The Fire and the Veil (Veronica Barry Book 2) (3 page)

The sushi restaurant he had chosen, Nishiki, was only a few blocks from Cafe San Paulo. The hostess at Nishiki offered them a booth or a spot at the sushi bar. Daniel looked at Veronica with his eyebrows raised, and she chose the bar.

“Sake?” he asked as he held her chair.

“No, thanks,” she said. Dancing had done the trick. She felt much calmer now. After all, if she decided she wasn’t ready, she’d just tell him so. Let him think she was weird or whatever. They had a good time together and there was no reason to feel pressured.

Daniel ordered a Sapporo beer and they gazed at their menus for a few moments. Veronica loved Japanese food. She wondered if it would be bad manners to order the mixed sashimi plate worth $22. A mixed nigiri plate was tempting, too. It was $18. She decided on the latter. She wondered if it was possible to become known as a glutton if you ate a lot of sushi. It was such light, clean food. But then, she imagined that small, delicate Japanese women didn’t eat twelve pieces of sushi in a sitting, plus wakame salad and a bowl of miso broth. Well, she wasn’t a small, delicate Japanese woman. She was a medium-height, curvy woman of French and Italian heritage. Neither of whom were known for having big women, she mused. She’d spent a semester in Paris and she’d actually felt tall there. But still, at least Italian women were known for their curves.

“I’m getting the chirashi bowl and a side of vegetable tempura,” Daniel announced.

Quick estimating told her his dinner would cost more than the sashimi plate. “I’ll order the mixed sashimi,” she said with a smile.

“So,” he said as he set down his menu and gestured to one of the chefs behind the bar. “Tell me about your squirrelly kids.”

“Ah. Well, I have a few that are just full of freshman energy. Nothing unusual. Most of the kids in French I are freshmen and sophomores. They tend to be sillier than the upperclassmen.”

“Oh? I’d have thought that all high schoolers were cooler-than-thou.”

“The freshman are basically still eighth graders until midway through spring, when they realize they’re almost sophomores.”

“And the sophomores?”

“Live up to their name. Sophomore means ‘wise fool.’ They think they have everything all figured out. Actually I think some of the sophomores are the worst; they’re completely committed to that teenage rebellion thing.”

“And it all changes when they get to be juniors?”

Veronica shrugged. “Lots of them get a summer job before junior year. It’s the first time many of them have ever had to wait on other people for a change. I think it makes a big difference. And developmentally… well, it does seem to make a difference, too. Of course there are often a couple of kids who lag behind and still think it’s funny to say ‘pianist.’ But the rest of the juniors give them the stink-eye for being so immature.”

“You end up talking about a lot of ‘pianists’ in your French classes?”

Veronica frowned and wrinkled her nose, not sure what to say to that, but she was saved by the arrival of the sushi chef, who took their order.

“We got a few new kids just recently,” Veronica said.

“Angie Dukas,” Daniel offered.

“Well, yes, of course. But a few others. One of them, a girl, she stands out.”

“A sophomore?”

“A junior.”

“The kind that laughs at ‘pianist’?”

Veronica shook her head. “No,” she said. “Disruptive though. The first day she came into the room it was like someone threw in a grenade. So much attitude. She slammed her books down on the desk and just glared at me. I didn’t know what to do. I gather they dumped her in the class.”

“French I?”

“No, French II. Can you believe it? I can understand dumping a kid into French I when they need an elective. But she’s never taken French and they dump her into French II? Ugh.”

The chef returned and placed little bowls of miso in front of them. Veronica wasted no time, scooping broth with her porcelain spoon. It was delicious. Daniel brought the bowl directly to his lips and drank.

“Wow, I thought I was hungry,” Veronica said with a laugh.

Daniel looked surprised, then glanced at the bowl in his hand. “Oh. Yeah. Sometimes I forget. Miso just doesn’t seem like spoon food to me.”

“Do you slurp your soup too?”

“Seriously? I dare you to slurp your soup if you ever eat at my aunt’s table.”

“But I remember a Brady Bunch episode that said something like that.”

“Brady Bunch? Aren’t they all white bread?”

“Yeah, but some relative who’s a world traveler comes to visit and she tells them that in Asia people slurp their soup to show appreciation to the chef.”

