When Zenji left, James looked out the hotel window at the apartments across the way, their windows yellow and white, filled with people not visiting, but living in Ohana. James lived in the Kansas flatlands, and, when he looked out his living room window, he only saw one house, and framed within he saw his neighbor the pastor and his Christian wife and kids, who sat around the kitchen table and read and prayed and colored with crayons nights after James finished dinner with his wife and young son. James sat in the dark and watched, the scene like one painted by Rockwell, the particular joys of a light light life. Here, in Hawaii, James saw two-hundred scenes, a hive of so many many lives. A woman washed a blue and white dish. A thin, monk-haired man jogged on a treadmill. Two couples toasted burgundy-colored wine. A lonely woman stared into the blue of her tv. A man ate beer nuts. Kids ran corners. James felt sad and alone, his people thousands of miles away, and his conference-mate Zenji had gone on to the big island to meet his girl. James screwed off the top of the Corona he’d lingered over at the minimart. He didn’t often buy beer. He stood on the lanai with his yellow beer stuffed with a lime and drank and leaned and watched. He felt himself totter, his hand on the rail. The way down was long. James tilted into the hotel room and onto the white sheets, where he felt like crying. So much humanity, and none of it his. He took off his clothes and stretched into the bed. He pulled at himself until he could sleep.