Of course the boy starts whimpering that very second and arches off me toward his mother. She croons and kisses his cheek. He wraps his arms around her neck and pulls her breasts into my elbow. I freeze. She claims it always takes him a minute to wake up.
Shushing her boy, May-ling encircles us with her arms, puts her cheeks to his, and rocks. Soon, both their heads are on my shoulder. Jittery with excitement and dread, I'm coaxed into swaying with them. Their warmth melts into me, and this sustained, whole-body consciousness of another is not something I know. I touch my head to May-ling's. When she does not flinch, I breathe in her scent of sweet ginger, of sweat, of soured milk. BeiBei is a ball of heat between us. My neck is sticky with his perspiration, but lulled and slightly euphoric, I hold on tight.
May-ling cups BeiBei's head with a hand. "Say hi."
He arches back to regard me and sticks his fingers in my mouth. Kissing him again, she tells BeiBei that MaMa is going to the bathroom. She smiles as she peels herself away and waves. "Be right back."
BeiBei's mouth turns down and quivers. His eyes pool. I, too, feel a measure of loss.
We follow his mother out the studio and down the dark hallway.
His baby hand bangs on my mouth as he cries ba-ba. It sounds like he's calling me daddy.
"Be right baaaack," I correct him and shake my head like a New Year's dancing lion to make myself a more difficult target.
I don't know how much longer I can take his howling. He nearly pokes my eye out, and I chomp down on his fingers the next time his hand comes near. I flush when May-ling returns and finds my teeth clamped around her son's hand and him alternately wailing and calling me daddy.
"He likes you." She cuddles her child. "He calls everyone he likes BaBa."
BeiBei mouths his fingers and pouts at me from his motherly perch. When he mumbles ba-ba in between the sucking, she grins at me, delighted.
Back in my studio, BeiBei shrieks and covers his ears. His sneakered feet pound at his mother's stomach.
Cooing all the while, May-ling slips an arm below his knees and faces him away from her. She apologizes to me yet again. "I think it's the music."
He doesn't like music? It's not even loud.
"I think the beat is too agitating."
There goes all my planning. What can I do but turn off the merengue? I cross my arms and stand a distance away. I thought we had something, a special connection, the hots for each other even. I thought the two of us were in cahoots, securing a date without going through the proper channels. It turns out she's the one who's pulled a fast one on me. May-ling has apologized repeatedly, but not once has she said sorry for bringing BeiBei.
He nearly falls out of her arms lunging for the ground. His squat legs motor toward the stability balls. He crashes into the largest one, knocking it off the rack. The thing is bigger than him.
"You found a purple ball!" May-ling claps as if he's managed the impossible. She touches my wrist and asks if it's all right for him to play with it.
Before I can answer, BeiBei pushes another off its perch. May-ling stops it from rolling away and asks what the balls are for.
"I'll show you." I set one behind me, rest a foot on it, and put my hands on the ground. There is an extremely difficult maneuver—the ball pike—that I planned on executing for her. Toes balanced on the ball, my toned ass up in the air, every muscle taut—it is a dazzling display of masculine strength.
I hear another ball thump to the floor, and May-ling stops watching me in order to corral it. She bounces the thing. "Let's play."
BeiBei does not listen. He goes for the kettlebell next. When it refuses to budge, he pulls with two hands and makes as if to sit down. My heart skips a beat as I tumble off my ball and lunge for the sixteen-kilo weight.
BeiBei sees my hand on his toy and starts bawling again. He pushes me away and tries again to dislodge it. I brace his back so he does not pull the weight on top of himself. On the rack, there are a half a dozen more kettlebells with which he can off himself. I lift him up, f ly him through the air like an airplane. I even make the whooshing noises.
May-ling beams at us and spreads her arms to zoom alongside. "Isn't this fun?"
Eyes still wet, BeiBei looks alarmed, but game. We careen around the room, and he tries to grab the dangling lat pull-down bar. I allow him to bat it and hop back every time the bar swings at his face.
"You're good with kids," May-ling says.
