3.05 Thistle

When I handed the adaptor over to the two men from Customs, they told me I would have to fill out a dôisho.

“Dôisho?”

I had to look the word up in my electronic dictionary. It meant "a letter of consent".

Nakata drew up a sample dôisho and instructed me to copy it verbatim. As I was writing down the sentences, the front door creaked open.

“If you don’t mind,“ I said to the two agents, rising to my feet.

“Not at all,” Nakata replied.

Walking over to the entry, I found Azami standing at the door, dressed in a flowing purple summer dress and frozen like a doe in crosshairs. I could have strangled the girl for coming when I had expressly told her not to.

I tell her not to call and what does she do? She rings me up every ten fucking minutes. I tell her not to stay away from my place, so, naturally, she comes by.

"Ah, hello, long time no see," I said cordially as I nudged her outside. "I'm afraid I have company at the moment."

Closing the door behind me, I glared at my girlfriend. "Goddammit, Azami! When I tell you to do something, for fuck's sake do it!"

"I'm s-sorry," she said taking a step away from me. True to the flower she was named after, she was as pretty as a thistle and just as prickly.

“Ah, Christ, I’m sorry, Azami. The one who should be apologizing is me." I felt like a real arse. No, I was a real arse. “Listen. Just make yourself scarce for the next thirty minutes or so, will ya? I'll call you the moment I'm finished here and explain everything."

Nodding, she did a sullen about-face and walked down the hallway towards the elevator.

What a jerk I am. Keep going Azami. You deserve better than me.

"Thank you," I said to the empty corridor, opening the door and stepping back into my apartment. "Please, do come again. Bye-bye!"

Returning to the dining room table, I finished writing up the dôisho, affixing my official seal to the document where the Customs agent indicated.

"One other thing," Nakata said.

Japanese have an annoying habit of going through an exhaustive list by saying "one more thing" before each item. I figured it would be more of the same here, but to my surprise there really was only one more thing: the password to my e-mail account.

Nakata showed me the piece of paper on which I had written the password the day before when my place was raided.

"We tried this, but it didn't work."

"Let me take a look at it," I put on my best-puzzled mien. "This is a underscore here, not a hyphen."

"Yes,” said Windbreaker, “we tried it both ways."

"Huh. It looks right to me," I said, scratching my head. "But you know, I can't remember the last time I actually typed the password. Oh, how silly of me. See this 'b' here? It's actually a 'six'."

"That's a 'six'?"

“Looks like a ‘four’,” Windbreaker laughed.

"Trust me, that's a 'six'.”

"Could you rewrite the password for us then,” Nakata asked.

When all the documents were signed and stamped, the two Customs agents packed up the documents and headed for the door.

“Now, don’t forget about tomorrow,” Nakata reminded me, stepping into his sneakers and tapping the toes against the ground. “We need you there at nine o’clock sharp.”

“Nine o’clock? But, I thought Ozawa said nine-thirty.”

“Oh, that’s right.” Nakata scratched his salt and pepper hair. “I meant nine-thirty.”

“I can be there nine,” I offered.

“No, no. Nine-thirty’s fine.”

“Okay, I’ll be there at nine-thirty, then.”

“Don’t be late.”

What-the-fuck-ever.

And with that they were gone.

Good-bye, and good fucking riddance!

© Aonghas Crowe, 2010. All rights reserved. No unauthorized duplication of any kind.

注意：この作品はフィクションです。登場人物、団体等、実在のモノとは一切関係ありません。

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

The complete version of No. 6 is now available for a variety of devices at Amazon's Kindle store.