Dance Dance Dance

by Haruki Murakami

  We went back to the hotel. We swam. We showered. We went to the supermarket and bought fixings for dinner. We grilled the steak with onions and soy sauce, we tossed a salad, we had miso soup with tofu and scallions. A pleasant supper. Yuki even had half a glass of California wine.

  “You’re not such a bad cook,” Yuki said.

  “No, not true. I just put my heart into it. That’s the difference. It’s a question of attitude. If you really work at something, you can do it, up to a point. If you really work at being happy, you can do it, up to a point.”

  “But anything more than that, you can’t.”

  “Anything more than that is luck,” I said.

  “You really know how to depress people, don’t you? Is that what you call being adult?”

  We washed the dishes, then went out walking on Kalakaua Avenue as the lights were blinking on. We critiqued the merchandise of different offbeat shops, eyed the outfits of the passersby, took a rest stop at the crowded Royal Hawaiian Hotel garden bar. I got my requisite piña colada; Yuki asked for fruit punch. I thought of Dick North and how he would hate the noisy city night. I didn’t mind it so much myself.

  “What do you think of my mother?” Yuki asked when our drinks arrived.

  “Honestly, I don’t know what to think,” I said after a moment. “It takes me a while to consider everything and pass judgment. Afraid I’m not very bright.”

  “But she did get you a little mad, right?”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “It was all over your face,” said Yuki.

  “Maybe so,” I said, taking a sip and looking out on the night sea. “I guess I did get a little annoyed.”

  “At what?”

  “At the total lack of responsibility of the people who should be looking after you. But what’s the use? Who am I to get mad? As if it does any good.”

  Yuki nibbled at a pretzel from a dish on the table. “I guess nobody knows what to do. They want to do something, but they don’t know how.”

  “Nobody seems to know how.”

  “And you do?”

  “I’m waiting for hints to take shape, then I’ll know what action to take.”

  Yuki fingered the neck of her T-shirt. “I don’t get it,” she said.

  “All you have to do is wait,” I explained. “Sit tight and wait for the right moment. Not try to change anything by force, just watch the drift of things. Make an effort to cast a fair eye on everything. If you do that, you just naturally know what to do. But everyone’s always too busy. They’re too talented, their schedules are too full. They’re too interested in themselves to think about what’s fair.”

  Yuki planted an elbow on the table, then swept the pretzel crumbs from the tablecloth. A retired couple in matching aloha shirt and muumuu at the next table sipped out of a big, brash tropical drink. They looked so happy. In the torch-lit courtyard, a woman was playing the electric piano. Her singing was less than wonderful, but two or three pairs of hands clapped when her vocal stylings were over. And then Yuki grabbed my piña colada and took a quick sip.

  “Yum,” she exclaimed.

  “Two votes yum,” I said. “Motion passed.”

  Yuki stared at me. “What is with you? I can’t figure you out. One minute you’re Mister Cool, the next you’re bonkers from the toes up.”

  “If you’re sane, that means you’re off your rocker. So don’t worry about it,” I replied, then ordered another piña colada from a frighteningly cheerful waitress. She wiggled off, trotted back with the drink, then vanished leaving behind a mile-wide Cheshire grin.

  “Okay, so what am I supposed to do?” said Yuki.

  “Your mother wants to see more of you,” I said. “I don’t know any more than that. She’s not my family, and she’s as unusual as they come. As I understand her, she wants to get out of the rut of a mother-daughter relationship and become friends with you.”

  “Making friends isn’t so easy.”

  “Agreed,” I said. “Two votes not so easy.”

  With both elbows now on the table, Yuki gave me a dubious look.

  “And what do you think? About Mama’s way of thinking.”

  “What I think doesn’t matter. The question is, what do you think? You could think it’s wishful thinking on her part. Or you could think it’s a constructive stance worth considering. It all depends on you. But don’t make any rush decisions. You should take your time thinking it over.”

  Yuki propped her chin up on her hands. There was a loud guffaw from the counter. The pianist launched into “Blue Hawaii.” Heavy breathing to a tinkling of high notes. The night is young and so are we….

