Widening her palm, she pressed her thumb to her forehead.
Victor nodded, and this time he repeated her gesture before curling his fingers and pressing the side of this thumb to his lips.
“Okay, sorta similar. I think I got it,” she said, copying his sign. “Here’s HAPPY.”
She smiled hugely and circled her hands in front of her chest.
But she scrunched her face when Victor did the same thing, more than once.
He eventually had to write down, “Your happy. My happy. Exactly the same.”
She gasped at his words, then laughed.
The sound made everything inside Victor pause to appreciate the sound up close. There she was. There was the girl he’d seen from afar in that club.
She was so pretty when she laughed. It made Victor want to laugh too. This was why he’d chosen her. This was why he’d wanted to learn her version of sign language as soon as he saw her.
Twenty minutes passed in a flash. And then it was time for each of them to do as many signs as they could.
Victor went first, efficiently pantomiming the signs he remembered and skipping over the ones he'd forgotten. In the end, he accumulated twenty-two points for remembering 22 out of 30 words.
Dawn whistled at his final tally. “Not bad. Okay, my turn!”
This was when Victor discovered something new about the girl from the club. She was completely untrustworthy.
While he had exacting standards for himself and had skipped over the words he didn't know, Dawn wasn't nearly as honorable. The first time she came to a word she didn’t know for certain, instead of skipping over it, she screwed up her face and said, “I think it maybe it sort of went something like this…?
Then she approximated a sign that only bore a passing resemblance to the one he'd shown her.
“No,” Victor answered, in American sign language so she wouldn’t mistake his meaning.
But when he gave her the real sign, she signed and said at the same time, “Wait, I was close. I think I should get half point for that.”
Noting the signs for HALF POINT, he answered, “No half point.”
“That's so unfair!” She signed and whined at the same time.
An argument ensued, in which they both learned how to say a few more words in their separate sign languages. Like UNFAIR… RULES… MEAN… and perhaps most importantly, as far as Dawn was concerned, CHEAT.
But then they were interrupted by Donny saying in Cantonese, “Victor, it is time for your next appointment.”
Victor looked up to find Donny standing in the doorway with his favorite escort. Her name was Ayane, and she was wearing a cocktail dress that perfectly highlighted her willowy figure.
Victor blinked at the sight. Was it that late already? It would seem that an hour and a half had passed without him checking the time once.
Both he and Dawn jumped to their feet.
“Oh, I'm sorry,” she said, looking at her watch. “We went way over.”
Her eyes skittered away from him again, and she stared openly at Ayane.
Ayane was one of the most beautiful women available from Red Diamond’s Japanese escort agency. Always in high demand, his father had ordered her to visit Victor every Thursday. Most others would consider him lucky.
But shame washed over him as Dawn stared at the woman who had interrupted their good time. And though he owed his tutor no explanation, he found himself wanting to tell her that this woman was no one special to him. Merely a servant, paid handsomely to please him.
But then, Dawn recovered. She looked back to Victor, signing and talking as she had before. “I'll go now. It was nice meeting you. This one time.”
This one time.
The three words floated out of her mouth but pierced Victor’s chest like a lead bullet. There was a sinking feeling inside of him as he answered with one of the signs she’d taught him in ASL: “Thank you.”
She silently signed back, “You’re welcome,” in half-point CSL and smiled up at him.
But her smile. It didn't reach her eyes. Not like it had when they’d been playing their game.
He raised his hands, struggling to come up with a combination of simple signs to tell her to stay. He wanted to offer to send Ayane away and ask if maybe they could have dinner.
But before he could, she dashed away, pushing past Donny and Ayane without any further goodbyes.
“That fat black girl speaks sign language?” Ayane asked in Japanese, staring after her with a giggle. “Oh, how cute! Is she your new tutor, Victor-san?”
Yes, Victor decided right then and there. She was his new tutor. Despite what he’d written to save face, this wouldn’t be a one-time thing.
3
DAWN
I didn't catch every word the beautiful woman said in Japanese to Victor. But I did manage to pick out "fat," "black," and "sign language." So I assumed she was talking about me.
