Free The Thief by Fuminori Nakamura Page B

that if I ignored him he’d give up. For no particular reason I was clutching my cell phone. I bought a can of coffee from a vending machine and warmed my hands onit. My temperature had gone down but I still had a headache. I drank the coffee and tried to decide where to go.
    I thought checking out a nearby hotel or sneaking into a function somewhere would be better than going to Haneda Airport. In a convenience store I bought a magazine to check out what was on. When I came out with my bag the boy was standing in the parking lot behind a small truck with muddy tires. I went into a run-down coffee shop to read my magazine and to make him give up. The interior was dark and damp with a low ceiling. I ordered a coffee, even though I’d just finished one.
    The waitress was wearing a short skirt and black stockings. She reminded me of the boy’s mother. Just then he came into the shop. The glass door was wet from the drizzle. Like me, he had no umbrella.
    He sat down at my table. When the woman in the miniskirt came over with a smile, he asked for an orange juice. I lit a cigarette and looked at his dirty clothes.
    “Go home.”
    He ignored me. Then he spoke in a small voice as if he was opening the conversation.
    “She took my money.”
    “Yeah?”
    “But only a hundred thousand yen. That’s all she found. I’ve still got a hundred and twenty thousand left.”
    “Ah.”
    When his drink arrived he stared at it seriously, like it was precious to him, and stuck the straw in his mouth.
    “I don’t care,” I said. “Go home. I’ve got things to do.”
    He went on drinking as though the orange juice was the only thing in his world.
    “Show me how you do it.”
    “No. I told you. You’d get in the way.”
    He finished his drink and looked at my coffee, fiddling with the paper wrapper the straw had come in.
    “I’ll just watch from a distance. It can’t hurt if I just watch, can it?”
    “Nothing doing.”
    “Why not? If I’m a long way off, I won’t be in the way.”
    He was a lot more talkative than before.
    “If you don’t like being at home, go to the library and read a book or something.”
    “Did you do it with my mom?”
    The dim lights of the shop reflected off the surface of the water in my glass. I was a bit taken aback, but I kept my expression neutral. I breathed in slowly.
    “Look, you know how it is. I’m not your guardian angel. I’m just like all those other guys.”
    “It’s okay, I don’t care.”
    He looked down, went on playing with the paper.
    “I’m used to it. I’ve even seen them at it.”
    “But I bet you don’t like it.”
    “It’s gross. But….”
    He rubbed his thighs, started to say something else and then changed his mind. The ice in his glass had melted into the little bit of orange juice that remained, and he sucked it up noisily with his straw. A Christmas song was flowing out of the speakers.
    “Better you than him.”
    “That’s not going to happen.”
    “Don’t you like her?”
    “What about your dad?”
    “I don’t know him.”
    I wondered why I was bothering to ask him questions. I picked up the tab and left. The kid came with me.
    WE CAME OUT the east exit of Shinjuku Station and walked under the neon signs, avoiding the main crush ofthe crowd. When I leaned against the wall of an office building and lit a cigarette, my eyes met those of a homeless man walking toward me. The boy looked scared and mover closer. He started to clutch at my sleeve but then thought better of it. I gazed at the herd of people streaming by while I smoked.
    “People don’t concentrate all the time. Every day they get distracted dozens of times.”
    “Yeah.”
    For some reason the kid had brought along the colored cardboard coaster from the coffee shop.
    “If someone calls their name, for example, or there’s a loud noise, most of their attention is drawn to that. Just like you were looking at that bum a second ago. There are limits to people’s awareness. More exactly,