I found Haru's hackneyed way of thinking about things and her darkly cheerless point of view sickening. I hated it.

“What's with you, anyway? Do you even really want him?” Haru said this as if she were scolding me.

“Yes, I want him!” I said. “That's why I'm stuck here with you, isn't it? With a moron like you—”

Wham!

Apparently I'd said too much. Before I'd even finished speaking Haru slapped me across the cheek with the flat of her hand, producing a loud smack. I was stunned for a moment, unable to grasp what had happened. Then, as the seconds passed, I felt my right cheek getting hotter.

“You've really pissed me off now, so I'm leaving,” I said, and stood up. “You can have him tonight. If he comes back.”

Haru went on staring at me as I picked up my bag, and then as I walked out the front door. She had her eyes open so wide, and they shone with such an earnest light, that I seriously thought she might call out for me to stop. That's the kind of gleam she had in her eyes. A look that says Don't go, not a look that says I'm sorry. I suspect that she only remained silent because it would have seemed weird if she'd actually spoken those words.

Her small, fair, tackily made-up face was half hidden by her long hair. I noticed how lovely and insubstantial she looked when you saw her from a distance. Without saying a word I closed the door.

Just thinking about other women I knew sleeping with the man gave me heartburn and left me fuming, and yet where Haru was concerned I no longer minded. In fact there were times, when the three of us were all sleeping together, when he and Haru would start going at it, and I hardly gave it a second thought. If it had been any other woman I probably would have killed her on the spot.

As long as we were together I could sort of understand how the man felt toward her.

I'm not talking about who she was inside.

Inside she was probably just a strange, high-strung, unpleasant woman. But there was something truly special in her appearance. The soft shadow you saw in her panties, slender shoulders flickering in and out of the blackness of her long hair, odd little valleys over her collarbone, the curves under her breasts that seemed so impossibly, untouchably distant . . . she could have been the embodiment of the diaphanous image of Woman herself, come shakily to life, stumbling around. That's certainly what you felt.

I saw the glimmering uproar of the trees in my garden again that night, outside the window. It was a beautiful scene, one that seemed to break off in bizarre angles, coming to points, just as I'd remembered. In the wash of light I had the feeling that these points were gentle, not pitilessly hard.

No doubt this was because I was drunk.