Resigned, she went to the pantry
and picked out an onion, a potato, and a carrot. One good thing about Mina
never being home the last few days was that June could finally make curry. Mina
disliked the texture and taste of the Japanese brown, warm, slightly spicy dish
adapted from the British during their governance of India. June adored it, plus
it was so easy to make: dice vegetables, fry, add water, and sauce cubes and
there you had it, piping hot delicious curry. There was only one problem; Mina
was always the one who made the rice. In Japan, curry and rice went so hand in
hand that on menus what you ordered was not ‘curry’ but ‘curry-rice’. Today,
June decided, the menu would be ‘curry-bread’. She grabbed a piece of expired
toast from the freezer and tossed it into the microwave to defrost.
Meanwhile
there were vegetables waiting to be sliced. She scrubbed the dirt-lined carrots
and impatiently peeled the skin off of the potatoes. She pulled back the paper-thin covering of
the onion and started slicing, first vertical slices, and then horizontal. As
she dug into the onion with her knife she thought about sad it was that after
all these months of working in Minamisanriku she really only had one person to
call a friend.
A sudden jolt of pain went up through
her left hand. She looked down to see a deep cut on the tip of her ring finger.
The immediate instant of pain was fast receding and she stood there for a
minute staring at the blood welling up and trickling down her finger. At that
moment, the visual receptors kicked in, augmenting the physical ones and she
winced at the deepness of the cut. Where was the first aid kit? June realized she
had no idea. If only Mina was home and not spending all of her free time with
Joseph—but she wouldn’t think that way. She was happy that her friend was
spending time with someone she truly cared about. Somehow that thought only
made her feel worse.
Regardless, what was important now
was dealing with her profusely bleeding cut. She didn’t know anything about
first aid, but she knew she needed to disinfect and then alleviate pain.
Running her left hand under the faucet with one hand she grabbed a cold beer
from the refrigerator with the other. In the process she knocked over the roll
of paper towels she was planning on using in place of bandages. Swearing, she
grabbed a dish-drying towel off the dish-rack and re-appropriated it for
staunching the flow of blood. Toweled up, with a beer can for an icepack and
painkiller, June stood in the middle of the kitchen amidst blood, paper towel,
and flyaway bits of onion.
Mina slid
the front door open and silently walked into the genkan. Slowly she lifted her feet and curled her toes until her
flats fell of, right and then left. The smell of curry, which she disliked, was
still lingering in the air and a roll of paper towels had unraveled itself from
the kitchen to the entrance to the living room. All of this would have troubled
Mina, but she could see and smell none of it. Bleary eyed and runny nosed she
walked to the bedroom, slid out of her red dress, and tossed it to the back of
a heap in her closet. Once in bed she took her requisite pills and ensconced
herself inside her blankets where she could finally feel safe.
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