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put a lady in touch with her old sweetheart.
    The search for the Queen of the Whores typified his bread and butter. Mr. Brady, hewas sure, had no particularly honorable or romantic motive in seeking her. The narrow omnipotence which Tyler rented out to his clients came to inform his own heart with a dreamy absence of scruples, and a habit of perceiving from a too professional standpoint anyone who interested him. This is not to imply that he spied on Irene, nor that Irene’s own qualities had nothing to do with attraction—for she was truly unique, not in her character but in her soul. And she was wounded; her soul cried like a wounded bird’s, and he heard the cry. John did not hear, at least not anymore. Isn’t that the natural outcome of marriage? John committed small and egregious rudenesses toward her family—an excellent way to make an Asian woman suffer even to the point of weeping. One February weekend Irene’s parents threw a birthday party for John, and John showed up with someone who claimed to be an old college friend who looked critically at the food and asked: Is this event catered?—No, said Irene’s sister Pammy. Mom and I cooked it all ourselves. —Oh, the woman said. I didn’t think it was catered. No wonder there’s nothing here worth eating. —A look of disgust flashed across John’s mouth, but he said nothing. Irene wanted to cry then for her sister’s sake. She said to Tyler (who of course hadn’t been present) that she didn’t care when she was walking down the street alone and some white person said: Will you look at that Chink! but when anyone insulted her sister or her parents in her presence, it was all she could do not to attack. She said that she must be a very bad person because she often felt such impulses. Tyler, slowly shaking his head, wondered if that meant that she often got called a Chink. He thought to himself that there couldn’t have been any human being more special and good than Irene. It hurt him to see how John treated her. Had he also cause for grievance, Tyler wondered (knowing from his work as well as from his own memories the wretched secrets which may infest domestic life), or was John simply morally inanimate? John was so cold with her—unconfiding and unhappy!
    Irene said that once she’d asked her husband why he didn’t divorce her if he felt so miserable, and he just turned toward her with a weary look and said: Because I know you’ll take good care of me.
    Don’t you think that’s wrong? Irene said.
    Oh, he’s trying to be nice. That’s just John’s way . . .
    But isn’t it wrong?
    It’s too bad, honey, said Tyler, stroking the back of her neck. It’s really a shame. Remember, I told you how it would be before you got married.
    I know. I’m sorry.
    Don’t be sorry, sweetheart, he said, embracing her. She kissed him passionately on the lips.
    It was a fresh cold winter’s eve of shiny raincoats and headlights of stalled traffic like luminous pairs of dinner plates stood on their edges; the pavement had become an ebony liquid which reflected upside down the people walking on it, stuck by the soles of their shoes to their inverted selves. Tyler had invited Irene and John out to dinner, knowing that John would be too office-burdened to attend. Sometimes he wondered if his brother were angry at him, or grateful for taking Irene off his hands, or simply oblivious. Mostly he tried not to think about it. They were walking down Geary Street now and Irene was squeezing his hand. He wanted to put her fingers into his mouth and suck them one by one. They strode along in happy silence. Tyler felt everything to be proceeding as it should. No surprises would frighten him.
    Among those Japanese restaurants on the edge of the Tenderloin he had chosen onecalled Kabukicho. The client who’d first taken him there, an old Japanese banker very correctly jealous of his young wife, had been amused by the resonance of such a name in this place, for Kabukicho is