"What"s that wonderful smell?" she asked.
"Sedap malam," the porter said. "Brought here from Indonesia. It means "heavenly night" because it offers its scent only in the evening. I think in English you call it the tuber rose."
I smiled and looked at her. "Well? Do you like it?"
She paused for a moment, then said, "Oh, my G.o.d."
"Does that mean yes?"
She nodded and looked around again, then back at me. Her face lit up in an enormous smile. "Yes," she said. "Yes, it does."
We checked in under the rafters of the open-air entrance pavilion. A woman named Aom gave us a quick tour of the facilities-the fitness center, the library, the spa. Everything was teak and stone and seemed to rise up out of the hilly terrain as indigenous as the surrounding palm trees. I noted the presence of multiple guards, all extremely discreet. Amanpuri is a celebrity magnet, and the resort takes security seriously. Which, to me, was part of the attraction. Even if Delilah informed her people of our whereabouts, they would have a h.e.l.l of a time getting in here unannounced and un.o.btrusive. As for Delilah herself, from what I had seen of her organization"s MO, her role was to set up the bowling pins, not to knock them down. Also, without checked bags, her ability to carry weapons would be limited. Knowing all this, and also, inevitably, influenced by the blissfully beautiful surroundings, I began to relax. I felt as though we"d been granted some sort of time-out, during which I might learn what I needed to know. Maybe I could turn the situation around, if that"s what was called for. Yeah, we"d faced a conflict of interests before and found a way to work things out. Maybe we could do it again.
Aom took us to our pavilion-number 105, with a full ocean view. The room was low-key and luxurious. The walls, floor, and simple furniture were all teak, with the porcelain of a long tub, a cotton duvet, and oversized thick towels all gleaming white by contrast. Everything seemed to glow with the golden light of the sun, which was still visible through the pavilion"s western doors.
Delilah was starving, so we decided to eat at one of the property"s two open-air restaurants. We sat along the railing overlooking the ocean. The sun was now completely below the horizon, and but for a thin line of glowing red between them the water was now as dark as the sky. The restaurant, like all Amanpuri"s facilities, wisely eschewed any piped-in music, instead allowing the breeze swaying the palm trees and the waves lapping at the beach to supply the necessary ambience.
We ordered roast duck sauteed with morning glories, soft-sh.e.l.led black crab sauteed with chile paste, stir-fried mixed vegetables, and stir-fried bean sprouts with tofu and chili. I started us with a "93 Veuve Clicquot.
"I have to tell you," Delilah said as we ate. "I"ve been to some of the most beautiful places on earth. Post Ranch in Big Sur. The Palace in Saint-Moritz. The Serengeti Plain. But this is right up there."
I smiled. "There aren"t many places that can make you forget everything. Everywhere you"ve been, everything you"ve done."
She raised her eyebrows. "Where are the others? For you."
I thought for a moment. "A few places in Tokyo, believe it or not. But they"re more like . . . enclaves. Oases. They can protect you from what"s outside, but you still know it"s there. This . . . it"s another universe."
She took a sip of the champagne. "I know what you mean. There"s a beach in Haifa, where I grew up. Sometimes, when I"m back there, I can find a quiet spot at night. The smell of the sea, the sound of the waves . . . it makes me feel like I"m a girl again, innocent and unblemished. Like I"m alone, but in a good way, if you know what I mean."
"To be unaccompanied by constant memories," I said, quoting something a friend had once said to me, "is to find a state of grace."
"Grace?" she asked, taking the reference literally. "Do you believe in G.o.d?"
I paused, thinking of my conversation with Dox, then said, "I try not to."
"Does that help?"
I shrugged. "Not really. But what difference does it make, what you believe? Things are what they are."
"What you believe makes all the difference in the world."
I looked at her. We"d been down this road before, and I didn"t like the implicit criticism, maybe even condescension, in her comment. Then or now.
"Then you better be careful about what you believe in," I said. "And about what it might cost you."
She looked away for a moment. I wasn"t sure if it was a flinch.
We finished the champagne and I ordered a "99 Lafon Volnay Santenots. Delilah had a disciplined mind, I knew, but no one does as well in the presence of wine and jet lag as in their absence. And if she were here for something "nefarious," as Dox had put it, the discord between her feelings for me from before and her intentions for me now would be producing a strain. I wanted to do everything I could to turn that strain into a fault line, the fault line into a widening crack.
We talked more about this and that. She never let on that she knew anything about Manny, or that the botched hit in Manila had anything to do with her presence here now. And as the evening wore on, I realized I couldn"t accept that the timing of her contact had been a coincidence. So the absence of any acknowledgment had to be an omission. A deliberate omission.
If she had been anyone else, and if this had all happened just a year or two earlier, I would have accepted the truth of what I knew. I would have acted on it. Doing so would have protected my body, albeit at some cost to my soul. But sitting across the table from her, no doubt affected by the wine, as well as by the surroundings and the feelings I still had for her, I found myself looking for a different way. Something less direct, less irredeemable, something that might have as its basis hope instead of only fear.
