Part III, Chapterlets 9,10,11

9.
It was perhaps fortuitous that Reason was looking out the window for once as they turned down Lewis. He signaled the driver to pull over. Reason hopped out and crossed the street dodging cars and holding the front of his coat closed with one hand. He reached the sidewalk on the other side in time to step in front of Miss Ashikaga.
She was walking with her head down, and she was nearly engulfed by the sweater, overcoat, and scarf that protected her from the northerly wind, but Reason had not doubted it was her for a moment. Her head down against the cold, and her arms dragging down to her sides under the weight of the paper shopping bags depending from the plastic handles cutting into her bare, clenched hands, Miss Ashikaga almost hit Reason in the chest before he could muster a greeting.
As it happened, she stopped short, but the pale daylight shadow of her breath plumed out and broke against the four black buttons of his coat like the ghost of that aborted impact. She looked up, and her eyes were a shocking grey. Reason realized that he had never seen them open before at the same moment that the lack of decorum in his approach occurred to him as a monstrous affront. The greeting he had been on the cusp of articulating receded again and he was left struggling for words. She spared him with a simple, “I remember you.”
Reason was taken unawares by this pronouncement, but it was quickly forgotten as she handed him one of her burdens and began walking again. Reason took it and fell into stride next to her, waving away the driver, who instantly signaled and accelerated smoothly into the burgeoning mid afternoon stream of traffic.
Reason gathered his thoughts and managed a weak, “I hoped you might.”
Miss Ashikaga did not even turn her head at this. She kept walking—she was moving a little faster now that she was divested of half of the weight of her purchases. As Reason noticed this, a little moment of synchronicity occurred, and she sped up, shifting the remaining bag to the other hand and clenching and unclenching her recently freed hand, pale from the cold and livid where the plastic handle had impressed itself into her flesh. As they walked, he watched her face.
The line of her profile had something very resolute about it. Her expression in wakefulness was altogether different than it had been in the demi-consciousness in which he had first encountered her. Reason was surprised to notice that though this wakefulness seemed weary and was almost quantitatively less attractive, it seemed to fit her so well that it rather enhanced the features he had previously admired. There was no doubt that Miss Ashikaga lived her body fully. She wore it comfortably and loosely, taking in her own beauty with no more or less concentration than she seemed to put into walking.
As they rounded the corner to the left, the hotel came into view, and she spoke again. “Why do you keep sending me those cards? What do those mean?” Reason turned slightly away, affecting to study the sign on a business offering adult toys, uncertain how to proceed. She filled the silence: “I remembered your…I remembered you from the security tapes Dave showed me. The cards are sad. Just your name. No telephone number. Just my name, written in. Like the cards had no purpose at all. And the Doctor said you were there, before. At New Year’s. That you met Henry. What do you want?”
Reason was prepared for this question: “I would like to buy you dinner.” She shrugged at this. They walked the rest of the way to the hotel. She took her bag back in front of the sliding automatic door. She stood there, looking at him. Her face was unreadable. “I’m pretty much stuck in the hotel for the next week or so. But if you come to the front desk, they’ll let me know. We could get a drink in one of the lounges. Or there’re a couple of restaurants in-house. They’re overpriced. Room service isn’t much better.” She shrugged again and turned toward the doors. They hissed open. Warm air rushed out and over Reason.
He turned, wondering how long it would take the driver to pick him up, but the car was waiting in front of him. He reached out and grabbed the handle, already thinking about calling Henry Lee about that job offer. He reflected, not for the first time, that Mr. Lee might have liked to meet Sifu Chang. As he sat, pulling his coat out of the way of the closing door, the heated seat came to life with a soft purr. As they pulled away, he resolved to see if the offer still stood.

