Paris is a Bitch

that right after I helped save her from about the worst thing possible, she could just let me walk away without even a word of protest, or doubt, or regret?
    And the worst of it was, part of me still wanted to go to her. She could be headstrong, and maybe she would disregard my admonition about her apartment. Maybe she was angry enough to ignore my advice just to make a point. She might need my help.
    No. If she needed me, all she had to do was ask, but she didn’t. She could have, but she didn’t.
    I looked around, and this city I’d become so comfortable with felt suddenly alien to me, a pretty oasis built for someone else, inhabited by strangers, my own presence that of a ghost. Paris made no sense for me without Delilah, and the loneliness and alienation I felt right then settled into my gut with an almost physical weight.
    I paused and considered. She would take me back if I wanted. We wouldn’t even have to discuss what had just happened. Everything would be the way it had been.
    I shook my head and walked on. On the Pont de la Tournelle, heading toward the Quartier Latin, I was surprised to see Stubble Boy coming toward me, still glued to his cell phone, walking with his girlfriend. He saw me and his face twisted into an unpleasant smile.
    “Hey,” he said, pulling the phone momentarily away from his face. “If it isn’t the Parisian politeness police. Struck out with your date?”
    And suddenly, everything was clear.
    I spent only a few moments with him, testing the conventional wisdom that you can’t fit a square peg in a round hole, the peg in this case being his cell phone, the hole being his mouth.
    It turns out the conventional wisdom is off by a little. In fact, the whole thing depends on how hard you jam the peg.
    When I left him, crumbled and gagging and spitting out teeth, his broken phone tossed in the river and his girlfriend shrieking over him, I knew what would happen next. The downed man, and the shrieking woman, would soon attract attention, including police attention. A tourist assaulted right on one of the famous bridges of the Île Saint-Louis would be bad for business, especially if the culprit weren’t caught. Luckily, this particular tourist was acquainted with his assailant, and would tell the police all about him so they would know who to look for: an unassuming but dangerous Asian man who enjoyed dinner at Auberge de la Reine Blanche, and who was known to be accompanied by a stunning blonde.
    But I didn’t care. Because they’d be looking for that man in Paris. And after tonight, he’d never be there again.
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I hadn’t killed anyone in almost four years. But all good things come to an end, eventually.
    It was good to be living in Tokyo again. The face of the city had changed, as it continuously does, but in its eternal, essential energy, Tokyo is immutable. Yes, during my sojourn in safer climes there had occurred an unfortunate profusion of Starbucks and Dean & Delucas, along with their innumerable imitators, but the havens that mattered remained impervious to this latest infestation. There was still jazz at Body & Soul in Minami Aoyama, where no seat is too far from the stage for a quiet word of thanks to the band members at the end of the evening; coffee at Café de l’Ambre in Ginza, where even as he nears his hundredth birthday, proprietor Sekiguchi-sensei arrives daily to roast his own beans, as he has for the last six decades; a tipple at Campbelltoun Loch in Yurakucho, where, if you can secure one of the eight seats in his hidden basement establishment, owner and bartender Nakamura-san will recommend one of his rare bottlings to help melt away, however briefly, the world you came to him to forget.
    I told myself no one was looking for me anymore. But I knew if they were, they’d start with a place I’d been known to frequent. Unless you had unlimited manpower, you couldn’t use the bars or coffee houses or jazz clubs I liked. There were too many of