Hard Rain

you'd deserved
    it."
    "I would have made you sorry."
    "You didn't. You made me happy."
    I heard her laugh. "Good. You still haven't told me what you were
    afraid of."
    I thought for a moment. Drowsiness was settling on me like a
    blanket.
    "Of getting involved. Like you said, I haven't been with someone for a
    long time."
    She laughed again. "How can we be involved? I don't even know who you
    are."
    With an effort, I opened my eyes. I looked at her. "You know better
    than most," I said.
    "Maybe that's what scares you," she replied.
    If I stayed any longer I would fall asleep. I sat up and ran a hand
    over my face.
    "It's okay," she said. "I know you have to go."
    She was right, of course. "Yeah?" I asked.
    "Yeah." She paused. Then: "I'd like to see you again. But not at the
    club."
    "That makes sense," I said, my mind having defaulted to its usual
    security setting. She furrowed her brow at my response. I saw my
    mistake, smiled, and tried to correct. "After tonight, I don't think I
    could respect that "no below the waist" rule, anyway." She laughed at
    that, but the laughter wasn't entirely comfortable.
    I used the bathroom, then made my way back to the foyer, where I pulled
    on my still-wet clothes. They were cold and clinging.
    She came over as I was lacing my shoes. She had combed her hair back
    and was wearing a dark flannel robe. She looked at me for a long
    moment.
    "I'll try to help you," she said.
    I told her the truth. "I don't know how much you can really do."
    "I don't either. But I want to try. I don't want... I don't want to
    wind up someplace where I can't find my way back."
    I nodded. "That's a good reason."
    She reached into a pocket of the robe and pulled out a piece of paper.
    She extended her arm to hand it to me, and I noticed the diamond
    bracelet again. I reached out and took her wrist, softly.
    "A gift?" I asked, curious.
    She shook her head slowly. "It was my mother's," she said.
    I took the paper and saw that she had written a phone number on it. I
    put it in my pocket.
    I gave her my pager number. I wanted her to have a way to contact me
    if something came up at the club.
    I didn't say, "I'll call you." I didn't hug her because of the wet
    clothes. Just a quick kiss. Then I turned and left.
    I made my way quietly down the hallway to the stairwell. I could tell
    she thought she wasn't going to see me again. I had to admit that she
    might be right. The knowledge was as damp and dispiriting as my sodden
    clothes.
    I came to the first floor and looked out at the entrance-way to the
    building. For a second I pictured the way she had hugged me here. It
    already seemed like a long time ago. I felt an unpleasant mixture of
    gratitude and longing, streaked with guilt and regret.
    And in a flash of insight, cutting with cold clarity through the fog of
    my fatigue, I realized what I hadn't been able to articulate earlier,
    not even to myself, when she'd asked me what I was afraid of.
    It had been this, the moment after, when I would come face-to-face with
    knowing that it would all end badly, if not this morning, then the next
    one. Or the one after that.
    I used the rear entrance, where there was no camera. It was still
    raining when I got outside. The day's first light was gray and feeble.
    I walked in my wet shoes until I found a cab, then made my way back to
    the hotel.
    Twelve.
    The next day I contacted Tatsu via pager and our bulletin board, and
    arranged to meet him at noon at the Ginza-yu sen to or public bath. The
    sen to is a Japanese institution, albeit one that has been in decline
    since not long after the war, when new apartments began to feature
    their own tubs and the sen to became less a hygienic necessity and more
    a periodic indulgence. But, like all indulgences that are valued not
    just for their product but for their process, the sen to will never
    entirely disappear. For in the unhurried rituals of scrubbing and
    soaking, and in the perspective of profound relaxation that can only be
    derived from immersion in water that the meek might describe as
    scalding, there are qualities of devotion, and celebration, and
    meditation, qualities that are necessary concomitants to a life worth
    living.
    Ginza-yu exists at both geographical and psychological remove from the
    nearby shopping glitz for which its namesake is best known, hiding
    almost slyly in the shadow of the Takaracho expressway overpass, and
    making its presence known only with a faded, hand-painted sign. I
    waited in a