Rainfall

Japanese woman’s unnecessarily dainty gesture, and again I was struck by the unusual confidence with which she carried herself.

“That’s good,” she said after a moment, folding her arms across her chest and conceding a small, lingering smile.

I smiled back. “What’s today? A bit of shopping?”

“A bit. And you?”

“The same. It’s past time for a new briefcase. We consultants have to maintain appearances, you know.” I glanced down at the shopping bag she was carrying. “I see you’re a fan of Paul Stuart. That was going to be my next stop.”

“It’s a good store. I know it from New York, and was glad when they opened a Tokyo branch.”

I raised my eyebrows slightly. “Have you spent much time in New York?”

“Some,” she said with a faint smile, looking into my eyes.

Damn, she’s tough, I thought. Challenge her. “How’s your English?” I asked, switching from Japanese.

“I get by,” she said, without missing a beat.

“You want to get a cup of cawfee?” I asked, staying with English and using my best Brooklyn accent.

She smiled again. “That’s pretty authentic.”

“So is the suggestion.”

“I thought you were going to Paul Stuart.”

“I was. But now I’m thirsty. Do you know the Tsuta coffeehouse? It’s great. And right around the corner, just off Koto-dori.”

Her arms were still folded across her chest. “I don’t know it.”

“Then you’ve got to try it. Koyama-san serves the best coffee in Tokyo, and you can drink it listening to Bach or Chopin, looking out onto a wonderful secret garden.”

“A secret garden?” she asked, playing for time, I knew. “What’s the secret?”

I gave her a sober look. “Koyama-san says that if I tell you, I have to kill you. So it would be better if you were to see for yourself.”

She laughed again, cornered but seeming not to mind. “I think I’d have to know your name first,” she said.

“Fujiwara Junichi,” I replied, bowing automatically. Fujiwara was my father’s last name.

She returned the bow. “It’s nice to meet you, Fujiwara-san.”

“Let me introduce you to Tsuta,” I said, smiling, and we headed off.

The stroll over to Tsuta took less than five minutes, during which we made small talk about how the city had changed over the years, how we missed the days when the boulevard in front of Yoyogi Park was closed to automobile traffic on Sundays and host to a delirious outdoor party of costumed revelers, when the identity of Japanese jazz was being newly forged in a thousand basement bars and coffeehouses, when there was no gleaming new City Hall in Shinjuku and the area was alive with real yearning and romance and grit. I enjoyed talking with her, and knew at some level that this was strange, even undesirable.

We were in luck, and one of Tsuta’s two tables, each of which overlooks the establishment’s secret garden through a single oversized picture window, was open and waiting for us. Alone, I typically enjoy a seat at the counter, where a view of Koyama-san’s reverential coffee preparations is always a wonder, but today I wanted an atmosphere more conducive to conversation. We each ordered the house demitasse, made with an intense dark roast, and sat at right angles to each other, so that we could both see the garden.

“How long have you lived in Tokyo?” I asked, when we were settled in.

“On and off for my whole life, really,” she said, slowly stirring a spoonful of sugar crystals into her demitasse. “I lived abroad for a few years when I was little, but mostly I grew up in Chiba, one town over. I used to come to Tokyo all the time when I was a teenager, to try to sneak into the live houses and listen to jazz. Then I spent four years in New York, studying at Julliard. After that, I came back to Tokyo. And you?”

“Same as you — off and on for my whole life.”

“And where did you learn to order coffee in an authentic New York accent?”

I took a sip of the bitter liquid before me and considered how to answer. It’s rare for me to share biographical details. The things I have done, and continue to do, have marked me, just as Crazy Jake said they would, and, even if the mark is invisible to most of the wider world, I am always aware of its presence. Intimacy is no longer familiar to me. Probably, I sometimes realize with a measure of regret, it is no longer possible.

I haven’t had a real relationship in Japan since my move into the shadows. There were some faltering dates, perfunctory on my part. Tatsu, and some other friends that I no longer see, sometimes tried to set me up with women they knew. But where were these relationships going to go, when the two subjects that most define me were unmentionable, taboo? Imagine the conversation: “I served in Vietnam.” “How did you manage that?” “I’m half American, you see, a mongrel.”

There are a few women from the mizu shobai, the water trade, as Japan calls its demimonde, whom I see from time to time. We’ve known each other long enough so that things are no longer conducted on a straight cash basis, expensive gifts instead providing the necessary currency and context, and there is even a certain degree of mutual affection. They all assume that I’m married, an assumption that makes it easy for me to explain the subtle security measures in which I engage as a matter of course. And the assumption also renders explainable the suspended, on-again, off-again nature of our relationship, and my reticence about personal details.

But Midori had a reticence about her, too, a reticence she had just breached in telling me a bit about her childhood. I knew that if I failed to reciprocate, I would learn nothing more from her.