“How was your sabbatical?” I asked.
“Wonderful. Just what I needed.”
I lifted the pint to take a drink, watching Roger through the glass. “Anything wrong between you and Mick?” I asked, laying my glass on the table.
“No. Why?”
“You both looked like dogs ready to go at it when I came to the table.”
“Oh, you know how Mick is.”
“I didn’t know you knew Detective Balosky.”
“Yes...just an acquaintance, a natural born antagonist he is. I was merely toying with him in lively debate.”
I took another drink of beer. The taste was flat. I asked, “Do you have the package?” Roger retrieved a legal-sized envelope from his briefcase, then slid the envelope in front of me. “Thanks again for picking this up from Ivy’s office on short notice,” I said. I mulled over the photographs I’d pulled from the envelope.
“Who are they?” Roger asked about the photos.
“Just a couple birds that flew in from New York.” I flipped through the photos of Catherine Fleming and the other dance instructor, Lena. I then saw her: the one Ivy said had a mark on me. She was someone I knew, Angela Bashir, one of my instructors at the dance studio. Her “pretty as hell”, prima donna features sat behind the wheel of a Toyota Prius outside my house.
“Are they business clients or Janes?” Roger asked.
“They’re my dance instructors over at the studio and their placement”—I took deep breath—“is perfect.” I conjured an array of possible motives as I studied the image of Angela.
“Placement, Jack?”
“‘All the world’s a stage,’ Rog.”
Roger drew a bead on me. “You’re heir to some of the richest real-estate in the world, my friend, and you behave like an over-sexed voyeur. You know that, right?”
“Leave it alone, Rog.”
“You own one-hundred-and-sixty acres of prime real estate and you fuck around in people’s business, making nickels and dimes squeezing orange juice. An endeavor to develop your land could put you into billions—”
“With your company, right?”
“Our company. It could be substantial, upscale retail and residences, clean and green complexes, and we’ll chic the hell out of it. A village atmosphere, a first of its kind.”
“Sounds good.”
“You know it sounds good, and I have connections, people in high places who can facilitate this. In fact, I brought a design.” Roger pulled a rendering from his briefcase and laid it in front of me. “I’ll bring you on as a partner, Jack. Not only will you profit from the sale, but you’ll receive fair share of the residuals. What do you say?”
I pushed the rendering back across the table. There was an off-hand feel about that rendering, to be sure, but more importantly, there was an even worse offhand feel about Roger’s meeting today with Detective Balosky.
“How about I break out of all this, Rog? Move away from here and find a place where no one is looking over my shoulder and where friends talk about things besides money.” Roger’s eyes dropped toward the table. I went on, “A place where a man’s wallet is empty and his conscience is clear. Maybe a long sabbatical like you took; a quiet, Costa Rican beach where I can fish and relax without all the shitloads of feminine bitchery. Or better yet, a secluded island somewhere in the South Pacific. Hell, why not Australia? I’ve never been to Australia.”
The rendering slid back in front of me. “I think it’s our chance, your chance, to break out, Jack. I only want the best for you...you know that, right?”
I was quiet. Just then a woman entered the pub, turning the heads of everyone in the place. A black, leather skirt clung tightly along her lithe shape, sloping dangerous curves of carnal knowledge. A white, long-sleeve blouse, silk it appeared, towered the length of her slender torso, demonstrating in dual comparison a pair of full-fitting breasts, au natural. She moved to a vacant section of the bar and scanned the room like a predator searching for feeble, male prey. She was the other one, the one who had landed in the harbor a month ago and had been arrested at Brenda’s dance studio a few days back; the one with the ink-black hair, paper-white skin, and ice-blue eyes, Lena, Catherine Fleming’s other half of my musing equation.
The bartender scurried over to her like a roach after spilt sugar.
“It appears one of your birds has landed for a drink,” Roger said, gazing at the woman.
“It appears.”
“There’s an exquisite peculiarity about her,” Roger said. “Why do you think she’s alone?”