  “We’re not doing so well right now,” said Yuki. “Before going to Sapporo was the worst. She was on my case about not going to school. It was real messy. We hardly spoke to each other. I never wanted to see her. That dragged on and on. But then Mama doesn’t think like normal people do. She says whatever comes into her head and then she forgets it right after she’s said it. She’s serious when she says it, but after that she might as well have never said a thing. And then out of nowhere, she wants to play mother again. That’s what really pisses me off.”

  “But—,” I tried to interrupt.

  “But she is interesting. She isn’t like anybody else in the world. She may be the pits as a mother and she’s really screwed me up, but she is interesting. Not like Papa. I don’t really know what to think, though. Now she says she wants to be friends. She’s so … overwhelming, so powerful, and I’m just a kid. Anyone can see that, right? But no-o, not her. Mama says she wants to be friends, but the harder she tries, the more it hurts me. That’s how it was in Sapporo. She tried to get close to me, she actually tried. So I started to get closer to her. I tried, honest. But her head’s always so full of stuff, she just spaces out. And the next thing I know, she’s gone.” Yuki sent her half-nibbled pretzel out over the sand. “Now if that’s not loopy, what is? I like Mama. I guess I like her. And I guess I wouldn’t mind if we were friends. I just don’t want to have everything dumped back on me again like that. I hate that.”

  “Everything you say is right,” I said. “Completely understandable.”

  “Not for Mama. She wouldn’t understand if you spelled it all out for her.”

  “No, I don’t think so either.”

  The next day dawned with another glorious Hawaiian sunrise. We ate breakfast, then went to the beach in front of the Sheraton. We rented boards and tried to surf. Yuki enjoyed herself so much that afterward we went to a surf shop near the Ala Moana Shopping Center and bought two used boards. The salesclerk asked if we were brother and sister. I said yes. I was glad we didn’t look like father and daughter.

  At two o’clock we were back on the beach, lazing. Sunbathing, swimming, napping, listening to the radio and tuning out, thumbing through paperbacks, people-watching, listening to the wind in the palms. The sun slowly traveled its prescribed path. When it went down, we returned to our rooms, showered, ate some spaghetti and salad, then we went to see a Spielberg movie. After the movie we took a walk and ended up at the Halekulani poolside bar, where I had a piña colada again and Yuki her usual fruit punch.

  A dance band was playing “Frenesi.” An elderly clarinetist took a long solo, reminiscent of Artie Shaw, while a dozen retired couples in silks and satins danced around the pool, faces illuminated by the rippling blue light from below. A hallucinatory vision. After how many years, these people had finally made it to Hawaii. They glided gracefully, their steps learned and true. The men moved with their backs straight, chins tucked in, the women with their evening dresses swirling, drawing cheek-to-cheek as the band played “Moon Glow.”

  “I’m getting sleepy again,” said Yuki. But this time, she walked back alone. Progress.

  Returning to my room, I opened a bottle of wine and watched Clint Eastwood’s Hang ’Em High on the tube. By the time I was on my third glass, I was so sleepy I gave up on the whole thing and got ready to knock off. It’d been another perfect
Hawaiian day.

  And it wasn’t over yet.

  Five minutes after I’d crawled into bed, the doorbell rang. A little before midnight. Terrific. What did Yuki want now? I got myself decent and got to the door as the bell sounded another time. I flung the door open—only to find that it wasn’t Yuki at all. It was an attractive young woman.

  “Hi,” said the attractive young woman.

  “Hi,” I said back.

  “My name is June,” she said with a slight accent. She seemed to be Southeast Asian, maybe Thai or Filipino or Vietnamese. Petite and dark, big eyes. Wearing a sleek dress of some lustrous pink material. Her purse and shoes were pink too. Tied on her left wrist was a large pink ribbon. Gift-wrapped. She placed a hand on the door and smiled.

  “Hi, June,” I said.

  “I come in?” she asked, pointing behind me.

  “Just a minute. You must have the wrong party. Which room do you want?”

