The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing: A Novel

by Mira Jacob

  “Hey. Hi. It’s Jamie. Jamie Anderson. From Mesa—”

  “Yeah, I know. Hi.”

  “Hi.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Hello?” Amina asked.

  “I’m really bad at the phone,” Jamie said. “Did you want to get dinner?”

  “What?”

  “I said I’m bad at—”

  “No, I got that. Dinner?”

  “Yes. Or, I mean, if you’re still around by then.”

  “By when?”

  “Tonight.”

  “Oh,” Amina laughed. “Yeah, I’ll be here tonight.”

  “No going out tonight!” Kamala shouted, throwing open the pantry door. “Nina Vigil wants to see your photos before she hires you. I told her we’d come!”

  “What?”

  “Quinceañera! Her granddaughter’s! I told her we’d bring by the Bukowsky photos this evening.” Kamala squinted at the phone. “Who is that?”

  “A friend.” Amina shooed her mother from the pantry, shutting the door behind her. “Hello?”

  “So … not tonight.”

  “No, it’s fine. Maybe we can just grab a drink somewhere at nine?”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure I’ll need a drink by then,” Amina said, and he laughed.

  “How about Jack’s Tavern? It’s on—”

  “You think I don’t know where Jack’s is?” she teased.

  “Oh. Right, of course.”

  Amina hung up. Outside the pantry, her mother stood like a tiny sergeant, arms crossed over her chest. “Who was that?”

  “Who is Nina Vigil?”

  “The Vigil family up on Toad Road! You met them at the Bukowskys’! She saw you taking photos and asked me if you’d do her granddaughter’s—”

  “Fine. How much?”

  “What?”

  “What is she paying me?”

  “I told them you would do it for free.”

  “You what?”

  “And then they will pay you if they want to order any prints, same price as Jane.”

  “I don’t work for free, Ma!”

  “Oh, pah! What else are you doing? And besides, you can make it up to Jane by giving her the cut. Get her back on your good sides, right?” The worst part, Amina realized, was that Kamala was right, but admitting that was akin to negotiating with a terrorist. What would stop her the next time?

  “You know, it would be helpful if you’d actually run these things by me before you did them. It’s a good idea to tell the person doing the actual work.”

  “I’m telling you now, silly. Don’t get all bent into shapes.”

  “Fine,” Amina muttered. “But listen, I’m just shooting this as a favor because you already promised. No more after this.”

  “Just the Campbells’,” Kamala agreed.

  “Ma! Jesus!”

  “No Jesus! It’s their anniversary. And hold on.” She went to her purse and opened her wallet, pulling out several twenty-dollar bills.

  “What’s this?”

  “Maybe go to the mall today and buy some clothes.”

  “What?”

  “So you don’t look like a man all the time.”

  Amina shook her head and left the kitchen.

  “Bright colors!” her mother called up after her. “Everyone likes bright colors!”

  An hour later, Amina stood at a pay phone in a mall hallway, where poop and perfume and the grease from the food court formed the kind of atmosphere you might find in Jupiter’s red spot.

  “That kid with the Afro?” Dimple was asking. “Paige’s brother?”

  “Jamie, yeah.”

  “Is it a date?”

  “No.” Amina stared at the red Exit sign at the end of the hall. “He’s bald now. I mean, not bald, but he shaves his head in the summer.”

  “That’s weird.”

  “It isn’t really.”

  “So first of all, stay away from pastels. They make you look chalky.”

  “You never told me that.”

  “You never asked. Okay, and then what shoes do you have out there?”

  “My sneakers.”

  “What else?”

  “I was only going to be here for a week, remember?”

  “So get some nicer shoes. Something a little more feminine.”

  “Why does everyone think I dress like a man?”

  “Like a sandal. Or a flat.”

  “I just don’t like dresses. It’s not like I’m some transvestite.”

  “Are you sure this isn’t a date? Because you sound nervous.”

