Page 19 of Dial F for Finance

“Six blocks,” Dominic says, glancing up the street. “Or we grab the car.”

“Six blocks.”

Tokyo at half past ten is a different kind of quiet—bright, polite, full of people minding their own business. The neon along the side streets throws color across the pavement, pink and gold and electric blue, and I tell myself the reason I’d rather walk than sit in a town car beside him is the number of hours I’ve already spent in chairs.

“Sato’s wife is intense,” Dominic says.

“Sato’s wife liked you, which means we’re invited back, which means we did our jobs.” She had taken one look at me over the first course, decided we were going to be friends, and I’d let her, because she was funny and sharp and poured sake like a woman settling a score. “I think she liked both of us, actually.”

“What’s not to like? We’re a power couple.”

I roll my eyes at him and he grins and nudges me with his shoulder.

“She was also delighted by how tall you are,” he says, and I roll my eyes again. But this time I’m smiling along with it.

“I’m an endless fascination wherever I go.”

He laughs. “She told me she thinks you look like a goddess. I agreed.”

I keep my eyes on the sidewalk so he can’t see what that does to my face. “You’d say anything.”

“I’d say a lot of things. That one’s just true.” He looks over. “What are you, six-one?”

“Around that.”

“So six-three, six-four in heels. When we dance, we’re eye to eye.” A beat. “I love that. My neck loves it too.”

“Are you drunk?”

“Not even close. I’m at the part of the night where the whiskey’s evaporating and my brain is running regression analyses on your smile.”

“You need better hobbies.”

“There are no better hobbies.”

I shake my head, but I don’t speed up. If anything, I let the gap between us close by an inch. He doesn’t touch me. He smirks a little and says nothing, which is somehow worse.

“I heard Sato’s wife asking about your mother. What’d you tell her?” I ask, because it’s safer than the silence.

“That she taught Spanish at a high school in Greenwich for twenty years and once sent a man home from a parent-teacher conference in tears. He had opinions about curriculum design and my mother did not entertain those opinions.”

I snort. “Is that where your gregariousness comes from?”

“Oh no. That would be my father. He’s me, but louder. Runs a hedge fund, cries at every Pixar movie, once rented a cart at the school field day and sold churros at a loss to prove a point about snack pricing, then wrote the principal a letter and cc’d the mayor.”

I laugh before I can stop it. “He sounds exactly like you.”

“Shrink him thirty percent and you get me.” He glances over. “What about your folks?”

I’m not sure why, but I answer honestly. Maybe because it’s dark and we’re in a country where no one knows either of us. “Dad’s a plumber. Self-employed. Good with his hands. Bad with fidelity. Mom worked the post office until she retired, then moved into an ambitious second career in boxed wine and denial.” I shrug like this is funny. It’s not funny. “My sister and I were very self-sufficient children. Which is what adults call neglect when they want it to sound like a character-building exercise.”

Dominic is quiet for a few steps.

I can’t tell if it’s pity or sadness, and I instantly regret saying anything and try to take it back. “Please forget I said that. I don’t know why⁠—”

“Are you close with your sister?” he asks, and his voice is genuine. Curious. Not filled with pity at all.

I look at him despite myself.