Dark of Night

by T. F. Walsh

  It took a long time for their breathing to fall into the steady rhythm of relaxation. Curtis didn’t draw out right away. He softened inside Izzy, enjoying the residual warmth and the gentle pulse of her body. Hand resting gently around her throat, his thumb stroked the tendon he’d never nibbled. She drooped, lazed along the cradle he made of his body. When he did move — difficult as his sapped energy made him feel like he waded through honey — he kept her comfortable and kissed the spot in the middle of her shoulder blades and flipped onto his back.

  “Can I hop in your shower before I head out?” Clear-Skies rippled at the pull of longing in Curtis’s gut. The wolf didn’t want to leave either.

  “Sure,” Izzy said, a hint of a smile at her lips. “That is unless you planned to lick your balls and pee in the corner.”

  Curtis’s lashes lowered and he laughed a private laugh before launching out of bed. “Your corners are safe from me.” He ambled to the bathroom, his heavy cock swaying with his stride.

  • • •

  Izzy left the shower to Curtis, comfortable in pajama bottoms, a loose tank and the clinging scents of sex for the moment. She gathered the clothes he’d pitched in the corner, stale from two days of continuous wear, and yelled through the cracked bathroom door if he wanted his things washed. He consented, the shower spray muffling his words, and she puttered out front with a large bundle of clothes tucked under her left arm. Absent the warmth and steam of the shower against her face, the front rooms were chilly. Hiking up the thermostat, she ventured to the utility room and shook out their jeans next to the washing machine.

  Curtis’s cell phone flew from his pocket and clattered on the hardwood floor.

  “Shit.” Izzy swiped back her hair and bent for the device, anxious she’d busted it. Images of her crushed smart phone and its pricey replacement flashed in her mind. The cell landed in an upside down vee and stood up like a pup tent. She snatched it up as two texts came through, strings of characters populating the green screen before she could flip it closed.

  You there?

  She more important than us?

  Squinching her eyes closed, Izzy snapped the phone shut and pursed her lips. The lighted text burned colors on the backs of her lids. She squeezed the cell and set it on the dryer. Single-handedly, her chores so practiced without her prosthetic that she was as fast with it on or off, she emptied thick, blue detergent into the already running wash and let the lid slam shut. She found Curtis’s jacket and wallet on the coffee table and placed his phone next to them, glaring at it like a treacherous thing as she plunked down on the couch.

  She hadn’t snooped, had she? She hadn’t meant to read it. It was an accident. Not like the text had to be about her anyway, and if it was it was Curtis’s problem and he wasn’t treating her like it was. Better to forget it. She hadn’t done anything wrong and asking him about it would be nosy and clingy and a perfect example of everything she hated about herself.

  “Pondering the secrets of the universe?”

  Jerking her head from her hands, Izzy stared at the tan, towering man framed by the hall entrance to her bedroom. Covered only in a white towel wrapped around his waist, he stretched his arms overhead, his shadowed navel peeking above the terrycloth.

  “I’m all wet,” he said, slicked back his damp hair, and drummed his fingers on his taut stomach.

  “You’ll be dry when your clothes are. If you’re going to sit, make sure you do it on the towel,” Izzy said.

  “Yes, ma’am.” He saluted her and adjusted his thick sarong. The towel opened for a quick flash of his groin before he draped the cloth around his hips, rolling the top edge for security.

  “You are standing in front of a window,” Izzy said as he strolled to the couch and took a seat. He propped his feet on the coffee table, crossing them at the ankle.

  “No one saw.” Curtis picked up the remote and switched on the TV, somehow finding a basketball game in under three clicks.

  Izzy leaned against the armrest and stared past his feet. “Your phone was making a lot of racket.”

  “Was it?” Curtis’s brows came together and he leaned forward for his cell. Whipping it open, his eyes scanned the logged texts with an impassive expression. He closed the phone on his chest and let it rest there where it rose and fell with his breath. “Good times never last,” he muttered and rubbed his eye.

  “Lodge stuff?” The words escaped her lips before she pinched them shut.

