At half past midnight the line of taxis at the east exit of Shinjuku Station could not find a single passenger. The third in line cut the engine and tuned the radio to a station that played the same old records over and over.
A few minutes later a man in a beige raincoat came down the steps from the station entrance, opened the rear door, and sat down without a word. The driver glanced at him in the mirror — clean-shaven, neatly combed, the collar of his shirt pressed flat. The man did not speak; he was looking at the twenty-year-old Shinjuku neon outside the window.
After perhaps twenty seconds he said:
"Please take me "tomorrow"row\"."
The driver hesitated. On nights like this he had heard everything, but he had not heard this. He asked nothing. He reached forward and pressed the meter and eased the car into Ome-kaidō. The rain had only just stopped; the road shone an unsteady black.
At five past one in the morning the car crossed the Shibuya intersection.
The five-way lights cycled with their usual obedience, but the crossing was empty — only their one car passing through. The driver thought of his daughter. Six years ago she had gone to Brazil; the last photograph she had sent him, just after landing, was of the airport signage in São Paulo at night.
If she could see this — the empty crossing, the silent passenger, that strange request: "take me to tomorrow" — she would have laughed. The driver found himself smiling, in the mirror, soundlessly.
The passenger glanced once out the window and closed his eyes again.
At two forty in the morning the car stopped before Asakusa's Kaminarimon.
The man said nothing. He drew a neat stack of bills from his pocket, placed them on the leather of the rear seat, and beside them set a small, well-worn omamori. The red thread of the charm had faded almost to white; its edges shone with the gloss of use.
"For you," the man said. "I won't be needing it."
He stepped out and walked toward the gate. He did not turn back.
The driver took the small charm in his hand and turned it. Embroidered on it were two characters: 安産 — safe childbirth. He held it for a while. The fabric was slightly warm, as though it still carried someone else's body heat.
The meter was still running. He did not turn it off. He sat there a long time. He understood, at last, where his passenger was going; he understood, at last, what "tomorrow" had meant.
He did not follow.