"...would you like to join me for dinner?"
Her smile grew even broader.
"I'd love to," she said. She effortlessly unwound her legs and bounced to her feet, then brushed past me, trailing the smells of perspiration and sweet soap. "Be with you in a minute."
I looked around the room again but my mind kept coming back to her. She liked Pepsi with her pizza; there were dozens of empty cans. There was a deep scar on her knee and upper thigh. The ashtrays were empty... and the long muscles of her calves bunched strongly as she walked. Kluge must have smoked, but Lisa didn't, and she had fine, downy hairs in the small of her back just visible in the green computer light. I heard water running in the bathroom sink, looked at a yellow notepad covered with the kind of penmanship I hadn't seen in decades, and smelled soap and remembered tawny brown skin and an easy stride.
She appeared in the hall, wearing cut-off jeans, sandals, and a new T-shirt. The old one had advertised BURROUGHS OFFICE SYSTEMS. This one featured Mickey Mouse and Snow White's Castle and smelled of fresh bleached cotton. Mickey's ears were laid back on the upper slopes of her incongruous breasts.
I followed her out the door. Tinkerbell twinkled in pixie dust from the back of her shirt.
"I like this kitchen," she said.
You don't really look at a place until someone says something like that.
The kitchen was a time capsule. It could have been lifted bodily from an issue of Life in the early fifties. There was the hump-shouldered Frigidaire, of a vintage when that word had been a generic term, like Xerox or Coke. The counter tops were yellow tile, the sort that's only found in bathrooms these days. There wasn't an ounce of Formica in the place. Instead of a dishwasher I had a wire rack and a double sink. There was no electric can opener, Cuisinart, trash compacter, or microwave oven.
The newest thing in the whole room was a fifteen-year-old blender.
I'm good with my hands. I like to repair things.
"This bread is terrific," she said.
I had baked it myself. I watched her mop her plate with a crust, and she asked if she might have seconds.
I understand cleaning one's plate with bread is bad manners. Not that I cared; I do it myself. And other than that, her manners were impeccable. She polished off three helpings of my casserole and when she was done the plate hardly needed washing. I had a sense of a ravenous appetite barely held in check.
She settled back in her chair and I refilled her glass with white wine.
"Are you sure you wouldn't like some more peas?"
"I'd bust." She patted her stomach contentedly. "Thank you so much, Mr. Apfel. I haven't had a home-cooked meal in ages."
"You can call me Victor."
"I just love American food."
"I didn't know there was such a thing. I mean, not like Chinese or... you are American, aren't you?"
She just smiled. "What I meant—"
"I know what you meant, Victor. I'm a citizen, but not native-born. Would you excuse me for a moment? I know it's impolite to jump right up, but with these braces I find I have to brush instantly after eating."
I could hear her as I cleared the table. I ran water in the sink and started doing the dishes. Before long she joined me, grabbed a dish towel, and began drying the things in the rack, over my protests.
"You live alone here?" she asked.
"Yes. Have ever since my parents died."
"Ever married? If it's none of my business, just say so."
"That's all right. No, I never married."
"You do pretty good for not having a woman around."
"I've had a lot of practice. Can I ask you a question?"
"Shoot."
"Where are you from? Taiwan?"
"I have a knack for languages. Back home, I spoke pidgin American, but when I got here I cleaned up my act. I also speak rotten French, illiterate Chinese in four or five varieties, gutter Vietnamese, and enough Thai to holler 'Me wanna see American Consul, pretty-damn-quick, you!' "
I laughed. When she said it, her accent was thick.
"I been here eight years now. You figured out where home is?"
"Vietnam?" I ventured.
"The sidewalks of Saigon, fer shure. Or Ho Chi Minh's Shitty, as the pajama-heads renamed it, may their dinks rot off and their butts be filled with jagged punjee sticks. Pardon my French."
She ducked her head in embarrassment. What had started out light had turned hot very quickly. I sensed a hurt at least as deep as my own, and we both backed off from it.
"I took you for a Japanese," I said.
"Yeah, ain't it a pisser? I'll tell you about it someday. Victor, is that a laundry room through that door there? With an electric washer?"
"That's right."
"Would it be too much trouble if I did a load?"
It was no trouble at all. She had seven pairs of faded jeans, some with the legs cut away, and about two dozen T-shirts. It could have been a load of boy's clothing except for the frilly underwear.
We went into the backyard to sit in the last rays of the setting sun, then she had to see my garden.
I'm quite proud of it. When I'm well, I spend four or five hours a day working out there, year-round, usually in the morning hours. You can do that in southern California. I have a greenhouse I built myself.
She loved it, though it was not in its best shape. I had spent most of the week in bed or in the tub. As a result, weeds were sprouting here and there.
"We had a garden when I was little," she said. "And I spent two years in a rice paddy."
"That must be a lot different than this."
"Damn straight. Put me off rice for years."
She discovered an infestation of aphids, so we squatted down to pick them off. She had that doublejointed Asian peasant's way of sitting that I remembered so well and could never imitate. Her fingers were long and narrow, and soon the tips of them were green from squashed bugs.
We talked about this and that. I don't remember quite how it came up, but I told her I had fought in Korea. I learned she was twenty-five. It turned out we had the same birthday, so some months back I had been exactly twice her age.
The only time Kluge's name came up was when she mentioned how she liked to cook. She hadn't been able to at Kluge's house.
"He has a freezer in the garage full of frozen dinners," she said. "He had one plate, one fork, one spoon, and one glass. He's got the best microwave oven on the market. And that's it, man. Ain't nothing else in his kitchen at all." She shook her head, and executed an aphid. "He was one weird dude."
When her laundry was done it was late evening, almost dark. She loaded it into my wicker basket and we took it out to the clothesline. It got to be a game. I would shake out a T-shirt and study the picture or message there. Sometimes I got it, and sometimes I didn't. There were pictures of rock groups, a map of Los Angeles, Star Trek tie-ins... a little of everything.
"What's the L5 Society?" I asked her.
"Guys that want to build these great big farms in space. I asked 'em if they were gonna grow rice, and they said they didn't think it was the best crop for zero gee, so I bought the shirt."
"How many of these things do you have?"
"Wow, it's gotta be four or five hundred. I usually wear 'em two or three times and then put them away."
I picked up another shirt, and a bra fell out. It wasn't the kind of bra girls wore when I was growing up. It was very sheer, though somehow functional at the same time.
"You like, Yank?" Her accent was very thick. "You oughtta see my sister!"
I glanced at her, and her face fell.
"I'm sorry, Victor," she said. "You don't have to blush." She took the bra from me and clipped it to the line.
She must have misread my face. True, I had been embarrassed, but I was also pleased in some strange way. It had been a long time since anybody had called me anything but Victor or Mr. Apfel.