The Dance

by Gary Smalley

  “I’m not worried about that,” Michele said. “The college has a bunch of strong buildings. Several of them are approved shelters for the Red Cross. It’s the wedding I’m worried about. Mom, what if we have to postpone it?”

  46

  Marilyn decided to wait until after the group dance lesson before breaking the news to Roberto about the dress. During class he treated her pretty much the way he always had, except she did catch him several times staring at her that way. He’d always smile and look away. Now she wondered if he’d been doing this all along or if it had increased since their dinner on Tuesday. Either way, it made her feel uncomfortable. She was almost certain this extra attention would stop once she told him no about the skimpy dress.

  The class had ended about ten minutes ago. Most of the people had already left. She stayed around chatting with different ones, finished up a conversation, then said good-bye to Gordon and Faye. She looked at Roberto. He was talking with one of the other couples. Other than the three of them, the studio looked empty. She walked over to the office and peeked inside. Audrey Windsor was working at the desk. Marilyn had seen her come in during the class, but then she disappeared. Obviously, she hadn’t gone home.

  Audrey looked up. “Hello, Marilyn. How are you? Can I help you with anything?”

  “No, I’m fine. Nice to see you.”

  “I’m just checking over the schedule, but I’ll be glad to help you.”

  “No, really, I’m fine. Have a good night.” She pulled away before Audrey could draw her into more conversation.

  Guess we won’t be talking in the office, she thought. After backing away from the door, she noticed Roberto waving good-bye to the couple he’d been talking with. She grabbed her purse from the chair and walked toward him. “Roberto, I need to leave, but I wonder if I can speak with you before I go. It’s kind of important.”

  “Of course, my dear.” A big smile on his face. His eyes lit up. “Only two more days. Aren’t you excited? I can’t wait to show you off. Have you tried on the dress? What did you think?”

  “That’s what I want to talk to you about, but not here.” She spoke just above a whisper.

  “What’s wrong? You seem a little upset.”

  “Let’s talk outside, in the breezeway.” Now she was whispering. “Audrey is working in the office.”

  “Very well.”

  Marilyn headed out the front door. She heard Roberto’s footsteps behind her. As she rounded the corner into the breezeway, she was relieved to find it empty. The couple Roberto had last talked with must have parked out front. She watched as Gordon and Faye’s car pulled out of the rear parking lot. Stopping when she reached the midpoint, she turned and faced him. You be strong . . . stick to your guns. Charlotte’s words replayed in her head. “I can’t do it,” she announced. “I’m sorry to have to tell you on such short notice, but you really haven’t given me a choice.”

  He put both arms on her shoulders, as if to comfort her. “Come now, what are you talking about?” The Latin accent set on full. “Can it be that bad? Tell me, what’s the problem?”

  “I can’t wear that dress, the one you gave me Tuesday night.”

  “Why? It’s perfect. I’m sure you look amazing in it.”

  “It’s not . . . it’s just not right for me.”

  “How can you say that, Marilyn? You are a beautiful woman, you—”

  “That’s not what I—” She sighed. How could she say this? “I’m not that kind of woman.”

  “What kind?”

  “The kind that wears dresses like that,” she said. “Out in public.”

  He laughed. “My, my, look how upset you are. Don’t be. I’ve seen the dress on other women. It’s beautiful, yes. Stylish, yes. Provocative, maybe a little. But everything is covered.”

  She felt he was treating her like a child. “It’s not covering up enough for me. I’m sorry. I just can’t wear it. If you insist, I’ll have to back out of the contest.”

  “Back out? But the contest is two days away.”

  “I know, but you only gave me the dress two days ago. I thought I was wearing the red one I’ve been wearing all this time.”

  He took his hands off her shoulders and walked a few steps away, looking down at the pavement. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “There’s nothing to say, Roberto. My mind’s made up. If you want me to dance with you, you have to be okay with the other red dress.” Secretly, she was hoping it would not be okay with him and that she’d be able to end everything right here.

