I thought he might not come, but he did. Dressed in a full suit, complete with a diagonal-striped tie, he sat by the window, silently sipping whisky, gazing at the dark sea. Apart from a few distant lights from fishing boats, there was nothing but darkness, yet he watched intently.
As if by just looking, the sea would offer him something.
He was the only customer. Lillian was cleaning the cupboard. With nothing to do, I sat at the door, smoking. I had to bring in the beach chairs outside before closing, predicting rain tomorrow – something the sound of the waves hinted at.
“Could you get me another whisky, please?”
I exhaled three smoke rings. “Not having Hoegaarden anymore?”
“No, not anymore.”
“Stopped writing, too?” I asked, on purpose.
He took off his gold-rimmed glasses, rubbing his eyelids with his thumb and forefinger. “Stopped. Probably won’t come here anymore.”
“For the past two months, thanks for your patronage. This one’s on me.”
“Thank you, boss.”
I called Lillian to refill his drink. By then, she had finished cleaning. At the bar, she quickly scribbled a note, gestured for me to come over. Her handwriting queried, “What are you two talking about?”
“The meaning of life.”
She wrote again: “You definitely can’t tell him.”
“Owe me a dinner?”
She drew a face on the notebook. > <.
“Hey, the customer wants whisky,” I said. Lillian, as if just remembering, went to pour the drink.
I leaned in to ask him, “What kind of music do you like?”
He smiled. “This is your place.”
“My place, my rules: Whoever pays, calls the shots.”
He let out a chuckle. “Right you are! That’s how business should be. Unlike our line of work, whether you pay or not, we’re the ones who call the shots.”
“What line is that?”
“Guess.”
“A writer.”
He paused, then said, “Do I look like one?”
“I see you write every day.”
“True. But… Do writers wear suits?”
I shrugged and played the soundtrack of 2046 on the turntable. He gave no reaction.
But after a moment of contemplation, he spoke, “Boss, has anyone ever found a message in a bottle here?”
“Three over one billion.” I said.
“Hm?”
“The odds of someone sending a message in a bottle and it ending up in your hands. A guy named Briscre calculated it.”
“Huh.” He sat up straight. “What if I told you that for the past two months, I’ve been receiving a message in a bottle every day? How would you calculate that?”
“Three over one billion to the power of sixty-one?”
“Which means impossible.” He said. “But it happened. Every day, at nine in the evening, it would drift in, almost as if the bottle was steering its way to me. After receiving the message, I would reply, seal my letter in the Hoegaarden bottle, and throw it off the pier, waiting for a response the next day. This has been going on for two months. Magical, isn’t it?”
“Magical.” I said.
The whisky trickled down the side of his glass as he requested another. “Magical,” he echoed. “She’s a good girl. You can tell by the handwriting and the tone. Beautifully written, and extraordinarily empathetic. Thoughts I couldn’t make my friends understand face-to-face, she grasped just by reading the letters. Boss, I’m telling you, this is the power of literature.”
Lillian came staggering over with his drink, her face as red as an overripe apple, but he didn’t notice.
As soon as the drink arrived, he downed it.
“Magical,” I said.
“But then, snap, no more messages. Not for five days.”
I nodded. “And you probably know why?”
“I do. El Niño, the currents changed, and who knows where the bottle drifted off to. Magic comes, magic goes.”
I said, “Don’t worry, El Niño is just temporary. It’ll pass in a couple of months.”
“No, it’s not the problem.” He raised his empty glass towards me.
Lillian wrote five words in her notebook and showed it to me: “Don’t let him drink anymore.”
I told him, “This is your last one.”
He continued, “The problem is I lied to her. What did I say? I pretended to be a writer.”
“So, you’re not a writer?”
“Me, with that kind of talent? The only creativity I have is in deceiving the elderly into buying funds. High risk sold as stable, stable as conservative, conservative as risk-free. Not just with clients, but also feigning camaraderie with colleagues who are actually competitors. People in my line should die, including me. But I’ll fall deeper in hell than them because I’ve committed an extra sin: I deceived a girl, a good girl.”
Lillian brought his last drink. He downed it without a glance. After finishing, he cursed himself, over and over, until he closed his eyes and fell asleep. I glanced at the clock; it was 1:30 in the morning.
Lillian sat in a corner, chin in hands, contemplating as she watched him sleep. In reality, there was nothing magical; he didn’t know that the currents would bring back anything thrown into the sea in six hours. Two months ago, when he first started writing letters here, Lillian saw it all. He threw the bottle at midnight, and she retrieved it at six in the morning. She wrote a reply, threw it back at three in the afternoon, and it reached him by nine.
But this week, whether his bottle or Lillian’s, neither came back.
Lillian gestured at me with her hands mimicking bull’s horns, tapping twice. I poured whisky for her and one for myself, then sat down opposite her.
“He’s not a writer,” I said.
She wrote quickly: “I knew that already.”
“Don’t mind?”
She shook her head, then wrote: “It’s him who minds.”
“Then tell him. Tell him not to mind.”
She pursed her lips, hands open, fingertips touching.
“Just tell him it was you who wrote them.”
She shook her head.
“He said he won’t come back.”
She shook her head.
I said, “Lillian, in my eyes, he’s a fool, but in one aspect, he hit the bullseye.”
She looked at me.
“He said you are a good girl.”
She lowered her head, the ribbon on her hair drooped listlessly. Her fingers repeatedly drew on the wooden table. > <. > <. > <.
That was everything I could say, I thought. I finished my drink and emptied Lillian’s too. She actually didn’t drink. “Time to close up,” I said. As I was about to stand up, she pulled me back, writing in her notebook, “I’ll stay here.”
“Alright. There’s a bag of potatoes in the fridge, help me peel them,” I said. “and make sure you take the day off tomorrow.”
I left the bar, neatly stacking the beach chairs under the awning outside. At the pier, where the bottles were thrown, I smoked three cigarettes, then headed home. Shortly after arriving, a light rain began to fall.
I wanted to sleep, but couldn’t. Were they unfortunate? Not really. If an El Niño could end things, they were bound to end eventually. I believed more in people than in gods. In the end, the issue was they weren’t ready, not caring enough about each other to face their own flaws. Both of them.
So there wasn’t much to regret. Still, sleep eluded me. Somehow, I made it to six in the morning and returned to the bar.
He was still asleep. Lillian, too, had fallen asleep, sprawled over a pile of peeled potatoes. I put the potatoes back in the fridge, brewed some coffee, and sat at the front of the bar, sipping and smoking. At exactly seven, his phone rang. It was Joe Hisaishi’s Merry-Go-Round of Life. He turned off the alarm, struggled to wake up, and after a while, realised where he was.
“Coffee?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Sorry for the trouble.”
“No trouble for me.” I pointed at Lillian with the two fingers holding my cigarette. “But her, she peeled potatoes all night.”
He looked at Lillian for a long time before turning back to me. “Tell her thanks for me.” He stood up, leaving a thousand dollars. “Keep the change.”
“Don’t worry.” I crushed the cigarette butt on the ground. “I’ll keep it until next time.”