Hard Rain

mind that's always running in the background logged what I
    saw as the jakuzas assets: raw strength, experience with violence,
    familiarity with principles of continuous attack. Under weaknesses, I
    placed lack of self-control, shortness of breath after a brief and
    one-sided fight, relatively minimal damage caused despite ferocity of
    assault.
    Unless he was a borderline sociopath, which was statistically unlikely,
    I knew the jakuza would now be feeling slightly uneasy about what
    people must have made of his outburst. I took the opportunity to
    stroll over to the bench-press station and ask him if he needed a
    spot.
    "Warui na? he thanked me, grateful, I knew, for the comfort this
    simple interaction afforded him.
    'lya," I replied. It's nothing. I stood over him and helped him get
    the bar in the air. I noted that he was moving a hundred and
    fifty-five kilos. He managed two repetitions, with some assistance
    from me on the second. He would still be fully adrenalized from his
    recent altercation, and I made a mental note of the limits of his
    strength at this exercise.
    I helped him guide the bar back onto the uprights, then whistled
    quietly through my teeth in slightly theatrical deference to his power.
    I moved to the foot of the bench as he sat up and told him that if he
    needed another spot, he should just ask me. He nodded his head in
    gruff thanks and I began to turn away.
    I paused as though considering whether to add something, then turned
    back to him. "That guy should have checked to see if you were done
    with this station," I said in Japanese. "Some people have no manners.
    You taught him a lesson."
    He nodded again, pleased at my astute assessment of the important
    social service he had provided in pulverizing some harmless idiot, and
    I knew that he would be comfortable calling on me, his new friend, from
    time to time when he needed a spot.
    Like tonight, I hoped. I moved quickly down Gaienhigashi-dori, easing
    past pedestrians on the crowded sidewalk, ignoring the cacophony of
    traffic and sound trucks and touts, using the chrome and glass around
    me to gauge whether there was anyone to my rear trying to keep up. I
    turned right just before the Roi Roppongi Building, then right again
    onto the club's street, where I paused behind a thicket of parked
    bicycles, my back to the incongruous pink exterior of a Starbucks
    coffee shop, waiting to see who might be trailing in my wake. A few
    groups of young partygoers drifted by, caught up in the urgent business
    of entertaining themselves and failing to notice the man standing
    quietly in the shadows. No one set off my radar. After a few minutes,
    I made my way to the club.
    The facility occupied the ground floor of a gray commercial building
    hemmed in by rusting fire escapes and choked with high-tension wires
    that clung to the structure's facade like rotting vegetation. Across
    from it was a parking lot crowded by Mercedeses with darkened windows
    and high-performance tires, the status symbols of the country's elite
    and of its criminals, each aping the other, comfortably sharing the
    pleasures of the night in Roppongi's tawdry demimonde. The street
    itself was illuminated only by the indifferent glow of a single arched
    lamplight, its base festooned with flyers advertising the area's
    innumerable sexual services, in the shadows of its own luminescence
    looking like the elongated neck of some antediluvian bird shedding
    diseased and curling feathers.
    The shades were drawn behind the club's plate-glass windows, but I
    spotted the jakuza's anodized aluminum Harley-Davidson V-Rod parked in
    front, surrounded by commuter bicycles like a shark amidst pilot fish.
    Just past the windows was the entrance to the building. I tried the
    door, but it was locked.
    I backed up a few steps to the club windows and tapped on the glass. A
    moment later the lights went off inside. Nice, I thought. He had cut
    the lights so he could peek through the shades without being seen from
    outside. I waited, knowing he was watching me and checking the
    street.
    The lights went back on, and a moment later the jakuza appeared in the
    entranceway to the building. He was wearing gray sweatpants and a
    black cut-away A-shirt, along with the obligatory weightlifting gloves.
    Obviously in the middle of a workout.
    He opened the door, his eyes searching the street for danger, failing
    to spot it right there in front of him.
    "Shimatterun day o," he told me. Club's closed.
    "I know," I