Lord of All Things Read online

  “We have to talk.”

  James sat bolt upright as his mother’s voice broke in on his train of thought. The way she spoke made him think her next words would be about some girl who had turned up pregnant claiming he was the father.

  “Good morning,” he said with studied calm, waiting for what might come next.

  “I really don’t care when you get up,” his mother declared, sitting across the table from him, “but please don’t wish me a good morning at two o’clock in the afternoon.”

  She was tanned an astonishing shade of brown, which made her blond hair look almost unreal, as though she dyed it—which she didn’t; indeed, she never even used lipstick.

  “I’ll try to remember that,” James replied. Perhaps it was about something else, then. So far he’d always been lucky. Or had good condoms.

  “It’s about your engagement party,” his mother said, coming to the point at last. “We’ll have to arrange it. You can’t drag these things out forever. We’ll have to set a date, send out invitations.…It all needs organizing; it all takes time. The good restaurants with big enough banquet chambers are booked out months in advance.” She opened the folder next to her on the table.

  “I understand,” James said. With an effort he restrained himself from rolling his eyes. Did it have to be today? Given the way he was feeling right now?

  He would have his work cut out for him. He knew his mother at least that well.

  All day long Hiroshi was wrapped in a strange silence—no, filled with a silence that never left him. It wasn’t the silence of the outside world. Rather, it felt as though his ears were blocked, or somebody had rolled him up in yards and yards of cotton wool. He was tired, his throat tickled as though he was catching cold, and his stomach grumbled and cramped from the unaccustomed quantities of alcohol and cheap food, but even so he was overflowing with a warm feeling of contentment. Overflowing was the only word that came near describing how he felt. He couldn’t get over his surprise at what had happened. He saw his whole life spread out before him, saw the paths that he had taken and how they had finally led him here, to this place, to this moment. All at once everything made sense. Meeting Charlotte so unexpectedly in such an unlikely way seemed a kind of confirmation that fate was at work here. Nothing more, nothing less. A sign he had a task.

  They had spent most of the night telling each other their life stories from the day they had been so suddenly separated. Charlotte had gone with her parents to Argentina, to Buenos Aires. After that her father had been posted back to Africa, to Dakar in Senegal. There, Charlotte had learned to speak Wolof, Diola, and Pulaar. She had liked the place even though she had suffered constantly from some kind of stomach trouble and hadn’t coped well with the antimalaria tablets.

  She told him about a place called the House of Slaves, a museum on an island called Gorée, off the Senegalese coast. Gorée claimed to have been the main transit market for slaves from Africa to America, but Charlotte said she had felt nothing of that in the building. In fact, it had only been set up as a trading post years later and had mostly dealt in ivory and gold; there had never been a single prisoner held in the so-called dungeons down in the cellar. The whole museum was just a replica of other places where the actual slave trade had taken place, but of course they never said as much to visitors.

  Hiroshi asked her whether she still had her gift of reading the history of things. Yes, she told him, but it was on the wane. She had to be very deeply in love, or really angry about something—in some state of extreme emotion. Otherwise, things said nothing to her, or she couldn’t understand what she felt from them. All the same, she still didn’t like going to libraries; old books that had passed through hundreds of hands were sometimes too much to handle. She could hardly bear being near them.

  “But don’t you have to do a lot of library work?” Hiroshi had asked. “I kind of imagine that’s how you study anthropology.”

  “I mainly want to do excavation work later,” she had replied.

  “Is that why you picked it as a major? So that you can use your power?”

  At that she had given him a strange, secretive look and replied that no, that hadn’t been the main reason, but she couldn’t tell him now; she would have to show him one day. Hiroshi shook his head, astonished. How long ago it had all been. The girl in the nightgown standing out in the rain late at night; somehow it was like remembering a marvelous dream, but it had really happened. Hard to believe.

  He jumped up, looked under the bed for a particular box, and took it out. He blew the dust away and opened the lid. There it was, his old Masters of the Universe notebook where he had written down all the secrets of his master plan when he was growing up. He opened the book. It was nearly full, with only the last three pages still blank. Hiroshi leafed through it, looking at the pages he had filled to the very edges with scribbles and cross-section plans. He read his carefully handwritten notes, thoughts and second thoughts, strike-throughs and additions. He had to smile at a lot of what he read, especially in the first pages, his very first naive ideas from when he’d still been a kid. Back then he had thought the world was a whole lot simpler than it actually turned out to be. On the other hand…a lot of what he read in this old notebook was amazingly insightful from where he stood today. Bold. Lucid in the true sense. How on earth had he been able to think like that when he had been just thirteen, fourteen years old?

