Harlan laced up his running shoes and headed out the door and down the stairs. He turned left at the narrow road leading to Route 171, passed the police station and Itami City Hall, crossed Route 171, and ran up the incline leading to Koya Park. He entered the park, a refuge for ducks, swans, and other birds that spent every winter on the man-made pond, and started jogging on the two-and-a-half-kilometer path that circled the park.

He was in a rhythm, legs and arms pumping, heart beating, images and abstract thoughts racing through his mind. He had started running regularly again about a month ago and was getting into better shape. The beer belly he had put on in Maui was gone. Japanese phrases he had learned recently flashed in his mind as he headed through the stretch of cherry trees, now nearly in full bloom and looking like a mass of cotton candy. On the right and across the street was a row of high-rise apartment buildings with long lines of brightly-colored laundry flapping in the breeze. Beyond the apartment buildings were three baseball diamonds. Two softball games were in progress. On the third field fathers and sons were playing catch. Inside the park and lining the edges of the pond were dozens of birdwatchers with their cameras. A group of school children in uniforms squealed in delight and waved and shouted encouragement as he passed by them. Now he was on the back stretch, running past a hospital. Several construction workers in the parking lot stopped to watch him. Then he ran through a back entrance to the park and up a slight incline where a few families were eating bento lunches. He completed two more laps and returned to his apartment.

At the end of these invigorating and therapeutic runs Harlan liked to drink a beer and sit down to think and write in his journal. He was feeling healthy and energetic these days. Things were going well. He had recently met an interesting American who was running his own conversation school.

They had met about ten days before. Harlan was walking to the UCLA school from the Nishinomiya train station when he bumped into another American whom he recognized from some pictures he had seen at the school. Rick Stratford was a rotund man who was in his early fifties and had a broad smile. He had quit UCLA two weeks before Harlan had started working. He had set up his own school in Mukonoso. Harlan had a half hour before his first class started and they agreed to have a cup of coffee together. Rick said he had too many students to handle by himself and wanted to hire a couple of teachers. He invited Harlan to go out to discuss the possibility of working for him.

They met again a few nights later at a yakitori grilled chicken shop near the Mukonoso station. Over beer and chicken Rick told Harlan about his school and how he had started with two students and now had 35, about his life as a photographer in the States, and about meeting his Japanese wife when she was a homestay student on an exchange program in which he had been involved in Seattle. He talked about the changes Japan had undergone from the time he was a serviceman stationed in Japan in the 1950s to the last few years after he returned to settle permanently. He warned Harlan about the need to stay clear of schools like UCLA that exploited both teachers and students. He talked about the importance of the conversation teacher creating a relaxed atmosphere in which the students could do the majority of the speaking. He brimmed over with confidence and enthusiasm, and gave Harlan many tips on teaching and surviving in Japan.

Harlan took an immediate liking to Rick's good-natured personality and engaging smile. He liked the way Rick joked and bantered with the cooks and other customers at the yakitori shop. He decided that night he would go to work for Rick as soon as he could. The next day he gave his notice to UCLA. He planned to start at Rick's school at the beginning of May.

This plan suited Harlan well. He would extend his tourist visa in a few days for another three months. That would carry him as far as the beginning of July. Rick had told him that beyond that it would not be difficult to get a six-month culture visa. All he would have to do is claim he was studying Japanese at Rick's school. His salary at the school would be considerably less than what he was getting at UCLA, but he would have to teach only in the evenings and would have plenty of time to study. The long hours at UCLA were starting to wear him down and he wanted more time to himself. Besides, by the end of April he would have his key money on the apartment paid off and would not be burdened by the 80,000 yen a month he was dishing out for that.

He looked forward to a new change, to having more time. His Japanese studies were going well. He had started taking lessons a couple months before. He had seen an ad in a local English newspaper, called the teacher--a woman named Nishimoto who spoke English well--met her in a coffee shop in Umeda, and continued meeting her at the same coffee shop twice a week in the morning before going to work. Rick had said that when Harlan started working at his school, Harlan and Nishimoto could use the school for their lessons.

Nishimoto was stiff and nervous in their first lesson. She had just graduated from a six-month training course in teaching Japanese to foreigners. Harlan was her first student. She gradually began to relax and grow confident, and now they were often joking with each other. Whenever Harlan made a particularly glaring mistake in pronunciation or grammar, they would both have a good laugh about it.