  “Umm, wait second,” she said and pulled a piece of paper from her purse. “Mmm, Mistah …” She showed me the note.

  “That’s me.”

  “No mistake?”

  “No mistake. But not so fast,” I said. “I’m the fellow you want, but I don’t know who you are. What’s going on?”

  “I come in first? Here people listen. People think strange things. Everything relax, no problem. No gun, no holdup. Okay?”

  True, we’d wake Yuki up if we continued talking in the corridor. I let June in.

  I asked her if she wanted something to drink. She’d have what I’d have. I mixed two gin-and-tonics, which I placed on the low table between us. She boldly crossed her legs as she brought the drink to her lips. Beautiful legs.

  “Okay, June, why are you here and what do you want?”

  “I come make you happy,” she said naturally.

  “Who told you to come?”

  She shrugged. “Gentleman friend who not want say. He already pay. He pay from Japan. He pay for you. Understand?”

  Makimura. It had to be Makimura. The way that man’s mind worked! What a world! Everyone wanting to buy me women.

  “He pay for all night. So we can enjoy. I very good,” June said, lifting her legs to remove her pink high heels. She then lay down on the floor, very provocatively.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t go through with this,” I interrupted her.

  “Why? You gay?”

  “No, I’m not gay. It’s a difference of opinion between me and the gentleman who paid for you. I’m afraid I can’t accept, June.”

  “But I get money. I cannot pay back. He care whether we fuck or not fuck? I don’t call overseas and say, ‘Yessir, we fuck three times.’ ”

  I sighed.

  “Let’s do it,” she said simply. “It feel good.”

  I didn’t know what to think. One foot in dreamland after a long day, then someone you don’t know shows up and says “Let’s fuck.” Good grief.

  “We drink one more gin tonic, okay?”

  I agreed somehow. June fixed our drinks, then switched the radio on. “Saiko!” June said, throwing in some Japanese for effect, relaxing as if she were at home. “Great.” Then sipping her drink, she leaned against me. “Don’t think too much,” she said, reading my mind. “I very good. I know very much. Don’t try do nothing, I do everything. Gentleman in Japan out of picture. Now just you and me.”

  June ran her fingers across my chest. My resolve was weakening steadily. This was beginning to seem quite easy. If I could just live with the fact that Makimura had bought me a prostitute. But it was only sex. Erection, insertion, ejaculation, that’s all folks.

  “Okay,” I said, “Let’s do it.”

  “Thatta boy!” exclaimed June, downing her gin-and-tonic.

  “But tonight I’m very tired. So no special stunts.”

  “I do everything. But you do two things.”

  “Which are?”

  “Turn off light, untie ribbon.”

  Done. We headed into the bedroom. June had her dress off in a flash, then set about undressing me. She may not have been Mei, but she was skilled at her job and she took pride in her skills. She was fingers and tongue all over me. She got me hard and then she made me come to the beat of Foreigner on the radio. The night had just begun.

  “Was that good?”

  “V-very,” I panted.

  We treated ourselves to another round of drinks.

  Suddenly I had a thought. “June, last month you wouldn’t have had a ‘Mei’ here, would you?”

  “Funny man!” June burst out laughing. “I like jokes. And next month she is July, right?”

  I tried to tell her that it wasn’t a joke, but it didn’t do any good. So I shut up. And when I did, June did another professional job on me. I didn’t have to do a thing, exactly like she said. I just lay there.

  She was as fast and efficient as a service station attendant. You pull up and hand over the keys. She takes care of everything else: fill up the tank, wash and wax, check the oil, empty the ashes. Could you call it sex? Well, whatever it was, we kept at it until past two when we finally ran out of gas and conked out. It was already light out when we awoke. We’d left the radio on. June was curled up naked next to me, her pink dress and pink shoes and pink ribbon lying on the floor.

  “Hey, get up,” I said, trying to rouse her. “You’ve got to get out of here. There’s a little girl coming over for breakfast.”

  “Okay, okay,” she muttered, grabbing up her bag and walking naked into the bathroom to brush her teeth and comb her hair.

