Dance Dance Dance

25

At seven o'clock, Yuki came sauntering back. She'd been walking on the beach. Would she like dinner, then? Not hungry, she said. She wanted to go home.

«Well, drop by whenever you feel in the mood,» said her father. «This month I'll be in Japan straight through.» Then he turned to me and thanked me for making the long trip, apologizing for not being able to be more hospitable.

Boy Friday saw us out. As we turned the corner from the backyard, I spied a four-wheel-drive Jeep Cherokee, a Honda 750cc, and an off-road mountain bike parked in a corner of the grounds.

«Heavy-duty living, eh?» I commented to Friday.

«Well, it's not namby-pamby,» Friday responded after a moment. «Mr. Makimura doesn't live in an ivory tower. He's into action, he lives for adventure.»

«A bozo,» Yuki mumbled.

Both Friday and I pretended not to have heard her.

No sooner had we gotten into the Subaru than Yuki said she was famished. I pulled into a Hungry Tiger along the coast road and we ordered steaks.

«What did you talk about?» she asked me over dessert.

There was no reason to hide anything, so I gave her a general recap.

«Figures,» she sneered. «Just the sort of thing he'd dream up. What'd you tell him?»

«I said I wasn't cut out for an arrangement like that. It wouldn't be bad, us getting together and hanging out, when­ever we wanted to. That could be fun, but no formal arrangement. You know, I may be an old man next to you, but we still have plenty to talk about, don't you think?»

She shrugged.

«If you didn't feel like seeing me, you could just say so. People shouldn't feel obligated to see each other. See me when you feel like it. We could tell each other things we can't say to anyone else, share secrets. Or no?»

She seemed to hesitate, then nodded, «Umm.»

«You shouldn't let the stuff build up inside. It gets to a point where you can't keep it under control. You got to let off the pressure or it'll explode. Bang! Know what I mean? Life is hard enough. Holding down the fort all by your lone­some is tough. And it's tough for me too. But the two of us», I think maybe we can understand each other. We can talk pretty honestly.»

She nodded.

«I can't force you. But if you want to talk, just call up. This has nothing to do with what your father and I dis­cussed. And try not to think of me as a big brother or some­thing. We're friends. I think we can be good for each other.»

Yuki didn't respond. She finished off her dessert and gulped down a glass of water. Then she peered over at the heavyset family stuffing their jowls at the next table. Mother and father and daughter and baby brother. All wonderfully rotund.

I planted my elbows on the table and drank my coffee, watching Yuki watch them. She was truly a beautiful girl. I could feel a small polished stone sinking through the darkest waters of my heart. All those deep convoluted channels and passageways, and yet she managed to toss her pebble right down to the bottom of it all. If I were fifteen, I'd have been a goner for sure, I thought for the twentieth time.

How could her classmates be so rotten? Was her beauty too much to be around everyday? Too pointed? Too intense? Too aloof? Did she make them afraid of her?

Well, she certainly wasn't cool like Gotanda. Gotanda had this remarkable awareness of the effect he had on oth­ers, and he held it in reserve. He controlled it. He never lorded it over people, never scared them off. And even when his presence had inflated to star proportions, he could smile and joke about it. It was his nature. That way everyone around him could smile along and think, Now there's one nice guy. And Gotanda really was a nice guy. But Yuki was different. Yuki was not nice.

She didn't have it in her to keep tabs on everyone else's emotions and then to fit her own emotions in without stomping on people. It was all she could do to keep on top of herself. As a result, she hurt others, which only hurt her­self. A hard life. A little too hard for a thirteen-year-old. Hard even for an adult.

I couldn't begin to predict what the girl would do from here on. Maybe she'd find a way to express herself, like her mother did, and make her way in art. Maybe she'd channel her powers into something positive. I couldn't swear to it, but like her father, I could sense an aura, a talent, in her. She was extraordinary.

Then again, she might become a perfectly normal eigh­teen-year-old. It wouldn't be the first time.

Humans achieve their peak in different ways. But who­ever you are, once you're over the summit, it's downhill all the way. Nothing anyone can do about it. And the worst of it is, you never know where that peak is. You think you're still going strong, when suddenly you've crossed the great divide. No one can tell. Some people peak at twelve, then lead rather uneventful lives from then on. Some carry on until they die; some die at their peak. Poets and composers have lived like furies, pushing themselves to such a pitch they're gone by thirty. Then there are those like Picasso, who kept breaking ground until well past eighty.

