In the Age of Love and Chocolate (Birthright #3)(35)

IN NEW YORK AT LEAST, April is not the cruelest month. The snow melts, heavy coats and boots are returned to closets, and perhaps best of all, I could walk home from work again. Sometimes Scarlet and I walked together, and it was almost like we were at Holy Trinity.

Theo was in San Francisco, helping my brother set up the kitchen there. We had argued the entire winter about subjects including frozen peas; his flirtation with Lucy, the mixologist; winter coats; his sister Isabelle; and even the temperature I kept the apartment. I wanted him to move out though I did not know how to make him go. Sad to say, but I had begun to anticipate his absences. Maybe it wasn’t his fault. Maybe I was, by nature, a solitary creature.

I was leaving the Dark Room early, around eleven p.m., when a black car pulled up to the curb. Not for the first time, I wondered if I was about to be shot, if this was how it was going to end. (But we are only on page 133 of the third volume of my life, so surely this could not be the end. Unless, reader, you believe in Heaven—I am not always certain that I do.)

The car door swung open, and a man in a dark suit leaned out. “A ride, Anya?” Yuji Ono asked. His tone was familiar, as if it had been days and not years since I had last seen him.

I hesitated. I slowly (and I hoped subtly) reached for my machete.

Yuji Ono laughed. When he spoke, his voice was scratchier than I remembered. “Do you think I have come to kill you? I have brought no weapon aside from Kazuo, who is sleeping back at the hotel and who is, in truth, a pacifist. Besides, had I wanted you dead, I would not have come to see you in person. I would have sent someone to do the job. You’d think even a nascent head of a crime family would understand how these acts are accomplished.”

“What do you want from me?”

“A conversation. I think you owe me as much. You refused me once and therefore you are still in my debt.”

Despite Yuji’s association with Sophia Bitter, at this point I had no particular reason to think he wished me dead. I had indeed declined his marriage (business?) proposal three winters ago and though I hadn’t entirely understood his conduct in the years since, I could not say for certain that he was my enemy. Besides, I was curious. “Come into my office,” I said, pointing toward the club.

He leaned farther out of the car into the light, and I noticed that dark circles masked his eyes and that he seemed slimmer than the last time I’d seen him. Was it my imagination or did he seem to be considering the four flights of stairs that led to the entrance of my club? “I would very much like to see the Dark Room, but I have been traveling,” he said after a pause. “I am tired. Might we see the club tomorrow after our conversation? Assuming you survive it, that is.” He smiled a bit wickedly at me.

The truth was, if Yuji had wanted me dead, I would have been dead long ago. Besides, I had had so much good fortune in the past two years that I had truly begun to believe I was charmed and that nothing would ever go wrong for me again. (NB: Famous last words.)

And so I got into the car.

* * *

I instructed the driver to take us to my building. When we arrived, Yuji struggled to get out of the car and the walk from the street to the lobby seemed to fatigue him. Though he tried to conceal it from me, his breathing was shallow and labored.

I took a better look at him under the lights of the elevator. He was still handsome, but his body, which had always been thin, was skeletal. The skin of his face was nearly transparent, and I could make out disturbing patches of blue veins below the surface. His eyes were bright, though perhaps too bright.

The last I had heard from Yuji had been a letter that had accompanied ashes that had turned out not to be my brother’s. In the letter, he had mentioned that he was in poor health, but that was years ago. Still, this did not look like a healthy man to me, or merely a sick one either. I had watched my nana die, and I knew what dying looked like.

“Yuji, you’re dying,” I said tactlessly.

“I thought I was hiding it rather well,” he said with a laugh. “You’re still blunt. I’m glad of that. I had worried that now that you were grown, your rough edges would have been sanded away. But yes, it is true. The elephant in the elevator is that I am dying. As are we all, though I am sure that is a cliché.”

“How? Why?”

“Everything will be revealed. Let’s sit down first. Now that my secret is out, I don’t have to pretend that I do not fatigue easily these days, my old friend.”

I was not sure that we were friends.

I deposited him on my living room sofa, and then went to the kitchen to get him a glass of water.

“How long do you have left?”

“The doctors say a couple of months, perhaps a year. I could linger. I would rather not linger though.”

“No.” My grandmother had lingered.

“Come closer to me.”

I did. He took my hand. His fingers were long and bony and cold. He had lost a finger years ago, but he no longer bothered with the prosthetic. I was not sure why this disturbed me, but it did.

I had so many questions to ask him. Why was he dying? Why had he claimed those ashes were my brother’s? What was his relationship to Sophia Bitter? Why was he here now? But it didn’t seem like the right time. It was a great shock to see Yuji Ono in such a state of physical collapse. Once upon a time, I had thought of him as almost superhuman.

“Anya, I want to begin by telling you that I have watched your career with great interest. In opening the Dark Room and its sister locations, you have done everything I hoped you would do and more than I ever dreamed. I do not take credit for you, but I am gratified by the small ways in which I may have set you on the road to this success.”