A Song in the Daylight. Paullina Simons

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.”

      Larissa came back the next morning. When he saw her, Kai Cheshire-grinned. She couldn’t help it. She smiled back.

      “I don’t want to see another car,” she said. “I want you to show me what colors you have on the one I drove. Besides burl.”

      Kai got her a coffee and they sat and talked at his desk, in full view of the rest of the dealership, chatted for an hour about luxury packages and sound options, about the convertible cover, wheel coverings, rich high-gloss burl walnut. She noticed he had a battered paperback on his desk: The Sorrows of Young Werther.

      Of all the books! “You’re reading that?”

      He nodded. “Rereading it. Werther is so wretched and self-pitying, I love it.”

      “Well, he is pining. That’s what happens to pining people.”

      “Pining and self-pitying,” said Kai. “Such attractive qualities in a man.” He pitched his baritone an octave higher. “‘Oh, why did my greatest joy turn into my greatest misery? Wah.’”

      “Mmm.” Larissa tried not to smile. Kai clearly thought he was being clever and amusing. “Then how come all the girls think he is a dashing romantic hero?”

      “Who? Not the girl he’s pining for. And in real life, the girls wouldn’t come within a mile of him. Girls hate a whiner.”

      “Well,” said Larissa, “perhaps you’re right. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have Werther’s sorrows.” She stared away into his desk. He read. Why did that impress her? She didn’t want him to see that she was impressed; he might find it conde-scending. But reading Werther! Honestly. About a young man who falls desperately СКАЧАТЬ