  He walked back. She leaned against the wall. He leaned toward her, putting his right arm just above her shoulder, his palm flat against the wall, like a teenage boy hovering over his girl in the school hallway.

  What is he doing? she thought. He’s not getting the message. She remembered what Charlotte had said about guys like Roberto needing to be hit by a two-by-four.

  Jim was driving down Oakland Avenue, taking the long way home from his warehouse. For some reason, he was missing Marilyn even more than usual. Maybe it had to do with how much time he’d been “practicing” the last few nights, putting Uncle Henry’s advice to work. He’d written out all the things he’d wished he could say to her if she ever gave him the chance. He knew she’d be finishing up her dance class about now, and he decided to drive by the studio, take a chance he might see her in the window.

  It had been an exhausting day. The weathermen had not declared a hurricane watch yet, but if Hurricane Harold changed course as some tracks showed, the storm could be here in two days, three at the most. It was already a Category 3 and growing.

  Jim’s properties had suffered extensive damage in 2004 with Charley, Frances, and Jean. The insurance had covered the worst of it, but his out-of-pocket expenses were huge. In the aftermath, he’d decided to have custom plywood covers made for every window of every property, and had been storing them in rented warehouse space ever since. Years went by with no more storms. Anderson Development, Inc. had purchased four more properties. Those properties didn’t have custom plywood coverings.

  He’d spent the day moving heavy piles all around, making sure the plywood at the warehouse was present and accounted for, and figuring out how much more he’d need for the new properties. Then he’d spent hours in line waiting for a new shipment of plywood to come in at Lowe’s. Listening to the conversations, he figured everyone in line had lived through the other hurricanes. No one was taking a chance with Harold. One good thing had come out of the wait: he’d found an out-of-work guy in line who owned a pickup truck. They’d haggled over a price for him to pick up Jim’s plywood, deliver it to his properties, and make it all fit in the right places.

  Hopefully, the cost of all this would be a fraction of the expense of possible damage from the storm. Then again, the stupid thing could just keep barreling north or turn west and miss central Florida altogether.

  There was the studio up ahead. He slowed as he drove by. The lights were on, but he didn’t see anyone inside. Darn, he’d missed her. He had no plans of stopping to talk, of course, but he really wished he could have seen her.

  Wait. There in the breezeway. Two silhouettes. His car slowed to a crawl. He saw two people talking, a man and a woman. They were in the shadows, but he could swear it was Marilyn and Roberto.

  She was leaning against the back wall. He had his arm straight out, just over her, standing very close.

  Too close.

  His heart sank. He sighed audibly and drove off. So that was it, then. He really was losing her to this guy. Within half a block, he started imagining holding Marilyn in his own arms. When was the last time he’d held her like that and kissed her tenderly?

  No, please, God. I’ve lost the most beautiful, precious woman on earth, and there’s nothing I can do now.

  “Marilyn, if you feel that strongly about it, of course you can wear the old dress.”

  “Old dress? Roberto, that dress cost a lot of money, and it’s less than two years old.” />
  “That’s not what I meant. I only meant—”

  She pushed his arm down. “And there’s something else I need to say. Right now.” She backed several steps away from him. “I don’t know if I gave you the impression that I’m interested in a relationship with you, but if I have, I—”

  “Marilyn, no, I’m sorry. I know you are a married woman. I was only being playful.”

  “Well, you’ve been getting a little too playful the last couple of times we’ve been together.”

  He stood up straight, all the swagger out of his step. “Really, I’m sorry. I meant no harm. I’ll behave, I promise.” He was smiling again. “Can we still be friends?” He held out his hand.

  “Just friends?” she asked.

  “Just friends,” he repeated.

  “Okay.” She shook his hand but kept her distance.

  “And you’ll still dance with me on Saturday?”

  “In my old red dress?” she said.

  “Yes, it’s a lovely dress,” he said. “I’m sorry I said that. So what time shall I pick you up? Five o’clock?”