  “I haven’t talked to humans besides my parents in a week.” Amina heard a cough in the background, followed by Dimple’s quick shushing. “Who is that?”

  “What? Oh, just Sajeev.”

  “Just Sajeev?” Amina started to laugh but then stopped. “Wait a minute. Are you dating Sajeev?”

  “Hold on a sec,” Dimple said, clackclackclacking across the gallery floor quickly, and then, from the sound of things, into the bathroom, where she whispered, “Yes.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not like it’s a big deal.”

  “Not a big—are you fucking kidding me? Sajeev Roy? Your mother is going to hold an international press conference!”

  “Shh! I’ve been trying not to think about that.” Dimple paused. “I really like him.”

  “Really?”

  “Is that so surprising?”

  “Well … yes.”

  “I know.” Dimple sighed. “It’s totally fucking weird. Sometimes when he’s asleep I just stare at him and think, What the hell is he doing in my bed? But then when he wakes up and I don’t know … he’s nice to me. I feel like I don’t have to try so hard with him.”

  “Huh,” Amina said, feeling a little nick of jealousy. “Wow.”

  “Anyway, do me a favor and don’t tell the others. I just want to enjoy this without everyone, you know.”

  “Planning an all-Albuquerque ticker-tape parade?”

  Dimple laughed. “Exactly.”

  Amina hung up a few moments later and headed back down the white corridor, a little disoriented. Dimple and Sajeev? Was that kind of oppositional attraction possible in anything other than a romantic comedy? She made her way through the food court with its faux hot-air-balloon landscape and back into Macy’s, where she skipped the horrible dresses that had sent her to the pay phone in a panic and stopped at the first set of shirts. She pulled one up, frowning at its twinkly curviness. “Can I help you?” a hen-faced saleslady asked, smoothing her plump waist.

  “I need to buy a shirt.”

  The woman drew up short in surprise. She recovered quickly. “Is it for a formal event? Gala? Black-tie wedding?”

  “No, just a regular old dinner.”

  “Oh, great.” She smiled nervously in a way that put Amina at ease. “So let’s get out of the formalwear.”

  Twenty paces and a few turns later, they were surrounded by decidedly less ball-worthy clothes. “Anything in particular you’re looking for? A tank top? A button-down?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “A color, maybe?”

  “Something bright.”

  “Gotcha.” She moved with surprising deftness for her girth, lifting and plucking shirts from the racks like they were ripe fruit. “You open to yellow?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Most people can’t wear it,” she said, lifting up a sunflower-yellow blouse. “But it’s great for your skin. And green?”

  “No green.”

  The woman motioned for Amina to follow her back to the dressing room, where she hung the blouses in a tidy row. “Anything else right now?”

  “No, thanks. This is great.”

  There were reasons that Amina didn’t like to shop, her too long, thin-in-odd-places torso among them. The fuchsia shirt hung on it like a sail. The blue button-down made her look like a high school lesbian. She pulled on the yellow tank top, gasped a little as
she looked in the mirror. It worked. She looked healthy, glowing.

  “You doing okay in there?”

  Amina opened the dressing room door. The saleslady smiled.

  “That’s really great.”

  “You think?”

  “Absolutely. It’s the right color and the right fit. Shows off your neck and arms.”

  “Yellow isn’t weird?”

  “Not a bit.”

  Amina closed the door, turning her back to the mirror and trying to see what she’d look like to Jamie. Minutes later she stood at the register, flushed with an unusual amount of pleasure. Was it a purchase high? Minor-task accomplishment? She took the receipt and folded it.

  “Thanks so, so much,” she gushed. “You’ve been really helpful. That was so, you know, easy.”

  “Oh, sure.” The woman hesitated before handing her the bag with her shirt. “I’m Mindy.”

  “Hey, Mindy, I’m Amina.”

  “I know.”

  Amina looked at her for a moment before the trapdoor in her brain released. “Holy shit.”

  Mindy laughed a little, shifting nervously. Her fingers reached up to straighten her necklace, a small silver cross on a thin chain.

