was no need for jealousy. As I made some headway into that third drink, I began to see the appeal of bringing both of them home with me tonight, the salesman in his designer suit with the spark and glamour, the solid engineer with the staying power. Isn’t that what I really wanted? To compare the flavor of their kisses, like different vintages of a fine claret. To watch two different hands caress each breast, side by side, Brad’s tapered fingers, Tim’s squared, thick hands which, like everything about his body, made me think of that luscious word big. In the end—the thought made me shiver—I’d be sandwiched between them, their cocks filling me front and rear, my body stretched and filled so full my head would explode when I came. Filled so completely I would never be hungry again. I always feared that I craved too much pleasure. Perhaps the problem was that I didn’t ask for enough?
‘I think you should ask her now,’ Tim snapped. ‘It’s getting late.’
‘Ask me what?’
Brad turned and gave me a conciliatory smile. ‘Well, Sensei, Tim and I wanted to ask you a question. We want to know the truth about you.’
All at once I saw everything: Tim’s single pint glass, half-full, Brad finishing his first beer quickly, wiping his mouth, and in front of me two empty glasses and one full one, glittering like washed gold.
They are trying to get me drunk.
Or rather, they’d already succeeded. Suddenly I was aware of my teeth sitting in my head, tingling. They could ask the question, but I wasn’t sure my tongue could manage a reply.
‘The truth?’ I repeated stupidly, as if it were a foreign word.
‘Well, do you remember when the president of your company introduced you at the first meeting and he said your course would give us an understanding of Japanese business practices that would ensure our success in the challenging international environment?’
I nodded, although I’d done my best to tune out the old windbag. It was pure fantasy that I could teach anyone in five evening sessions what I had failed to do in almost a decade of all-too-earnest effort. I found it amusing, too, that in the eyes of the world this charade was the most respectable job I’d had in quite a while.
‘Do you remember after he said that, you did this?’ Brad folded his hands and rolled his eyes in perfect imitation of a surly teenager.
‘I did not do that,’ I protested, but my voice rose in a damning adolescent whine.
‘You did, and not only that. When he said, “Lydia Yoshikawa will provide you with a highly experienced insider’s perspective on Japanese interpersonal relations,” you did this.’ He brought his hand to his mouth as if to stifle a snicker.
I’d been sitting at the back of the room and didn’t think anyone would bother to look in my direction. Of course, Brad had been paying attention.
Instinctively I turned to Tim for help. All he gave me was a merciless grin, his eyes narrowed as if he enjoyed watching me squirm. Harsh punishment for such a small transgression, a bit of flirting with his friend. The nice ones are always the cruelest in the end. They lull you into thinking you’ve found paradise then cut you out cold.
‘The truth?’ I said again. ‘That might take a long time.’
They gazed at me, waiting.
What could I tell them? That I knew little of Japanese business practices, but plenty about picking up strangers in hot spring baths, handcuffing guys to beds in tacky love hotels, playing mistress to wealthy playboys, and miming sex acts on stage at a year-end banquet, among other activities I had thought best not to mention on my résumé? That if I hadn’t had sex with every last able-bodied Japanese male over eighteen, it wasn’t for lack of trying? That I was a fraud and a lecher who’d spent every class undressing them in my mind and forcing them to service my insatiable sexual needs?
Suddenly tears sprang to my eyes. Real tears. I had been unprofessional and now I would lose my job, just as I’d lost everything else. What a fool I was to think I could make a fresh start. I was still the same old troublemaker, indulging dangerous whims, sabotaging myself at every turn. I buried my face in my hands and took a few deep breaths. Clear your mind. Let it go. Then a stronger voice rose up through the beer-induced fog, older, familiar, the one I always listened to: Run.
‘I’m not feeling well. I think I’d better go home,’ I managed to say. ‘I don’t think I can drive myself though. If one of you could please call a taxi . . .’
That’s how Tim ended up driving me home in my car, with Brad following me in his to drive Tim back to the office, and then they both insisted they walk me in to make sure I was OK.
In fact, I couldn’t have worked out a better way to get both of them back to my place for a three-way romp if I’d planned it from the beginning.
CHAPTER SIX
My townhouse was, to say the least, not ready for guests. I hadn’t bought furniture for the downstairs, partly because of money, but mostly because I liked the spaciousness of it after my cramped apartment in Japan. Now, with two normal American guys glancing uncomfortably around the empty rooms, what had been an abundance of pure possibility seemed to reveal a disturbing lack.
It got worse. Murmuring something about getting me a glass of water, Brad walked into my kitchen and opened the refrigerator door to find nothing but a container of plain yogurt and a phallic-looking package of pickled white radish.
‘We need to get you some dinner,’ Brad said. ‘Is Chinese OK? There’s a pretty good place a few blocks from here.’
I waited meekly as Brad called in our order—Buddha’s Delight and brown rice for me—and sent Tim out to pick up the food.
What else could I do then but invite him up to my bedroom?
When Brad saw the fireplace and the pile of wood the former tenants had left stacked neatly beside it, he offered to make a fire, which wasn’t such a bad idea on this chilly spring evening.
‘Thanks for doing all of this. I’ll be ashamed to face you next week in class, but you’ll probably get me fired for what I did, so at least I won’t have to worry about that.’
‘Do you mean because of those funny faces you made? I won’t tell. In fact, that’s when I decided I liked you.’
I felt oddly moved by his words. I wanted him to like me. I wanted them all to like me. That was the problem.
‘Well, I’d like to keep my job.’
‘I want what you want, Sensei.’ He smiled at me for a long moment, then began crumpling newspaper for kindling.
I stretched out on the floor and tucked the meditation pillow under my head. I liked watching him at work. His rolled-up sleeves and loosened tie gave him a fetching vulnerability, a boy playing businessman. ‘You must have been a Boy Scout.’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but I dropped out.’ I laughed.
The doorbell rang and Brad motioned me to stay put while he went downstairs to let Tim in. With a bag of fragrant Chinese take-out in his arms, my Irish engineer looked even more delicious than I remembered. There it was again, that pang of arousal. Like hunger, but lower.