“Well, I can’t speak for all of Asia, but at least as far as my family’s concerned, that would be rude.”

“Interesting.”

“So back to this new girl in your class. Is she still as bad as she was the first day? What’s her name?”

“Dolores Hekili. But she goes by Lola.”

Daniel started to hum “Lola” by the Kinks.

“Trust you to make the 60s music connection.”

“Says the woman whose knowledge of foreign customs comes from episodes of the Brady Bunch,” he countered. “Hey, speaking of which, isn’t Hekili a Hawai’ian name?”

“Hekili, and yes. But I don’t follow your ‘speaking of which.’”

“You know. Brady Bunch. Hawai’i. That two-part episode where Greg wakes up the spider hanging over him?”

“I think it was on his chest actually.”

“Man, I remember that. To be continued. I was dying to see what was going to happen. Talk about a cliff-hanger,” Daniel laughed. “Although you have to admit, the Bradys weren’t exactly paragons of cultural sensitivity. I mean, Hawai’i was so exotic to them that they got all messed up by a curse.”

“Yeah. White bread, like you said.”

“So this Lola Hekili—”

“Hekili.”

“Hekili. She’s still a handful?”

“No, she’s not as bad. She’s absent a lot. The main problem when she’s there is that she’s beautiful.”

Daniel raised his eyebrows.

“The boys all have to impress her at all costs. You should see her. Sleek black hair. Slim but with… assets. Tough looking, but gorgeous. She’s all done up. And with her attitude they all know there’s only one way to get her to notice them.”

“Take on the teacher?”

“Directly or indirectly, yes. They have to rebel. It’s tiresome.”

“Isn’t Angie in your French II class?”

“Yeah.”

“How does she like Miss Hekili?”

She nodded to show that she noticed that he got the name right, and he beamed. “Ange doesn’t seem to pay much attention to her. I’ve already pulled the names for next weeks’ partners, though, and she’s going to be working with her. If Lola even shows up.”

“Well, that will be interesting.”

The chef took their bowls and set down small plates of wakame salad. Veronica dug in with enthusiasm. She loved the spicy-vinegary green seaweed.

Daniel watched her, looking pleased. “I’m going to have to schedule that sukmo dinner sooner than I thought.”

Veronica looked up at him. With effort she swallowed her mouthful. “Really?”

“Sure. You eat seaweed. My sukmos both grew up on the coast, in Busan. They love seaweed. They used to go collect it themselves.”

“What, like, scuba-diving?”

Daniel barked with laughter.

“What?” Veronica said.

“It’s just the image of my aunt Eun Hee in a wet suit with a tank…” He kept laughing until he had to wipe tears from the corners of his eyes with his napkin. “That was priceless. Thank you.”

Veronica pursed her lips.

“Ah. Well,” he sighed. “So, no. No scuba gear. They collect it on the beach. And sometimes from nets the fishermen bring in. If it’s not in bad condition.”

“Wow,” Veronica said. She didn’t know how she’d feel about eating that.

“But not now,” Daniel added hastily. “Now they buy it at the Asian supermarkets.”

Veronica nodded. She’d been in some Asian supermarkets, with their tanks of huge live toads and the slaughtered turtles. She wasn’t exactly reassured. But it was sweet that he was thinking of introducing her to his family. It meant he really liked her, didn’t it?

For the rest of dinner they talked about other things: old detective movies, whether Sam Spade was tougher than Dirty Harry—Veronica said he was, but Daniel had been raised on seventies movies so he disagreed—and other light talk. Daniel didn’t say anything at all about work, which Veronica was beginning to realize meant he had had a particularly unpleasant week and was trying not to think about it. She wondered if they would ever get to a point where he’d want to unload the burdens of his job on her. She was ready to listen. She thought she could understand a lot of what he went through, after the experiences they’d shared trying to get to the bottom of Grant Slecterson’s crimes. Veronica had found Sylvia Gomez’s body, so she even knew a little about the horrors of a crime scene. But then, Daniel saw horrors a lot more often than she did. Fortunately not every day, but sometimes more than once in a week. Veronica suspected that he didn’t want to lay any of that on her. She hadn’t exactly reacted with composure to finding Sylvia’s body, either. She wondered if he thought she was weak. Maybe she
was
weak.