Nishimoto prepared extensively for their lessons. She brought in pictures, maps, graphs, charts, props, anything she could think of to make a point clear and help him remember a new expression or pattern. She always related the material to his personal life. She taught him baseball expressions, literary expressions, vocabulary to explain where he came from, what his life history was, where he had travelled, what he had seen, what he wanted to order in restaurants. She drilled him in correct pronunciation and the time length of Japanese vowels. She insisted Harlan use standard Japanese rather than the Kansai dialect, although she took the time to point out the differences in intonation, verb endings, reduced speech, and male and female patterns. She always listened patiently with interest to Harlan's tales of misadventure with the language. She counseled perseverance and effort when he told her of his frustration about not making fast enough progress and not understanding what people were saying. She consoled him by explaining how she had studied English for over eight years and still had trouble understanding a conversation between two native speakers.

Studying Japanese induced Harlan to see more clearly the difficulties of his own Japanese students studying English. He had often wondered why so many Japanese students were reticent in the classroom. Now he was beginning to understand the obstacles involved in constructing a simple sentence in a language totally unrelated to one's own. There was no concept of singular and plural in Japanese, the subject was often omitted, the verb came at the end of the sentence. In addition, the Japanese had a way of responding three or four times to a speaker's single sentence. If this response was not given, the speaker seemed to have difficulty continuing. A native speaker of English responded to entire thoughts or opinions. If a student could not think in the second language, and had to grope through a tension-ridden thought process of internal translation--clause by clause and sentence by sentence--from one language to another, it was no wonder so many classes were filled with silence and confusion. Harlan's empathy went out to those students. He resolved to make himself a better teacher, a teacher as committed as Nishimoto.

It was time to get moving. He had promised to meet Sachiko at Ashiya Station at seven o'clock. He put on a kettle of hot water, washed and shaved at his kitchen sink, and changed into a clean shirt and pants. He had mixed feelings about this meeting. Since that day Sachiko came to the door when he and Yoshiko had been making love, he had vowed to cut off any further development of a sexual relationship with Sachiko. He had explained to her that he wanted theirs to be strictly a business relationship. She had agreed, but her letters increasingly revealed a passion born of desperation. That bothered him. Yet he wanted to find out what had happened in Tokyo. She had actually found an agent who might be interested in representing his book. He had to admit that her commitment to and understanding of his work inspired him. He was already making notes in preparation for a new book. She was the only one he could talk with honestly about it. He hoped that time would diminish her attraction to him and that they could settle into a friendship based on mutual interests.

Sachiko's head swirled with excitement as she walked from her home to Ashiya Station. Much had happened in the last two months. She had graduated. She had started her new job as an office worker in a foreign trading company in Osaka. She had gone to Tokyo as Harlan's representative and met the secretary of a Japanese literary agent she had found out about. She was anxious to meet Harlan and tell him about the trip. She also wanted to show him the cherry blossoms along the banks of Ashiya River.

This was Harlan's first April in Japan. Throughout the Kansai area the cherry blossoms along Ashiya River were among the most famous. It was a popular spot for young lovers. Every year Sachiko went there alone and watched the couples stroll arm in arm. It always made her feel envious and lonely. Perhaps tonight she would know what it was those lovers felt. She believed happiness demanded a certain boldness. She would try to put her arm in his, to hold his eyes in hers. She was in love with his eyes. She wanted to feel again his warmth, his kisses.

A coldness passed through her. She knew she was deceiving herself, but she could not help it. Every time she thought of him she experienced a sickness of heart, a tenseness of the body. She knew it was better for her not to send her letters to him. She revealed too much of herself. She imagined that he and his soul mate, his other lover, sometimes read Sachiko's letters while in his futon and perhaps even laughed at her confessions. The thought depressed her.

He had told her he did not want to be emotionally involved with her, but she found it impossible to separate her roles of lover and agent. She wanted him for herself. If he became famous, she would confess to the world that he was the first man with whom she had had sex.

She wished she had the courage to speak to him directly. He never wrote back. He said nothing about her letters when they met. He usually spoke only about writing and books. She wanted to hear him talk about his feelings, confess his love for her. Perhaps he was like her in that respect. He saved his feelings for his writing.

Harlan arrived promptly on time. The walk to the downtown area of Ashiya took only ten minutes. There were many fashionable shops that Sachiko liked, but, remembering his reactions to the fancy restaurant she had taken him to before, she took him to a Mosburger hamburger shop. They ordered and sat down.

"So how was Tokyo?" Harlan asked.

"I have some good news."

"That's nice."

"I didn't meet the agent, but I met the secretary and she was very nice."

"What happened?"

"Well, at first I was a little nervous when I approached their office, but I was composed when I entered."