Good at not allowing them to maim themselves on my turf. I wonder if all this is a test. I wonder, too, if I like her enough to go through the trouble of passing.
I say, "Why did you give me your number like that?"
That good-humored glint is back in her eyes. She cants a shoulder. "I like you."
BeiBei twists toward the ground, and I ease him down. He approaches a stack of weights, pushes his finger into their pin slots. I kneel next to him, pick up the chained pin, and show him how to slide it in.
I look up at May-ling. "You make up your mind awfully fast."
"I'm a very good judge of people."
I arch an eyebrow, not sure whether to be flattered or alarmed by her impulsivity.
"Really." She bugs her eyes out at me. "You glow green."
"What?"
"The air around you is green. It's kind of a halo effect. My favorite people—BeiBei, my best girlfriends—they're all green."
"You like people because of a color no one else sees?"
"It confirms what I feel in my gut. It's never wrong," she says. I've yet to see her this serious. "There's something between us. Tell me you don't feel it."
I feel lust is what I feel. I pull the pin out of BeiBei's mouth. "What do you see in me?"
She considers my question. "A kindred loneliness. A gentle heart." Her eyes zero in on me. "A false front."
I frown. "Is your second husband green as well?"
Her smile is tight. "He's really smart. A genius."
Yeah, a clueless genius. "Why'd you marry him?"
She is quiet for a second. "I don't regret it." She strokes the downy swirl atop her son's head.
I pause as well, trying to process her seeming honesty. "And Husband One?"
She tsks good naturedly at the name. "He's green."
I do not like her answer one bit.
The floor of my studio is littered with elastic bands, foam blocks, ping-pong balls, paper cups. Tired of luring BeiBei away from one dangerous situation after another, I sit him on my shoulder and usher May-ling into my movement studio. Maybe the boy can entertain himself in the mirrors.
"What's this?" May-ling approaches the table in the corner crowded end-to-end with beef empanadas, shrimp croquettas, pork cubanos, and rum cake.
"I was hoping that you'd teach me to merengue. Hence the music that we shut off. And this lunch is supposed to complement the Latin dancing." I rest my head ruefully on BeiBei's thigh. She should know what she's missing.
"You did all this for us?"
For you, you dumb egg, I want to say.
She approaches us and tugs on BeiBei's foot. "Look! Yum, yum."
A male voice calls out from my outer studio.
"BaBa is here!" May-ling exclaims to BeiBei. She scampers to the door.
Husband One comes floating in with a tray of supermarket sushi and kisses Mayling's cheek before handing it to her. He stretches his arms up, and BeiBei kicks off my shoulder leaping for a hug. That this old goat commands such affection from this child, a child who is most likely not his Biological, makes me see red. That he comes to a gym in yet another impeccable wool suit pisses me off further. I feel like a naked midget next to him.
He sees my spread in the corner and grins. "Great minds think alike." He pumps my hand. "I'm so glad you called. It's so much better for us to get to know each other without intermediaries."
So, he's a cheapskate, and a sneaky one at that. "Our matchmaker is a longtime client of mine." He is no such thing, but I want to see Husband One's reaction. I have no in
tention of stiffing anyone.
"He's great. He's become a good friend." This guy is smooth.
May-ling tells Husband One, "Wei-guo wants us to show him how to dance. He's got music, and the Cuban food is to set the mood. Isn't that nice?"
Husband One's eyes light up with an enthusiasm uncharacteristic of the man I met at lunch. "We haven't danced in such a long time." Asking me to crank the music, he hands BeiBei to May-ling and sheds his blazer.
"BeiBei hates music," I say.
"No such thing." Oozing sex appeal, he glides toward May-ling in his blindingly white shirt. A panther on the prowl.
I could have let it go, but I make him take off his shoes.
"Of course," he says. "That's how your floor stays so shiny."
They sandwich BeiBei and begin to shimmy. They look practiced. Sleek. Like they belong together.
Feeling like a dunce, I crank the stereo like I'm told, pounding it out louder than I can stand. Four fingers in his mouth, BeiBei drools between them, unperturbed. Happy even. They sway, dipping him side to side. Like the matchmaking site says, I might as well not exist.