“Waiting for a date, I would guess.”
“And what man would be so lucky?”
“An unlucky bastard, that’s for sure.”
After denying the bartender both an order and any decorum, the woman stood and headed our way, slinking the needed distance for a beautiful predator to stake a kill. I shoved the photographs back in the envelope and went back to my beer. She stopped at our table.
“Hello, Jack,” she said.
“Hello,” I said. Roger and I stood. “Lena, right?”
“Yes, that’s right.” A slight, Irish lilt hung in her voice.
“This is my friend, Roger,” I said.
Roger clasped her hand and held it for a long duration. A subtle sneer lined her face as she considered him. She turned toward me and said, “Catherine sends her love, Jack.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, she enjoyed the chat you two had on the ferry the other morning. It was very cat and mouse she told me.”
“I’m glad she enjoyed it. Tell her next time she can be the cat.”
The huntress offered me an ominous glare, then asked, “Will you be at class tonight, Jack?”
“I will.”
“That’s good. And how is your tango coming along?”
“Fine, I suppose.”
“You should never suppose when it comes to the tango.” There was a mannequin-like beauty about this woman, pale, opaque, creepy. “Do you dance Roger?” she asked.
“With great difficulty.”
“Come to the studio and let me teach you.”
“I’ll consider it.”
“I do like dark-complected men, especially when they’re tall and interesting like you. You would make an elegant dancer.”
A smile shaped Roger’s face, coy and naturally quirky. He glanced at me for help, yet I was more interested in seeing that Ms Tango man-eater left our table and sampled other feeble, male prey.
“Would you care to join us for a drink, Lena?” Roger asked.
“No, thank you. Jack doesn’t like me, and I have an arrangement already lined up.”
I pulled a swig from my glass, not looking at anyone.
She said, “I only came to your table to make an assessment. Do be careful how you dance the tango, Jack. It can be a tricky step.”
I took in her sentry pose and the caveat in her wickedly blue eyes.
“Goodbye, Roger. Perhaps sometime.”
“Yes...sometime.”
Lena slinked back to her previous spot, drawing the eyes of everyone at the bar. Roger and I sat. At that moment a man walked into the pub. He was tall with an athletic build, and he had long blond hair that lay on his shoulders like a lion’s mane, hence his moniker, The Lion. His proper name was Tommy Barton, one of my local competitors in the vocation of escorting lonely women.
The Lion spotted Lena and strutted toward her. They greeted each other like two prizefighters sizing up their match. He sat with her and ordered a drink. I watched the two of them the way a writer studies characters, or worse, the way a journalist logs a crime.
Roger fidgeted with his brief case for a moment, then needled his long fingers through a series of necktie adjustments all the while casting glances toward Ms Tango. “Have you ever been with a whore, Jack?” he asked.
My eyebrows raised; a grin tweaked my face. “No, but the women I’ve been with have. Why?”
“A month ago I did, in Europe. To sett
le some things. You know, curiosity, the sex and all. Both of us were to perform ravenously, but it wasn’t that way at all.”
“It usually isn’t.” Sensing that something awkwardly revealing was about to be unloaded from my chic amigo, I took a slow swig of beer.
Roger kept his eyes on Lena. “Perhaps I should take dance lessons. Dancing makes one more agile, more privy to life. Is that why you dance, Jack?”
“It helps with sales.” I ate some of the nickel-and-dime appetizers on the table so that the alcohol wouldn’t squeeze my senses more than it had. I looked at my watch, realizing I needed to leave soon for some tricky tango lessons.
Roger downed his beer with a robust swig, then brought the glass down hard against the table. “Can I tell you something, Kidd?”
My eyebrows arched again. “Go ahead.” Roger had never addressed me by my last name.
“I’m not truly happy with women.”
“Get in line.”
“I’m afraid you don’t understand.”
I read his eyes...the delicate look in his face, as a brother would when ignoring family secrets.
