_OceanofPDF.com_Dance_Dance_Dance_-_Haruki_Murakami

“Yup, you gotta let the pressure out. If you don’t, it builds up inside
your head.” I made an over-inflated balloon with my arms.
She nodded silently as she fiddled with her ring again, removing it
from her finger, then putting it back.
“Tell me, do you even believe my story? About the sixteenth floor
and all?” she whispered, not raising her eyes from her fingers.
“Of course I believe you,” I said.
“Really? But it’s kind of peculiar, don’t you think?”
“That may be, but peculiar things do happen. I know that much.
That’s why I believe you. It all links up somewhere, I think.”
She puzzled over that a minute. “Then you’ve had a similar
experience?”
“Yeah, at least I think I have.”
“Was it scary?” she asked.
“No, it wasn’t like your experience,” I answered. “No, what I mean
is, things connect in all kinds of ways. With me …” But for no reason I
could understand, the words died in my throat. As if someone had
yanked out the telephone line. I took a sip of whiskey and tried again.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know how to put it. But I definitely have seen my
share of unbelievable things. So I’m quite prepared to believe what
you’ve told me. I don’t think you made up the story.”
She looked up and smiled. An individual smile, I thought, not the
professional variety. And she relaxed. “I don’t know why,” she said,
“but I feel better talking to you. I’m usually pretty shy. It’s really hard
for me to talk to people I don’t know, but with you it’s different.”
“Maybe we have something in common,” I laughed.
She didn’t know what to make of that remark, and in the end didn’t
say anything. Instead, she sighed. Then she asked, “Feel like eating?
All of a sudden, I’m starving.”
I offered to take her somewhere for a real meal, but she said a snack
where we were would do.
We ordered a pizza. And continued talking as we ate. About work at
the hotel, about life in Sapporo. About herself. After high school, she’d
gone to hotelier school for two years, then she worked at a hotel in
Tokyo for two years, when she answered an ad for the new Dolphin
Hotel. She was twenty-three. The move to Sapporo was good for her;