After Dark Read online

  He glances out the window as if in search of something he should not have lost. Then he turns toward Mari again.

  “One thing always mystified me, and that is, why didn’t your sister ever get into the pool that time? It was a hot day, and a really nice pool.”

  Mari looks at him as if to say, You mean you don’t get that, either? “She didn’t want her makeup to wash off. It’s so obvious. And you can’t really swim in a bathing suit like that.”

  “Is that it?” he says. “It’s amazing how two sisters can be so different.”

  “We live two different lives.”

  He thinks about her words for a few moments and then says, “I wonder how it turns out that we all lead such different lives. Take you and your sister, for example. You’re born to the same parents, you grow up in the same household, you’re both girls. How do you end up with such wildly different personalities? At what point do you, like, go your separate ways? One puts on a bikini like little semaphore flags and lies by the pool looking sexy, and the other puts on her school bathing suit and swims her heart out like a dolphin…”

  Mari looks at him. “Are you asking me to explain it to you here and now in twenty-five words or less while you eat your chicken salad?”

  He shakes his head. “No, I was just saying what popped into my head out of curiosity or something. You don’t have to answer. I was just asking myself.”

  He starts to work on his chicken salad again, changes his mind, and continues:

  “I don’t have any brothers or sisters, so I just wanted to know: up to what point do they resemble each other, and where do their differences come in?”

  Mari remains silent while the young man with the knife and fork in his hands stares thoughtfully at a point in space above the table.

  Then he says, “I once read a story about three brothers who washed up on an island in Hawaii. A myth. An old one. I read it when I was a kid, so I probably don’t have the story exactly right, but it goes something like this. Three brothers went out fishing and got caught in a storm. They drifted on the ocean for a long time until they washed up on the shore of an uninhabited island. It was a beautiful island with coconuts growing there and tons of fruit on the trees, and a big, high mountain in the middle. The night they got there, a god appeared in their dreams and said, ‘A little farther down the shore, you will find three big, round boulders. I want each of you to push his boulder as far as he likes. The place you stop pushing your boulder is where you will live. The higher you go, the more of the world you will be able to see from your home. It’s entirely up to you how far you want to push your boulder.’”

  The young man takes a drink of water and pauses for a moment. Mari looks bored, but she is clearly listening.

  “Okay so far?” he asks.

  Mari nods.

  “Want to hear the rest? If you’re not interested, I can stop.”

  “If it’s not too long.”

  “No, it’s not too long. It’s a pretty simple story.”

  He takes another sip of water and continues with his story.

  “So the three brothers found three boulders on the shore just as the god had said they would. And they started pushing them along as the god told them to. Now these were huge, heavy boulders, so rolling them was hard, and pushing them up an incline took an enormous effort. The youngest brother quit first. He said, ‘Brothers, this place is good enough for me. It’s close to the shore, and I can catch fish. It has everything I need to go on living. I don’t mind if I can’t see that much of the world from here.’ His two elder brothers pressed on, but when they were midway up the mountain, the second brother quit. He said, ‘Brother, this place is good enough for me. There is plenty of fruit here. It has everything I need to go on living. I don’t mind if I can’t see that much of the world from here.’ The eldest brother continued walking up the mountain. The trail grew increasingly narrow and steep, but he did not quit. He had great powers of perseverance, and he wanted to see as much of the world as he possibly could, so he kept rolling the boulder with all his might. He went on for months, hardly eating or drinking, until he had rolled the boulder to the very peak of the high mountain. There he stopped and surveyed the world. Now he could see more of the world than anyone. This was the place he would live—where no grass grew, where no birds flew. For water, he could only lick the ice and frost. For food, he could only gnaw on moss. Be he had no regrets, because now he could look out over the whole world. And so, even today, his great, round boulder is perched on the peak of that mountain on an island in Hawaii. That’s how the story goes.”

  Silence.

  Mari asks, “Is it supposed to have some kind of moral?”

  “Two, probably. The first one,” he says, holding up a finger, “is that people are all different. Even siblings. And the other one,” he says, holding up another finger, “is that if you really want to know something, you have to be willing to pay the price.”

  Mari offers her opinion: “To me, the lives chosen by the two younger brothers make the most sense.”

  “True,” he concedes. “Nobody wants to go all the way to Hawaii to stay alive licking frost and eating moss. That’s for sure. But the eldest brother was curious to see as much of the world as possible, and he couldn’t suppress that curiosity, no matter how big the price was he had to pay.”

  “Intellectual curiosity.”

  “Exactly.”

  Mari went on thinking about this for a while, one hand perched on her thick book.

  “Even if I asked you very politely what you’re reading, you wouldn’t tell me, would you?” he asks.

  “Probably not.”

  “It sure looks heavy.”

  Mari says nothing.

  “It’s not the size book most girls carry around in their bags.”

  Mari maintains her silence. He gives up and continues his meal. This time, he concentrates his attention on the chicken salad and finishes it without a word. He takes his time chewing and drinks a lot of water. He asks the waitress to refill his water glass several times. He eats his final piece of toast.

  Your house was way out in Hiyoshi, I seem to recall,” he says. His empty plates have been cleared away.

  Mari nods.

  “Then you’ll never make the last train. I suppose you can go home by taxi, but the next train’s not until tomorrow morning.”

  “I know that much,” Mari says.

  “Just checking,” he says.

  “I don’t know where you live, but haven’t you missed the last train, too?”

  “Not so far: I’m in Koenji. But I live alone, and we’re going to be practicing all night. Plus if I really have to get back, my buddy’s got a car.”

  He pats his instrument case like the head of a favorite dog.

