As soon as the lights came on, she started talking again. Umm, what did you think of it? It was pretty good, right? Maybe not so good? If you ask me, I guess I think it was like great. You know there was that one black actress? And the guy who played her older brother? I heard he’s like in a theatre group, like it’s his theatre group, or a performance group, one of those, you know? I’m not just telling you to show that I know stuff, I’m more like, wow, he really knows what he’s doing as an actor, that’s what I meant. What did you think about him? Don’t you think he’s good? And like, oh right, I heard a rumour he’s going to be in a performance, the day after tomorrow or something, at a place in Roppongi, I mean it’s not a rumour, it’s like true, I just for some reason said it was a rumour, and like they never perform in theatres, they always do it in like clubs or bars and stuff, their show, or I guess their performance, they’re like performers, but they don’t use a stage set or anything, they just like get a mic and improvise, something like that, yeah.
When I told the guy about this performance, he said, maybe I’ll go. I know he was just saying that, but I forced myself, I went out of my way to believe him, so I just came out and said, oh really, then why don’t we go together. I did it because I didn’t want to think he was just saying he’d go, and because if he wasn’t just saying it, I wanted to see if things could go farther, and because some small part of me really thought he wanted to go. I knew exactly what would happen if I said, why don’t we go together, but I said it anyway, because like if I had a positive attitude and gave it a shot, it would happen, so I came out and said it as sincerely as I could. I said it all brightly, to cheer myself on. Even if he saw right through to my trembling little ulterior motive—though I don’t think it was anything sinister like ulterior, I think it was sweet and kind of innocent—even if he saw through me, I told myself I didn’t care. Which of course was a lie, if he saw through me I’d just want to die. When I was about to say, why don’t we go together, I thought that as soon as I finished saying it, I should stare into his eyes as hard as I could. So I did. I knew that he might get put off by me giving him that kind of look, but I did it anyway. Then when I was staring into his eyes, I knew that I had to really plead with my eyes or it wouldn’t work, and I didn’t let myself think it wouldn’t work because it was my eyes, in my face. If I looked away quickly because I knew it was putting him off, that would be even worse, and I mean I knew right away that even if I stared into his eyes, nothing was going to happen, but I forced myself to stare into his eyes for a while—a really short while, maybe just a few seconds. But it wasn’t working, like I knew it wouldn’t, and I gave up. For a moment I didn’t know where I should look next, which was how I ended up looking hard at the wall. It was like throwing a lump of clay against the wall as hard as I could and it was just sticking there. A light grey spot, hardly noticeable, but it leaves a stain that never comes out, and even though it’s basically totally meaningless, there it is forever, so that’s what I decided to stare at. I tried to make it mean something by looking at it, even though it didn’t want to be given any meaning.
To be honest, by that point in time I was totally sick of myself. But I was telling myself that I always get sick of myself too quickly. The lobby of the movie theatre had posted these magazine articles about the movies they were showing. The two of us were standing there, me kind of leaning against the wall, kind of like talking. Maybe fifty centimetres above my right shoulder there was on the wall this cut-out little article from a magazine I know the name of but have never read. From where he was standing, my head was in the way of him seeing the article, not that he was trying to see it, he was probably just thinking about getting out of there. I leant against the wall all heavy, like I couldn’t move if I wanted to, so he felt like he couldn’t just leave me there. I made him feel that way. Of course he knew I was just putting it on. But all he could do was stand there. He didn’t lean against the wall like I did, he just stood there. He stood there for a whole hour, until his feet ached.
The two of us were talking about something, but there was suddenly a break in the conversation, like a gap between us. I remembered that before the movie started we were talking about soundtracks, but the movie started and the conversation got cut off, so I thought I would bring that back up again, and I did. Umm, I’ve actually been wondering something this whole time, so, before the movie started, we were talking about this, right? I mean I just wanted to go back to that, you know? So like are you the type who buys soundtracks
