The Empty Café
by
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At the Walrus, Marty sat slumped in a chair, eyes closed, head swaying back and forth in time to the early Beatle music playing in the background. At Melanie's entrance he jerked upright, startled and abashed, and hastily switched off the music. Melanie smiled. She knew it embarrassed him to be caught listening to the Beatles, for whom his admiration bordered on hero-worship which was, he knew, rather childish of him, something he should have outgrown by now. He had once, in a moment of irrepressible candor, confessed to her that a storage room in his house was stacked floor to ceiling with Beatle memorabilia - books, magazines, posters, what have you. Sometimes when he was alone at home - and only when he was alone - he would slip into the room, close the door, and lose himself in daydreams of the vanished glorious sixties. Once he too had dreamed of being a rock star adored by millions. He was musical. He played the guitar not badly, and sang beautifully. But owing perhaps to weakness of character, perhaps to some other flaw, he had never, as he put it, "gone all out"; nor was he sorry he had not. Stardom, he now realized, or at least said, is better dreamed about than lived. He was content. "If only some customers would come in and keep me busy so I could forget this nonsense," he muttered. "What nonsense? Listening to the Beatles? There's nothing nonsensical about that. I read recently that some musicologist or other said they are to our age what Mozart and Schubert were to theirs." "Let's change the subject. Listen. I've been thinking about that talent night idea of yours. Maybe there's something in it after all." "I don't think so, Marty." "You don't?" "No. Forget talent night. Your idea's better. Silence, thoughtfulness, a quiet refuge. That's what the world needs. All we have to do, Marty, is..." "Is?" "That man who just passed." "Eh? What man who just passed?" Melanie ran to the door, flung it open, and vanished through it. Marty gaped in stupefied bewilderment. A moment later she returned, frowning. "He's gone." "Who, for God's sake? Who's gone?" "I could have sworn I saw... but no doubt I was mistaken." "Will you please kindly stop talking in riddles and - " "Pete Harris, a man in my neighborhood who broke his mother's heart by disappearing." "Pete Harris?" "Yes, his name happens to be Pete Harris. Nondescript middle-aged man." "What do you mean, he disappeared? I saw him last night." "You?" "Why not me? I've known Pete Harris for years." "Works in a furniture shop." "Yeah, over on Delgardo Street. Known him all my life. Everything I know on guitar, he taught me. As teenagers we were best friends, dreamed of forming a rock group. He coulda done it, too. Me, no, but him, he's got serious talent. Genius, I'm tempted to say. There's a touch of John Lennon in his voice. Trouble is, he's so unworldly. His whole life's his inner life. Outside, he's... how did you put it? 'A nondescript middle-aged man.' That's kinda what he was twenty years ago too." "You say you saw him last night?" "I see him every Wednesday night. It's Annalee's movie club night. What's a movie club? God knows. Anyway, she goes out and he comes over with his guitar, and we go into my storeroom that I've told you about, and we jam for a couple hours." "And last night - "
"He's written a new song, a song... good Lord but it's beautiful! A more haunting, wrenching song I have never heard in my life. It's the sort of song that, I swear, could turn the world on its edge. And last night he was teaching it to me. I'm sayin' to him, 'Pete, Pete, you gotta record this, this is amazing!' And he just smiles and shrugs. It was him I was thinking of just now when I mentioned talent night. I thought if I could give him a place to play, and an audience - how come the idea never struck me before, I wonder? Now that it finally has, it seems so obvious!" "He hasn't been home in three days, his mother's insane with worry." "No kidding." "Wait, it gets better. You know those five dogs that've been killed? And last night a woman murdered? Well, I don't know if it's official or anything, but the talk around the neighborhood is that the wreaker of all this havoc must be none other than Pete Harris!" "That's mad! It's insane!" "Wait. Better yet. His mother - do you know his mother, by the way?" "I did as a teenager. Haven't seen her in years." "What was she like then?" "Ordinary. Rather nice. Afternoon-milk-and-cookies sort of mom. Why?" "She's an awful old harpy now. I caught her last night pounding like a madwoman on the door of my next-door neighbor, whose dog was killed and who she thinks of as one of her son's leading accusers. My houseguest and I - the houseguest I mentioned - managed to calm her down and take her home. And in the house, on the living room wall, is a painting, a seascape, a storm, a thrilling painting, it grips you with a kind of preternatural terror, it's hard to describe... And guess who painted it?" "Pete?" "You're not surprised?" "I haven't heard of him painting lately, but I know he once did. I never saw the picture myself, though." "And you're telling me he hasn't disappeared at all." "First I've heard of him disappearing."
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About the Book
Somewhere between fantasy and reality is the unexplored world in which Hoffman’s characters live. A man reading the newspaper suddenly finds himself transformed into the elder brother of god. A foreigner in Japan, falsely accused of assaulting a young girl, finds his innocence slowly slipping away from him. Why did the woman in the restaurant scream? The empty café fills; reason loses its coherence. In the novella Solitude, the last of eight tales in this volume, Solomon Rose returns home after 22 years to confront a dilemma soluble only by murder.
About the Author
Michael Hoffman was born in Montreal, Canada and has lived in Japan since 1982. His short fiction has appeared in various North American and Japanese magazines. He is the author of One Armed Yatsu & Other Stories, also available through 1stbooks. As a freelance journalist he is a regular contributor of essays, book reviews, and translations to Japan’s English-language media. He is co-author of Tokyo Confidential, a collection of tall but true tales from the Land of the Cherry Blossom Blushing in the Rising Sun.