“Come.” Ayako touched his shoulder, helping him toward the door. “You need to stop fighting for a few hours. I know a place. It will be drafty, but it is safe.”
CHAPTER 48
An old and bent man with a shaved head and the dark robes of a Buddhist monk stood in the shadows under a black umbrella, framed by a heavy timber gate. It was the only apparent opening in a white stone wall that ran in either direction to disappear in the sheets of rain. Weak yellow light from a rusty oil lantern pooled at the old man’s feet. A game of Angry Birds on a smartphone illuminated his face as Ayako rode up with Quinn on the little yellow motorbike.
“Kobo-san,” Ayako called out. “Thank you for meeting us.”
The old man shook his head. He slipped the cell phone inside his robes as Ayako brought the little bike to a crunching stop on the gravel.
“I do not know about enlightenment.” Kobo chuckled. “But I feel certain I could achieve a sense of no-thought if I played that silly game long enough.” He bowed to Ayako and pulled the gate open, waving them inside.
The sharp odor of burning incense hung on the moist air, hitting Quinn’s nose and rousing his tired senses. Tall Japanese cedars stood close together like ranks of towering soldiers in the night. The thin sliver of orange light from the old monk’s lantern did little to push back the inky darkness. A steady rain dripped from the high branches in pattering staccato along the wood and stucco wall surrounding the grounds.
Bone-tired and stooped in pain, Quinn trudged behind Ayako as she pushed the little bike through the gate. They followed the crunch of the old man’s footfalls in the gravel, down the silver ribbon of gravel toward a small wooden house nestled among the shadowed trees.
“There are quilts and futons inside,” Kobo said, shining his lamp toward the dark cottage. Rain poured off the tile roof in a steady stream, hissing to the gravel below. “You may take your rest here.”
Ayako began to explain their situation, but Kobo put up his hand.
“Please,” he said. “Rest. Reasons do not matter to me, nor should they matter to you. Each of us is in need of a safe haven from time to time.”
The monk left the lantern with them and crunched away in the darkness under his umbrella, his path lit only by the Angry Birds launching across his phone.
The cottage, originally meant for itinerant monks, was set well off the main path behind the small Buddhist temple and surrounded by drooping cedars. Towering obelisks of black granite, situated on either side, looked like tall black holes cut out of the night. There was no electricity, and the lamp cast only a hazy orange shadow on the heavy ceiling beams and rough-hewn floor. The place was seldom used, and dust puffed up at every movement. Even Quinn, who was frightened by little in the world, found it impossible not to think of spiders.
Ayako dragged the futon mats from a closet at the far side of the fifteen-by-fifteen room.
“Quinn-san, please,” she said, unfolding the futons and situating two hard buckwheat pillows side by side. “You do not look well. I think you should get off your feet.”
In truth, Quinn felt as though he might pass out at any moment. The constant optempo since Kim’s shooting, coupled with a steady stream of adrenaline, the dog bite, and one savage beating after another, had stacked up to drive him to his knees.
A soft rapping at the door caused him to draw the H&K pistol. Kobo said something Quinn couldn’t hear, and Ayako opened the door to retrieve two small sandwich bags of crushed ice.
She closed the door and turned the flimsy lock.
“He saw you are hurt,” she said, “and thought some ice might help with the pain.”
Quinn stripped off his leather jacket and set the pistol on top of it next to the pillow.
“Ice is probably a good idea.”
He sank to the mattress with a long, low groan. The futon was clammy, laden with dust, and filled with lumpy cotton stuffing. Each mattress was roughly six feet long and three feet wide. Barely a few inches thick, they were meant for a springy tatami-mat floor instead of the hard wood of the temple house. Quinn was too exhausted to care.
Ayako knelt beside him. “Please,” she said softly, “roll over on your stomach.”
The old lamp’s tiny orange flame did little to light the room, and Quinn blinked up at her in the darkness.
“What?”
“You are skilled at killing,” she whispered. “I am skilled at taking care of the pains of a man. Besides, do you not know the saying ‘cold as the heart of a whore’?”
“Your back is badly bruised.” She held up the plastic bags, smiling softly. “Kobo has brought us two bags of ice and I offer my cold heart to help heal you.”
The intense cold of the ice over his kidney pushed back the worst of the pain almost as soon as Ayako put the bag on Quinn’s back. She moved it expertly every few minutes, never allowing any one place to get uncomfortably cold, yet still allowing for the ice to do its job.
“You spoke of a girl who works for Oda,” she said, the flat of her hand gently on the bare skin over his kidney, warming it slightly between applications of ice.
“She is supposed to have a tattoo,” Quinn said. “A foo dog… a komainu, like Oda.”
Quinn didn’t know how much Ayako knew, so he didn’t mention anything about Ran being Emiko Miyagi’s daughter.
“I see,” Ayako said, her hand trembling at the talk of Oda. Quinn thought of probing a little deeper but decided he didn’t have the energy at the moment for such a discussion.
She leaned back, kicking her legs out to one side so her knees were only inches from Quinn’s face where he lay against the buckwheat pillow.
She held her ankle with one hand as she spoke. “I believe we each have a moment that we live for. Something very important toward which our entire life is aimed.”
Quinn nodded, fighting sleep.
“I am convinced that this is but a detour in your life, Quinn-san.” She bit her lip as if she did not want to continue, but felt she must. “My meeting you, to help you in what you and I are doing… I believe this may be my one moment…”
Quinn reached out to touch the back of her hand that held her ankle. It seemed cruel to leave her sitting there alone in the dark. A tear fell from above and landed on his wrist.
“We have a saying here in Japan,” she whispered. “All married women are not wives.”
Quinn nodded but said nothing.
“If I had not decided to become a prostitute… do you think I would have made a good wife?”
“Of course,” Quinn said, blinking back sleep.
She rubbed away the tear on his hand. “I do as well,” she said.
Exhaustion crept in like a drug as the ice and Ayako’s touch chased away more pain. Quinn jerked, catching himself as he fell asleep.
He was vaguely aware of the warmth of Ayako’s body as she crawled in beside him and pulled the musty quilt over them both. His last memory before he drifted off was the smell of cigarettes and the candy scent of her strawberry shampoo. She said something to him, her voice soft and whiskeyed, but he was asleep before it registered as tender.
Quinn woke six hours later to the sound of the sliding door rattling in the wooden track. Hand on the H&K, he sat up, blinking, working to clear his head. A sickening ache low in his back brought the memories of the night before flooding back to him. Still, the ice and sleep had helped and he was feeling somewhat better.
The door clacked open and Ayako appeared, carrying a pink cloth grocery bag in one hand and her striped helmet in the other. She dropped her keys on the rough timber table and ducked her head toward Quinn in a polite bow.