"They live in the house, and they can kill mice if they want."

"What do they eat?"

"Fish."

"How about sausage?"

"Sausage, too."

That's how it went.

What the psychiatrist said was true. With civilization comes communication. Expression and communication are essential; without these, civilization ends. *Click*...OFF.

The spring when I turned 14, an unbelievable thing happened: as if a dam had burst, I suddenly began talking. I don't really remember what I talked about, but it was like I was making up for lost time, talking non-stop for three months, and when I stopped talking in the middle of July, I came down with a 105 degree fever and missed school for three days. After the fever, I wasn't completely silent, nor was I a chatterbox; I became a normal teenager.

8

I woke up at six in the morning, probably because I was thirsty. Waking up in someone else's house, I always feel like I'm in someone else's body with someone else's soul stuffed inside. Eventually collecting myself, I rose from the narrow bed, and from the sink next to the door, like a camel, I drank gla.s.s after gla.s.s of water before returning to bed. From the open window, I could see just a tiny sliver of the ocean. The sunlight glimmered above the tiny waves, and I gazed upon the who-knowshow-many rusty freighters going nowhere in particular. It looked like it was going to be a hot day. All the nearby houses were sleeping quietly, and every once in a while the squeaking of the trains on the rails could be heard, and I thought I detected a faint trace of a radio playing the melody for morning calisthenics.

Still naked, I was leaning against the bed and, after lighting a cigarette, I let my eyes wander over to the girl sleeping next to me. From the southward-facing window, rays of sunlight illuminated the full spread of her body. She was sleeping with her bedsheets pushed down to below her knees. Occasionally, she would struggle when taking a breath, and her wellshaped b.r.e.a.s.t.s would jiggle up and down. Her body was well tanned, but over time, the dark color had begun to change, and with the clear tanlines of her swimsuit leaving those areas looking strangely white, she looked like her flesh was decaying.

Ten whole minutes after finishing my cigarette, I made an attempt to remember the girl's name, but it was useless. First off, I couldn't even remember if I'd known her name to begin with. I gave up, yawned, then went back to gazing at her body. She was a little younger than twenty, and she was a little on the slim side. I spread out my fingers and measured her from head to toe. She was eight handspans long, with a remainder of a thumb. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 158 centimeters, I'd say.

Under her right breast was a birthmark the size of a nickel, and on her abdomen a thin happy trail of pubic hair had sprung up like weeds along a river. As an added bonus, she only had four fingers on her left hand.

From then, it was still three whole hours before she woke up. After that, it took her five minutes to become fully cognizant. During that time, I hunched my shoulders together and looked out towards the east, at the thick clouds changing shape over the horizon of the ocean.

A short time later, when I looked back, she had the covers pulled up to her neck. She was struggling with the whiskey vapors rising from the pit of her stomach, staring at me without any expression.

"Who are you?"

"Don't you remember?"

She shook her head just once. I lit a cigarette and tried to offer one to her, but she ignored me.

"Explain."

"Where should I start?"

"At the beginning."

For starters, I had no idea where the h.e.l.l to begin, and what's more, I didn't have any idea how to tell the story so that she'd understand. I wasn't sure whether it would go over well or not. After thinking about it for ten seconds or so, I started to speak.

"It was hot, but it was a nice day. I swam all afternoon, then went home and, after an afternoon nap, I had dinner. Now it's after 8pm. Then I got in my car so I could go somewhere and go for a walk. I parked my car on the road near the sh.o.r.e and listened to the radio while I looked at the ocean, like I always do.

"After thirty minutes of this, I all of a sudden got to feeling like talking to people. Whenever I look at the ocean, I always want to talk to people, but when I'm talking to people, I always want to look at the ocean. I'm weird like that. So then I decided to go to J's Bar. I wanted to drink beer, and I usually can meet up with my friend there. But my friend wasn't there. So I decided to drink by myself. In just one hour I drank three beers."

I paused for a moment to ash my cigarette into the ashtray.

"By the way, have you ever read Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?"

She didn't answer, wrapped in her sheet she looked like a mermaid who washed up onto a beach as she glared up at the ceiling. Undeterred, I went back to my story.

"What I mean is that I'm always reminded of that play whenever I'm drinking by myself. Like a little switch that goes off and lets me relax or something. But in reality, it didn't go so well. I didn't even hear the click. After awhile, I got sick of waiting and called up his apartment. I was going to invite him to come out and have a drink with me. However, some girl answered his phone. It made me really uneasy. He's just not the type to let that happen. Even if he'd had fifty girls in his room and was dead drunk, he'd still answer his own phone. You know what I mean?

"I pretended I had the wrong number, apologized, and hung up. After that call, I started to feel bad. Of course, what I did was ridiculous. Still, that's just how I am. I finished my beer and called J over so I could pay the check, thinking about going home and listening to the baseball scores on the news. J told me to go and wash my face. You could drink a case of beer, and he'd still that that washing your face would make you okay to drive. There was nothing I could say to that, so I headed to the washroom to wash my face. To tell you the truth, I didn't really plan to wash my face. Just to pretend to. Because the drain in the sink there is usually clogged up. So I didn't really want to go in there. But last night, strangely, there wasn't any water filling up the sink. Instead, it was you, all balled up on the floor."

