“When I was in middle school, I happened to buy a jazz record called Blues-ette at a used record store. An old LP. I can’t remember why I bought it at the time. I had never heard any jazz before. But anyway, the first tune on side A was ‘Five Spot After Dark,’ and it was great. A guy named Curtis Fuller played the trombone on it. The first time I heard it, I felt the scales fall from my eyes. That’s it, I thought. That’s the instrument for me. The trombone and me: it was a meeting arranged by destiny.”
The young man hums the first eight bars of “Five Spot After Dark.”
“I know that,” says Mari.
He looks baffled. “You do?”
Mari hums the next eight bars.
“How do you know that?” he asks.
“Is it against the law for me to know it?”
He sets his cup down and lightly shakes his head. “No, not at all. But, I don’t know, it’s incredible. For a girl nowadays to know ‘Five Spot After Dark’ . . . Well, anyway, Curtis Fuller gave me pins and needles, and that got me started playing the trombone. I borrowed money from my parents, bought a used instrument, and joined the school band. Then in high school I started doing different stuff with bands. At first I was backing up a rock band, sort of like the old Tower of Power. Do you know Tower of Power?”
Mari shakes her head.
“It doesn’t matter,” he says. “Anyhow, that’s what I used to do, but now I’m purely into plain, simple jazz. My university’s not much of a school, but we’ve got a pretty good band.”
The waitress comes to refill his water glass, but he waves her off. He glances at his watch. “It’s time for me to get out of here.”
Mari says nothing. Her face says, Nobody’s stopping you. “Of course everybody comes late.”
Mari offers no comment on that, either.
“Hey, say hi from me to your sister, okay?”
“You can do it yourself, can’t you? You know our phone number. How can I say hi from you? I don’t even know your name.”
He thinks about that for a moment. “Suppose I call your house and Eri Asai answers, what am I supposed to talk about?”
“Get her advice on a class reunion, maybe. You’ll think of something.”
“I’m not much of a talker. Never have been.”
“I’d say you’ve been talking a lot to me.”
“With you, I can talk, somehow.”
“With me, you can talk, somehow,” she parrots him. “But with my sister, you can’t talk?”
“Probably not.”
“Because of too much intellectual curiosity?”
I wonder, says his vague expression. He starts to say something, changes his mind, and stops. He takes a deep breath. He picks up the bill from the table and begins calculating the money in his head.
“I’ll leave what I owe. Can you pay for us both later?”
Mari nods.
He glances first at her and then at her book. After a moment’s indecision he says, “I know this is none of my business, but is something wrong? Like, problems with your boyfriend or a big fight with your family? I mean, staying in town alone by yourself all night . . .”
