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“Potato chips?
    â€œYour favorite outfit?”
    â€œSweats?” Again, a question, as if she were unsure of her answer.
    â€œYou like comfortable clothes?” I asked. “Sweat pants and loose jackets?”
    She frowned. “Oh, those are fine, but I like the big woolens. You know? Sweats, with reindeer knitted in?” Her fingers flew through the air like prancing reindeer.
    â€œSweaters.” I tried to smile encouragingly, but my face was still stiff with sinus pain. “Do you have a favorite movie or TV show?”
    She frowned, touching her little pin. “I like TV but I don’t have time to watch. But I do love Brad Pitt. Do you know him?”
    â€œI know who he is,” I said. Our appetizers arrived. As Yoshiko and her mother sampled the spicy wings and fried mozzarella sticks, I decided to stop the interview for now. It was tepid at best, which, considering my physical health and Yoshiko’s lack of life experience, was not a surprise. Oh, I could write up some history, throw in some facts, even describe the way she had brought tears to my eyes in her performance of a Stravinsky concerto. But there was more to life than single achievements, and it was the Herald’s mandate to provide a thorough picture of the celebrities we profiled; to cover the subject’s grand achievement, and yet to paint a fuller portrait with his or her passions and fears, idiosyncracies, and personal sense of style.
    A crush on Brad Pitt was just not a lasting facet of Yoshiko’s personality, but when I thought of her world, I realized how much of it was spent in concert halls and hotel rooms and airports. In a way, it was not a life at all, but a relentless stream of rehearsals and performances.
    As Yoshiko and her mother nibbled on appetizers, I chomped on celery sticks and tried to gather a clue from her clothes. Yoshiko wore a snappy little black blazer—looked like a Liz Claiborne to me—over a chiffon-print shirt with velvet trim at the waist. Her jeans looked well worn, as did her chunky Steve Madden boots. Nothing remarkable about this teenager, though I did admire the little pin on the lapel of her jacket. It reminded me of a model of an atom.
    â€œThat’s a very nice pin,” I said.
    Yoshiko smiled, touching the pin. “Thank you very much. I made it.”
    â€œYou did?” It wasn’t a real hook, but it was a nice detail that might prove to be an inroad to her personality. “You make your own jewelry?” I leaned forward to admire the pin, a spiral of silver wires looping around three polished stones, two green and one purple. “How interesting. Do you use wire cutters?”
    Her eyes lit up, and she put a hand over her mouth in a coy gesture that was almost comical. “I use blow torch,” she admitted.
    Beside her, mother rolled her eyes and shot a disapproving comment in Japanese.
    I shot Yoshiko a smile. “Do you have any other jewelry creations?”
    She nodded. “I have many now. It started when my uncle brought in the torch to work on a pipe, and I played with bending a piece of metal. After that, it sort of happened. I keep the torch in my room at home. My mother is worried that I will harm my fingers, but I am careful.”
    Mother shook her head, but I enjoyed the light of defiance in Yoshiko’s eyes.
    At last, I had the beginning of a story.
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    After the interview I strolled up Lexington amid the blur of rushed commuters and shoppers and Christmas lights, trying to weave in my mind a fine mesh of Yoshiko’s distinctive qualities. The strong tendrils of her mother’s hold were a consideration. Was her mother the force behind Yoshiko’s disciplined genius, or the tyrant who held the girl captive in hotel rooms around the world?
    That was the thing about mother-daughter relationships—too difficult to read in one sitting, too complex to summarize in a tidy three-hundred word bio. The