I sat silently for several minutes, resisting the urge to speak, knowing it was stupid. There was nothing left of my father. Even if there were, it was ridiculous to believe it would be here, hovering...
I played baccarat at the upscale Bellagio; roulette at the off-strip Rio; craps at the fading Riviera, whose attempts to match the gayness and glitter around her felt forced, artificial, like makeup l...
I moved deeper into the comforting gloom, along a stone walkway covered in cherry blossoms that lay like tenebrous snow in the glow of lamplights to either side. Just days earlier, these same blossoms...
I heard laughter and looked up. Some kids at the terminal next to me, playing an online game. I wondered for a moment how I had gotten here. And I wondered if maybe this is what Tatsu had meant when h...
I heard a bolt moving, then the door opened. It was Washio. You’re early, he said. I shrugged. I rarely make appointments. You don’t want to give someone the opportunity to fix you in time and place....
I hadn’t meant to embarrass him. Harry, I only ask because, when you’re young, you sometimes think you can have it both ways. If you’re just having fun, you don’t need to tell her anything. You should...
I also went to Kyoto. I had found no occasion to visit the city in over twenty years, and was struck to find that the graceful, vital metropolis I remembered was nearly extinct, disappearing like an u...
He shrugged. Maybe you’re afraid I won’t help you anymore. You said it yourself: ‘You can’t live with one foot in daylight and the other in shadows.’ Maybe you’re afraid I’ll move into the daylight an...
George Burns line? ‘Sincerity—if you can fake that, you’ve got it made.
Foreigners who think of Japan as a polite society have never ridden the Yamanote at rush hour. The
First was the fewer, not less. Now it was the care in avoiding a preposition at the end of a sentence. An educated man, presumably. Precise. Apparently fussy about small-minded rules, perhaps to compe...
Checking your six? he said, still smiling. I thought you wanted an airport because they’re safe. What is it about me that scares people so much?
But, like all indulgences that are valued not just for their product but for their process, the sento will never entirely disappear. For in the unhurried rituals of scrubbing and soaking, and in the p...
After about fifteen minutes he walked over to me. Randori? he asked, in a tone that was more a challenge than an invitation. I nodded, averting my eyes from his hard stare. In my mind, our contest was...
A Fed, a local, and a consultant.
We rarely see what we prefer to overlook.
Some traveler from the undiscovered country. I know as well as I know anything the dead are simply dead.
Know. I get it. Because when I knew but they didn’t know I knew, that was good. But when they knew that I knew but I didn’t know they knew, that was bad. But now that I know they know that I know, and...
When I’d killed Ozawa at the sentō, I’d briefly wondered whether I was now one of the bad guys. By the time I did McGraw, I’d figured out there are no bad guys, any more than there are good guys. Ther...
We could go from bliss and harmony to anger and recriminations as fast and with as little warning as a tropical storm. What made it bearable, what made it good, was that the foul weather would pass wi...