Ransom by Jay McInerney

back was aching and his store of sincerity exhausted.
    After a closing round of seated meditation, the sensei handed him the broom. Wondering why this was necessary after practice, Ransom swept the lot again from one end to the other.
    The next night was the same. While the others followed their secret choreography, Ransom stood in the duncecorner bowing to his post. The sensei came around twice to measure his progress but offered no comment. Ransom’s back ached so severely the next day that he could hardly get out of bed. He walked to the public bath hunched over like the old country women he saw sometimes at the bus stops, women who spent their lives bent doubled over in rice fields.
    At the end of the third night he was convinced he was being systematically humiliated. The sensei hadn’t wanted him in the dojo to begin with. When he came around to watch, Ransom was too stiff to bow fluidly, and the proper mix of humility and sincerity was out of the question.
    Practice finished, he was changing into his street clothes when the sensei held out the broom. Ransom continued buttoning his shirt and didn’t look up. When he got to the second-to-last button he saw there were three buttonholes left. The sensei saw, too. He held out the broom. Ransom rebuttoned and tucked in his shirt, then took the broom and snapped it in half over his knee. He laid the two halves down at the sensei’s feet and was out in the street before he realized he had left his shoes behind.
    The shoes were sitting beside the door of the gym when he arrived the next night, under a folded-paperbag tent. Ransom was fifteen minutes early. He had brought a new broom. The sensei arrived as he was beginning to sweep. Ransom continued sweeping. The sensei walked over to the post and began punching. Ransom laid down the broom and approached him. The sensei changed hands and hit the post fifty times before turning to look at Ransom. Ransom drew himself up, clenched his fists athis side and bent deeply from the waist. He kept his head down.
    Okay
, the sensei said.
Good
.
    Ransom had finished sweeping when Udo arrived. He walked like a sumo wrestler, with a semicircular swing of his legs, looking like he was carrying something between them. Udo had been a body builder before he joined the dojo and the hypertrophied pectorals and thighs that had won two Mr. Kyoto titles were no help with karate. He could bench-press two hundred kilos, but his punches were slow and ineffective.
    Initially, Udo had refused to acknowledge Ransom’s existence. The sensei forced him to do so by letting a match between them run on much too long. Udo went down three times. After the second knockdown there was blood all over the front of Udo’s gi. Ransom had no heart to go on, but he knew better than to question the sensei’s tactics. The next day Udo began to ask Ransom for pointers. Later, when Ransom had carburetor trouble with his bike, Udo brought him down to the service station where he worked, showed him all the features of the three-bay garage with hydraulic lifts, showed Ransom off to his friends and refused payment for the rebuild of the carburetor. Since then they had been out fishing a few times.
    Ito arrived wearing his gi, as if he had no civilian life. He bowed to Ransom and to Udo and then began jogging around the lot. It still might rain, Ransom thought. Udo watched Ito circle the lot, then began running himself. He was scared to death of Ito.
    The sensei was in a buoyant mood, smiling owlishly.Ransom bowed. The sensei nodded and asked if he thought it was going to rain. Ransom felt that it wasn’t his meteorological intuition which was being checked, but his enthusiasm. Did Ransom want it to rain? seemed to be the question. Or maybe he was just paranoid.
    When the sensei knelt down on the asphalt, the twelve of them fell into line according to rank—the sensei, Ito and then Ransom. Yamada was absent. Ransom had less seniority than others