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already dead. He lifted his eyes to his wife, who looked to Harry like a wrung-out rag, beyond tears. It wasn’t just their shop and home, it was their neighbors’ homes and shops, too, which involved the idiocy of honor and face. As a third house collapsed the tailor sucked air through his teeth and seemed to draw in his eyes to avoid the unbearable sight.
    Harry opened his billfold and found a hundred-yen note. And another hundred-yen note, which cleaned him out. He pressed the money into the wife’s hand.
    The tailor’s boy ran toward the fire, not directly in but obliquely around the firemen. A sack he had been holding had slipped from his hands, spilling small boxes. The boy bent forward as he ran, and Harry saw that he was chasing beetles perhaps two inches long. Every boy kept pet beetles at some point, kept and fed and pampered them. The beetles scuttled nimbly ahead, a miniature menagerie flying in short bursts, not so much drawn to the flames as confused by the fiery heat and glow. Even after a fireman seized the boy by the scruff of his neck and dragged him away from the flames, he struggled to break free. Harry followed the beetles through puddles of water and picked up the insects one by one, depositing them in his jacket pockets. The beetles were black beauties, some equipped with antlers, some with horns. Four had disappeared underfoot into the crowd, but Harry was satisfied that he had rounded up the majority, and when he delivered them, the boy identified each by name as he replaced them in their boxes.
    From the peak of a ladder, a fireman swung his pole like an executioner’s ax and the house next door came down, front punched in, sides sliding together, a house of cards in a city of cards. Glutted, the fire took on a rosy glow that made Harry feel thoroughly baked. He noticed that his pants and sleeves were wet and smudged. He finally noticed by a reflection of the fire in sequined lapels that Michiko was in the crowd, watching him instead of the flames.

    H ARRY STANK SO MUCH of smoke that he went straight up to the apartment while Michiko closed the club. He undressed and soaped thoroughly at a bucket, sucked in his balls and sank into a tub of water so hot the steam was suffocating. When he was settled against the velvety wood, he lit a cigarette and let his head rest against the rim. A bath for Harry was both ritual and amniotic fluid. It was his context, the sea he swam in. His missionary parents had been too busy wearing out shoe leather on the byways of Japan to enjoy salubrious moments in a bath, but Harry had been brought up on his nurse’s back. That was how Japanese learned how to behave, bowing whenever their mother —or nurse— bowed. Who had washed him but his nurse? And what followed the washing? A bath veiled in steam, where Harry was as Japanese as the next man.
    Through the steam, he noticed Michiko enter the narrow bathroom with Hajime’s gun. She aimed it at Harry. “Did you call her?”
    “Who?”
    “You know who.”
    “Ah, this is one of those circular conversations.”
    “ Her .” The gun bobbed for emphasis.
    “She couldn’t talk. Her husband was there.”
    A Japanese face could be flat as paper, slits carved for the eyes and mouth. Michiko showed no emotion at all. “If we were married, you could have a mistress, I wouldn’t care. But I am your mistress. I could kill you and then me.”
    She aimed at his head, his heart, his head. It was distracting. Also, he was too old for this. Suicide was for the young.
    “Have you ever fired a gun before?” Harry asked. It was amazing what he didn’t know about Michiko.
    “No.”
    “I’ll bet you a hundred yen you can empty that gun at this range and not hit me.”
    “Your life is worth that little? A hundred yen?”
    “Eight shots, Michiko. You’re not going to get better odds than that.”
    “I could do it so easily.”
    “Keep your elbows flexed. You know, it’s moments like these that make me wonder what