  Hiroshi looked up from the pages and out the window, gazing into the sky. Today it was such an intense blue that it seemed to vibrate. He thought back on everything that had happened in his life since then. Thought of his school days. Of all the books he had devoured. Of his scientific work so far. It was a real shock to look back at the Hiroshi of those years, to remember the boundless confidence that had flooded him as a child when he had first had the idea. And what was he doing now? Conducting careful little experiments, proposing tentative theories, studying articles by people who really had no idea, and trying the whole time to be scientifically rigorous in everything he did, making sure there was no angle from which he could be attacked—covering his back.

  He leafed through the colorful, rustling pages some more. Here in his hands he had a plan that would change the world from the ground up. He’d had it lying in his desk drawer for years, complete in every detail, and what was he doing? He’d invented a gizmo to save folks the trouble of having to measure a room. He wrote smartass essays for a seminar where the grades were irrelevant. He got into tussles with a professional neurotic over a glass of champagne, risking a black eye for his wisecracks. He was very definitely punching below his weight.

  He closed the box, put it back where he’d found it, then sat down at his desk with his old notebook to read it from cover to cover. Every page. To refresh himself on all the thoughts and ideas he had ever had for his grand plan. To remember, remember, remember. It was a trip back in time, almost more than seeing Charlotte again had been. The hours flew by, and he had to laugh, smile indulgently—and raise his eyebrows in wonder. There was so much here that would really work. Maybe not exactly how he had imagined it when he was fourteen, but in principle. At some point he realized he had a pen in his hand and was making more notes. That he was excited.

  As he sat there, his initial feeling of having wasted his time all these years changed to a strange certainty he had opened this notebook again at exactly the right moment. That it was good it had spent all those years put aside, almost forgotten. That something had needed time to mature, to age, to ripen in a forgotten corner. That everything that had happened, everything that was happening now, everything that was still to come, was fate.

  When he closed the worn, old pages at last, He-Man and Skeletor glared back at him from the cover. He felt a sense of certainty he had not felt for a long time. He picked up his phone and scrolled through the list until he found Charlotte’s number, which he had saved last night. He had to see her again. That was th
e logical next step.

  James finally called around four o’clock, all in a flurry. “We’re going out! Get yourself ready. I’ll pick you up around seven.”

  Charlotte didn’t have a chance to protest. Which was all right by her, she mused as she put the phone down. It meant she didn’t have to cook. For some reason she didn’t feel like it today.

  James always turned up either too early or too late, never right on time. Today he arrived at half past six. Charlotte was just brushing her hair when she saw his Jaguar come roaring up the street and swerve in by her garage. She put the brush down and opened the door, and there was James bounding up the stairs. He flung his arms around her and kissed her passionately as though they hadn’t seen each other in weeks.

  Charlotte gasped. “For goodness’ sake, James!” she said, beginning to worry about her dress.

  “I can’t help it,” he murmured, his mouth nuzzling at her neck. “You look ravishing.”

  It wasn’t as though his compliments were particularly original. But the way he uttered them, she felt he meant every word. On top of which he was so damn good-looking. And strong—the very embodiment of animal masculinity. And so on and so forth. Charlotte closed her eyes and surrendered to his kisses, felt his arousal. Well, she had assumed they would be having sex today anyway, but this felt as though he had forgotten the restaurant entirely and wanted to have her right away. It wouldn’t have been the first time.

  Just then, however, he let go of her and conjured up a clear plastic box from somewhere with the most marvelous orchid brooch inside. He handed it to Charlotte with a flourish and said, “For the most beautiful woman in the world.”

  Unoriginal indeed, but it worked. Her fingers trembled as she took the orchid and fixed it to her dress with the pin. It sent up a heavy, intoxicating scent, and for a moment Charlotte felt like an insect queen, wafting out pheromones to lure in males. Perhaps she would eat him whole after sex.

  “Is today a special date of some kind?” she had to ask. Normally, she never forgot birthdays or anniversaries.

  James gazed adoringly into her eyes. “Every day with you is a special day,” he said earnestly. “Also, we’re going to Altair.”

  Charlotte blinked in confusion. She knew the name from somewhere. “Altair?”

  “Cuisine française,” James declared grandly.

  As always when he mangled her beautiful French language, she shuddered. “And why, all of a sudden?”

  “Checking out their menu. Mother thinks we could have the engagement party there.”

  “Ah.” Another of those moments when she thought she must have missed something important. His mother? What did she have to do with anything? It sounded as though preparations were already underway that she knew nothing about—after all, the two of them had never even talked about setting a date. He had simply asked, do you want to? And she had said yes and let him put the ring on her finger. A diamond ring. The diamond had been found by a South African mine worker who couldn’t afford to pay a doctor for his sick daughter. James was disappointed she never wore it, but somehow she wasn’t ready yet to tell him about her strange gift.

  They set out. As Charlotte sank back into the soft, warm leather of the passenger seat, James made some conventional compliment, muffled by the satisfying clunk of the closing door. Some comment about envying the upholstery. Charlotte could only summon a crooked smile. It was odd—the idea of going to bed with James tonight didn’t excite her as it usually did. She would have liked more than anything else to go home after dinner, tumble into bed, and fall asleep. She already felt as though she might fall asleep on the spot if she kept her eyes closed for more than ten seconds. Last night had been too short.

