Written for sm_monthly May 2009 Challenge: prompt: "Kaidou"
He paused in front of her door for mere seconds before knocking, knowing in his heart that if he didn't jump in and force himself to do it immediately, he would remain standing in the dim hallway indefinitely debating if this was the right thing to do.
Of course it was.
What did he have to lose? He had carried her picture in his wallet—buried deep behind photos of his wife and children, of course—for what? At least a decade. Now that the other photos were…no longer necessary, he was free to put her face forward, where he could stare at it at length whenever he felt like it.
He had rescued the small photograph from the rubbish can after the Senator had cleaned out his desk and tossed it without a second glance. At the time, he couldn't imagine being so crass as to casually throw away a photo of one's own daughter along with the scratch paper and old receipts and golf cards; but then again, he had done the same things a few weeks ago, with a picture of his own child in a fit of hopeless rage.
He had much in common with the old Senator now.
The Internet made it ridiculously easy to track someone down, and he had stared at the monitor for long minutes before making his decision. The online white pages had given him ten numerals that he had dialed once before hanging up and deciding that whatever he had to say, was better said in person. Except he didn't know what he wanted to say.
He could barely hear music playing from inside the apartment, so he knocked again, louder.
A male voice rang out and hit the other side of the door. "Raye? That you?"
So he had the right address, but that particular detail was unexpected. A "Mina Aino" was listed along with Raye, and he had wrongly presumed the roommate was female. A choking spasm suddenly radiated from his midsection, and he swallowed to keep from screaming.
"Shit." He heard the man inside mutter. Kaidou was seconds away from fleeing when the door opened.
A young man stood in the doorway, blonde like a Viking with one of those irritating lacrosse-player haircuts that Kaidou had noticed on new Senate interns, and clear blue eyes to complete the perfect Nordic picture. He was taller than Kaidou, much younger, slim and muscled and wearing nothing but a pair of black boxer shorts with a logo pattern that spelled out "SOX". He spoke before Kaidou could get a word in. "Oh hey, I still have that last Watchtower you guys gave me, and I swear, I'll read it and get back to you, but just to warn you, I'm a hard sell. I really like sex and alcohol and you know, music and Halloween and blood transfusions and shit. Five bucks if you guys leave me alone for another month?"
Kaidou cleared his throat. "I—you're…is Rachel Hino here?" She had legally taken her mother's maiden name as soon as she had turned eighteen, and this was the first time he had said it out loud.
The blonde guy blinked. "Oh, uh, you know Raye?"
Once, he did. "I'm an…associate of her father's."
"Oh." The young man cheeks flushed; the mention of Raye's father seemed to put him off-balance. "Oh, shit, I'm sorry, I thought you were a---I get a lot of—uh, here, come in." He moved aside and ushered Kaidou in.
He waited in the quaint kitchen with an offered beer as the man stepped out and reappeared wearing a t-shirt and jeans. "Sorry about that, I, uh, work from home and I kinda…don't like to, uh, wear. Clothes. Most of the time." He couldn't meet Kaidou's eyes. "Her dad doesn't have to know that."
Kaidou wanted to laugh, but settled for smirking. He remembered being awestruck by Senator Stovall to the point where casual conversation was a tortuous exercise in second-guessing, and he never thought he would rise to the point where he could get that same reaction out of a stranger. If this man only knew that Old Stovall wouldn't care either way, in fact, he wouldn't even bother to ask. He had heard a rumor a few years back that she had become some sort of burlesque dancer, had blocked streaming video from his office, and stuck to a fabricated story that his daughter had taken a job in "entertainment" in L.A.
"So, uh." The guy was probably trying to make a good impression. All for naught. "You work with her father? The Senator?"
"Yes," Kaidou said, rubbing the sweating beer bottle. He didn't know why he took it; he didn't drink. "I'm his Chief of Staff. I've known Rachel since she was young."
The young man shifted his gaze to something across the room. "That's cool. Um, she should be home from work soon."
"Are you her roommate?" Kaidou straightened, making the kid squirm a bit. It felt good, to have this kind of control back.
"No. Well—yes. I'm her boyfriend."
"So you're 'Mina'?"
