Oh, yes, one other item. Crucial, as it turned out. I'd always been a collector of something—once it was antique spurs, for chrissake—but about ten years earlier I'd started to get interested in things Japanese and ended up going a little overboard about old swords and such. Joanna's unscheduled departure managed to burn out a lot of my circuits, and what had been merely an obsession grew into something a little crazy. For a year or so I became, in my own mind at least, a sort of American ronin, a wandering samurai. You see, the Japanese warriors had a code that said you ought to live every moment in full awareness of your own mortality. When you adopt this existential outlook, so they claimed, all regrets, emotions, complaints, can be seen as an indulgence. You're ready to meet life head-on, to risk everything at a moment's notice. That's the only way you ever discover who you really are, and it's supposed to make you marvelously detached. Almost enough to make you forget how your raven-haired, brilliant, sexy mate packed it in one New Year's Eve twenty Almost enough to make you forget how your raven-haired, brilliant, sexy mate packed it in one New Year's Eve twenty months past . . . when you called late from the office, again . . . after declaring that that was the goddam last straw and apparently the only thing you could find worthy of undivided attention came printed on goddam computer paper and she was goddam sick of it—which she demonstrated the next day by slamming the door on her way out. months past . . . when you called late from the office, again . . . after declaring that that was the goddam last straw and apparently the only thing you could find worthy of undivided attention came printed on goddam computer paper and she was goddam sick of it—which she demonstrated the next day by slamming the door on her way out. Add to which, she used my momentary disorientation to get custody of Amy. So while I was battling corporate Goliaths, I let her walk off with the only thing I would have given my life for. The more time went by, the more I wanted to kick myself. Alex Katz (of Walton, Halliday, and Katz—now minus the Walton) read the custody agreement the day after I signed it, sighed, glared over his smudgy half-lenses, and announced that this kind of unconditional surrender should only be signed on the decks of battleships. What did he have, a law partner or a fucking schlemiel? Add to which, she used my
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