“I see life as both a landscape and a seascape,” he said. “That’s why I hired the whores, a call girl actually, and a call boy, too, if there is such a word. Like sages they were and quite understanding for street vermin. They made me aware of simple pleasures and things as profound as childhood and even birth.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Rog?” Actually, I had a fairly good idea what he was talking about. I took another slow bite of my beer.
“I enjoy the intimate company of both men and women.”
And there it was, no turning back now for the poor soul. That suspicion I had about my squeaky clean, bordering on effeminate compadré had finally come to light. So this was what the coming out of the closet was like, and executed true to form in Roger’s elegantly clumsy style “How long have you felt like this?” I asked,
“Long enough to know there are no answers to it. My sabbatical brought me to a place: Hindi prayers in India, touring all the great museums in Europe, and then the two whores in Paris. I crave the elusive, the varied assortments of life—fine clothes, art, automobiles, choice properties, and even people, no matter their sexual category. It’s a lust I can’t quench.”
“What about all those Creole girls at Tulane?”
“There were also Creole men.”
A lull of silence, ticklish and almost funny, drew between us.
“I’ve known you for twenty years, Rog; why haven’t you told me?”
“Told you what, that I enjoy kicking with both feet? My culture, my family, would never accept it. I never thought you would either.”
Realizing my friend needed a moment to tuck in his silk underwear, I allowed my eyes to drift around the pub. A NASCAR race streamed overhead on a High-Def screen. Gruff, masculine dialogue and laughter mixed with the fumes of liquor. Near the bar through a large bay window was a serene portrait of yachts and billowing sails awash in cottony sunlight. I said, “There’s two sides to everything, Rog. We all have secrets.”
“You’ve always suspected, haven’t you?”
I nodded.
“I’m not the least bit attracted to you, my friend...not in a way you may think. You’re like a brother to me, so don’t be uneasy.”
“I’ve never been uneasy about that or you, Rog.”
A soothed expression morphed in my friend’s face. He then said, “Damn that vixen over there. She made me speak of things of a poignant nature and not of the future of our business. I have to go, Jack. We’re going to work together on this”—he nodded toward the rendering—“and build a business together and make millions, which will hopefully cause you to change your half-ass life once and for all.” He stood. “Remember your dance steps, my friend, and my proposal for your land.”
I watched Roger’s tall height and well-coiffed sable hair make escape out the pub. He had left the rendering on the table, along with a shedding of skin.
9
From the pub I trotted a couple blocks to Dr. Murphy’s Dance Studio, which was the actual name of her business. The dance floor was upstairs above a hair salon in an old wood and stucco building, one of the original buildings in the harbor, circa 1930’s.
As I climbed the staircase I sensed, as always, the nuance of another time, as if it were a centuries-old ghost…the briny odors of the harbor, clinging to the dated, musty carpeting and walls. Inside, the studio had a cozy feel about it with overhead lamps casting warm salutations against the polished wood floor and the full-length mirrors along the walls.
Before I crossed the room to commence my routines of stumbling, shin kicking, and flat out insulting the art of dance, I noticed, as always, a shiny brass plaque attached to the receptionist’s desk that read:
NO FRATERNIZING BETWEEN INSTRUCTORS AND STUDENTS.
I scoffed out a needed laugh, pondering the dramatic irony. Angela, my dance instructor, pulled my lesson binder and approached me. Her face was a lovely mix of European and Semitic heritages, I surmised, demonstrating an exotic, unsolved story. Her soft, mink eyes were what I always noticed first, with her long, black silky-hair coming in at an enjoyable second, and when she smiled, it was indulgent, like a child at play. She was only eighteen years old, and, I’m not going to lie, I felt an intense attraction toward her. Yet because of our twenty-one year age difference, I reined in, the best I could, my dodging flirtations. I tried staying away from her eyes, knowing how easily I could fall into them, knowing too how she noticed me wandering through them, a possible mishap, a slight of hand while dancing the tango…my God, the tango.
“Hello, Angel,” I said. After four weeks of lessons, our rapport evolved from first names and toe-mashing to cutesy nicknames and somewhat choreographic harmony.
