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lady,” I said, trying to sound as suave as possible.
    “Yuji, it’ll be the first time a student at Northern High ever made a movie. Who else could be the star, man? Huh? If we don’t get Kazuko Matsui to be the star, who we gonna get?”
    Leave it to Adama to think of exactly the right thing to say. Shirokushi’s entire face lit up. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. Who else could it be but Kazuko?”
    “See what I mean? So if we don’t let Ken have a good look at her, how’s he gonna come up with the right image?”
    Shirokushi nodded several times as Adama spoke, then took my hand and shook it, saying, “Yeah, that makes sense. But listen, man, you better make her look good. Better than Brigitte Bardot, even.” He moved up to the front of the crowd, kicking people in the butt to clear a space for us. The idea of making Kazuko Matsui the star of our film had excited him, and now he was rattling on about how we should use something by Yujiro Ishihara for the theme song, and how about if Kazuko played a bus guide who was raised in an orphanage, and he himself would be a hit man, see, and...
    “Ken,” Adama whispered to me, “this is not cool. If Kazuko Matsui sees this she won’t want to be in the film.” He had a point. If Lady Jane saw us here with Shirokushi babbling, “movie movie movie movie,” she’d freeze us out completely. She hated the guy. Adama didn’t miss a trick.
    “Ken, why don’t you go check it out for yourself. She’s probably in the room backstage right now.”
    “What are you talking about? It’s all chicks back there.”
    “You’re in the newspaper club, right?”
    “Yeah?”
    “Well, all you have to do is say you’re getting material together for an article.”
    So I ended up going on my own to that holy sanctuary, the room that housed the English Drama Club. When I looked back over my shoulder, everyone in the auditorium was cheering me on. Some even waved their caps and shouted, “Go get ’em, Ken!” Adama, in the meantime, was trying to smooth things over with Shirokushi, who wanted to go with me.
        
    The room smelled like a meadow full of flowers. It made you want to start singing “Daisy Chain.” My only problem was that I didn’t know what to say. To start off with something like “Er” or “Good afternoon” or “Excuse me” would have been too ordinary, but I couldn’t think of anything else. I was just toying with the idea of trying a bit of English when the faculty advisor for the club, a guy named Yoshioka, came striding out of the room toward me. He was a middle-aged pain in the ass who plastered his hair down with pomade and thought he was hot stuff because he always wore an English suit.
    “What is it?” he said in a tone of voice that made it clear he meant, How dare you set foot in this sacred place.
    “I’m, uh, in the newspaper club. My name’s—”
    “Yazaki. I know your name. I teach grammar to your class, for heaven’s sake.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “What do you mean, ‘Yes, sir’? How would you know? You’re almost never there.”
    Just my luck. I hadn’t expected somebody like this to appear and start laying a rap on me. With him in particular, I was at a disadvantage. Yoshioka was a bastard, but since he was also too much of a gentleman ever to hit anyone, I made a habit of cutting his class. I’d flunked his first exam, too. He peered at me from behind his black-framed glasses.
    “So? “What do you want? Don’t tell me you want to join the drama club. You haven’t a hope.”
    A burst of gay laughter came from inside the room. The foxes were listening to our little dialogue. I couldn’t afford to back down now.
    “I’m here to research an article.”
    “About what?”
    “The war in Vietnam.”
    “That’s news to me. You know how it works: first you ask the advisor of the newspaper club for permission, then the advisor talks to me, and I give the okay. You can’t just decide these things for yourself.”
    In