When he started shivering, he stripped down to his wet shirt and underpants and curled up between two quilts. His uncle’s space was a narrow mattress on the other side. Orin could be found in bed most days, drying out. If he was out this late, the drought was over and he’d spend the night at a sailors’ bar in Yokohama, sitting in a haze of laudanum and rye. The housekeeper lived apart with her own family. Harry was alone.

His domain: the mats, the rats that lived in the tiles of the roof, a shelf of schoolbooks, a stack of baseball cards, a cigar box with playing cards and dice, a beetle named Oishi in a bamboo cage, his parents’ print of the child Christ confounding Pharisees, his print of Japanese warships sinking the Russian fleet, his money wrapped in oilcloth and hidden under floorboards. He turned his back on his earthly possessions and laid his face toward the wall.

“Harry? Harry, are you in there?”

There was a scratch at the door. It opened, letting in a moment of air and the sound of rain on macadam, and slid shut again.

“This place is almost impossible to find. You forgot your clogs.”

“Leave them,” Harry muttered and pulled his quilt tighter. He didn’t need to see Oharu in the dark, taking in his shabby port in a storm, condescending to her little errand. He hated her. He’d left his clogs in the garden of the green house. He hated his clogs, too.

“I’m sorry, Harry. It was just sex.”

Exactly what the Folies manager had said about Gen. Everyone mouthed the same hypocrisy. He didn’t dignify her with a reply.

“Do you want me to go, Harry?”

Silence was good enough. That had to be clear to the stupidest person in the world. He hadn’t heard her slip off her shoes or fold an umbrella, so she obviously wasn’t sincere.

“It was just for money, Harry, it didn’t mean anything. I am very sorry.”

There was one drip in particular that Harry heard right on the other side of the wall, a steady tapping on the ground outside. Oharu stirred. At any second Harry expected to hear the door slap shut behind her.

“You’re still wet.” Oharu felt his hair. “You must be soaked.”

“It meant enough.”

“You’re right, Harry, it did. I am so sorry. But you’re shivering.” Her hand slid down to his neck. “You’re wet all the way through.”

“How could you do it?”

“I’m getting by, Harry. Doing what a modern girl has to do. You have to take those wet clothes off. We have to dry you.”

“No.” The last thing Harry was going to do was undress in front of her.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Then we’ll warm you.”

Harry still had his face to the wall. He heard silk slip over skin, and then he felt Oharu crawl under the quilt with him. She was so warm it was like being by a fire.

“So cold and uncomfortable, Harry. You’re sure you don’t want to get dry?”

“I’m sure.”

She cupped herself around him, her hips against his, her breasts against his back, her breath on his neck.

“It gives me gooseflesh. Feel my skin, Harry.”

She took his hand and ran it lightly up and down her leg. She had muscular dancer’s legs.

“Like a goose, right, Harry?”

Harry’s damp back had made her breasts stiffen. He felt himself grow hard and held his breath.

“That’s all I am, a goose, a silly girl. Can you forgive me?”

He let his hand spread on her leg as if he were touching a temple column of cool marble. He was angry with her. At the same time, he was afraid that if he turned toward her, she would disappear.

“I want to give you something, Harry. It’s not worth anything, don’t fool yourself, but it’s all I have to give.” She slid her hand down his stomach. “I think you’re ready for it.”

Harry swallowed because a mere second touch might set him off. He was no longer chilled at all, he burned like a coal. She turned him toward her and the small blue eye of the lamp and pulled his head down to her breast. The tip stiffened more in his mouth. She lifted herself and led his hand between her legs.

“Softer, even softer, even softer.”

He felt the crispness of the hair there and the heat unfolding at his fingertips.

“You’re going to be a good lover, Harry. You’re going to care.”

She smiled proudly, the best smile he’d had in his life. Oharu led him in. It was for Harry the closest to heaven he’d ever been, and he’d barely touched bottom when he came and clung to Oharu like a boy on a raft. When his heart stopped pounding, he looked up and saw she was still smiling.

“That was a little fast,” Harry said.

“No, for a first time that was perfect. My Harry, my wild boy, what will we do with you?”

“I don’t know.”

Harry did know that his knowledge of the world had just doubled, as if the moon shone not as brightly as the sun but as fully in a softer way, as if he could see his body by her light. She changed the nature and purpose of skin, of hands, of mouth. The scent of Oharu stayed on him like salt on a swimmer. Many things made more sense now than they had ten minutes before. An equal number of things no longer made any sense at all. For example, he was already hard again.

“I should be going,” Oharu said.

“Don’t go,” said Harry.

Oharu smoothed his hair from his forehead. Between her own rounded eyebrows lay one wrinkle of concern, and she studied his face as if coming to a fateful conclusion. She had him sit up and peeled off the rest of his damp clothes. She showed him how to kiss Japanese-style with the tip of the tongue, and French-style, with an open mouth. On his own inspiration, he slid behind her to kiss the nape of her neck, the soft weight of her breasts, their softer aureoles, while she took his hand as she had before. This time where his hand went his mouth followed. He felt a moment of hesitation in her before she lifted herself to him and caressed his head. A groan came from deep inside her, and Harry lifted his eyes in time to see her put a cloth between her teeth. As her eyes rolled back and her hips moved against him, Harry thought, this is for real, this time she means it, I did this for her. She raked him up onto her, and as he entered, he heard an electric crack of lightning that rolled down his spine and limbs and nailed him deep, deep inside her.

Followed by a profound sleep with Harry folded around Oharu as if they were riding with their eyes closed slowly through the rain, the heart’s rhythm like a black horse. A faint electric haze lay in all directions. They rode through high grass soughing in the wind.

“OH MY GOD, he’s with a whore!”

Harry sat up, blinded by lights. He saw Oharu cover herself with her arms.

“My son is with a whore!” Harriet Niles said again.

Roger Niles grabbed Oharu by the hair and shook her. “Who are you?”

“She’s a friend,” Harry said.

On her knees, Oharu tried to gather her dress. She said, “So sorry, so sorry.”

“She can speak for herself,” Roger Niles said.

“That’s all the English she knows. She doesn’t speak English, and you don’t speak Japanese.”

Harry didn’t see his father’s slap coming. It bowled him to the wall with his ears ringing, but at least it got him out of the direct glare of the lanterns and he could see his parents in their wet capes, umbrellas and galoshes. Behind them hovered his uncle Orin in a drowned hat, luggage still in hand, disaster in his eyes. Obviously he had met Harry’s parents at the train station, and this was their homecoming. Harry lying with Oharu. Orin, in loco parentis, did seem chagrined.

“What is a whore doing in our house?” Harriet asked.

“That’s rather self-evident, dear,” Roger said. He pulled Oharu up by her hair and thrust her toward the door. “Get out.”

Oharu bowed. “So sorry.”

“If she says that one more time, I’m going to scream,” Harriet said.