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the most obvious of which was to give you the chance to see firsthand how people do business over here—or, in this case, how they choose not to do business. But you were also a very active participant in the dinner. Your being there made them uncomfortable at first, because they weren’t expecting you. In general, bringing surprise guests is not something to be recommended. But I thought they would like you, and they did. That’s what allowed me to run the dinner that way. I didn’t realize your Japanese was good enough to really talk to people.”
    “Neither did I,” Alec said. “After a few drinks, though, I just seemed to pick up speed. I probably won’t be able to speak a word tomorrow.”
    “Knowing the language can be a great asset. Maybe I should’ve put more time into it when I was younger.”
    “Maybe so,” Alec said, “but I got the feeling at dinner that you understood a lot more of the Japanese conversation than you let on. What there was of it, anyway.”
    “Yeah, I guess you could say that. Remember: when you don’t understand much, you have to be very shrewd.” He gave a quiet laugh, as though it were a joke he had heard many times.
    Alec had been looking away, out the window, but there was something in Boon’s laugh—in the softness of it—that made him turn back to Boon for just a second, almost to make sure it was still really him. He remembered hearing his father laugh that same way once before. It was a laugh of modesty and warmth, so unlike his usual laugh, which had always sounded harsh to Alec, something thrown at people across the dinner table. This was a laugh of unconscious moments, and Alec looked more closely at Boon, feeling that he had somehow been let in on another secret, this one less clear and more important.
    “Joe?”
    Boon looked surprised for a moment at hearing his own name.
    “I was just wondering about your family. If you have one, I mean.”
    “Sometimes I wonder about my family, too,” Boon said. Then he smiled. “Don’t look so serious, Alec.”
    “Sorry.”
    “And don’t apologize. Okay? My wife and I split up a long time ago. Diane was never really happy here. She tried to make it work for a couple of years. Then, one morning, she said she thought she had to leave, to go back. Things were just starting to work for me at the company, and I felt I had to stay on. For my career. So that was pretty much it. Of course, there were other problems, too.”
    “Do you have any kids?”
    Boon held up his index finger. “One. A daughter. She’s at school in Connecticut, where her mother lives. She’ll enter tenth grade this fall. I haven’t seen her in a year.”
    “You miss her.”
    “Yes. Sure.”
    “Do you get lonely sometimes?”
    “Lonely? Not really,” Boon said, looking out the window. “Not anymore. There’s too much to do. But life’s not all one way or another, Alec—not all loneliness or happiness. I guess I don’t believe people can separate the parts of their lives like that. And if you spend your life thinking you can, or even trying to, I think you always end up a little disappointed.”
    They were both quiet then. Alec found himself caught in the strange, bittersweet mood of the nearly empty bar. Waiters in red jackets emptied ashtrays and wiped the tables clean. Chairs were put up, lights were turned off; the room became a patchwork of shadows. The bartender glanced nervously at the two foreigners, not wanting to speak to them, hoping they would realize on their own that it was time to leave. Looking out from the darkened interior, the glowing, mist-covered sky appeared otherworldly, an apparition.

MOTORCYCLE DREAMS
    T he steam rose from the water of the wooden bathtub, fast and then slow. Suspended, swirling, it cloaked the walls and ceiling of the small room in layers of billowed white gauze. And with it came the heat, wet and sensual, all energy in the confined space.
    Alec reached up and pushed the window open a crack. Steam