A Lonely Resurrection

girls?” I asked, looking around. “Where do they come from?”
    “Oh, all over the world.” She pointed to a tall, auburn beauty in a red-sequined dress who was charming Botox Boy. “That’s Elsa. She’s from Sweden. And that’s Julie next to her, from Canada. The girl who was dancing opposite me is Valentina, from Russia.”
    “What about the girls from Japan?”
    “That’s Mariko and Taeka,” she said, pointing to a petite pair at a corner table who had just said or done something to elicit gales of laughter from their two obviously inebriated, American-looking customers. She turned her head one way, then the other, then back to me. “I don’t see Emi or Yukiko. They must be getting ready to dance.”
    “Seems like a good mix,” I said. “Do you all get along?”
    She shrugged. “It’s like anywhere else. Some of your coworkers are your friends. Others you’re not so crazy about.”
    I smiled as though preparing to enjoy a bit of gossip. “Who do you like, and who do you not like?”
    “Oh, I get along all right with pretty much everyone.” It was a safe answer to a slightly different question. I admired her poise.
    The house music faded out and was replaced by another round of J-Pop techno. Simultaneously, two Japanese girls, topless and high-heeled, appeared on the dance stages.
    “Ah, that’s Emi,” Naomi said, indicating the pretty, appealingly zaftig girl on the far stage. She turned and nodded her head at the stage closer to us. “And that’s Yukiko.”
    Yukiko. At last we meet.
    I watched her, a tall girl with long hair so black that under the stage lighting it coruscated like moonlit liquid. It cascaded in waves around the smooth contours of her shoulders, past the alluring shadows of her waist, around the upturned curve of her ass. She was tall and fine-boned, with delicate white skin, high cheekbones, and small, high breasts. Put the hair up, add a little couture, and you’d have the world’s classiest courtesan.
    This girl with Harry?
I thought.
No way.
    “She’s beautiful,” I said, feeling that her striking looks demanded some commentary.
    “A lot of people say so,” Naomi replied.
    There was something lurking in her deliberately noncommittal reply. “You don’t think so?” I asked.
    She shrugged. “Not my type.”
    “I get the feeling you don’t care for her.”
    “Let’s just say she’s comfortable doing things I’m not.”
    With Harry?
“I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t curious.”
    She shook her head, and I knew I’d hit another dead end, even after three whiskies.
    Snow child, indeed. There was something cold, even calculating, about the girl’s beauty. Something was wrong here, though how the hell could I tell Harry that? I imagined the conversation:
Harry, I went to Damask Rose to check up on you. Trust me, my friend, this girl is way out of your league. Plus, I had a bad feeling about her generally. Steer clear.
    I knew where his mind was right now: she would feel like the best thing that had ever happened to him, and anything or anyone that threatened that comfortable sense would be rationalized away or ignored. A heads-up from a friend would be useless. Or worse.
    I wasn’t going to get any more out of Naomi. I’d do a little more digging when I got back to Osaka. Harry was a friend and I owed him that much. But finding out what this girl was up to wasn’t really the problem. Getting Harry to acknowledge it, I knew, would be.
    “Do you want to watch her?” Naomi asked.
    I shook my head. “Sorry. I was thinking of something else.”
    We talked more about Brazil. She spoke of the country’s ethnic and cultural variety, a mélange of Europeans, Indians, Japanese, and West Africans; its atmosphere of exuberance, music, and sport; its extremes of wealth and poverty; most of all, its beauty, with thousands of miles of spectacular coast, the vast pampas of the south, the trackless green basin of the Amazon. Much of it I knew already, but I enjoyed listening to her, and looking at her while she spoke.
    I thought of what she had said about Yukiko:
Let’s just say she’s comfortable doing things I’m not.
    But that only meant Yukiko had been in the game longer. Innocence is a fragile thing.
    I might have asked for her number. I could have told her my visit had been extended, something like that. She was too young, but I liked the way she made me feel. She provoked a confusing mix of emotions: affinity based on the shared experiences of