And what about me?

My peak? Would I even have one? I hardly had had any­thing you could call a life. A few ripples. Some rises and falls. But that's it. Almost nothing. Nothing born of nothing. I'd loved and been loved, but I had nothing to show. It was a singularly plain, featureless landscape. I felt like I was in a video game. A surrogate Pacman, crunching blindly through a labyrinth of dotted lines. The only certainty was my death.

No promises you're gonna be happy, the Sheep Man had said. So you gotta dance. Dance so it all keeps spinning.

I gave up and closed my eyes.

When I opened them again, Yuki was sitting across the table from me.

«You okay?» she said, concerned. «You looked like you blew a fuse. Did I say something wrong?»

I smiled. «No, it wasn't anything you said.»

«You just thought of something unpleasant?»

«No, I just thought that you're too beautiful.»

Yuki looked at me with her father's blank stare. Then silently she shook her head.

Yuki paid for dinner. Her father had given her lots of money, she informed me. She took the check over to the reg­ister, peeled a ten-thousand-yen note from a wad of five or six, handed it over to the cashier, then scooped up the change without even looking at it.

«Papa thinks that all he has to do is fork over money and everything's cool,» she said, piqued. «He's real dim. But that's why I can treat you today. Makes us even, kind of, right? You're always treating me, so fair's fair.»

«Thank you,» I said. «But you know, all this goes against classic date etiquette.»

«Huh?»

«On a dinner date, even if the girl is paying for it, she doesn't run up to the register with the bill. She lets the guy do it, then pays him back, or she gives him the money ahead of time. That's the way to do it. Males are very sensitive creatures. Of course, I'm not such a macho guy, so I don't care. But you ought to know that there are lots of sensitive fellows out there who really do care.»

«Gross!» she said. «I'll never go out with guys like that.»

«It's, well, just an angle on things,» I said, easing the Su­baru out of the parking space. «People fall in love without reason, without even wanting to. You can't predict it. That's love. When you get to the age that you wear a brassiere, you'll understand.»

«I told you, dummy. I already have one!» she screamed and pounded me on the shoulder.

I almost plowed the car into a dumpster, and had to stop. «I was only kidding,» I said. «It was a stupid joke, but you ought to give your laugh muscles some practice anyway.»

«Hmmph,» she pouted.

«Hmmph,» I echoed.

«It was stupid, that's for sure,» she said.

«It was stupid, that's for sure,» I said.

«Stop it!» she cried.

I was tempted not to, but didn't, and pulled the car out of the lot.

«One thing, Yuki, and this is not a joke. Don't hit people while they're driving,» I said. «You could get us killed. So date etiquette lesson number two: Don't die. Go on living.»

On the way back, Yuki hardly said a word to me. She melted into her seat, and appeared to be thinking. Though it was hard to tell if she was asleep or awake. She wasn't lis­tening to her tapes. So I put on Coltrane's Ballads that I'd brought along. She didn't utter a word, barely noticed any­thing was on. I hummed along with the solos.

The road was a bore. I concentrated on the taillights of the cars ahead. When we got onto the expressway, Yuki sat up and started chewing gum. Then she lit a cigarette. Three, four puffs and out the window it went. I was going to say something if she lit up a second, but she didn't. She could tell what was on my mind.

As I pulled up in front of the Akasaka condo, I announced, «Here we are, Princess.»

Whereupon she balled up her wad of gum in its wrapper and placed it on the dashboard. Then she sluggishly opened the car door, got out, and started walking. Didn't say good­bye, didn't shut the door, didn't look back. Okay, a difficult age, I thought. She seemed like a character out of Gotanda's movies. The sensitive, complex girl. No doubt, Gotanda could have played my part loads better than I did. And prob­ably Yuki would be head over heels in love with him. It wouldn't make a movie otherwise. Good grief, I can't stop thinking about Gotanda! I reached across her seat and pulled the door shut. Slam! Then I listened to Freddie Hub-bard's «Red Clay» on the way home.

