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• • •
WHILE NADIA AND SAEED were sharing their first spliff together, in the Tokyo district of Shinjuku
where midnight had already come and gone, and so, technically, the next day had already commenced,
a young man was nursing a drink for which he had not paid and yet to which he was entitled. His
whiskey came from Ireland, a place he had never been to but evinced a mild fondness for, perhaps
because Ireland was like the Shikoku of a parallel universe, not dissimilar in shape, and likewise
slung on the ocean-ward side of a larger island at one end of the vast Eurasian landmass, or perhaps
because of an Irish gangster film he had gone to see repeatedly in his still-impressionable youth.
The man wore a suit and a crisp white shirt and therefore any tattoos he had or did not have on his
arms would not be visible. He was stocky but, when he got to his feet, elegant in his movements. His
eyes were sober, flat, despite the drink, and not eyes that attracted the eyes of others. Gazes leapt
away from his gaze, as they might among packs of dogs in the wild, in which a hierarchy is set by
some sensed quality of violent potential.
Outside the bar he lit a cigarette. The street was bright from illuminated signage but relatively
quiet. A pair of drunk salarymen passed him at a safe distance, then an off-the-clock club hostess,
taking quick steps and staring at the pavement. The clouds above Tokyo hung low, reflecting dull red
back at the city, but a breeze was now blowing, he felt it on his skin and in his hair, a sense of brine
and slight chill. He held the smoke in his lungs and released it slowly. It disappeared in the wind’s
flow.
He was surprised to hear a noise behind him, because the alley to his rear was a cul-de-sac and
empty when he came outside. He had examined it, out of habit and quickly, but not carelessly, before
turning his back. Now there were two Filipina girls, in their late teens, neither probably yet twenty,
standing beside a disused door to the rear of the bar, a door that was always kept locked, but was in
this moment somehow open, a portal of complete blackness, as though no light were on inside, almost
as though no light could penetrate inside. The girls were dressed strangely, in clothing that was too
thin, tropical, not the kind of clothing you normally saw Filipinas wear in Tokyo, or anyone else at
this time of year. One of them had knocked over an empty beer bottle. It was rolling, high-pitched, in a
scurrying arc away.
They did not look at him. He had the feeling they did not know what to make of him. They spoke in
hushed tones as they passed, their words unintelligible, but recognized by him as Tagalog. They
seemed emotional: perhaps excited, perhaps frightened, perhaps both—in any case, the man thought,
with women it was difficult to tell. They were in his territory. Not the first time this week that he had
seen a group of Filipinos who seemed oddly clueless in his bit of town. He disliked Filipinos. They
had their place, but they had to know their place. There had been a half-Filipino boy in his junior high
school class whom he had beaten often, once so badly that he would have been expelled, had
someone been willing to say who had done it.
He watched the girls walk. Considered.
And slipped into a walk behind them, fingering the metal in his pocket as he went.
• • •
IN TIMES OF VIOLENCE, there is always that first acquaintance or intimate of ours, who, when they are
touched, makes what had seemed like a bad dream suddenly, evisceratingly real. For Nadia this
person was her cousin, a man of considerable determination and intellect, who even when he was