We don't go inside immediately. Ian drops onto the low wooden step outside the back door and tips his head back against the doorframe, eyes closed, the picture of a man who has temporarily run out of reasons to keep moving.
I sit beside him. The sake is already in his hand—I didn't see him grab it, but it's there, the cheap convenience store bottle, and he passes it to me without opening his eyes.
I take a drink. Pass it back.
The night is warm and soft around us, cicadas going, the last of the festival smoke faint on our clothes. Gerald sits between my feet, looking aggrieved about everything.
"I stand by Gerald," Ian says, eyes still closed.
"Nobody questioned Gerald."
"You had a look."
"I didn't have a look."
"You had a look that saidwhy did he name the swan?"
"I was thinking about the swan's expression, not his name."
"Gerald came with the name." He opens one eye. "I've said this."
I take the sake back. "You paid eight hundred yen for a ceramic swan and named him Gerald, and I think that's the most normal thing you've done since I met you."
"High praise." He closes his eye again. A pause. "Did you have fun tonight?"
The question is simple and he asks it simply, and something about that—the directness of it, no performance in it—lands somewhere tender.
"Yes," I say. "I did."
"Good."
"Ian."
"Mm."
"Thank you. For today." I pass the sake back. "For all of it. The ring toss diplomatic incident. The things on sticks. Gerald." A beat. "All of it."
He opens both eyes then and looks at me, and there's something in his face that isn't quite the performance and isn't quite what lives underneath it—something in between, something the sake and the festival and the hour have allowed up to the surface.
"You don't have to thank me," he says.
"I know. I wanted to."
He looks at me for a moment longer than he normally would. The bottle is loose in his hand, the night is warm, and the distance between us on the step is not very much distance at all.
"Crazy." His voice is different. Quieter. "I need you toknow that whatever happens—" He stops. Starts again. "You're not alone in this. I need you to know that."
"I do know that."
"Do you?" He looks back at me. "Because you spend a lot of time in that room by yourself, and I hear you at night, and I—" He stops again. Something in his face tightening and releasing. "I just need you to know."
The cicadas go. The tap drips its thirty seconds somewhere in the garden.
"I know," I say softly. "I know you're here."
He nods. Looks at the garden. Then, after a moment, looks back at me, and whatever he was managing has slipped slightly, the way things slip at midnight after sake when you've been plagued with so much uncertainty for so long.
And something changes.