"And then?"

"The agent was out, but the secretary agreed to have lunch and look at your manuscript. We spent two hours together and became friendly with each other. She said she would like to meet you, but they weren't selling many literary manuscripts. They did a lot of literary work in the past, but now most of their business is from representing models and actors. She said it might be better for you to approach an American publisher first. She said most of the English books published in Japan have already been published and successful in the United States or England."

"I tried sending it to several American publishers before, but no one was interested. Do you suppose she knows any other agencies or publishers in Tokyo who might look at the manuscript?"

Sachiko felt her confidence growing as she spoke. Always before she had been tongue-tied and tense when she met Harlan, but now she had his full attention and her story was not just about her own history and thoughts and feelings that were so hard to explain but about something that involved them both. She luxuriated in the warmth of his look, the strong interest he was showing in her.

"I don't know," Sachiko said, "but the important thing is we made a contact, and that contact might possibly lead to something else. I think we should go to Tokyo together this summer. Just to meet her and see what happens. She might introduce us to another agent if she likes the book. What do you think?"

"I wouldn't expect too much. Maybe it's best just to chalk this up as another failure. An artist or writer can't expect success. After all, constant failure is an important source of inspiration to the artist."

They laughed and Sachiko felt happy.

"Let's go anyway," she said. "I want to show you Tokyo. I know you'll like it very much. There are so many things to see. We can stay in my father's apartment in Nagata-cho. He only uses it when he goes to Tokyo on business. It's located in a convenient place. It's also very quiet even though it's in the center of a lot of government buildings, hotels, and restaurants. If you want, you can go jogging and see the Diet Building or Prime Minister Nakasone's residence or even the Imperial Palace. There are always many joggers on the streets. And the agent's office is near the next subway station. What do you think?"

Harlan hesitated. "I don't know."

"Please, Harlan. The secretary said she wants to meet you. I'm sure you'll make a good impression on her. We can't give up. I'll continue to work hard for you. Maybe if I can translate the book into Japanese, we will have a better chance."

"Well, OK, but you know I don't have any money to pay you. And translating the book will take a lot of time, probably wasted time."

"I don't need money. Besides, it's the kind of work I love. Maybe I understand your book better than others. I want to do it."

"Thank you. If you really want to do it, then you have my blessings and appreciation."

After eating they walked along the banks of Ashiya River. The cherry blossoms were in an earlier stage of blooming than those in Itami. The moon glittered on the surface of the river. Sachiko took Harlan's arm as they walked back to the station. Harlan stiffened. Several times she seemed to bump his side intentionally and he felt the fullness of her breasts press against him.

Sachiko suddenly began talking about the works of Hieronymous Bosch and El Greco. She talked about how she was attracted to Bosch's portrayal of man's insanity and to El Greco's emaciated saints. It seemed strange to Harlan that she would shift their conversation in this direction. He wondered what she was really trying to tell him, if her words revealed a true interest in those artists' works or if she was repeating what he had written in his book about the artists who had stirred his imagination during his initial journey to Europe years before. He wondered if this were not some ploy to push her way into getting closer to him and resume the affair he had chosen to cut off.

At the station they said good-bye, agreeing to meet again soon. In the meantime, Sachiko would make a plan for going to Tokyo in the summer and continue trying to translate the book.

On the ride back to Itami Harlan thought deeply about both Sachiko and Yoshiko. He wondered how far he should allow himself to get involved with either one. He was more attracted to Yoshiko. Her gritty, independent rebelliousness, tough intelligence, and love of downtrodden people were much more to his liking than Sachiko's higher-class aloofness and intellectual fantasies. He also preferred Yoshiko's hard, athletic body to Sachiko's soft fullness. Yoshiko seemed to understand better his need for time alone. He often went for days without seeing her, then she would show up at his apartment late at night, as if possessing an intuitive sense of when he wanted to see her.

Back in Itami his thoughts dwelled more and more on Yoshiko as he walked the silent, dark streets back to his apartment. Grey-white clouds, illuminated by a near full moon, drifted quickly across the sky. The realization of how much he was starting to care for her came to him. Recently he had found himself going for long midnight walks to escape the confines of his small apartment. At the end of these walks he would invariably pass by Yoshiko's place, stare up at the light coming from her bedroom window, and wonder if she were in bed with one of her lovers.

Harlan moved through the silence and coolness of the night. He passed along the back street leading to Yoshiko's place. There was a car he had not seen before parked near the back of the house. Her bedroom light was on. He paused a moment. A rush of wind struck his face. He headed home. �@