by Lia London
Maybe the cosmic signal meant things would align for his good after all.
“You got a date? Five dates?” Charlene practically danced beside herself with glee.
“Are you completely missing the point that I freed my car from the towing company?”
“But dinner dates!”
“It’s a job, Charlene. Not a date.”
Charlene refused to be dissuaded from her enthusiasm. “No, no. You have to tell me more. Is he cute? Is he nice? Is he funny? Tell! He must be loaded if he forked over that much dough like it was nothing.”
Amaya stared at the contents of her fridge, her lips twisted in thought. “He’s borderline hot, has a personality like a dead history professor, and only smiled once.”
“He’s rich and hot?” Charlene squealed and jumped up from the couch to join her. “What are you going to wear? Where are you going first?” She snatched out a carton of cottage cheese, cracked it open, and sniffed. “Can you bring home leftovers?”
“Do they do doggie bags in fancy restaurants?”
“I don’t know. Oh my gosh, this is so cool!”
“You’re weird, Charlene.”
“You’re lucky! I wish Jenelle recommended me! I can ballroom dance.”
“Maybe she was afraid you’d do that in public,” said Amaya, pointing to Charlene’s full cheeks and curd-covered lips.
“Whaa?” mumbled Charlene through her food. “I can use silverware. I even know which one is the salad fork.” She swallowed and pantomimed choosing a utensil. “You work from the outside to the inside if there’s more than one fork or knife. Each course moves in towards the dish.”
“I’ll text you from the table if I get lost.” Amaya shut the fridge door and opened the cupboard where they housed their dry goods. “I don’t love the feeling that Jenelle doesn’t want me at rehearsals. How am I going to learn the—”
“Amaya, you are taking this all wrong. She’s not saying she doesn’t want you at rehearsals. She’s saying she doesn’t need you there. That’s probably because you already know the parts.”
Amaya failed to hide a smile. “You’re too generous in your praise.”
“Shut up. You know you know the parts.” Charlene scraped the last of the cottage cheese from the carton and brandished the laden spoon. “And there’s no guarantee you’ll ever even get to dance them. You’ve got a sure thing here with actual money—a lot of easy money—and all you can think about is drilling moves for a performance you’ll probably never do.” Charlene waved the empty carton at her. “Girl, why can’t you just go have a little fun? It’s free food, and you said he was hot.”
With a yawn, Amaya lifted the fruit bowl on the counter and peeked behind it. “Not as hot as I am ambitious.” She set the bowl back down and opened the silverware drawer. “How could he be rich? I mean he dresses rich. He acts rich. But he’s a newspaper guy. Aren’t they all starving just like dancers?”
“Whatever. Maybe he inherited wads of cash or an oil drill.” Charlene dropped the remains of her snack into the sink and headed towards the bathroom. “If you want your one love in life to be the dance floor, that’s your choice, but I think you’re nuts.”
Before Amaya could come up with a crushing reply, Charlene turned on the faucet, drowning out her words with the rush of water.
Amaya raised her voice. “Have you seen my phone?” She lifted the sofa cushions for the third time in her fruitless search.
Emerging from the bathroom with a mouthful of toothpaste, Charlene wagged her finger in a wide No. “Ith nah ih ya bah?”
“Not last time I checked.” She rifled through her backpack one more time.
Charlene hurried to spit out the foaming toothpaste in the bathroom sink and called out, “Why were you searching for your phone in the fridge? I swear, you lose that thing at least once a week!”
“I know, but I need to check my email. Grumbleygut was going to send the details of the first dinner date.”
Charlene’s brows jumped up. “You called it a date. Admit it, Amaya. This job might be fun after all, since he’s cute.”
“Uh-huh.” She’d been around too many gorgeous jerks during her brief stint with Who Wants to Be a Soap Star. Celebrities were the worst, and this Grumbleygut character clearly fancied himself famous.
She paused in her search long enough to admit his jerk-ness differed. Not lecherous. Just stuck-up. She’d survive. “Seriously. I need the email.”
Charlene came out, pulling a hoodie down over her tank top. “Here’s a novel idea. Use the computer. It’s that thing over there on the desk we use to hold the junk mail.” She swept the shiny car dealership brochures and internet provider post cards onto the floor and wiggled the mouse to wake up the screen.
Amaya slumped. “I don’t know my password.”
Charlene stared at her. “Then how do you check your email?”
“I have everything preset on my phone.” Amaya shrugged. “Who knows anyone’s number or passwords?”
Charlene dragged her hand down her face. “Honestly, how does the most talented woman ever to walk the planet not remember where her phone is or what her email passwords are?” She danced like a floppy marionette. “Look at me. I’m Amaya Jefferson. I can memorize 128 counts of intense dance moves in five minutes, but I don’t know where I parked my car.”
Amaya air-slapped her. “It’s right outside, thank you very much.”
“No. Thank Grumblebutt very much. He’s the one that bailed you out.” Charlene wrinkled her nose in a taunt. “I bet you don’t know where the keys are.”
“Anyway …” Amaya didn’t want to talk about her tendency to lose things. “What should I do?”
