smile and bowed to Akito’s bow and pumped his hand with as much warmth as I could, which wasn’t much since Akito had a grip whose vice-like crush implied long hours practising karate or some other fortifying regimen. We exchanged a few brief inanities about the markets and then turned back to the women.
‘Don’t I even get a “hi”, Nori?’ asked Kim, and, after the briefest of pauses, the two women embraced, Honoria smiling at Kim as might a mother at a lovable but incorrigible child. ‘Nori’ was the family nickname for Honoria and a vast improvement it was over the original, but Nori preferred Honoria, especially from her inferiors, which was almost everyone.
Laughing, Kim broke away from Honoria and, ignoring me, seated herself in a patio chair quickly held for her by the good-looking Japanese, Akito.
‘Well, Kim,’ said Honoria, her blue eyes intense with something, but whether pleasure, interest in her cousin’s escapades, or combativeness, I couldn’t tell. ‘Where have you been?’
‘Into New York last night,’ Kim said. ‘Then here this morning. Then Mr Akito kidnapped me as I arrived and insisted he show me the river.’
From behind her chair Akito smiled easily and, after his older colleague and Mr Battle had settled into chairs, seated himself next to Kim.
‘The victim went willingly,’ he said in barely accented English. ‘It may even have been her idea.’
‘Details,’ ‘said Kim. The point is we had a lovely morning, and – how are you, Uncle?’ This last she addressed to Mr Battle, who looked as if he deeply disliked being called ‘Uncle’, which, I guessed, probably accounted for Kim’s using the term.
‘I’m fine, Kim,’ he said with a scowl. ‘I’m fine. I’m glad you’ve all enjoyed yourselves. Gentlemen, have you had lunch?’
‘Miss Castelli introduced us to a most interesting pizza restaurant,’ said Akito. ‘Part of a chain, as I understand it.’ I was impressed that his little half-smile indicated absolutely no suggestion of what he might be thinking about the merits of eating at the local Pizza Hut.
‘How are you, Nori?’ asked Kim, her wide brown eyes mischievously alert. ‘Haven’t you got a wedding coming up one of these days?’
‘Oh, yes, I think you’re right,’ said Honoria. ‘But in the winter, I believe. I’ll have to check my calendar,’ she added in a tone of heavy irony.
Kim finally turned her eyes on me, a glance that although little different from the one she’d bestowed on the others, nevertheless sent my heart unexpectedly racing ahead as if a fire alarm had been set off. Although Kim was smiling and her eyes were bright, I, though unaware of it at the time, was glaring at her: I knew chaos when I saw it.
‘And you must be Larry,’ she said. ‘I bet you know the date. Nori says you’ve got a good head for figures.’
Since my head, if not my eyes, had been gaping at her breasts, which I was sure had been swaying bra-lessly beneath her loose sweatshirt, her statement that I had a good head for figures seemed to be some sort of double entendre. I flushed.
‘February twenty-eighth,’ I managed to answer.
‘He wanted the twenty-ninth,’ said Honoria, smiling. ‘But I pointed out there was no such date.’
While everyone else smiled at this little hit, I felt another burst of annoyance. I knew that the invasion of Kim was a Saddam Hussein: a sudden, unexpected new element which was bound to upset the markets. Chaos had come.
The rest of the day only proved my first intuition was correct. When we ended up playing tennis for an hour and a half Kim continued to be provocative – in all senses of that word. While the rest of us dressed in trim white shorts, blouses, socks and tennis shoes, Kim came out as the feminine equivalent of Andre Agassi: scruffy sneakers, raggedy cut-off blue jeans, and a multicoloured T-shirt that looked like an explosion in a paint factory.
And her playing style was no better. Whereas Honoria and I had competitive spirits of Superbowl quality – she’d been taking lessons from the age of six – Kim played as if she didn’t have a care in the world. Honoria and I, partners, fought for every point as if our victory alone would stave off a nuclear holocaust, and Akito played the same way, racing and diving and grunting and grimacing with quite un-Japanese passion.
But Kim played as if she were a child at a Sunday picnic, each point a lark. If she missed an easy overhead she smiled and shrugged. If she accidentally hit a woodshot that turned out to be a winner she laughed, not noting that her accidental winner was sending both Honoria and me into the kind of deep depression that normally takes years of therapy to overcome. Kim played hard but didn’t seem to distinguish between her winners and her losers. Even Akito, lusting after her with his healthy male appetite, was clearly annoyed at her lack of devotion to beating the crap out of us. He tried to join in her smiles when she smiled and her laughter when she laughed, but his smile came out a grimace and his laughter like a sumo wrestler’s grunt.
And I hated the way Kim frolicked around the court in her raggedy shorts and tight T-shirt, her breasts bouncing and swaying and doing all in their power to take my eyes off the ball. She was a few inches shorter than Honoria and more compact, with taut tanned legs that looked as if they belonged on a gymnast. And it also irked me that Akito often seemed as distracted by Kim’s swoops and sways of breasts as I was. Chaos.
When it was over, Akito shook hands with us, the winners, with all the grace of his ancestors on the battleship Missouri at the end of World War II. But Kim bounded to the net as if greeting long-lost friends, her dark hair wild, sweaty and straggling about her face as if she’d almost drowned. Honoria, who had played twice as hard, although gleaming with perspiration, was nevertheless still as neat and dignified as a monarch greeting commoners at a royal reception.
Then later, when we were all having drinks on the patio, Kim showed up with a sweatshirt emblazoned with the logo ‘Losers enjoy more free time’, a clear affront to her guardian and all the right-thinking, high-earning people present.
‘This Château Borgnini is one of a kind,’ Mr Battle announced to one and all, holding up his glass so that the sunlight shimmered through it, giving it a deep purple glow. ‘It’s so expensive most French people don’t even know it exists.’
‘It is delightful,’ pronounced Akito, with a smile and a slight bow of his head to his host.
‘I prefer a cold beer,’ said Kim. ‘But it does look lovely in these glasses, that I admit.’
‘Daddy bought it last spring in Paris,’ said Honoria.
‘It cost three hundred dollars a bottle,’ announced Mr Battle proudly. ‘You might give it a decent try.’
‘I’ve always wondered what an eighty-dollar glass of wine would taste like,’ said Kim, taking a small sip from a fresh goblet poured for her by Hawkins. She paused. ‘And now I know.’
‘Wonderful, isn’t it?’ suggested Mr Battle.
‘Yes it is,’ said Kim. ‘I’m glad I’ve discovered something else I can do without.’
‘Aren’t you being a little ostentatiously philistine?’ I said, annoyed at her rudeness. ‘Most women I know would fake an orgasm from a single sip.’
‘I save my fake orgasms for men,’ said Kim, and poked Akito with an elbow to show she’d just made a good shot. Akito joined her in loud laughter.
‘Oh, Kimsy, stop trying to shock us,’ said Honoria, smiling. ‘It’s adolescent.’
‘I know,’ said Kim calmly, looking at me. ‘But being surrounded by parents does that to me.’
‘What happened to that guru you were so enthusiastic about?’ Honoria asked, changing the subject.