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arrived—obviously, she’d been there through the night. I was struck again by how pretty she was, and by how deliberately she seemed to be doing nothing to accentuate it. “You okay?” I said.
    “Why would I not be okay?”
    I was surprised. I realized I was expecting something more along the lines of a thank-you.
    “I don’t know…I just wanted to make sure. That guy was pretty belligerent.”
    “You don’t think I deal with assholes like that about five times a week on average?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Well, I do. Without anyone’s help.”
    “I…guess I don’t know much about hotels,” I stammered.
    “Yeah, well this one’s not known for its high-class clientele. You want that, try the Imperial.”
    Why was I arguing? I had more important things on my mind. I shook it off and said, “I didn’t mean to suggest you couldn’t handle it yourself. I’m glad you’re okay.”
    I moved off, out the exit door, past the privacy wall, into the narrow street. I was about to turn the corner when I heard the door open behind me. A voice called out, “Hey.”
    I turned. It was her. But it took me a second to process—what was she doing sitting?
    No, not sitting. She was in a wheelchair.
    She pushed the wheels to propel herself forward a few feet, closer to where I stood. Then she stopped and regarded me.
    “Thank you,” she said. But before I could overcome my surprise and come up with something in response, she had spun around and disappeared inside.

chapter
six
    I checked in with the answering service I used. There were two messages. One from McGraw: I should meet him that night at a place called Taihō Chinese Cuisine in Minami Azabu. Okay, that was good. I didn’t have to worry about the pros and cons of what he might make of my not calling him about what had happened at the Kodokan. I could hear what he said, and play the rest by ear.
    The other message was from a good friend, maybe my only friend, who I’d been avoiding since getting mixed up with McGraw. His name was Tatsuhiko Ishikura—Tatsu—and we’d known each other in Vietnam, where the Keisatsucho, Japan’s National Police Force, had seconded him to learn counterterror strategies. We’d gotten close there, being the only two Japanese speakers for thousands of miles, and had seen each other a few times since I’d arrived back in Tokyo. He was a good man—smarter than the people he worked for; stout as a bulldog and twice as tenacious; and funny as hell when he’d had too much sake and was venting about his “superiors.” I missed him. With my mother gone, my father no more than the increasingly remote memory of a child, and no siblings or other close relatives, I felt worse than orphaned. I felt marooned, unmoored, capable of anything because no one knew me anymore, no one was watching. I needed a connection to someone, or something—even at twenty I understood that. But Tatsu was a cop, and working for McGraw and hanging out with a cop just didn’t strike me as a particularly tenable set of simultaneous relationships. I felt sad about it, but there wasn’t much to be done. If I didn’t call back, maybe he’d stop trying. And that would probably be for the best.
    I spent the day reading in a variety of parks and coffee shops, feeling like a homeless man. I was used to having time on my hands, but this was different. It was knowing I shouldn’t go to the usual places. My apartment was out, obviously, and so was training at the Kodokan. Even the Tokyo Metropolitan Library, where I’d whiled away many an afternoon with a book, felt suddenly dangerous and uncertain. All I could do was drift from place to place on Thanatos, my bag slung across my back, feeling disconnected, in between, a rōnin —a masterless samurai, literally “a floater on the waves”—with nothing to look forward to but a single scheduled meeting, and nothing to do but wait.
    I arrived in Minami Azabu on Thanatos at seven, and found a small storefront