Diane Joplin』s room at the Hakone Ryokan otlessly . She』d heard that the Japanese were sticklers for liness but this was ridiculous. Every thirty minutes a sphere-shaped autonomous vacuum er would spring to life and glide silently across the tatami mats. There was no way to switch off the ing robot, no buttons anywhere on its smooth plastic body. Diane lay on the room』s fortable futon and watched the er deftly iate her suitcase and the other items she had discarded on the floor. The vacuum fis run aled ba its er, its amber standby light blinking itently. She』d taken a leisurely bath in hot water pumped in from the ryokan』s hot springs and sidered her options. The De Witte woman had explaio her that she had to wash herself befetting ih and she had tried hard to see the logic of that but without much success.
She』d have to go back to Boston at some point and deal with the paperwork that had emerged in the wake of her father』s death. She』d later learned from Fouler the ao the question she was most afraid to ask. What had happeo her father』s body? A few phone calls later Fouler had e back with the answer. Her father had beeed acc to instrus in his will and his ashes had been forwarded to the legal firm that was handling his affairs, at least until Diane sighe papers.
She wondered what she was going to do with her life. The chasm that had been opened up with her father』s passing seemed to have fractured her sense of purpose. Yet in Japan, she felt like she was beginning to breathe a new life. She liked the culture, its improbable juxtaposition id feudal traditions and the extremes of modernity. She would e back here with her father』s ashes, after taking care of things in America, and she just might join a Japanese course at one of the uies in Tokyo. She couldn』t live in the Uates anymore, it held one bad memory too many. First her mother had passed away. Now her father had goo join her, both violently ripped from her world to another place, another dimension. The voices were mostly silent now, leaving behind a strange calm, a calm reinforced by the serenity of this place, the pristiamis, the warm wooden floors, the simple Zen-ness of the interior design and the restrained use of color.
Strangely, Fouler had let her hold on to the sole. He seemed to uand that somehow she viewed it as some kind of e to her father. She had told him about what she had found out in cyberspace about the man who created the sole and how she would like to pay him a visit. Somehow, she felt this would bring closure to the whole ordeal and she』d be able to return to Amerid do what she had to do there. Fouler had thought for a moment, his long jaw tightly set in a grimace. Then he had told her that he too had been planning to pay Akio Inoue a visit at the Tokyo Medical Uy Hospital in Shinjuku and that he would take her with him in the m.
Diane Joplin thought about all these things till her eyes grew weary and she turned down the bedside lamp and drifted off to sleep. She dreamt of her room in the ryokan, blaed in darkness, and the shadows from the leafless trees outside dang on the wooden floors. She saw light reflected from the moonlight on to the surface of the hot spring bath in the enclosed terrace. And wasn』t that the robot vacuum er doing its rounds, lights blinking in the darkness of her dream?
And then she saw the shadow moving purposefully through the room towards her Samsonite. In the pale moonlight the ruddy face was unmista