“I have to make a change tonight, Jaywalk,” she told me. The legal definition of Jaywalk was a reckless stride across a roadway, or in my case, a reckless saunter across the dance floor. In either case the tag fit me well.
“Oh?”
“We had some trouble with our scheduling. Might you be a sport and switch trainers? Brenda will pick me up.” A faint, British accent carried in Angel’s voice, making the burgeoning woman inside her that much more appealing.
“Of course,” I said. The image of Angela in that photograph with camera in hand sitting in a car outside my house turned in my head. She was the one Ivy had photographed spying on me, the one whose pretty face had been captured with both Lena and Catherine Fleming in various social settings.
“After all, you did cancel tonight’s appointment a few days ago, Jay, and then rescheduled at the last minute. You threw us off.”
“Sorry. Brenda pulled some strings, no doubt.”
“Pulled my arm more like it, nearly broke it. See you next lesson?”
“I’ll be here.” As amusing as Angela’s naivety was regarding my canceling of tonight’s lesson and sudden appearance, I did have a reason for my arrangement. I watched my Angel stride away, differently now. I knew our lessons would never be the same.
Speaking of the devil—“Come here, Jack,” Brenda called out from across the room. “Let me feel how firm your Cuban motion is getting.” She crossed the floor with the poise of a ballerina, the swagger of a ball-busting diva. The term Cuban motion was shop talk regarding the swaying of one’s hips during Latin steps, and to be sure, Brenda’s definition was always nuanced with the intended sexual overtone.
We embraced. Her hand squeezed my backside, then to the front where my Cuban hung snugly. While on her dance floor psychoanalyzing specimens, Brenda was as grab-ass gregarious as any half-drunk shrink out there. Truth be told, she was one of the most annoyingly enjoyable people I’ve ever met.
“You’re stuck with me tonight, Mr. Kidd.” Her eyes lit into two glistening orbs of silliness.
“I’ve been with a lot worse. How’ve you been, Doctor?”
“Peachy. Want to dance?”
“
Hell yes.”
She burst out in laughter, filling the room with spontaneous glee. We met in a wide frame. I stepped forward with my left foot and the stumbling began, a tango, Argentine version. Her eyes stayed locked on me as her tight-lipped grin hummed tunefully to a piped-in song. Besides being an accomplished dancer and classical musician, Brenda would sometimes accompany the overhead music with a crisp operatic voice. She was a big draw here.
“Angela’s been doing a good job with you,” she said. “Your shoulders are still and all your movement is strong and below the waist.”
“Sexy, middle-age women tend to have that effect on me.”
Her eyes twinkled; her smile remained seared on her face. “But why are you dancing so far away?”
“Faraway? I’m rubbing my Cuban all over you.”
“I haven’t seen you in days, is what I mean.”
“I’m trying to obey that ominous No Fraternizing sign you have posted in the front.”
“Are you suggesting another place?”
“Anywhere but that futon.”
We turned into promenade, then a careful assertion whispered into my ear, “I’ve missed you, Jack.”
Ignoring her, I lifted my arm and turned her to where we met on the beat of four and continued.
“To hold a woman like this in dance is to make love to her,” she said.
“Sort of cathouse cotillion, huh?”
“And how do you like my parlor?”
“Favorably, madam, and with the curiosity of a tomcat.”
Lena entered the studio and crossed the floor, greeting her students. She seemed pleased from her reconnaissance mission over at the pub.
Brenda pivoted us about to see who I was watching.
“How’s the bed-time nightcaps?” she asked, regarding the topic of one of our previous sessions. “Still tilting the Bushmills before you knock off each night?”
“Guilty as charged.”
“You started drinking this way a year ago, didn’t you, after that Rio thing?”
I could tell Dr. Murphy was damned determined in the ongoing fondling of my dangling lacuna. “Our session’s are over, Brenda.”
The Irresistible Muse of Jack Kidd Page 6