After waking the next morning, I went to the train sta­tion. Before nine and Shibuya was swarming with com­muters. Yet despite the spring air, you could count the number of smiles on one hand. I bought two papers at the kiosk, went to Dunkin' Donuts, and read the news over coffee. Opening ceremonies for Tokyo Disneyland, fighting between Vietnam and Cambodia, Tokyo mayoral election, violence in the schools. Not one line about a beautiful young woman strangled in an Akasaka hotel. What's one homicide compared to the opening of a Disney theme park anyway? It's just one more thing to forget.

I checked the movie listings and saw that Unrequited Love had finished its run. Which brought Gotanda to mind again. I had to let him know about Mei.

I tried calling him from the pink phone in Dunkin' Donuts. Naturally he was out, so I left a message on his machine: urgent. Then I tossed the newspapers in the trash and headed home. Walking back, I tried to imagine why on earth Vietnam and Cambodia, two communist countries, should be fighting. Complicated world.

It was my day for catching up on things.

There were tons of things I had to do. Very practical mat­ters. I put on my practical-minded best and attacked things head-on.

I took shirts to the cleaners and picked some up. I stopped by the bank, got some cash from the atm, paid my phone and gas bills, paid my rent. I had new heels put on my shoes. I bought batteries for the alarm clock. I returned home and straightened up the place while listening to fen. I scrubbed the bathtub. I cleaned the refrigerator, the stove, the fan, the floors, the windows. I bagged the garbage. I changed the sheets. I ran the vacuum cleaner. I was wiping the blinds, singing along to Styx's «Mister Roboto,» when the phone rang at two.

It was Gotanda.

«Can you meet me? I can't talk over the phone,» I said.

«Sure. But how urgent is it? I'm right in the middle of a shoot right now. Can it wait two or three days?»

«I don't think it can. Someone's been killed,» I said. «Someone we both know and the cops are on the move.»

Silence came over the line. An eloquent silence as only Gotanda could deliver. Smart, cool, and intelligent. I could almost hear his mental gears whirring at high speed. «Okay, how about tonight? It'll have to be pretty late. That okay?»

«Fine.»

«I'll call you around one or two. Sorry, but I won't have one free minute before that.»

«No problem. I'll be up.»

We hung up and I replayed the entire conversation in my mind.

Someone's been killed. Someone we both know and the cops are on the move.

A regular mob flick. Involve Gotanda and everything becomes a scene from the movies. Little by little reality retreated from view. Made me feel like I was playing a scripted role. Gotanda in dark glasses, trench coat collar turned up, leaning against his Maserati. Charming. A radial tire commercial. I shook the image off and returned to my blinds.

At five, I walked to Harajuku and wandered through the teenybopper stalls along Takeshita Street. There was plenty of stuff inscribed with Kiss and Iron Maiden and AC/DC and Motorhead and Michael Jackson and Prince, but Elvis? No. Finally, after visiting several stores, I found what I was looking for: a badge that read elvis the king.

Then to Tsuruoka's for tempura and beer. The sun went down, the hours passed. My Pacman kept crunching away at the dotted lines. I was making no progress. Getting closer to nothing. Even as the lines seemed to be multiplying. But lines to Kiki were nowhere to be seen. I'd been sent off on detours. Energies expended on sideshows, never on the main event. Where the hell was the main event? Was there a main event?

Free until after midnight, I went to see Paul Newman in The Verdict. Not a bad movie, but I kept losing myself in thought and losing track of the story. I was expecting Kiki's naked back to appear on screen at any moment. Kiki, Kiki, what did you want from me?

The end credits came on and I left the theater, hardly hav­ing any grasp of the plot. I walked, stepped into a bar, and had a couple vodka gimlets. I got back home at ten and read, waiting for Gotanda to call.

I eventually tossed my book aside and lay back in bed. I thought about Kipper. Dead and buried, quiet in the quiet ground.

The next thing I knew the room was flooded with silence.

Waves of helplessness washed over me. I needed to rouse myself. I closed my eyes and counted from one to ten in Spanish, ending in a loud finito and a clap of the hands. My own spell to conquer helplessness. One of the many skills I'd acquired living alone. Without these tricks I may not have survived.