And there was something strangely attractive about the feeling that I was taking a chance. It wasn"t anything as base as the thrill of "unsafe s.e.x," as Dox had suggested. It was more a sense of the possibilities, the potential upside. Not just the possibility that, if I confronted her and she cracked, she might give me information that would help me understand where I stood regarding Manny. I was aware, too, of a deeper kind of hope at work, for something more than information alone, something intangible but infinitely more valuable.
After a dessert of fruit and Thai sweets followed by steaming tureens of cappuccino, we strolled back to the pavilion. We left the lights dim and sat on a low teak couch facing the sea, present by the sound of the surf but unseeable in the darkness without. The silence in the room felt heavy to me, portentous. My previous, oblique conversational gambits had afforded me only hints and clues. I decided it was time to be more direct. My mouth felt a little dry at the prospect, part of me perhaps afraid of what I might discover.
"Did your people tell you about what they"ve involved me in?" I asked.
She looked at me, and something in her expression told me she wasn"t happy with the question. This wasn"t why we had come back to the room. It wasn"t part of the script.
"No," she said. "Everything is "need to know." If I don"t need to know, it"s better that I don"t."
"They sent me after a guy in Manila."
She shook her head. "Why are you telling me this?"
"I don"t want what"s between us to be nothing more than "need to know." If it is, we"re just gaming each other."
"Protecting each other."
"Would you protect me?"
"From what?"
"What if something went wrong?"
"Don"t put me in that position."
"What if you had to choose?"
Her eyes narrowed a fraction. "I don"t know. What would you do?"
I looked at her. "It"s easy for me. I don"t believe in anything, remember? I can make up my own mind."
"That"s not an answer."
"It"s more of an answer than what you just told me."
"I told you I don"t know. I"m sorry if that wasn"t the answer you were looking for."
"I"m looking for the truth."
"You know who I am."
"That"s what I"m asking you."
She laughed. "Look, I"m like a married woman, okay? With a family I always have to return to."
I didn"t respond. After a moment she said, "So stop pretending you don"t know all this."
That sounded dangerously close to a rationalization, one with which I"m all too familiar: He knew what he was getting into. If he hadn"t been in the game, they wouldn"t have wanted him dead.
Of all the potential angles, the possible gambits, it seemed to me that the truth would be what she was least prepared for. The closer I got to it, the more it was putting her off her game.
"You"re here only for personal reasons?" I asked her.
She shifted a fraction on the couch. "Yes."
"Look in my eyes when you say that."
She did. A long beat went by.
"I"m here only for personal reasons," she said again.
No. I knew her, from the time we"d spent together in Rio. If what she just said were true, my suspicions would have provoked her instantly. But now she was trying to manage her behavior in the presence of fatigue, conflicting emotions, and alcohol, and under pressure from my questions, and the unaccustomed effort was showing.
I looked at her silently. She returned my gaze. A long time went by-ten seconds, maybe fifteen. I could see some color coming into her cheeks, her nostrils flaring slightly with each exhalation.
All at once she looked away. I saw her shoulders rising and falling with her breathing. "G.o.dd.a.m.n you," she said, her voice just above a whisper. "G.o.dd.a.m.n you."
She glanced around the room, her head moving in quick, efficient jerks, here and there and back again.
She got up and started pacing, slowly at first, then more rapidly, her head nodding as though internally confirming something, trying to accept it. She looked everywhere but at me.
"I have to get out of here," she said, more to herself than to me. She walked over to one of the dressers, pulled open a drawer, and started shoving things into her bag.
"Delilah," I said.
She didn"t answer, or even pause. She pulled open a second drawer and stuffed its contents into the bag, too.
I stood up. "Delilah," I said again.
She threw the bag over her shoulder and headed toward the door.
"Wait," I said, and moved in front of her.
She tried to go left around me. I stayed with her. She went right. That didn"t work either. She moved left again, more quickly. No go.
She had become almost oblivious to my presence. Something had gotten in her way, she had been blindly trying to go around it. But her lack of progress forced her to change her focus, and all at once she saw that the obstacle was me. Her eyes narrowed and her ears seemed to settle back against her head. In my peripheral vision I took in a shift in her weight, a slight rotation of her hips. Then her right elbow was blurring in toward my temple.
I retracted my head and shrugged my left shoulder, bringing my left hand up alongside my face as I did so. Her elbow glanced off the top of my head. Her left was already coming in from the other side. I covered up, dropped through my knees, and deflected it the same way.
She shifted back and shot a left palm heel straight for my nose. I weaved off-line and parried with my right. Other side-same drill.
She took two more quick shots, hooks to the head. I avoided the worst of both. She grabbed my arm and tried to drag me to the side, frustration and anger eroding her tactics.
If there"s one thing my body learned in twenty-five years of judo at the Kodokan in Tokyo, it"s grounding. She might as well have been trying to move one of the room"s thick teak posts.
She made a sound, half rage, half desperation. She stepped back and whipped the bag around at my head. I dissipated some of the blow"s force by flowing with it, and absorbed the rest by covering up with my shoulder, bicep, and forearm. She reloaded and swung again. Again I flowed and absorbed.
