"Go ahead." She pouted out her lower lip, not in the least abashed. "You silly fool. You and your ideas of chastity...." There was something unmistakable in Yoshiko's expression which marked her as a virgin who had never been defiled. Soon after New Year, one night in the dead of winter, I drunkenly staggered out in the cold to buy some cigarettes and fell into a manhole in front of her shop. I shouted for Yoshiko to come save me. She hauled me out and bandaged my bruised right arm. Yoshiko, earnest and unsmiling, said, "You drink too much." The thought of dying has never bothered me, but getting hurt, losing blood, becoming crippled and the like—no thanks. I thought as I watched Yoshiko bandage my hand that I might cut down on my drinking. "I'm giving it up. From tomorrow on I won't touch a drop." "Do you mean it?" "There's no doubt about it. I'll give it up. If I give it up, will you marry me, Yoshiko?" Asking her to marry me was, however, intended only as a joke. "Notch." ("Natch" for "naturally" was popular at the time.) "Right. Let's hook fingers on that. I promise I'll give it up." The next day, as might have been expected, I spent drinking. Towards evening I made my way to Yoshiko's shop on shaking legs and called to her. "Yoshiko, I'm sorry. I got drunk." "Oh, you're awful. Trying to fool me by pretending to be drunk." I was startled. I felt suddenly quite sober. "No, it's the truth. I really have been drinking. I'm not pretending," "Don't tease me. You're mean." She suspected nothing. "I should think you could tell by just looking at me. I've been drinking today since noon. Forgive me. "You're a good actor."
