Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet: Dinner (1986) Summary & Analysis

Samantha cooks a delicious Chinese dinner for Marty and Henry. The three toast to “a successful find in the basement time capsule of the Panama Hotel.” Samantha brings out the special dessert she’s made: dragon’s beard candy. “I’ve been practicing,” she says. “Sometimes you have to just go for it. Try for what’s hardest to accomplish. Like you and your childhood sweetheart.” Startled, Henry replies: “I see my son’s been sharing stories.” Samantha presses Henry to search for Keiko. She “might still be out there somewhere,” she says. “Aren’t you curious where she is, where she might be?”

To himself, Henry admits that he has thought of Keiko over the course of the years, and that he does still love her; he loved her even as he was married to Ethel, whom he also loved. However, now as then, Henry is sure that he “love[s] [Keiko] enough to let her go—to not go dredging up the past.” Marty presses the issue, saying that Henry should return Keiko’s sketchbooks to her. Henry insists that “she might not even be alive.” “People didn’t look back,” he says, “and there was nothing to return to, so they moved on.” Still, Henry begins to wonder “what else he might find if he look[s] hard enough.”