No one laughed. No one said a word. Bryce felt everyone around him go quiet with suspense, perhaps with shock. Resolutely, he fixed his furious gaze on Paul, wanting him to flinch.
But Paul did not flinch. He stared just as steadily back, but he was expressionless. He gave no sign to Bryce that he felt anything. And then Bryce wiped the look off his face and flung his arm in the air toward Paul as hard as he could.
Paul made as if he caught Bryce’s look with both hands. He splashed his hands over his face, as if they held water. He raised his head and dropped his hands, and on his face Bryce recognized a perfect imitation of his own horrible expression.
He surprised himself with his raucous laughter. Paul started laughing, too, and soon everyone joined in. It seemed to Bryce that a note of hysteria reverberated from himself and was echoed in the general hilarity. There was a moment of release, like a sudden rush of air through a vacuum: Bryce was released from his anger. It wasn’t gone, but it no longer controlled him.
Though he hadn’t spoken to Paul all evening, though he had deliberately avoided him, he now turned to him and said, “I concede it. You win the game. I quit.” He started to stand up, intending to exit at this dramatic moment, but Paul’s calm reply made him pause.
“In this game there are no winners or losers,” Paul said. “There’s the will to make the face and the wish to be rid of it, to see it on someone else’s face and laugh at the picture of desolation.”
Bryce shook his head. “I don’t like this game. I don’t share your fascination for it.”
“Well,” said Paul, “that’s another story, isn’t it?” He looked around at the others sitting in the circle, as if suddenly aware they were all ears. “We’re ready to stop anyway. It’s quarter past eleven; in a little while, we’ll start gathering outdoors. At precisely ten minutes to midnight, the show will begin.”
* * *
Away from everyone, in Bryce’s office, Kurt Matthews was saying to Althea, “Young people often seem to their elders to be walking in a dream, their heads full of music no one but they can hear. At my age you lean forward. The dead are not dead, and the living are ghosts.” Tiny bells attached to the collar of his harlequin costume tinkled faintly.
She studied him: trim and muscular, a picture of fitness. The only signs of age were tinting his hair and etched on his face. “You’re not old,” she said.
She had spent all evening with the Kurt Matthews Dancers and Kurt, until, one by one, the Dancers had filed away to join other companions. Now only she and Kurt were left. They had gone outside and stood by the cold, empty fountain and then come back in. Seeking a quiet place to carry on their conversation, they ended up in Bryce’s neat office. She leaned against the desk. Kurt stood nearby.
He smiled faintly. “Sometimes it seems to me that I haven’t changed; it’s the dancers who have gotten younger. I admire them for their courage and their contempt of death. I like them to manipulate me. I love their shrewdness. Everything represents, nothing is. One eye watches the effect, the other weeps.”
“I wish I were one of your dancers.”
“Theater is filth, torment, muddle. The childishness of dancers is a filter against awareness. When we dance, we’re on the edge of darkness, the mystery. We solve the riddle and learn repetition.”
Althea looked at him, lost in thought. What did he mean? “I’m thinking of what Jane Vaughan said earlier this evening,” she confided, wanting to give him a gift. “She was describing what it’s like to dance with you. She said, ‘The place he took me to was perfect meditation.’ ‘An out-of-the-body experience?’ I asked her. ‘No,’ she said, ‘into the heart of music.’”
“I’ll show you,” Kurt said softly. “Come, dance with me.”
Automatically Althea tried to retreat, but the desk was in her way.
“Just a simple fox-trot,” Kurt elaborated. “Four beats.”
“But what’s the music?”
“We’ll pick a standard. I’ll sing. You’ll count the beat.”
Althea shook her head. “I don’t dare.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m proud enough not to want to make a fool of myself with you. You’re the dancer. I don’t know how to dance.”
“You can only learn to dance with someone who knows how. Now’s your chance. We’re all alone. If you make a fool of yourself, no one will see.”
“Except you.”
“Believe me, I’ve seen it all before.”
But Althea still shook her head.