“Google him.” Charlene started typing. “How many Frank Grumbleyguts could there possibly be? I mean, how many parents would be that cruel?” The screen changed to reveal her search results. “There.” She sat down and clicked the first site listed. “Wow.”
“Wow, what?” Amaya knelt beside her, reading. “Oh. Wow.”
Frank heard his professional email notification beep and braced himself for another angry restaurateur’s tirade. His eyes widened with delight to see an email from AmayaJ90 instead.
Hello Mr. Grumbleygut,
Thank you again for your generosity. My boss, Jenelle Berk, verified that you are a legit writer whom I can trust and has given me permission to schedule our dates as needed.
However, I am afraid I accidentally deleted the email you sent with the details, so I am contacting you through your website. I hope you get this in time. Please call me at the dance studio where we met to iron out the details. (I’ll put the number below.) I will be there tomorrow from 4 to 6:30.
Thank you,
Amaya Jefferson
Frank swelled with pride. She contacted him through his professional website. That had to be good. If she searched him on the internet, maybe she had been impressed after all. Surely, she would be after seeing the site.
He reread her email. Not terribly articulate, but her punctuation and spelling were correct. He’d hired her to dance, not write.
Drumming his fingers on the back of his phone, he debated again whether to go see her live. He knew they could make the dinner date arrangements over the phone, but he wanted to see her again before that. Even just to appreciate her feline grace from a distance.
No. No entanglements. They never worked out. He would call her at work and keep everything professional.
***
Unable to resist, Frank showed up at 4:05 as a class with a dozen teenagers began. He sidled along the wall to the parental seating area and took the chair on the end.
A giant pear of a woman with short-cropped, gray hair inched her face upward from her phone without actually extracting her eyes from the screen. “Hi.”
“Hello.” Frank ventured a try at small talk. “Has your child been studying with Miss Jefferson long?”
“My granddaughter? Not so long. Maybe five weeks. She loves it, though. Grea
t deal.”
“She enjoys the teacher?”
The woman’s expression changed, wobbling between curiosity and irritation. “You Amaya’s boyfriend or something?”
Surprised, Frank opened his mouth to speak, turning at the same time to face the dance floor. In that moment, Amaya spotted him with shocked recognition. He faltered into a forced laugh. “I am not so fortunate. Ours is a professional relationship.”
“Oh.” The woman resumed her focus on her phone, and Frank gave a sheepish smile to Amaya.
Her eyebrows briefly questioned him, but she seemed to give up the inquiry and offered him a flutter-fingered wave before returning to the task of warming up her students’ muscles by putting them through an inhuman array of stretches and strides across the floor.
Frank’s pride told him Amaya’s excellent posture and gracious rapport with the youth was part of a show to impress him, but no one showed the slightest alarm at her demeanor. Maybe she genuinely carried herself that well?
Though his eyes remained fixed on Amaya’s movements, his inner vision blurred, and he was transported back to his own youth and the longings he had nurtured to find moments of culture like this in his poor, working-class family. He would have inhaled a chance to take a class from someone like Amaya, and here she was, offering it to the low-income kids of east Multnomah County.
He blinked hard, forcing back a bitter tear. Dance had been only one of the points of contention between himself and his parents. The mutual disdain had grown with each passing year. They wanted him to roll up his sleeves and find “real work”. He wanted them to pick up a book or do something—anything—to bring a little refinement to their home.
If he hadn’t spent so many hours in the library learning of the world beyond blue-collar careers, maybe he could have been content, but once his eyes had been opened to the beauties of the Fine Arts and literature, there was no turning back, no matter how impractical they were for earning a living.
And yet Amaya had found a way to bridge the gap in her own life, and now the lives of her students. He focused again on the present and delighted in what he saw before him.
Two and a half hours passed without Frank noticing the hardness of the metal chair, the coldness of the room, or the stench of youthful dancers working hard. He saw only a beautiful and gifted teacher encouraging teens beyond their comfort zone. Their jubilance when they mastered a new portion of the piece lifted his spirits, and twice he inadvertently applauded before catching his faux pas.
At length, the last parents and siblings shuffled out of the dance studio and into the black night, leaving him alone on the bank of chairs. Amaya, who personally complimented each student as they left, now turned towards him with her arms folded across her chest.
“Should I be creeped out that you froze your butt off in an old strip mall studio all afternoon just to give me details about a dinner date?”
She called it a date.
Frank waited for his heart to beat again before rising. “I guess I thought I’d catch you between classes, but then became distracted. You do impressive work here.”
A faint smile softened her features, and she let her arms drop. “Well thank you. It’s the kids that do all the work.”
For a moment, he watched her approach, a sleek vision of grace in a blue sweatshirt and paisley leggings. He swallowed as she sat down with a chair between them. Even casually folded, her legs moved like water pouring from a fountain.
He sat down again. “You push them hard.”
“Yeah, they need it. They need to believe in themselves, and that comes from doing hard things.” She rested her elbow on the back of the chair. “Sorry if I stink. I was thinking we’d have to work around class schedules if you need me ready by an early hour. I promise you’ll want me to have time to get home and showered up.”
