everything else.
Japan.
Where a fire awaited her, burning in the darkness of her night.
Perhaps sensei discerned the blackness inside her, but if so, he made no comment on it. Sensei was a believer in hard work - in discipline, he once told Tori, is the answer to every problem.
Either he was mistaken or Tori was unable to absorb his teachings deeply enough. In either case, Tori graduated from his arduous course of training-the only woman to make it all the way through-without having successfully confronted the specters within her own night.
This was the state in which Bernard Godwin found her: dangerous, her nerves hair-trigger fine, walking the edge between trouble and death, and getting a hell of a kick out of it.
In fact, when she remembered the moment of her first meeting with Bernard Godwin, what stuck out most was that she had almost gotten him killed.
He had found her in an akachochin called The Happily Ever After. The after-hours club was in the wrong end of Nihonbashi-God knows how Bernard even found it. Walking into the place was like being sucked into a whirlpool in the center of a cesspit.
A Yakuza underboss approximately as large as Godzilla was hitting on her. She didn't mind; she liked his tattoos: flames, everywhere flames, eating gods, demons, mythical animals, and fierce swordsmen with indiscriminate greed. The flames made her think of exorcism, turning filth to oily smoke, purging sacred ground that had been made profane, purifying the night.
Just before Bernard Godwin came down the stairs in The Happily Ever After, she remembered composing the first line of a reply to the letter she had just received from her brother: It's all right, Greg. I'm doing the best I can. Smiling up at Godzilla, the Japanese gangster full of fantastic flames. Yessir, she thought. He's evil, he's nasty, and he's all mine.
Then Bernard Godwin had introduced himself. It was not a happy moment, for either Tori or Godzilla. Neither of them wanted to be interrupted. Then Bernard Godwin said that he had a proposition for Tori, but first she must come away with him out of this place, and all hell broke loose.
Godzilla might have been huge, but he was astonishingly quick. This was his turf, and he was nothing if not intensely territorial. Bernard had muscled in on his property, and Godzilla was enraged. He displayed his displeasure by picking Bernard up in one meat-hook fist and shaking him until Bernard's teeth rattled.
"Stop it!" Tori said.
Godzilla ignored her. A small blade snicked into his left hand. It headed for Bernard's throat.
Tori drove her doubled-up knuckles into Godzilla's sternum while simultaneously smacking him in the groin with her knee. For a moment nothing happened, then Godzilla's eyes began to water, his mouth flopped open, and he dropped Bernard Godwin to the none too clean floor.
Tori knew her exit cue. She grabbed Bernard by the back of the neck and got out of there.
Across town in Roppongi, in an infinitely more savory neighborhood, they entered an all-night sushi restaurant. A sign over the door had imprinted on it the image of a round, spiky fish.
"You 're buying, " Tori said as they sat down. "You owe me."
"It will be a pleasure," Bernard Godwin said, inclining his head in a gesture that seemed both old-fashioned and appropriate. She was surprised that he appeared none the worse for his ordeal.
Tori ordered for them: bowls of baby eels to start, then an assortment of sushi that included abalone, flying fish roe, and sea urchin. Lastly, she ordered broiled fugu. All this was quite deliberate: the Japanese Unique Culture Test. Tori had been subjected to it on her arrival; she saw no reason why she shouldn't subject Bernard Godwin in the same way. She had taken him to one of the restaurants licensed to serve blowfish, which, in the wrong hands, could be lethally poisonous.
They were given hot towels. The hot sake came first, and Tori watched Bernard as he drank his. They were on their second
Japan.
Where a fire awaited her, burning in the darkness of her night.
Perhaps sensei discerned the blackness inside her, but if so, he made no comment on it. Sensei was a believer in hard work - in discipline, he once told Tori, is the answer to every problem.
Either he was mistaken or Tori was unable to absorb his teachings deeply enough. In either case, Tori graduated from his arduous course of training-the only woman to make it all the way through-without having successfully confronted the specters within her own night.
This was the state in which Bernard Godwin found her: dangerous, her nerves hair-trigger fine, walking the edge between trouble and death, and getting a hell of a kick out of it.
In fact, when she remembered the moment of her first meeting with Bernard Godwin, what stuck out most was that she had almost gotten him killed.
He had found her in an akachochin called The Happily Ever After. The after-hours club was in the wrong end of Nihonbashi-God knows how Bernard even found it. Walking into the place was like being sucked into a whirlpool in the center of a cesspit.
A Yakuza underboss approximately as large as Godzilla was hitting on her. She didn't mind; she liked his tattoos: flames, everywhere flames, eating gods, demons, mythical animals, and fierce swordsmen with indiscriminate greed. The flames made her think of exorcism, turning filth to oily smoke, purging sacred ground that had been made profane, purifying the night.
Just before Bernard Godwin came down the stairs in The Happily Ever After, she remembered composing the first line of a reply to the letter she had just received from her brother: It's all right, Greg. I'm doing the best I can. Smiling up at Godzilla, the Japanese gangster full of fantastic flames. Yessir, she thought. He's evil, he's nasty, and he's all mine.
Then Bernard Godwin had introduced himself. It was not a happy moment, for either Tori or Godzilla. Neither of them wanted to be interrupted. Then Bernard Godwin said that he had a proposition for Tori, but first she must come away with him out of this place, and all hell broke loose.
Godzilla might have been huge, but he was astonishingly quick. This was his turf, and he was nothing if not intensely territorial. Bernard had muscled in on his property, and Godzilla was enraged. He displayed his displeasure by picking Bernard up in one meat-hook fist and shaking him until Bernard's teeth rattled.
"Stop it!" Tori said.
Godzilla ignored her. A small blade snicked into his left hand. It headed for Bernard's throat.
Tori drove her doubled-up knuckles into Godzilla's sternum while simultaneously smacking him in the groin with her knee. For a moment nothing happened, then Godzilla's eyes began to water, his mouth flopped open, and he dropped Bernard Godwin to the none too clean floor.
Tori knew her exit cue. She grabbed Bernard by the back of the neck and got out of there.
Across town in Roppongi, in an infinitely more savory neighborhood, they entered an all-night sushi restaurant. A sign over the door had imprinted on it the image of a round, spiky fish.
"You 're buying, " Tori said as they sat down. "You owe me."
"It will be a pleasure," Bernard Godwin said, inclining his head in a gesture that seemed both old-fashioned and appropriate. She was surprised that he appeared none the worse for his ordeal.
Tori ordered for them: bowls of baby eels to start, then an assortment of sushi that included abalone, flying fish roe, and sea urchin. Lastly, she ordered broiled fugu. All this was quite deliberate: the Japanese Unique Culture Test. Tori had been subjected to it on her arrival; she saw no reason why she shouldn't subject Bernard Godwin in the same way. She had taken him to one of the restaurants licensed to serve blowfish, which, in the wrong hands, could be lethally poisonous.
They were given hot towels. The hot sake came first, and Tori watched Bernard as he drank his. They were on their second
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