“If something came out of the deal, it couldn’t make things any worse for us than they already were, I thought. But I couldn’t have been more wrong. Hell has no true bottom.”

“It feels like everything's been decided in advance that I'm following a path somebody else has already mapped out for me. It doesn't matter how much I think things over, how much effort I put into it. In fact, the harder I try, the more I lose my sense of who I am. It's like my identity's an orbit that I've strayed far away from, and that really hurts. But more than that, it scares me. Just thinking about it makes me flinch.”

“Anyhow, I took every stitch of clothing off and got out of bed. And I got down on my knees on the floor in the white moonlight. The heat was off and the room must have been cold, but I didn’t feel cold. There was some kind of special something in the moonlight and it was wrapping my body in a thin, skintight film. At least that’s how I felt. I just stayed there naked for a while, spacing out, but then I took turns holding different parts of my body out to be bathed in the moonlight. I don’t know, it just seemed like the most natural thing to do. The moonlight was so absolutely, incredibly beautiful that I couldn’t not do it. My head and shoulders and arms and breasts and tummy and bottom and, you know, around there: one after another, I dipped them in the moonlight, like taking a bath.”

“Memory is a funny thing. When I was in the scene, I hardly paid it any mind. I never stopped to think of it as something that would make a lasting impression, certainly never imagined that eighteen years later I would recall it in such detail. I didn't give a damn about the scenery that day. I was thinking about myself. I was thinking about the beautiful girl walking next to me. I was thinking about the two of us together, and then about myself again. It was the age, that time of life when every sight, every feeling, every thought came back, like a boomerang, to me. And worse, I was in love. Love with complications. The scenery was the last thing on my mind.”

“I was at that age, that time of life when every sight, every feeling, every thought came back, like a boomerang, to me. And worse, I was in love. Love with complications. Scenery was the last thing on my mind.”

“I can never say what I want to say, it's been like this for a while now. I try to say something but all I get are wrong words - the wrong words or the exact opposite words from what I mean. I try to correct myself, and that only makes it worse. I lose track of what I was trying to say to begin with. It's like I'm split in two and playing tag with myself. One half is chasing this big, fat post. The other me has the right words, but this can't catch her.”

“All over again I understood how important, how irreplaceable,Sumire was to me. In her own special way she’d kept metethered to the world. As I talked to her and read her stories,my mind quietly expanded, and I could see things I’d neverseen before. Without even trying, we grew close. Like a pair ofyoung lovers undressing in front of each other, Sumire and Ihad exposed our hearts to one another, an experience I’d neverhave with anyone else, anywhere. We cherished what we hadtogether, though we never put into words how very precious itwas.Of course it hurt that we could never love each other in aphysical way. We would have been far happier if we had. Butthat was like the tides, the change of seasons—somethingimmutable, an immovable destiny we could never alter. Nomatter how cleverly we might shelter it, our delicate friendshipwasn’t going to last for ever. We were bound to reach a deadend. That was painfully clear.I loved Sumire more than anyone else and wanted her morethan anything in the world. And I couldn’t just shelve thosefeelings, for there was nothing to take their place.I dreamed that someday there’d be a sudden, majortransformation. Even if the chances of it coming true were slim, Icould dream about it, couldn’t I? But I knew it would nevercome true.”