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Please write to 291 me, I said, and sent the letter special deliveryThe answer never cameThis was the beginning of one weird springI spent the whole holiday waiting for lettersI couldn't take a trip, I couldn't go home to see my parents, I couldn't even take a part-time job because there was no telling when a letter might arrive from Naoko saying she wanted me to come and see her on such-and-such a dateAfternoons I would spend in the nearby shopping district in Kichijoji, watching double bills or reading in a jazz caf?I saw no one and talked to almost no oneAnd once a week I would write to NaokoI never suggested to her that I was hoping for an answerI didn't want to pressure her in any wayI would tell her about my painting job, about Seagull, about the peach blossom in the garden, about louis vuitton white speedy the nice old lady who sold tofu, about the nasty old lady in the local restaurant, about the meals I was making for myselfBut still, she never wroteWhenever I was fed up reading or listening to records, I would work a little in the gardenFrom my landlord I borrowed a rake and broom and pruning shears and spent my time pulling weeds and trimming bushesIt didn't take much to make the garden look goodOnce the owner invited me to join him for a cup of tea, so we sat on the veranda of the main house drinking green tea and munching on rice crackers, sharing small talkAfter retirement, he had got a job with an insurance company, he said, but he had left that, too, after a couple of years, and now he was taking it easyThe house and land had been in the family for a long time, his children roxanne mulberry bag were grown-up and independent, and he could manage a comfortable old age without workingWhich is why he and his wife were always travelling together"That's nice," I said"No it's not," he answered"Travelling is no funI'd much rather be working He let the garden grow wild, he said, because there were no decent 292 gardeners in the area and because he had developed allergies that made it impossible for him to do the work himselfCutting grass made him sneezeWhen we had finished our tea, he showed me a storage shed and told me I could use anything I found inside, more or less by way of thanks for my gardening"We don't have any use for any of this stuff," he said, "so feel free And in fact the place was crammed with all kinds of things - an old wooden bath, a kids' swimming pool, baseball batsI found gold chanel earrings an old bike, a handy-sized dining table with two chairs, a mirror, and a guitar"I'd like to borrow these if you don't mind," I said"Feel free," he said againI spent a day working on the bike: cleaning the rust off, oiling the bearings, pumping up the tyres, adjusting the gears, and taking it to a bike repair shop to have a new gear cable installedIt looked like a different bike by the time I had finishedI cleaned a thick layer of dust off the table and gave it a new coat of varnishI replaced the strings of the guitar and glued a section of the body that was coming apartI took a wire brush to the rust on the tuning pegs and adjusted thoseIt wasn't much of a guitar, but at least I got it to stay in tuneI hadn't had a guitar in my hands since school, I realizedI sat on the porch and picked tiffany diamond my way through The Drifters' "Up on the Roof" as well as I couldI was amazed to find I still remembered most of the chordsNext I took a few planks of wood and made myself a square letterboxI painted it red, wrote my name on it, and set it outside my doorUp until 3 April, the only post that found its way to my box was something that had been forwarded from the dorm: a notice from the reunion committee of my schoolA class reunion was the last thing I wanted to have anything to do withThat was the class I had been in with KizukiI threw it in the binI found a letter in the box on the afternoon of 4 AprilIt said Reiko Ishida on the backI made a nice, clean cut across the seal with my 293 scissors and went out to the porch to read itI had a feeling this was not going to be good news, and I was mulberry roxanne rig