My left hand keeps running through my hair, like I’m testing its thickness.
It’s morning. The futon mattress is nearly flat and has these soy sauce stains and other discolourations. Even if I tried, I wouldn’t be able to get them out.
At around two in the morning (I could pinpoint the exact time if I checked my phone but I can’t be bothered), I got a text from somebody named Wakabayashi. I don’t know anybody by that name, so it’s probably somebody my husband knows. The text said something about the first anniversary of Nakakido’s death coming up and everyone should get together. Somehow instead of the text going to my husband, or just to my husband, I was included in the text, or maybe it only came to me. I was still awake when it came in, so I read it then. It didn’t make me sad, if anything it made me feel kind of uncomfortable, since I don’t remember my husband telling me something had happened to Nakakido. I thought he was still alive.
My husband was at work when the text came in, cooking at a diner until I think 6:00 a.m. At the moment he’s somewhere killing time until his next job starts at ten or eleven. He’s probably getting some food or napping. I think about sending him a text.
But my fingers don’t make a move.
The song is still on repeat in my head. My left arm is under me, pressed against the sheet. I’m not looking at the glass pane of the sliding door, but I know that the light pouring in is milky, maybe because I was looking at the door before, or maybe I can just tell without looking.
I hear the tinny melody played by the garbage truck in the distance. I have the feeling that if I get up right now and move really quickly, I could probably get the trash out in time. I’ve been able to before. I think about it but I know that today I won’t be taking out the trash. I doubt I’ll be getting out of bed.
The couple times that I managed not to miss the garbage collection, the sanitation guys were finishing loading up and about to leap onto the back of the truck when they noticed me running towards them, sandals flapping, and they were nice enough to wait for me.
My phone buzzes. I’m thinking it must be my husband.
My phone is red, and seeing it lying upside down like it is now makes me think it looks like a tiny little flipped-over sports car. This isn’t the first time I’ve thought that.
It turns out the phone buzz was a phantom buzz. I stroke the body of the phone. How come the sun is shining outside and everyone’s running around but I don’t feel the least urge to do anything? How come I don’t care? The light in the room feels heavy, like a chunk of ice that’s starting to melt and the edges are beginning to get soft and round.
Any time my phone vibrates I get the distinct feeling that I knew it was about to happen a few seconds before it does.
I notice now that I have two unread messages which came in after the text from Wakabayashi. One is from my mother. The time stamp says exactly 4:00 a.m. I read the message and shake my head several times, trying to get my hair out of my eyes. But that doesn’t do the job, so I brush them off with my hand.
A while back I accidentally left a sweater at my mother’s house. Her text was asking if I was planning to come and get it. It’s the third time my mother has asked. Maybe the fourth.
It’s a sweater with a half-circle fringe, beige, I think, but it could be lavender. Not once has my mother offered to send it to me. At one point I told her it wasn’t the season for sweaters, it was summer, but she wrote back that in summer you need a sweater because of air conditioning. It’s now September of 2005, so the sweater’s been there over a year.
The hum of the refrigerator feels like it’s coming from a living thing, and the noise fills the room. It sits against the wall, across from the sliding glass door that’s next to the futon where I’m lying. It sounds louder than usual, like the volume is turned up, forcing me to pay attention to it.
In front of the cabinet under the kitchen sink, which I can’t see from where I’m lying, are two empty 500ml cans of cheap beer that my husband drank a few days ago. I placed the cans there when I was straightening up.
That song is on repeat in my mind again, having crept up on me without my noticing, and I move suddenly from thinking about the message from Wakabayashi to thinking about Nakakido, but then that floats away too, and I’m free to just listen to the song. Then I realize that the song is no longer playing, which surprises me slightly.
Now that I think about it, I’ve only been to my mother’s once since last September. She always brews a huge pot of coffee. Any time I go to see her I end up having way more coffee than I should. For some reason, my sweater never came up. We had both forgotten about it, and I went home without it. The next day I got a text from my mother saying that I should have taken the sweater home with me.
The big toe on my right foot has found itself atop the middle toe. There’s a thin film of sweat making my toes sticky, which may be why they’re in that position. I move
