Mari puts on her glasses and stares up at him. The silence between them is tense and chilly. He raises both palms toward her as if to say, Sorry for butting in.
“I’ll probably be back here around five in the morning for a snack,” he says. “I’ll be hungry again. I hope I see you then.”
“Why?”
“Hmm, I wonder why.”
“’Cause you’re worried about me?”
“That’s part of it.”
“’Cause you want me to say hi to my sister?”
“That might be a little part of it, too.”
“My sister wouldn’t know the difference between a trombone and a toaster oven. She could tell the difference between a Gucci and a Prada at a glance, though, I’m pretty sure.”
“Everybody’s got their own battlefields,” he says with a smile.
He takes a notebook from his coat pocket and writes something in it with a ballpoint pen. He tears the page out and hands it to her.
“This is the number of my cell phone. Call me if anything happens. Uh, do you have a cell phone?”
Mari shakes her head.
“I didn’t think so,” he says as if impressed. “I sorta had this gut feeling, like, ‘I’ll bet she doesn’t like cell phones.’”
The young man stands and puts on his leather coat. He picks up his trombone case. A hint of his smile still remains as he says, “See ya.”
Mari nods, expressionless. Without really looking at the scrap of paper, she places it on the table next to the bill. She holds her breath for a moment, props her chin on her hand, and goes back to her book. Burt Bacharach’s “The April Fools” plays through the restaurant at low volume.
Excerpted from After Dark by Haruki Murakami Copyright © 2007 by Haruki Murakami. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