  “They can get by without me,” Curtis said without humor.

  “If you have to leave now, I can dump your stuff in the dryer.”

  “No,” he said. “Leave it. They can wait.”

  Izzy reclined against the cushions. Maybe the messages really hadn’t been about her, but if they had she was glad to be more important than whatever or whoever awaited Curtis at the lodge. Sinking into his side, she watched the game, her eyes taking in movement and color while her mind wandered to her duties for the coming week. She switched their clothes from machine to machine and when the dryer’s alarm buzzed, her chest got a little heavy. Her weekend guest pulled on his clothes in the utility room and tossed the damp towel in the hamper. He scratched the back of his neck.

  “Will you think about coming up next weekend?”

  Izzy nodded while Curtis shrugged on his coat at her door.

  “Give me a call sometime this week so I have an excuse to stop working, ok?” he asked.

  “All right,” Izzy said and Curtis took her by the cheeks and placed a noisy kiss on her forehead. He disappeared down the hall, the clomp of his boots on the stair and his booming voice when he greeted someone below lingered in his absence. When she shut the door, she was very aware of how empty her apartment was even with the noise of the surrounding residents on a Sunday afternoon.

  Chapter Nine

  Crisis at the Glazier Studio meant Izzy soon forgot the ominous texts from persons unknown. Mimi Sims, cast as Clara, fractured her ankle at softball practice and showed up to class Tuesday evening on crutches, her damaged foot stuck in a big, blue boot. She swore she’d be fine in time for the performance, but a call to her parents revealed doctor’s orders were four weeks with the walking aids and an additional two weeks to a month of rest without. No sports or strenuous activity. There were tears and tears when Izzy informed Mimi’s understudy Suzanne — Su-zahn, the girl stressed whenever anyone got it wrong — she’d take over the part. Izzy placated Mimi by making her the understudy coach. By the end of class, Mimi beamed with her power over her understudy and Suzanne was red faced over the girl’s admittedly harsh corrections. Choreography needed changing. Suzanne didn’t carry the same exuberance as Mimi. She’d need a lot of Izzy’s attention in the coming month.

  Tuesday evening also marked Arty’s return. The bum shambled back and forth on the other side of the studio’s picture windows. Izzy closed the blinds and called the cops. She must have checked the door locks six times while she shut the studio down. Arty was gone when she emerged but came back Wednesday morning when she opened. A Styrofoam cup of coffee gripped in his chapped and palsied hands shook, spilling dark brown liquid on his coat sleeves and the pavement. He knew enough not to get too close and mumbled near incoherent apologies for his botched mugging before holding his hand out for change. Izzy remained tight lipped and shut herself inside the studio, warming up for her ten A.M. class.

  The Montessori school down the street booked her early Wednesday and Friday slots. There was no real structure needed for classes geared for three to four years olds, just freeform movement and dance games. Izzy thought they might like to play with the big parachute at the end of the hour and yanked the wadded fabric out of the storage closet at the back of the girls’ changing room.

  Class flew by with shrieking toddlers swaying in the studio like tiny trees and flitting beneath the ballooning parachute before it touched the fl
oor. Anyone trapped underneath became a “parachute bug” and had the cloth billowed around them to their squealing delight.

  Izzy nabbed an early lunch after the toddlers, led by over- caffeinated, highly animated teachers, paraded out of the studio. Two private sessions with girls prepping auditions for summer intensives followed that afternoon. She thought at least one of them had a good chance. The other needed another year of hard work and significant improvement. When her evening classes ended, she finally had a spare moment to go over calls she’d missed on the studio’s answering machine and to note two missed calls on her cell. One came from her therapist, the other from Curtis.

  Izzy called Dr. Turner back, confirming their nine P.M. appointment then stared at her phone for the next five minutes, her thumb hovering over the “call back” button next to Curtis’s missed call. In lieu of conversation, she sent him a text.

  Sorry, I can’t call. Dr.’s appt.

  His reply came quick.

  This late?

  Therapy, she answered. Call you tomorrow?

  Sure. Night!

