After dark - By Haruki Murakami Page 0,24
face and neck, at least, show no trace of sagging. In general appearance, he gives the same impression as a well-ordered room. He does not look like the kind of man who would buy a Chinese prostitute in a love hotel—and certainly not one who would administer an unmerciful pounding to such a woman, strip her clothes off, and take them away. In fact, however, that is exactly what he did—what he had to do.
The phone rings, but he doesn’t pick up the receiver. Never changing his expression, he goes on working at the same speed. He lets the phone ring, his line of vision unwavering. After four rings, the answering machine takes over.
“Shirakawa here. Sorry, but I am unable to take your call. Please leave a message after the beep.”
The signal sounds.
“Hello?” says a woman’s voice. It is low and muffled and sleepy-sounding. “It’s me. Are you there? Pick up, will you?”
Still staring at the computer screen, Shirakawa grabs a remote control and pauses the music before switching on the speakerphone.
“Hi, I’m here,” he says.
“You weren’t there when I called before. I thought maybe you’d be coming home early tonight,” the woman says.
“Before? When was that?”
“After eleven. I left a message.”
Shirakawa glances at the telephone. She is right: the red message lamp is blinking.
“Sorry, I didn’t notice. I was concentrating on my work,” Shirakawa says. “After eleven, huh? I went out for a snack. Then I stopped by Starbucks for a macchiato. You been up all this time?”
Shirakawa goes on tapping at the keyboard as he talks.
“I went back to sleep at eleven thirty, but I had a terrible dream and woke up a minute ago. You still weren’t home, so…What was it today?”
Shirakawa doesn’t understand her question. He stops typing and glances at the phone. The wrinkles at the corners of his eyes momentarily deepen.
“What was what?”
“Your midnight snack. What’d you eat?”
“Oh. Chinese. Same as always. Keeps me full.”
“Was it good?”
“Not especially.”
He returns his gaze to the computer screen and starts tapping the keys again.
“So, how’s the work going?”
“Tough situation. Guy drove his ball into the rough. If somebody doesn’t fix it before the sun comes up, our morning net meeting’s not gonna happen.”
“And that somebody is you again?”
“None other,” Shirakawa says. “I don’t see anybody else around here.”
“Think you can fix it in time?”
“Of course. You’re talking to a top-seeded pro here. I score at least par on my worst days. And if we can’t have our meeting tomorrow morning, we might lose our last chance to buy out Microsoft.”
“You’re gonna buy out Microsoft?!”
“Just kidding,” Shirakawa says. “Anyhow, I think it’ll take me another hour. I’ll call a cab and be home by four thirty, maybe.”
“I’ll probably be asleep by then. I’ve gotta get up at six and make the kids’ lunches.”
“And when you get up, I’ll be sound asleep.”
“And when you get up, I’ll be eating lunch at the office.”
“And when you get home, I’ll be settling down to do serious work.”
“Here we go again: never meeting.”
“I should be getting back to a more reasonable schedule next week. One of the guys’ll be coming back from a business trip, and the kinks in the new system should be ironed out.”
“Really?”
“Probably,” Shirakawa says.
“It may be my imagination, but I seem to recall you saying the exact same words a month ago.”
“Yeah, I cut and pasted them in just now.”
His wife sighs. “I hope it works out this time. I’d like to have a meal together once in a while, and maybe go to sleep at the same time.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, don’t work too hard.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll sink that last perfect putt, hear the crowd applaud, and come home.”
“Okay, then…”
“Okay.”
“Oh, wait a second.”
“Huh?”
“I hate to ask a top-seeded pro to do something like this, but on the way home can you stop by a convenience store for a carton of milk? Takanashi low-fat if they’ve got it.”
“No problem,” he says. “Takanashi low-fat.”
Shirakawa cuts the connection and checks his watch. He picks up the mug on his desk and takes a sip of cold coffee. The mug has an Intel Inside logo. He restarts the CD player and flexes his right hand in time to Bach. He takes a deep breath and sucks in a new lungful of air. Then he flicks a switch in his head and gets back to his interrupted work. Once again the single most important thing for him is how to get consistently from point A to point B over the shortest possible distance.
The interior of