gave out, for now or forever. Harry was desperate for love and sex, and for the first time, in that order.
Lovely, sleek Marlena Chu had boarded the bus to Lijiang ahead of him and had taken a window seat, while her daughter, Esmé, raced to the aft of the bus and flopped lengthwise on the long bench. Ye gods, an opportunity. Harry pretended to pass Marlena before reversing to inquire quietly whether she might have any aspirin. Women adore helping creatures in pain; Harry knew that, as well as the fact that ladies always carry remedies for menstrual cramps and headaches. As Marlena began to dig through her purse, he sat down next to her and waited puppylike for his treat.
Although Harry had seen Marlena at many social gatherings in San Francisco, here in this mountain valley in China, she looked positively exotic. Why was that? Why had he not sought her out before? Could it really be that he had overlooked her because she was past a certain dewy-skinned age? But look at her now. Everything about her was smooth and elegant: her hair, her face, her clothes, and especially her movements and gestures. When applying insect repellent, she looked like a goddess. Such grace, such style. She wore a simple black sleeveless sheath and a large colorful pleated scarf, wound and wrapped, so that it resembled a sarong, an origami shawl, a sari, the multiple effects waiting to be undone by a breeze, a whisper of consent in the night.
Naturally, he worried that his friend Moff might have similar thoughts. The two men often did when it came to women. He glanced over at Moff, who was staring right this moment at Heidi as she reached into the overhead rack to pull out a neck pillow from her rucksack. Moff’s son, Rupert, who had been playing with a deck of cards, also stared openly at the young woman’s breasts. Harry had noticed that Moff had given Marlena a number of second glances, his eyes drifting down the length of her figure, lingering on her buttocks. By sitting next to her, Harry hoped this territorial hint would find its way into his friend’s brain, stir some cognition where impulsive behavior and primitive reflexes now resided. Moff could be thickheaded exactly when you didn’t want him to be.
There was that time, Harry recalled, when they were both at a café in Stinson Beach, and Harry had clearly indicated his interest in the café’s owner by saying to Moff: “What gorgeous peepers. Huge hazel irises, fourteen millimeters in diameter, I reckon.” Harry had a fixation about eyes. And Moff had answered, “Really? Hadn’t noticed.” The next day Harry was back at the café and ordered eggs sunny-side up. The woman was friendly, but it was hard to move in more closely; she was like those hand-shy dogs in shelters that had been beaten by previous owners. But he loved the challenge of transforming untrusting creatures into licking maniacs. Take it slowly, he cautioned himself. No sudden moves.
The next day, she wasn’t there. He learned later that Moff had wooed the pants off her by asking if he could drop her somewhere on his refurbished Harley. She rode with him down the coast to Monterey, shedding almost every stitch of clothing and flinging it into the Pacific. After two rapturous months, Moff had to break things off because of “serious differences in expectations.” She responded by spray-painting his motorcycle pink. Harry was more upset than Moff about this report. Blast it! Moff had turned her into a Cerberus hellhound who wanted only to lunge and kill anyone with a penis. He had utterly ruined her as far as future dating was concerned. Adding insult to injury, Moff had also said to him, “Those hazel irises you admired so much? Colored contact lenses, my friend.”
What the devil did women see in Moff? Harry tried to imagine him from a female’s perspective.… He was taller than average (meaning, taller than Harry, who was five-feet-ten), had a passable build, lanky and no flab. But he was a complete washout when it came to proper clothes. His boyhood pal wore the same jungle-safari shirts and baggy short pants no matter what the season or event. And the shoes, well, they were more working-class boots, greased with dirt and flecked with paint. His hands were callused, like an ordinary laborer’s. He wasn’t the sort to buy a woman flowers or speak to her in endearments, not like Harry. And Moff’s hair was a mess, long bushy locks gathered into a ponytail, and a receding hairline accentuating a massive forehead. The latter made him appear super-brainy, which he was, Harry acknowledged, though he also knew that Moff had been kicked out of school for truancy and smoking pot by the time he was sixteen, and thus was forced to become an autodidact.
What knowledge Moff possessed had come from reading, roaming the streets, and took odd jobs in his youth, many of them in dockyards where he did inventory for import-export companies, the rest in backyards in Miami and Los Angeles, where he pruned hedges and cleaned pools. His interest in bamboo began in the 1970s, when he grew walls of it to camouflage his marijuana plants. Keen to make his cannabis as powerful per puff as possible, he devoured books on horticulture, particularly those related to genetic enhancement. Later, bamboo cultivation itself superseded his nefarious grass-growing interests—and why wouldn’t it, when bamboo regenerated so quickly, just like marijuana, but without the legal hassles? And thus he made the 1980s transition to capitalist farmer, shipping containers of “live product,” as he called it, to the lobbies of new office buildings, remodeled airports, and luxury hotels around the world. (Harry didn’t know at the time that Moff and Marlena had quite a few clients in common. Then again, neither did Moff.)
All right, so Moff had an unconventional business, Harry granted him that. And by calling himself a “plantation owner,” Moff made himself highly attractive to women with romantic illusions. They probably thought the plantation was idyllic, like the set for a dinosaur movie, and indeed, it had been used for that purpose on several occasions. But Moff himself had not a whit of romance in his brain. His plantation was intentionally situated near the Laguna Seca Raceway in Salinas, and that was where he took his dates—a factor in a man’s favor if a woman’s idea of a good time was smelling crankcase oil and getting her eardrums blown out by the rpms of Le Mans prototypes. Inexplicably, there was no shortage of women in that category.
Perhaps, Harry thought, he should just be direct with Moff, inform him straightaway that he was interested in Marlena, strongly so. “Old chum, I hope you don’t mind, but you know …” and Harry would indicate with a nod that the lady in favor was Marlena. He imagined Moff would reply with a “Ho-ho,” then clap his hand firmly on Harry’s back, thus sealing their understanding. Marlena, while unaware of the pact, would subconsciously sense the respect these two men shared and never violate it by bedding both of them.
“Have you noticed the trees along the roadside?” Marlena now said to him. Harry peered out the window and in doing so leaned his chest against her arm, his cheek hovering close to hers. The tree trunks were painted white halfway up.
“It’s been that way mile after mile,” she continued, “like a white picket fence.”
My God, Harry thought, her voice was liquid amber, light and mysterious. “An insecticide,” he concluded.
She frowned. “Really? I thought it was so the drivers could see the road at night.”
He backpedaled: “Brilliant deduction. Dual-purpose white. Kills bugs, saves lives.”
“Watching the trees can be hypnotic, though,” she added. “Not great for drivers.”
“Is that why I’m feeling dazed?” He stared into her eyes.
Out of protective instinct, she did a quick deflect. “Probably jet lag.”
He wished he could see her eyes more clearly, but the light was too dim. He could tell how responsive a woman was from the way her pupils reacted. If they pulsed into superdilation, that meant she was open to flirtation, and sex within hours if not minutes was a strong possibility.
Marlena smiled, then yawned. “I can’t wait to fall into my bed.”
“Funny,” Harry quipped, “I’m looking forward to the exact same thing.” He gave his best version of a puppy panting.
She
