She had been careful about everything, about how
perfectly straight her hair was cut, how properly she
spoke, walked, and dressed, careful about placing her
knife and fork in exactly the right place on either
side of her dinner plate, careful about her manners,
how she got on and off a train, an escalator, a ferris
wheel.
She was insanely meticulous, thorough, making the most
rigorous demands on herself. I was flawed, seriously
flawed, I'd never be like her - every girl's ideal, a
model of excellence. She enjoyed tidying up. I made
sure to leave the place a wreck. In the two years we
shared a room I saw her lose her composure only once,
in an argument with me one night after a concert at
the school of works by early twentieth century French
composers.
It was late, we had changed into our pajamas, eating
rice crackers.
She insisted that an English horn is the same thing as
an oboe.
I said, "No, it's larger and pitched lower by a fifth.
A warmer sounding instrument than the intolerable
oboe."
"What do you mean intolerable? The oboe is by far
the..."
"No," I persisted. "That tight, reedy sound makes me
want to scream. You're not thinking of getting one,
are you?"
"That's when she threw a handful of crackers at me,
shouting, "I'll bring a truckload of oboes in here if
I want to. Just try and stop me, little miss
sensitive ears."
A mild explosion, totally out of character; but I'd
been waiting for her to break since that first day in
school when she discreetly came up behind me in the
hall and whispered, "Najimi-san, your hem has come
undone."
Two months after graduation I was going through my
mail, mostly junk, when a card fell to the floor. It
was from her sister in Akabane, hastily written in
pencil.
Oh, Haruko, how could you have been so careless,
stepping off the curb without looking first?
