Already the summer was half over. Somehow it seemed wrong for my boyfriend to be wearing short sleeves, and I was shocked to see his bare arms when he arrived at the shop where we met. I guess I just always imagined him dressed in a sweater and coat, maybe because we'd met in winter. I'd always feel like we were out walking in a north wind when we got together. I thought I'd gone crazy. We'd be inside some shop with the air conditioner on full blast, it would be a stiflingly hot tropical night outdoors, yet deep down I'd still feel just the same.

“Shall we go?” he said, staring at me, evidently puzzled by the fact that I'd simply followed him with my eyes until he was right in front of me. But I still sat there gazing up into his eyes, my mind completely blank.

“Right, okay,” I said, and stood up.

For some reason my mind always went blank the instant we met.

“So what did you do today?” he asked vaguely, as he always did.

“I was at home. . . . Oh, I ran into an old friend today.”

“A guy? Maybe you had a date?” he said, grinning.

So I replied, grinning back, “Yeah, it was a young guy.”

“Was it really?” He sulked a little. There was only six years’ difference between us, but that gap bothered him strangely. I have a feeling that this was because my appearance was unusually childish, so much so that when I went out without makeup I'd sometimes be mistaken for a high school student. It was as if I hadn't aged at all since I left college. No doubt this had something to do with the way I lived.

“You're free tonight?” I asked.

He looked sadly into my eyes. “Actually I've got to go see some relatives,” he said, sounding very apologetic. “We'll just have dinner, okay?”

“Relatives? Some of yours?”

“No. My in-laws.”

He no longer even tried to hide it from me. Maybe he'd realized that my instincts were just too good, that I could tell? My boyfriend had a wife.

An unconscious wife, a wife who lay quietly asleep in the hospital.

Winter was at its very coldest the first time he and I arranged to meet. We drove to the beach. It was the Sunday after I'd quit my job, and Mr. Iwanaga—he'd been one of my bosses at work—had asked me out on a date. I was more or less aware that he was married. It was a long, long day.