A Lonely Resurrection

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, though in fact it was better than that. Much better.
    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,