She sighed and shut her eyes.

"And?"

"I sat you up and carried you out of the bathroom, then took you around to all the customers in the bar and asked them if they knew you. But n.o.body knew you. Then, J and I treated your wound."

"My wound?"

"When you pa.s.sed out, you must've hit your head on a corner or something. It wasn't a major injury or anything."

She nodded and drew her hand from under her sheet, then lightly touched her fingertip to her forehead.

"So then I consulted with J. What we should do about you. In the end, we decided that I should take you home. I emptied your bag and found a key holder and a postcard addressed to you. I paid your tab with the money in your wallet, and following the address on the postcard, brought you here, opened the door with the key, and laid you out on your bed. That's it. I put the receipt from the bar in your wallet."

"Why'd you stay?"

"Hm?"

"Why didn't you just buzz off after bringing me home?"

"I had a buddy who died from alcohol poisoning. After gulping down whiskey and saying goodbye and leaving, he went home feeling well enough, brushed his teeth, put on his pajamas and went to bed. When the morning came, he was cold and dead. It was a spectacular funeral."

"So you were going to nurse me all night?"

"Really, I was planning to go home at 4am. But I fell asleep. I thought about leaving when I woke up. But I gave up on that."

"Why?"

"At the very least, I thought I should explain to you what happened."

"You did all this out of the goodness of your heart?"

Feeling the venom laced in her words, I shrugged my shoulders and let them pa.s.s over me. Then I looked at the clouds.

"Did I...did I talk about anything?"

"A little."

"What did I say?"

"This and that. But I forget. Nothing too terribly important."

She closed her eyes and a grunt escaped the depths of her throat.

"And the postcard?"

"I put it back in your bag."

"Did you read it?"

"No way!"

"Why not?"

"There was no reason to."

I said this in a bored way. Something about her tone was irritating me. Even more than that, she stirred up some kind of familiar sentiment within me. Something old, from a long time ago. If before this h.e.l.lish encounter we'd have met under different circ.u.mstances, we'd probably have had a slightly better time together. That's how I felt. However, in reality, what those 'better circ.u.mstances' might have been, I really couldn't remember.

"What time is it?" she asked.

Breathing a little sigh of relief, I stood up, looked at my digital watch on the desk, put some water in a gla.s.s, and came back to bed.

"It's nine."

She nodded weakly, then got up, leaned on the wall and drank all the water in one gulp.

"Did I really drink all that much?"

"Absolutely. If it were me, I'd be dead."

"I feel like I'm dying."

She took her cigarettes out from under her pillow and lit one, sighing as she exhaled the smoke, then suddenly pitched the match out the window towards the harbor.

"Hand me something to wear."

"Like what?"

With her cigarette still in her mouth, she closed her eyes yet again. "Anything. I ask you to get me something, don't ask questions, just do it."

Facing the bed was a large wardrobe. I opened its door feeling a little confused, but finally chose a sleeveless blue dress and handed it to her. Not bothering to put on underwear, she slipped it completely over her head and pulled it down, zipping up the back all by herself and sighing once again when she finished.

"I have to go."

"Where?"

"To work."

She spit those words out, stumbling out of bed. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I looked on, uninterested, as she washed her face and brushed her hair.

The room was tidy, but even with things being neatly arranged, there was an air of something like resignation, and it was weighing heavily on my spirits.

Her room was just six mats in size, and after taking into account the cheap furniture it was stuffed with, there was barely enough s.p.a.ce left over for one person to lie down. She was standing in this s.p.a.ce brushing the knots out of her hair.

"What kind of work?"

"That's none of your business."

And that's how it was.

For the time it takes to smoke an entire cigarette, I kept quiet. With her back to me, she was pushing her bangs, which hung down to below her eyes, into position with her fingertip.

"What time is it?" she asked once more.

"It's been ten minutes."

"Time to go. You'd better hurry up and get dressed and go home," she said while spraying perfume under her armpits, "you do have a home, don't you?"

"Yeah, sure," I said, pulling my t-shirt over my head. Still sitting on the edge of her bed, I went back to gazing out the window.

"Where is your work?"

"Close to the harbor. Why?"

"I'll drive you. You won't be so late."

Clutching the handle of her brush, she looked at me as if she were about to burst out in tears. This'll be fun if she cries, I thought to myself. But she didn't cry.

"Hey, just remember this: I drank too much, and I was drunk. So if anything bad happened, it's my own fault."

Saying that, she tapped the handle of the brush in her palm a few times in an almost entirely businesslike manner. I was silent while I waited for her to continue.

"Don't you think?"

"Sure."

"Still, a guy who sleeps with a girl who's pa.s.sed out...that's low."

"But I didn't do anything."

She was quiet, looking like she was trying to keep her emotions in check.

"Hmm, well then, why was I naked?"

"You took your own clothes off."

"Yeah right."