Rainfall

I swiveled in the other direction. Same seat, right rear. Three young women who looked like office ladies on a night out. No apparent problem there.

Mr. Bland would be able to watch me throughout the performance, and I needed to avoid the mistake of conspicuous aloneness that he had made. I told the people around me that I was a friend of Midori’s and was here at her invitation; they started asking me questions, and pretty soon we were shooting the shit like old friends.

A waitress came by and I ordered a twelve-year-old Cragganmore. The people around me all followed suit. I was a friend of Kawamura Midori’s, so whatever I had ordered, it must be cool. They probably didn’t know whether they had just ordered scotch, vodka, or a new kind of beer.

When Midori and her trio walked down the side of the room, everyone started clapping. Another thing about Alfie: There, when the musicians first appear, the room fills with reverential silence.

Midori took her place at the piano. She was wearing faded blue jeans and a black velvet blouse, low cut and clinging, her skin dazzling white next to it. She tilted her head forward and touched her fingers to the keys, and the audience grew silent, expectant. She spent a long moment frozen that way, staring at the piano, and then began.

She started slowly, with a coy rendering of Thelonious Monk’s “Brilliant Corners,” but overall she played harder than she had at Alfie, with more abandon, her notes sometimes struggling with the bass and the drums, but finding a harmony in the opposition. Her riffs were angry and she rode them longer, and when she came back the notes were sweet but you could still sense a frustration, a pacing beneath the surface.

The set lasted for ninety minutes, and the music alternated between a smoky, melodic sound, then elegiac sadness, then a giddy, laughing exuberance that shook the sadness away. Midori finished in a mad, exhilarated riff, and when it was over the applause was unrestrained. Midori stood to acknowledge it, bowing her head. The drummer and bass guitarist were laughing and wiping dripping sweat from their faces with handkerchiefs, and the applause went on and on. What Midori felt when she played, the place her music took her, she had taken the audience there, and the clapping was filled with real gratitude. When it finally faded, Midori and her trio left the stage, and people started to get up and move about.

A few minutes later she reappeared and squeezed in next to me. Her face was still flushed from the performance. “I thought I saw you here,” she said, giving me a mild check with her shoulder. “Thank you for coming.”

“Thank you for inviting me. They were expecting me at the ticket window.”

She smiled. “If I hadn’t told them, you wouldn’t have gotten in, and you can’t hear the music very well from the street, can you?”

“No, the reception is certainly better from where I’m sitting,” I said, looking around as though taking in the grandeur of the Blue Note, but in fact scoping for Mr. Bland.

“Do you want to get something to eat?” she asked. “I’m going to grab something with the band.”

I hesitated. I wasn’t going to have a chance to probe for information with other people around, and I wasn’t eager to broaden my always-small circle of acquaintances.

“Hey, this is your big night, your first gig at the Blue Note,” I said. “You probably want to just enjoy it yourselves.”

“No, no,” she said, giving me another shoulder check. “I’d like you to come. And don’t you want to meet the rest of the band? They were great tonight, weren’t they?”

On the other hand, depending on how the evening progressed, you might have a chance to talk to her alone a bit later. “They really were. The audience loved you.”

“We were thinking the Living Bar. Do you know it?”

Good choice, I thought. The Living Bar is an atmospheric place in Omotesando, absurdly named as only the Japanese can name them. It was close by, but we’d have to turn at least five corners to walk there, which would allow me to check our backs and see if Mr. Bland was following.

“Sure. It’s a chain, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but the one in Omotesando is nicer than all the others. They serve lots of interesting little dishes, and the bar is good, too. Good selection of single malts. Mama says you’re a connoisseur.”

“Mama flatters me,” I said, thinking that if I weren’t careful, Mama would put together a damn dossier and start handing it out. “Let me just pay for the drinks.”

She smiled. “They’re already paid for. Let’s go.”

“You paid for me?”

“I told the manager that the person sitting front center was my special guest.” She switched to English: “So everything is on the house, ne?” She smiled, pleased at the chance to use the idiom.

“Okay, then,” I said. “Thank you.”

“Can you wait for just a few minutes? I’ve got a few things to take care of backstage first.”

Getting to her backstage would be too difficult to bother trying. If they were going to make a move, they’d make it outside. “Sure,” I said, getting up and shifting so that my back was to the stage and I could see the room. Too many people were now up and milling about, though, and I couldn’t spot Mr. Bland. “Where do you want to meet?”

“Right here — five minutes.” She turned and walked backstage.

Fifteen minutes later she reappeared through a curtain at the back of the stage. She had changed into a black turtleneck, silk or a fine cashmere, and black slacks. Her hair was loose over her shoulders, her face perfectly framed.

“Sorry to make you wait. I wanted to change — a performance is hard work.”

“No problem,” I said, taking her in. “You look great.”

She smiled. “Let’s go! The band is out front. I’m starving.”