murakami, haruki - Norwegian wood

I sipped my whisky and soda, then struck a match to light the
Marlboro that Midori held between her lips. "You must have had a
terrible time, what with the funeral and everything."
"Nah, a funeral's a piece of cake. We've had plenty of practice. You
put on a black kimono and sit there like a lady and everybody else
takes care of business - an uncle, a neighbour, like that. They bring the
sake, order the sushi, say comforting things, cry, carry on, divide up
the keepsakes. It's a breeze. A picnic. Compared to nursing someone
day after day, it's an absolute picnic. We were drained, my sister and
me. We couldn't even cry. We didn't have any tears left. Really.
Except, when you do that, they start whispering about you: "Those
girls are as cold as ice.' So then, we're never going to cry, that's just
how the two of us are. I know we could have faked it, but we would
never do anything like that. The bastards! The more they wanted to
see us cry, the more determined we were not to give them the
satisfaction. My sister and I are totally different types, but when it
comes to something like that, we're in absolute sync."
Midori's bracelets jangled on her arm as she waved to the waiter and
ordered another Tom Collins and a small bowl of pistachios.
"So then, after the funeral ended and everybody went home, the two of
us drank sake till the sun went down. Polished off one of those huge
half-gallon bottles, and half of another one, and the whole time we
were dumping on everybody -
this one's an idiot, that one's a shithead, one guy looks like a mangy
dog, another one's a pig, so-and-so's a hypocrite, that one's a crook.
You have no idea how great it felt!"
"I can imagine."
"We got pissed and went to bed - both of us out cold. We slept for
hours, and if the phone rang or something, we just let it go. Dead to
the world. Finally, after we woke up, we ordered sushi and talked
about what to do. We decided to close the shop for a while and enjoy
ourselves. We'd been killing ourselves for months and we deserved a
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