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0c3d3d8
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There was a time when I didn't seem to need such things, when I would have been amused and perhaps even vaguely disgusted at the notion of living like some sort of psychic vampire, a lingering revenant pressed up against one-way glass, looking with forlorn and futile eyes at the ordinary life fate had denied him.
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Barry Eisler |
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cf092ea
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He wiped his brow. "So. Consider this state of affairs from Yamaoto's perspective. He understands that, with the immune system suppressed, there must eventually be a catastrophic failure of the host. There have been so many near misses--financial, ecological, nuclear--it is only a matter of time before a true cataclysm occurs. Perhaps a nuclear accident that irradiates an entire city. Or a countrywide run on banks and loss of deposits. What..
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Barry Eisler |
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dec3e8a
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Maybe." "You can't retire." I paused. When I spoke, my voice was quiet, not much more than a whisper. "I hope you're not saying you might interfere." He didn't flinch. "There would be no need for me to interfere," he said. "You don't have retirement in you. I wish you could recognize that. What will you do, find an island somewhere, spend time on the beach catching up on all the books you've been missing? Join a go club? Anesthetize yoursel..
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Barry Eisler |
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c1208fa
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She spun around and I heard her inhale sharply. "What the hell?" she exclaimed in her Portuguese-accented English. I raised my hands, palms forward. "I just want to talk to you." I used English because it was the language of the persona she'd initially met me in--the one she had initially trusted. She looked over her shoulder for a moment, perhaps gauging the distance to her door, then turned back to me, apparently reassured. "I don't want ..
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Barry Eisler |
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b17a4da
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You start slow. You find the subject's limits and get him to spend some time there. He gets used to it. Before long, the limits have moved. You never take him more than a centimeter beyond. You make it feel it's his choice.
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Barry Eisler |
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17df250
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suffering in the midst of the vast city from solitude so acute that not even the narcotic of late-night television talk shows could distract them from occasional nocturnal forays in search of signs of other life; even other furita, on their way back to their parents' houses, which, to make their meager ends meet, they still inhabited, who might share a tired cigarette and an unfunny joke before sleeping off the morning, then rising to do it..
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Barry Eisler |
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e698572
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A few minutes later we pulled up in front of a nondescript office building. I paid the driver and we got out. The rain had stopped but the street was empty, almost forlorn. If I hadn't known where we were, I would have thought it an odd place to get out of a cab in the middle of the night.
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Barry Eisler |
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c3c1599
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A vending machine hung tilted from the wall, advertising laundry soap at fifty yen a packet to customers who might as well have been ghosts.
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Barry Eisler |
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c1e9b61
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The waiter brought the drinks. After he had moved silently away, I looked at her and said, "You're not involved in any of this?" She looked into her glass. Several seconds went by. "You want an honest answer, or a really honest answer?" she asked. "Give me both." "Okay," she said, nodding. "The honest answer is no." She took a sip of the Highland Park. Closed her eyes. "The really honest answer is, is..." "Is, not yet," I said quietly. Her ..
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Barry Eisler |
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0c9c6e6
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I wiped water from my face and thought, Time to go. But I remained. "Thanks for an interesting evening," she said, after a pause. "You're not a bad guy, for a stalker." I gave her a half smile. "That's what people tell me." There was an odd moment of quiet. Then she stepped in close and hugged me, her face against my shoulder. I was surprised. My arms moved reflexively around her. Just a little comfort, I thought. You were rough on her befo..
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Barry Eisler |
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bbba269
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I shifted my head slightly. The corners of our mouths brushed together. I felt her breath on my cheek. Then we were kissing. Her mouth was warm and soft. Our tongues entwined and simultaneously I thought Oh, you fucking idiot and Oh, that feels so good.
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Barry Eisler |
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7f54185
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I squeezed her hips, then ran my hands up and over the curve of her ribs to her breasts. Her nipples were hard under the wet fabric of her dress. Her body radiated heat. I heard myself groan. It sounded like capitulation.
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Barry Eisler |
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f80ed94
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The feeling was a bit odd under the circumstances, but I was glad to be back at the Old Imperial. Windowless and low-ceilinged, dark and subdued, intimate despite its spaciousness, the bar has an air of history, of gravitas, perhaps a consequence of being the sole surviving feature of the hotel's martyred progenitor. Like the hotel itself, the Old Imperial feels a bit past its prime, but retains a dignified beauty and mysterious allure, lik..
