chalkboard, the second hand moved as if it were weighed down with lead sinkers. The minute hand needed regular coaxing and encouragement to help it get through the hour. My afternoon break was hardly better. Nothing I did helpe d push the stalled day forward.
I went for a five-kilometer run around Ôhori Park, then took a leisurely walk through the usually quiet and deserted castle ruins which I discovered were now alive with the pink and purple azalea blossoms. I doubled back, walking along the moat, its dark green still water dotted with plate-sized lily pads. The diversion didn't have much of an appetite; hardly an hour was gobbled up.
Back at my apartment, I began unpacking my things and putting my apartment in order. I removed Mie's articles. Her yellow toothbrush joined mine in a stainless cup by the sink, her pajamas took priority position in the top drawer of the wardrobe. I also went to some lengths to erase any sign of Reina having been in my apartment, picking up the occasional hair, putting the empty cans of chu-hi [4] and beer in a bag for non-burnable garbage on the balcony. Last but by far not least, I tossed the package of Whisper sanitary napkins Reina had, for Lord knows what reason, left behind. In the remaining hours, I studied Japanese, looking up all the things I'd been wanting to say to Mie for the past six months, all the things I'd been wanting to ask her every day that passed since she closed the door on me.
Back at work in the afternoon, I went to the lobby and sat on a bench butted up against the tinted windows and looked out at the still life below. White compacts and delivery vans were stopped at a red light. An old woman hunched all the way over like a candy cane paused for an eternity before attempting to cross the four-lane avenue. Arthritic, knobby hands clutching for dear life onto the handle of a small stroller-like shopping cart. Without it, she probably would have toppled right over. She took a step, a small one, bringing her closer to the shopping cart, then pushed the cart an arm-length away and stepped slowly towards it again, making her way across the avenue like an ancient inchworm.
Every time the phone rang in the office, I got a case of the jitters, worried that Mie was calling to cancel, that something preventing us from meeting had come up. Will she be held up at work and be forced to postpone the date for kondo , for another time?
Japanese often chime “ let's do it another time ,” but you soon realize this “other time” is just another way of saying “ nev er in a million years, buster.”
It was the last words Mie had spoken to me when she left my a partment seven months earlier. “ Kondo, ” she said and drove off never to return.
Anxiety filled my thoughts, crowding out any of the elation I should have been feeling about seeing Mie again. It was to be expected, after what I'd gone through. Six months on, I'm still shell-shocked from the bomb she dropped on me.
2
8:40 and still no sign of Mie.
The air is cooler than I expected and the longer I wait the more I wish I'd dressed for warmth rather than The Sell. My inability to exaggerate or embellish upon my own accomplishments, let alone mention them, is one reason, I suppose, that I am so fussy about how I dress. I don't dress for success so much as I dress to avoid the almost certain failure that my modesty invites. Clothes make the man, the lesser the man, the more he dep ends on them to help him along.
What is it I wanted my linen suit to communicate to Mie? That I'm too broke to buy something warmer? Nah, that wasn't it. That, somehow, despite all the crap that happened last year, in spite of my former boss's attempts to bury me, that everything has managed to work out al l right in the end; that I'm not a complete failure; that I still have a fighting chance to get through this life with my dignity intact; that, more than anything, I deserve another chance with Mie. And so, in my effort to
I went for a five-kilometer run around Ôhori Park, then took a leisurely walk through the usually quiet and deserted castle ruins which I discovered were now alive with the pink and purple azalea blossoms. I doubled back, walking along the moat, its dark green still water dotted with plate-sized lily pads. The diversion didn't have much of an appetite; hardly an hour was gobbled up.
Back at my apartment, I began unpacking my things and putting my apartment in order. I removed Mie's articles. Her yellow toothbrush joined mine in a stainless cup by the sink, her pajamas took priority position in the top drawer of the wardrobe. I also went to some lengths to erase any sign of Reina having been in my apartment, picking up the occasional hair, putting the empty cans of chu-hi [4] and beer in a bag for non-burnable garbage on the balcony. Last but by far not least, I tossed the package of Whisper sanitary napkins Reina had, for Lord knows what reason, left behind. In the remaining hours, I studied Japanese, looking up all the things I'd been wanting to say to Mie for the past six months, all the things I'd been wanting to ask her every day that passed since she closed the door on me.
Back at work in the afternoon, I went to the lobby and sat on a bench butted up against the tinted windows and looked out at the still life below. White compacts and delivery vans were stopped at a red light. An old woman hunched all the way over like a candy cane paused for an eternity before attempting to cross the four-lane avenue. Arthritic, knobby hands clutching for dear life onto the handle of a small stroller-like shopping cart. Without it, she probably would have toppled right over. She took a step, a small one, bringing her closer to the shopping cart, then pushed the cart an arm-length away and stepped slowly towards it again, making her way across the avenue like an ancient inchworm.
Every time the phone rang in the office, I got a case of the jitters, worried that Mie was calling to cancel, that something preventing us from meeting had come up. Will she be held up at work and be forced to postpone the date for kondo , for another time?
Japanese often chime “ let's do it another time ,” but you soon realize this “other time” is just another way of saying “ nev er in a million years, buster.”
It was the last words Mie had spoken to me when she left my a partment seven months earlier. “ Kondo, ” she said and drove off never to return.
Anxiety filled my thoughts, crowding out any of the elation I should have been feeling about seeing Mie again. It was to be expected, after what I'd gone through. Six months on, I'm still shell-shocked from the bomb she dropped on me.
2
8:40 and still no sign of Mie.
The air is cooler than I expected and the longer I wait the more I wish I'd dressed for warmth rather than The Sell. My inability to exaggerate or embellish upon my own accomplishments, let alone mention them, is one reason, I suppose, that I am so fussy about how I dress. I don't dress for success so much as I dress to avoid the almost certain failure that my modesty invites. Clothes make the man, the lesser the man, the more he dep ends on them to help him along.
What is it I wanted my linen suit to communicate to Mie? That I'm too broke to buy something warmer? Nah, that wasn't it. That, somehow, despite all the crap that happened last year, in spite of my former boss's attempts to bury me, that everything has managed to work out al l right in the end; that I'm not a complete failure; that I still have a fighting chance to get through this life with my dignity intact; that, more than anything, I deserve another chance with Mie. And so, in my effort to
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