Free Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami Page A

what I can do today. What's your number up there?"
    I gave it to him.
    "Talk to you later," he said and hung up.
    I had a simple lunch in a cafe in the hotel. Then I went down to the lobby and saw that the young woman with glasses was behind the counter. I took a seat in a corner of the lobby and watched her. She was busy at work and didn't seem to notice me. Or maybe she did, but was playing cool. It didn't really matter, I guess. I liked seeing her there. As I thought to myself, I could have slept with her if I wanted to.
    There are times when I need to chat myself up like that.
    After I'd watched her enough, I took the elevator back to my room and read a book. The sky outside was heavy with clouds, making me feel like I was living in a poorly lit stage set. I didn't know when my ex-partner would call back, so I didn't want to go out, which left me little else to do but read. I soon finished the Jack London and started in on the Spanish Civil War.
    It was a day like a slow-motion video of twilight. Uneventful, to put it mildly. The lead gray of the sky mixed ever so slowly with black, finally blending into night. Just another quality of melancholy. As if there were only two col-ors in the world, gray and black, shifting back and forth at regular intervals.
    I dialed room service and had them send up a sandwich, which I ate a bite at a time between sips of a beer. When there's nothing to do, you do nothing slowly and intently. At seven-thirty, my expartner rang.
    "I got ahold of the guy," he said.
    "A lot of trouble?"
    "Mmm, some," he said after a slight pause, making it obvious that it had been extremely difficult. "Let me run through everything with you. I suppose you could say the lid was shut pretty tight on this one. And not just shut, it was bolted down and locked away in a vault. No one had access to it. Case closed. No dirt to be dug up anymore. Seems there might have been some small irregularities in govern-ment or city hall. Nothing important, just fine tuning, as they say. Nobody knows any more than that. The Attorney's Office snooped around, but couldn't come up with anything incriminating. Lots of lines running through this one. Hot stuff. It was hard to get anything out of anyone."
    "This concern of mine is personal. It won't make trouble for anyone."
    "That's exactly what I told the guy."
    Still holding the receiver, I reached over to the refrigerator to get another beer, and poured it into a glass.
    "At the risk of sounding like your mother, a word to the wise: If you're going to pry, you're going to get hurt," my ex-partner said. "This one, it seems, is big, real big. I don't know what you've got going there, but I wouldn't get in too deep if I were you. Think of your age and standing, you ought to live out your life more peaceably. Not that I'm the best example, mind you."
    "Gotcha," I said.
    He coughed. I took another sip of beer.
    "About the old Dolphin owner, seems the guy didn't give in until the very last, which brought him a lot of grief. Should've walked right out of there, but he just wouldn't leave. Couldn't read the big picture."
    "He was that type," I said. "Very untrendy."
    "He got the bad end of the business. A bunch of yakuza moved into the hotel and had a field day. Nothing so bad as to bother the law. They set up court in the lobby, and stared down anyone who walked into the place. You get the idea, no? Still, the guy held out for the count."
    "I can see it," I said. The owner of the Dolphin Hotel was well acquainted with misery in its various forms. No small measure of misfortune was going to faze him.
    "In the end, the Dolphin came out with the strangest counteroffer. Your guy told them he'd pack up shop on one condition. And you know what that was?"
    "Haven't a clue," I said.
    "Take a guess. Think, man, just a bit. It's the answer to one of your other questions."
    "On the condition that they kept the Dolphin Hotel name. Is that it?"
    "Bingo," he said. "Those were the terms, and that's what