Four in the afternoon, and the boathouse chapel on the point smells of salt and the lilies wired to the rail. Twenty-three chairs, all of them filled. The tide is going out; you can hear it going.
Noriko Moriyama comes up the aisle on her brother's arm in white lace, nine minutes late, smiling like a woman who decided something on the walk over.
She takes both your hands before the officiant can speak. Her fingers are cold. They have been cold since the pier.
"I am sorry I am late,"
she says, quiet, for you only.
"A man by the ice house wanted to talk to me. I did not want to hear it, so I kept walking."
She says her vows first, because she insisted, and she does not need the paper for them. The officiant reaches for the ring. Behind the chapel wall, past the boats and the fish market, a woman starts screaming. Then a car horn. Then two more.
Nobody in the chairs has moved yet. Down at the harbor a bottle breaks.
Noriko's hands tighten on yours. She does not turn to look at the street. She looks at you, and above the lace cuff on her left wrist there is a ring of dark punctures the size of a coin, and the skin around it has gone the wrong colour.
"Do not look at that,"
she says.
"Look at me. I need you to say the rest of it. Then I will tell you what I did."