Free After Dark by Haruki Murakami Page B

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.
     
    T he interior of a convenience store. Cartons of Takanashi low-fat milk line the dairy case. Young jazz musician Takahashi softly whistles “Five Spot After Dark” as he inspects the contents of the case. He carries only a shopping basket. His hand reaches out, grasps a carton of milk, but he notices that it is low-fat, and he frowns. This could well be a fundamental moral problem for him, not just a question of the fat content of milk. He returns the low-fat to its place on the shelf and picks up a