She and I ask each other What? a lot, and I think it’s because we have similar thoughts that we express in completely different terms. She was born in New England but lived in Osaka for years, her English is full of idioms I don’t understand, and I get the feeling she thinks in Japanese, that there’s something lost in the translation. It’s not that I don’t hear. It’s not that she doesn’t listen.

I stood halfway in and out of an elevator’s doors and we gave each other a laughing hug, on the dull grey second floor of the parking garage, while slushy rain dripped down the outside walls and spilled into the open stairwell and through the open walls. She was going up. I was going home.