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Barry Eisler |
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7388505
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She looked at me. "You're an assassin, aren't you? When there are rumors the government has someone on the payroll, they're talking about you, right?" I let out a long exhalation. "Something like that." There was a pause. Then she asked, "How many people have you killed?" My eyes moved to my glass. "I don't know." "I'm not talking about Vietnam. Since then." "I don't know," I said again. "Don't you think that's too many?" The mildness of he..
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Barry Eisler |
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28910e7
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She laughed. "Good. You still haven't told me what you were afraid of." I thought for a moment. Drowsiness was settling on me like a blanket. "Of getting involved. Like you said, I haven't been with someone for a long time."
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Barry Eisler |
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138cda0
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I came to the first floor and looked out at the entranceway of the building. For a second I pictured the way she had hugged me here. It already seemed like a long time ago. I felt an unpleasant mixture of gratitude and longing, streaked with guilt and regret. And in a flash of insight, cutting with cold clarity through the fog of my fatigue, I realized what I hadn't been able to articulate earlier, not even to myself, when she'd asked me wh..
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Barry Eisler |
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e7c7bd8
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But, like all indulgences that are valued not just for their product but for their process, the sento will never entirely disappear. For in the unhurried rituals of scrubbing and soaking, and in the perspective of profound relaxation that can only be derived from immersion in water the meek might describe as scalding, there are qualities of devotion, and celebration, and meditation, qualities that are necessary concomitants to a life worth ..
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Barry Eisler |
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229d7dc
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I didn't think you'd know it. You're a little... older." I laughed. If she'd been trying to get a rise out of me, she had missed the mark. I'm never going to be sensitive about my age. Most of the people I knew when I was younger are already dead. That I'm still breathing is actually a point of pride."
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Barry Eisler |
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a4e1509
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We put our shoes away. I had already purchased the necessary accouterments at the convenience store across the street--shampoo, soap, scrubbing cloth, and towels--and handed Tatsu what he needed as we went in. We paid the proprietor the government-mandated and subsidized four hundred yen apiece, walked up the wide wooden stairs to the changing area, undressed in the unadorned locker room, then went through the sliding glass door to the bath..
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Barry Eisler |
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f27f95d
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I moved deeper into the comforting gloom, along a stone walkway covered in cherry blossoms that lay like tenebrous snow in the glow of lamplights to either side. Just days earlier, these same blossoms had been celebrated by living Tokyoites, who came here in their drunken thousands to see reflected in the blossom's brief and vital beauty the inherent pathos of their own lives. But now the blossoms were fallen, the revelers departed, even th..
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Barry Eisler |
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cb36cee
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I walked on, my footfalls melancholy, respectful of the thick silence around me. Unlike the surrounding city, Aoyama Bochi is changeless, and I had no difficulty finding what drew me despite the decades that had passed since I had last come here.
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Barry Eisler |
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33094fb
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I waited a moment, then lowered myself, cross-legged, to the earth. Some of the graves were adorned with flowers, in various stages of freshness and decay. As though the dead could smell the bouquets.
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Barry Eisler |
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13c1985
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I could feel her soft shape, the heat of her, conducted with electric clarity through the wet of our clothes. I felt my body responding. I knew she felt it, too. Ah, shit.
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Barry Eisler |
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fe5c19a
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Between her hand over my heart and her hips at my crotch, she might as well have been administering a polygraph.
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Barry Eisler |
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ab4fefd
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Then she reached lower and started to ease my pants down. I stopped her so I could get my shoes and socks off first. Pants-pooled-at-the-ankles is too helpless a posture for me.
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Barry Eisler |
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12c10c7
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Shoganai," I said. Literally, There is no way of doing it. "Yes," he said, nodding. "Elsewhere they have Cest la vie, or That's life."
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Barry Eisler |
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857366b
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If you live only for yourself, dying is an especially scary proposition.
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fear
life-lessons
lonely
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Barry Eisler |
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5d959c0
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We found a cab. I got in first and she slid in behind me. She told the driver to take us to 3-3-5 Shibuya-ku, south side of Roppongi-dori. I smiled. "Tantra?" I asked. She looked at me, perhaps a little disappointed. "You know it?" "It's been around for a long time. Good place." "I didn't think you'd know it. You're a little... older." I laughed. If she'd been trying to get a rise out of me, she had missed the mark. I'm never going to be se..
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Barry Eisler |
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7f9d6ef
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The owner of a coffee shop sat diminished in the back of his deserted establishment, waiting for patronage that had long since vanished.
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Barry Eisler |
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eb95a0b
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Death catches everyone eventually, and I had never harbored any illusions about its ability to catch me. That it had hesitated so long to do so seemed born more of a desire to mock me than of any real inclination to wait. Death had tired of that game, and had finally moved in to collect what we all owe.
