valve design you came up with, the one with the little micro ceramic spheres? About three months after you disappeared, Syntech made us an offer on the pending patent. I negotiated the deal. Twenty six million dollars.” He shook his head. “It seems like another lifetime. I can hardly remember the satisfaction that brought me. Maybe there wasn’t any. By then, I wasn’t feeling much of anything.”
“Sorry,” Tal said, puzzled. “I feel like I should apologize for something.”
Greg started to say something, then stopped. He slurped up the last of the soup from his bowl, then slid over to a more comfortable position leaning against the wall. “Is that sleet I hear?”
Tal nodded.
“Why are you smiling?” Greg asked.
Tal rubbed his thin blonde hair. “My mind keeps looking for the Greg I remember. The intense young corporate attorney, Armani suits, Mercedes, martinis on the terrace at Abiki’s.”
“A different person. You, too, I think.”
“This town, backcountry Japan suits me.”
Greg lifted his beer glass in what was almost a toast. “You seem satisfied. You said ‘us’ a minute ago.”
“Yeah,” Tal said. “Carol’s an American from Wisconsin. We’ve been together a couple of years now. We’ve leased an empty house—lots of them around—converted part of it to a studio. She’s a painter. Me, I’m a handyman for the old folks here. When they saw the progress I’d made on our house, I could tell they wanted me to help them with their houses.” He smiled. “They are too polite to ask, so I just started doing it. I like them and I’ve learned a lot from them. They never complain, no matter how difficult things are, and I try to be like that.”
Tal laughed out loud then. “I’m the entire Yumoto city maintenance department,” he said. “I’ve repaired all their houses, this shop, their cars. None of them have any money, and I don’t want any. They give us food, supplies, the things we need. Sometimes they give us family mementos from pre-war. It breaks your heart that their kids aren’t interested in that stuff. I’ve never felt this kind of satisfaction before. I like working with wood, the linearity, the clean scent, the clarity of a job finished.” He stopped, embarrassed. “Carol and I met in Tokyo. Back when we were both different people living a different life. You remember I was over here to talk to the firm making those ceramic spheres?”
“That little Kyocera subsidiary.”
“Right. Carol was a buyer for a department store in Milwaukee.”
* * *
Tal thought he’d have the hotel bar to himself, but there was a woman, an American, sitting by herself at a table by the window overlooking the Tokyo smog, fingering her empty Compari and soda glass. When Tal passed behind her, she must have thought it was the waiter. As she looked around, their eyes met.
“Hello,” Tal said noncommittally. He slumped into a chair three tables away, ordered an Asahi Super Dry, and sat staring at the hazy sky beyond the tinted glass.
“Still hot outside?” she said, no doubt feeling, like him, that she should say something to be polite.
“Humid as July in Florida.”
“You from Florida?”
He shook his head, “No. Los Angeles, Santa Monica. You?”
“Milwaukee.”
Without preamble, they drifted into a desultory conversation. Drinks came and went. Tal moved to her table.
The slow stream of words wound on, deepening descriptions of hard work, success, and too little satisfaction. Two strangers, chance met, far from home and alone, in need of absolution.
Dusk came and the lights of Tokyo spread to the horizon. They had dinner together at the French restaurant on the twentieth floor of the hotel. They went to his room and slept together, not making love. Later, in the darkness, they woke and resumed their conversation.
“I want more than anything else to work at my art,” Carol said. “Before it’s too late. I believe I have some talent, I certainly have the passion, and I know that for people like me with modest talent, it takes years of practice to find your voice. My greatest fear is that I will run out of time.”
Tal started to speak when the fire alarm went off. They lay still for a while waiting for it to stop, and for the annunciator to reassure them it had been only a test. But the electronic klaxon continued. Tal got up, pulled on his pants and went to the door. People were moving silently down the corridor and into the stairwell. There was a smell he could not identify in the air.
“This could be the real thing. Let’s dress and go.”
Outside, fire trucks arrived in a roar of clashing lights and ear-splitting sirens. They retired to a Star-bucks across the street, ordered Macchiatto’s, and watched the activity.
She pointed. “Look, there’s the fire.” Smoke had begun to boil out of a couple of windows on the tenth floor. Glass fell into the street.
Tal craned his neck. “A big one, too. This hotel’s going to be out of business for a while.”
They sat silently for a moment.
“I think I’d like to be out of business for a while, too,” Carol said so softly Tal could barely hear. “I changed hotels just last night. Nobody knows I’m here. I’ve got my passport and my money with me. I can disappear…”
“Me, too.” Tal patted the breast pocket of his jacket. “An opportunity to step outside of time.”
They watched the whirling lights of the fire trucks, lost in their own thoughts, comfortable in silence. After a while, they walked to the train station and took the next train out of Tokyo. It happened to be going north.
* * *
Tal refilled Greg’s glass. “You said something about some money a minute ago.”
“Yeah. The Syntech buy-out money put our company way into the profit zone for that year. You were a millionaire for about a year. But Susan was clamoring for more. She had her share, plus some more as your beneficiary, but she wanted the options on your shares, which were now worth several million.”
Tal started to say something, changed his mind, drank the last of his beer and called “Mo ni pon” to Megumi. She brought two more bottles of Asahi.
“So Susan was rich. That’s what she always wanted.”
Greg’s expression changed a little. “Well, yes, but she wanted more. It took me several months to get your options converted and sold. Actually, eight months and two hundred thousand dollars in legal fees to be exact.” He glanced at Tal. “It was always a little ambiguous as to what had actually happened at the Tokyo hotel fire since your body was never found. The official Tokyo police report lists you as presumed dead.”
Tal shrugged. “Let me guess. As soon as Susan got the money, it was more clothes, remodel the house, cosmetic surgery, vacations to all the stylish places, and a new car.”
“Two cars, actually. Susan ran through seventy-five percent of the money in a year. I was holding the rest in a trust. I’ll never forget the afternoon about a year after you disappeared. I was in the lobby of our office talking to a client when I saw her drive up in her black Mercedes 600SL convertible, her hair all silvered, big sunglasses, looking like a fifties movie star. But the funny thing was, it worked, heads turned when she came into the room. She was there to sweet talk me out of the rest of the money.”
Tal said nothing.
“I gave it to her,” Greg said.
“She wasn’t always that way,” Tal said slowly. “Not back when I first met her. Long time ago.”
“She became…” Greg searched for a word, “harsh, more driven. Very strange, since she now had