“Not your story to tell,” I repeat.
“Sorry,” she mumbles.
And I find myself wanting to see her face again. Needing to see her face again.
“Look at me,” I command, my voice soft but firm.
My tone works. Her chocolate gaze lifts to meet mine, with her arm halfway out to her nigiri sushi, which Chef Ito encourages his patrons to eat with their hands.
“May I ask your name?”
She visibly swallows. “It’s Kristal. What’s um...your name?”
“Hayato Nakamura,” I answer, giving her both of my names, even though I usually go out of my way not to disclose my family name. I’m not sure Eloa even knew it. But in this case, I want to see how she responds.
“Nakamura,” she repeats, seeming to taste the words. “Do you mean the same Hayato Nakamura Chef Daniel thanks in his menu notes?”
I palm the back of my head and wince, embarrassed, “I told him that wasn’t necessary.”
Her eyes light up, and to my surprise, she grins at me.
“Oh, now I get it,” she says with a nod before taking an appreciative bite of her nigiri roll.
I wait as she finishes her sushi and then starts on the accompanying dishes, but she doesn’t say anything further. Forcing me to ask, “Now you get what?”
“Why you pay so much for company. Because you only desire it for a little bit, then you want the women you date to go away and not require anything back from you.”
My brow furrows. I’m not used to being analyzed instead of entertained by my dates. But… “You are correct.”
She smiles even bigger, her whole body sagging with relief. “Oh, cool, I can do that. I can keep you terrific company. You know, I spent my entire Christmas break, reading People magazines…”
Over the next five courses, she tells me story after story from an American magazine I’ve never read, only glimpsed in airports. But she doesn’t tell me the stories about the celebrities featured in it. She tells me the stories about average people doing extraordinary things: a man risking his life to shelter dogs during a hurricane, a teenager flying to Europe to give a kidney to a Belgian girl he saw sing on YouTube, an old woman in Arkansas dying at the age of 113 and leaving exactly that number of descendants behind.
Before I know it, we’ve finished the last dessert course, and it’s as if time flew by. It’s a simple conversation, really, but I honestly can’t remember the last time I enjoyed myself this much on a date. In fact, my last hot date dinner conversation in Tokyo had ended with me politely telling the woman it wasn’t necessary for us to talk while we ate.
“Could you bring the check for my meal?” she asks the waiter when he comes to clear our dishes.
The waiter, who if I’m guessing right, is probably my childhood friend’s latest lover—why he insists on bringing his love life into the workplace, I’ll never know—looks at me, confused.
“Thank you.” I dismiss him with a bow of my head before turning back to Kristal to say, “The bill has already been paid.”
“No, no, it hasn’t. See, I still have all the money to pay it right here,” she insists, reaching into her purse. I look at the wad of cash she brings out, somewhat bemused. I’ve become very techy now that my brother, Norio, has permanently moved to the States to run the Seattle U.S. division of GoNoToRobo. I don’t even bother to bring anything but cards when I fly here. It’s been years since I’ve handled physical U.S. dollars.
Yet here I am, watching Kristal wave her messy stack of bills at the waiter. “Excuse me, please come back. I think there’s been some mistake—”
“Kristal.”
The one chiding word causes a new awareness to dawn across her face.
“Oh, you paid my bill.” She then raises the messy wad of American dollars to me. “Then I should pay you.”
“Put your money away.”
“No, seriously, take it,” she says with a pleading look. “I don’t want to owe you more than I already do. I feel terrible about how your real date ended tonight.”
My real date…
She holds the money out again. And I stare at her, realizing she’s not just doing this for show. That she seriously doesn’t wish for me to cover her expensive dinner, even though we’re both aware I’m a billionaire.
“How did you know?” I ask her, still not taking the money. “How did you know I’d like your People magazine stories?”
She shrugs as if it’s obvious. “You’re a billionaire, right? So I figured you must be like me. Kind of obsessed with the real world because it’s something you can’t touch.”
Again, she’s correct, but then my mind turns to the next part of our date, the part that has my body still humming with anticipation, and I have to ask, “Why can’t you touch the real world?”