The year we had a run at a theater in Osaka, I was still an actor nobody could be counted on to remember. When I came out the stage door, there she was, among faces I didn't know.

Since I was surrounded, she quietly asked only for the name of my hotel and went on ahead. I think she'd been waiting a few rows back, and yet of everything that night, she was what I saw most clearly.

By the time I got to my room, it was past midnight. We should have had endless things to talk about, and we didn't talk about much. That was just right.