  “The band practices in the basement of a building near here,” he says. “We can make all the noise we want and nobody complains. There’s hardly any heat, though, so it gets pretty cold this time of year. But they’re letting us use it for free, so we take what we can get.”

  Mari glances at the instrument case. “That a trombone?”

  “That’s right! How’d you know?”

  “Hell, I know what a trombone looks like.”

  “Well, sure, but there are tons of girls who don’t even know the instrument exists. Can’t blame ’em, though. Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton didn’t become rock stars playing the trombone. Ever see Jimi Hendrix or Pete Townshend smash a trombone onstage? Of course not. The only thing they smash is electric guitars. If they smashed a trombone, the audience’d laugh.”

  “So why did you choose the trombone?”

  He puts cream in his newly arrived coffee and takes a sip.

  “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 goose bumps, 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 to help you plan 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…”

  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.

  2

  The room is dark, but our eyes gradually adjust to the darkness. A woman lies in bed, asleep. A young, beautiful woman: Mari’s sister, Eri. Eri Asai. We know this without having been told so by anyone. Her black hair cascades across the pillow like a flood of dark water.

  We allow ourselves to become a single point of view, and we observe her for a time. Perhaps it should be said that we are peeping in on her. Our viewpoint takes the form of a midair camera that can move freely about the room. At the moment, the camera is situated directly above the bed and is focused on her sleeping face. Our angle changes at intervals as regular as the blinking of an eye. Her small, well-shaped lips are tightened into a straight line. At first glance, we can discern no sign of breathing, but staring hard we can make out a slight—a very slight—movement at the base of her throat. She is breathing. She lies with her head on the pillow as if looking up at the ceiling. She is not, in fact, looking at anything. Her eyelids are closed like hard winter buds. Her sleep is deep. She is probably not even dreaming.

  As we observe Eri Asai, we gradually come to sense that there is something about her sleep that is not normal. It is too pure, too perfect. Not a muscle in her face, not an eyelash moves. Her slender white neck preserves the dense tranquility of a handcrafted product. Her small chin traces a clean angle like a well-shaped headland. Even in the profoundest somnolence, people do not tread so deeply into the realm of sleep. They do not attain such a total surrender of consciousness.

  But consciousness—or its absence—is of no concern as long as the functions for sustaining life are maintained. Eri’s pulse and respiration continue at the lowest possible level. Her existence seems to have been placed upon the narrow threshold that separates the organic from the inorganic—secretly, and with great care. How or why this condition was brought about we as yet have no way of knowing. Eri Asai is in a deep, deliberate state of sleep as if her entire body has been enveloped in warm wax. Clearly, something here is incompatible with nature. This is all we can conclude for now.

  The camera draws back slowly to convey an image of the entire room. Then it begins observing details in search of clues. This is by no means a highly decorated room. Neither is it a room that suggests the tastes or individuality of its occupant. Without detailed observation, it would be hard to tell that this was the room of a young girl. There are no dolls, stuffed animals, or other accessories to be seen. No posters or calendars. On the side facing the window, one old wooden desk and a swivel chair. The window itself is covered by a roll-down window shade. On the desk is a simple black lamp and a brand-new notebook computer (its top closed). A few ballpoint pens and pencils in a mug.

  By the wall stands a plain wood-framed single bed, and there sleeps Eri Asai. The bedclothes are solid white. On shelves attached to the opposite wall, a compact stereo and a small pile of CDs in their cases. Next to those, a phone. A dresser with mirror attached. The only things placed in front of the mirror are lip balm and a small, round hairbrush. On that wall is a walk-in closet. As the room’s only decorative touch, five photographs in small frames are lined up on a shelf, all of them photos of Eri Asai. She is alone in all of them. None show her with friends or family. They are professional photographs of her posing as a model, photos that might have appeared in magazines. There is a small bookcase, but it contains only a handful of books, mostly college textbooks. And a pile of large-size fashion magazines. It would be hard to conclude that
she is a voracious reader.

  Our point of view, as an imaginary camera, picks up and lingers over things like this in the room. We are invisible, anonymous intruders. We look. We listen. We note odors. But we are not physically present in the place, and we leave behind no traces. We follow the same rules, so to speak, as orthodox time travelers. We observe but we do not intervene. Honestly speaking, however, the information regarding Eri Asai that we can glean from the appearance of this room is far from abundant. It gives the impression that preparations have been made to hide her personality and cleverly elude observing eyes.

  Near the head of the bed a digital clock soundlessly and steadily renews its display of the time. For now, the clock is the only thing in the room evidencing anything like movement: a cautious nocturnal creature that runs on electricity. Each green crystal numeral slips into the place of another, evading human eyes. The current time is 11:59 p.m.

  Once it has finished examining individual details, our viewpoint camera draws back momentarily and surveys the room once again. Then, as if unable to make up its mind, it maintains its broadened field of vision, its line of sight fixed in place for the time being. A pregnant silence reigns. At length, however, as if struck by a thought, it turns toward—and begins to approach—a television set in a corner of the room: a perfectly square black Sony. The screen is dark, and as dead as the far side of the moon, but the camera seems to have sensed some kind of presence there—or perhaps a kind of foreshadowing. Wordlessly, we share this presence or foreshadowing with the camera as we stare at the screen in close-up.

  We wait. We hold our breath and listen.

  The clock displays “0:00.”

  We hear a faint electrical crackling, and a hint of life crosses the TV screen as it begins to flicker almost imperceptibly. Could someone have entered the room and turned on the switch without our noticing? Could a preset timer have come on? But no: our ever-alert camera circles to the back of the device and reveals that the television’s plug has been pulled. Yes, the TV should, in fact, be dead. It should, in fact, be cold and hard as it presides over the silence of midnight. Logically. Theoretically. But it is not dead.