  Texting brought a taste of Curtis’s infectious good nature to mind and an emptiness behind Izzy’s sternum yawned wide. She’d kept herself so busy she hadn’t had time for thoughts of him or what a good time they’d had together. How he fit comfortably in her schedule, insinuating himself in her heart and life as though he’d always been there and merely returned after an extended absence. She scowled at her phone. Who was he to barge into her life and why did she let him? Since when did she need anybody? She’d gotten over Alan’s death and her arm and her whole life unraveling all on her own. Nothing should have changed.

  Izzy recalled the pride that warmed her last Sunday while she and Curtis had watched the game. When he’d chosen her over his problems at the lodge, she’d had the same sense of satisfaction that came after she’d mastered a difficult balance or turn. Healthy validation came from within. That it came from his estimation of her was an enormous red flag.

  • • •

  The suite of offices Dr. Janet Turner shared with her associates was almost a second home, but the comforting atmosphere never banished Izzy’s trepidation at sharing her innermost secrets and blackest thoughts. Confession was hard no matter how much you did it, and she’d done therapy for years. She’d spent a significant bout of childhood and adolescence on a couch discussing her once debilitating anxiety and quicksand depressions, her fits of self-deprivation and obsessive rituals, ballet included. All those offices and doctors melded into one innocuous, slap-dash memory like a smeared oil painting, the therapists and their surroundings all calming and without personality. Even the waiting room of the Couppola building’s psychotherapy suite was different.

  Dim lighting prevailed, but there was no innocuous, soft music piped from overhead speakers or a stereo concealed behind potted ferns and rubber plants. Art covered the walls. And not the pay-no-attention-to-us watercolor prints or framed Klimt posters bearing the artist’s name in dominant, serif capitals. Paintings stacked upon paintings and decorative masks and relief sculpture tiled the wall in a haphazard Tetris layout from floor to ceiling. A couch and two deep-seated armchairs upholstered in mahogany leather surrounded a block of marble, which served as a coffee table. Izzy sat on the couch. Its splitting leather rasped at her palm and the backs of her thighs and she sank into the well-worn cushions.

  Up-to-date issues of Vogue, Craft, Make, Wired, and The Economist mingled on the marble slab with supermarket paperbacks and jacketless, hardcover rescues from the public library. An area rug under the marble was reminiscent of a forest floor in autumn, its plush weave shot through with hunter greens, russets, and flecks of faded gold. Kicking off her flats, Izzy curled her toes in the thick fibers while she waited on Dr. Turner. The smell of brewing tea preceded her therapist’s arrival.

  A pale, rosy cheeked, heart-shaped face capped with a sleek black bob poked through the waiting room door. Carmine lips spread in a wide smile.

  “Ready for me, Isabelle?”

  Izzy sprang from the couch. “Yes, Dr. Turner.” She followed the taller, curvier likeness of Bettie Page, complete with artfully sculpted brows, down the long hall to her office. They stopped briefly at the kitchenette where Dr. Turner poured herself a mug of green citrus tea from a ceramic pot. Gold rings gleamed on all her fingers, matching the braided torc circling her white throat and the heavy scarabs stretching her ear lobes, stamped with twin cartouches on their backs.

  Dr. Turner shook her head. “You’re never going to call me Janet, are you? Tea?”

  “No to both, thank you. ‘Dr. Turner’ is more conducive to my process.” Izzy had to maintain some sense of structure to these meetings. Dr. Turner wasn’t like any psychologist she’d ever met. She dressed like a yoga instructor crossed with an Oxford professor. Black, swishy pants flared around her gold, snakeskin pattered sandals, and a crisp, white button-down blouse drew in at her waist and fell over her wide hips. With a patient’s consent, she chain-smoked cloves during sessions and glided effortlessly between a trio of personas: mother, best friend and incisive therapist. The combination made Izzy completely open while never doubting the formidable psychologist waited in the wings should trouble brew.

  “How have you been coping since our last session with fear?” Dr. Turner asked as she sashayed into her office. “Have you given my suggestions any thought?”

