Erika and I briefly reviewed the lives we’d led over the past sixteen years. After college, I was hired by a small publisher, but quit after three years and had been a writer ever since. I got married at twenty-seven but didn’t have any children yet. Erika was still single. “They drive me so hard at work,” she joked, “that I have no time to get married.” She was the first one to bring up the topic of Kitaru.

“Aki-kun is working as a sushi chef in Denver now,” she said.

“Denver?”

“Denver, Colorado. At least, according to the postcard he sent me a couple of months ago.”

“Why Denver?”

“I don’t know,” Erika said. “The postcard before that was from Seattle. He was a sushi chef there, too. That was about a year ago. He sends me postcards sporadically. Always some silly card with just a couple of lines dashed off. Sometimes he doesn’t even write his return address.”

“A sushi chef,” I mused. “So he never did go to college?”

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She shook her head. “At the end of that summer, I think it was, he suddenly announced that he’d had it with studying for the entrance exams and he went off to a cooking school in Osaka. Said he really wanted to learn Kansai cuisine and go to games at Koshien Stadium, the Hanshin Tigers’ stadium. Of course, I asked him, ‘How can you decide something so important without even asking me? What about me?’ ”

“And what did he say to that?”

She didn’t respond. She just held her lips tight, as if she’d break into tears if she tried to speak. I quickly changed the subject.

“When we went to that Italian restaurant in Shibuya, I remember we had cheap Chianti. Now look at us, tasting premium Napa wines. Kind of a strange twist of fate.”

“I remember,” she said, pulling herself together. “We saw a Woody Allen movie. Which one was it again?”

I told her.

“That was a great movie.”

I agreed. It was definitely one of Woody Allen’s masterpieces.

“Did things work out with that guy in your tennis club you were seeing?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No. We just didn’t connect the way I thought we would. We went out for six months and then broke up.”

“Can I ask a question?” I said. “It’s very personal, though.”

“Of course.”

“I don’t want you to be offended.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“You slept with that guy, right?”

Erika looked at me in surprise, her cheeks reddening.

“Why are you bringing that up now?”

“Good question,” I said. “It’s just been on my mind for a long time. But that was a weird thing to ask. I’m sorry.”

Erika shook her head slightly. “No, it’s O.K. I’m not offended. I just wasn’t expecting it. It was all so long ago.”

I looked around the room. People in formal wear were scattered about. Corks popped one after another from expensive bottles of wine. A female pianist was playing “Like Someone in Love.”

“The answer is yes,” Erika said. “I had sex with him a number of times.”

“Curiosity, a thirst to know more,” I said.

She gave a hint of a smile. “That’s right. Curiosity, a thirst to know more.”

“That’s how we develop our growth rings.”

“If you say so,” she said.

“And I’m guessing that the first time you slept with him was soon after we had our date in Shibuya?”

She turned a page in her mental record book. “I think so. About a week after that. I remember that whole time pretty well. It was the first time for me.”

“And Kitaru was pretty quick on the uptake,” I said, gazing into her eyes.

She looked down and fingered the pearls on her necklace one by one, as if making sure that they were all still there. She gave a small sigh, perhaps remembering something. “Yes, you’re right about that. Aki-kun had a very strong sense of intuition.”

“But it didn’t work out with the other man.”

She nodded. “Unfortunately, I’m just not that smart. I needed to take the long way around. I always take a roundabout way.”

That’s what we all do: endlessly take the long way around. I wanted to tell her this, but kept silent. Blurting out aphorisms like that was another one of my problems.

“Is Kitaru married?”

“As far as I know, he’s still single,” Erika said. “At least, he hasn’t told me that he got married. Maybe the two of us are the type who never make a go of marriage.”

“Or maybe you’re just taking a roundabout way of getting there.”

“Perhaps.”

“Do you still dream about the moon made of ice?” I asked.

Her head snapped up and she stared at me. Very calmly, slowly, a smile spread across her face. A completely natural, open smile.

“You remember my dream?” she asked.

“For some reason, I do.”

“Even though it’s someone else’s dream?”

“Dreams are the kind of things you can borrow and lend out,” I said.

“That’s a wonderful idea,” she said.

Someone called her name from behind me. It was time for her to get back to work.

“I don’t have that dream anymore,” she said in parting. “But I still remember every detail. What I saw, the way I felt. I can’t forget it. I probably never will.”

When I’m driving and the Beatles song “Yesterday” comes on the radio, I can’t help but hear those crazy lyrics Kitaru crooned in the bath. And I regret not writing them down. The lyrics were so weird that I remembered them for a while, but gradually my memory started to fade until finally I had nearly forgotten them. All I recall now are fragments, and I’m not even sure if these are actually what Kitaru sang. As time passes, memory, inevitably, reconstitutes itself.

When I was twenty or so, I tried several times to keep a diary, but I just couldn’t do it. So many things were happening around me back then that I could barely keep up with them, let alone stand still and write them all down in a notebook. And most of these things weren’t the kind that made me think, Oh, I’ve got to write this down. It was all I could do to open my eyes in the strong headwind, catch my breath, and forge ahead.

But, oddly enough, I remember Kitaru so well. We were friends for just a few months, yet every time I hear “Yesterday” scenes and conversations with him well up in my mind. The two of us talking while he soaked in the bath at his home in Denenchofu. Talking about the Hanshin Tigers’ batting order, how troublesome certain aspects of sex could be, how mind-numbingly boring it was to study for the entrance exams, how emotionally rich Kansai dialect was. And I remember the strange date with Erika Kuritani. And what Erika—over the candlelit table at the Italian restaurant—confessed. It feels as though these things happened just yesterday. Music has that power to revive memories, sometimes so intensely that they hurt.

But when I look back at myself at age twenty what I remember most is being alone and lonely. I had no girlfriend to warm my body or my soul, no friends I could open up to. No clue what I should do every day, no vision for the future. For the most part, I remained hidden away, deep within myself. Sometimes I’d go a week without talking to anybody. That kind of life continued for a year. A long, long year. Whether this period was a cold winter that left valuable growth rings inside me, I can’t really say. At the time I felt as if every night I, too, were gazing out a porthole at a moon made of ice. A transparent, eight-inch-thick, frozen moon. But I watched that moon alone, unable to share its cold beauty with anyone.

Yesterday Is two days before tomorrow, The day after two days ago. ♦