After dark

7

A man is working at a computer. This is the man who was photographed by the surveillance camera at the Hotel Alphaville—the man in the light gray trench coat who took the key to room 404. He is a touch typist of awesome speed. Still, his fingers can barely keep up with his thoughts. His lips are tightly pursed. His face remains expressionless, neither breaking into a smile of satisfaction nor frowning with disappointment at the results of his work. The cuffs of his white shirt are rolled up to the elbows. His collar button is open, his tie loosened. Now and then he has to stop typing to scribble notes and symbols on a scratch pad next to the keyboard. He uses a long, silver-colored eraser pencil stamped with the company name: veritech. Six more of these silver pencils are neatly lined up in a nearby tray. All are of roughly the same length and sharpened to perfection.

The room is a large one. The man has stayed late to work in the office after everyone else has gone home. A Bach piano piece flows at moderate volume from a compact CD player on his desk. Ivo Pogorelich performs one of the English Suites. The room is dark. Only the area around the man’s desk receives illumination from fluorescent lights on the ceiling. This could be an Edward Hopper painting titled Loneliness. Not that the man himself feels lonely where he is at the moment: he prefers it this way. With no one else around, he can concentrate. He can listen to his favorite music and get a lot of work done. He doesn’t hate his job. As long as he is able to concentrate on his work, he doesn’t have to be distracted by practical trivia. Unconcerned about the time and effort involved, he can handle all difficulties logically, analytically. He follows the flow of the music half-consciously, staring at the computer screen, moving his fingers at full speed, keeping pace with Pogorelich. There is no wasted motion, just the meticulous eighteenth-century music, the man, and the technical problems he has been given to solve.

His only source of distraction is an apparent pain in his right hand. Now and then he interrupts his work to open and close the hand and flex the wrist. The left hand massages the back of the right hand. He takes a deep breath and glances at his watch. He grimaces ever so slightly. The pain in his right hand is slowing his work.

The man is impeccably dressed. He has exercised a good deal of care in choosing his outfit, though it is neither highly individualized nor especially sophisticated. He does have good taste. His shirt and necktie look expensive—probably name-brand items. His face gives an impression of intelligence and breeding. The watch on his left wrist is elegantly thin, his glasses Armani in style. His hands are large, fingers long, nails well manicured. A narrow wedding band adorns the third finger of his left hand. His facial features are undistinguished, but the details of his expression suggest a strong-willed personality. He is probably just about forty years old, and the flesh of his 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 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 neighboring regular. He checks the expiration date and puts the carton into his basket.

Next he moves on to the fruit case and picks up an apple. This he inspects from several angles beneath the ceiling lights. It is not quite good enough. He puts it back and picks up another apple, subjecting it to the same kind of scrutiny. He repeats the process several times until he finds one that he can at least accept, if not be wholly satisfied with. Milk and apples seem to have a special significance for him. He heads for the checkout counter, but on the way he notices some vinyl-wrapped fish cakes and picks one up. After checking the expiration date printed on the corner of the bag, he puts it into his basket. He pays the cashier and, shoving the change into his pants pocket, leaves the store.

Sitting on a nearby guardrail, he carefully polishes the apple with his shirttail. The temperature must have dropped: his breath is faintly white in the night air. He gulps the milk down, almost all in a single breath, after which he munches on the apple. He chews each mouthful with care, thinking. It takes time for him to eat the whole apple this way. He wipes his mouth with a wrinkled handkerchief, puts the milk carton and apple core into a vinyl sack, and goes over to throw them away in a trash bin outside the store. The fish cake he puts into his coat pocket. After checking the time on his orange Swatch, he reaches both arms straight up in a big stretch.

When he is through with all this, he chooses a direction and begins walking.