As the waiter returned with his credit card at the end of dinner, Daniel hopped up and offered a hand to help her rise from her chair. Veronica contemplated his manners. Daniel was quite a gentleman. He seemed to have learned all of the right gestures: holding doors and chairs, serving her wine first if they were sharing a bottle, helping her step over puddles. When she’d tried to insist that they go dutch on their second date (the first had been at his house so there was no check to pay), he’d refused, saying that if she wanted to pay, she’d have to be the one to ask him out. She wondered if he expected her to hold the door if she did, too. She also wondered if his manners implied that she was weak. That was the basis for the argument feminists had against all the gallant gestures of a gentleman.

So maybe Daniel was treating her so politely because he thought she was weak. Maybe he liked her because he thought she was weak—a real damsel in distress. After all, hadn’t she fainted when he shot Grant Slecterson by the banks of the American River? Maybe in his mind, he’d rescued her. Well, he had. She wouldn’t have gotten far with her broken arm.

Veronica chewed on her bottom lip as he held the restaurant door and they walked out into the night. Maybe she was reading into all of this. Maybe he didn’t think she was weak and he was just trying to show respect the way he’d been raised to.

And even if he did think she was weak, was he wrong? She had needed rescuing. Was it bad to be with man who took on the hero role willingly? Maybe she just needed to accept her limitations.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Daniel said as they neared his car.

She almost asked him, right then, “Do you think I’m weak?” but she stopped herself. How could she expect him to answer that truthfully? Instead she said, “I guess I was wondering what happens next.”

He smiled. “You want to come back to my place for a while? I got some new fish.”

“From your uncle’s store this time, I hope,” she said, thinking of his uncle, who was not pleased when she met him, because Daniel had bought a fish from another store than his.

“Oh yeah, from his store. I got a whole second tank and four fish, so far. They’re saddleback clownfish.”

“There are different kinds of clownfish?”

“You want to see them?”

“Sure,” she said. She felt the flush returning to her cheeks, but the air was cool. His car waited another block down the street and she took every moment to breathe in the refreshing air as deeply as she could without giving herself away.

Daniel lived in a modern building in downtown Sacramento. She’d been there twice—once, before they were dating, when she was still trying to convince him that she really was psychic. The second time had been their first date. She hadn’t really been nervous either time, but now she was.

Daniel lived on the fourth floor, in a condo with industrial style. The walls were unfinished with pipes visible here and there. It had a cold quality to it that she hadn’t really liked from the beginning, and tonight with her anxiety, she found the decor all the more off-putting. The huge bay window overlooking L Street reflected the room back to her, and if she looked at herself in it, it seemed like she was standing over the drop to the street below. She glanced away. The black leather couch looked cold and the plastic coffee table looked hard. Veronica suppressed a shiver. It’s just a bachelor pad, she thought. Of course, that made her feel worse. Bachelor pads were for bachelors, or men with swinging lifestyles, who brought women home for just one night. Was that where this was headed? And should she be okay with that? What kind of a wuss was she?

The medium fish tank against the left wall now had a second one next to it of the same size: about thirty gallons. The original tank had six orange and white fish swimming in it. Daniel turned on the fluorescent lights in both tanks. The second tank had four similar fish in it, but instead of orange and white they were black and white. Veronica approached the tank. Some had varying amounts of yellow on their faces, and on one the black was more of a dark brown. The white spots glowed in the light.

“They’re pretty,” she said.

Daniel beamed. “They aren’t cheap, but Samchon Jung-Hwa gave me a family discount. I’ll probably get one or two more, eventually. You want to feed them?” He handed her a little can of pellets. She took off the lid and pinched a few, dropping them into the open part of the aquarium cover.

“I thought you stopped by on your way to pick me up to feed them,” she said as she watched the fish gulp the pellets.

“I did,” he said, stepping closer to her. “They’re always hungry.”

She turned and glanced at him with a smile. “What about the orange ones? They’ll think we’re playing favorites.”

“Sure, toss them some pellets too.”

Veronica dropped some food in the orange clowns’ tank. They darted around, catching the pellets as they floated down to the floor. Daniel took the canister from her hand, still holding her fingers lightly as he put it away.