2.

I fucked things up with everyone. I knew that. I also knew that of everyone, I had to start with the one person I hadn't tried to reconnect with. I called in the next day, phantoms of my dreams hanging in my brain, and took a cab across town.

Nagi stayed in a large warehouse with his crew in Chinatown. Deep in the depths of Chicago, at Cermak and Wentworth. I stared out the windows of the cab as I people-watched, watching the Chinatown Gate pass us by. People in storefronts—old laundromats, restaurants, churches, and schools. Their faces were blurs.

"You sure you want to stop here, lady?" the driver asked.

I just paid the man wordlessly and got out. The Warehouse sat between a church and a crumbling apartment block, and two men were hanging outside, their feet dangling from the curb.

"Pretty layyyy-deeee," one of them said.

"Fuck off," I said. "I'm here to see Nagi."

"Oh, you must be birthmark lady," one of them said.

"Lemme see your neck," the other one said. "The Boss man bite you yet?"

"Seriously, fuck off," I said, opening my collar.

Their eyes took in my birthmark, twisted towards one another, and then they wordlessly got up and let me in. A man with a gun stayed at the entrance inside; he'd unlatched the door and then latched it again behind me and watched me as I walked in.

It looked like a sauna, done up in traditional Chinese architecture, with paper fans hanging on the walls. Here and there, various still-life displays stood—some Shinto shrines, borrowed from the Japanese culture Nagi was heir to. Another place had a fountain with what looked like a small deserted island in the middle of it. The water bubbled with life, and there were koi that swam in its crystal-clear waters.

"You," a woman said. She had on Noh-style makeup, her face pale and white, hair up in a chopstick, a fine kimono flowing down her form. "Follow me, please. The Master requests your presence and is pleased at your arrival."

"What's your name?" I asked.

"Yara," she said.

"How do you know Nagi?"

"The Master is a kind soul that took me in at a dark period of my life," she said. "I'd rather not talk about it."

"Is he awake?" I asked.

"The Master rarely sleeps anymore," she said. "His dreams disturb him. There's something wrong with the flow of things."

"You're telling me," I said. "Look. Do you guys really, you know. Look up to him?"

"Why would we not look up to our savior?" Yara asked.

"Fair point, I guess," I said.

"Come this way. His chambers are up these steps."

She looked as if she were gliding under her kimono. I tried to follow her as soundlessly as possible.

"Ah, Stacey," Nagi's voice said.

I looked over and then closed my eyes out of instinct.

"Now now," he said. He got to his feet, sliding an open robe over himself and belting the bottom for decency. His kimono looked nice. The material looked extremely expensive—it flowed like silk, decorated with what looked like goldfish in an old-school style. He grinned at me as he rose from the pile of nubile bodies on his bed and padded past me. Men and women groaned at him as he rose.

"Where are you going?" I asked.

"I have had inspiration strike," he said. "Come. Follow me. We'll talk as we walk. Yara, can you bring me my palette, please?"

Yara came up and handed him some paints. He stopped at a statue. I couldn't make heads or tails out of it if I were being honest, but here and there was a suggestion of limbs, there perhaps a face pressing against some hidden wall. He touched it with two strokes of broad white stripes, stood back, turned his head, and then nodded.

"What brings you here, today of all days, Stacey?"

"I screwed up," I said.

"Whatever do you mean?" He had his head tilted like a goldfinch still, then dabbed his paintbrush in some blue and began to run around the installation, making a ribbon around the whole of it.

Truth be told, it looked like a hot mess, but... I didn't know anything about art.

"I never heard from you, and I didn't call after the trial," I said.

"You have your own life, Stacey," Nagi said, voice clear.

"Yeah. But you know. I have a relationship with the others."

"Eddie and Vic," he said. "How is that going?"

I pursed my lips.

"Not well. They're upset with me. Ever since Brother Al and Vic saw us."

"Did you explain what had happened between us?" he asked.

I shrugged.

"I didn't know what to say."

"You were comforting me in a time of need," Nagi said. "It needs not be anything more than that."

"But how do I know that's what it was?"

Nagi stopped and considered me.

"Stacey. I am a lot of individual, and a big swathe of ego. Did you not see the various things on display in this Warehouse on your way to my chambers? Did you not see the pile of tender flesh awaiting my touch as you came in?"

"Yeah," I said uncertainly.

"Rest assured, Stacey, I can find intimacy anywhere I would like," he said. "And you are an agreeable person. We share a connection, you and I. You saved my life. Not once, but twice. And for that, I owe you a debt. But it would be wrong for either of us to equate that, and a desperate clinging of passion during an uncertain period into something serious. We're both animals, and we both made a decision during uncertain times that was animal in origin."

"Are you comfortable leaving it there?" I asked.

"I am not a jealous person, Stacey. For me relationships are two individuals coming together, even if only for a brief moment. Each is valid and lovely in its own way. Each is its own work of art, the spinning of two artists as they weave an invisible network of thoughts and emotions in the air between one another, imprinting it on the cosmos. In that way, even the most disappointing of relationships—what others may call mistakes—are instead beautiful works of passion, hallmarks of a time that two unique individuals came together. So, yes. I am comfortable leaving what we had where we had it, if it would lessen the complications of your life. And yet. Should you feel the work of art we came together to create is yet unfinished. I would have to agree that we should see what else comes next on the canvas."

"You're a very strange man, Nagi."

"I am told that," he said. "You must know a relationship with me is a coming together of two unique artists. It's a collaboration, not a fusion. I have my own relationships. You have yours. Is that acceptable?"

"Yeah," I said.

"Great. Then we've come to an agreement."

"Are you used to this?" I asked him. "Is this hard for you? Juggling all this. Don't people get jealous?"

"People are only jealous if they feel like one's works are superior to theirs," Nagi said. "Come, Stacey. Come to my next chamber. We'll talk while I paint you."

"Paint me, or paint me onto a painting?"

"Which would you prefer?" he asked, with a wolfish grin.

I knew I had a problem, but I could not help but fall sway to him…