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  • This Will Only Take a Moment
  • Elin Hawkinson (bio)

Have you ever been eating in a restaurant—just an ordinary café or dining room, surrounded by the bustle of waitresses, the buzz of conversation, and the smell of meat cooking on a grill—and when you take up the salt to sprinkle it over your eggs, you’re struck by the simple wonder of the shaker, filled to the brim by unseen hands, ready and awaiting your pleasure? For you, the shaker exists only for today. But in reality it’s there hour after hour, on the same table, refilled again and again. The evidence is visible in the threads beneath the cap, worn down by repeated twisting—someone else’s labor, perhaps the girl with the pen and pad waiting patiently for you to choose a sorbet, the boy in an apron with a washrag and dirty sneakers, perhaps someone you’ll never in your life see. This shaker is work, embodied. And there you are, undoing it.

Or you might have wandered through a department store, perusing neat stacks of buttoned shirts. The size or color you prefer is at the bottom of the stack, and though you’re as gentle as can be lifting the shirts, extracting only the chosen one, the pile as you leave it is never quite as tidy, and it won’t be again until the invisible person returns to set things right.

Cash in an ATM machine. Hotel towels on the floor. The world is full of this kind of work, always waiting to be done and then undone, so it can be done again.

________

This morning, I gathered up all the cans and bottles strewn about the apartment by my sometimes-boyfriend and put them in a bag to carry down to the building’s rubbish area. He hasn’t slept here in a week, but I’d been staying late at the university library and only managed to lift myself out of bed in time to bathe and run to my secretary job in an office in downtown Kobe, where every day I perform my own round of monotonous tasks. I’m fairly good at it, though. I’m careful to affix the labels on file folders so they are perfectly centered, perfectly straight, and I have a system of ink and Post-it colors that keeps everything organized. I never run out of pens or paper clips. When anyone needs an aspirin or a stick of gum or a throat lozenge, I’m the one who has it in her desk drawer. Always. Like magic.

Today is Sunday and both the office and the university library are closed. My boyfriend texted he’d arrive at one o’clock, so I have all morning to straighten up the apartment and shop. Around eleven last night I finished my final paper [End Page 162] of the year, and there won’t be another until classes begin again in a few weeks. It’s a comfortable feeling.

Besides the cans and bottles, there are the to-go containers of Lawson’s yakisoba, crusted with dried spring onion, from our dinner together last weekend. The greasy paper bags that once held pastries I pick up half-price from the bakery in Sannomiya before it closes. I eat these on weeknights, alone, in bed. Sometimes in the morning, I discover flakes of crust or a dollop of cream on my pillow. My boyfriend would be horrified.

After tossing the containers and bags into the overflowing trashcan, I strip the bedding and leave it in a pile beside the futon. There are many other things to do, but the sky is threatening rain and I decide to do the shopping before it starts to pour.

To go out, I put on a salmon-pink raincoat and hat my boyfriend gave me on my birthday. He mentioned, modestly, that it came from a special shop in Tokyo. Not long after, I spotted the same set in an ordinary clothing store in Umeda. It’s possible the Tokyo salesgirl pulled his leg; she probably convinces every customer what he purchased was one-of-a-kind...

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