Ransom Read Free Page B

paper,” Ransom said.
    Eric assumed an expression at once indulgent and triumphant. “Even in conversation you’re aggressive, combative, unyielding.”
    â€œYou should hear me talk to myself. It’s brutal.”
    Eric ordered a beer and attempted to explain how Ransom could get in touch with his
ki
, the life force, the whole ball of wax. Listening to Eric, Ransom decided that one of the things he liked about the Japanese was their distrust of loquaciousness, their suspicion of language itself, although he wasn’t sure what was left if you dispensed with it.
    Eric buzzed on and Ransom considered the hollowness of expatriate communities. The individuals might be interesting enough, but they had in common only what they had already left behind. Having exhausted the subject of ki, Eric said goodbye and shuffled off when Miles drifted back.
    â€œDeVito’s acting up tonight,” Miles said. Ransom followed his gaze to a table where two gaijin were arm wrestling, one of them sporting a samurai haircut. This was DeVito. “I may need you to help me beat him senseless.”
    â€œDeVito’s already senseless.”
    â€œYou think you could take him?”
    Ransom shrugged. “It’s not something I’ve given any thought to. I don’t fight outside the dojo.”
    â€œWhat good are fighting skills if you can’t thrash scum like DeVito? What are you supposed to do if someone picks a fight with you?”
    â€œThe sensei says the best defense is two feet.”
    â€œKicking ass, right and left. I rest my case.”
    â€œNot quite. You run away.”
    â€œThis took you two years to learn?” Ryder’s eyes registered a new point of interest. Ransom turned to look. Marilyn was just inside the door, looking around.
    â€œWhat’s she waiting for?” Ransom said. “A drum roll?”
    Ryder waved her over. She didn’t move in the tentative and pigeon-toed manner of Japanese women. It seemed to Ransom that she didn’t walk like any Asian women he had ever seen. He supposed that she had adopted this bold Western stride in her native Saigon, back when it was an American outpost. Ransom had met her here last Saturday. Ryder, who had met her at the same time, was already infatuated. She was a refugee from Vietnam, she explained, and her real name was Mey-Van. She was a singer in a Kyoto nightclub, where her manager billed her as Marilyn, which, although virtually unpronounceable for the Japanese, had a shamanistic power because of its former attachment to Monroe-san. Marilyn herself much preferred it to Mey-Van.
    She and Miles kissed. Ransom stood up.
    â€œHello, Ransom-san.” She looked him over and turned to Ryder. “His breeding is wonderful. It wouldn’t occur to you to stand up when a woman enters the room, but Ransom does it in a bar for a woman he doesn’t even like.”
    Ransom was surprised all over again by the quality of her English. Certainly none of his Japanese students could rival Marilyn, even if he worked with them for years. To him her slight accent seemed vaguely French.
    â€œRansom likes you just fine,” Miles said. “Don’t you?”
    â€œWho could resist Marilyn’s charm?”
    The bartender called Miles to the phone. “Keep an eye on my baby,” he said to Ransom. Marilyn pulled a cigarette from her purse and hunted for a light. “The only defect in your manners, Ransom, is that you never light a girl’s cigarette. But you don’t approve of smoking, do you?”
    â€œI gave it up myself.”
    â€œAnd you don’t drink?”
    â€œNot much anymore.”
    â€œBit of a bore, aren’t you?” She took his hand and fingered the callused knuckles. “Karate.” She flipped the hand over and spread the palm open on her knee, as if to read his fortune. “
Kara
—empty.
Te
—hand. Empty-handed Ransom. Is that it? You give up everything