Read Dance Dance Dance for Free Online Page B

buttered her toast.
    As I passed by their table, the girl glanced up at me. Then smiled. A more definitive smile than last night's. Unmistak-ably, a smile.
    I ate my breakfast alone and tried to think, but after that smile I couldn't focus. No matter what came to mind, the thoughts spun around uselessly. In the end, I stared at the pepper shaker and didn't think at all.

7

    There was nothing for me to do. Nothing I should do, and nothing I wanted to do. I'd come all this way to the Dolphin Hotel, but the Dolphin Hotel that I wanted had vanished from the face of the earth. What to do? I went down to the lobby, planted myself in one of the magnificent sofas, and tried to come up with a plan for the day. Should I go sightseeing? Where to? How about a movie? Nah, nothing I wanted to see. And why come all the way to Sapporo to see a movie? So, what to do? Nothing to do.
    Okay, it's the barbershop, I said to myself. I hadn't been to a barber in a month, and I was in need of a cut. Now that's making good use of free time. If you don't have any-thing better to do, go to the barber.
    So I made tracks for the hotel barbershop, hoping that it'd be crowded and I'd have to wait my turn. But of course the place was empty, and I was in the chair immediately. An abstract painting hung on the blue-gray walls, and Jacques Rouchet's Play Bach lilted soft and mellow from hidden speakers. This was not like any barbershop I'd been to—you could hardly call it a barbershop. The next thing you know, they'll be playing Gregorian chants in bathhouses, Ryuichi Sakamoto in tax office waiting rooms. The guy who cut my hair was young, barely twenty. When I mentioned that there used to be a tiny hotel here that went by the same name, hi response was, "That so?" He didn't know much about Sap-poro either. He was cool. He was wearing a Men's Bigi designer shirt. Even so, he knew how to cut hair, so I left there pretty much satisfied.
    What next?
    Short of other options, I returned to my sofa in the lobby and watched the scenery. The receptionist with glasses from yesterday was behind the front desk. She seemed tense. Was my presence setting off signals in her? Unlikely. Soon the clock pushed eleven. Lunchtime. I headed out and walked around, trying to think what I was in the mood for. But I wasn't hungry, and no place caught my fancy. Lacking will, I wandered into a place for some spaghetti and salad. Then a beer. Outside, snow was still threatening, but not a flake in sight. The sky was solid, immobile. Like Gulliver's flying island of Laputa, hanging heavily over the city. Everything seemed cast in gray. Even, in retrospect, my meal—gray. Not a day for good ideas.
    In the end, I caught a cab and went to a department store downtown. I bought shoes and underwear, spare batteries, a travel toothbrush, nail clippers. I bought a sandwich for a late-night snack and a small flask of brandy. I didn't need any of this stuff, I was just shopping, just killing time. I killed two hours.
    Then I walked along the major avenues, looking into win-dows, no destination in mind, and when I tired of that, I stepped into a cafe and read some Jack London over coffee. And before long it was getting on to dusk. Talk about bor-ing. Killing time is not an easy job.
    Back at the hotel, I was passing by the front desk when I heard my name called. It was the receptionist with glasses. She motioned for me to go to one end of the counter, the car-rental section actually, where there was a display of pam-phlets. No one was on duty here.
    She twirled a pen in her fingers a second, giving me a
    I've-got-something-to-tell-you-but-I-don't-know-how-to-say-I look. Clearly, she wasn't used to doing this sort of thing.
    "Please forgive me," she began, "but we have to pretend we're discussing a car rental." Then she shot a quick glance out of the corner of her eye toward the front desk. "Man-agement is very strict. We're not supposed to speak privately to customers."
    "All right, then," I