This, to me, seemed tremendously unfair. She had been seeing him for a few months, but she and I had been “seeing” each other for twenty-three years. We had always gotten along well, practically never had a fight. I didn’t know a brother and sister who could talk so honestly and openly with each other, and not only about masturbation and periods: She knew when I first bought condoms (I was seventeen), and I knew when she first bought lace underwear (she was nineteen).

I had dated her friends (but not slept with them, of course), and she had dated mine (but not slept with them, of course—I think). That’s just how we were brought up. This excellent relationship of ours turned sour in less than a year. The more I thought about it, the angrier it made me.

She had to buy a pair of shoes at the department store near the station, she said. I left her outside the restaurant and went back to our apartment alone. I gave my girlfriend a call, but she wasn’t in. Which wasn’t surprising. Two o’clock on a Sunday afternoon was not the best time to ask a girl for a date. I flipped the pages of my address book and tried another girl—a student I had met at some disco. She answered the phone.

“Like to go out for a drink?”

“You’re kidding. It’s two o’clock in the afternoon.”

“So what? We’ll drink till the sun goes down. I know the perfect bar for watching the sunset. You can’t get good seats if you’re not there by three.”

“Are you some kind of connoisseur of sunsets?”

But still she accepted, probably out of kindness. I picked her up, and we drove out along the shore just beyond Yokohama to a bar with a view of the ocean. I drank four glasses of I.W. Harper on the rocks, and she had two banana daiquiris (can you believe it?). And we watched the sun go down.

“Are you going to be okay driving with that much to drink?” she asked.

“No problem. Where alcohol is concerned, I’m under par.”

“‘Under par’?”

“Four drinks are just enough to bring me up to normal. You haven’t got a thing to worry about. Not a thing.”

“If you say so …”

We drove back to Yokohama, ate, and enjoyed a few kisses in the car. I suggested we go to a hotel, but she didn’t want to.

“I’m wearing a tampon.”

“So take it out.”

“Yeah, right. It’s my second day.”

And what a day it was. At this rate, I should have just had a date with my girlfriend. But no, this was going to be the day I spent a nice, leisurely Sunday with my sister, something we hadn’t done for a long time. So much for that plan.