Dance Dance Dance

the refrigerator . . .

By evening I'd copied twenty pages. Wielding a pen for hours on end is hard work. Definitely not recommended. Your wrist starts to go limp, you get scribe's elbow. The mid­dle finger of your hand begins to throb. Drift off in your thoughts for a second and you get the word wrong. Then you have to draw a line through it and thumbprint your mis­take. It could drive a person batty. It was driving me batty.

For dinner, we had generic take-out food again. I hardly ate. The tea was still sloshing around in my gut. I felt woozy, lost the sense of who I was. I went to the toilet and looked in the mirror. I could barely recognize myself.

«Any findings yet?» I asked Fisherman. «Fingerprints or traces or autopsy results?»

«Not yet,» he said. «These things take time.»

I kept at it until ten. I had five more pages to go, but I'd reached my limit. I couldn't write another word and I told them so. Fisherman conducted me to the tank and I dozed right off.

In the morning, it was the same electric razor, coffee, and bread. The five pages took two hours. Then I signed and thumbprinted each sheet. Then Bookish checked the whole lot.

«Am I free to go now?» I asked hopefully.

«If you answer a few more questions, yes, you can go,» said Bookish.

I heaved a sigh. «Then you're going to have me do more paperwork, right?»

«Of course,» answered Bookish. «This is officialdom. Paperwork is everything. Without the paper and your prints, it doesn't exist.»

I pressed my fingers into my temples. It felt as if some loose object were lodged inside. As if something had found its way into my head and ballooned up to where it was impossible to remove.

«This won't take too long. Be over before you know it.»

More mindless answers to more mindless questions. Then Fisherman called Bookish out into the corridor. The two stood whispering for I don't know how long. I leaned back in my chair and studied the patterns of mildew on the ceil­ing. The blackened patches could have been photographs of pubic hair on dead bodies. Spreading down along the cracks in the wall like a connect-the-dots picture. Mildew, cultured in the body odor of the poor fools ground down in this room the last several decades. From a systematic effort to undermine a person's beliefs, dignity, and sense of right and wrong. From psychological coercion that fed on human inse­curity and left no visible scars. Where far removed from sun­light and stuffed with bad food, you sweat uncontrollably. Mildew.

I placed both hands on the desk and closed my eyes, thinking of the snow falling in Sapporo. The Dolphin Hotel and my receptionist friend with glasses. How was she getting along? Standing behind the counter, flashing that profes­sional smile of hers? I wanted to call her up this very second. Tell her some stupid joke. But I didn't even know her name. I didn't even know her name.

She sure was cute. Especially when she was working hard. Imbued with that indefinable hotel spirit. She loved her work. Not me. I never once enjoyed mine. I do good work, but I have never loved my work. Away from her work, she was vulnerable, uncertain, fragile. I could have slept with her if I'd felt like it. But I didn't.

I want to talk to her again.

Before someone killed her too.

Before she disappeared.

23

The two detectives came back into the room to find me still lost in the mildew. They both stood. «You can go home now,» Fisherman told me, expres­sionless. «Thanks for your cooperation.»

«No more questions. You're done,» Bookish added his comments.

«Circumstances have changed,» Fisherman said. «We can't keep you here any longer. You're free to go. Thank you again.»

I got up from my chair and pulled on my jacket, which reeked of cigarette smoke. I didn't have a clue what had hap­pened, but I was happy to get the hell out of there. Bookish accompanied me to the entrance.

«Listen, we knew you were clean last night,» he said. «We got the results from the coroner and the lab. You were clean. Absolutely clean. But you're hiding something. You're biting your tongue. You're not so hard to read. That's why we figured we'd hold you, until you spit it out. You know who that woman is. You just don't want to tell us. For some reason. You know, that's not playing ball. We're not going to forget that.»

«Forgive me, but I don't know what you're talking about,» I said.

«We might call you in again,» he said, digging into his cuticle with a matchstick. «And if we do, you can be sure we'll work you over good. We'll be so on top of things that lawyer of yours won't be able to do a damn thing.»

«Lawyer?» I asked, all innocence.

But by then he'd disappeared into the building. I grabbed a taxi back home.

I ran a bath and took a nice, long soak. I brushed my teeth, washed my face, shaved. I couldn't get rid of the smoke on me. What a hole that place was!

Refreshed, I boiled some cauliflower, which I ate along with a beer. I put on Arthur Prysock backed by the Count Basie Orchestra. An unabashedly gorgeous record. Bought sixteen years before. Once upon a time.

After that I slept. Just enough sleep to say I'd been some­where and back, maybe thirty minutes. When I woke up, it was one in the afternoon. Still time in the day. I packed my gear, threw it into the Subaru, and drove to the Sendagaya Pool. After an hour's swim I was almost feeling human again. And I was hungry.

I called Yuki. When I reported that I'd been released, she gave me a cool that's nice. As for food, she'd eaten only two cream puffs all day, sticking to her junk-ridden regimen. If I came over now, though, she'd be ready and waiting, and probably pleased.

I tooled the Subaru through the outer gardens of Meiji Shrine, down the tree-lined avenue before the art museum, and turned at Aoyama-Itchome for Nogi Shrine. Every day was getting more and more like spring. During the two days I'd spent inside the Akasaka police station, the breeze had become more placid, the leaves greener, the sunlight fuller and softer. Even the noises of the city sounded as pleasant as Art Farmer's fliigelhorn. All was right with the world and I was hungry. The pressure lodged behind my temples had magically vanished.

Yuki was wearing a David Bowie sweatshirt under a brown leather jacket. Her canvas shoulder bag was a patchwork of Stray Cats and Steely Dan and Culture Club but­tons. Strange combination, but who was I to say?

«Have fun with the cops?» asked Yuki.

«Just awful,» I said. «Ranks up there with Boy George's singing.»

«Oh,» she remarked, unimpressed with my cleverness.

«Remind me to buy you an Elvis button for your collec­tion,» I said, pointing at her bag.

«What a nerd,» she said. Such a rich vocabulary.

We went to a restaurant where we each had a roast beef sandwich on whole wheat and a salad. I made her drink a glass of wholesome milk too. I skipped the milk for myself, got coffee instead. The meat was tender and alive with horseradish. Very satisfying. This was a meal.

«Well then, where to from here?» I asked Yuki.

«Tsujido,» she said without hesitation.

«Okay by me,» I said. «To Tsujido we shall go. But what's there to see in Tsujido?»

«Papa lives there,» said Yuki. «He says he wants to meet you.»

«Me?»

«Yeah, you. Don't worry, he's not such a bad guy.»

I sipped my second cup of coffee. «You know, I never said he was a bad guy. Anyway, why would he want to meet me? You told him about me?»

«Sure. I phoned him and told him how you'd helped me get back from Hokkaido and how you got picked up by the cops and might never come out. So Papa had one of his lawyer friends make inquiries about you. He's got all kinds Of connections. He's real practical that way.»