  “Hi,” she said, and Amina tried to find some vestige of the girl who seduced Akhil with a joint and cleavage. Was it always this way? Did everyone from high school end up looking like weird facsimiles of other people’s parents?

  “This keeps happening,” Amina said.

  Mindy nodded. “So you’re back visiting?”

  “Yeah. Parents.”

  “Oh, nice. I live here. Obviously.” A slight blush rose to her cheeks. “Remember Nick Feets from school?”

  Amina didn’t. She nodded.

  “We got married a few years ago. We live in the valley.” Mindy took a quick breath. “Yep, three kids, dogs, the whole nine. Our oldest is probably going to start at Mesa next year. They’ve opened a middle school, you know.”

  “Wow.” Amina had the distinct feeling she was supposed to say something more. Congratulations? Hallelujah?

  “What about you? Last I heard, you and Dimple were in New York or something?”

  “Seattle,” Amina said, distracted by that funny, bubbling-up feeling of thought rising from her subconscious. “We moved to Seattle.”

  “Oh yeah? You like it?”

  “Mostly.”

  The girl Akhil lost his virginity to has a hen face and three kids. This was the thought, whole and uncharitable, and with it came the subsequent thought that Akhil himself might have looked old by now, which was so obvious that Amina felt stupid for never having thought of it before. And yet she hadn’t. The tiny corner of her imagination reserved for what-ifs had always brought him back more or less as he was, maybe a little taller, or broadened in the chest and waist, the way boys tended to be after college.

  “Oh no,” Mindy said. “You look upset. I didn’t want to upset you. I just thought …” She was really blushing now, red patches blooming on her cheeks and chest like an allergic reaction. “I mean, I didn’t know if you recognized me and were just being nice or something.”

  “Oh,” Amina said, backing away from the counter. “No, I didn’t.”

  “I mean, it’s a job, you know?”

  “Yeah, sure. And you’re really good at it.”

  Mindy’s eyes narrowed, and for a split second Amina thought she saw the old Mindy, the one who would shred her with a sentence, but then she just shrugged. “Thanks. Well, we’re having a thirty-three-percent-off-all-red-tag-items starting Wednesday—everything except housewares.”

  “Okay.” Amina raised the bag awkwardly in salute and backed away. She walked quickly down the aisle in front of her, taking one turn and then another, racing through the golden-hued jewelry/perfume section until she was finally, thankfully, spat out into the dark cavern of the mall. On one side of her, a few bodies pummeled at unseen forces in a video arcade, and on the other, a collection of massage chairs were entirely empty, save for a lone, undulating salesman. At the farther end of the mall, a shoe store specializing in designer names for less promised relief. Amina walked toward it.

  CHAPTER 3

  Jamie Anderson was with another woman. Why this should feel so bad was not anything Amina wanted to dwell on, though she was sure that the shower and the shirt and optimistic leg shaving had something to do with it. She stood in the doorway of Jack’s Tavern, her breath lodged in her chest as Jamie smiled at a pretty redhead, the kind of girl who turned playing with her hair into performance art.

  “You going in?” A pie-faced guy behind her asked, and Amina stumbled into the bar, trying not to feel self-conscious as the girl watched her approach.

  “Hey,” Jamie said, catching sight of her and standing. The suit had been replaced by a shirt and shorts and flip-flops, giving him the air of a surfer.

  “Hey.” Amina turned to the girl. “Hi, I’m Amina.”

  “Hi.” The girl regarded her coolly.

  An awkward second passed.

  “So I’ll see you soon, Maizy?” Jamie prompted, and the girl looked from Amina to him and back again before slowly standing up. Her hand tugged Jamie’s T-shirt briefly, and she leaned into him. “You didn’t tell me you had a date.”

  Jamie backed up. “Have a great night.”

  “You got it.” She turned her head in Amina’s direction, not quite looking at her before walking slowly back to the bar, where, Amina now saw, a small group of girls was waiting for her, the corners of their eyes taking in everything. She slid into the vacated spot. “Sorry to interrupt.”

