Haruki Murakami - Norwegian Wood

"You wouldn't happen to need the toilet by any chance?"

"Yup.

I took Midori to a pay toilet in Shinjuku Station, put a coin in the slot and bundled her inside, then bought an evening paper at a nearby stand and read it while I waited for her to come out. But she didn't come out. I started getting worried after 15 minutes and was ready to go and check on her when she finally emerged looking pale.

"Sorry," she said. "I fell asleep."

"Are you OK?" I asked, putting my coat around her shoulders.

"Not really," she said.

"I'll take you home. You just have to get home, take a nice, long bath and go to bed. You're exhausted."

"I am not going home. What's the point? Nobody's there. I don't want to sleep all by myself in a place like that."

"Terrific," I said. "So what are you going to do?"

"Go to some love hotel around here and sleep with your arms around me all night. Like a log. Tomorrow morning we'll have breakfast somewhere and go to lectures together."

"You were planning this all along, weren't you? That's why you called me."

"Of course.

"You should have called your boyfriend, not me. That's the only thing that makes sense. That's what boyfriends are for."

"But I want to be with you."

"You can't be with me," I said. "First of all, I have to be back in the dorm by midnight. Otherwise, I'll break curfew. The one time I did that there was all hell to pay. And secondly, if I go to bed with a girl, I'm going to want to do it with her, and the last thing I want is to lie there struggling to restrain myself. I'm not kidding, I might end up forcing you."

"You mean you'd hit me and tie me up and rape me from behind?"

"Hey, look, I'm serious."

"But I'm so lonely! I want to be with someone! I know I'm doing terrible things to you, making demands and not giving you anything in return, saying whatever pops into my head, dragging you out of your room and forcing you to take me everywhere, but you're the only one I can do stuff like that to! I've never been able to have my own way with anybody, not once in the 20 years I've been alive. My father, my mother, they never paid the slightest attention to me, and my boyfriend, well, he's just not that kind of guy. He gets angry if I try to have my own way. So we end up fighting. You're the only one I can say these things to. And now I'm really, really, really tired and I want to fall asleep listening to someone tell me how much they like me and how pretty I am and stuff. That's all I want. And when I wake up, I'll be full of energy and I'll never make these kinds of selfish demands again. I swear. I'll be a good girl."

"I hear you, believe me, but there's nothing I can do."

"Oh, please! Otherwise, I'm going to sit down right here on the ground and cry my head off all night long. And I'll sleep with the first guy that talks to me."

That did it. I called the dorm and asked for Nagasawa.

When he got to the phone I asked him if he would make it look as if I had come back for the evening. I was with a girl, I explained.

"Fine," he said. "It's a worthy cause, I'll be glad to help you out. I'll just turn over your name tag to the "in' side. Don't worry. Take all the time you need. You can come in through my window in the morning."

"Thanks. I owe you one," I said and hung up. "All set?" Midori asked.

"Pretty much," I said with a sigh. "Great, let's go to a disco, it's so early."

"Wait a minute, I thought you were tired."

"For something like this, I'm just fine."

"Oh boy."

And she was right. We went to a disco, and her energy came back little by little as we danced. She drank two whisky and cokes, and stayed on the dance floor until her forehead was drenched in sweat.

"This is so much fun!" she exclaimed when we took a break at a table.

"I haven't danced like this in ages. I don't know, when you move your body, it's kind of like your spirit gets liberated."

"Your spirit is always liberated, I'd say."

"No way," she said, shaking her head and smiling. "Anyway, now that I'm feeling better, I'm starved! Let's go for a pizza."

I took her to a pizzeria I knew and ordered draught beer and an anchovy pizza. I wasn't very hungry and ate only four of the twelve slices. Midori finished the rest.

"You sure made a fast recovery," I said. "Not too long ago you were pale and wobbly."

"It's because my selfish demands got through to somebody,,, she answered. "It unclogged me. Wow, this pizza is great!', "Tell me, though. Is there really nobody at home?"

"It's true. My sister's staying at her friend's place. Now, that girl's got a real case of the creeps. She can't sleep alone in the house if I'm not there."

"Let's forget this love hotel crap, then. Going to a place like that just makes you feel cheap. Let's go to your house. You must have enough bedding for me?"

Midori thought about it for a minute, then nodded. "OK, we'll spend the night at mine."

We took the Yamanote Line to Otsuka, and soon we were raising the metal shutter that sealed off the front of the Kobayashi Bookshop. A paper sign on the shutter read TEMPORARILY CLOSED. The smell of old paper filled the dark shop, as if the shutter had not been opened for a long time. Half the shelves were empty, and most of the magazines had been tied in bundles for returns. That hollow, chilly feeling I had experienced on my first visit had only deepened. The place looked like a hulk abandoned on the shore.

"You're not planning to open shop again?" I asked.

"Nah, we're going to sell it," said Midori. "We'll divide the money and live on our own for a while without anybody's "protection'. My sister's getting married next year, and I've got three more years at university.

We ought to make enough to see us through that much at least. I'll keep my part-time job, too. Once the place is sold, I'll live with my sister in a flat for a while."

"You think somebody'll want to buy it?

"Probably. I know somebody who wants to open a wool shop, She's been asking me recently if I want to sell. Poor Dad, though. He worked so hard to get this place, and he was paying off the loan he took out little by little, and in the end he hardly had anything left. It all melted away, like foam on a river."

"He had you, though," I said.

"Me?!" Midori said with a laugh. She took a deep breath and let it out.

"Let's go upstairs. It's cold down here."

Upstairs, she sat me at the kitchen table and went to warm the bath water. While she busied herself with that, I put a kettle on to boil and made tea. Waiting for the tank to heat up, we sat across from each other at the kitchen table and drank tea. Chin in hand, she took a long, hard look at me. There were no sounds other than the ticking of the clock and the hum of the fridge motor turning on and off as the thermostat kicked in and out. The clock showed that midnight was fast approaching.

"You know, Watanabe, study it hard enough, and you've got a pretty interesting face."

"Think so?" I asked, a bit hurt.

"A nice face goes a long way with me," she said. "And yours... well, the more I look at it, the more I get to thinking, "He'll do'."

"Me, too," I said. "Every once in a while, I think about myself, "What the hell, I'll do'."

"Hey, I don't mean that in a bad way. I'm not very good at putting my feelings into words. That's why people misunderstand me. All I'm trying to say is I like you. Have I told you that before?"