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By Root 1206 0

where the sky ended and the lake began. The rain had knocked the balloons from the trees, and the paper lanterns we’d strung by the patio sagged, heavy with water. I went downstairs, the residue of my dream lingering, all beauty and loss, and made a cup of tea, moving as quietly as I could. My mother was sleeping in; she didn’t have to be at work until ten, and it was something of a relief not to see her after our argument the night before. Some of the food from the party was still out on the counter, so I snacked on Brie and crackers and took a cluster of grapes when I went upstairs. I closed the door to my room and sat cross-legged at the head of the bed, sipping at the orange pekoe while I gazed out the window, the rainy lake mist-covered, the grass dark green, drenched, and flattened. Yoshi had promised to be home by seven, and it was five minutes before that. I dialed into Skype and he answered right away, his face filling up the screen.

“I brought home some noodles,” he said. “I’m here in the kitchen. Do you mind if I eat while we talk? I’m starved.”

“From that place down the street?” I asked. It was a small shop, paneled in light wood, with stools pulled up to the counter where they served big bowls brimming with noodles and broth. Yoshi and I liked to go there on weekends.

“Yes. I got your favorite, curried noodles,” he said, lifting the spoon to show me before he ate a mouthful. “Too bad for you that you’re so far away.”

“I have my own pleasures,” I said, holding up the grapes. “You forget it’s early in the morning here. It’s not at all a curry time of day. So, how are you?”

“Not so great, in fact,” he said. “Sorry I couldn’t talk earlier, but the office was a little tense when you called.”

“What happened?”

“It’s the Indonesia project. There were those objections from the people in the village, you remember that? They don’t want the site destroyed, because they think it’s sacred. So, we spent the last week drawing up a set of alternate plans that would let the bridge go around the site. Win-win, right?”

“Sounds that way to me,” I said.

“Hang on just a second,” he said, and disappeared. I thought of all the times I’d been warned not to go out at dusk in Indonesia—a transition time, when it was easy to lose your spirit or suffer some sort of danger. It had always made sense to me, illogical though it was, and it made more sense now that I was in this other kind of transition, drifting between the past and the present, between the life I’d been living and whatever sort of life was to come, a time when I sometimes felt I might lose myself entirely.

Yoshi was on the screen again; he’d gotten a bottle of sake. “Right, exactly: win-win. That’s what the engineers all thought. Completely good solution. But the manager disagreed. It would add too dramatically to the cost; and they already own the rights to the land in question anyway, so they don’t have to compromise.”

“You were vetoed.”

“Yes. And worse—I argued.”

“Ah. I see.” There were any number of expats in Yoshi’s company, so it was more flexible than many, but with his looks and heritage and fluent Japanese, Yoshi was expected to walk a different walk. It seemed to me that he overcompensated, staying longer at the office and going out drinking with his business clients more often than anyone else, trying to offset moments like this, when the differences in his training and philosophy broke through. “It’s not a big deal, though, is it? I mean, they’re not going to fire you.”

I was half joking, but Yoshi didn’t smile.

“No. At least, I hope not. It’s just very quiet around me right now. The fact is, when they hired me they expected my experience in Indonesia to be helpful to them, but they didn’t expect me to advocate for the Indonesians. So now I’ve been assigned a partner when we go to Jakarta next week.”

“Really? A chaperone?”

“Something like that. I’m not too happy. So, no, it’s not a big deal in some ways. But to be honest, I’ve been giving some thought to quitting.”

“Quitting? Really?” I laughed, but in fact it filled me with a rush of panic to