Happy Café
Pure white walls, blank right angles. Wine bottles, wire sculptures. Cigarettes. 50s predawn jazz. In the window, an old man in pinstripes read Murakami’s translation of The Great Gatsby. The owner bowed too low, kept straying over to my table, desperate to practice his English. I told him to get a glass and join me. He looked thrilled and terrified by the idea. A breach of etiquette. “It’s New Year,” I said. “Have a drink.”
The crowds from Meiji Jingu filled the streets, clutching takeaway food bought after praying to the old Emperor. New Year seemed to be in the direction of Shibuya. I’d come from there.
It was my party I’d left. I didn’t really know any of the people I’d invited. Not really. That one was called Toshi, that one Jin, those two were both Ayaka. I couldn’t think what their New Years resolutions would be. Did Kumiko want to be thinner or to quit smoking. Would Hiroyuki choose to study English harder or to start going to the gym.
“I’ll go to the shrine later,” he said.
“What will you pray for?”
“A new start,” he said, after a moment. “What else can you ask for at New Year?”
We finished the wine.
“What did you pray for last year?”
“Same.”
The darkness outside was dilute now, but the crowds kept coming. The old pinstripe man was sleeping with his head against the wall.
Last year I fell asleep on the Yamanote line. Circling the subway for five hours. Going round and round and round and round. In the January dawn I prayed for a new start, then went home.
Iain Maloney is a writer of fiction, poetry and journalism. A graduate of Glasgow University’s Creative Writing MLitt, his novel Dog Mountain is in search of a good home.
