Hard Rain

to look around or do anything else that might have
    seemed suspicious. I opened my mouth to say something to her,
    something any other excited beneficiary of an incipient lap dance might
    utter. But she made a face half scowl, half exasperation that stopped
    me. She raised a subtle index finger from the strap of her dress to
    the ceiling. Then she cocked her head slightly and shifted her finger
    to her ear.
    I got the message. People were listening, and watching.
    Not just here. At the table, too. That's why her responses had been
    so odd. She couldn't warn me there.
    And why she had looked angry tonight, I realized. Was I just the
    American accountant I had claimed to be, or at least a neutral party?
    If so, silence would be her safest course. Was I involved with
    Murakami, who frightened her? If so, silence, and certainly a warning
    like the one she had just given me, would be dangerous. I had
    inadvertently forced her to choose.
    But the detector hadn't buzzed at the table. Then I realized:
    Murakami. If the tables were monitored, they knew to turn off the
    equipment when the boss was around. Those would be the rules, and I
    imagined that no one would want a guy like Murakami finding out that
    they weren't being adhered to. And the last time I'd been here, the
    device hadn't been charged yet. That's why it hadn't warned me then.
    I reached into my pocket to switch off the unit, nodding to indicate I
    understood.
    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,