Dance Dance Dance

42

I had a dream about Kiki. I guess it was a dream. Either that or some act akin to dreaming. What, you may ask, is an «act akin to dreaming»? I don't know either. But it seems it does exist. Like so many other things we have no name for, existing in that limbo beyond the fringes of con­sciousness.

But let's just call it a dream, plain and simple. The expression is closest to something real for us.

It was near dawn when I had this dream about Kiki.

In the dream as well, it was near dawn.

I'm on the phone. An international call. I've dialed the number that Kiki apparently left me on the windowsill of that room in downtown Honolulu. Beepbeepbeep beep beepbeep beepbeep ... I can hear the phone lines connect­ing. I'm getting through. Or so I think. The numbers are linking up in order. A brief interval, a short dial tone. I press the receiver to my ear and count the muffled reports. Five, six, seven, eight rings. At the twelfth ring, someone answers. And in that instant, I'm in that room. That big, empty death chamber in downtown Honolulu. It seems to be daytime. Noon, judging from the light pouring straight

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down through the skylight. Flecks of dust dance in these upright shafts of light, bright as a southern sun and sharp as gashes from a knife. Yet the parts of the room without light are murky and cold. The contrast is remarkable. Like the ocean floor, I'm thinking.

I'm sitting on a sofa there in the room, receiver at my ear. The telephone cord trails away over the floor, across a dark area, through the light, to disappear again into the gloom. A long, long cord. Longer than any I've seen. I've got the phone on my lap and I'm looking around the room.

The furniture in the room is the same as it was. The same pieces in the same places. Bed, table, sofa, chairs, TV, floor lamp. Spaced unnaturally apart. And the room has the same smell as before. Stale and moldy, a shut-in air of disuse. But the six skeletons are gone. Not on the bed, not on the sofa, not in the chair in front of the TV, not at the dining table. They've all disappeared. As have the scraps of food and plates from the table. I set the telephone down on the sofa and stand up. I have a slight headache. The kind you get when there's a high-pitched hum in your ears. I sit back down.

I detect a movement from the farthest chair off in the gloom. I strain my eyes. Someone or something has gotten up and I hear footsteps coming my way. It's Kiki. She appears from out of the darkness, cuts across the light, takes a chair at the dining table. She's wearing the same outfit as before. Blue dress and white shoulder bag.

She sits there, sizing me up. She is quiet, her expression tranquil. She is positioned neither in light nor in darkness, but exactly in between. I'm about to get up and go over to her, but have second thoughts. There's still that slight pain in my temples.

«The skeletons go somewhere?» I ask.

«I suppose,» says Kiki with a smile.

«Did you dispose of them?»

«No, they just vanished. Maybe you disposed of them?»

Eyeing the telephone beside me, I press my fingers to my temples.

«What's it mean? Those six skeletons?»

«They're you,» says Kiki. «This is your room. Everything here is you. Yourself. Everything.»

«My room,» I repeat after her. «Well, then, what about the Dolphin Hotel? What's there?»

«That's your place too. Of course. The Sheep Man's there. And I'm here.»

The shafts of light do not waver. They are hard, uniform. Only the air vibrates minutely in them. I notice it without really looking.

«I seem to have rooms in a lot of places,» I say. «You know, I kept having these dreams. About the Dolphin Hotel. And somebody there, who's crying for me. I had that same dream almost every night. The Dolphin Hotel stretches out long and narrow, and there's someone there, crying for me. I thought it was you. So I knew I had to see you.»

«Everyone's crying for you,» says Kiki, ever so softly, in a voice to soothe worn nerves. «After all, that whole place is for you. Everyone there cries for you.»

«But you were calling me. That's why I went back, to see you. And then from there ... a lot of things started. Just like before. I met all sorts of folks. People died. But, you did call me, didn't you? It was you who guided me along, wasn't it?»

«It wasn't me. It was you who called yourself. I'm merely a projection. You guided yourself, through me. I'm your phan­tom dance partner. I'm your shadow. I'm not anything more.»

But I wasn't strangling her, I was strangling my shadow. If only I could choke off my shadow, I'd get some health.

«But why would everyone cry for me?»

She doesn't answer. She rises, and with a tapping of foot­steps, walks over to stand before me. Then she kneels and reaches out to touch my lips with her fingertips. Her fingers are sleek and smooth. Then she touches my temples.

«We're crying for all the things you can't cry for,» whis­pers Kiki. Slowly, as if to spell it out. «We shed tears for all the things you never let yourself shed tears, we weep for all the things you did not weep.»

«Are your ears still. . . like they were?» I'm curious.

«My ears—,» she breaks off into a smile. «They're in per­fect shape. The same as they were.»

«Would you show me your ears again, just one more time?» I ask. «It was an experience like I've never known, as if the whole world was reborn. In that restaurant that time, you knocked me out. I've never forgotten it.»

She shakes her head. «Maybe sometime,» she says. «But not today. They're not something you can see at any moment. It's something to see only at the right time. That was a right time. Today is not. I'll show you again sometime, when you really need it.»

She stands back up and into a vertical shaft of illumina­tion from above. She stays there, her body almost decompos­ing amid the specks of strong light.

«Tell me, Kiki, are you dead?» I ask.

She spins around in the light to face me.

«Gotanda thinks he killed me,» says Kiki.

«Yes, he does. Or he did.»

«Maybe he did kill me. For him it's like that. In his mind, he killed me. That's what he needed. If he didn't kill me, he'd still be stuck. Poor man,» says Kiki. «But I'm not dead. I just disappeared. I do that. I move into another world, a differ­ent world. Like boarding a train running parallel. That's what disappearing is. Don't you see?»

No, I don't, I say.

«It's simple. Watch.»

With those words, Kiki walks across the floor, headlong toward the wall. Her pace does not slacken, even on reach­ing the wall. She is swallowed up into the wall. Her foot­steps likewise vanish.

I keep watching the wall where she was swallowed up. It's just a wall. The room is silent. There's only the specks of light sifting through the air. My head throbs. I press my fin­gers to my temples and keep my eyes on the wall. When I think of it, of that time in Honolulu, she'd vanished into a wall too.

«Well? Simple enough?» I hear Kiki's voice. «Now you

try.»

«You think I can?»

«I said it's simple, didn't I? Go ahead, give it a try. Walk straight on as you are. Don't stop. Then you'll get to this side. Don't be afraid. There's nothing to be afraid about.»

I grab the telephone and stand up, then walk, dragging the cord, straight toward the wall where she disappeared. I get wary as the wall looms up, but I do not slacken my pace. Even as I touch the wall, there is no impact. My body just passes through, as it might a transparent air pocket. Only the air seems to change a bit. I'm still carrying the telephone as I pass through and I'm back in my bedroom, in my own apartment. I sit down on the bed, with the phone on my lap. «Simple,» I say. «Very, very simple.»

I put the receiver to my ear, but the line is dead.

So went the dream. Or whatever it was.