandably, the Marines in my unit weren’t too thrilled to work with me. Eventually, I lost my foot. I was sent to the hospital and then home.”