10.
Yuriko handed her bags to Steve. He had given her the little mock salute that he usually did. Apparently, some of the younger staff believed her to be the owner of the hotel. Yuriko considered that it might be worth buying, if she could convince her grandfather to give her a start-up advance on her trust. As Steve slipped the embossed black key card into the slot, Yuriko imagined how the old man was getting along. She got her own key card out of her pocket. When the elevator stopped, Steve tried to help her out, just as he always did. Yuriko dismissed the effort with an impatient wave. She took her bags back, thanked him, and turned away.
When she heard the doors slide closed behind her, she walked to her room and put the card in the lock. When the light blipped, she turned and levered down the handle with a practiced move of her hip. The door bounced off her shoulder as she rolled in.
She moved her elbow up to bump the rocker panel for the The wall had been repaired from the damage that had been done to it, but the paint was a subtly different color. Yuriko had half a mind to switch rooms again. She put her bags down side by side on the bedstand and removed her hat, scarf, and coat. She walked to the closet and put them away. A small corner of fabric hung down from the shelf above. She tucked it back up absently, but her fingers lingered on it. It was Allison’s. Had been Allison’s. As she moved back toward the bed, the fingers on her right hand caught the lip of the door and pulled it noiselessly closed behind her.
As she pulled out the individually wrapped candles she had purchased and arranged them around the room, she became aware of the memory of the scent of her pushing forward. She turned out the overhead light and struck a match. The ache was coming back. She lit the candles, reciting the little, childish prayers her mother had taught her as the flame caught each one. She used the same match until it burned her thumb. Each match could only light two or three new wicks. She burned her thumb again and again, giving body to her little rhymes.
The pale flesh of her orisons was illuminated in her mind by the light of the candles and the burns on her thumb, and, just as it always had, the combination of the ritual and the odor of cheaply perfumed candles pushed Allison—the inexhaustible expanses of skin, the tight curls, the wild honey, the cedar shavings and scotch the smell of her—back into the dark.

11.
Yuriko stared across the table at him. He was fidgeting. She reflected that ‘Reason’ was no kind of a name for anyone to have. She sipped her vodka seven. It was better than ‘Star.’ He had started calling her that when she asked that he quit with all the “Miss Ashikaga” formality. He had just said it again. She interrupted him, “You can call me Yuriko. This isn’t work.” He looked at her and gave a small nod. Something in his face made her pay closer attention.
“I guess what I’ve been circumlocuting, Yuriko, Yuriko, is simply a proposition that I have been wanting to make to you ever since we…became acquainted.” As he finished, he looked up from his own drink. He was waiting.
“What sort of proposition is that?” asked Yuriko. His awkwardness was somewhat charming.
“Well, I suppose it is a sort of contract.”
“I’m not following you, Reason. Do I have to call you that? Seems silly.”
“You may call me what you like.” As Reason said this, he seemed to grow brighter in the dimness of the lounge. Yuriko looked at the polished grain of the two-top they were at.
“I’ll call you Mannfred, then,” she said, trying to make him smile.
“As you like,” he responded. She waited. He sat there. Looking.
“What kind of a contract, Mannfred?”
“A marriage contract,” he replied. She cast her glance around to see who might be watching, waiting to jump out, pointing and laughing.
“That’s not a very good joke, Manny. And in any case, it’s not very romantic. Putting the cart before the horse a little bit. I don’t know you.”
“You know me as well as anyone does. As to romance, you’ll have to forgive me, but my understanding was that love at first sight was the height of romance.” He said this with a dismissive air, reaching into his coat pocket. “Yuriko, will you marry me?” He brought out a small velvet box. He pushed it across the table to her with a gravity that took all the mocking things she had lined up right out of her head.
She looked around the room again. Zouhair, the night guy on weekends, was watching Behind the Music with his back to them. There was nothing to give her a sign.
“Okay,” she said, without opening the box. She left it sitting on the table between them. Reason, seeing nothing odd about any of this, began to question her about her family, friends, past, future, and she found that she had finished her drink. She rattled her drink at Zouhair’s back and began telling Reason everything he wanted to know, a growing sense of unreality pushing at her thoughts. She never once thought about Allison.