Dance Dance Dance

deeply, «it's almost a relief,

telling you.

«What goddamn thing am I going to do next? That gap— it's too big, too deep. Professional hazard, huh? The bigger the gap, the more weird the shit I find myself doing. Is it in my genes? God, I'm afraid that I will just kill my wife. I haven't got any control over it. Because it won't take place

in this world.»

«You worry too much,» I said, forcing a smile. «Forget this nonsense about genes. What you need is a break from work. Stop seeing your wife for a while. It's the only way. Throw everything to the wind. Come with me to Hawaii. Lie on the beach, drink pina coladas, swim, get laid. Rent a con­vertible and cruise around listening to music. And if you still want to worry, you can do that later.»

«Not a bad idea,» he said, the folds of his eyes crinkling as he smiled. «We'll get us two girls and the four of us can fool around till morning again. That was fun.» Shoveling that good snow. Cuck-koo. «I can take off any time,» I said. «How about you? How long will it take you to finish up what you're doing?»

Gotanda gave me the oddest smile. «You don't under­stand a thing, do you? There's no such thing as finishing up in my line of work. All you can do is toss the whole thing. And if I do that, you can be sure I'll never work again. I'd be drummed out of the industry, permanently. And, I'd lose my wife, permanently.»

He drained the last of his beer.

«But that's fine. Back-to-nothing is fine. At this point, I'm ready to call it quits. I'm tired. Time I went to Hawaii and

blanked out. Okay, let's scrap it all. Let's go to Hawaii. I can think things over later. I'll . . . become a regular human being. Maybe too late, but worth a try. I'll leave everything up to you. I trust you. Always did, from the time you first called me up. You seemed like such a decent guy. Like what I'd always wanted to be.»

«No such decent guy here,» I protested. «I'm just . . . keeping in step, dancing along. No meaning to it at all.»

Gotanda spread his hands a body-width apart on the table. «And just where, pray tell, is there meaning? Where in this life of ours?» Then he laughed. «But that's okay. Doesn't matter anymore. I'm resigned to it. I'll follow your example. I'll hop around from elevator to elevator. It's not impossible. I can do anything if I put my mind to it. I'm sharp, hand­some, good-natured Gotanda after all. So, okay, Hawaii. We'll get the tickets tomorrow. First class. It's gotta be first class. It's in the cards, you know. BMW, Rolex, Azabu, and first class. We'll leave the day after tomorrow and land on the same day. Hawaii! I look good in an aloha shirt.»

«You'd look good in anything.»

«Thanks for tickling what remains of my ego.»

Gotanda gave me a good, long look. «You really think you can forget I killed Kiki?»

«Uh-huh.»

«Well, one other thing you don't know about me. Remember I told you I got thrown in confinement for two weeks?»

«Yeah.»

«That was a lie. I blabbed everything and they let me out right away. I wasn't scared. I wanted, in some sick way, to do something gutless. I wanted to hate myself. I'm such a louse. You didn't know that when you clammed up to save my face, you also saved my rotten hide. You did something for me that I wouldn't do for myself—wash away my dirt. And I was glad, you know. It gave me the chance to finally be honest with myself. I feel like I've come clean at last. Man, I bet it wasn't too pleasant to watch.»

«Don't worry about it,» I said. It's brought us closer together, I wanted to say. But I didn't. I decided to wait for a time when the words would mean more. So I just repeated myself, «Don't worry about it.»

Gotanda took his rain hat from the back of his chair, checked to see how damp it was, then put it back. «I got a favor to ask you,» he said, «as a friend. I'd like another beer, but I don't have it in me to get up and go get one.»

«No problem,» I said.

I stood up and went up to the bar. There was a line, so it took me a while. By the time I waded back to the table, mugs in hand, Gotanda was gone. Ditto his rain hat. And no Maserati in the parking lot either. Great, I shook my head,

just great.

There was nothing I could do. He had disappeared.

40

The following afternoon they dredged the Maserati out of Tokyo Bay. As I expected. No surprises. As soon as he disappeared, I saw it coming.

Another corpse. The Rat, Kiki, Mei, Dick North, and now Gotanda. Five. One more to go. What now? Who was the next in line to die? Not Yumiyoshi, I wouldn't be able to bear that. Yumiyoshi was not meant to die. Okay, then Yuki? The kid was thirteen. I couldn't let that happen to her. I was going down the list, as if I were the god of doom, deal­ing out orders for mortality.

I went down to the Akasaka police station to tell Bookish that I'd been with Gotanda the previous night until right before his death. Somehow I thought it was the right thing to do, though naturally I didn't mention Kiki. That was a closed book. Instead, I talked about how exhausted Gotanda had been, how his loans were piling up, the problems with work, the stresses in his personal life.

Bookish took down what I said. Unlike before, he made simple notes. Which I signed. It didn't take an hour. «People dying left and right around you, eh?» he said. «At this rate, you'll never make friends and influence people. They start hating you, and before you know it, your eyes go and your skin sags. Not a pretty prospect.»

Then he heaved a deep sigh.

«Well, anyway, this was a suicide. Open and shut case. Even got witnesses. Still, what a waste. I don't care if he was a movie star, he didn't have to go blitzing a Maserati into the Bay, did he? Ordinary Honda Civic or Toyota Corolla would've done the job.»

«It was insured.»

«No sir, insurance never covers suicides,» Bookish reminded me. «Anyway, you can go now. Sorry about your friend. And thanks for taking the trouble to come in,» he said as he saw me to the door. «Mei's case isn't settled yet. But the investigation's still going on.»

For a long time after, I walked around feeling as if I'd killed Gotanda. I couldn't rid myself of the weight. I went back over all the things we'd talked about that night. If only I'd given him the responses he'd needed to save himself, the two of us might be relaxing on the beach in Maui right now. No way. Gotanda had made up his mind from the begin­ning. He'd been thinking about plowing that Maserati into the sea all along. He'd been waiting for an excuse. It was his only exit. He'd already had his hand on the doorknob, the Maserati in his head sinking, the water pouring in, choking him, over and over again.

Mei's death had left me shaken, Dick North's death sad and resigned. But Gotanda's death lay me down in a lead-lined box of despair. Gotanda's death was unsalvageable. Gotanda never really got himself in tune with his inner impulses. He pushed himself as far as he could, to the furthest edge of his awareness—and then right across the line into that dark otherworld.

For a while, the weeklies and TV and sports tabloids feasted on his death. Like beetles on carrion. The headlines alone were enough to make me vomit. I felt like throttling every scandalmonger in town.

I climbed into bed and shut my eyes. Cuck-koo, I heard Mei far off in the darkness.

I lay there, hating everything. The deaths were beyond comprehension, the aftertaste sickening. The world of the living was obscene. I was powerless to do anything. People came and went, but once gone, they never came