“You must like Leonard Cohen. I noticed that you put on his album,” he notes.

I got the vinyl record that’s playing now in the café as a gift from this person sitting across from me.

It was the night of the café owner’s wedding. Out of the blue, he gave me the record. The café was closed that day, and everyone had gone to the wedding hall at the hotel, and I was left alone with Nana at the café. I was reading about Italian baristas because I’d started to appreciate coffee. Several times I’d asked the café owner to buy an espresso machine so we could make espressos and cappuccinos, but she said the machine was too expensive. She wasn’t even replacing the worn needle on the record player, so we couldn’t even play music in here—she kept saying tomorrow, tomorrow … the uncultured bitch.

I felt tired without music. Spacey. I found myself mindlessly chewing my nails, and that made me angry. I was lying on the sofa, throwing peanuts into the air and trying to catch them in my mouth. The peanuts I missed scattered across the floor. Nana was asleep on my belly. The café owner said she’d be in Guam or Saipan or wherever for seven days for her honeymoon, so I thought that as long as I could hide from Sungyun’s watchful eyes I could be lazy and pick on Nana. But since the early evening Nana had been depressed, not being her usual playful self, and kept on sleeping. The dentist opened the door, entered the café, and stumbled toward me. He said he didn’t feel good about his best friend marrying the café owner and mumbled something about how he regretted introducing him to her. He had hoped to live with his friend in the house the friend had designed, but that was all moot now. I liked him better now that he was drunk. Until then we had been using the honorific tone with each other—awkward and uncomfortable. It was nice to finally speak casually. He walked into the DJ booth and removed the old needle with his trembling hand. He pulled out a new needle from his pocket, and in a familiar movement placed the new needle in the arm. He placed a record on the turntable, and the needle nimbly moved along the grooves of the record.

Fortuitously, the fourth track, the same song he played that night, is playing in the café right now: “I’m Your Man.”

If you want a boxer

I will step into the ring for you

And if you want a doctor

I’ll examine every inch of you

If you want a driver, climb inside

Or if you want to take me for a ride

You know you can

I’m your man.