"What?" His eyebrows knitted together. "Uh—no, Mina's my sister. She doesn't live her anymore; she moved in with her boyfriend uptown. I'm Jason."
"Kaidou." He didn't feel like he needed to give more than that.
"Uh," Jason stuttered, obviously confused. "Is that your first name or last name?"
Before he could answer, the sound of sharp heels on tile echoed in the hallway, growing louder until the owner stopped in front of the apartment and opened the door.
She was still a force of nature, even while juggling with a huge handbag and a cardboard box full of takeout containers. She didn't notice the two men sitting at the kitchen table as she stepped delicately out of her black stiletto pumps. She was wearing a white dress, with a small black cardigan covering her shoulders.
"Jason? I picked up Chinese. I think we should have sex before we eat so that we're not all bloated and lazy from the starch."
She turned her head and nearly dropped the box when she saw them. "You."
Kaidou stood instinctively, drinking in the sight of her. She was so beautiful, just like he knew she would be. He was amused to see that out of her heels, she hadn't grown much taller than when she was thirteen. Her face was different: more mature, with graceful, high cheekbones dusted with shimmering powder. Her eyes were the same color, that deep crystal violet that people had a hard time believing was real. Her smooth pink lips were parted lightly in shock as she tried to process the presence of the man in front of her. "Rachel."
The sound of her name caused her to close her mouth and narrow her eyes. "Raye," she corrected haughtily, moving to the boyfriend's side of the table. She turned away from Kaidou and leaned over the blonde man. "Hey. Those light beers are mine." Her head dropped and she planted a short, deep kiss on him, obscuring their faces with her curtain of shifting black hair. "I remembered your egg rolls."
"Rach—Raye," Kaidou said, his stomach lurching as he noticed another part of her anatomy that had beautifully matured.
She turned to him, and he felt like a fool. He had come to see Rachel Stovall, the breathtakingly beautiful young wom—girl—that he had remembered, the one that shared his secrets and spilled her heart out to him in the lonely hours away from her absent father. He had almost expected her to still be that girl, honest and innocent and impressionable, as haunting and lovely like she was in the picture in his wallet.
Instead, Raye Hino, a grown woman, who once had vowed never to marry, clasped the hand of her live-in lover and stared him down with blistering indifference in her eyes.
He could have taken her rage easier than her apathy.
"What are you doing here?"
They were both looking at him now; his brief moment of power was gone. He had so much to tell her that it seemed too large to be condensed into sentences and paragraphs.
That he had followed her father to success and ruin. That he was going through a lengthy, bitter divorce that left him with nothing to fill the void but an aging Senator and a stressful job. That he had imagined what became of her over the years, finally gathering the nerve to search on the Internet, and had hopped on a train and came to her doorstep before he could change his mind. That he missed the child that she had been, and that memory of that girl had kept him going through the stretch of days until just moments before, when she had stepped through the door and shattered his fragile illusion.
That lovely girl was gone. A beautiful woman had taken her place, and it wasn't the same. It would never be.
He kept this inside. "I was in town and came to see how you were doing. And to wish you a happy birthday."
She still looked suspicious. "Did my father send you?"
Once a lapdog… "No," he said. "He didn't."
She dropped her lover's hand and started opening boxes of takeout. "OK, then. I'm doing fine, and thanks for the birthday wishes. Anything else?"
The boyfriend kept looking at each of them in turn; Kaidou wished he could vanish the guy with his mind.
"Do you want to go for a drink, or dinner? To catch up? It's been a while." It sounded stupid and desperate, even to him.
Raye unsheathed a pair of disposable chopsticks and broke them apart with a dry snap. "I'm busy tonight."
"I'm in town all week. I'm staying at the Radisson."
She barely glanced at him. "Good to know. Thanks for stopping by."
A dismissal if he ever heard one. "Thanks for the beer," he said to the boyfriend, who gave him a short nod in return.
The door shut behind him with a soft click; it wasn't like Raye to slam doors anymore, he guessed. He took the stairs at a jog, desperate to get out of this building, this city, this planet.
Thirteen-year-old Rachel Stovall died in his mind's eye: now he had nothing left but a discarded school picture that he threw in the street for the wind to catch. He watched it flutter down the block until it was out of his sight.