Husband One spins May-ling out, pauses, and eyes me. "Come on. Join us."
"I'm not much of a dancer," I say. That was the line that I rehearsed last night— the line I was going to utter with great humility and then prove wrong—but sud denly the words cannot be more true. "I should go see if, uh," I stall, unable to recall his name, "your other husband is lost outside."
May-ling tells me he's at work and drags me by both hands to the center of the floor. Still holding on, she stares into my eyes as flirtatious as ever and shows me how to take side steps, to lead with my ribcage and then hips. Husband One circles us with BeiBei, modeling the move. She tells me I'm doing the merengue and repositions my right hand on her side just below her breast and straightens my left arm. My face is hot; my hands, shaky; my armpits, gushing. She encourages me to feel the music. To let go.
Just as I get the hang of it, Husband One noses in. May-ling wraps an arm around him, BeiBei on his shoulder between them. She drapes her other on me. Husband One does the same. Together, they smile at me.
"Okay. Let's go left first," he says. "Count of ten."
Their steps sweep me sideways. Husband One keeps count and encourages me to hold on to them. There is nowhere to put my hand except around his waist. Lest I be thought uncooperative, or worse—slow—I back up as much as possible and complete the stifling circle. My face is on fire. My limbs are granite. I hardly know how to move. Where to look.
"Close your eyes," May-ling says.
I cannot be more grateful to shut them out.
"Ribcage then hips," Husband One chants.
I block out his feline grace, loosen my neck, and try to feel the music again. I concentrate on my ribs and my hips, the rhythmic step and drag of my feet. I bump into Husband One as our circle changes direction. He steadies me.
"You move like an athlete," he says.
I suspect that he's making fun of me, but the corners of his eyes crinkle with warmth.
"I'm so glad you want to dance," he continues. "You remind me that the joy dancing evokes, this togetherness, this intimacy, this common direction and built-in safety net, all this is very much what I envision for our family."
His rhapsodizing reminds me of the little tidbit I learned last night to impress May-ling: Merengue originated in cane fields among slaves who danced, dragging one foot, because they were ankle-chained.
I ask if he likes athletes. "Physical types." Like me.
"Very much so. Athletes know discipline and hard work. They've learned to play fair."
A dense workhorse is what he wants.
He pauses and catches my eye this time before leaning and easing me in the opposite direction. I can't deny that I feel invited, that he has extended his hand multiple times. I flash to my fathers practicing qigong together at dawn, challenging each other to chess every night. To their decade of steady companionship after MaMa died.
BeiBei wants down, and Husband One lowers him to the floor.
"You want to dance, too?" he trills to the little guy.
He and May-ling hold the boy's hands, and they show him how to step one foot and drag the other. His butt wiggles in imitation. He squeals as we lean into each other ten times to the right, ten times to the left.
Quickly bored by the subtleties of merengue, BeiBei's short legs churn. He leads the circle, pushing up against his mother. Our steps hurry into a shuffle, and soon, we too give up on the dance. We let go of shoulders and waists and hold hands instead to give BeiBei room to roam. May-ling catches my gaze as we gallop faster and faster, round and round. My neck and shoulders loosen. The orchestra drums and pounds inside me. In the mirrors around us, we are a whirl of red, white, and black, of big smiles and open faces. BeiBei's laughter rings and fills my space, and at a lower register, I hear myself join in.
* * *
LAST DAY AT THE ICE MAN CAFÉ
M. Bennardo | 2508 words
M. Bennardo is the author of over forty published short stories. He is also editor of the Machine of Death series of anthologies. The second volume, This Is How You Die, is now available from Grand Central Publishing. His latest tale takes us on a bittersweet visit to the...
Janice turned as Ulno entered the café again from the back door, dragging the now-empty garbage cans behind him after a trip to the dumpster. "Carol doesn't really think that you're the ice man," she said.
"No?" asked Ulno distractedly. Janice and Carol were perched together at adjacent stools on the counter. The clock on the wall drearily pointed to 10 A.M., and seemed to have been stuck in the same spot for hours. The Coca-Cola calendar underneath it was open to August 1974.