“I thought you just said you wished you were one of my dancers.”
“That’s the point. I’m not.”
Althea believed she wouldn’t give in no matter how he pressed her, but she had no chance to prove it. Just then they were interrupted: Eric Fuller stood in the doorway. “Come on outside, guys. It’s time to break out the bubbly and watch the show.”
* * *
All of the guests had gathered on the roof by the trellis wound with lights and the pole and streamers. They had taken off their masks. Glimpses of finery were visible underneath their coats. Two waiters circulated with trays of champagne glasses. Inside the house, the caterers were laying out the after-midnight supper. Paul thought, If only there were a real snowfall.
Like a curved bone, the crescent moon hung in the sky. Wearing his 1920s-vintage raccoon coat, Paul sat on the iron bench before the toe shoe garden, sipping Champagne, while Eric and Hector wheeled out four large portable fans and placed them around the beds facing each other. They plugged the fans into stout extension cords. My fantasy is coming to life, Paul rejoiced. And the Champagne is excellent.
He summoned his guests to the toe shoe garden by blowing on a small high-pitched brass bugle. Alerted by the bright, fractured sounds, people gathered near the toe shoes stuck in sugar in the beds. We’ll start now; it’s too cold to delay, Paul decided. He stood up, free of his crutches, balancing his weight on one foot. Two spotlights bathed over him. He felt dissolved in the light and cold, thin air. He raised his arms high to quiet his guests.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he intoned with a flourish, “let us welcome 1981 with The Toe Shoes’ Finale.”
The music began, played on a piano, amplified by four speakers on the roof. Waiting for something to happen, the audience listened to a melody that subtly repeated itself. The spotlights trained over the toe shoes melodramatically. Paul, as if forgotten, was left in darkness. Am I going to make a fool of myself with this? The thought crossed his mind—I’m bound to. It’s a joke, but to me it’s a sweet one. Will everyone laugh?
The four fans started whirring. Their steady gusts agitated the sugar, creating a fine, blinding mist. Most of the toe shoes were instantly blown over and buried. A few skidded for a yard or so before tumbling on their sides. Some toppled onto the roof from the raised garden beds. Almost all of them were obscured by the local sugar storm.
There was laughter, but nothing else happened as Paul had hoped. The dance seemed over before it had begun.
A spattering of frugal applause erupted in the audience. It stopped, bewildered, when the fans kept blowing and the music playing.
Then a single toe shoe, dislodged, blew up and twirled in a spiral, caught in a cross-gust. For a second it stayed aloft, and then was flung over the edge of the garden bed onto the roof. Without realizing that he was going to do it, Paul hopped over and picked it up.
It was time. In the distances of the night, church bells tolled the new year. Standing on his good leg, Paul, trying hard to bury his disappointment, impulsively poured the Champagne left in his glass into the battered toe shoe. “Happy New Year,” he airily wished his assembled guests, as, raising the shoe aloft in a toast, he drank from it.
On the street far below, car horns honked. On the roof, Paul’s guests rattled noisemakers and cheered and hugged one another. Only Paul, like a king or an exile, stood apart.
* * *
Suddenly Althea was dancing. It happened so suddenly tha
t she couldn’t resist. Kurt swept her into his arms. On the curve of the wave of music, they danced together. Taken by surprise, Althea forgot to be afraid. She stopped thinking that other people were watching. Stepping nimbly, one-two-three, one-two-three, she followed Kurt’s flowing motion. For a moment her eyes closed, as if in a dream. When they opened, she saw that they had been joined by other dancing couples. The roof was transformed to a ballroom.
She stumbled against Kurt’s foot and faltered. “Oh!” she exclaimed, mortified, apologetic.
“Ssh—keep going. It doesn’t matter,” Kurt urged, without missing a beat.
* * *
Jeanne watched with René. With a start of surprise she recognized Althea dancing to a waltz. Her partner was the man Jeanne had seen her with at the fountain. Now Jeanne knew who he was—Kurt Matthews. She was about to point them both out to René, when René asked her to dance, too.