  James drove the way he made love: behind the wheel he was brisk, determined, powerful. That, and the car’s solid construction, made her feel safe sitting by his side. The only thing that always annoyed her about the Jaguar was that although she could see the world outside, she couldn’t hear a thing. The motor purred away, but even in the densest traffic she could hear herself breathe in this car. When she looked out the window, she always felt cut off from the world. As though the buildings, the cars, and the pedestrians out there were just a silent film.

  “And by the way, Mother has already made us an appointment with a certain Miss Jeffries,” James declared. “She looks after the whole organizational side at Altair. We’re supposed to talk to her about her ideas, what kind of event she would suggest, all of that. Next Thursday, half past nine. I told her you have Thursday mornings free—isn’t that right?”

  Charlotte pouted. “This Thursday I’m going to the hairdresser.”

  James said nothing.

  “No problem,” she said and sighed. “I can cancel.”

  He looked across at her for a moment. “Honestly, I have no idea how you can bear to cut off even an inch of your hair. I love it just the way it is.”

  “When a woman’s hair is this long, she has to look after it. If I didn’t go to the hairdresser, I would end up looking like I was wearing a mop on my head. I’m sure you wouldn’t like that.”

  He laughed merrily. “You’re right,” he said.

  Charlotte lifted her orchid and inhaled. What was wrong with her? Was it because the topic of the engagement party had come up so suddenly? For some reason she felt ambushed. Was that it? Did she not feel ready yet after all? When she had said something of the kind to her mother recently, Maman had curtly reminded her that when she was her age she was not just married but also practically halfway to the maternity ward.

  She remembered what Brenda always said. Her watchword was that you always had to be 100 percent sure. You had to imagine being old as the hills and lying on your deathbed and looking back over your life. And then you had to be able to say yes, I spent it with the right man. Charlotte couldn’t really imagine being as old as the hills, and thinking of her deathbed just gave her the shivers. But despite that—yes, she was sure. Fairly sure anyway. And it was perfectly normal at a time like this to be a little fearful of the bold step ahead.

  As though he could read her thoughts, James broke in at that very moment to say, “By the way, about giving your friend Brenda a hand moving on Saturday…”

  “Yes?”

  He heaved a great sigh. “I can’t come after all. Tennis. My father asked me to play doubles with him against two of his business partners. It’s some kind of big deal for the company. Strategic stuff. I couldn’t say no.”

  Charlotte looked at him and wondered whether it was true. It was definitely a pretext of some kind. The plain and simple truth of it was that James just couldn’t stand Brenda. In fact, he always found something to criticize in all her friends and acquaintances, male or female. He had told Charlotte once that he wanted to have her all to himself.

  “That’s too bad,” she said.

  Altair had valet parking; all they had to do was get out and give the key to a man in a chic gray-blue uniform, who took care of everything.

  “That’s a good start,” James said happily as they walked up the thick, gray-blue carpet to the entrance.

  The sun was behind them, low on the horizon, a ball of red fire mirrored in the restaurant windows and drenching the rooms beyond in flame. The sight made Charlotte think of Hiroshi for some reason and how he was bound to call again. Better if he didn’t call today of all days. She took her phone from her handbag and switched it off.

  The sun was just setting, drenching the sky in blood-red gold. The reflection from the apartment windows across the street almost blinded Hiroshi.

  Not that he would have noticed. He sat there with the telephone in his hand, his eyes half-closed, deep in thought. Charlotte’s telephone number glowed on the display. His finger hovered over the “Dial” button. All he had to do was press it—so what was holding him back? Was he suddenly shy? Afraid of disappointment? Nothing of the kind, he decided at
last as he switched the phone off and put it aside. It just wasn’t the right moment, that was all.

  3

  A wicked rumor had it that Prof. Sheldon Bowers had set his office hours early on Monday mornings so that as few students as possible would ever come to see him. Those who made it anyway were either single-minded or so badly in need of his help that they were even willing to lay off the alcohol over the weekend and get to sleep on time. Hiroshi was one of the single-minded ones. This morning he was already standing waiting at Bowers’s door when the prof came in to work.

  Bowers was solidly built, his bald head polished to a high shine, and his heavy, black-rimmed glasses perched on an impressive hook nose. Further rumors said he wore only organic cotton, that he was a vegetarian, and he could hold forth at length about what was wrong with the tap water in various states of the union. His academic area was complex-systems research.

  “All right, all right,” he grumbled once he was near enough he could no longer ignore Hiroshi’s presence. “So where’s the fire?”

  “It’s about my term project,” Hiroshi said.

  “I guessed as much,” said Bowers, fishing around in his jacket pocket for his keys. “Let me guess a little more. You’re getting bogged down, and you want to focus your topic more tightly.”