Haruki Murakami - Dance Dance Dance

Silence.

«I don't like it when people watch me while I'm working. It makes me nervous and I start making mistakes. I could feel your eyes on me the whole time.»

«Sorry, I won't stare at you again,» I said. «I was only watching you to give myself confidence. I didn't think you'd get so nervous. From now on I'll be more careful. Where are you calling from?»

«Home,» she answered. «I'm just about to take a bath and go to bed. You extended your stay, didn't you?»

«Uh-huh. Business got postponed a bit.»

Another short silence.

«Do you think I'm too nervous?» she asked.

«I don't know. It's a different thing for everybody. But in any case, I promise not to stare again. I don't want to ruin your work.»

She thought it over a second, then we said good night.

I hung up the phone, took a bath, and stretched out on the sofa reading until eleven-thirty. Then I dressed and stepped out into the hall. I walked it from one end to the other. It was like a maze. At the farthest recess was the staff elevator, a little hidden from view, next to the emergency staircase. If you followed the signs pointing past the guest rooms, you came to an elevator marked freight only. I stood before it, noting that the elevator was stopped on the ground floor. No one seemed to be using it. From speakers in the ceiling came the strains of «Love Is Blue.» Paul Mauriat.

I pressed the button. The elevator roused itself and started to ascend. The digital display registered the floors—1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6—slowly but surely advancing, to the rhythm of the music. If someone was in the elevator, I could always plead ignorance. It was a mistake guests were probably making all the time. 11, 12, 13, 14—and rising steadily. I took one step back, dug my hands in my pockets, and waited for the doors to open.

15—the count stopped. There was a moment's pause, and not a sound, then the door slid open. The elevator was empty.

Awfully quiet, I thought to myself. A far cry from that wheezing contraption in the old hotel. I got in and pressed 16. The door shut, soundlessly, again, I felt a slight move­ment, and the door opened. The sixteenth floor. Bright, fully lit, with «Love Is Blue» flowing out of the ceiling. No dark­ness, no musty odor. For good measure, I walked the entire floor from end to end. It proved to have the exact same lay­out as the fifteenth. Same winding hallways, same inter­minable array of guest rooms, same vending machine alcove midway along, same bank of guest elevators.

The carpet was deep red, rich with soft pile. You couldn't hear your own footsteps. In fact, everything was resound­ingly hushed. There was only «A Summer Place,» probably by Percy Faith. After getting to the end, I turned around and walked back halfway to where the guest elevators were and took one down to the fifteenth floor. Then I went through the whole routine all over again. Staff elevator to the six­teenth floor, where there was the same, perfectly ordinary, well-lit floor as before. And it was still «A Summer Place.»

I gave up and went down to the fifteenth floor again, had two sips of brandy and hit the sack.

At dawn, the black changed back to gray. It was snowing. Well now, I thought, what do I do today?

As usual, there wasn't anything to do.

I walked in the snow to Dunkin' Donuts, chewed on a couple doughnuts, and read the morning paper as I sipped my coffee. I skimmed through an article about local elec­tions. I looked through the movie listings. Nothing I particu­larly wanted to see, but there was this one film featuring a former junior high school classmate of mine. A teen angst movie by the title of Unrequited Love, with an up-and-com­ing teenage actress and an up-and-coming teenage singer. I could guess the sort of role my classmate would play: hand­some, young teacher with his wits about him, tall, slim, all-around athlete, girls swooning all over him. Naturally the lead girl has a crush on him. So she spends Sunday baking cookies and takes them to his apartment. But there's a boy who's got his eyes on her. Average boy, kind of shy, . . . Typi­cal. I could see the movie without seeing it.

When this classmate of mine became an actor, I went to see his first few films, partly out of curiosity. But before long I didn't bother. Every movie was straight out of the same mold, and every role he had was basically the same: tall, handsome, athletic, clean-cut, often a student at first, then later teacher or doctor or young elite salaryman, adored by the girls around him. He had perfect teeth, a charming smile. Very suave. Though still not anything you'd want to pay money to see. Now I'm not a snob who only goes to see Fellini or Tarkovsky. No, not by any means. But this guy's films were the pits. Low-budget productions with cliche plots and mediocre dialogue, movies you could tell even the directors didn't care about.

Although, come to think of it, in real life the guy had been pretty much like the parts he played. He was nice enough, but who actually knew anything about him? We were in the same class during junior high school, and once we shared the same lab table on a science experiment. We were friendly. But even back then he was too nice to be real—just like in his movies. Girls were already falling all over him. If he talked to them, their eyes would go moist. If he lit a Bunsen burner with those graceful hands of his, it was like the opening ceremony of the Olympics. None of the girls ever noticed I was alive.

His grades were good too, always first or second in the class. Kind, sincere, friendly. It didn't matter what kind of clothes he wore, he always looked neat and clean. Even when he took a leak, there was something elegant about him. And there's hardly a male around who looks elegant when pissing. Of course, he was good at sports, active in school government. There was talk that he had a thing going with the most popular girl in the class, but no one knew for sure. All the teachers thought he was great, and on Parents' Day all the mothers would be enchanted with him too. He was just that type. Though, like I said, it was hard to know what the guy was thinking.

His life was practically right out of the movies.

Why the hell would I pay money to go see a movie like that?

I tossed the newspaper into the trash and walked back to the hotel in the snow. In the lobby, I glanced at the front desk, but my friend was nowhere to be seen. I went over to the video game corner and played a couple rounds of Pacman and Galaxy. Nerve-racking. Games like those bring out the aggression in people. But they do kill time.

After that I went back to my room and read.

The day was impossible to get a handle on. When I got tired of reading, I looked out the window at the snow. It snowed the entire day. I found it inspiring that a sky could actually snow this much. At twelve o'clock I went down to the cafe for lunch. Then I returned to my room and read and watched the snow. But the day wasn't a complete loss. Around four o'clock, while I lay in bed reading, there was a knock on the door. It was my receptionist friend, standing there in glasses and light blue blazer. Without waiting for me to open the door any wider, she slipped into the room like a shadow and shut the door.

«Hotel policy. If they catch me here, I'm fired,» she said quickly.

She looked around the room and sat down on the sofa, straightening the hem of her skirt at her knees. Then she breathed a sigh. «I'm on my break now,» she said.

«I'm going to have a beer. Want something to drink?» I asked.

«No thanks. I don't have too much time. You've been holed up inside here all day, haven't you?»

«I didn't have anything special to do. I'm just whiling away the hours, reading and watching the snow,» I said.

«What's the book?»

«It's about the Spanish Civil War. The whole history, from beginning to end. Full of innuendo.» To be sure, the Spanish Civil War was rich in historical suggestion. It was a real old-fashioned war.