On his rainy walk to the restaurant he passes a man going the other way leading a crippled dog. The dog’s hind legs are slung in a wheeled cradle. Why keep such a nuisance alive?

The dog pulls itself along, walking with his front paws, like an acrobat on his hands. The dog’s owner has a plastic bag hanging out of his back pocket to collect any messes.

After passing the dog and its owner, he notices in the dry patches under awnings parallel wheel tracks from the dog’s wet wheels, and haphazard prints from its two functional paws.

When he gets to the restaurant a woman is kneeling on the floor and playing Koto. The music doesn’t make any sense. The notes land like wary mosquitoes; they are tuned to a foreign scale. The rhythm spits and flutters. She could be a clumsy beginner or a revered expert, he doesn’t know.

Rain smears the window glass and the rivulets warp the view outside, bending trees, making cars appear to rush, then slow, squashing pedestrian’s faces and elongating their legs.

The tea burns his tongue. Now he will taste less of his meal. That dog should have been put down. Why care for something so hopeless?

Everything on his plate is ordered so perfectly. Momentarily he will eat it. With the first bite he will destroy the order. This, he thinks, is living. Taking and breaking.

He eats all of the sushi on his plate as quickly as possible. The woman is still playing. On the sidewalk outside the man and the crippled dog appear. Through the rain-glazed window it looks like the dog is whole. His head dodges up and down, his tongue hangs pink, he wears a canine smile.

The dog’s owner stops at the restaurant’s door, opens it. The drum skin sound of rain mixes with the Koto. The waitress greets the man by name.

The Koto player stops. She is smiling. She is opening her arms. The dog does a fumbling two-legged gallop to reach her. She embraces the wet animal; it licks her cheek.

His burnt tongue is numb. He closes his eyes. He hears laughter and a jingling from the dog’s collar, from its walking apparatus. Finally the Koto begins again, and though he cannot anticipate a single note, he understands each one. They follow one after another, making a track through the air like wet impressions of wheels and footprints on a dry surface.

Amasia Hide’s Sushi Bar

149 Noe St (at Henry)

San Francisco

(415) 861-7000

www.amasiahidesushi.com