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first month right here in this house. We all took turns walking the floor. I’d never seen a baby with so much bendy black hair.” Grace smiled at him fondly, closing her mouth, story finished. Ryoki let out a breath. That wasn’t too bad. Last time she’d regaled him with all sorts of delivery room drama, details of which he could have spent his entire life in gleeful ignorance.
    “I speak English because my mother was a half, born and raised in the United States,” Ryoki said, looking at Claire. “I grew up speaking English and Japanese at home. She was very adamant about that.”
    “What’s a ‘half’?” Claire asked, the question itself containing an innate sense of democratic superiority that Ryoki often encountered in the United States. He looked at Claire’s heavy gold necklace and soft manicured hands and wondered if Americans recognize they participate in a fictitious egalitarianism.
    “I mean my mother is only half Japanese. My grandmother eloped with an American Air Force pilot and they moved to the States.”
    “That’s a relief,” Kate said. “You made it sound like she’d misplaced some crucial body parts.” Her joke did not reach her eyes, making Ryoki wonder if she understood what it meant to be “half” in Japan. His mother flaunted her half status, always pronouncing Ryoki with her hard American “R,” a tease that stuck, continually goading his grandmother into correcting her with a tightlipped smile, “ Lyoki, his name is Lyoki. ” His father took the middle ground, generally calling him Son. Early on Ryoki learned to answer to anything.
    “I understand your grandfather was a tall man,” Brian said. “Gave your mother her blue eyes and I’m guessin’ your height too.”
    “He was six-foot four. I’m only six-two, same as Tom.” Ryoki had never met either of his maternal grandparents. For him they existed merely as figures in a black and white wedding photo, dead before his birth. In the picture his American grandfather towered over his tiny Japanese grandmother, almost floating in her pouffy Western-style wedding dress. Because of that picture he’d always envisioned his grandfather as a gentle, slow-witted giant, protecting his miniature princess.
    “When you were four, I remember you throwing all your weight against the doors at the mall, to hold them open for your mother and me.” Grace said. “Your mother said she was raising you to be a gentleman just like her father. I thought it was darling, but she said a few Japanese mothers had told her off for making a little boy work so hard.”
    “How did your parents meet?” Claire asked, her eyes shining, perhaps anticipating a grocery store romance, soulmates defying distance and culture.
    “An arranged marriage,” Ryoki said simply.
    Claire’s head snapped back an inch. “Oh.” She cleared her throat, clearly aware she’d been rude, but not sure how to proceed. “I didn’t realize—advanced nation—I imagine parents know their children best,” she said, her cheeks pinking.
    “It still goes on,” Kate said. “We hadn’t been roommates a week before I knew you were perfect for Tom, so the first chance I got I dragged you on a road trip to Stanford. Before we got there, I called to make him get a haircut and told him exactly what to wear, practically gift-wrapped him,” Kate laughed smugly. “If it weren’t for me, Tom would still be spending Friday nights chugging beer with a bunch of smelly guys.”
    “Sounds good to me,” Tom grinned wickedly at his wife, but Ryoki caught a certain softness in his eyes and quickly looked away, embarrassed to have seen such naked affection in the face of his old friend.
    “Well, Ryoki, I don’t believe you’ve ever been up through Wine Country,” Brian said.
    Ryoki had never been to Wine Country because he didn’t care about it.
    “Unfortunately not,” he said.
    “Well, you need to do that while you’re here. Kate, why don’t you take him