She started swearing something in Hebrew and hammering at me with the bag, with no obvious goal now other than to vent her fury. I let her pound on me, taking most of the impact along my arms and shoulders. She was in shape, and it took longer than I would have liked for her to tire. But eventually the power of the blows lessened, the interval between them lengthened. She stood, the bag hanging at her side, her breath heaving in and out. I lowered my arms and looked at her.
She glanced around the room. I realized she was looking for a better weapon of convenience than the bag. I tensed to grab her before she could pick up something heavy and blunt, or something sharp.
She must have sensed that I was on to her. Or she didn"t see anything that looked likely to do the job. Regardless, she stopped scoping the room and looked in my eyes. Her pupils were huge and black-dilated by adrenaline.
Her panting punctuated her words. "Get. The f.u.c.k. Out. Of my way."
"Not until you tell me what"s going on."
She sucked wind for a moment, then said, "f.u.c.k you."
I looked at her. "This is going to be a long night."
"What do you want?" she asked.
"I want . . ." I started to say.
But it had only been a feint. She dropped her right shoulder and charged into me, trying to knock me off balance. The move surprised me and might have worked, but I caught her shoulders with both hands and used her body as a momentary brace. She reared up under me, looking for a head b.u.t.t, and connected with my chin. My teeth slammed together, narrowly missing my tongue.
Enough. I grabbed her by the biceps and shoved her against the wall.
"Tell me what"s going on," I said.
She dropped the bag and tried for an uppercut to my gut. I took hold of her wrists and slammed her arms up against the wall on either side of her head. Our faces were inches apart.
I felt her knee coming up and pressed my body against hers to stop it. She twisted right, then left. My cheek was pressed against hers and her smell, that perfume I liked, now mixed with sweat and fear and rage, got inside me and wrought some weird alchemy. I dropped my face to her neck, feeling first as though I was just going to brace it there, but then I was kissing her instead. I heard her say, "No, no," but she wasn"t fighting me anymore, or at least not the same way.
Keeping her arms and body pinned to the wall, I brought my face around to kiss her on the mouth. She twisted her head away. I let go of her wrists and took her face in my hands. She tried to push me away for a second, but then she was kissing me back, almost attacking me with her mouth. I ran my hands down around her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and squeezed her waist, her a.s.s. I realized I was kissing her as hard as she was me.
I reached up and tried to undo one of the b.u.t.tons on her blouse but my hands were shaking and I couldn"t do it. f.u.c.k it. I slipped the fingers of both hands into the gap between the b.u.t.tons and pulled hard to the sides. The b.u.t.tons all popped free. The bra beneath was lace, with a front snap. I could feel her nipples, hard, through the fabric. I struggled to get the snap undone. Fabric tore. The bra opened up and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were in my hands. Her skin was smooth and hot and damp from exertion.
Kissing me so hard I was forced to step back from the wall, she reached up and tore my shirt open the same way I had done hers. Then she reached down for my belt buckle. No, I thought. You first. I yanked her blouse and bra down to her wrists and spun her around so that she was facing the wall. We started to struggle again. I took her left arm in a wristlock and bent it behind her back. I held it high, almost to her shoulder blades, with my left hand, and shoved her up against the wall. I reached under her skirt with my right. She was wet through her panties. I pushed her skirt up, pinned the fabric against her a.s.s with my hip, and tore her panties away. She snapped her head back and caught me on the cheek with a rear head b.u.t.t. I saw stars. I pushed against her harder and pressed the side of my face against hers so that she was pinned entirely to the wall. I reached down and began to touch her. She closed her eyes and groaned. I moved my fingers inside her and her body shook.
I looked around wildly. To our left-the dresser. I shoved her over to it. There was a stack of travel magazines on top. I swept them to the floor with my free hand. Then I bent her over the dresser, bearing down on her arm and pinning her upper torso. She struggled but the wrist hold was too tight. I stepped to her side, opened my belt, and undid my b.u.t.ton and zipper.
I stepped on the cuff of my left pants leg with my right foot and dropped my pants, stepping clear of them with my left leg as soon as they hit the floor. No way was I going to deal with her with a pair of trousers pooled around my ankles. I repeated the procedure with my right leg, then slipped off my boxers. My erection was straining upward like spring-loaded cement.
I stepped between her legs and pushed up the skirt. Her breathing was more like gasping now, and so, I realized, was mine.
Still pressing her down with the wristlock, I started touching her again. I don"t know what I was waiting for. Maybe I wanted to torture her a little, to torture both of us.
"Do it," I heard her gasp. "Do it, or I"ll kill you."
My heart was hammering so hard I heard it thudding in my skull. My fingers and toes were tingling. I kicked her feet farther apart, wiped some of her wetness onto myself, and entered her in one smooth motion.
She gasped so loudly I felt the sound of it run back up into me, like a feedback screech through a microphone. I started driving into her, my hips sliding up and forward, my gut and a.s.s clenching and releasing with each profound stroke.