“It will be all right.” The dentist placed two large hands on Tetsu’s shoulders. Something like a wasp’s sting ignited in his chest. Spread, numbing. He was guided to the floor. One sweeping hand in red, back and forth in front of his eyes. A blur. His eyes too heavy to keep open.
“Ever since,” Grandpa Tetsu said, finding his mouth harder to move. But his hearing remained keen, woosh woosh woosh the robes busied about him. The sweet, clean scent of camphor filled his head. “I poked him when he came too close.”
“You poked him?”
“With the hot end of my pipe.” The old man wanted to explain better, but he was tired, sleepy. He needed to warn the carver-dentist. “He kept coming around, after me. Fish-faced, evil.”
The stranger Nakanishi sat silent, his presence smothering.
“I don’t know wh