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full-circle
life-lessons
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Barry Eisler |
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83cab76
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Only teasing', Death seemed to be saying over his shoulder with a rictus smile, with good humor and an oddly paternal affection. 'Take care of yourself, okay? We'll play again.
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game-of-life
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Barry Eisler |
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4f9369c
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The second guy moved the gun, trying to track me, the movements overlarge and shaking. Then, maybe because he saw the cool bead I was drawing on him, his nerve broke. He started shooting in a spray-and-pray pattern, his eyes closed, his body hunching forward involuntarily. Pffft. Pffft. Pffft. Small clouds of dust kicked up along the concrete around me, puffing out lazily in my adrenalized slow-motion vision. I heard the sounds of ricochets..
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Barry Eisler |
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e799e1f
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Murakami liked to fight. Hell, Pride wasn't enough for him. He needed more. And it wasn't the money. Pride, with promotions and pay-per-view, would pay a lot more, to the winners and losers. No. It wasn't the money for this guy. It was the excitement. The proximity to death. The high you can only get from killing a man who's simultaneously doing everything in his power to kill you. I know the sensation. It both fascinates and repulses me.
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Barry Eisler |
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8b054ed
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Boxers wear tape to protect their hands. But you get dependent on the tape, and then you don't know how to hit someone without it. Even Mike Tyson once broke a hand when he hit another fighter barehanded in a late night brawl. In a real fight, if you break your hand, you probably just lost the fight. If you were fighting for your life, you probably just lost that, too.
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Barry Eisler |
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542bbb6
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My speed and strength were still good. Endurance likewise. Recovery times weren't what they once were, but a steady diet of liquid amino acids for the muscles, glucosamine for the joints, and Cognamine for the reflexes all seemed to help.
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Barry Eisler |
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4201ca3
|
Men who have survived close-quarters killing know that humans are possessed of a deep-seated, innate reluctance to kill their own species. I believe there are evolutionary explanations for the existence of this reluctance, but that doesn't really matter. What matters is that the fundamental purpose of basic training for most soldiers is to employ classical and operant conditioning techniques to suppress the reluctance. I know modern trainin..
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Barry Eisler |
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10df70d
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My American and Japanese personalities are distinct, and I carry myself differently depending on which language I'm using and which mode I'm in.
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Barry Eisler |
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cc6629b
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We were quiet for a few moments. Then she said, "You were right. I wouldn't have reacted so sharply if what you were saying were untrue. These are things I've been thinking about a lot, and I haven't been as honest with myself as you just were." She reached out and took my hand. She squeezed it hard. "Thank you." I felt an odd confluence of emotions: satisfaction that my manipulation was working; sympathy because of what she was struggling ..
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Barry Eisler |
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8b71303
|
I sighed. Two goodbyes in one night. It was depressing. And it wasn't as though I had a whole Rolodex full of friends. But no sense being sentimental about it. Sentiment is stupid.
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Barry Eisler |
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84fbb15
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I've gotten used to hoping for so little that I seem to have lost any natural immunity to the emotion's infection.
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Barry Eisler |
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b1b651b
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I thought of how Midori had once articulated the idea of mono no aware, a sensibility that, though frequently obscured during cherry blossom viewing by the cacophony of drunken doggerel and generator-powered television sets, remains steadfast in one of the two cultures from which I come. She had called it "the sadness of being human." A wise, accepting sadness, she had said. I admired her for the depths of character such a description indic..
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Barry Eisler |
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9887a10
|
My mother would have wanted me to say a prayer, crossing myself at its conclusion, and had this been her grave, I would have done so. But such a western ritual would have been an insult to my father in his life, and why would I do something to offend him now? I smiled. It was hard to avoid that kind of thinking. My father was dead. Still, I offered no prayer.
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Barry Eisler |
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77f9659
|
I sat silently for several minutes, resisting the urge to speak, knowing it was stupid. There was nothing left of my father. Even if there were, it was ridiculous to believe it would be here, hovering around ashes and dust, jostling for position among the souls of the hundreds of thousands of others buried in this place. People lay the flowers and say the prayers, they believe these things, because doing so avoids the discomfort of acknowle..
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Barry Eisler |
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16519e1
|
After all, killing is the ultimate expression of hatred and fear, as sex is the ultimate expression of romantic love and desire. And, as with sex, killing a stranger who has otherwise provoked no emotion is inherently unnatural. I suppose you could say that a man who kills a stranger is not unlike a woman who has sex under analogous circumstances. That a man who is paid to kill is like a woman who is paid to fuck. Certainly the man is subje..
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Barry Eisler |