  “How about I meet you there?” she said as she turned and headed for the parking lot. “You stand right there. I’ll be right back.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To give you back the red dress you gave me. It’s in the car.”

  47

  When Jim awoke on Friday morning, his mind not even fully anchored in the day, he flipped on the television to the local news station. A familiar weatherman stood in his blue suit right next to a satellite image showing Hurricane Harold inching ever closer to the lower west coast near Naples, Florida. He clicked off the mute button.

  “Here he is, folks. As you can see, Harold seems to be coming our way. It’s really time to start taking this storm seriously. I don’t think we’re going to dodge the bullet this time. Most of the tracks now show it making landfall somewhere between Naples and Fort Myers later this afternoon. Folks down there are already under a hurricane warning and have been since about 3:00 a.m. There are already reports of tropical storm winds picking up along the coast nearby. Let’s switch to the screen showing the new forecast tracks.” The man stood in place as the actual hurricane image became a red symbol, with multi-colored tracks spewing out of its head.

  “Uh-oh,” Jim said as he sat back on the bed. Not good. All but two of the tracks had it coming in around Naples then heading diagonally across the state, exiting somewhere south of Jacksonville. Three of the tracks went right through central Florida. “Looks just like the path Charley followed in ’04,” Jim muttered. A moment later, the weatherman said almost the same thing. Jim listened some more.

  “Harold may be following Charley’s track, but it’s actually a little bigger than Charley was and moving a little slower. Which means there’s a likelihood of it causing more damage than Charley.” Charley had caused a great deal of damage. More than the other two storms put together, at least around their area. Jim listened now for the timing. After a few moments, that information came.

  “It’s hard to say exactly when the storm will hit the Orlando-Sanford area. There’s a chance it will slow down even a little more once it makes landfall. There’s also a chance it will weaken significantly by the time it reaches us. It’s expected to reach Category 4 by this afternoon. But those of you who were around in 2004 might remember Charley was a Category 4 when it pummeled Punta Gorda, then a strong Cat 1 by the time it got here.”

  The weatherman faced the camera; a serious look came over his face. “Now, don’t hear the wrong thing, folks. Even if it does weaken to a Cat 1 or 2, this is still going to be a major storm event. Expect severe tree damage, even some big ones coming down altogether. We’ll see roof damage and flooding in low-lying areas. Those of you in mobile home or trailer parks, you should already be making plans to pack up and stay with friends, or move to an approved Red Cross shelter. Let’s go ahead and put up that list of storm shelters in our area now.”

  Jim clicked off the TV and stood up. He walked over to his desk to make a list of things he had to take care of right away. At the top of the list, he wrote: Call that guy, make sure he can get all the plywood on the windows done TODAY. Hire others, if necessary. He wrote down to call Doug, make sure he was aware of the latest weather update and confirm where he planned to ride out the storm. Then he scratched through that one. Better just walk over to the garage and talk to Doug in person. Call Tom and Jean, he wrote. Both of them were responsible; he didn’t have to worry if they’d do all the right things. Michele would probably stay in one of the main university buildings. They were built solid, so no worries there. But still he wrote Call Michele down, to make sure she would buy all the necessary supplies for the storm’s aftermath.

  But what about Marilyn?

  He had to call her. Surely she’d be willing to talk to him with this storm on the way. Where would she stay? Those apartments built over the stores downtown were strong enough to stay intact with a Category 1 or 2 storm. But what about the windows? Did her landlady even have boards to cover them? What if the downtown area got flooded? That could happen if they got enough rain. The river could overflow its banks and move right into downtown.

  He had to call her. He wrote that at the top of his list.

  Charlotte and Marilyn sat at the dinette table in her kitchen watching the weather report. “This is terrible,” Charlotte said. “It’s really coming. Most of those tracks got it coming this way.”

  “Looks like it,” Marilyn said.

