“I see my face in the mirror every morning when I’m shaving, but I’ve never noticed anything like that.”
She smiled warmly and asked, “What type of stories do you write?”
“People ask me that a lot, but it’s hard to talk about my stories as ‘types.’ They don’t fit into any particular genre.”
She ran a finger around the lip of her cocktail glass. “I suppose that means you write literary fiction?”
“I suppose it does. But you say that the way you might say ‘chain letters.’”
She smiled again. “Could I have heard your name?”
“Do you read the literary magazines?”
She gave her head a small, sharp shake.
“Then you probably haven’t. I’m not that well known.”
“Ever been nominated for the Akutagawa Prize?”
“Twice in five years.”
“But you didn’t win?”
Junpei smiled but said nothing. Without asking his permission, she sat on the bar stool next to his and sipped what was left of her cocktail.
“Oh, what’s the difference?” she said. “Those prizes are just an industry gimmick.”
“I’d be more convinced if I could hear that from somebody who’s actually won a prize.”
She told him her name: Kirie.
“How unusual,” he said. “Sounds like ‘Kyrie’ from a mass.”
Junpei thought she might be an inch or more taller than he was. She wore her hair short, had a deep tan, and her head was beautifully shaped. She wore a pale green linen jacket and a knee-length flared skirt. The sleeves of the jacket were rolled up to the elbow. Under the jacket she had on a simple cotton blouse with a small turquoise brooch on the collar. The swell of her breasts was neither large nor small. She dressed with style, and while there was nothing affected about it, her entire outfit reflected strongly individualistic principles. Her lips were full, and they would mark the ends of her sentences by spreading or pursing. This gave everything about her a strange liveliness and freshness. Three parallel creases would form across her broad forehead whenever she stopped to think about something, and when she finished thinking, they would disappear.
Junpei noticed himself being attracted to her. Some indefinable but persistent something about her was exciting him, pumping adrenaline to his heart, which began sending out secret signals in the form of tiny sounds. Suddenly aware that his throat was dry, Junpei ordered a Perrier from a passing waiter, and as always he began to ask himself, Is she someone with real meaning for me? Is she one of the remaining two? Or will she be my second strike? Should I let her go, or take a swing?
“Did you always want to be a writer?” Kirie asked.
“Hmm, let’s just say I could never think of anything else I wanted to be.”
“So, your dream came true.”
“I wonder. I wanted to be a superior writer.” Junpei spread his hands about a foot apart. “There’s a pretty big distance between the two, I think.”
“Everybody has to start somewhere. You have your whole future ahead of you. Perfection doesn’t happen right away.” Then she asked, “How old are you?”
This was when they told each other their ages. Being older didn’t seem to bother her in the least. It didn’t bother Junpei. He preferred mature women to young girls. In most cases, it was easier to break up with an older woman.
“What kind of work do you do?” he asked.
Her lips formed a perfectly straight line, and her expression became earnest for the first time.
“What kind of work do you think I do?”
Junpei jogged his glass, swirling the red wine inside it exactly once. “Can I have a hint?”
“No hints. Is it so hard to tell? Observation and judgment are your business.”
“Not really,” he said. “What a writer is supposed to do is observe and observe and observe again, and put off making judgments to the last possible moment.”
“Of course,” she said. “All right, then, observe and observe and observe again, and then use your imagination. That wouldn’t clash with your professional ethics, would it?”
Junpei raised his eyes and studied Kirie’s face with new concentration, hoping to find a secret sign there. She looked straight into his eyes, and he looked straight into hers.
After a short pause, he said, “All right, this is what I imagine, based on nothing much: you’re a professional of some sort. Not just anyone can do your job. It requires some kind of special expertise.”
“Bull’s-eye! You’re right: not just anyone can do what I do. But try to narrow it down a little.”