  “You didn’t. She was just a student in my Intro to Anthro intensive.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah.” Jamie shifted in the booth seat, his knees knocking the table. “I kind of forgot that this was a student hangout.”

  “Is it weird for you?”

  “Nah.” He rubbed his head a little, looking around the bar. “Yeah, maybe a little.”

  The girls at the bar were making no secret of looking at her now, and Amina tried to relax, or at least to look relaxed. Of course he had a female following. Was there anything college girls found sexier than being told what to think?

  “What do they call you?” she asked.

  “Professor Anderson.”

  “Wow.”

  Jamie raised an eyebrow. “Was that sarcasm, Amina Eapen?”

  “No, not at all,” Amina laughed, crossing and uncrossing her legs. “I’m impressed.”

  “Yeah, you look impressed.” His eyes fell to her collarbone. “Nice shirt.”

  Her face blossomed with heat. “Thanks.”

  Just then, the group of girls at the bar erupted into laughter, the redhead the loudest among them. She laughed with her head thrown far back, her hand nestled into her cleavage, and even without looking around the room, Amina could sense collective relocation of the male gaze, the beery, smitten hunger behind it.

  “Hey.” Jamie leaned in, his foot bumping hers. “Do you want to get out of here?”

  “What?”

  “Go to another place down the street? Or maybe just on a walk? There’s actually a pretty nice park a few blocks away if you—”

  “Yes.”

  It was much better outside. Deep-blue evening was settling over Albuquerque, erasing the mountains and bejeweling the traffic lights running up Central. The air smelled sweet and diesely, like the promise of a road trip. Some minutes ago there had been a decision that involved leaving her car where it was, buying beer, and heading to the park, and since that time they had been walking steadily uptown, Jamie filling her in on details about his life that she wanted to know but was too nervous to absorb.

  His walk was the same. Not that there was anything so remarkable about the way he leaned back on his heels, hands jammed into his pockets, talking to some midpoint in the sky like it was a floating amphitheater, but it did give Amina a déjà vu of sorts, the newness of him (definitely bigger out of the suit, with an equal amount
of stubble lining his scalp and jaw) cut by an unnerving familiarity. He still had that weird, slightly dismissive tone, and that funny way of squinting while she talked, as though he couldn’t quite hear or believe what she was saying.

  “So it seemed like the right time,” he was saying now, wrapping up the trajectory of his last twelve years, the highlights of which included graduate work at Berkeley, a few years living in South America, the offer of a tenure-track position at UNM, and a divorce.

  “You were married?”

  “For about three years.”

  “Oh.” Amina felt strangely embarrassed about this, though less for him than herself. What had she been doing with her life? She’d never even tried hard enough at having a relationship to have it fail.

  Jamie pointed his chin ahead. “There we go.”

  There was a 7-Eleven, replete with red-orange glow and shelves of brightly colored products that looked like they could survive a nuclear winter. Jamie held the door open and followed her in, tagging her hip when she started walking down the wrong aisle.

  They stood in front of the glass case, sizing up the beer options.

  “So, Rolling Rock?”

  “Yeah.”

  Two minutes later they were back out the door, corn nuts, beef jerky, and M&M’s thrown into the bag. (“Trash picnic,” Jamie had said approvingly of her last-minute additions.) They turned onto one side street, then another, winding through a residential neighborhood where small stucco houses hovered behind dusty-looking lawns.

  “Where are we going?” Amina asked.

  “It’s a surprise. Hold up a sec.” He stopped at a station wagon and fished his keys out of his pocket.

  “Wait, this is your car?” Amina asked.

  “Yep.” He opened the hatchback and pulled out a blanket. He handed it to her, along with a small cooler.

  “You just park it here?”

  “In front of my house? Yeah.”

  Amina turned around. The house that greeted her was not particularly different from the others, though it did look like someone had recently swept the porch.

  “Wow. Don’t look so disappointed,” Jamie laughed.