A Song in the Daylight. Paullina Simons
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“Right.” He paused. “Though it’s great for getting on the highway. You never have to worry.”
“That’s good, not having to worry,” said Larissa. “I like to not worry. But I never go on the highway. Do I really need a supercharged Jag convertible to drive to Stop&Shop?”
“You tell me,” said Kai.
When they were almost at the dealership parking lot, Larissa was surprised to discover it was after one.
“I have to run,” she said. “But I like it. I like it very much.”
“Yes,” was all he said. “I thought you might.”
She didn’t know what to say next. Does she call him? Does he call her? Does she fill out a sheet with her details on it? Does she shake his hand? Does she say how this is going to end, or say, I’ll talk to my husband, maybe call back in a couple of days. What does she do?
“I’m starved,” he said. “Drive on to Stop&Shop. I’ll buy us some sushi.”
“They sell sushi you can eat at Stop&Shop?” This surprised her.
“It’s not bad. It’s fresh. The sushi chef knows me. Makes me an excellent rainbow roll. You like sushi?”
Larissa didn’t want to say she’d never eaten sushi. She hesitated. “Come,” he said. “We’ll get you a tuna roll. You like avocado and cucumber? You like spicy?”
“It’s the raw fish I have a problem with,” she said to him. “Make it medium well, and I’ll eat it.”
Kai laughed. “Regular stand-up today, aren’t we?”
She parked, and they walked in together through the automatic doors, she first. As it should be, she thought. Age before beauty. In the back of the store, she met Al, a friendly wide bald Japanese man with a thick accent and an even thicker goatee. She didn’t understand him at all, but he and Kai spoke a secret language. Kai asked him for something special, while Al nodded and smiled. “It really is surprisingly good here,” Kai said while they waited. “Good enough for a Maui boy who ate sushi before he drank milk.”
She hurried off to buy some sirloin for dinner.
Kai paid for the sushi, they walked out, and got inside the Jaguar, where he turned up the heat and the radio. “I can’t believe you’ve never had sushi,” he said, opening up her plastic container. “Do you like wasabi?”
“I might if I knew what it was.”
“What about soy sauce? Do you know what that is?”
“Oh, who’s the comedian now?” She watched him skeptically as he used chopsticks to spread a little green paste over one of the sushi balls or rolls or whatever the heck it was, then deftly pick it up with the chopsticks and …
Well, it wasn’t like the sushi was on a fork. He couldn’t hand her the chopsticks. Once embarked on a course of action, they had no choice but to see it through; it was a good thing he was so unselfconscious. He brought the chopsticks with the sushi to her, she leaned forward, and put the whole roll in her mouth.
“Well?” He was excited. “What do you think?”
Her eyes teared up from the spice. “What is that? It’s going right to my nose.”
He laughed. “That’s the wasabi. It’s Japanese horseradish. Good?”
“Well, sure.” She swallowed. “If you think eating Vicks VapoRub is good, then yeah, absolutely.”
He handed her the plastic tray, and she put her own wasabi on the sushi, just a drop, not a teaspoon. It was marginally better. She couldn’t believe she was eating raw fish. Forty years and never once. Now suddenly in a Jag, with chopsticks.
“In Maui,” Kai said, eating happily, drinking his Coke, “there was a place near our apartment where the guy caught the tuna in the morning and made the sushi for me two hours later. It was most outrageous. I lived on tuna morning, noon, and night. Then one day, Charlie, the guy who owned the joint, asked me to go fishing with him, and I got all excited, until we went out in his boat at dawn and I saw the size of the tuna. Mamma mia! I thought tuna were tiny little fish, you know, big enough to fit into a 6-oz can.” He laughed. “But they were like whales! Three times the size of our boat. I said to him, Charlie, you bastard, you tricked me. He was laughing so hard he peed himself. I couldn’t catch a thing, they scared the shit out of me, excuse my French.”
“If you’re expecting plankton and you get whale, yeah, I can see how that might have an impact.”
“But good, right?”
“It’s not bad.”
“There’s a place nearby in Madison, they make really good special roll. Crab, salmon, tuna, avocado, cucumber, and a spicy sauce. Pretty awesome.”
“I bet.” She was busy trying to gingerly carry the large roll between two wooden sticks to her mouth before it fell.
“If you buy the car, I’ll take you there for lunch as a thank you. You’ll love it.”
“Well, you’re very kind. But no thanks will be necessary.”
They sat facing the gravestones and had their sushi out of plastic containers with the car running and the classical jazz station playing Nina Simone singing, “If He Changed my Name.”
“I hope you don’t have ice cream in the back,” he said when they were done eating.
“No ice cream today. Just meat.” Damn, they’d had steak last night. She pulled out of the parking lot. They were a minute away from the dealership. She had to jet. It was after two, and Michelangelo was getting out in a half-hour.
“So you love the car?”
She pulled into the Jag lot, to the front, put the car in park, idled.
“I love it. But I have to go.”
“Come back tomorrow,” Kai said. “I’m here in the morning. I can show you two other models. The flagship of our line, the XJR.”
“Is the flagship a convertible?”
“No, a sedan.”
Larissa pursed her lips. Sedans were so middle-age.
He smiled. “Okay. Only quad tailpipes with polished chrome for you.”
Quad tailpipes? What would Jared think of that? “The heated leather seats might come in handy.”
“Oh, for sure. And the leather is hand-selected.”
“What other kind would I ever want, Mr. Passani?”
“Exactly.” He grabbed the brown paper bag of empty sushi boxes. “But that’s not why you buy a Jag, Miss Stark.”
“No,” she said, “you buy it for the body-colored spoiler and the four tailpipes with bright finishes. And it’s Mrs.”
His smile was wide. “So you’re going to stop by tomorrow?”
For some reason he wasn’t getting out of the car.
“Kai, I really have to run. I’ve got to pick up my son from school.”
Still not moving.
She looked at him. He looked at her. “Um, car’s not yet yours, Mrs. Stark,” he said, keeping the teasing grin away. “Would you like me to walk you to your own vehicle?”
“Oh God!” Larissa flipped off the ignition. “Sorry.” Idiot.
“Feels like yours, though, doesn’t it?” They both got out. He did walk her to the Escalade, even shook her hand gently. “Almost like you already own it.”