Dance Dance Dance

mounts inside me. This was wrong!

The hallway bends to the right.

I turned right, feeling my way along the wall. Far off up ahead there was a faint light. As if filtered through layers and layers of veils.

Just like she said.

My classmate is kissing her all over. Slowly, with such finesse, from the nape of her neck to her shoulders to her breasts. Camera angle shows his face and her back. Then the camera dollies around to reveal her face. But it isn't my receptionist friend, no. It's Kiki! My high-class call-girl friend with the world's most beautiful ears, who was with me at the old Dolphin. Kiki, who disappeared without a word, without a trace. And here she is, sleeping with my classmate.

It's a real scene from a real movie. Every shot and cut according to plan. Maybe a little too planned—it looks so commonplace. They are making love in an apartment, the light shining in through the blinds. Kiki. What's she doing here? Time and space must be getting out of whack.

Time and space must be getting out of whack.

I kept walking toward the light. As my feet took the lead, the image in my head evaporated.

FADE OUT.

I proceeded along the wall. No more thinking. Concen­trate on moving feet forward. Carefully, surely. The dim light ahead begins to leak and spread, from a door. But I still don't know where I am. And I can barely tell that it's a door. It isn't like anything I saw when I made the rounds earlier. On the door, a metal plate, a number engraved on it. I can't read the number. It's dark, the plate's tarnished. But, at the very least, I know this isn't the Dolphin Hotel. The doors are different. The air is wrong too. That smell, what is it? Like old papers. The light sways from time to time. Candlelight.

I thought about my receptionist friend again. I should have slept with her when I could have. Who knew if I'd ever return to the real world? Would I ever get another chance to see her? I was jealous of the real world and her swim club. Or maybe I wasn't jealous. Maybe it was a matter of regret, an overblown, distorted sense of regret, although maybe what it came down to, plunged in this darkness, was I was jealous. It'd been years. I'd forgotten what it felt like to be jealous. It's such a personal emotion. Maybe I was feeling jealous now. Maybe, but toward a swim club?

This is stupid.

I swallowed. It sounded like a metal baseball bat striking a barrel drum. That was saliva?

Then a strange vibration, a half sound. I had to knock. That's right, like she said. I summoned up my courage and let go with a tiny rap. Something that didn't necessarily demand to be heard. But it was a huge, booming noise. Cold and heavy as death.

I held my breath.

Silence. Just like with her. How long it lasted, I couldn't tell. It might have been five seconds, it might have been a minute. Time wasn't fixed. It wavered, stretched, shrank. Or was it me that wavered, stretched, and shrank in the silence? I was warped in the folds of time, like a reflection in a fun house mirror.

Then that sound. A rustling, amplified, like fabric. Some­thing getting up from the floor. Then footsteps. Coming toward me. The scuffling of slippers. Something, but not human. Like she said. Something from another reality—a reality that existed here.

There was no escape. I did not move. Sweat streamed down my back. Yet, as the footsteps grew closer and closer, unaccountably my fears began to subside. It's all right, I said to myself. Whatever it is, it is not evil. I knew. I knew there was nothing to fear. I could let it happen.

I felt aswirl with warm secretions. I gripped the door­knob, I shut my eyes, I held my breath. You're all right, you're fine. I heard a tremendous heartbeat through the darkness. It was my own. I was enveloped in it, I was a part of it. There was nothing to fear. It was all connected.

The footsteps halted. They were beside me. It was beside me. My eyes were shut. It is beginning to come together. I knew. I knew I was connected to this place. The banks of the Nile and the perfumed Nubian court ladies and Kiki and the Dolphin Hotel and rock 'n' roll, everything, everything, everything! An implosion of time and physical form. Old light, old sound, old voices.

«Beenwaitingforyou. Beenwaitingforages. Comeonin.» I knew who it was without opening my eyes.

11

We faced each other across a small table, talking. The table was very old, round, set with one candle in the middle. The candle had been stuck directly onto a saucer. And that was the entire inventory of furnish­ings in the room. There weren't any chairs. We sat on piles of books.

It was the Sheep Man's room.

Narrow and cramped. The walls and ceiling had the feel­ing of the old Dolphin Hotel, but it wasn't the old hotel either. At the far end of the room was a window, boarded up from inside. Boarded up a long time ago, if the rusty nails and gray dust in the cracks of the boards were any indica­tion. The room was a rectangular box. No lights. No closet. No bath. No bed. He must've slept on the floor, wrapped in his sheep costume.

There was barely enough room to walk. The floor was lit­tered with yellowing old books and newspapers and scrap-books filled with clippings. Some were worm-eaten, falling apart at their bindings. All, from what I could tell, having to do with the history of sheep in Hokkaido. All, probably, from the archive at the old Dolphin Hotel. The sheep refer­ence room, which the owner's father, the Sheep Professor, pretty much lived in. What ever became of him?

The Sheep Man looked at me across the flickering candle flame. Behind him, his disproportionately enormous shadow played over a grimy wall.

«Beenalongtime,» he spoke from behind his mask. «Let's-ussee, youthinnerorwhat?»

«Yeah, I might have lost some weight.»

«Sotellus, what'stheworldoutside? Wedon'tgetmuchnews, notinhere.»

I crossed my legs and shook my head. «Same as ever. Nothing worth mentioning. Everything's getting more com­plicated. Everything's speeding up. No, nothing's really new.»

The Sheep Man nodded. «Nextwarhasn'tbegunyet, we-takeit?»

Which was the Sheep Man's last war? I wasn't sure. «Not yet,» I said.

«Butsoonerorlateritwill,» he voiced, uninflected, folding his mitted hands. «Youbetterwatchout. War'sgonnacome, nothreewaysaboutit. Markourwords. Can'ttrustpeople. Won'tdoanygood. They'llkillyoueverytime. They'llkilleach-other. They'llkilleveryone.»

The Sheep Man's fleece was dingy, the wool stiff and greasy. His mask looked bad too, like something patched together at the last minute. The poor light in the damp room didn't help and maybe my memory was wrong, but it wasn't just the costume. The Sheep Man was worn-out. Since the last time I'd seen him four years ago, he'd shrunk. His breathing came harder, more disturbing to the ears, like a stopped-up pipe.

«Thoughtyou'dgetheresooner,» said the Sheep Man. «We-beenwaiting, allthistime. Meanwhile, somebodyelsecame-'round. Wethought, maybe, butwasn'tyou. Howdoyoulike-that? Justanybody, comewanderinginhere. But anyway, was-expectingyousooner.»

I shrugged my shoulders. «I always thought I would come back, I guess. I knew I had to, but I didn't have it together. I dreamed about it. About the Dolphin Hotel, I mean. Dreamed about it all the time. But it took a while to make up my mind to come back.»

«Triedtoputitoutofmind?»

«I guess so, yes,» I said. Then I looked at my hands in the flickering candlelight. A draft was coming in from somewhere. «In the beginning I thought I should try to forget what I could forget. I wanted a life completely dissociated from this place.»

«Becauseyourfrienddied?»

«Yes. Because my friend died.»

«Butyoucameback,» said the Sheep Man.

«Yes, I came back,» I said. «I couldn't get this place out of my mind. I tried to forget things, but then