  Izzy tagged after her therapist into a room as full of character as the woman. Dr. Turner had a cat fetish and a streak of Egyptologist. Pharaohnic black cats adorned with lapis and gold necklaces and hoops through their ears coolly observed the eclectic space. Cousins to the regal felines, lucky cats of various sizes beamed from end tables and window ledges, the biggest and fattest positioned next to Dr. Turner’s afghan covered sofa. Spangled with gold glitter, it smiled at each patient who sat — as Izzy did now — in the Laz-E-Boy opposite the therapist’s couch and, when encouraged, waved its mechanized paw.

  “I went back to Keene Lodge,” Izzy said as she rocked back in the chair.

  Dr. Turner reclined on her couch, legs up, a yellow legal pad balanced on her lap. She twirled a well-chewed ballpoint pen. “Feet first as always. Did you confront anything unexpected?”

  “Curtis Keene.”

  Dr. Turner’s brows went up and she made a “do tell” motion with her hand.

  Describing their meeting and the weekend that followed ate up half the session. Dr. Turner didn’t speak until more than three minutes of Izzy’s silence elapsed.

  “You’ve told me nothing but good, yet you’re frowning. Why’s that?”

  “Why would anyone go through so much trouble over one person? Just to see them?”

  Making a note on her pad, Dr. Turner straightened her posture and gave a thoughtful sigh. “Sharing a trauma with someone is a powerful thing. There might be a bond for him you don’t yet understand.”

  “Or motives I don’t.”

  Like slivers of glass, the texts, which Izzy had kept from her thoughts most of the week, had burrowed into her brain since she and Curtis’s brief correspondence at the studio.

  Is she more important than us?

  Who was us? Lodge people? Did Curtis’s co-workers or employees have such unrestrained access to his private life? And if they did, what threat did she pose? He didn’t strike her as the type who shirked responsibility.

  “Has he given you a reason for mistrust?” Dr. Turner asked.

  Her foot dancing around over her knee, Izzy admitted her unintentional invasion of his privacy. Dr. Turner nodded.

  “Accidents happen. Is the text what’s bothering you or your violation of Curtis’s boundaries?”

  “Both.”

  “What is it about the contents of the texts that strikes you most?”

  Thinking, Izzy folded her arms over her stomach. “The ‘her over
us’ thing. I don’t want to compete for someone’s attention or affection.”

  “You’ve been in a situation like that before?” Dr. Turner’s pen scratched against her pad.

  “Competition’s a big part of being a professional dancer. Standing out. Vying for roles. It’s exhilarating career wise, but I don’t want it bleeding into my personal life.”

  “Has it before?”

  The therapist’s room dimmed and an image wavered in Izzy’s vision. A girl, belly curving outward in a pale pink leotard, legs sheathed in white tights, and feet in pink slippers wobbled in plié before rising into a strained relevé.

  “Mom, look. Mommy, watch me!”

  Watch me, Curtis.

  But little Izzy’s mom would not be distracted. She bent her dark head over Alan’s blue duffel, making sure her son had everything for his Monday baseball practice.

  “Mom, you’re not watching!” Little Izzy rocked back on her heels, her loosened bun hanging off her head.

  “In a second, sweetie.”

  Little Izzy didn’t want seconds, she wanted now. Lower lip jutting, she dropped to the floor and glared at her brother’s bag and his ugly, stinky baseball junk.

  Blinking the memory back into the shuffle of fixed stills from her past, Izzy focused on Dr. Turner, whose lips puckered and relaxed as she observed her patient.

  “If I didn’t have everyone’s attention when I was little, I wasn’t happy. And I hated,” her voice caught on the word, “Alan sometimes.”

  And when those angry feelings surfaced during a session or on her own time, Izzy’s soul withered and crumpled like a dead leaf. How dare she feel anything but good for her brother? Alan had loved her. He’d sacrificed himself for her. Sure, he could be a great big jerk, but that was part of the brother thing. What she’d hated was the competition. Compared with his accomplishments, all her personal triumphs seemed negligible, then and now. A ballerina couldn’t compete with a surgeon. She’d danced. He’d saved lives. Died saving hers.