He crossed his legs and cleared his throat, holding back a chuckle at her candor. “Yes, we can arrange that.”
“Were you trying to do more than two nights a week?”
She sounded desperate to keep their contact to a minimum. “Do you have a preference?”
“Not Saturdays.” Her eyes flitted to the ceiling high above, as if reading her schedule there. “That way I won’t be tired on Sunday mornings when I go to church with Grammy.”
A church girl. With a ‘Grammy’.
“All right.”
“So, do we meet up at the various places? How does this work?”
He hesitated. “We can. I prefer not to arrive on the scene dawdling around like I’m waiting for my companion. It’s … awkward.”
“Right. The restaurant people figure you’re on a date? Do they know you’re coming to critique them?”
“Not always.”
She nodded. “Surprise for them.” Something in her expression hinted that she pitied the owners. “When do we start?”
“Tomorrow night?” He felt a rush of anticipation at the thought. “I can retrieve you at your home, or …”
“I don’t know about that.” She held up a hand. “Forgive me, but I don’t usually let men I don’t know find out where I live. If you want us to come into the restaurant together, I can meet you near the place.”
“Somewhere inside.”
“Of course.”
He held back a squirm. “What if we have trouble connecting? Do you need my cell phone number?”
“Yeah, that would probably be good.” She hesitated, then rose and crossed to a dented metal cupboard near the main door. “I hate to sound so crass about this, but don’t I need to fill out some W-2s or something? To make this official?”
“Oh.” Frank used his practiced breathing method to stem the rise of heat. “You are not officially hired by the syndicate.”
“You’re my boss?” The glint in her eyes showed amusement.
“In a manner of speaking.”
She let out a squeak of delight, and for a moment, he wondered what she meant by it, but then she held up her phone. “Found it!” She held up the phone, poised to enter the information. “All right. What’s your number, and where are we meeting tomorrow night?”
Amaya had almost warmed up to Frank when he ruined it with a stupid comment.
“This is a five-star restaurant we’re going to.”
“Yes.”
He squinted at her pointedly. “I assume you know how to dress and behave in such a place?”
Amaya balled her fists on her hips with a heavy-lidded glare. “I’ll be sho’ to pick the straw out o’ mah hair an’ shine mah bes’ sneakers.”
“There’s no need to be ridiculous.” He sniffed, his eyes glinting with anger. “It wasn’t a racist comment. It was a … concern about your formal dining experience.”
She managed not to show her contempt. How had she been so rude to someone willing to pay her so crazy much money for eating and dancing? For such an easy gig, she could play nice.
“I apologize.” She glanced down at her attire. “You are seeing me in my work clothes for my day job. I will wear a nice dress and heels, complete with tasteful accessories for the night job.”
“Thank you.”
She could sense his rooster feathers falling back into place. “I’ll meet you in the little bar on the corner at 7:50.” She pointed to the location on the map on her tiny screen.
Frank nodded. “Don’t be late. We have reservations.”
“I understand. I never miss a cue.”
“Right. Good night, Miss Jefferson.” He cleared his throat again and exited the studio.
Charlene’s ringtone sounded three seconds later, and Amaya answered. “Hey, I’m just closing up shop.” She slung her backpack over her shoulder and crammed the key into the sticky old lock. “You’ll never guess who showed up and scrutinized my every move tonight.”
“Not Jenelle.”
“No, that would have been easier.”
“Yikes. Who?”
“Mr. Fancypants.”
“Grumbleygut?”
“The same. He shows up and plants himself in the end chair and stares at me the whole dang time.”
“Well, he got a good show.”
Amaya smiled. Charlene kept her skittish ego well-fed. Walking briskly, she crossed the tiny parking lot, now mostly empty. “As he’s leaving, he implied I wouldn’t know how to dress for a nice restaurant. Who does he think he is?”
“A famous food critic?”
“Oh, come on, I’ve been on Brock Adrian’s yacht, sipping champagne, for crying out loud.”
“On TV.”
“So? I pulled it off, didn’t I?”
“Swimmingly.”
“Anyway, it was all I could do to keep myself from hauling out my sass on him.” She bit her lip and paused by her car. “Actually, I did, but I wanted to say, ‘I can fake being civilized enough for your rich company. Will you be able to act like you’re not a pretentious pig?’ Honestly!”
Charlene snorted.
“Don’t you go all piggy on me, Char.”
“Har har. See you in a bit.”
Amaya disconnected and slipped the phone into the outer pocket of her backpack as a smoky blue Lexus crept past her and eased out onto the street.
Chapter 4 ~ The Arabesque
The clouds hung like gray pea soup, ready to burst and drench Frank’s best suit. Although he hadn’t scheduled the most glamorous establishment first, he wanted to make a good impression on the waiters, because gossip would spread through town by the time he reached the second stop, and he wanted everyone to recognize him as a class act.
If he were honest with himself, he also hoped to impress Amaya. Though accidental, overhearing Amaya’s phone call in the parking lot had cut a hole in his chest, making room for more self-doubt to seep in.
Or maybe the sad, soggy feeling was the humidity. Oregon springs always felt wet even when the rain stayed in the sky.