  When she was ready to leave, she tossed her lipstick into her bag and closed it with a snap. “So when I come next?”

  “Next?”

  “I get money for three nights. We fuck last night, we fuck two more nights. Maybe you want different girl? I no mind. Men like sleep with lots girls.”

  “No, you’re who I want, of course,” I said, at a loss for what else to say. Three nights? Did Makimura want me milked dry?

  “You very nice. You no regret. I do wild next time. Okay? You count on me. Night after tomorrow, okay? I have free night. I do whole works.”

  “Okay,” I told her, handing her ten dollars for carfare.

  “Thank you, you very nice. Bye-bye.”

  I cleaned the place up before Yuki arrived, got rid of all the telltale signs, including the pink ribbon. But the moment Yuki stepped into the room a stern expression came over her face. She knew right away. I pretended not to notice her demeanor, whistling as I prepared the coffee and toast and brought them to the table.

  She didn’t say a word through breakfast, refused to respond to my attempts at conversation.

  Finally she placed both hands on the table and glared at me. “You had a woman here last night, didn’t you?” she said.

  “You really pick up on things, don’t you?” I tried to make light of the situation.

  “Who was she? Some girl you picked up somewhere?”

  “Oh c’mon. I’m not that good. She came here of her own doing.”

  “Don’t lie to me! Nothing happens like that.”

  “I’m not lying, I promise. The woman really did come here on her own,” I said. I tried to explain: The woman suddenly showed up and turned out to be a gift from her father. Maybe it was his idea of giving me a good time, or maybe he was worried and figured if I was sexually sated, I’d stay out of his daughter’s bed.

  “That’s exactly the kind of garbage he’d pull,” said Yuki, resigned but angry. “Why does he always operate on the lowest level? He never understands anything, anything important. Mama’s screwy, but Papa’s head is on ass backwards.”

  “Yeah, he’s totally off the mark.”

  “So then why’d you let her in? That woman.”

  “I didn’t know what was coming off. I had to talk with her.”

  “But don’t tell me you …”

  “It wasn’t so simple, I—”

  “You didn’t!” Yuki flew into a huff. Then, at a loss for what to say, s
he blushed.

  “Well, yes. It’s a long story. But the truth of the matter is, I couldn’t say no.”

  She closed her eyes and pressed her hands to her cheeks. “I don’t believe this!” Yuki screamed, her voice breaking. “I can’t believe you’d do such a thing!”

  “Of course, I refused at first,” I tried to defend myself. “But in the end—what can I say?—I gave in. It wasn’t just the woman, though of course it was the woman. It was your father and your mother and the way they have this influence on everybody they meet. So I figured what the hell. Also, the woman didn’t seem like such a bad deal.”

  “I can’t believe you’re saying this!” Yuki cried. “You let Papa buy a woman for you? And you think nothing of it? That’s so shameless, that’s wrong. How could you?”

  She had a point.

  “You have a point,” I said.

  “That’s really, really shameless.”

  “I admit it. It’s really, really shameless.”

  We repaired to the beach and surfed until noon. During which time Yuki didn’t speak a single word to me. When I asked if she wanted to have lunch, she nodded. Did she want to eat back at the hotel? She shook her head. Did she want to eat out? She nodded. After a bit more nonverbal conversation, we settled for hot dogs, sitting out on the grass by Fort DeRussy. Three hours and still not a peep out of her.

  So I said, “Next time I’ll just say no.”

  She removed her sunglasses and stared at me as if I were a rip in the sky. For a full thirty seconds. Then she brushed back her bangs. “Next time?!” she enunciated, incredulous. “What do you mean, next time?”

  So I did my best to explain how her father had prepaid for two more nights. Yuki pounded the ground with her fist. “I don’t believe this. This is really barfbag.”

  “I don’t mean to upset you, Yuki, but think of it this way. Your father is at least showing concern. I mean, I am a male of the species and you are a young, very pretty female.”

  “Really and truly barfbag,” Yuki screamed, holding back tears. She stormed off back to the hotel and I didn’t see her until evening.

  Hawaii.

  The next few days were bliss. A respite of peace.