Blank Fury

She was a beautiful, fine-boned woman with black hair down to her thighs. She stood enchantingly before my seated companions and in her elaborate American folk cottons delivered a soliloquy which might have seemed full of praise had I not understood the lexicon.

The message in her delicate hands was airy and passive and her face was a blanket. Yet she was telling us that she was irate. Our promise to arrive at half past three had been worth nothing. It was nearly four thirty.

She didn't want to be introduced to me. She didn't look at me. I stared at her hands, and then at the oranges on the table. This was the first time I had ever witnessed the anger of a Japanese person, and I was finding it to be an entirely impressive experience. I checked it numbly off the list as Yuusuke asserted quiet excuses to his elder sister.

She went away and I was invited to try on the clothes she had designed, but I was too scared to touch them. Her brother bought me some short cake and turned on the juke box. We all acted like nothing had happened.

The next time I went to her studio, she smiled but didn't say anything. Her brother told me that she'd been embarrassed and apologized for her behavior, but it was too late. I already knew that she was insane.