managed the security detail at the nightclub Kuklabuck where Aspirin lit up the crowd on Tuesdays and Fridays. Victor had once helped Aspirin out of a sticky situation that involved the accidentally crushed bumper of a fancy car. Whiskas was considered an intellectual—he forced every bouncer on his team to read Murakami—but that was not what Aspirin valued the most about him. Victor Somov was a good friend because he was the perfect listener. He was attentive and a little slow, with an air of deliberateness that felt like attentiveness. He also had an aura of confidence and serenity, and that was exactly what Aspirin usually needed after his long, stress-filled days.
Or crazy, dog-and-girl-and-bear-filled nights.
Enlisting a professional to help with a child was overkill. Aspirin was showing weakness, and he knew it; he felt awkward now about calling Somov. But he also had no choice. If the girl refused to leave on her own, he would have to—what, grab her arms? Shoulders? Grab her by the throat or hair? He would have to seize her and drag her out, and she would most certainly scream, and the neighbors would hear her screaming and then he’d probably be screaming his way to prison. And that wasn’t in his plans. No, in a few years Aspirin was going to make some decent dough, buy a house in the country, erect a tall fence, and get a dog. Just not a pit bull. A German shepherd. He would live without a telephone, without a television set; a stereo and a laptop would be enough.
And he wasn’t going to let an act of charity turn his dream into a nightmare.
He listened again: a melody replaced the erratic sounds in the next room. An uninitiated listener would think that the girl continued to press random keys, but Aspirin heard a ragged, unschooled, strangely captivating song emerging from the instrument. A few measures—stop—repeated now, with more conviction.
A new measure . . .
He peeked into the living room. The girl stood in front of the instrument, finding the melody by ear, but not in the usual way of children trying to pick out a song. She didn’t hit the keys with one finger; instead, she passed her left hand over the octaves, while the right barely touched the keys, like a blind person reading Braille.
Her teddy bear sat on the piano between an antique clock and a china doll Aspirin had brought from Germany, seemingly watching her and keeping a glass eye on him at the same time.
“Right,” the girl murmured to herself. She placed both hands on the keys now. Her left hand played a chord, the right hand led a melody, and for a second Aspirin felt dizzy. He saw his future, and it was so serene and so joyful, as if he were a schoolboy at the start of an endless vacation. He took a step toward the piano, about to embrace and kiss this marvelous girl who came to teach him how to live his life for real, without depression and fear, without small upsets, without Mishutkas, to live and listen to music, to live and rejoice in living. He placed his hands on her shoulders and at that moment the china doll, securely attached to its stand, stepped forward, lost its balance, and toppled over onto the keys.
The melody died. Shards of porcelain lay on the carpet. Aspirin jerked his hands back; the doll’s head, curly-haired and indifferent, lay between E and F of the second octave.
“It wasn’t me,” the girl said with a guilty look. “I didn’t do it.”
Aspirin rubbed his temples. He still felt a little dizzy.
“No . . . it’s okay,” he said, but he wasn’t sure if anything was ever going to be okay. “Do you know how to play?”
“Well, no,” the girl admitted. “I just try to pick the right notes . . . and the keys are in order, so it’s not that difficult.”
He tried to work his mind around that, but things were still a bit blurry after the song. “What were you playing?”
The girl crouched down and started collecting the shards of porcelain. He saw the back of her neck under the blond ponytail, her spine, and her scrawny shoulder blades.
“It’s his song,” the girl said, addressing the floor. “If it’s played correctly, it leads you away forever. But you can only play it properly on his pipe. Or maybe if you get a big orchestra . . . maybe. If you gather virtuosi