Haruki Murakami - Pinball, 1973

That pretty well summed it up. The first chance to be alone in a long time, and I had no idea what I was supposed to do with myself.

It's so strange. For years and years I'd lived all by myself, and I'd managed well enough, hadn't I? Why wouldn't it all come back to me? You don't forget twenty-four years just like that. I felt as if I was in the middle of looking for something, but had lost track of what it was I'd been trying to find.

What was it now? A bottle opener? An old letter, a receipt, something to clean my ears with?

On the verge of utter distraction, I reached for my bedside Kant, and what should fall out from between the pages but a note. Written in the twins' script, it read, "Gone to the golf course." That's when I really started to worry. Hadn't I warned them never to go onto the golf course without me?

* * *

A golf course can be a risky place in the early evening for those who aren't aware of the dangers. Who knows when a golf ball might come flying out of nowhere?

I slipped on my tennis shoes, wrapped a sweatshirt around my shoulders on my way out of the apartment, and climbed over the chainlink fence onto the course. Over a gentle rise, past the twelfth hole, past the rest house, through some woods, I walked and walked. The setting sun spilled across the turf from between the trees along the western fringe. In a dumbbell-shaped sand trap I found an empty coffee-cream cookie box, obviously left there by the twins. I crumpled it up and crammed it into my pocket, taking the trouble to erase our three sets of footprints even though it meant falling further behind. Then I crossed a small wooden footbridge over a brook before finally encountering the twins on a nearby hill. They were sitting sideby-side midway up an outdoor escalator built into the slope on the far side of the hill, thoroughly absorbed in a game of backgammon.

"Didn't I tell you two it was dangerous to come here on your own?"

"The sunset was so beautiful," pleaded one of them.

We walked down the escalator, and stretched ourselves out on a knoll covered with susuki grass for a clear view of the sunset. The view was gorgeous.

"You shouldn't leave trash in the sand traps, you know," I scolded.

"Sorry," the two of them apologized.

"A long time ago, I got hurt in a sandbox. Back when I was in elementary school." I showed them the tip of my left index finger where you could still make out a tiny white thread of a scar a third of an inch long. "Somebody'd buried a broken pop bottle."

The two of them nodded.

"Of course, no one gets cut on an empty cookie box. But still, you mustn't leave things lying around in the sand. Sandy places are sacred and not to be defiled."

"We understand," said one of them.

"We'll be more careful," said the other. "Got any other scars?"

"Well, now that you ask..." And I proceeded to show the two of them every scar on my body. A regular catalog of scars. First, my left eye, where I got hit by the ball in a soccer match. To this day, I still have a small scar on my retina. Then there's my nose, again thanks to soccer. I was going to head the ball, when I met up with another player's teeth on the upswing. And seven stitches in my lower lip. A fall from a bicycle, trying to veer out of the way of a truck. Then there's that chipped tooth...

There we lay, all three of us on the cool turf, listening to the rustling of the susuki tassels in the breeze.

The sun had completely disappeared before we made it back to the apartment for dinner. By the time I'd had myself a bath and a beer, three trout were cooked up and waiting, with some canned asparagus and gigantic sprigs of watercress alongside for color. The taste of trout brought back memories. It tasted like a mountain path on a summer's day. We took our time polishing off those trout. The only things left on our plates were the white trout bones and pencil-thick watercress stalks. The twins immediately set about washing the dishes and brewing coffee.

"About that switch-panel," I said. "Something's really starting to bother me."

They both nodded.

"Why do you suppose it's on its last legs?"

"Probably's sucked up something awful, don't you think?"

"It's gone flat."

I considered the situation a while, a coffee cup in my left hand and a cigarette in my right.

"And what can be done about it?"

The two of them looked at each other and shook their heads. "Too late to do much of anything."

"Back to the soil it goes.

"Ever see a cat with blood poisoning?"

"No," I said.

"It starts getting hard as a rock from the outside in. Takes a long time. And the last thing to go is the heart. It just stops."

I sighed. "But I don't want mine to die on me."

"We know how you feel," said one. "But you know, the load's too heavy for you."

That was putting it mildly. As offhandedly as you'd say, might as well not go skiing this winter because there's not enough snow. At least I could still drink my coffee.

Wednesday night the Rat nodded off at nine o'clock, only to wake up again at eleven, unable to get back to sleep. Something squeezed tight around his head, as if he had on a hat two sizes too small. A downright unpleasant feeling. Nothing to do but get up. The Rat walked into the kitchen in his pajamas, and gulped down a glass of ice water. Then he started to think about her. As he stood at the window watching the beacon light, his eyes drew back along the jetty until he was looking in the vicinity of her apartment. He thought of the waves pounding in the darkness, the sand peppering her window. But no matter how much he thought about it, he never made any headway – who was he kidding?

Ever since he'd met the woman, the Rat's life had become an endless repetition, week after week. He couldn't keep track of the date. What month was it?

October, probably. Or was it? Saturdays he'd see her, then for three days from Sunday to Tuesday he'd dwell on the memory. Thursdays, Fridays, half the day Saturday, he'd be making weekend plans. That left only Wednesdays up in the air, with nothing to do. No progress, no setbacks. These Wednesdays...

After a leisurely ten-minute smoke, he changed out of his pajamas, put on a windbreaker over his shirt, and went down to the underground parking garage. After twelve, there was hardly a soul out and about. Only the streetlamps shining on the darkened streets. The shutters on J's Bar were already rolled down, but the Rat pushed them up half-way, ducked under, and headed on downstairs.

J sat alone behind the counter smoking a cigarette, some dozen towels he'd washed draped over the backs of chairs to dry.

"Just one beer, how about it?"

"Fine by me," came J's cheerful reply.

It was the first time the Rat had come to J's Bar after hours. All the lights were out, save the ones over the counter, even the ventilation and air-conditioning were silent. Only the smell that had soaked into the floor and walls over the years lingered.

The Rat stepped behind the counter, took a beer from the refrigerator, and poured himself a glass.

The air hung in layers of murky darkness out beyond the bar, warm and dank.

"I really hadn't planned on coming here tonight," the Rat apologized, "but I woke up craving a beer. Be out of here before you know it."

J folded up the newspaper, put it on the counter, and brushed some cigarette ash from his trousers.

"No need to drink and run. I'll even cook something up for you if you're hungry."

"Nah, that's okay. Don't bother. Just beer's fine."

The beer was awfully good. He drank the glass in one go, then let out a satisfied sigh. Then he poured the remaining half a bottle into the glass, and fixed his gaze on the receding head of foam.

"Care to join me in a drink?" the Rat inquired.