Vallie picked up the phone right away, and I could tell from her voice that she was pleased that I’d called.
“How is the mysterious Orient?” she asked. “Are you having a good time? Have you gone to a geisha house yet?”
“Not yet,” I said. “So far all I’ve seen is the morning Tokyo garbage. Since then I’ve been waiting for Cully. He’s out doing business. At least I’ve got him beat for six grand in gin.”
“Good,” Valerie said. “You can buy me and the kids some of those fabulous kimonos. Oh, by the way, you got a call yesterday from some man who claimed he was a friend of yours in Vegas. He said he expected to see you out there. I told him you were in Tokyo.”
My heart stopped a little. Then I said casually, “Did he give his name?”
“No,” Valerie said. “Don’t forget our presents.”
“I won’t,” I said.
I spent the rest of the afternoon worrying. I called the airline for a reservation back to the States for the next morning. Suddenly I wasn’t so sure that Cully would be back. I checked his bedroom. The big brassbound suitcase was gone.
Darkness was beginning to fall when Cully came into the suite. He was rubbing his hands, excited and happy. “Everything is all set,” he said. “Nothing to worry about. Tonight we have fun and tomorrow we wind things up. The day after that we’ll be in Hong Kong.”
“I called my wife,” I said. “We had a nice little chat. She told me some guy called from Vegas and asked where I was. She told him Tokyo.”
That cooled him off. He thought about it. Then shrugged.
“That sounds like Gronevelt,” Cully said. “Just making sure his hunch was right. He’s the only one who has your phone number.”
“Do you trust Gronevelt on a deal like this?” I asked Cully. And right away I knew I had stepped over the line.
“What the hell do you mean?” Cully said. “That man has been like a father to me all these years. He made me. Shit, I’d trust him over anybody, even you.”
“OK,” I said. “Then why didn’t you let him know we were leaving? Why did you give him that bullshit about buying antiques in Los Angeles?”
“Because that’s the way he taught me to operate,” Cully said. “Never tell anybody anything he doesn’t have to know. He’ll be proud of me for that, even though he found out. I did it the right way.” Then he eased up. “Come on,” he said. “Get dressed. Tonight I’m going to show you the best time of your life.” For some reason that reminded me of Eli Hemsi.
– -
Like everybody who has seen films about the Orient, I had fantasized about a night in a geisha house: beautiful talented women devoting themselves to my pleasure. When Cully told me that we were going to be entertained by geishas, I expected to be taken to one of those crazy-cornered, gaily ornamented houses I had seen in movies. So I was surprised when the chauffeured car stopped in front of a small restaurant housed in a canopied storefront on one of the main streets of Tokyo. It looked like any Chinese joint in the lower part of Manhattan. But a mitered led us through the crowded restaurant to a door that led to a private dining room.
The room was lavishly furnished in Japanese style. Colored lanterns were suspended from the ceiling; a long banquet table, raised only a foot above the floor, was decorated with exquisitely colored dishes, small drinking cups, ivory chopsticks. There were four Japanese men, all in kimonos. One of them was Mr. Fummiro. He and Cully shook hands, the other men bowed. Cully introduced me to all of them. I had seen Fummiro gambling in Vegas but had never met him.
Seven geisha girls came into the room, running with tiny steps. They were beautifully dressed in heavy brocade kimonos embroidered with startlingly colored flowers. Their faces were heavily made up with a white powder. They sat on cushions around the banquet table, a girl for each man.
Following Cully’s lead, I sat down on one of the cushions around the banquet table. Serving women brought in huge platters of fish and vegetables. Each geisha girl fed her assigned male. They used the ivory chopsticks, picking up bits of fish, little strands of green vegetables. They wiped our mouths and faces with countless tiny napkins that were like washcloths. These were scented and wet.
My geisha girl was very close to me, leaning her body against mine, and, with a charming smile and entreating gestures, make me eat and drink. She kept filling my cup with some sort of wine, the famous sake, I guessed. The wine tasted great, but the food was too fishy until they brought out platters of heavily marbled Kobe beef, cut into cubes and drenched in a delicious sauce.
Seeing her close, I knew that my charming geisha had to be at least forty. Though her body was pressed against mine, I could feel nothing except the heavy brocade of her kimono; she was swathed like an Egyptian mummy.
After dinner the girls took turns entertaining us. One played a musical instrument that was like a flute. By this time I ‘had drunk so much wine that the unfamiliar music sounded like bagpipes. Another girl recited what must have been a poem. The men all applauded. Then my geisha got up. I was rooting for her. She proceeded to do some astonishing somersaults.
In fact, she scared the hell out of me by somersaulting right over my head. Then she did the same somersault over Fummiro’s head, but he caught her in midair and tried to give her a kiss or something like a kiss. I was too drunk to see really well. But she eluded him, tapped him lightly on the cheek in reproach, and they both laughed gaily.
Then the geisha girls organized the men into playing games. I was astonished to see that it was a game involving an orange on a stick, that we had to bite the orange with our hands behind our backs. As we did so, a geisha would try the same thing from the other side of the stick. As the orange bobbed between male and female, the two faces would brush each other with a caress which made the geishas giggle.
Cully, behind me, said in a low voice, “Jesus, the next thing we’ll be playing spin the bottle.” But he smiled hugely at Fummiro, who seemed to be having a great time, shouting at the girls in Japanese and trying to grab them. There were other games involving sticks and balls and juggling acts, and I was so drunk that I was enjoying them as much as Fummiro. At one point I fell down into a pile of cushions and my geisha cradled my head in her lap and wiped my face off with a hot scented napkin.
The next thing I knew I was in the chauffeured car with Cully. We were moving through dark streets, and then the car stopped in front of a mansion in the suburbs. Cully led through the gate and the door opened magically. And then I saw we were in a real Oriental house. The room was bare except for sleeping mats. The walls were really sliding doors of thin wood.
I fell down on one of the mats. I just wanted to sleep. Cully knelt down beside me. “We’re spending the night here,” he whispered. “I’ll wake you up in the morning. Stay here, go to sleep. You’ll be taken care of.” Behind him I could see Fummiro’s smiling face. I registered that Fummiro was no longer drunk, and that set off some alarm bell in my mind. I tried to struggle up off the mat, but Cully pushed me down. And then I heard Fummiro’s voice say, “Your friend needs some company.” I sank back down on the mat. I was too tired. I didn’t give a damn. I fell asleep.
I don’t know how long I slept. I was awakened by the slight hiss of sliding doors. In the dim light of the shaded lanterns I saw two young Japanese girls in light blue and yellow kimonos come through the open wall. They carried a small red wood tub filled with steaming water. They undressed me and washed me from head to foot, kneading my body with their fingers, massaging every muscle. While they were doing this, I got an erection and they giggled and one of them gave it a little pat. Then they picked up the redwood tub and disappeared.
I was awake enough to wonder where the hell Cully was but not sober enough to get up and look for him. It was just as well. The wall fell apart as the doors slid back again. This time there was a single girl, a new one, and just by looking at her, I could tell what her function would be.