murakami, haruki - Norwegian wood

"What were you talking about for so long?" I asked, munching on a
cracker.
"You, of course," said Reiko, cradling the cat and rubbing her cheek
against it. "He says you're a very proper young man, a serious
student."
"Are you sure he was talking about me?"
"There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that he was talking about
you," she said with a laugh. Then, noticing my guitar, she picked it up,
adjusted the tuning, and played Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Desafinado".
It had been months since I last heard Reiko's guitar, and it gave me
that old, warm feeling.
"You practising the guitar?" she asked.
"It was kicking around the landlord's storehouse, so I borrowed it and
I plunk on it once in a while. That's all."
"I'll give you a lesson later. Absolutely free." Reiko put down the
guitar and took off her tweed jacket. Sitting against the veranda post,
she smoked a cigarette. She was wearing a madras check short-sleeve
shirt.
"Nice shirt, don't you think?" she asked.
"It is," I said. In fact it was a good-looking shirt with a handsome
pattern.
"It's Naoko's," said Reiko. "I bet you didn't know we were the same
size. Especially when she first came to the sanatorium. She put on a
little weight after that, but still we were pretty much the same size:
blouses, trousers, shoes, hats. Bras were about the only thing we
couldn't share. I've got practically nothing here. So we were always
swapping clothes. Actually, it was more like joint ownership."
Now that she mentioned it, I saw that Reiko's build was almost
identical to Naoko's. Because of the shape of her face and her thin
arms and legs, she had always given me the impression of being
smaller and slimmer than Naoko, but in fact she was surprisingly
solid.
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