“It continued for about six months, give or take. We’d get together at a bar every two weeks or so and drink together,” Kafuku said. “Then it ended. I ignored his phone calls. Made no attempt to contact him. After a while he stopped calling.”

“I bet he found that strange.”

“Probably.”

“You may have hurt his feelings.”

“I guess so.”

“Why did you break it off so suddenly?”

“Because there was no need to keep acting.”

“You mean there was no need to stay friends once you didn’t have to act?”

“Yes, there was that,” Kafuku said. “But there was another reason too.”

“What was it?”

Kafuku fell silent. Misaki glanced at him occasionally, the unlit cigarette clamped between her lips.

“Go ahead and smoke if you want,” Kafuku said.

“Huh?”

“You can light that thing.”

“But the top is closed.”

“I don’t care.”

Misaki lowered her window, lit the Marlboro with the car lighter, and took a deep drag. Her eyes narrowed in pleasure. She exhaled slowly, directing the smoke out the window.

“Tobacco’s a killer,” Kafuku said.

“Being alive is a killer, if you think about it,” Misaki said.

Kafuku laughed. “That’s one way to see it.”

“That’s the first time I’ve seen you laugh,” Misaki said.

She had a point, Kafuku thought. It had been a long time indeed since he had laughed, not as an act, but for real.

“I’ve been meaning to tell you this for a while,” he said. “But there’s something very attractive about you. You’re not homely at all, you know.”

“Thank you very much. My features are plain, that’s all. Like Sonya’s.”

Kafuku looked at Misaki in surprise. “I see you’ve read Uncle Vanya.”

“I hear little bits of it every day, so I wanted to know what it was about. I get curious too, you know,” Misaki said. “‘Oh, how miserable I am! I can’t stand it. Why was I born so poorly favored? The agony!’ A sad play, isn’t it.”

“A sad play indeed,” Kafuku said. “‘Oh, how unbearable! Is there no help for me? I am forty-seven now. If I live till sixty I have thirteen more years to endure. Too long. How shall I pass those thirteen years? What will help me get through the days?’ People only lived to about sixty back then. Uncle Vanya was fortunate he wasn’t born into today’s world.”

“You were born the same year as my father. I checked.”

Kafuku didn’t respond. He took a handful of cassettes and scanned the songs on the labels. But he didn’t play one. Misaki was holding the lit cigarette in her left hand with her arm out the window. Only when the line of cars crept forward and she had to use both hands to steer and shift gears did she place it between her lips for a moment.

“To be honest, I wanted to punish that guy,” Kafuku said, as if confessing to something. “The guy who slept with my wife.” He put the cassettes back in their containers.