Before she and René had come out on the roof again for Champagne and the spectacle, Jeanne had removed the butterfly wings to put her coat back on. Now René held her by the shoulder where one wing had been. He took her other hand in his and led her away. He feels more substantial to me when I am dancing with him, she thought.
The ranks of dancers were swelling by the moment. Jeanne and René passed near Althea and Kurt. Jeanne saw that Althea saw her. She observed Althea’s glance fall on René, then turn back to her. The two women smiled gently at each other.
“Was there ever such a party?” Jeanne asked.
“Isn’t it fantastic?” Althea assured her.
Althea and Kurt spiralled out of sight. That’s the first time Althea and I have spoken to each other all night, Jeanne acknowledged. The moment seemed to her an emblem of the future: she and Althea in separate orbits, happy to meet and not collide, moving past each other.
René’s clear eyes are like topaz, Jeanne thought. He’s looking at me, not Althea.
Like a column of water in a fountain, love for him rose in her. Over his shoulder she caught a glimpse of Bryce standing next to Paul. Then the two men passed from view.
* * *
Suddenly Paul noticed Bryce beside him. “Hi,” he greeted him casually. “The Toe Shoes’ Finale was a flop,” he announced, before Bryce could say anything. “But not this,” he went on, indicating the dance evolving before him. “This is beautiful. This dance saves my silly spectacle by reimagining it. My dance becomes the prologue to this dance, which is the real dance. I wonder whose idea it was.”
“I can tell you that,” Bryce said.
“It wasn’t you.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“It was one of the Dancers, wasn’t it?”
“The Dancer himself.”
“Kurt?”
Bryce nodded. “I went in to check on the caterers and noticed Kurt in the living room, examining our music collection. But I didn’t say anything to him.”
“So he and I have collaborated after all—improvisationally. First, dancerless toe shoes collapsed in a contrived windstorm.” Paul smiled, “Not like the dance of death, but like the end of dance, observed by spectators who then claimed dance for themselves. To me, it seems a natural, even an inevitable, movement.”
“But it wasn’t,” objected Bryce. “It was completely arbitrary.”
“That’s the beauty of it.”
“You make more of it than it is.”
“So what if I do?” Paul countered. You try to deflate me, but I won’t let you, he thought to himself. “Is the supper ready?” he continued, changing the subject.
“Just about. Shall I call in everyone to eat?”
“No, I’ll do it,” Paul said, “when this dance is over.”
* * *
At last the music ended, and the couples broke apart. Paul stood once more in the spotlight. He raised his arms, garnering attention. Over the guests there fell a hush.
“The magic fades, but the memory lingers. You are part of a performance which will never be repeated. Please, take home a toe shoe when you leave tonight, as a memento. They’ll be in boxes by the door. But don’t go yet: refreshments are being served in the dining room.”
He is ridiculous, Bryce thought, watching him. And he is also magnificent. Now I will tell him what I have been saving all night to say.
Their appetites whetted by exercise, people headed indoors. Paul, too, was hungry. He prepared to follow, but Bryce laid a hand on his shoulder, detaining him.
“May I speak to you for a moment?” Bryce asked.
Paul felt a premonition of dread. Bryce is going to break up with me, he guessed. This is why he has been avoiding me. This is the meaning of the face he threw at me in the game. After all we’ve been through, after the separation when it really seemed that we would break up and we didn’t, it’s happening now.
On Bryce’s face was an unfathomable expression. Paul braced himself.
“I had news about your lawsuit today,” Bryce began. “The moving company is prepared to make an offer to settle.”
Paul stared at Bryce uncomprehendingly. Then he laughed out loud.
“It’s absolutely true,” Bryce insisted, assuming Paul didn’t believe him. He paused. “Aren’t you going to ask me about it?” he demanded.
Paul was in a daze. “How much?” he asked in a voice barely over a whisper.
“A million.”
“What?”
At last Bryce smiled. “You heard me. They offered you a million dollars. I guess they got scared.”
