Chapter 4

Akemi tried not to acknowledge her husband’s failure to step out boldly and become an artist, his embrace of a secure existence. She saw that as cowardly, at the same time saw it helped her. His job at the college provided the freedom she needed to pursue her own work freely, her artwork, which wasn’t a surrender.

He’d set the course of his life—securely—before they met, him as student and teacher, and he’d shown her lively enthusiasm for, knowledge of art, asked about her work. It wasn’t until they married that she understood the compromises he had made. She accepted, at least tried not to focus on them.

But she couldn’t help seeing that Nelson, Mitchell’s former teacher and celebrated independent filmmaker, was the opposite of Mitchell in so many ways, in his boldness, freedom. He was a maverick, and Akemi’s thoughts had raced at just the talk about him even before their long-anticipated first encounter. And that had been an anticlimax, taken place in a public setting. Nothing happened beyond the brief introduction. Of course he’d expressed interest in the wife of his former student, Mitchell, who for so many years (since before she and he knew each other!) confided in Nelson as a mentor. Their friendship, though long-distance, sustained after Mitchell graduated and Nelson’s two-year visiting professor post ended, he returned to the West Coast. No surprise Nelson had stepped back to take her in, appreciate her in the screening room café surrounded by others. It had felt like he saw her only. Under his look, those eyes, the appraising gaze of an accomplished visual artist, filmmaker, of a man in full possession of his powers, a man taken with himself, Akemi’s skin tingled. She felt—she couldn’t explain it to herself—he saw all her colors and more, and she wanted to show him and herself.

Nelson’s confidence had impressed her. So different from Mitchell. She hadn’t wanted to acknowledge that, it seemed, felt disloyal, and yet—

The patrol car idled at the curb, exhaust curling into the biting air thick with car fumes. Tommy leaned against the door, one hand resting on the butt of his baton, the other drumming the roof with restless fingers. Akemi stood motionless, the rough canvas of her bag strap pressing into her shoulder, the wind catching the hem of her skirt—a pale, whisper-thin thing that rustled like drafting paper, its edges lifting just above her knees with each gust, revealing the faintest tracing of veins beneath the fabric, as if it might tear under too firm a touch. Her white dance top, elastic and clinging, stretched across her torso with spaghetti straps barely holding against the cold bite of the wind.