A Dog in Water by Kazuhiro Kiuchi

occurred to me. I finished getting dressed and left the office.
    I knew there was a small salon on the same side of the street as my office’s building, but I had never been inside. I usually patronized a barbershop in front of Nakano station.
    The instant I entered the salon a young female employee shrank back with an “Agh!” A middle-aged man wearing a huge nose guardwas utterly out of place in a stylish beauty parlor.
    “Could I trouble you for just a shampoo?”
    She took in the state of my face and my left hand and immediately put the pieces together. “Right this way,” she said with a charming smile. Unlike barbershops, a salon would have me lying face-up for a shampoo and keep my face from getting wet.
    I was a bit bashful at first by how close the young lady’s face was to mine, but I soon got used to it. It felt so good I nearly dozed off. When she asked if I itched anywhere, I simply replied no. Where I did itch was under my cast.
    As I left the salon feeling refreshed thanks to her fairly thorough job, my phone rang. It was my informant.
    “Where are you?”
    “Near the office. Just about to grab a bite to eat.”
    “Perfect. I’ll join you.” He gave the name of a restaurant nearby and hung up.
    The place was a snug Mexican joint located underground behind Shinjuku Koma Theater. I ordered an enchilada and a ginger ale. The informant was already sipping a Venezuelan beer with chorizo to go with it.
    “I got a call last night from the young lady.”
    “Yeah, on my recommendation.”
    “So she said. At any rate, are you dropping her case, telling her to go to another P.I.?”
    “No, I haven’t paid back this debt yet …” I pointed at my face.
    The informant looked at me with dismay. “Lemme ask you. Will you be doing this for your client? Or for yourself? Which?”
    I couldn’t answer. Not that I was holding back—I honestly wasn’t sure.
    “Geez. You’re not cut out for this P.I. gig.” He swigged his beer straight from the bottle. He seemed to be in lecture mode today.
    “Really? I think it’s my calling …”
    “Listen, a detective’s gotta be a cool spectator. Do nothing morethan what was asked of you and forget about the client as soon as the job is done. That’s the proper way to go about it since not all clients are saints. But you, you let yourself get sucked into their problems. You always make it personal.”
    I had never thought of it that way before. Was that how things looked from the sidelines?
    “The client might think of you as a good, dedicated detective, but if you ask me that’s not what occupations are about. You are the last man on earth who should be doing detective work.”
    The waiter brought our food to the table. The dish placed in front of the informant was something I’d never seen before.
    “Owner chef’s special. Not on the menu, but it’s the best thing they serve here. Try it.”
    Ground meat sautéed with eggs lay coated in what looked to be hot chili oil. I scooped up a spoonful and tasted it. It was indeed very good. The next instant, however, the back of my nose flared with intense pain. The informant was laughing as he piled some of the mixture onto a tortilla and happily tucked in.
    I silently returned to my own dish. My sense of taste was coming back compared to the day before. Maybe it was thanks to the morphine.
    As the informant continued eating heartily he dove back into his lecture. “Same goes for your face. I bet you think you get into fights now and then out of bad luck. You tell yourself it’s just part of being a detective. But that’s not it. You summon the violence.”
    I didn’t understand. Why would I want to do that? Not that I’m a pacifist, but I’m not the sort to seek out violence.
    “You probably don’t even realize it, but that’s why you quit the force, huh?”
    What was he talking about when he had no idea of the circumstances? I decided to ignore him and give my meal undivided attention.
    “I wouldn’t