Paul suppressed an urge to shout the news to all the surrounding rooftops. He wanted to broadcast his triumph, yet he was superstitious that he would lose the prize. Until I know it’s for certain, it’s bad luck to say anything, he told himself.
Bryce watched Paul’s blue eyes grow round in astonishment. “I’d advise you to settle,” he said soberly, assuming a lawyerly tone, as if he were weighing the alternatives. “There’s a chance you could do better if you went to court, but it’s not a big chance. Of course, then your legal fees will be a lot higher, not to mention the emotional costs of such a litigation.”
Paul stared at Bryce as if he were crazy. “Of course I’ll accept,” he said. “Take the money and run, that’s what I say.” He shook his head like a simpleton. “I can’t believe it. A million bucks.”
“Minus taxes and expenses,” Bryce amended.
A mischievous look came over Paul’s face. “Will I be as rich as you?” he asked.
Bryce’s reply upset Paul. “I guess you won’t need me any more,” said Bryce.
Looking around him, Paul saw that the roof was deserted. Everyone had gone into the house.
* * *
In the crowded dining room, under the buzz of conversation, Jeanne laid her hand on René’s arm, alerting him. “There’s Althea. I want to introduce you to her. Let’s not let her get away this time.”
Near a long buffet table, where people were busy serving themselves, Althea and Kurt were eating standing up, with plates in one hand and forks in the other. René saw them, too, but he demurred, “I’m hungry.”
“We can get our food first,” Jeanne said. Her tone of granting permission surprised her. Will he take offense? she wondered.
He didn’t. “Good,” he said, propelling her towards the table. There were only four people ahead of them.
We’re already like a couple, Jeanne thought, working out our differences, planning our way together. I have a partner; I am no longer all alone. At this thought, she felt immensely blessed. She wanted Althea to see her with René.
The vision of Althea dancing with the so-graceful Kurt, her blonde hair tumbling like a cloud over her shoulders, had piqued Jeanne’s curiosity. Have they been together all evening? she wondered, remembering her glimpse of them at the fountain hours ago.
* * *
Flushed from dancing, Althea and Kurt were eating noodles lightly tossed with butter and cheese.
“You see, you could do it after all,” Kurt said between mouthfuls.
“You were a perfect partner,” said Althea. “I could tell, even if I was just barely keeping up.” Though her voice held remorse, her tone was gentle and peaceful. “Your cues are so light they are nearly telepathic. You don’t just lead; you get in touch.”
He smiled, accepting her praise as his due.
“You have such influence,” she marvelled. “Because we danced, everyone did. Tell me this, what inspired you to put on dance music?”
“The moment demanded it,” Kurt replied. “The Toe Shoes’ Finale had its whimsical aspect, but it didn’t take off. There was a void, and I rushed in to fill it.”
“But you had already selected the music before The Toe Shoes’ Finale began,” said Althea. “You must have done it when you went inside for a few minutes, while everyone was on the roof, drinking Champagne.”
“Very observant of you,” Kurt commented. He had stopped eating. He looked at her closely.
“So you’d planned the whole thing before The Toe Shoes’ Finale,” she pressed him.
“I had to,” Kurt said. “How else was I to get you to dance with me?”
“The result was hardly worth the effort,” Althea replied. She was suddenly nervous, her mouth dry. I am frightened, she realized.
“For me there was no effort,” Kurt corrected her softly.
What is he trying to tell me? she wondered. Their eyes met. He did not try to escape her gaze; he allowed her to fathom his meaning. She looked at him. She forgot about the other people in the room. She saw that he looked at her with interest but without desire. His curiosity was generous, for there was no need in it. She divined an impersonal chill in his warmth. He appeared to retreat slightly, though he did not move. She was glad of his remoteness, because it was friendly. It restored her sense of safety.
He is everyone’s mentor, Althea thought. He can be my mentor, too, even if I am not a dancer.
“Tell me,” she said, her thoughts now free to wander, “about my collaboration with the Dancers. Tell me about the backdrop you want me to create.”
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