She rings the bell again, causing a mild alarm in her mother. And before the little girl's mother could say anything, the door opens. A man in his mid thirties appears. He is in his pajamas, looking very puzzled at the woman and the little child. The woman, in her early forties, apologizes with slight bows for her daughter's "incessant" ringing of the bell. The man is even more puzzled, but smiles and says he only heard the bell once. He lets them in as it is quite cold outside. He understands that they have come for the violin lesson his roommate is giving, but then he remains very puzzled when he looks at the key hanger by the door. The woman asks if the violin teacher is in, and the roommate shakes his head. He points to the key holder and says, "Her keys aren't there, so she is not in." She asks again, now mirroring his perplexed look, and he repeats, more slowly, perhaps because partly she is speaking with a Japanese accent, "She isn't here. She would be hanging her keys here." "Oh..." says the woman, a little confused and disappointed.
The little girl doesn't seem to care what is happening. She is a little blond girl, not even hip height to the man in pajamas. The man looks at her, and smiles, but his puzzled look intensifies when the woman speaks to the little blond girl in Japanese while she searches for her cell phone in her handbag. He opens the curtain that is shielding the living room from the cold air of the foyer where they are standing. That allows the stronger light of the living room to shine onto the little girl. There he realizes that the blond little girl actually has a very Asian face. She is wearing a little pink jacket, colorful even in the already radiant New England city in autumn. She takes out her left hand from her pocket so it can take the violin case from the tired right hand, which goes into its respective pocket. She doesn't look at him but neither does she shy from him. In fact, she doesn't even seem to notice that he is there. He feels a little awkward, not knowing what to do while the woman makes her phone call and starts to talk in a language he can't understand. Should he just move away and mind his own business so they can be left alone, or should he be a host without knowing what sort of connection to make. After all, these aren't his clients, and he doesn't know anything about them. And he doesn't feel much of an inclination to know anything about them.
The phone call is brief. She puts away the phone and speaks to the little girl in Japanese, signaling her that they are leaving. The man asks if they aren't staying to wait for his roommate to return, and the woman says that she must have missed a call from her in which she told them to go meet them at her music school. The man nods. All this time neither one of the adults looks at each other in the eye, so neither knows whether the other is doing so. The little girl, carrying the violin case now with both hands, steps out after her mother. She turns to look at the man again, and sees that he's looking at her in wonder. She smiles, a smile universal to all little girls of her age, and somehow that puts the man in the pajamas at ease. He closes the door behind them after wishing them luck (in what?) and then he returns to his solitary dinner with no company but his own thoughts.
