In a world where everyone is online, why can’t I find the man who inspired a major character in my novel?
My first memory is one of loss — specifically, the disappearance of Blackie, my beloved plastic horse. (Despite his name, Blackie was, for reasons now lost to history, brown.) I must have been three years old. It seemed that one minute, Blackie was there with me on the living room floor, and the next, he was gone forever, and no amount of searching under couches or in boxes could bring him back. This was not supposed to happen. Things didn’t just vanish. They had to be somewhere. Didn’t they?
I met Shinobu for the first time in 2002 at a Subway shop in Kawasaki...