don’t know much about champagne, but this is supposed to be great. Would you like some? Champagne might be just the thing after a string of funerals.”
He brought out the chilled champagne bottle and two clean glasses and set them quietly on the table, then smiled slyly. “Champagne’s completely useless, you know,” he said. “The only good part is the moment you pop the cork.”
“I can’t argue with you there,” I said.
We popped the cork, and talked for a while about the zoo in Paris and the animals that live there. The champagne was excellent.
There was a party at the end of the year, an annual New Year’s Eve party at a bar in Roppongi that had been rented for the occasion. A piano trio played, and there was a lot of good food and drink. When I ran across someone I knew, I’d chat for a while. My job required that I put in an appearance every year. Parties aren’t my thing, but this one was easy to take. I had nothing else to do on New Year’s Eve and could just stand by myself in a corner, relax, have a drink, and enjoy the music. No obnoxious people, no need to be introduced to strangers and listen to them rant for half an hour about how a vegetarian diet cures cancer.
But that evening someone introduced me to a woman. After the usual small talk, I tried to retreat to my corner again. But the woman followed me back to my seat, whiskey glass in hand.
“I asked to be introduced to you,” she said amiably.
She wasn’t the type to turn heads, though she was certainly attractive. She was wearing an expensive green silk dress. I guessed that she was about thirty-two. She could easily have made herself look younger, but she didn’t seem to think it was worth the trouble. Three rings graced her fingers, and a faint smile played on her lips.
“You look exactly like someone I know,” she said. “Your facial features, your back, the way you talk, your overall mood—it’s an amazing likeness. I’ve been watching you ever since you came in.”
“If he’s that much like me, I’d like to meet the guy,” I said. I had no idea what else to say.
“You would?”
“I’d like to see what it feels like to meet someone who’s exactly like me.”
Her smile deepened for an instant, then softened. “But that’s impossible,” she said. “He died five years ago. When he was about the same age you are now.”
“Is that right?” I said.
“I killed him.”
The trio was just finishing its second set, and there was a smattering of halfhearted applause.
“Do you like music?” she asked me.
“I do if it’s nice music in a nice world,” I said.
“In a nice world there is no nice music,” she said, as if revealing some deep secret. “In a nice world the air doesn’t vibrate.”
“I see,” I said, not knowing how to respond.
“Have you seen the movie where Warren Beatty plays the piano in a nightclub?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Elizabeth Taylor is one of the customers at the club, and she’s really poor and miserable.”
“Hmm.”
“So Warren Beatty asks Elizabeth Taylor if she has any requests.”
“And does she?”
“I forget. It’s a really old movie.” Her rings sparkled as she drank her whiskey. “I hate requests. They make me feel unhappy. It’s like when I take a book out of the library. As soon as I start to read it, all I can think about is when I’ll finish it.”
She put a cigarette between her lips. I struck a match and lit it for her.
“Let’s see,” she said. “We were talking about the person who looked like you.”
“How did you kill him?”
“I threw him into a beehive.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Yes,” she said.
Instead of sighing, I took a sip of whiskey. The ice had melted and it barely tasted like whiskey anymore.
“Of course, legally I’m not a murderer,” she said. “Or morally, either.”
“Neither legally nor morally a murderer.” I didn’t want to, but I reviewed the points she’d made. “But you did kill someone.”
“Right.” She nodded happily. “Someone who looked just like you.”
Across the room a man let out a loud laugh. And the people around him laughed, too. Glasses clinked. It sounded very far away but extremely clear. I don’t know why, but my heart was pounding, as if it were expanding or moving up and down. I felt as if I were walking on ground that was floating on water.