Rainfall

the piano, wearing black like the first time I saw her. It felt good to watch her for the moment, unobserved, separated by a sadness that I knew she must have shared. She looked beautiful, and it hurt.

    The lights dimmed, the murmur of conversation died away, and Midori brought the piano to life with a vengeance, her fingers ripping into the keys. I watched intently, trying to lock in the memory of the way she moved her hands and swayed her body, the expressions of her face. I knew I’d be listening to her music forever, but this would be the last time I would watch her play.

    I had always heard a frustration in her music, and loved the way it would at times be replaced by a deep, accepting sadness. But there was no acceptance in her music tonight. It was raw and angry, sometimes mournful, but never resigned. I watched and listened, feeling the notes and the minutes slipping away from me, trying to find some solace in the thought that perhaps what had passed between us was now part of her music.

    I thought about Tatsu. I knew he had done right in telling Midori I was dead. As he said, she would have figured out the truth eventually, or it would have found its own way of forcing itself into her consciousness.

    He was right, too, about my loss not being a long-term issue for her. She was young and had a brilliant career opening up right in front of her. When you’ve known someone only briefly, even if intensely, death comes as a shock, but not a particularly long or deep one. After all, there was no time for the person in question to become woven tightly into the fabric of your life. It’s surprising, even a little disillusioning, how quickly you get over it, how quickly the memory of what you might have shared with someone comes to seem distant, improbable, like something that might have happened to someone you know but not to you yourself.

    The set lasted an hour. When it was done, I stood up and eased out the back, exiting through the wooden doors and pausing for a moment under a moonless sky. I closed my eyes and inhaled the smells of Manhattan’s night air, at once strange and yet, connected to that long-ago life, still disturbingly familiar.

    “Excuse me,” a woman’s voice came from behind me.

    I turned, thinking
Midori
. But it was only the coat-check girl. “You left this behind,” she said, holding out the trilby. I had placed it on the seat next to me after the lights had gone down and had then forgotten it.

    I took the hat wordlessly and walked off into the night.

    Midori. There were moments with her when I would forget everything I had done, everything I had become. But those moments would never have lasted. I am the product of the things I have done, and I know I will always wake up to this conclusion, no matter how beguiling the reverie that precedes the awakening.

    What I needed to do was not deny what I was, but to find a way to channel it. Maybe, for the first time, into something worthwhile. Maybe something with Tatsu. I’d have to think about that.

    Midori. I still listen to her music. I hang on hard to the notes, trying to keep them from vanishing into the air, but they are elusive and ungraspable and each one dies in the dark around me like a tracer in a treeline.

    Sometimes I catch myself saying her name. I like its texture on my lips, something tenuous but still tangible to give substance to my memories. I say it slowly, several times in succession, like a chant or a prayer.

    Does she ever think of you?
I sometimes wonder.

    Probably not,
is the inevitable reply.

    It doesn’t matter. It feels good to know she’s out there. I’ll keep listening to her from the shadows. Like it was before. Like it’s always going to be.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

    TO MY AGENT, Nat Sobel, and his wife, Judith, for believing in me all the way back to the first iteration. At times Nat knew John Rain better than I did (this could be a little unsettling), and Rain would never have emerged as the complex character he is without Nat’s insight and guidance.

    To Walter LaFeber of Cornell University, for being a great teacher and friend, and for writing
The Clash: A History of U.S.-Japan Diplomatic Relations
, the definitive study of its subject, which provided some of the historical foundations for the birth of John Rain.

    To my instructors, formal and informal, and
randori
partners at the Kodokan in Tokyo, the beating heart of world judo, for imparting to me some of the skills that make their home