  “When I came here a couple of years ago, I asked the real estate guy about hurricanes. ‘They never come here,’ he said. But look, here it comes.”

  “It’s not as bad as it seems,” Marilyn said, only half believing it. “I mean, it’s not going to be anything like Katrina or Sandy.”

  “They were talking about this storm at work last night,” Charlotte said. “I didn’t know anything about it. Seems like it came out of nowhere.”

  “It kinda did. That’s the thing about storms that move into the Gulf. There’s so many ways they can turn. If they go north toward the panhandle or west toward Texas, people there get lots of warning. Several days while it moves over the water. But when it turns east, toward—”

  “Towards us,” Charlotte interrupted.

  “Right, well, when that happens, it’s just right there at the doorway.”

  “What are you going to do?” Charlotte asked.

  Marilyn wondered why she didn’t say “we.” “What do you mean?”

  “If it comes, where you gonna go?”

  “Can’t we stay here?”

  “What? No. I mean, I’d like to. I guess it’s safe enough. But my supervisor was telling us last night that if the storm comes, she wants those of us without families to ride it out at Urgent Care. The building’s solid as a rock. That way, we can look after any patients who come in.”

  Marilyn began looking around the apartment, trying to imagine how she’d feel sitting through a hurricane in here, all by herself. She’d barely held it together in 2004 in her big house on Elderberry Lane. “Can we put masking tape on the windows?” she asked.

  “We could,” Charlotte said, “but I read somewhere it doesn’t do any good. Think about it. A big oak branch comes sailing through that window at a hundred miles an hour, and masking tape’s not gonna matter much. Oh . . . I’m sorry. That was a stupid thing to say. Listen, there’s gotta be a place you—”

  Marilyn’s cell phone began ringing. She lifted it up and saw it was Jim.

  Charlotte saw it too and stopped talking. “Maybe you should get that, you know?”

  “Maybe I should.”

  As Jim dialed Marilyn’s number, he said a prayer, then tried to remember Audrey’s admonition about not reacting to things Marilyn did or said. “Create a safe place for her to share what she’s feeling. If you react harshly, she’ll shut down.”

  “Hello . . . Jim?”

  He couldn’t believe it. She’d picked u
p.

  “Hi, Marilyn. Thanks for taking my call.”

  “Are you calling about the storm?”

  “Yeah, have you seen the news?” he said. “I think this one’s really going to hit us.”

  She sighed. “I think so too.”

  “Have you . . . have you thought about where you’re going to stay?”

  “We were just talking about it. Charlotte’s a nurse, so she has to be at Urgent Care if it comes.”

  “You can’t stay in that apartment alone.” He instantly regretted saying it that way, like he was telling her what to do. “I mean, you’re not going to be there by yourself, right?”

  “I don’t want to be. I don’t know where else to go.”

  A pause. Just say it. “You could come here.”

  “I don’t know, Jim. I don’t think—”

  “Wait, hear me out,” he said as gently as he could. “I know it’d be awkward for you with what’s going on between us. But you know this house is safe as can be. We rode out all three hurricanes here in 2004. I don’t feel right with you holed up in that little apartment by yourself. Do you even have boards for the windows?”

  “No, we don’t.”

  “Here we have first-class electric storm shutters. I just push a few buttons.” Another long pause. “How about . . . you come here, and I’ll go stay in a shelter.”

  “I don’t want to do that . . . to you, I mean.”

  “I insist. I won’t be able to rest unless I know you’re safe. So you stay here, and I’ll leave. Maybe I’ll stay with Tom and Jean.” Another pause, longer this time. “Are you still there?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you’ll come? You really should get here this evening before the wind starts to pick up. Right now it’s gorgeous outside, but that’s going to change pretty quick once it starts heading this way. So, you’ll come?”

  “Yes. I think I will. Thanks for doing this.”

  “I’ll be here all evening getting the house and yard ready,” Jim said. “You can come anytime. I’ll leave shortly after, when I know you’re settled.”