blue

It all seemed mad. It all seemed deranged. Yet the criminal’s execution was so exceedingly brilliant that, clearly, he could be neither a halfwit nor insane. If this business seemed mad to us, was it only because we could not figure out his plan? Were the three successive murders just three points on the circumference of a bloody circle that the

I found out afterwards that Bankachi was a corruption of Ubagaichi, a place name literally meaning “the town for old women”. No doubt it must have had something to do with the legendary practice of abandoning old women in the mountains and leaving them there to die…

And in fact the wooden transom, or ranma, bore the inscription: “With the hand of a demon and the heart of the Buddha”.

We start to walk down the tote road together. She understands my need to pace. For my part, I am suddenly, urgently in need of a friend. I want to talk, but at the same time, I fear that an innocent inquiry into my well-being might cause me to collapse, like a detonated building.

His jaw set, Warren turns and begins to walk back to the main entrance. After a moment, he says, “You are a difficult woman, Lena.” At last, she smiles. “I’ve been trying to tell you that for years!”

The word she refuses to use is “lonely.” She wasn’t lonely in the way old people are lonely. A reader is never lonely. Besides, she didn’t like people, so how could she be lonely for them? But after the lockdown, early that spring, she began to feel a poignant longing, a quickening at the sound of footsteps.

“I was wondering. In plant life, is there any equivalent of a familial relationship?” he asks. “Do plants grow near one another out of sheer convenience, or by design?” She rubs her runny nose. “Are plants attracted to each other? Is that what you’re asking?” “I suppose so.” “Well,” she says. “Plants are touching underground, through their root

She has been called, in various registers of respect, an “original,” a “square peg,” and “an acquired taste.” She felt no indignation when she’d overheard two fellow residents in her retirement community discussing her recently in the solarium. “I like Lena,” one had said. “I mean, in the abstract.”

Because, another one? Already? If a nurse was needed, I was a nurse. If a porter was needed, I was a porter. A scribe, a janitor. An undertaker. And no one ever said, Gee. Gee, this isn’t what you signed up for at all. This makes no sense at all. Down is up. I didn’t want to be called a hero. I wanted someone to acknowledge my moral injury.