She finished moving the strap away and slipped her arm through it, then slowly performed the identical action on the opposite side. She crossed her arms. Her nostrils were flaring slightly with her breathing. She paused for a moment. Then, still scowling, her body rigid, she moved her arms to her sides. The dress slid down, past her breasts, past her belly, gathering in black ripples at her waist.
“You can touch with your hands,” she said. “Only above the waist.”
I stood, keeping my eyes on hers. I leaned forward and put my mouth to her ear. “Thanks for the warning,” I whispered.
“Don’t thank me,” she whispered back. “It’s not as though you left me any choice.”
“I’m not with these people.”
“No? You were fighting tonight, weren’t you?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Your face is scratched. And I understood Murakami’s joke about your ‘workout.” ’
Adonis must have dented me a little. I hadn’t even noticed.
“You know about those fights?” I asked.
“Everyone knows about them. The fighters come in here afterward and brag. Sometimes they act like we’re deaf.”
“I wasn’t there voluntarily. I work out at a dojo, some people invited me to a fight. I didn’t know what it was all about. Turned out I wasn’t there to eat. I was supposed to be the main course.”
“Too bad for you,” she whispered.
“If you think I’m with these people,” I said, “why are you talking to me now? Why did you warn me about the listening devices?”
“Because I’m as stupid as you are.” She took a step back and looked at me, her hands on her hips, her chin high. She raised her eyebrows and smiled. “Are you afraid to touch me?”
I watched her face. What I wanted was information, not a damn lap dance.
“You’re afraid even to look?” she asked, her smile taunting.
I held her eyes for another moment, then let my gaze go south.
“You like what you see?” she asked.
“It’s okay,” I said after a moment, although in fact it was much better than that.
She turned around and pushed back against me, leaning forward slightly as she did so, molding the back of her body to the front of mine.
I realized suddenly that this was a game I could only lose.
She put her hands on her knees and moved her hips from side to side. The friction from her ass assumed a prominent place in my consciousness.
“You like that?” she asked, looking over her shoulder.
“It’s okay,” I said again, my voice lower this time, and she laughed.
“It feels like you like it better than ‘okay,’ no?”
“I want to talk to you,” I said. I noticed I had put my hands on her hips. I removed them.
“So talk,” she said, pressing into me harder. “Say anything you like.”
She was trying to divert me. She didn’t want to talk and I didn’t know how to make her.
She arched her back and pushed her ass higher. A shadow formed like a dark pool in the cleft of her lower spine.
“Anything you like,” she said again.
The shadow waxed and waned in time to her movements.
“Cut it out, damn it,” I whispered. My hands were on her hips again.
“But you like it,” she cooed. “I like it, too.”
Disengage, I thought. But my hands stayed put. They were moving now. I watched them as though from afar. The sound of fabric against flesh was loud in the enclosure.
She’s playing you, I thought.
Then: The hell with it. You’re supposed to be acting like an ordinary customer, anyway.
I dropped to one knee, sliding my hands down to the backs of her thighs as I did so, then stood again, my hands sweeping the dress upward en route. She was wearing a black thong. The dress dangled slightly above it, gathered at her lower back. I gripped the dress in one hand like a bridle and took hold of her ass with the other.
“Only above the waist,” she said, smiling over her shoulder, her cool voice in counterpoint to the heat in my head and gut. “Or I have to call the doorman.”
I felt a surge of anger. Let it go, I thought. Just get out of here. Like you should have before this bullshit began.
I removed my hand from her ass and took a step back, but my anger got the better of me. Still gripping the dress with one hand, I swiveled my hips in and delivered a hard spank to her exposed right cheek. There was a loud slap! and she yelped, jerking away from me as though from an electric shock.
She spun and faced me, one hand on her wounded posterior. Her eyes were wide, her nostrils flared with shock and anger. In my peripheral vision I saw her weight shift to her back leg, and thought she was going to try for a ball shot with her forward foot.
Instead, she stepped back. Her arms slipped to her sides and she drew up her shoulders and chin, the picture of suppressed regal rage. She looked at me.
“Mo owari, okyakusama?” she asked, as contemptuously as she could. Are we finished, honorable customer?
“Was that against the rules?” I asked, smiling into her eyes.
She pulled up the dress and slipped her arms through the straps. Her face was still red with anger, and I couldn’t help admiring her composure in controlling it. She managed the zipper without assistance, then said, “That was three songs, so thirty thousand yen. And you should tip the doorman ten percent. Ken?”
Ken must have been the Nigerian, because a second later the semicircular sofa was pulled aside and there he was. I took out my billfold and paid each of them.
“Thank you,” I said to Naomi. I beamed like a well-satisfied customer. “That was… special.”
She smiled back in a way that made me glad she didn’t have a weapon. “Kochira koso,” she replied. The pleasure was mine.
She escorted me back to my seat. I switched the unit back on en route. Murakami and Yukiko were waiting for us.
“Yokatta ka?” Murakami asked me, showing me the false teeth. Good?
“Maa na,” I told him. Good enough.
He took Yukiko’s hand and started moving away. “We’ll discuss our business another time,” he said.
“When?”
“Soon. I’ll find you at the dojo.”
He didn’t like to make appointments any more than I did. “Morning? Evening?” I asked.
“Morning. Soon.” He turned to Naomi. “Naomi, shikkari mendo mite yare yo.” Take good care of him, Naomi. Naomi bowed her head to show that she most certainly would.
Murakami and Yukiko left. A minute later the detector started buzzing-continuous, so audio only. I’d been right about the house rules.
Naomi and I made small talk for a few minutes for the benefit of the microphones. Her tone was cool and correct. I knew our little encounter hadn’t turned out quite the way she had planned, but she had managed to distract me from my questions, which was what she had really been after. Probably she was telling herself that the fight had been a draw, that she could settle for that.
What she didn’t know was that it had only been round one.
I told her I was bushed and had to go. “Come back anytime,” she said with a sarcastic smile.
“For another one of those lap dances?” I asked, returning the smile. “Absolutely.”
I walked up the stairs and out onto Gaienhigashi-dori. When I got to the street a horn tooted. I saw Yukiko driving by in a white BMW M3, Murakami in the passenger seat. She waved, then disappeared onto Aoyama-dori.
It was just past one in the morning. The club closed at three. Naomi would be heading home at some point thereafter.
I’d done the computer check. I knew where home was. The Lion’s Gate Building, Azabu Juban 3-chome.
The trains had already stopped running. I doubted that she’d have a car: keeping one in the city is too expensive and the trains go everywhere, anyway. Getting home would mean a taxi.