Not a customer had been in the place all morning and barely a car had even been seen on the road outside—but that's the way it was now, ever since the new freeway bypass had connected Helena to Missoula, making this stretch of the highway redundant.
"I guess I don't talk about it much."
"What?" shrieked Carol. "You are not the ice man!"
Ulno scrubbed his hands in the big steel sink in the kitchen and then slowly shuffled around to lean on the opposite side of the counter from the women, his thick, hairy arms with their faded Army tattoos resting on the pale blue Formica surface. Janice looked back at him—her lips closed in silent amusement. Beside her Carol remained young, incredulous, defiant.
"What did you think all that stuff was?" Ulno finally asked. Then he jerked his head toward the front of the café where dusty cases held the old caribou-skin parka, the half-disintegrated boots, the flint arrowheads, and assorted other artifacts.
Carol looked no less incredulous. "That's just a bunch of replicas—a bunch of tourist-trap doo-dads, because the ice man was found around here." Her eyes looked into Ulno's face, and a moment later, she softened in confusion. "Isn't it?"
Janice's gaze drifted out the café window for a moment, out into the bright Montana morning. The bulk of Mt. Rebo rose up and climbed up away out of the window frame. Somewhere out there, out of view just now, lay its white peak and the three small glaciers resting against the deep rills cut in its side.
Ulno cleared his throat, apparently eager to change the subject. "Last day before we close up for good," he said. "Why don't we just get out of here and go somewhere fun instead?"
"But where?" asked Carol.
Ulno jabbed his thumb vaguely into the air behind him. "This whole place is mine, you know. Government issued on account of original ancestral claims. We can go anywhere as far as the eye can see."
"I never knew that," said Janice.
Ulno shrugged again. "I guess I don't talk much about that either."
Ulno's jeep rattled down the dirt track that ran behind the café, deep into the back country away from the highway. Great clouds of fine red dust billowed up from under the tires. Carol sat in the passenger seat next to Ulno with her hair tied up in a scarf. Janice was in the back,
leaning against the side, trying to keep the dust out of her face. She could barely hear Ulno and Carol talking up front.
"So, you've seen a woolly mammoth?" Carol asked.
Ulno nodded agreeably. "Sure."
"And saber toothed tigers?"
"A couple." Ulno shifted gears as he took a turn. "They weren't that common around here."
"And you were frozen?" asked Carol. She said the last word like it was some kind of shameful event. "For how long?"
Ulno shrugged. "Ten thousand, twelve thousand years? Long enough anyway."
Janice suddenly leaned forward into the conversation. "That's how he lost his fingers," she said dryly.
Ulno laughed and looked down at his right hand as it clung to the steering wheel.
The tips of his index and middle fingers were gone, leaving stumps of skin. "Sure," he said. "Froze right off."
"Other things too," added Janice.
Ulno laughed again, louder. "Absolutely," he said. "Destroyed my pride and joy. Like a Hemingway hero."
Carol pursed her lips and sat back with a harrumph. "You guys are putting me on."
"We're not," laughed Janice. "I promise we're not."
Later, they were sitting under the shadow of Mt. Rebo, eating the ham sandwiches and drinking the Coca-Colas that Janice had packed for lunch. A little waterfall tumbled down into a pool of clear water nearby, cliff swallows swooping and diving for bugs over it, chasing their invisible prey in and out of the shade.
"So, wait," said Carol, halfway through her sandwich. "If you're really the ice man, thawed out and all that, then why are you running a diner in the middle of nowhere Montana? Why aren't you doing something important?"
Ulno was lounging against a damp mossy rock, his hands clasped over his stomach. "I didn't do anything important before. And getting frozen in a glacier doesn't exactly qualify you for a position of responsibility." He belched contentedly. "Besides, I like it here."
"No, but I mean, why aren't there scientists and archaeologists looking for you all the time? Don't they want to ask you questions?"
"They did. Sometimes they still do. But by the time I got back from Vietnam, they mostly seemed to have lost track of me."
Asimov's Science Fiction: February 2014 Page 14